was not an isolated existence, in any case. My old friends and their children came to visit us. Even my mother came from time to time. She liked staying at Mead, and she and Jake got on well together even though she tended to make barbed remarks on the lines of some people not knowing they were born, and how iniquitous it was that ninety per cent of the land in this country belonged to less than ten per cent of the people.
Jake was more than equal to her. ‘Quite agree with you, Joyce,’ he used to nod. ‘It’s a lousy system. Getting rid of land, that’s what the Meadowes have been about for the last hundred and fifty years.’
She would laugh, impatient but disarmed.
I didn’t exactly choose not to involve myself in village affairs, but that was what happened. As Jake’s wife and the chatelaine of Mead I was in any case outside the circle of Meddlett women who gossiped about local events at a level of detail I couldn’t be bothered to absorb. Inevitably there were the sly hints and whispers about Jake, too, and his local affairs before we met. I didn’t want to hear any of these.
The women probably thought I was standoffish; it was true that I found the coffee mornings and book groups tedious and repetitive. There were a few county couples with whom we had dinner, but I didn’t play tennis or ride horses and so those women soon overlooked me. Jake also had his own circle of friends, mostly men of his own age who enjoyed fishing and bird-watching and were interested in land management and country politics, and he continued to involve himself with the parish council and the village church.
I found that I was happy and entirely fulfilled in the peaceful world Jake and I inhabited together. If I wanted a change of scenery I went to London, to the theatre or shopping, or just to gossip with Katherine or Colin or any one of a dozen other friends. Sometimes I even felt resentful when local commitments took up too much of Jake’s time. He did say he wished I would participate more, and so for several years we hosted Meddlett’s November the Fifth party until the annual bacchanalia finally got out of hand.
While I reflect on all this I have been wielding the shears in snapping bursts, within a thicket of honeysuckle growth that is blocking the light into the dining-room window.
I lean back to judge the effect and out of the corner of my eye see a figure coming towards me. Once again memory plays its trick of elision and I think it is Jake in his old tweed coat. A companionable greeting, nothing as formal as a word, takes shape in my head, and then the nudge of reality makes me blink and duck.
‘Let me go up the ladder and do the top bit for you,’ Colin says.
An ache has developed between my shoulder blades so I hand him the shears in silence and wipe my forehead with the back of my gardening glove.
Colin works more methodically, disentangling the excess growth before clipping it back. I hold the stepladder with one hand, and listen to the rooks in the trees along the drive. Very quickly the top of the shrub looks disciplined while the sides that I have butchered bristle with snapped twigs and dying tendrils. He dismounts and touches my shoulder.
‘Don’t you have anyone to come in and do this for you?’
‘Am I so bad at it?’ I smile.
‘It’s a lot of work.’
I glance about trying to see the house and its setting through his eyes.
The roses and lavender need attention, it’s true, and there are weeds sprouting between broken stone slabs. Jake was a knowledgeable gardener, whereas I am only trying to keep the place looking cared for. I don’t employ a regular handyman, even for a few hours a week. This is partly because of the money, but mostly because I don’t want anyone else working amongst Jake’s flowers. Gardeners have strong ideas of their own. I might come out one evening and find the old roses replaced with those variegated evergreens, the kind that look like shiny oilcloth splashed with bleach.
There are days when Mead is too much, even though looking after it is my only job. Sometimes I count up and there are half a dozen light bulbs waiting to be replaced in three different rooms. Blocked gutters are sending rainwater chutes down the old walls, and doors have warped in the winter’s damp so they no longer close properly.
Sell up, demon voices immediately whisper in my ear. Move to a modern apartment, somewhere with underfloor heating and windows that don’t rattle.
I shan’t do that, of course.
At other times, much more consistently, I know that I can – and will – do anything to keep it going.
The idea of having Colin and the others to live here with me is part of that process of preservation. They choose to see it as a more emotional matter, Mirry gathering everyone together in her old hippy way, and it has that element of course. Who else can we look to, now that we have reached this time of our lives?
But I am more practical than my old friends give me credit for.
Colin leans the stepladder against the wall of the house. The exertion has brought some colour to his face, but I notice how thin he is. We all know that he has, or has had, prostate cancer, but I don’t think even Polly knows much more than that bald fact. Colin talks so little about himself.
‘Shall we go in and have a sandwich?’ I suggest.
I want to feed him up, to mother him, but the idea of Colin, the most self-contained of men, welcoming any maternal attention from me is comical enough to make me smile.
He looks up at the sky. It’s pale and luminous. Two days of rain and wind following the discovery of the burial site have now given way to a warm, damp stillness. The air smells of ploughed earth and leaf mould, and it’s hard to believe that the bracing sea is only six miles away.
‘I think I’d rather go for a walk. Indoors is a bit claustrophobic on a day like this.’
I put away the ladder and the tools. Nowadays before we can set off on even a short impromptu walk we have to change our shoes and put on different jackets and Colin finds a flat tweed cap to cover his thinning hair. I note these signs of elderly caution only in passing, because I am getting used to them. We all display them, except for Selwyn. Selwyn, I think, would still set out for Tibet at an hour’s notice without a backwards glance, and in the clothes he stood up in.
Colin and I head down the drive together, tacitly steering away from the track that leads to the site. Earlier today Amos got in his Jaguar and raced off to protest the delay to his project at a meeting with the contractors, his architect, and the various senior representatives of the county authorities. He asked me if I would like to join them, but I assured him that I’d be quite happy to hear everything from him. The idea of sitting through a meeting with Amos on the boil and a row of local authority archaeological experts was not enticing.
He’s not back yet.
Katherine is in London, at the charity, and Polly and Selwyn are working on their house. There’s a cement mixer parked in the yard.
Colin takes my arm. He has long legs, but he shortens his stride to match mine.
‘Where are we going?’
I don’t want to walk into Meddlett. If we did we’d bump into people I know and for now I want Colin to myself.
‘Along the footpath and up the hill. We can look back at the house and the digging.’
