Solsbury Hill Page 17

  A friendly-faced young woman answered. She was big with a baby belly, her face was long and lean, and her eyes were limpid with generosity.

  “Darling man.” Mead had flowers with him and a bottle of champagne. “Eleanor,” she said and embraced her warmly.

  “More gorgeous than ever,” Mead said. “Eleanor, this is my great friend Lucy, and this her hardheaded bloke, Jim.” A redheaded man wrapped his arms around Lucy’s fine belly and with his chin resting there on his wife’s shoulder, reached around to shake Eleanor’s hand.

  “Come in, come in. Thanks, mate,” he said, taking the champagne and flowers. A bouncy short-haired blonde in miniskirt and bare legs came around a corner and took them from Jim, introduced herself to Eleanor. “Kendra,” she said, “and my boyfriend, Harry.” Coming in from the garden, Harry carried a ladder he set down so he could make it across the room to greet Eleanor properly.

  “We’re making a baby’s room,” Lucy said. “Problem is we don’t know the color, so we’ve been mixing paints to find one that pleases, won’t offend, whichever she is.”

  “Whichever he is, she means,” Jim added.

  “We’ve settled on a slightly grayed green. It looks better than it sounds. Come have a look, won’t you?”

  Lucy led them in. The back of the house was a wall of windows, from one end to the other, which opened on to a backyard that was flat with a low wall around it and beyond that was the thick of a forest.

  “They call the house the Bailey,” Mead said. “That out there is like a kind of bailey.” He stopped himself. “Do you like it?”

  It was sparsely furnished with pieces of this and that, nothing that formed a whole or matched. “It’s fantastic. I’m stunned. Can we stay?” Eleanor whispered as they walked a few feet behind the others.

  “If we did, we’d have to help clean up. We won’t be long. Just wanted you to see . . .”

  “He designed this place,” Jim said.

  Eleanor looked up at Mead’s strong, handsome face. He was shaking his head. “Drew some drawings, is all I did.” He was genuinely humble.

  “It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Lucy said.

  “It really is,” Eleanor said.

  The baby’s room had a wall of curtains over the wall of windows, but Lucy pulled the drapes open. “In the spring there’s a baby field of poppies right there,” she said. “It will look nice with the green, I think, don’t you?”

  “I do.” One wall was painted and a crib was half put together. “How long before the baby’s due?”

  “Any day, we think.”

  There were too many people in the small child’s room, so they moved into the living room, a pleasant jumble of colorful mismatched furniture that clashed, in the best way, with the perfection of the house itself.

  Mead was, as always, relaxed in his skin, but in the company of his good friends she could see more parts of him: how he was a mix of commanding and charming, self-effacing and deeply kind. They’d been at school and then at university together. They were educated and spoke familiarly about an array of things, finishing off the California chardonnay and then opening the champagne. Kendra’d made fudge and some butter cookies, so they feasted on sweets and guessed about names for the baby.

  “Did you really design this?” Eleanor asked.

  Mead was utterly at home with his long legs stretched out from the chair. He’d finished putting the crib together, had gone into the cupboards for glasses and popped the cork on the champagne bottle, served everyone a glass.

  It was different to see him loved by other people. Really loved—one could feel it and it cast a kind of light on his face: like the difference between a postcard and a real place.

  “He certainly did.” A barrister in London, Harry spoke with a slight stutter.

  Mead was across the coffee table from her. “It really was just a drawing,” he said.

  Jim cuffed him on the shoulder as he walked behind him and Mead dropped his head back. Grabbed hold of Jim and they played at roughhousing.

  “He told me he built castles and dreams,” Eleanor said, “and I thought he was kidding.”

  The whole room sparkled with delight at this.

  The ancient church in the town of Pickering was modest inside. She and Mead were alone except for a man climbing down a ladder, who invited Eleanor to come have a close look at the medieval paintings. The figures were drawn in thick black lines. She didn’t know much about art but she knew enough to be startled. How modern they seemed: beyond a perfect rendering, they were almost cartoons of expression and feeling. Edmund, in the depiction of his martyrdom, was tied to a stake. His feet were turned out and he stood on a small field of cheerful, childlike red flowers. With arrows piercing him, his face looked perplexed, almost ironic, and Eleanor felt him looking straight at her and asking what the heck she thought was going on here. She climbed down the ladder and thanked the old man for letting her up.

  They strolled along and looked at the panels. In a low whisper, Mead read to her about how the church had plastered over them long ago and happily this had protected them, once they were restored.

  Each picture had a sense of the inevitable in it. Whether Salome danced or St. George pranced on the red belly of a dragon or Jesus tolerated the Passion, they were Bible dramas mitigated by thick, simple black lines, pure colors, and candor.

  Outside the church, Eleanor and Mead walked awhile. The fresh air relieved Eleanor and she linked her arm through Mead’s. At the top of the hill, so steep you felt you might slide right down and off the edge of it, there was a view of the wildly vast countryside.

  “I used to feel in the middle of nowhere, here, but I don’t anymore,” she said.

  He stepped in front of her.

  “And you, with those green eyes.”

  He pulled her toward him. The top of her head was at his chin and he pulled her so close she had to lift her face to see him. “Fact is,” he said, “you’re only ever exactly where you are.”

  “And happily so.”

  “You know the inn’s only got the one room,” he whispered.

  She blessed him with her pure smile. “I am fully capable of behaving myself in bed.”

  “Well, I like the sound of that,” he said.

  The room was dressed up in pink and cream paisley bedspread and curtains. Eleanor opened the window to let in some fresh air. She sat on his lap. She turned around and unlaced her shoes, then kicked them off. She took off her sweater and wriggled out of her jeans. This left her in a T-shirt and the pale blue frilly knickers she’d bought in Haworth. They were lacy frills from top to bottom, particularly across the bottom.

  “Your friends are great, that room she’s making . . .”

  “You’re going to talk whilst sitting on my lap in those lovely knickers?” he said.

  “It can’t be called behaving if there’s nothing at stake, can it?”

  His warm hands held her legs. The tips of his fingers moved slightly inside her thighs. Mead took off his shirt and Eleanor shivered with simple pleasure at the sight of him. He gathered her in and they climbed under the comforter. The length of her body was against him.

  Mead lifted her chin and kissed her.

  There was a knock on the door and Eleanor startled. A kitchen girl called out to say she’d leave the tray and Mead stepped into the hall to get it.

  “I ordered us some dinner,” he said. “There are lamb chops with greens, the requisite mashed potatoes, and some squash soup.”

  “Yum,” she said.

  “Let’s start with wine,” he said and opened the bottle of a French blend.

  “Chocolate and plums,” she said, tasting it. “Some tobacco zing and a smidge of dirt.”

  It was so rich, the wine, she could almost chew it in her mouth. She tasted the color she saw on Mead’s lips, the deep red almost purple
stain, and drank enough that her mouth was saturated with berries and ferment, and then she wanted to taste a wine-rich kiss with him.

  He stood from his chair and came around the table, offered his hand, and there in the middle of the room she rose on her toes and tasted him, tasted the alcohol and behind that the berries and behind that she felt the warmth of down like a soft pillow it was safe to fall into. And she fell, and he drew her firmly against him so she could feel his blood surge and his heart pounding fast with desire. It was good he was strong, good he had a hold of her, because she’d have dropped to the floor: her knees giving way, her womb contracting.

  She tried to think, tried to think about the lamb and the mashed potatoes under the silver domes on the plates on the table, but he moved forward with her. He’d moved beyond the tender kiss to one that suffused her even though his lips were his, and hers were hers, and their tongues were only barely finding each other. The pervasive feeling was separateness, even as she lost herself for moments. He nipped at her lips with his teeth and then his mouth opened just enough that she sensed how great it was.

  He lifted her off the ground.

  A man had never lifted her off the ground, she’d never allowed it. She’d always pressed her feet into the floor, but Mead lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him. His hands supported her as he held her in the middle of the room and his fingers moved against her bottom, pressed gently toward the middle point, where she was soft and pliable.

  His right hand settled on her left hip bone, his left hand held her hand, and they waltzed in small circles around the room. He was bare-chested. She wore her thin top and lacy knickers. He hummed a Scottish tune into her ear, and it tickled but she didn’t squirm away from it, and soon the tickle became an unwinding thrill. With his fingers pressed against her spine, he guided her where he wanted her to go, made it easy for her to follow. Her hand slid below his lower back.

  Tension. Taut and tender. Fragile and crazy with vigor. There were things to talk about. Through her brain snapped the thought like a flash of light in the back of the eye: they had things to talk about. They knew enough to be dangerous to each other, enough that embarking on a journey high on that bed, a bed so high above the ground there were three stairs to climb to it, could prove unwise. It flashed through her mind as the dancing became more like dervish swirling and she pressed, climbed up the front of him. He kissed her lips and neck and then at her ear exhaled something with glittery wings that made its way down her spine. She’d never felt so wild, on the inside.

  On the outside, he lifted her onto the bed and watched as she pulled the thin tank off over her head. He seemed older, looked at her as if he might be choosing something. The right thing. He tasted one breast and then the other, dropped onto his elbows and framed her face in his hands. He held her still and moved slowly.

  In the morning, they’d taken a bath and were standing in front of the mirror. She watched as he kissed her neck, then draped a linen towel around her shoulders.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen herself in a mirror.

  He loved the taste of her, he whispered.

  They looked beautiful, side by side: her long blond hair and pale fresh skin, his dark hair, tanned flesh, and structured body. Tall and taller, there was something simple and balanced between them. And she felt a wave of sadness inside the pleasure.

  In the weeks she’d been in Yorkshire, she’d slowed down enough to feel. And this gesture, draping her with a plain soft towel when she was damp and slightly cold, reminded her how she had coped and set herself to the beat and rhythm so easy to fall into in New York City. Moving and producing and clipping through on pavement with high heels.

  “Do you feel like an orphan?” she asked him. As it tumbled out she heard the empty sound of the word, but before she had a chance to explain he answered.

  “I am an orphan. A foundling, really. Always have been. My father lives without me in the north, and Alice was more than a mother to me but still not my mother. I am an orphan.”

  He cupped her breasts in his hands and kissed her again.

  She reached her arms behind to pull him closer.

  “Sometimes I think we all are orphans, really,” he said. He watched her face in the long, cloudy mirror. “But that might be sour grapes in me. My father couldn’t raise me after my mother died, but they loved each other deeply, I can feel it inside. Maybe Alice told me, but still I feel it. That’s all there is, for me. I’ve never known it any other way.” Mead’s breath changed. She felt it through her bare spine against his chest. “Now you,” he said.

  “My parents were good to me.” She caught hold of Mead’s eyes in the mirror. “But it’s weird not having them. My father disappeared inside himself or something else after my mom died, but I’ve been making the best of it. Because they were good, they were good to me . . .”

  “And the good of it shows on you.” He smoothed his hands across her belly and held her hips.

  As if the molecules of her flesh and soul had rearranged, she felt open and clear. Though light-headed from a long night of lovemaking, her head spinning with remnant desire, she felt awakened as if some combination of the moors and Mead had stirred the sleeping soul at the base of her spine.

  “I think my mother might have had some kind of crazy love,” she said.

  “This kind?” Mead whispered just below her ear and, as he whispered, his lips brushed that stirring skin at the side of her neck.

  Now Eleanor turned and peppered Mead’s face with kisses and his eyes and then his neck. “Maybe this kind,” she whispered amid kisses, “yes, maybe. Maybe I am at a crossroads. Maybe I’m choosing.”

  In the narrow space between the mirror and the tub they stood. She rested her cheek against his chest. “My mother came back here for a reason. I remember the day she left, that last day. I didn’t remember for long time, but I’ve been remembering things, while I’ve been here. She was happy to be leaving and I thought she shouldn’t be. Shouldn’t be leaving and I begrudged her it, that day. She was looking forward to something.”

  He could see her well-rounded bare bottom in the mirror behind her and the way her spine held strong and stable amid the fall of blond ringlets and curls.

  Her skin was still damp. She sat down on the edge of the tub and said, “Emily made a choice to stay with her brother and it killed her. Catherine, maybe she made the wrong choice.”

  “She never let go of Heathcliff,” he said.

  “And that killed her.” Eleanor was trembling.

  Mead started kissing her brow, to quieten her.

  “Do you think I can choose and not choose the wrong thing?”

  Mead wrapped a robe around Eleanor’s bare shoulders and sat beside her. “May I tell you something?”

  She nodded, tears on her cheeks and a solid bewilderment in her eyes.

  “There’s a love here that can be transporting, it’s true,” he said. “The moors are strong and fierce and wild. And, fine woman, so are you. But it takes more than crazy love to withstand the moors. Crazy love on these moors will kill you. It can’t be ’bout choosing the right love, my love. It’s all about choosing yourself, finding what’s true inside you.”

  Wiping away tears, she said cheerfully, “I know that. I know what it takes to withstand love on the moors.”

  “Do you?” He stared into her face.

  Her head bobbed with a few short bobs. “Mm-hmm. I do.”

  “Well, then. That sounds good.” He paused between his words, slowing things down, making them last. “Would you mind if I carried you back to that bed and had my way with you?”

  In the kitchen at Trent Hall, when they arrived home, they found a note Gwen had left in bright red pen on butcher paper so Mead wouldn’t miss it. She reminded him of a meeting he had with the rapeseed buyer in Thirsk.

  In the aftermath of lovemaking they
were floating half-high in air. They’d never got around to eating their dinner the night before, so they scrambled some eggs and ate day-old biscuits, then Mead headed off to get his things together for the day’s journey.

  Just after the back door slammed, the phone in the downstairs hall rang, loud and shrill, seven or eight times before Eleanor found it and grabbed it.

  “Trent Hall,” she said into the big old Bakelite phone.

  “Is there an Eleanor Abbott?” Gladys’ voice was tentative.

  “This is me, Gladys.”

  “Eleanor, my God. You answered the phone. I’ve been trying e-mails and finally remembered you gave me this number. Just in time. I’ve got news. Harrods wants a big old piece of you, and I set up a meeting, was just about to cancel it, but great, there you are. Can you make it?”

  “Today?”

  “I set the meeting for tomorrow, but I can change it. They’ll send a car for you, wherever you are.”

  “No, God, I’ll take the train.” A wild shift in thinking, she’d lost track of time. “Is everything going okay, there? Production and . . .”

  “Absolutely great. You doing okay?”

  “I am, actually.”

  “You sound good. Your voice sounds good and a little English the way you answered the phone. So you’ll make it to the city? Listen, I’ll make a res at some hotel and text you with it.”

  “Just overnight. I’ve got to get back to a few things here.”

  “Right. Just tomorrow, one meeting. It’s not even necessary, but since you’re there . . .”

  “It’s mind-bogglingly great. Harrods, Barneys, this is just insane.”

  “Just what you deserve.”

  “Thanks, Glad. I better get going.”

  “You coming back soon?”

  “Hmm, define soon.”

  It took three minutes to fold her few things and put them in the suitcase. The sky was bright with new winter light outside her windows and the ground had a thin slick cover of frost. She kicked the suitcase closed and went to the barn-library to find him, but Mead’s car was already gone.