Page 17 of Happily Ever After
‘Why were you mowing “fuck off” into the grass?’ I asked.
He leaned against one of the birch trees, one foot up so he looked relaxed and at home. ‘Ah. You saw that.’
‘From up there.’ I pointed to the top of the icehouse mound.
Jay shrugged. ‘It’s all right, I mow it all out again. It’s just a way of letting some frustration out.’
‘On innocent grass?’
He sighed and rested his head back against the bark of the tree. His hair was long and swept against the neck of his T-shirt, and when he folded his arms I noticed that he had a tiny tattoo on his wrist.
‘Grass isn’t innocent,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s evil. Everything round here is evil.’
‘Even the ghosts?’
His head rolled along the trunk of the tree so that he could look at me. ‘Did you say “ghosts”?’
‘Mmmm. Marie of the landing, that sort of thing.’
‘Marie of the what, now? Who the hell is that?’
I found myself explaining about the ghostly figure at the balcony, her origin story and that I’d seen her myself, twice. Jay just stood and listened, frowning, then rubbed his hand through his hair. ‘Never heard of her,’ he said. ‘All sounds dodgy as hell to me.’
‘Well, unless Hugo is keeping a secret woman in the house…’
‘Who’d blame him? Lady Tanith probably won’t let him go out with anyone until he’s over forty, and she’s pre-approved them. If he wanted a girlfriend he’dhaveto keep her hidden.’
I thought about the scuffling noises in the attic above my head. About the soft, sorrowful sounds from the Yellow Room, which I’d managed to convince myself had been rats. ‘Do you think so?’ Then I thought of Hugo’s diffidence and deference to his mother. ‘No. He wouldn’t dare.’
‘So he’s not tried to seduce you yet then?’ Jay had his hands on his hips. ‘A red-blooded male denied female companionship – he’ll have a secret lover away in a priest hole somewhere.’
For some reason I felt as though I ought to defend Hugo. ‘I don’t think he’s like that.’
Jay raised his eyebrows.
‘What about you then? Where’s your “female companionship”?’
‘I don’t need a woman.’ Jay turned away and began to walk back across the grass. ‘I just take my pleasure with the ride-on mower if I feel the urge.’
‘You really are horrible,’ I said, but he’d got his back to me and was already taking out his hearing aids and climbing back up into the seat of the little tractor. He waved a hand at me and started the engine, executing a neat spin around the grove and back to the incriminating letters carved into the lawn, where he dropped the blades and began mowing them out.
9
WUTHERING HEIGHTS – WUTHERING HEIGHTS, EMILY BRONTË
Between having frightened Hugo, Lady Tanith’s ‘misunderstanding’, and my minor falling-out with the gardener, I kept my head down for a few days. I worked diligently enough to keep everyone at bay, and cleared acres of floor space in the library, getting all the books entered on the system as the newly liberated light streamed in through the big window and made my working conditions far more pleasurable. I even tolerated The Master coming to sit under the table, with occasional breaks for rubbing against my ankles while I worked.
But I was tired. Every night now, thanks to Jay, I would lie awake listening out for sounds of Hugo tiptoeing downstairs to let in his ‘secret woman’, or creeping up to the attics to ‘entertain’. The house was given to sporadic noises, wispy sounds from the Yellow Room next door, those footstep-like creaks from overhead, none of which did anything for the state of my nerves. I sometimes sat with my ear against the door, alert just in case a ghostly arm should reach through, to hear nothing more alarming than the raspberry blowing of The Master, puffing air through his fur as he cleaned himself, ineffectually, on my threshold.
The house continued mostly as silent as – well, I tried not to think ‘the grave’. I had to admit that Hugo having a secret lover was more likely than Marie haunting the landing, but from what I knew of Hugo it wasn’t an enormous probability gap. He had failed, totally, to try to seduce me in properdroit de seigneurfashion and instead kept up a light-hearted and chatty relationship, which was at least an improvement on what I got from his mother, who would sit in dark silence in the library at times, like a black hole that’s got lost on its way to a universe.
Jay gave me the occasional wave if he saw me, but now I knew that he didn’t wear his hearing aids when he was working, I didn’t bother to shout a greeting. I’d return his wave, with an inner comment on his dreadful shorts or the brown hairy legs that protruded beneath them, ending in work boots or wellingtons depending on the wetness of that day’s task.
I’d spent one day off walking down towards the village and hoping to meet someone,anyone, from outside the household to talk to. I had failed on both counts. The tiny collection of thatched-roof cottages was deserted, so I had only gone as far as the church.
Without the pressure of the memorial service and the presence of Lady Tanith, the building had seemed more welcoming. I’d always liked churches. There was something comfortingly enduring about the way they sat in towns and villages, overlooked and quite often overgrown, but sensiblythere. This one was little more than a squat tower and four grey walls etched with the marks of now-absent windows and the scars of recently removed ivy. From the pathway I could see the silent houses beyond, uniform in their thatch and fencing. There was something of theMidwich Cuckoosabout them, a slight tinge of the sinister and I’d turned away, poked once or twice around the graveyard which hadn’t helped matters at all because it had only reminded me further of the presence of the dead, and gone back to the house.
The weather turned hot, not that we really noticed inside the dampness of Templewood, which sucked all the heat from the air and turned it into a vaguely plaster-scented chill permeating the entire building. The Master went outside and spent his days lounging under the edging shade of the bushes, airing his surprisingly pale stomach and blinking in the unaccustomed daylight. I hated to admit it, but the library was lonelier without him, and as another day trailed miserably to another end, I made myself a sandwich in the kitchen and went to bed early to lie in my pyjamas in the moist heat of my room.
