Solsbury Hill A Novel (31 page)

When she saw the North Sea, she thought of the selkies. Seals that swam up close to the shore and slipped out of their skin to be human, on land, and then slipped back in again. But if a man stole and hid the skin, he’d keep the selkie forever as his human wife. The world was full of puzzling stories.

The woman beside Eleanor on the train had nicely shaped calves and wore a pair of sensible shoes. She offered a lap blanket and Eleanor received it happily, pulled it up to her shoulders, and tucked it under herself, wrapped it tight around her legs so no cool air might slip in.

The woman wore a felt hat, her hands were delicate, and she wore a beautiful emerald ring on her wedding finger. Her hands moved quickly as she knitted blue and green yarn with nubs and ribbons into the shape of a carpetbag. She had one like it sitting beside her on the seat, out of which she pulled a package of thin sandwiches made with pumpernickel bread, cream cheese, and chopped cucumbers. She offered a
sandwich to Eleanor, who took it gladly. The train cut through the familiar green of the moors.

When the train slid smoothly into the station, Eleanor dried out the tin cup the woman had given her with tea and milk. She handed back the blanket she’d loaned her for the ride and thanked her. The woman finally slipped off her hat to straighten her hair. She looked into her reflection in the train window and smiled a big smile with an excited wave of her hand as they passed a handsome man and two blond children.

Without a hat, the woman looked quite young. The man and the children ran along beside the train smiling at her and waving until the train stopped. She made a bun of her pretty hair, tucked in some stray hairs, then placed her hat carefully on her head and pinned it there.

Miles was at the end of the platform when Eleanor stepped off. He came toward her, took her bag, and put it down so he could take her into his arms. He rubbed her back with vigorous encouragement and she buried her face in his chest. When he pulled away to get a look at her, she clung tight for an extra moment, then tossed her head, tossed her curled hair, let him see how she was doing. She unbuttoned her overcoat and offered to take back the bag. Side by side they walked through the station and then to the curb, where Miles hailed a taxi to the Stafford Hotel.

On the vinyl seat, her skirt didn’t slide easily, so Miles went around the other side and met her in the middle.

“You must have things to tell me,” he said. “I know you do.” His arm went to its natural place around her shoulders. “You can start now or save it for later.” His hand moved briskly up and down her right arm, as if he were trying to warm her. “They didn’t feed you,” he said, “you’re thin.”

At home, this would be an unequivocal compliment. “I’m strong from walking.” She watched the streets of London go by.

“I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time,” she said. “I had a meeting at Harrods and you must have been here. What have you been doing?”

“I sent you loads of texts.”

She remembered seeing them, but had only just read them on the train.

“I’ve been learning about the market here. We’ve got offices in London, so it hasn’t made much difference. I could easily live here.” He craned his head forward to read her face as he spoke, then sank back against the seat again.

“Is Harrods making an offer?” he asked.

“Looks like it, yeah, I think they are,” she said.

“That’s great.”

Conversation between them had never before been strained.

On Regent Street, she noticed top-end shops and elaborate Christmas decorations. Piccadilly Circus with throngs of people and unlit neon lights. She caught a glimpse of the Mall and Buckingham Palace. He kissed the back of her head, and she sensed him smelling her hair.

The hotel was like an elegant home. Velvet upholstery and floral wallpaper, lovely rooms and halls. Their suite’s sitting room was blue and tan velvet with a bay window in front of which a table was set with flutes for champagne and a bucket of ice with a bottle of Cristal.

Eleanor slid out of her overcoat and peeled off her sweater.

Miles stepped back another step and walked backward toward the table, where without looking he reached for the bottle of champagne. He unwrapped the foil and deftly jimmied the cork free. He poured two flutes and lifted one toward her, without a word.

She walked toward him and happily took the glass and a sip.

Miles was saying that it worried him, when he thought about it, that she hadn’t made a scene when she saw him, at least when she got alone with him. “You never got mad at me,” he said. “I thought maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. Not a good sign, right?”

“Please.” Enough of signs, she thought. She touched her temples.

He undid his tie and sat next to her.

She rubbed her temples like she was rubbing in a stain. “You can’t imagine how much has changed,” she said.

“I don’t want things to change.” He knelt on the floor in front of her where she sat on the edge of the bed. “I want to tell you about why it happened.”

“I don’t want you to.” She didn’t want to talk about the girl, who she was, and what had moved him to want her in his bed on that evening, or on many evenings about which she’d never heard.

She rubbed her temples again.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Miles said and he pulled her fingers away from the sides of her head.

Miles knew much about her life, but he didn’t know that her father was not her father, that the man who’d come to her basketball games was not her blood. He didn’t know that her true father had lived in a small living room on the edge of the North Sea and had loved her mother since she was a little thing. He didn’t know that her father had eyes like hers—eyes that changed so in some pictures they looked shuttered and secretive and other times appeared as generous and open as when the sun reaches down with its fingers through the clouds.

“Of course.” She looked into his scared eyes. “You should explain to me if you need to, if you want to, you should.”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe we should just go home and talk about it once this is behind us more.”

“No, you should go on,” she said.

So he explained the way it had felt to love her since childhood. The blind faith he’d had in himself through her love and what it had felt like, after so many years of seeing himself through her, to feel other women’s eyes. To feel the power of his own attraction. To feel himself desired, how little it took
to seduce a girl who liked him—once he started with a most natural smile.

It sounded like there was more than one girl, but Eleanor didn’t ask. She let him continue.

He explained that he’d never wanted anything but a life with her, and the closer it came to being true, the more he felt he owed it to them, to himself and so maybe to their life together, to be a little wild before embarking on forever, because he imagined them together forever—from the beginning to the end.

Eleanor’s bones felt less cold. She sipped the champagne. She looked at Miles’ face and she liked him. She always had, she had loved him. He was telling the truth, and she liked him for that, that part of him that felt he needed to tell her the truth and get it all on the table.

She knew he had a life planned for them, one that started on their school playground and would end on the playgrounds of their grandchildren. It included a diamond ring and a white dress, a house in the country for the weekends, with swings, and children on the swings one day, and Eleanor opening her own store in the city and then one in the country.

“Let’s go out and find the river,” she said.

He stood and put on his jacket.

“You look good,” she said. He looked handsome in his navy jacket and gray slacks.

The cab dropped them near Westminster and they walked on the Victoria Embankment.

“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”

“It really is,” she said.

“You know, I’ve been talking a mile a minute since I got you back, up close again.”

“I know.”

“I guess I don’t really want to find out what happened over here.” He shrugged. “I’ve got a bad feeling about it.”

She sighed the sigh of resolve. “A lot happened.”

She told him about some of the things she’d found. The clues that seemed to have been left for her like crumbs to collect on her way out of the woods. She told him about the letters she’d found by accident in the cupboard of one of the rooms, how she’d gone into Scarborough looking for an old family member, but she was changing things and leaving things out.

The Victoria Embankment was beautifully shaded with trees, though they’d dropped their leaves, and the sky seemed very high over the river.

She looked at him and laughed at herself.

“What?” He didn’t understand what was funny. “Really, what?”

“Nothing. It’s all so awful.” She was smiling.

He seemed lost and she was sad to see him lost and to feel so far away from him. His hand held hers. Their fingers fit perfectly together in a fist. She remembered noticing it and
thinking they were meant for each other when he first took her hand like this.

“You’re my best friend,” she said. “Really, my best friend.”

His sad face brightened.

“It’s not the girl, or even the girls, if there were many of them.” She noticed he didn’t object and her heart did one small flip before she continued. “It’s something else. Maybe something that’s been happening. Maybe you noticed something before I did, or maybe you sensed there was something more in store for each of us.”

“Eleanor, it wasn’t that.”

“I know. Let’s sit down.” Her voice was soft like a fine mother’s can be. “I’m saying that maybe what happened, happened because it was time for it to happen. Time for something else to happen. At the root of things. Maybe?”

He started to object, but she saw him decide against it.

She knew she was being a coward, not saying what she was afraid to admit. “And anyway, I’ve not even told you the half of it here.”

He stiffened.

“I mean what it’s been like to find out so much about myself in such a short time. And without you.” She looked at him with great earnestness now. “Right? I mean, I’ve never done anything without you. And it’s strange that it happened the way it did, because if the call had come any other night, or if I hadn’t run up there and used the key, you’d have come with me.”

“Eleanor.”

“That’s wrong. I don’t mean that. I’m not sure I believe that. I don’t know. I like what I’ve found over here, on my own.”

“Let’s get a drink,” he said. It was all he said. “Let’s get a drink.”

They got a cab and pulled up to a pub, but Eleanor suggested they go back to the bar at the Stafford. The American Bar.

Miles crossed his legs and knocked back the last of his mojito, caught some ice cubes in his mouth, and chewed them. They hadn’t said words to each other in ten minutes or so but had been chewing on the salted mixed nuts from a bowl.

Finally he said, “I understand it’s the end now, I do, but I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad you didn’t fly home alone. I’m glad I didn’t come with you, and I’m glad I stuck around. You’re the best of everything there is.” He gestured for another round of drinks. Eleanor’s heart heaved in her chest.

With the courage it took to become her full self, she was free to do anything at all.

After their second mojito, Miles kissed her. She felt the kiss of the man he had become. The man who had learned how appealing he was.

“You deserve everything, everything good in the world,” she said to him.

Outside the Stafford, the cab pulled up and it would take Miles to Heathrow.

“I’m going,” he said.

Eleanor put the back of her hand against her mouth, and the fact that her eyes welled with tears, she knew, gave him a treacherous moment of hope.

He said, “I shouldn’t have come. I should have waited for you at home.” He looked at her the way he always had, with frankness and kindness. He waited and her clear eyes held him for an eternity.

“You’re the most wonderful girl.” He pressed one long kiss on her cheek and walked toward the big London cab. He never walked awkwardly, but he walked awkwardly now. She watched him throw his suitcase in, then he glanced back and held his hand up for a wave, climbed in, and the cab drove away.