Solsbury Hill Read online

  In the front hall her mother’s trunk had sat for years. On it was a Chinese bowl Eleanor dropped her keys into at the end of every day. Now she took the bowl off the trunk and opened it. She pulled things out one at a time. As she unwrapped tissue from pieces of a silver tea set, she grew curious. She’d lived her life without cousins or siblings, the last ten years without a mother or father, and suddenly she was part of a family. She took a box of letters her mother had saved, letters she’d once started to read when she was thirteen but hadn’t been able to finish, and put them in the bottom of her suitcase beside her old brown Uggs and wool sweaters.

  She called Miles again. There was no answer.

  She found her mother’s copy of Wuthering Heights in the trunk and flipped through it. She was just twelve years old when her mother died in a car crash on a visit to England. The afternoon the news had come, Eleanor had just closed the book, which her mother had loaned her, when her father knocked on the door. Happy to think he’d learned to respect her privacy, she called for him to come in.

  His face was gray, the muscles limp, but the hall phone rang again, that day, and he turned to answer it before he had a chance to say anything. Still, she knew the worst possible thing had happened. She looked at the small book, whose spine she’d broken as she listened to her father’s conversation.

  She hadn’t wanted to be there. It was the kind of gray day that wells with rain but never yields release. She had offered good reasons for not going to the memorial—her mother’s body was still far away in England, where she’d died—but her father insisted that Eleanor go and Miles had stood beside her all day until the moment she slipped away, tucked herself behind a nearby tree, and wished she were little again, wished she were small at the park with her mother on the swings, wished she were quiet at the edge of a battered picnic blanket as her mother unpacked chicken, then potato salad, then fresh corn on the cob. She wished she were small again and would be prepared to make any pact with God. And then the sky opened up and the sun shone through so that suddenly everything had color and contrast and shape. Eleanor had looked up through the branches above her and hoped that when she looked down again, everyone would be gone and she’d be alone there leaning against the tree with her mother waiting at home for her, as always.

  It still felt like rain outside, but it was just the damned pressure of rain about to explode and clouds as dark as the steel wool under the kitchen counter. Long after midnight, Eleanor’s mind was still restless and she called Miles again. She wanted to lie down next to him, but he didn’t answer his phone.

  There were no more bear claws in the fridge, there was no coffee in the canister, there were no apples in the bowl or blueberries in the freezer. Eleanor grabbed her purse and made her way down six flights of stairs to the ground and up the street to First Avenue to catch a cab.

  “Eighty-third and Columbus.” Her head rattled with the windowpane. Her eyes closed, she recollected images of their weekend at the lake: the first time she popped up on one ski, the fresh fruit jam they made and spread on biscuits he’d bought in the little town. They’d kissed each other, that day, with sticky faces, licked jam off each other’s lips, tasted the crumbs of oats and berries. She remembered how her body ached in the morning after skiing. She remembered the feeling of gliding on water, breaking through the wake, Miles’ face turned toward her, perched on the top of the seat as he took her around the full perimeter of the lake.

  Eleanor had said yes to Ms. Angle on the phone, but she wasn’t at all sure she should have, not at all certain she had the courage to go. She hoped Miles might come with her to Yorkshire, as she’d never really been anywhere without him.

  “Thanks,” she said as she paid the cabdriver. She looked up at the brownstone’s black front door and brass lion knocker. It had once been his parents’ pied-à-terre. She’d been here so rarely.

  The street was silent and all the houses were ready for Halloween, just days away. There were fallen leaves on the ground. The air smelled of earth and worms and damp. She took the steps one at a time. Stopped at the top and looked east down the long, quiet street. Perspective drew her eye to as far as she could see and then she turned to the heavy lion’s head. As she reached for the bell she noticed the ring on her right hand, the band of jet and the lovely carved cameo. It had arrived in a pink box tied with a black satin ribbon, and inside the box was a handwritten note: A Victorian ring of Whitby jet, sent with love, passed down for generations and meant to be yours. Aunt Alice.

  Eleanor pulled the lion’s head just to feel the weight of it, dropped it against the plate, and heard the hollow sound resonate in the inside hall. She leaned her back against the door and wondered if she should use her key. Miles often used his key to her place, but she spent so little time here, hardly any at all.

  Still, she longed to feel the flannel sheets on her skin. She pictured him with three pillows around him all in pale-blue-and-white-striped flannel. She would take off her clothes and slip silently into his warm, high, king-size bed.

  The key was lost in her capacious bag. She fumbled past lipsticks, pens, wallet, coin pouch, bills she meant to mail, then felt the satin ribbon. She opened the main door and then the bright red door to his apartment. Through the dark living room, she saw a low light from his bedroom glowing into the hall.

  The tangle of skin was confusing at first. The breathing was vivid; they hadn’t heard her come in. She regretted using the key as she stood there. When she came to a dead stop on the carpet in the hallway, she hoped she’d got spun about and was in the wrong apartment.

  If she hadn’t used the key in her bag, she’d have rung the bell. If it hadn’t rained, she might not be here. If Ms. Angle hadn’t called, she’d be asleep in bed now. Time might unwind. There would be a different tomorrow.

  Eleanor stood in the hallway and watched, without Miles hearing her heartbeat or catching her shadow or feeling her.

  There must be presences that linger all around us, she thought, which we simply ignore. We must get used to shadows nearby.

  The light was so perfect it may as well have been on film. The light from his bathroom shone on their bodies. He’d left the light on and the door slightly open, so he could see the naked body that lay beneath his naked body, which Eleanor could see was tangled in cotton sheets. Not striped and not flannel.

  He’d left the light on so he could watch as the pixie tipped her head back, the bony rise of her throat, had left it on so Eleanor could see the urgent way he sucked the unfamiliar mocha skin and the fervency of his kisses. She did this and he did that, and their bodies glistened as if they’d sprayed themselves with oil for maximum effect. Miles was moving as if he couldn’t manage enough parts at once, had left the girl’s neck and was holding her tight to flip her on top of him when he saw Eleanor’s face, just as she decided she was leaving and had begun to back her way down the hall. Too close to coming to stop, Miles finished before he pushed the girl aside and scrambled naked down the hall after her. The front door and the street door were open. The key was on the table in the front hall.

  Eleanor went straight to Soho House, where Miles had a membership, to get drunk and take a wild dip in the pool on the roof, but after a quick drink at the bar she hadn’t the heart. Instead, she went home to her apartment where she broke dishes, wreaked a little havoc, and realized she had to get out of there, too. She sat in an all-night café till the sun came up and then, in the early hours of the morning, headed toward the sliver of a workshop she rented in SoHo. At Balthazar she stopped and bought two hot chocolates and a bag of buns to share with her assistant who would be there, as she always was, in the quiet of a Sunday morning.

  Gladys was about to cut into a swath of wool when she saw Eleanor looking tired and lost as she struggled to open the door. Gladys hurried to open it for her. “Hey,” she chimed.

  Eleanor lifted the Balthazar bag.

  “Are you okay?”
Gladys asked.

  Eleanor shrugged, strained a smile. “I knew I’d find you here.” She made an effort to sound strong and cheery.

  “It’s true. I like the quiet,” Gladys said. “I sneak out early, before breakfast, leave the paper and the kids’ waffles to Harry.” Gladys took the cups and bag and placed a gentle hand on Eleanor’s back. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m all right. I’ve kind of been up all night.”

  “I can see that.”

  Eleanor picked up a pile of sweaters to sort. “I had a call from England, from a friend of my aunt. My aunt’s not well and they want me to come for a visit.” Eleanor dropped the sweaters and sat down.

  Gladys pulled up a chair beside her. “I didn’t know you had an aunt in England.”

  “She’s my mother’s sister. She’s fifteen years older than my mom, and it sounds like I should go. Did I already say it was her friend who called?”

  Gladys nodded.

  “I wasn’t sure at first if I’d go, but now I think I will.”

  “This was last night?”

  “Yep. I think I should. Her friend was pretty insistent. She said it was important, so . . .” Eleanor shrugged, and as she shrugged her eyes filled with a thin line of tears.

  “Well, it’s a good time to go,” Gladys said tentatively. “The collection’s sold, production’s under way, it goes on pretty well without you, and I’m here in case of anything.” She spoke softly. “Hey, you’ve done it, El.” She quoted a yoga teacher they shared, with a lovely singsong voice, “In doing, in doing, it is done.”

  This made Eleanor smile.

  “You’ve made it happen,” Gladys said and gazed at her. “You deserve to celebrate.”

  Eleanor took a breath as if it were her first in quite a while. Tears flowed silently.

  Gladys’ voice grew even softer. “Eleanor, tell me what’s up . . .”

  Eleanor closed her eyes. “I’m just tired.” She’d been working day and night since she was in high school, hadn’t gone to college with her friends because she’d already started making clothes and had made a small name for herself—reviewers called her the Wool Wunderkind for the clothes she made from recycled woolens accented with fabulous buttons. For more than ten years, she’d worked without a rest.

  “I get that.” Gladys hesitated before she returned to her cutting.

  The quiet rhythm of scissors slicing soothed Eleanor and she lay back on the flokati rug. She felt spent from inside out, wracked from her bones to her skin. “You must be great with your kids,” she said.

  “Why’s that?” asked Gladys.

  “You’re just so gentle. You don’t ever press. What’s your favorite thing with them, the thing you like to do best?”

  The scissors made their silvery sound. “When we curl up with books and Lily keeps up with the words and Jonah just listens to the song of it all. That’s my favorite time.”

  In the silence, Eleanor said, “If I didn’t make clothes, I think I’d make books.”

  “Me, too.” The cloth fell away as Gladys cut, and a piece fell to the floor as the scissors turned a corner. “One day they’ll be reading on their own and I’ll miss it,” she said.

  “We used to have this photograph—my dad framed it but I don’t know where it went—of my mother reading to me in a hammock. I was probably three or four then.” Eleanor couldn’t remember herself that small but she had cherished the picture, could almost feel the hammock swaying, hear the rustle of the low wind in the Chinese elm, loved the moment captured, her mother just kissing the back of her head, her hair probably warm from playing in the summer sun all day and her innocent eyes intent on the picture book’s page.

  Gladys came back to the table and sat down, took a sip of the chocolate.

  “You’re going to have an adventure in England, I can feel it. Whatever happens, it’s going to be good over there.”

  Eleanor’s eyes welled again.

  “Do you want to tell me? Do you want to talk about it?”

  Eleanor shook her head no. “Thanks, though.”

  “For how long will you go?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “I hadn’t even thought of it.” She looked up at Gladys, her eyes blank with incomprehension.

  “Well, you know I’ve got things covered here,” Gladys said.

  Eleanor reached across the table to touch her hand. “You’re sure it’s not too much? I guess that’s what I needed to know.”

  “I’m positive,” Gladys said.

  Miles tried to contact her every way he could that day, and in the late afternoon he knocked at the door, even tried his key when she didn’t answer, but the chain stopped him, and though it was hard to hear him stand silent on the other side of the door, hard not to go after him as she heard his feet move slowly toward the stairs, she had nothing to say. On Monday morning, the sun rose over the Williamsburg Bridge as she headed for JFK.

  PART

  TWO

  She only took her eyes off the view outside her window to take the blanket and a pillow, then a glass of wine and lunch. Eleanor watched day turn to night in a few short hours. The full moon rising in the sky. The coast of England visible. And when the plane arrived at Heathrow, the landing was easy and smooth, and when there was no one to meet her as she exited through Customs, no one with a sign, no one with a smile of recognition, she pulled the bag behind her, found her way to the London Underground, then through King’s Cross Station, and boarded a train for Yorkshire. All in a long day.

  “There she is,” the cabdriver said and pointed to an enormous stone house on the crest of a steep green slope. “That’s her, Trent Hall.”

  Eleanor got a glimpse of lights before the building disappeared behind some trees and a wall of stones chiseled to fit one against the other and hold without mortar. It was midnight when they passed through a break in the wall and climbed the mile-long driveway to the flat top of a hill, where the house stood wrapped inside another wall, this one covered with red-leafed ivy. Through the wall, under a thick stone archway, they drove into a large courtyard flagged with pavers and grass. There was an evocative crunch of gravel as the car slowed to a stop and the driver jumped out. The building, in the shape of an L around the yard, looked like a church with two towers and mullioned windows. Eleanor stepped out of the cab and stared around to take it in: a three-storied entrance in a wall of light gray stone extended to the right and to the left with stables and a carriage house behind her.

  “My God, look at this place.”

  The hinges on the trunk of the car creaked for oil and the driver shrugged a cute apology before he pulled out her bags. When she tipped him, he gave half of it back. “That’s too much, lass,” he said. He doffed his hat and wished her a good evening.

  She watched as his hand rose out the window to wave good-bye. As he drove away she imagined he’d be on his way to a warm house for a good night of sleep. Her red leather bag sat on the damp gravel, her satchel hung from her shoulder, and the wind was so strong she had to take a stand against it.

  Alone in the courtyard she was seized by fear: a choked feeling in her throat and a chill, as if she’d been brushed up against. One hand squeezed the soft leather of her suitcase handle and the other hand held tight to the strap over her shoulder, as if these would anchor her, so she startled when she heard a crunch behind her and turned to see a man.

  “I’m Granley,” he said and reached to take the burden of her suitcase. “Don’t be concerned, you’re in the right place. You’re Alice’s niece, Miss Eleanor Sutton, eh?”

  “I am. I’m Eleanor Abbott. Eleanor Sutton Abbott.” She smiled. She rarely used her full name. Reluctantly, she let go of the suitcase, then shifted her bag and reached to shake his hand, but he didn’t take it.

  “You were worried,” he said.

  She wrapped a strand of hair behind her ear. �
��I was a bit.” He picked up her suitcase and reached for her satchel. She followed him. “Is it always this windy?”

  “’Tis more or less this way always. ’Tis wutherin’ weather.” There were leaves hanging in midair. “The dull roarin’ sound of the wind, that’s it.” He threw his head in the direction of the moor where the land rolled away from the house.

  An echoed crunch of gravel as they walked across the drive, Granley led her inside the shadow of an arch into a well-lit entrance hall whose walls were paneled in aged dark wood. With the bags set down, he reached to take her coat. Again, she startled.

  “Steady,” he said. She felt his gaze unwavering on her face. “Are ye timid?”

  A girl in lace leggings and a short skirt. “I’m not. I’m really not.” She laughed at herself. Took a deep breath to calm down. Tucked her hair behind her ear again.

  “I help Alice with most everything needs doing ’round here. Well, not everything . . .” He cocked his head for her to follow and led her into the kitchen. She smelled fresh-baked bread. “The women take care of some things,” he said. He stooped as he stepped through the doorway because he was too tall for the passage. Inside the spacious kitchen, with well-worn yellow-stone floors and ancient fixtures, were two women busy as if it were the middle of the day.

  The older of the two, handsome and somehow elegant despite the white apron tied around her middle, turned and gasped, “Eleanor, you’re here!” She wiped her hands and took off her apron, then opened her arms and gave Eleanor a warm hug.

  “I’m sorry it’s so late.”

  “No, we were expecting you.”

  The kind stranger stepped back and looked into Eleanor’s face. “You’re much like your mother, do you know that? Alice is going to be so pleased.” She held Eleanor’s face in her hands and saw her confusion. “I’m Gwen Angle, dear. We spoke on the telephone.”