“Lucky you, sir,” says Eve, deciding she should have hugged him when she had opportunity. She’s missed him. “Are you here to see some old haunts or were you just keen to see how I’ve coped since you retired.”
“I’ve been watching with interest, Eve,” he replies. “Doing bloody wonderfully. Doing me proud.” He cocks his head and pulls a face. “Not so much with Arthur Sixpence though, eh?”
Eve listens to the sound of the wind playing with the branches of the trees below. Listens to the pink-pink-pink of grimy water falling from the mudguards to the puddles in the road. “Sir?”
“I think we might need a drink, love,” says Millward. “I reckon we can help each other out.”
Eve will always regret the speed with which she agrees.
19
Rosie lives in a sturdy, stone-built cottage that looks, to Rowan’s inexpert gaze, as though it may have stood here for the best part of 200 years. It’s an inviting, homely sort of place and seems to carry with an intrinsic whiff of home-cooking and freshly-picked herbs. Five big windows, painted sage green, spread out neatly around a big purple front door. The front lawn is slightly overlong but there are neatly labelled bamboo canes in the sodden flower-beds, predicting the names of the flowers that will bloom here soon. He glances up as he passes from the cold of the day to the heat of the house and spies a bushel of dried juniper; the berries black, tucked into the eaves of the porch. It’s a local superstition, a way to keep bad spirits away. Rowan wonders what she’s afraid of – why she came out so quickly when she spotted a strange man so obviously poking around in her neighbour’s garden.
He pushes open the front door and here’s her call out that she’s in the kitchen, drying off. He follows the sound of her voice, leaving footprints on her terracotta tiles, noticing the occasional imprint of her own damp soles upon the dry stone. He steps into the warm, yellow-painted kitchen; the drapes dark green. Used pots are stacked around a deep Belfast sink and the round kitchen table is a platter for a colossal buffet of pens, paints, papers and modelling clay. Pots, pans and old-fashion gypsy-style tea kettles hand from a wrought-iron range. The baby, now draped in a soft blue blanket, sits on the floor by an empty bowl for cat food, looking up at his mum with an expression somewhere between reverence and hunger.
“We got it for the view,” smiles Rosie, picking up an oven-glove and gesturing at the window. “Money well spent.”
Rowan, dripping onto the flagged floor, He looks past Rosie, who stands by the window, rubbing her hair into a great frizz of static. Beyond her, the fells are a blur: the merest suggestion of something there, beyond the cloud; brooding and immense.
“I’m not great with my hands but a towel would be appreciated,” says Rowan, apologetically.
“I’m using an oven glove,” responds Rosie, raising her eyebrows in a way that makes him warm to her at once. “I’m going to presume that’s not quite good enough.”
“I’m not proud,” smiles Rowan. “It’ll do…,”
“Stay there,” she commands, and disappears through the door, leaving Rowan and the baby to eye on another distrustfully. She pops back a moment later. She’s stripped off the vest and dungarees and pulled on a baggy T-shirt and a pair of flared cords. “That was bloody daft of me,” she says, exasperated with herself. She hands him a fluffy burgundy toweclass="underline" her scent all coconut and poster-paint. He notices that she has a tiny ring through the cartilage of one dainty ear; a daith, rumoured to be good for preventing migraines.
“What was daft of you?”
“I keep leaving him places,” she explains. “My mind does have a tendency to wander. I’d like to blame the artistic temperament but I think it’s more a case that I’ve gravitated towards art because I was too scatter-brained for everything else.”
Rowan uses his fingertips to rub the towel through his hair.
“Sorry if I loomed up on you.” she says, looking embarrassed. “I’m not one of those nosy neighbours.” She grimaces, as if there’s something unpleasant under her tongue. “That’s not true. That’s a total lie. I am one of those nosy neighbours – I just don’t mean to be. I swear, I maybe look out the window half a dozen times a day and they always seem to be times when there’s something going on – not that very much goes on around here anyway.” She gestures at the table and Rowan sinks onto a chair, his damp trousers feeling vile against his legs.
“We go a bit mad here sometimes,” confides Rosie, busying herself filling a deep kettle and looking through chaotically-stacked cupboards. “Not that it’s not brilliant, of course. I mean, who wouldn’t want to raise a child here? It’s idyllic. But my husband has to work away a lot so for big chunks there’s really just us. I go to the playgroups and the mums-and-tots groups but it’s always a bit of an effort. Some days I could scream, I really could.”
Rosie leans up to fetch something from a high shelf in the sombre yellow light she takes on the likeness of a painting by Vermeer – an apple-cheeked serving girl with a glow that speaks of glowing embers; a rose-lipped embrace. He feels a vibration in his pocket. It takes him a moment to realise it’s his phone. Embarrassed, he apologises and fumbles for the phone. It’s a message from Matti, his half Finnish, half Jamaican agent, for whom a love of literature has not blunted his use of superfluous exclamation marks.
Sounds Great!!! Call me, asap. Mat.
Rowan isn’t sure whether to feel enthused or to slink further into the swirling vortex of panic that is swirling in his whisky and stomach acid. This has to be something, he tells himself. Has to be!!!
“That’s Violet,” he says, rolling his eyes: an old friend falling victim to a repeated pattern of behaviour. “Full of apology, as usual! What a donut, I’ll have her guts for garters when she gets back from her travels.”
“Oh you’ve heard from her, have you?” exclaims Rosie, excitedly “I was panicking, if I’m honest. Is she on now? Is she active? Put on her on Facetime, I’d love to see her!”
Rowan makes a show of stabbing at the display. Makes a face. “Isn’t coming back. Hang on. Violet? Vi…,no, she’s gone. Bugger. I can send a message from you if you like …,”
“Drat,” says Rosie, petulantly. “Oh. Oh well, if she’s on, just ask her if she’s able to transfer the money for the oil, as it’s been a few weeks and I don’t mean to be a pain, but … and does she want to it again this year? Split it, I mean?” She stops, worriedly wringing out Rowan’s towel, water dripping on her paint-streaked hands. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Let her focus on her chakras or whatever.”
Rowan smiles. Affects the demeanour of one who’s had this happen plenty of times before. “Left you hanging, has she? Think of it as flattery. She only makes trouble for her really close friends.” He grins, hoping it’s true, and is grateful to see his smile mirrored in Rosie’s.
“It’s nice if she thinks of me like that,” says Rosie, a touch sadly. “I haven’t really made many good friends since we moved. It’s hard, and with not being allowed on Facebook any more, it’s almost …,”
“Not allowed?” asks Rowan, intrigued.
“Oh, my husband has banned me,” she says, and then makes an effort to make it sound less patriarchal. “I mean, with my consent, of course. It’s best - I get drawn in.”