THE GOLDEN HOUR
Also by William Nicholson
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life
All the Hopeful Lovers
THE GOLDEN
HOUR
William Nicholson
New York • London
© 2011 by William Nicholson
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ISBN 978-1-62365-241-8
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would not be to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.”
Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.
The story takes place over seven days in July 2010.
Contents
SUNDAY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
MONDAY
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
TUESDAY
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
THURSDAY
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
FRIDAY
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
SATURDAY
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Author’s note
SUNDAY
1
She comes to the front door just behind him, and notices for the first time that the heels of his shoes are worn on the outer side. Funny the things you still don’t know about someone, even after a year. No, it’s more than a year now. It was a cold spring day when they first kissed, and now it’s high summer. The latch of the door drops into the keep behind her with a solid clunk. Late afternoon sunshine warms her bare face, her bare legs. A summer to remember so far, blue skies over yellow fields, no rain for weeks. They say the trees are showing signs of stress.
Down the narrow lane lined with brambles, the blackberries still too small to pick. Andrew striding ahead, his stocky body proceeding with purpose, though she knows the way and he doesn’t. Then where the lane meets the road he stops and waits, looking back at her. That ugly gentle face, the shine of his rimless glasses, those comical eyebrows. He can make his eyebrows go up and down independently of each other. She laughed when she first saw the trick, and thought perhaps she could love him. It was the way he kept a straight face while being so foolish.
“I was thinking,” he says.
Maggie raises one hand and looks away, shielding her eyes from the sun. She hears it coming, the way you know the phone will ring before it rings.
I don’t want this.
This is the shock. She thought she’d made up her mind. Where has this come from?
“Take a right at the school,” she says. “It’s the field behind the school.”
They hear the distant sounds of the village fête in progress. A loud voice shouting indistinct words. The boom of a brass band. They pass a high hedge that conceals a flint-and-brick early-nineteenth-century cottage in which the windows have been replaced. The new windows are double-glazed, single-pane, plastic-framed, illegal.
“See those windows,” she says, pointing through the hedge. “That has to be a listed building. That’s a planning violation.”
Andrew looks.
“Ugh!” he says.
“It’s like the house has been blinded. It’s like it’s had its eyes put out.”
This is genuine, she really feels it. Maggie Dutton, conservation officer, champion of oppressed buildings. Who will cry their pain but her?
“Will you report them?” says Andrew.
“Probably not. It’s awkward when you live in the village. And it looks like it was done a long time ago.”
Not a true villager, only renting, the prices in Edenfield way too high for her salary. Two salaries combined would be a different matter, of course. In a week’s time Andrew starts a new job, in Lewes. He’s moving out of his flat in London, moving in with her. So it has been agreed. Arrangements have been made, friends have been told, parents have approved. This is the appropriate next step. And now, for no good reason, outrageously, she doesn’t want it.
He’s looking at her, smiling, but at the same time he’s wrinkling his forehead the way he does, making deep lines between his eyebrows. Why is he smiling?
Because I’m smiling at him. I’m smiling at him because I’m afraid of hurting him. Afraid that if I hurt him too much he’ll leave me and then I’ll be hurt. Or is that what I want? Mum used to say, “Don’t you look at me like a naughty puppy.” And Dad would say, “Go on, give her what she wants. You know she’ll get it in the end.” But what happens when you don’t know for sure what it is you want?
Dad called me “dainty.” Christ I hated that, it’s a cruel word. It means pretty but not to be handled too roughly. Not to be handled much at all.
“So about next weekend,” he says, not receiving the message.
“I can’t think about that now,” she says. “Later.”
They head on toward the fête. A mother she doesn’t know passes them, trailing two unhappy children. “Well, you can’t,” the mother’s saying, not looking back. “Whining won’t get you anywhere.”
Here’s what happens later. We move in together. And later? We get married. And later? We have children. And later? We get old. And later? We die. And that’s my life.
Ahead of her the high dome of Mount Caburn and the clean line where the land meets the sky. Maggie loves the Downs. Sometimes she climbs the sheep track to the top and stands face on to the wind watching the cloud shadows sail over the sea, and she feels as if she’s escaped time altogether.
&
nbsp; I can’t think about that now, Andrew. I can’t talk about it because how can I tell you that later turns into forever and how can I tell you that suddenly I’m not sure I want to be with you forever? Forever scares me. I can do tomorrow. I can do next week. But ask me for more than that and I don’t know what to say to you.
Ashamed of her doubts, she slips her hand through his arm as they enter the school field where the village fête is in full swing. Then she feels she shouldn’t hold his arm, not now. But she doesn’t let go because she doesn’t want to seem to be rejecting him. Because she is.
It’s a lovely fête, small and humble and homemade. A hundred or so local people stand about, stupefied by the heat. Sheep bleat. Dogs bark. Boys shout. The dog show is attracting a crowd, many of them sitting on the straw bales that line the rectangular arena. Owners parade their dogs up and down, competing to win the prize for Dog Most Like Their Owner. One woman in black leggings wears long purple-and-black striped socks. So does her dog. The Wealden Brass Band plays “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” The sound of smashing plates punctuates the mellow horns. One pound gets you four balls to throw at the crockery. Little girls race by with painted faces. The sun streams down on fat men in shorts. People line up under the chestnut tree to place their bets on the runners in the sheep race.
Mrs. Jones from the village shop is serving tea and lemonade and lemon drizzle cake.
“You should have heard Billy’s speech,” she says. “He got stuck in the middle.”
Billy is Lord Edenfield, formerly of Edenfield Place, a bulky stooping figure accompanied by a stout woman with black hair and a ringing laugh.
“Is that Lady Edenfield?” says Maggie.
“That’s her. His housekeeper as was.”
The village scandal, except it’s not a scandal at all. Why shouldn’t a lord marry a housekeeper?
“You should hear how she bosses him,” says Mrs. Jones. “She’s got him where she wants him all right.”
Andrew looks across the field and sees Lady Edenfield’s laughing face.
“I expect she makes him happy,” he says.
That’s Andrew for you. Always looking on the kind side. Old ladies adore him. Sometimes catching sight of him when he doesn’t know she’s watching, like when he gets off the train at Lewes station and makes his way down the steps to the car park where she waits, engine running, radio playing, she sees him as others see him, a serious young man with a purposeful air striding toward some meaningful encounter. But then he comes close up and somehow he loses focus. Getting into the car he’s already softer, floppier. When he leans across to give her the expected kiss he looks like a teddy bear, which is one of her affectionate names for him, though she’s forbidden him to use it about himself. Teddy bears, after all, are cuddly but not sexy. Teddy bears get left behind on the bed in your childhood bedroom when you grow up and leave home.
Maggie scans the crowd. A total stranger, a friendly looking man in a cream jacket by the Catch-a-Rat stand, meets her eyes and smiles.
Did I invite that?
Thoughts clatter through her mind like dominoes falling. If I’m not moving in with Andrew, then we’ve got no future together. If we’ve got no future, it’s over. If it’s over, I’m single again. If I’m single again, I’m looking for a new man.
Please don’t tell me I’m back on the market.
She feels a wave of panic wash over her. Thirty years old and starting again.
I can’t do this.
After all, it’s not as if anything’s actually been said. Here’s Andrew by her side just like before. No bridges burned. All she said was, “Later.” Except now he knows she’s avoiding the issue, and why would she do that if there isn’t a problem? Barely a word spoken but so much understood.
He gets her a lemonade. He shows no sign that he might be angry with her. Or hurt. Would it be easier if he did? Fleetingly she imagines a different Andrew, one who would swear at her, saying, “What the fuck’s going on?” After all, they have only one week to go. There is a case for urgency. He could stand in front of her, eyes no longer seeking to please, and say to her, “Fuck all this talk of later. We sort this out now.” Except Andrew’s eyes do seek to please. They’re fine eyes, large and amber-brown behind his rimless glasses. When his eyes are on her they’re forever watchful, checking to see what mood she’s in, trying to anticipate her wishes. This has the effect of making her petulant.
I have a bad character.
This was always her mother’s warning to her. “You watch out, Maggie,” she would say. “It’s all very well being pretty and getting what you want, but it’ll ruin your character.”
“They have a sheep race,” Andrew is saying to her. “This I have to see.”
They cruise the rough-cut field. Henry Broad is wandering about looking lost. Maggie barely knows him, but they talked once at a village party and discovered a mutual love of history. He’s bald, with a long worried face and intent eyes.
“Isn’t this something?” he says, gesturing round him. “We’re back in the Fifties. Retro chic, marinaded in irony.”
Maggie doesn’t follow this at all, but she decides she likes Henry.
“Whatever you say, Henry.”
“Can I test my theory on you? You have to name your favorite film, or book, or music.”
“Is it a trick question?”
“No, not at all.”
Maggie’s mind goes blank. What music do I like? What films? There’s so much, and yet nothing comes to mind.
“I can do it,” says Andrew. “Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone’s masterpiece.”
Maggie suppresses a spasm of irritation. This is one of the things about Andrew that she doesn’t like. He keeps lists.
“Can I have a graphic novel for a book?”
Henry Broad looks baffled. “I suppose so. Why not?”
“Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.”
“Oh, Andrew,” says Maggie. “No one’s ever heard of that.”
“Actually it’s a classic, and a huge seller.”
“Great,” says Henry. “I’m not sure whether that proves my point or not.”
“What point?”
“My idea is that we like the art we like because it projects the picture of ourselves that we want to project. So if you secretly love The Sound of Music, you might conceal that and say you like Brokeback Mountain best, because it makes you appear cooler.”
“I liked both of them,” says Maggie.
“Well, I expect I’m wrong.”
Henry drifts away.
“Were you trying to appear cooler?” Maggie says to Andrew.
“I’m not sure,” he says, furrowing his brow, considering the possibility. Always so scrupulously fair.
Maybe it’s a male thing, this keeping lists of what you’ve read and seen. Or a child thing. Small children are forever asking, What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite animal? And now with Facebook everyone has to reduce their personality to a few bullet points. My music. My photographs. My friends.
I don’t want to be on a list.
So what do I want? Who do I want?
Three very pretty girls are running about by a line of straw bales, calling out to the crowd, taking money for betting slips. They’re all wearing very short shorts, long bare legs, bare feet: the three daughters of the local farmer, Martin Linton. Martin himself is knee-deep in sheep in a pen in the shade of the chestnut tree. This is the sheep race.
The oldest of the Linton girls, Lily, is maybe fifteen, but is practically a young woman now, meaning she has very evident breasts. The men standing round can’t keep their eyes off her. The man in the cream jacket too.
I’m over thirty. What chance do I have?
She moves so she comes into Cream Jacket’s eye-line and he gives her a nod, acknowledging that a connection now exists. Maggie turns quickly to smile at Andrew.
“Are you going to have a flutter?”
“I have to study the form first,” say
s Andrew.
Maggie glances back toward Cream Jacket. He’s moved away.
So is this it? From now on, every man I meet between the ages of thirty and fifty I’m going to flirt with, asking myself: Is he free? Do I fancy him? Does he fancy me?
Maggie knows she’s attractive to men, with her smiling eyes and her sweet face and her petite figure. They always think she’s younger than she is, and usually make the mistake of thinking she needs to be protected. But if it’s big boobs you’re after, forget it.
Andrew’s gone off to examine the runners in the sheep race. Rosie and Poppy Linton are now on either side of him, competing with each other to take his bet.
Jimmy Hall comes shambling up to Maggie.
“Too bloody hot,” he says.
His sagging red face shining with sweat.
“What’s the news, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Hall edits the local weekly newspaper, which means he writes all the stories too. From time to time Maggie has provided carefully worded quotes about conservation matters.
“We’ve got a film star coming.” He lowers his voice as if it’s a secret between them. “Colin Firth.”
“Coming here?”
“Filming all next week. On the Downs. There’ll be crowds.”
“Do you think so?”
“Oh, you’re too young,” says Jimmy Hall sadly. “He was Darcy.”
Andrew is making a ludicrously thorough inspection of the field. Each of the seven sheep in the race is daubed with a color on its back. Laura Broad, Henry’s wife, who is standing nearby, is also hesitating over which sheep to back. Looking up, her eyes meet Maggie’s and she smiles. She and Maggie once spent a whole train journey to London talking about how the past lives on for them in things. Laura’s special expertise is in old manuscripts and rare books.
“Hello, Maggie,” she says. “Heavenly day.”
“A pound on Lewes Lady,” says Andrew.
Lewes Lady is the sheep with blue on its back.
“A pound on Lewes Lady for me too,” says Laura.
“Crikey!” says Martin Linton. “It’s a ring! Poppy, shorten the odds on Lewes Lady. The big money’s coming in.”