more of a hindrance than a help; her dreamy, perpetually defeated manner set Julia's teeth on edge.
"What can I do?" Kirsty asked. "Rory said-"
"Yes," said Julia. "I'm sure he did."
"Where is he? Rory, I mean."
"Gone back for another vanload, to add to the misery."
"Oh."
Julia softened her expression. "You know it's very sweet of you," she said, "to come round like this, but I
don't think there's much you can do just at the moment."
Kirsty flushed slightly. Dreamy she was, but not stupid.
"I see," she said. "Are you sure? Can't...I mean, maybe I could make a cup of coffee for you?"
"Coffee," said Julia. The thought of it made her realize just how parched her throat had become. "Yes,"
she conceded. "That's not a bad idea."
The coffeemaking was not without its minor traumas. No task Kirsty undertook was ever entirely simple. She stood in the kitchen, boiling water in a pan it had taken a quarter of an hour to find, thinking that maybe she shouldn't have come after all. Julia always looked at her so strangely, as if faintly baffled by
the fact that she hadn't been smothered at birth. No matter. Rory had asked her to come, hadn't he? And that was invitation enough. She would not have turned down the chance of his smile for a hundred Julias.
The van arrived twenty-five minutes later, minutes in which the women had twice attempted, and twice failed, to get a conversation simmering. They had little in common. Julia the sweet, the beautiful, the winner of glances and kisses, and Kirsty the girl with the pale handshake, whose eyes were only ever as bright as Julia's before or after tears. She had long ago decided that life was unfair. But why, when she'd accepted that bitter truth, did circumstance insist on rubbing her face in it?
She surreptitiously watched Julia as she worked, and it seemed to Kirsty that the woman was incapable of ugliness. Every gesture-a stray hair brushed from the eyes with the back of the hand, dust blown from a favorite cup-all were infused with such effortless grace. Seeing it, she understood Rory's doglike adulation, and understanding it, despaired afresh.
He came in, at last, squinting and sweaty. The afternoon sun was fierce. He grinned at her, parading the ragged line of his front teeth that she had first found so irresistible.
"I'm glad you could come," he said.
"Happy to help-" she replied, but he had already looked away, at Julia.
"How's it going?"
"I'm losing my mind," she told him.
"Well, now you can rest from your labors," he said. "We brought the bed this trip." He gave her a
conspiratorial wink, but she didn't respond.
"Can I help with unloading?" Kirsty offered.
"Lewton and M.B. are doing it," came Rory's reply.
"Oh."
"But I'd give an arm and a leg for a cup of tea."
"We haven't found the tea," Julia told him.
"Oh. Maybe a coffee, then?"
"Right," said Kirsty. "And for the other two?"
"They'd kill for a cup."
Kirsty went back to the kitchen, filled the small pan to near brimming, and set it back on the stove. From the hallway she heard Rory supervising the next unloading.
It was the bed, the bridal bed. Though she tried very hard to keep the thought of his embracing Julia out of her mind, she could not. As she stared into the water, and it simmered and steamed and finally boiled, the same painful images of their pleasure came back and back.
3
While the trio were away, gathering the fourth and final load of the day, Julia lost her temper with the unpacking. It was a disaster, she said; everything had been parceled up and put into the tea chests in the wrong order. She was having to disinter perfectly useless items to get access to the bare necessities.
Kirsty kept her silence, and her place in the kitchen, washing the soiled cups.
Cursing louder, Julia left the chaos and went out for a cigarette on the front step. She leaned against the open door, and breathed the pollen-gilded air. Already, though it was only the twenty-first of August, the afternoon was tinged with a smoky scent that heralded autumn.
She had lost track of how fast the day had gone, for as she stood there a bell began to ring for Evensong: the run of chimes rising and falling in lazy waves. The sound was reassuring. It made her think of her childhood, though not-that she could remember-of any particular day or place. Simply of being young, of mystery.
It was four years since she'd last stepped into a church: the day of her marriage to Rory, in fact. The thought of that day-or rather, of the promise it had failed to fulfill-soured the moment. She left the step, the chimes in full flight, and turned back into the house. After the touch of the sun on her upturned face, the interior seemed gloomy. Suddenly she tired to the point of tears.
They would have to assemble the bed before they could put their heads down to sleep tonight, and they had yet to decide which room they would use as the master bedroom. She would do that now, she
elected, and so avoid having to return to the front room, and to ever-mournful Kirsty.
The bell was still pealing when she opened the door of the front room on the second floor. It was the largest of the three upper rooms-a natural choice-but the sun had not got in today (or any other day this summer) because the blinds were drawn across the window. The room was consequently chillier than anywhere else in the house; the air stagnant. She crossed the stained floorboards to the window, intending to remove the blind.
At the sill, a strange thing. The blind had been securely nailed to the window frame, effectively cutting out the least intrusion of life from the sunlit street beyond. She tried to pull the material free, but failed. The workman, whoever he'd been, had done a thorough job.
No matter; she'd have Rory take a claw hammer to the nails when he got back. She turned from the window, and as she did so she was suddenly and forcibly aware that the bell was still summoning the faithful. Were they not coming tonight? Was the hook not sufficiently baited with promises of paradise? The thought was only half alive; it withered in moments. But the bell rolled on, reverberating around the room. Her limbs, already aching with fatigue, seemed dragged down further by each peal. Her head throbbed intolerably.
The room was hateful, she'd decided; it was stale, and its benighted walls clammy. Despite its size, she would not let Rory persuade her into using it as the master bedroom. Let it rot.
She started toward the door, but as she came within a yard of it, the corners of the room seemed to creak, and the door slammed. Her nerves jangled. It was all she could do to prevent herself from sobbing.
Instead she simply said, "Go to hell," and snatched at the handle. It turned easily (why should it not? yet she was relieved) and the door swung open. From the hall below, a splash of warmth and ocher light.
She closed the door behind her and, with a queer satisfaction the root of which she couldn't or wouldn't fathom turned the key in the lock.
As she did so, the bell stopped.
4
"But it's the biggest of the rooms..."
"I don't like it, Rory. It's damp. We can use the back room."
"If we can get the bloody bed through the door."
"Of course we can. You know we can."
"Seems a waste of a good room," he protested, knowing full well that this was a fait accompli.