The Sick Rose (7 page)

Only one neat acre had been begun in earnest; Nathaniel’s orchard had been double-dug from border to border and pegs and string marked out the trees’ positions with characteristic meticulousness. (Nathaniel was like a Thomas Hardy hero – all rosy cheeks, russet curls and meaningful silences which Louisa had initially interpreted as enigmatic – and she had developed an unnerving crush on him. She had been both disappointed and relieved to learn that he lived happily in Stratford-upon-Avon with an antiques dealer called Ian.) Those parts of the garden not under Nathaniel’s jurisdiction were a mess. The greenhouse was still half-empty, the bright green gulf of knotweed invincible. To the right of the Lodge, the wild brush of the old mere was as dense as the day she had first seen it. The sooner she could get that digger the better: in the meantime the kids would have to break their backs tilling and turning by hand what machines could do without effort. Ingram was against the digger, ostensibly on the grounds of expense but secretly, Louisa suspected, because he believed that backbreaking physical toil was vital to deplete the energy of a workforce who would otherwise rise up in violent mutiny. If he had his way the entire project would be completed with scythes and hand trowels. Finally, she squinted at the farthest boundary wall. Now that the leaves were starting to thin there was a telltale flash of whitewashed aluminium but you wouldn’t see it unless you were looking and because of its position anyone who did see it would surely take it for a farm vehicle or animal shelter.

Louisa turned her attention back to the ruin. No matter how many times she saw it she could never quite commit the pattern of its stalagmites to memory. She let her hands trail along damp walls, fingers lingering in ancient graffiti faded to indecipherable rune marks, wondering as ever who had stood here before her, what they had seen and how faithfully she would be able to recreate their view. How light her workload would be if walls had mouths as well as ears, if these old stones could guide her through her project.

She did not expect anyone else to be up on the knoll and turned a blind corner without looking, headbutting a chest that was at her eye level. She took a step back and so did he, his automatic ‘Sorry’ gaining hers. Louisa raised her eyes. The apology died on her lips as she looked into the face of Adam Glasslake.

She gulped air that was like icewater, as though she’d been running on a freezing day. Her first thought was that the strength of her longing had finally called him into being, that she had conjured his spirit. For a ghost it had to be: Adam had not aged a day and automatically, pathetically, she put her hand up to her own cheek, conscious of how different she must look to him, how old. But his breath misted the air like hers did and his chest, when it collided with her forehead, had been warm. This was no face in a cloud, no phantom reflection. Confused, frightened, she flattened herself against the uneven wall, fingers splayed against the stone. Adam looked even more terrified than she was.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Have I hurt you? I’m really sorry.’

‘No,
I’m
sorry,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Oh God, I’m so, so sorry.’ She almost slid down the slope in her desire to get away, and ran through the unplanted orchard, kicking out markers and churning up furrows. She would have smashed through the glass walls of the greenhouse to get away from him. She would have clawed her way through earth.

Chapter 7

April 1989

‘I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming all the way into the West End for this shit,’ she said to Elvira. They were in a sticky-floored basement in an alley off a side street at the wrong end of Oxford Street. The venue was a dubious cross-breed between a theme pub and an industrial club: the bars either side of the stage were covered in wooden timbers, but the ceilings were messy with open piping. They were only there because Elvira was friends with Trina, the girl on the door, and she’d offered them free drinks if they paid their way in.

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ said Elvira. ‘We’ll just stay for a couple of songs, then we’ll piss off.’

They had been waiting half an hour for the band to start playing. There were three of them, two guys and a girl, stacking, wiring and soundchecking instruments. Louisa counted two guitars and at least four synthesisers, although it was hard to tell because they kept rearranging them, linking wires and connecting leads until the whole stage was a cat’s cradle of cable. The word ‘Glasslake’ was tattooed on the skin of the bass drum.

Surveying the meagre audience, she saw promise in a ponytailed man wearing John Lennon glasses and an embroidered waistcoat. Once eye contact had been made, she lowered her lashes, counted to two and looked back. He was still watching her. She smiled, counted to two again, then turned back to Elvira, knowing he would come. Just because it was easy didn’t mean it wasn’t exciting.

After a screech of feedback, the club was plunged into darkness. Only the green fire exit signs and the lights behind the optics at the bar glowed. In the dark, Louisa became acutely aware of the bodies around her: Elvira to her left, tall and substantial, a skinny girl in front with backcombed hair that tickled her nose and soft, hot figures to her right and behind her that could have been men or women. She could feel someone’s breath on the nape of her neck and hear it, too: there was a hush of expectation in the echo. When the lights came on, it was hard to believe it was the same band. The machines and musicians were recessed in obscurity. A spotlight like a moonbeam shone on a microphone stand wound around with dead red roses and barbed wire. Behind this, with a bass guitar at his hips, was the band’s fourth member, a boy – a
man
– so violently good-looking that Louisa felt tingly and uncomfortable, as though an unbearably beautiful chord had already been played.

An invisible orchestra struck up, each bar bringing a new layer until the anticipation was intolerable. When at last he sang, his voice was by turns operatic and rocky, wheeling and swooping like a bird of prey. Louisa was rooted. The ponytailed man came over and she actually swatted him away like a fly, her rings catching the lens of his glasses. She didn’t acknowledge his
sotto voce
‘Bitch’, let alone apologise.

The singer’s looks were extraordinary, all Slavic angles and full lips, olive skin with a flush. After a while, she let her eye rove over the satellites to his star. An older guy with salt-and-pepper good looks marred only by a Habsburgian chin had two synths on either side and appeared to be playing them all at once. The guitarist was a skinny boy in eyeliner and a top hat, and the girl was behind the drum kit, a microphone hanging over her head. Best place for her, thought Louisa: with her square frame and coarse hair, she had the kind of looks it was almost impossible to enhance.

‘I can’t work out if this lot are behind the times or ahead of them,’ Elvira shouted, so loudly and so close to her ear that Louisa felt something deep within her neck go pop.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What’s it supposed to be? It’s not rock, it’s not rave, it’s trying to be classical, it’s a complete fucking mess.’

Elvira’s was not the prevailing verdict: the cheer when they left, all four of them disappearing behind the black sheets to some unfathomable backstage area, was disproportionate to the size of the crowd. Live music gave way to records again, and the dancefloor re-established itself in the centre of the room. Louisa searched for the singer, so intently that the muscles of her eyes ached from trying to focus in the smoky shadows. When she finally located him, a barb of excitement was followed by a slump of disappointment. He was with a girl whose long red hair looked as though it had been poured down her back. Was she a girlfriend or a groupie? Their foreheads were touching as they talked. Their conversation did not look casual, and neither did they look like strangers. The couple actually brushed past her on their way out of the club. Louisa was close enough to count the hairs on his wrist, and to notice that the girl had fair eyelashes at the roots where she could not get the mascara wand to reach. As she watched them disappear through the archway that led to the stairs, she felt an unaccustomed crash of defeat.

Louisa was not above taking men away from their girlfriends, but she was unpractised in it.

‘Find out when the next gig is,’ she said to Elvira.

‘
What
? Once was enough.’

‘Please?’

While Elvira talked to Trina and the girl drummer, Louisa played with a flyer, folding it in half as many times as she could, then ripping tiny holes in the red and black paper so that it unfolded into a snowflake. What was that film, the one where the man left little origami animals everywhere he went, like calling cards? Perhaps she would become the girl with the paper snowflakes. It would be something to be remembered for. There was a rush of cool air through the club as the fire doors were opened, and the backing band began to slide heavy cases into a waiting van. It was loaded with a clearly practised swiftness, the three of them passing equipment without communication. The doors slammed and the spell was broken. The stage was just a scuffed block of wood, painted black and covered in bits of gaffer tape.

In the street, Louisa’s hearing was distorted. As with finishing a book or stepping out of a cinema into daylight, the real world was always less real than the one she’d left behind.

‘They’re playing the 100 Club next Thursday,’ said Elvira. ‘We’re on the guest list. Unless I get a better offer.’ They turned into Charing Cross Road and were engulfed by a crowd spilling out of the Astoria.

Chapter 8

There were energies at work that were beyond human control or comprehension. Fate, chi, karma, the stars, destiny – they were all different names for the same thing, that force that brought people to where they were meant to be. What other explanation could there be for the fact that he was standing before her now, in the market? Something had delivered him to her. He was dressed like he was about to go onstage even though it was eleven o’clock on a weekday morning. He wore layer upon layer of dark denim and leather, jeans tucked into boots that came halfway up his shins. She had never known there could be so many shades of black.

‘Are you Elvira?’ he said. Elvira was working the silver stall downstairs and today she was wearing a dress that looked like three strategically placed eyepatches held together with macramé. No way was Louisa letting Adam anywhere near her.

‘I’m sorry, she’s not around. Can I help you?’

‘She told my guitarist we could leave these here.’ He had a fistful of flyers similar to the ones she’d been shredding the other night, the Glasslake logo badly Xeroxed, black on red, and his fingers were grubby where the ink had come off. His speaking voice was flat and middle-class neutral, with no hint of its capability.

‘You were good the other night,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know I’d had the pleasure.’ He raised an eyebrow and she felt, what the fucking hell was this, a
blush
creep up from between her breasts and stain her cheeks.

‘I meant the gig. I saw you at the Borderline.’

‘Really? I wasn’t sure, we didn’t seem to be getting much back.’

‘No, really,’ said Louisa. ‘Really really.’ The usual language of seduction seemed to be beyond her.

‘I had the worst stage fright. You wouldn’t believe how nervous I get. I have to get pissed just to turn up.’ He smiled; two little curved dimples, like sickles, bracketed his mouth. ‘I’m going to go now, while there’s still some mystery left.’

He picked up a little green phial and rolled it between his fingers.

‘That’s Vetiver. It reacts differently on everyone’s skin, so the skill is in matching the right scent to the right person.’

He unstoppered the bottle and held it to his nose. ‘I like it,’ he said. ‘But does it like me?’ He streaked his pulse point with it. Like anyone unused to essential oils, he had used far too much, and it trickled onto his collar. He leaned right into Louisa’s booth and offered her his neck like a vampire’s willing victim. The dull silver of his earring was warm against her cheek.

‘It’s perfect on you,’ she said. ‘Have it.’

‘Cheers, I will,’ he said. ‘I’d better go.’

She waited for the inevitable question. To her amazement and something like horror, the invitation for a drink or out to a club didn’t come. He dumped a stack of flyers on her countertop and retreated without asking to see her again. She clicked her teeth; she had been so sure. She arranged the flyers across the front of the counter.

When she left work, he was waiting for her outside. He was wearing his Walkman but not listening to it, the navy foam-padded phones around his neck. Her pleasure at knowing she had been right was spiked with indignation that he was playing games with her.

‘I realised that I didn’t know your name,’ he said. ‘I’m Adam Glasslake.’

‘Louisa Trevelyan.’

‘Louisa Trevelyan . . . That’s a very satisfying sound to say. Louisa Trevelyan, Louisa Trevelyan. It’s like an incredibly short poem, or a prayer. It’s very beautiful. It suits you. Would you like to go for a walk?’

This was more like it. They wandered up Kensington Palace Gardens where the embassies kept a respectful distance from the pathway. Uniformed flunkies were crouching next to Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, checking the underside of the vehicles for car bombs. There were still bomb scares most weeks in that part of London.