five and opened the top drawer.
Nothing.
She closed and opened, closed and opened, closed and opened.
The hangers were gone for ever. This was better than a kitchen waste-disposal unit. She found other things that needed to be thrown away – bags and wrappers and ruptured cardboard boxes – and disappeared them.
She picked up the chest of drawers. It wasn’t heavy. It couldn’t contain an intricate mechanism. It wasn’t connected to any hidden chute. She’d humped it here from Jordan’s room and knew it was just a piece of furniture.
It was magic. That was all there was to it.
* * *
S teven was in charge of the family’s first proper meal at the Hollow. Kirsty had produced a bean salad in Tupperware and a joint of cold ham for lunch, which had been eaten outside with the removal men. Now the family were alone together and could break bread – Delia’s pasta carbonara, actually, but with warmed French bread on the side – at their own table.
Tim set the places. Jordan picked the wine and the music (she had to tell Steven who it was, Julie London). The children collaborated on the carrying-out of bowls and bottles from the kitchen to the big room, which he realised now was to be called the Summer Room. Never before had Steven cooked in a room different from the one where they ate. It meant a whole new tier of jobs to be parcelled out.
Kirsty came down from the tower, in her backless cream evening dress, with one white glove. She had put her hair up.
Steven was stunned.
Tonight, when the kids were in bed, there was another inaugural ceremony to be seen to. When they had got their first flat together, they had christened all three rooms in one night, with dozes between bouts of lovemaking, and had enough left over in the early morning for afterplay in the tub of the tiny bathroom.
Counting the inside toilet, the secret passage, the larder and the foyer but not the outside toilet or the barn-garage (which might bear investigation), there were sixteen rooms at the Hollow. Maybe more, if some of the wardrobes were reckoned and further exploration of the unused store-rooms disclosed secret nooks. At thirty-eight, Steven wasn’t sure if he was up to it in a month, let alone a night. And there’d be awful complications with Jordan’s and Tim’s rooms.
Looking at Kirsty, though, he wondered.
These last years – God knows how many? – their lives had been changing. Properly looking at her had sometimes been difficult. There were always people – the kids, Vron, others – and things – work, craziness, medication – in the way. They had both turned into strangers.
His wife was still a stranger, but not in a frightening way. Behind her, the moors were twilit. A moon hung up high, light scattering in through the wall of glass, falling all about the Summer Room. The view was spectacular, endlessly changing but eternally the same. From this room, the landscape they saw was exactly as it would have been to a Monmouth rebel or a Roman legionary standing on the same spot. Only the occasional winking red aeroplane light among the stars let slip that this was nearly the twenty-first century.
And his wife was the same. Eternally the same, eternally a surprise. He remembered how she had been when they met, and understood that in recent years she had just channelled her wildness into other things. Now, it was being directed back at him and his mouth was dry with excitement.
‘Where’s the other glove, Mum?’ Jordan asked.
‘Does everything have to be symmetrical, darling girl?’
Kirsty made a flourish with her fingers.
Steven was suddenly very hungry indeed.
They all took their places at the table, clustering at one end around a candelabrum Jordan had found in one of the unexplored rooms. Candles dripped on white cloth. The big bowl of pasta had to be passed from person to person. It was almost too heavy for Tim.
Steven hadn’t had to say grace since school and wasn’t about to start now. But
Nothing.
She closed and opened, closed and opened, closed and opened.
The hangers were gone for ever. This was better than a kitchen waste-disposal unit. She found other things that needed to be thrown away – bags and wrappers and ruptured cardboard boxes – and disappeared them.
She picked up the chest of drawers. It wasn’t heavy. It couldn’t contain an intricate mechanism. It wasn’t connected to any hidden chute. She’d humped it here from Jordan’s room and knew it was just a piece of furniture.
It was magic. That was all there was to it.
* * *
S teven was in charge of the family’s first proper meal at the Hollow. Kirsty had produced a bean salad in Tupperware and a joint of cold ham for lunch, which had been eaten outside with the removal men. Now the family were alone together and could break bread – Delia’s pasta carbonara, actually, but with warmed French bread on the side – at their own table.
Tim set the places. Jordan picked the wine and the music (she had to tell Steven who it was, Julie London). The children collaborated on the carrying-out of bowls and bottles from the kitchen to the big room, which he realised now was to be called the Summer Room. Never before had Steven cooked in a room different from the one where they ate. It meant a whole new tier of jobs to be parcelled out.
Kirsty came down from the tower, in her backless cream evening dress, with one white glove. She had put her hair up.
Steven was stunned.
Tonight, when the kids were in bed, there was another inaugural ceremony to be seen to. When they had got their first flat together, they had christened all three rooms in one night, with dozes between bouts of lovemaking, and had enough left over in the early morning for afterplay in the tub of the tiny bathroom.
Counting the inside toilet, the secret passage, the larder and the foyer but not the outside toilet or the barn-garage (which might bear investigation), there were sixteen rooms at the Hollow. Maybe more, if some of the wardrobes were reckoned and further exploration of the unused store-rooms disclosed secret nooks. At thirty-eight, Steven wasn’t sure if he was up to it in a month, let alone a night. And there’d be awful complications with Jordan’s and Tim’s rooms.
Looking at Kirsty, though, he wondered.
These last years – God knows how many? – their lives had been changing. Properly looking at her had sometimes been difficult. There were always people – the kids, Vron, others – and things – work, craziness, medication – in the way. They had both turned into strangers.
His wife was still a stranger, but not in a frightening way. Behind her, the moors were twilit. A moon hung up high, light scattering in through the wall of glass, falling all about the Summer Room. The view was spectacular, endlessly changing but eternally the same. From this room, the landscape they saw was exactly as it would have been to a Monmouth rebel or a Roman legionary standing on the same spot. Only the occasional winking red aeroplane light among the stars let slip that this was nearly the twenty-first century.
And his wife was the same. Eternally the same, eternally a surprise. He remembered how she had been when they met, and understood that in recent years she had just channelled her wildness into other things. Now, it was being directed back at him and his mouth was dry with excitement.
‘Where’s the other glove, Mum?’ Jordan asked.
‘Does everything have to be symmetrical, darling girl?’
Kirsty made a flourish with her fingers.
Steven was suddenly very hungry indeed.
They all took their places at the table, clustering at one end around a candelabrum Jordan had found in one of the unexplored rooms. Candles dripped on white cloth. The big bowl of pasta had to be passed from person to person. It was almost too heavy for Tim.
Steven hadn’t had to say grace since school and wasn’t about to start now. But
Similar Books
