Solsbury Hill A Novel (7 page)

Eleanor inhaled a huge breath and tried to find words, the
right thing to say, but instead she laughed nervously and her laughter made Alice and Gwen laugh as well.

“She’s been out walking all morning,” Gwen said.

“Really!” said Alice.

Eleanor’s cheek was still held, in her aunt’s thin hand, and her eyes closed for a moment, then opened, and looked at her aunt looking so deeply into her. “It’s incredible here,” Eleanor said. She stood up and looked for somewhere to sit, pulled a chair close to her aunt’s chair. “You look so well.”

“I’m not,” Alice confided chummily. “I feel well, but they have me on oxygen at night, so I guess that explains it. Should have started a long time ago, eh?” Alice drew a shawl up over her shoulders. “I could sit here all day and just look at you. Would you let me do that?”

Eleanor scooted back in the chair to get comfortable, smiled to let Alice know she’d be staying for as long as she liked.

“You were a scrappy kid last time I saw you, and not at all a happy one, but look at you now. I want you to tell me everything.”

“I was hoping you’d tell
me
everything.”

“Elevenses?” Alice said to Gwen. “Let’s have some tea, whatever time it is. No time like the present.” Her eyes sparkled. “Let’s have Christmas and Easter, too,” she said to Eleanor with the eager delight of a child.

Gwen left the room and Alice spoke more quietly, “Do
you think you might help me back into bed? I look stronger than I really am.” Her smile was weak, her eyes someplace deep. “The smallest thing takes it out of me.”

The pale blue blouse proved to be a floor-length nightgown and beneath it Eleanor saw Alice’s lean body as she helped her under the covers and tucked her in. Just the move across the room had left Alice breathless. The room was not large but the floor was carpeted and the walls were paneled rather than stone, so this room was warmer than the others. Eleanor pulled the chair up beside the bed and sat down.

“It’s true there are things I want to tell you, before I go. Answers to give, if you have questions,” Alice said. “I’m so glad you could come. I can hardly believe you managed to come, and I want to hear everything you have to tell me. Tell me about your life there, about love in your life—tell me everything.”

Eleanor glanced out the window at the view from the bedroom. This room looked over another part of the landscape: a small lake with wild grasses and flowers surrounding it and hills that swelled beyond the lake.

“Aunt Alice, I’m a little numb, to tell the truth. There’s so much I can’t make sense of.” She turned her upper body to look out the window and she could see everything from the chair. “Walking around out there . . . after the city all my life, it’s unbelievable. I mean, living here you would probably think this is what the whole world is like, but I thought the whole world was like New York City. I know I sound
ridiculous. But I mean it, sort of. I mean I’ve been places, lots of places, obviously, but this place is completely different from anywhere I’ve been. I suppose I’ve just been from one city to another city. I guess you could travel the whole world and never leave the city.”

Alice’s face was compassionate and calm. “I’m not surprised you’re numb. It took a lot of courage for you to come.” Gwen came through the doors with a silver tray, and Alice shifted in the bed, as much as she could, to make room for it. “Let’s start in telling stories, shall we?” Alice said to Eleanor. “I might look fine, but I’m not here for long.”

“She’s a forthright woman,” Gwen said. The tray had a porcelain pot and cups, buns, and boiled eggs. “Here’s a picnic for you two. Be gentle with her, will you?” she said to Alice. On her way out the door she turned. “By the way, Mead stopped in the kitchen and asked if he might come up now, or should he wait till the afternoon?”

“Oh, not as long as the afternoon, but perhaps not right now. Would you ask him to give us just a while?”

She turned to Eleanor and asked, “Do you remember Mead?”

“I don’t think so . . .”

Alice’s face brightened. “Ah, Mead. You should know him. I’ll tell you his story, if you like, but it’s a long one. Do you want to hear about him?”

“I do.” Eleanor leaned back and draped her arms on the arms of the velvet-covered chair.

“He was one of the miracle babies of Juarez Hospital in 1985.”

“The year I was born.”

“Yes, exactly the year you were born.” She touched her bony finger to the side of her nose. “It was 1985, September nineteenth. There was a terrifying earthquake in Mexico City that morning, the morning after Mead was born. I was there visiting my dear friend Duncan Macleod and his beautiful wife, Fermina Meardi.

“We’d been to dinner and were still at the restaurant when Fermina went into early labor. Her water broke and the baby was coming, so we rushed her to the closest hospital.

“But Mead came easily. The birth was beautiful and uneventful and Duncan spent most of the night in a chair by Fermina’s bed.” Alice spoke as if she were seeing it again. “Fermina and the baby were sleeping soundly, so Duncan left early in the morning, just to rest a bit, to get things for Fermina and the baby, to change his clothing.

“He came back to the apartment about three in the morning. I was already asleep. I’d left soon after the baby arrived. He was a beautiful baby, with a full head of hair and deep-set eyes.

“Anyway, Duncan and I were both still sleeping when the earthquake hit at quarter past seven.

“We hurried through the streets to the hospital. It took forever. Through so many frightened people and so much destruction, it was odd, the city was so quiet. After the horrid
noise of the earth rolling and shaking, the city was hauntingly quiet.

“We came up the steps from the tunnel to where the hospital building was, where it should have been, but there was nothing but empty sky. The building Fermina and Mead were supposed to be inside was just a flat waste of rubble in front of our eyes. You can’t imagine. I’ll never forget all that clear empty sky.”

Alice took a strained, deep breath.

“You know his full name is Meadowscarp Macleod.” Alice smiled. “It’s a beautiful name Duncan gave him. You know a meadow is a heath and a scarp is a cliff. Do you see?”

Eleanor shook her head no. “Not exactly.”

“I expect Duncan meant it for me.”

“But Mead’s alive, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, darling. Very.” Her eyes seemed to have come back from somewhere vivid and far away though her voice was weak. “They were miracle babies.

“Mead was with Fermina all night. They surmised a nurse had thrown him out the window when the shaking began and the walls were coming down. He was found in the rubble with a tag on his wrist. Other babies, in the nursery, survived in their cribs. Maybe they were used to being in small spaces, with no expectations from life, their nervous systems strong and ready for survival—no one knows why they survived, really, but they did.”

Alice tried to reach for a glass of water on the bedside table and Eleanor stood and helped her take a sip.

“Duncan was too broken from it, losing Fermina and the shock. He couldn’t manage. For a long time, Duncan couldn’t manage at all, and Mead became my son, my ward.”

They hadn’t poured the tea or touched the buns. Eleanor cleared the tray from the end of the bed and set it on a low cabinet.

“That’s an incredible tale.”

Alice nodded. “Look how fit and strong you are,” she said. “Already out on the moors all morning. They will keep you hardy.”

Eleanor pulled the covers up on Alice’s chest, and Alice took her hand. “How about if I tell you about that beautiful ring you’re wearing, then?”

“Aren’t you tired?”

Alice nestled under the covers a little more deeply. “Perhaps it will be a short story.” She was drawn and her voice was weak as she began, “This lovely ring was made in Whitby sometime in the century before last. A young woman named Victoria Enswell, an ancestor of ours generations ago, put in her will that it should go to the first daughter of each generation when she turns twenty-seven.”

“The first daughter, like the house.”

“Just like that.” Alice put her cool thin hand on the side of Eleanor’s face and gazed at her. “Do you know you have a lot of Annie in you?”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“Why at twenty-seven?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I think it’s meant to protect against a certain bad habit of heartache.” Alice’s eyes fluttered and almost shut. “Sweetheart, there’s so much I want to tell you and I can’t sort out what goes where.” Eleanor wanted to hear more. “It’s something that’s said, a story that’s trickled down, that women in our line, women torn between two loves, choose the wrong one. Take the wrong turn for the wrong reason. It used to preoccupy me, but not much anymore.” There was a worn smile on Alice’s face as her eyelids closed then opened again. “It doesn’t happen to all the women,” she reassured Eleanor, “and this ring is meant to protect against it.”

Alice spun the ring on Eleanor’s finger. “It’s beautifully carved, isn’t it? Have you ever seen anything like it?” Alice’s eyes fell closed and it was minutes before she opened them again. “You’re happy, aren’t you, dear? You look wholesome and happy.”

Trying her best, Eleanor said, “I am.”

E
leanor stripped off her clothes and lay down for a minute in the late afternoon. Naked under the duvet with the window slightly open in the small room, she closed her eyes and soon was half dreaming. She saw the tree with
orange bark on the moor and now its shape looked like a woman screaming. She tried to picture another tree, but instead her mind moved closer to this one and she sat down beneath it. She looked up at the orange female tree and realized she was not screaming but running her fingers through her hair, stretching and yawning in the evening. The tree shivered and the leaves fell like snowflakes onto the bed.

Against the window above the bed where Eleanor slept and dreamed, the tree scratched against the pane. She was damp with sweat and moaning when she felt someone come in and cover her bare shoulders with the comforter, then push the branch away from the glass and close the window.

By the time she wakened, it was dark outside.

Disoriented, she wondered if she’d missed a day or just dinner. She was hungry but dank with sweat and when she climbed out of bed she was shocked by the cold, her nipples so hard they hurt. With fresh clothes in her arms, she went down the hall and waited for the bath to fill for a hot, steamy soak.

In the cupboard beside the sink she found some fragrant oil and poured it in, then slipped under the oily water. Her arms by her sides, palms just above the waterline, she felt herself inside Millais’ great painting of Ophelia: the dead shock in the eyes, the jaw loose, and the mouth ready to speak. She slipped under the water and held her breath. Touched the softness along the backs of her thighs. Gazed through the water at the coved ceiling ten feet above her.

In their talk, Alice had asked after Miles. She remembered him from when she’d visited New York for the funeral. She mentioned how attentive to Eleanor he’d been, how unusual it was for a boy so young to be so overtly concerned, asked if she still knew him.

Eleanor wanted to protect him. She wondered what had taken him so far from what he’d always been. His face, in that split moment when he saw her and before she turned away: he hadn’t wanted to ruin everything.

She came up out of the water for a mouthful of air. Her mother had grown up inside these stone walls. She might have bathed in this very same bathtub, deep and made of heavy iron to hold the heat for a long time. Eleanor grabbed the large, fragrant bar of soap and rubbed it into a lather. She extended her legs and washed her feet, her knees. First she hummed, “Lavender’s blue, dilly-dilly,” and then she sang, as she soaped herself. She remembered when she couldn’t sleep at night her mother, and when she was very young her grandmother, would whisper with a song. “Dreams for sale, fine dreams for sale . . . hush, my wee bairnie, an’ sleep wi’oot fear.” Now she knew where it came from: the strange accent they sometimes fell into together, her mother and her grandmother.

In her short time here, Eleanor had come to accept the child her mother had been in this house. Now it dawned on her that this was the world her mother had come back to just before she died. As a grown woman she’d walked the halls.
Why hadn’t she brought Eleanor with her? Why hadn’t she asked her mother if she could come along? Maybe there were questions she’d known not to ask, all those years ago.

The towel was thick and dried her quickly. She pulled on white tights and a cream cashmere dress and her big cream sweater, because it was cold in the house. She wrapped a black satin ribbon around her bun and headed downstairs.

Her dress had a flirty flare at the hem and she swung her hips side to side to feel it swing around her knees. Her hand on the rail, she had her eyes on the chandelier in front of her and over her head. The house was Tara after the war, a bit worse for wear, but still dignified, and she was heartbroken and the loneliest girl in the world.

“That’s a fine sashay,” a man said from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs, just behind the bend in the banister.