Secrets

‘For example,’ Tess continued, ‘Christmas just gone, they went skiing. I mean, I don't ski, I couldn't have afforded the trip and I couldn't have gone with Em being so little. But I wasn't invited anyway. So it did mean I didn't have plans for Christmas.’

Joe thought about this. ‘Well, if it's any consolation, I was on my own too.’

‘Are your parents not around?’

‘Not around,’ he confirmed without further detail but also without the burning reticence he'd experienced when Tess had enquired about his family soon after she'd arrived.

Despite revealing the shortcomings of her family set-up, Joe thought she seemed particularly bright today. Or maybe it was because she was facing inland, with her back to the beach. Certainly there was no trace of her desolation last night.

‘See up there,’ Joe said, gesturing towards the valley, ‘that's the reason I'm not a doctor.’

The view was certainly picturesque, the perpetual sea breeze had caused the trees to point their branches inland. Tess looked, not quite sure on what she was meant to be focusing, so she nodded.

Her confused politeness touched Joe. ‘There used to be a bridge here – spanning the valley,’ he said. ‘The Halfpenny Bridge – or the Ha'penny Bridge. It was built in 1869 to link the other towns of Skelton and Loftus with Saltburn, to enable travellers to avoid the steep drop down to the sea and the arduous trek up the other side of the valley. The bridge rose 120 feet above the Valley Gardens and it was a fantastic piece of Victoriana. Seven cast-iron supports, ostentatious in height and length. Spectacular views of coast and country.’

‘Why Halfpenny?’ Tess asked. She might be looking at nothing but she could clearly envisage Joe's bridge now.

‘Pedestrians paid half a penny. Carriages sixpence.’

‘But where's it gone? Why isn't it still here?’

Joe wasn't going to answer that just yet. ‘You'll find so much about Saltburn has a darker side. It always has – throughout its history. From smuggling to suicide. It's not all creamy dreamy buildings, a jolly pier and a quirky funicular. The Ha'penny Bridge became a hotspot – or should that be black spot – for suicides. As a bridge builder, that's often what gets me most about suicides from bridges. Jumping from tall buildings is one thing; similarly Beachey Head – those structures, whether natural or man-made, are static – they go up and then they stop. There's a top, if you like, and a bottom – the emphasis is vertical and finite. But bridges, by default, are there to carry you. They dominate a different axis altogether. And it – well – it breaks my heart, actually, that some people can't see the other side. They are too lost to see there is a way across. That A flows over to B. That there's another side, another way. They walk along a little distance – and then they let go. In that moment, the bridge somehow fails its function and it fails them.’

‘The Clifton Suspension Bridge has the Samaritans’ number on each approach. I grew up in Bristol. Is that why it's gone, the Halfpenny Bridge?’

Joe shook his head and gave her a smile because she grew up in the shadow of one of the most seminal bridges of the world. She was currently all ears, all eyes and she hadn't noticed that Emmeline was testing the taste of coastal soil. He retrieved the child and hitched her onto his hip, not minding the grubby fingers exploring the bristles on his jaw.

‘No. Actually, that had little to do with it. From the 1960s the bridge started to need repairs, and then total refurbishment. It was going to be too costly to fix, but too dangerous to leave standing. So they demolished it.’

The way he said it made it seem so violent. Senseless, almost. Tess frowned. ‘What a tragedy.’

‘Sort of. It was 1974. The seventeenth of December – my tenth birthday. That was my party, that year, I suppose. My parents brought me down with my little gang to watch. It took four seconds, exactly, to reduce a hundred and five years of cast-iron beauty and engineering into a twist of tangled metal.’

Tess let it hang for a moment. ‘And that's when you decided not to be a doctor?’

‘That's when I decided I wanted to build bridges.’

She let Joe have his memory in private while she enjoyed imagining him as a boy, clothing him in her mind's eye in a ridiculous cliché of cloth cap and hobnail boots, shorts and a knitted tank-top. It made her giggle, which brought Joe back to the present and that returned Tess's focus to the here and now between them.

‘The view must have been so different – when the bridge was here.’

‘Spot on, Tess, spot on. The vista isn't the same. I mean, for purists, it's more natural today than it was for those hundred and five years. But I don't know – for me, that bridge enhanced this landscape aesthetically, never mind practically.’

They looked up the valley quietly. Seagulls bickered in a noisy scatter overhead. The sea breeze, south-easterly and quite strong, pestered one side of their faces, the sun the other. They had to squint but they stood there a while longer, still and thoughtful. Joe didn't tell Tess that, on his tenth birthday, building bridges became not just his chosen career but also a metaphor to serve as a life lesson. He didn't tell her this, just then, because he'd have to explain that the drive for it came from his parents’ disintegrating marriage. The one chasm, the only hostile space, the single seemingly untraversable rift that he'd been unable to bridge. The distance between them was never to be spanned.

And just then, Tess didn't tell Joe that she detected both strength and sadness in his story. That his silent thoughts had a heaviness that confronted her. But she did tell herself that she wanted to slip her hand into his. But then she told herself off for thinking such thoughts. And pushed her hands deep into her pockets.

Joe is going to London tomorrow. The day at the Ha'penny Bridge was two days ago. In the intervening time, he and Tess have walked and talked, eaten together, laughed a lot and spent yesterday evening reading quietly in the drawing room before watching News at Ten in the sitting room. She does still sometimes wonder whether she should ask permission. And he does recall the structure he'd imposed on previous house-sitters. He still hasn't given her the pack. But he has to concede, the house seems to have shown that it works well for the two of them.

It is now mid-morning and Joe has finally emerged from his study and is pottering in the kitchen, taking a break from work. He sees Tess is outside, pegging out washing. Emmeline and Wolf are lolling about in the garden. It is surprisingly balmy today, as if a switch has turned off the chill of earlier in the week until next winter. April is two days away; spring is within easy reach now.

He studies the scene in the garden. It is less a Thomas Hardy novel and more an Edward Hopper painting. Tess, with her back towards him, wearing a faded tea-dress and woollen cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, a pair of old cream trainers. The breeze furling the washing around her forearms and causing the skirt to cling to her bare legs, licking at the fronds and curls of her hair which have escaped her scratchy pony-tail. Every now and then she turns her face a little as she stoops to pick up the next item or to check on Emmeline. And it is then that the sun glances off her skin and spins silken skeins from her hair. Joe wants to watch but he doesn't want to be seen and it confuses him that the scene is so compelling. He goes upstairs to his bedroom to pack for London but finds himself drawn to the window, peering down onto the garden, again transfixed by the sight of her sorting socks.

And look, my boxers. I didn't know she'd done my washing.

He is concerned, bemused, how a picture of such dull domesticity can be arousing, but this is the undeniable effect on him. Perhaps it is the feminine presence. Perhaps it is because at this angle, the sunlight has made her dress see-through. Maybe it is just because he likes her, he has enjoyed her company these last few days; it has been simple and uncomplicated yet entertaining and energizing too. And there's that frisson – how she can be stroppy and how he winds her up, that she can make him snappish and curt. It doesn't make him dislike her, far from it, but it unnerves him that he should feel eager to seek peace soon after. He tells himself, London, you prat, London. So he goes back to his packing.

But before he returns downstairs, he hovers on the landing and then goes up a flight to Tess's room. He's not really sure why. She's outside – he has only to go to a window to watch her, unseen. But he doesn't want to see her, he wants to sense her. That's why he's standing at her doorway.

There's not much to see: a pair of jeans on the floor. Socks in a scrunch. And a pair of plain black knickers kicked off nearby. Nathalie accosts his mind's eye; resplendent in her carefully selected and unfathomably expensive lingerie. Gold mesh and miniscule. Joe steps further into the room and picks up her knickers from the floor. Black cotton. He holds them to his nose, inhaling deeply while calling himself a crazy, dirty bastard. But still he goes to his bathroom to masturbate urgently. It isn't thoughts of Nathalie that have excited this state in the middle of a nondescript morning. He didn't think back to all that sex he'd had the week before. Rather, it was the sight of Tess this morning, in a shabby dress and old cardi. It's the proximity of her right now, just out there in the garden. The girl with the plain cotton knickers. And so, it isn't images of Nathalie that he now wanks to, but the still prevalent sense and scents of Tess. He comes and it's exquisite.

He opens his eyes after a moment and stares at the tessellation of tiles. Alone in a bathroom. He feels a little hollow. Tess's voice drifts up from the garden. She's rabbiting on at Wolf and laughing. She's sewn herself into the fabric of his life in Saltburn and yet for years now, he's felt no emotional anchor here – just the practicality of the house. He cleans himself up and goes back downstairs. He feels perplexed and shuts himself in his study where the complexity of calibrations for a forthcoming pitch offers him a welcome distraction.

‘May I use the phone?’

Tess knocked on the study door later that afternoon and called her request through. Joe's been in there all day, she hasn't seen him at all.

‘Sure.’

‘Oh – and would you like me to rustle up some supper later?’

After a pause. ‘Don't worry about me.’

Tess's turn to pause, laying her forehead gently against the door. ‘I'm not worried about you,’ she said quietly. ‘I'll be cooking for myself anyway. It's no trouble.’

A sigh from inside. ‘OK.’

‘Don't let me twist your arm!’ she muttered and stomped off.

‘Look – sorry. Fine – I'd love some food.’

‘OK. And it's OK to use the phone?’

‘Yes. I told you – it's fine.’

That he should sound irritated irked Tess but her desire to spend time with him is stronger. He's just hard at work, she told herself, building bridges.

‘Hullo, Claire? It's your long-lost sister… I'm fine – how are you? How are the kids? Good. Good… I'm in Saltburn – in the North-East… Me – on holiday? Don't be daft!… I've left London – for good, hopefully …A few weeks ago… Heard from Mum? Dad? My mobile doesn't work – shall I give you this number, you know, just for emergencies? No… No …Yes …Pretty shit, really… No – that's not why I've phoned… Pardon? No, I haven't heard from him – not for months, not since Em's birthday… Don't say that. You know what he's like. Anyway, I think he's still in the States. No – no, he hasn't. I didn't ask again, not after the last time… He hasn't got any money, you know that, Claire. Can we change the subject, please? I'm working here in Saltburn… No, not that – not any more. I'm doing Property Management …Well, I'm house-sitting… No, it's more than that – actually I'm looking after a bridge builder and his home.’

She was relieved to have made the call, which wasn't to say that she'd enjoyed it in the slightest. It would take her an hour or so to recover and feel better about herself. But she was used to that. She simply couldn't afford not to touch base with her sister every now and then.

The only phone in the entire house is the one in the main entrance hall. And Joe found himself helpless not to hover at his study door and eavesdrop. And afterwards, he found it impossible to work but he stayed in his study and thought about things until Tess called him for supper.

He looked at his plate heaped high with locally caught fish, home-made chips, peas and carrots. On the table a new bottle of ketchup, flakes of sea salt in one of the little dishes from Hong Kong he'd forgotten he had. White wine in one glass and water in another. He glanced across at Tess. She'd been quite right to tell her sister how she was looking after him and his home. Quietly, he considered it a shame he had to go tomorrow, to be away quite so often. But then he remembered this morning, when she was hanging out washing. He didn't want to think about it but he knew he didn't want to forget it either. It was confusing. Perhaps it was good that he was leaving tomorrow.

‘So, Tess,’ he said between mouthfuls, ‘what'll you get up to when I'm gone again?’

She thought about it. ‘With your say-so, I'd like to start on the sitting room – the TV room. And we really could make better use of the boot store. It is a room, you know.’

‘We?’

Tess reddened a little. ‘There's good paint you can buy now – it's scrubbable,’ she hurried. ‘It would be perfect. Will the Everything Shop sell it, do you think? Could I put it on your tab?’

Joe nodded. ‘No doubt they have a pot or two at the back somewhere, under the jigsaw puzzles, next to the ericaceous plant food, behind the home-brewery kit.’

Tess laughed. ‘Opposite the cotton reels and just across from the mousetraps?’

‘Or I can bring you some back,’ Joe said. ‘I may not stay in London that long – I may come back before heading off to France.’

He'd only just thought of this.

They caught each other's glance and looked away.

‘Or I may go and visit friends in Kent,’ he said with a nonchalant tap at the base of the ketchup bottle. ‘Chislehurst.’

‘Cool,’ Tess said breezily, as if it was no concern of hers where he went, when.

‘More wine?’

‘Please.’

Joe held the wine bottle aloft, appearing to scrutinize the label as if he harboured some concern over the vintage or the vineyard. He wasn't. But he needed a moment.

‘Pass your glass, Tess, and call me a nosy old sod and you don't have to answer, but Emmeline's dad? I mean, I was wondering – you know – about him. Whether he'll be coming – here – to visit, perhaps?’

He said it all so quickly, so conversationally whilst he poured wine, that however intrusive the question might have been, it didn't come across as such and Tess found herself answering. She hadn't noticed the two small lines that remained between Joe's brows; punctuation marks of discomfort that belied the light tone of his voice.

‘He won't be coming up to Saltburn. You see – well, you'll have guessed we're not together. Actually, he doesn't really visit much.’

‘Were you together for long?’

Tess traced her finger around the rim of the glass as if to elicit sound. Her voice, when it came, had the volume on low. ‘For about six weeks,’ she said. Then she cleared her throat, smiled a little meekly and spoke up. ‘We were together for about six weeks. And then he went travelling. Which was when I found out I was pregnant. It's all a bit of a cliché.’

The food was finished but Joe dabbed at the smear of ketchup on his plate and then sucked his finger thoughtfully.

‘He's a musician,’ Tess continued though Joe hadn't asked. In fact, all he was going to ask was whether she wanted a cup of tea. He thought she might want a change of subject; he was surprised that she didn't.

‘Or at least he likes to say he's a musician, though he never seems to play much more than themes and variations on “House of the Rising Sun”. The problem is, he's very handsome. Well, it's a problem for everyone else, you see. He's stunningly good-looking, really – luckily Em's inherited his looks. But he's one of those free spirits. Born in the wrong generation, you could say. The Woodstock era would have been so much more his thing.’

‘Where is he based?’ Joe asked though he'd eavesdropped about the States earlier from Tess's phone call. He'd prefer facts over these superlatives of the bloke's beauty.

‘He's a “wherever he lays his hat is his home” type.’

Joe was surprised that she smiled so wistfully and spoke with generosity when he felt that this fake rock-star sounded like a vain, irresponsible loser.

‘He's Canadian. I met him in London. He was en route to Europe. Now he's in the States. He wants to do Australia. And then he'll probably start all over again.’

‘Is he a good father?’

Tess wished she could reply quicker and in the affirmative so she employed vagueness instead. ‘He means well. He's not what you'd call “hands-on”. But he's simply one of those people it's just really difficult to get cross with. He has another child. Another daughter – she's five, apparently. So Em has a half-sister, somewhere in Toronto. Which'll be great when she's older. He's full of love and wonder at the world – he's just a bit crap with the practicalities.’

Her response baffled Joe – such equanimity from the woman who could be belligerent with him in an instant.

‘And his name is?’

‘Dick.’ Pre-emptively, she flicked a stray pea on the table at Joe. ‘Don't laugh.’

‘I'm not,’ said Joe. ‘The name fits. Does he support you?’

‘Dick?’ She was incredulous. ‘He's the archetypal penniless musician – he's like a latter-day strolling troubadour! He's only a step away from having worldly possessions small enough to fit in a hanky on the end of a stick, à la Dick Whittington.’

‘Dick Whittington went on to become incredibly famous and wealthy.’

Tess shrugged. ‘Dick's no Dick Whittington, Joe. He's gorgeous and charismatic and I fell for him, but I knew. I knew from when I first saw him, strumming away in Finsbury Park. I knew after the first kiss. After our first night together. During those madcap six weeks. I knew he wouldn't stay. And when I found out I was pregnant. I knew he wouldn't come back.’

Joe rolled the pea gently under his fingertip as he considered this. ‘Brave of you, Tess. To – you know – proceed.’

Tess shook her head. ‘Not brave, Joe, not really. My sister said I was stupid. Tamsin, my best friend, warned me how difficult it would be. But it was easy to make the decision. Being pregnant was the first thing in my life that seemed to slot into place seamlessly with my future. So many other uncertainties. But carrying Em was not one of them. My child would be my constant.’

‘You and her together, hey?’

‘She and me.’

He topped up their glasses. She gave him a half-smile combined with a small shrug.

‘Do you find it hard, Tess?’ The wine had made the question flow and there was an audible trickle of tenderness with it.

She looked at him with her head tilted, as if assessing the intent behind his enquiry. ‘Dick?’ She gave the same smile–shrug. ‘My love for Em soon made me realize that what I'd felt for Dick was just – well, it wasn't love at all. It was a crush. And hormones.’

But Joe wasn't smiling; he was still looking at her intently. ‘I didn't mean not having this Dick in your life – if you'll pardon the expression. I meant – your life. As a single mum. Do you find that hard, Tess? All this, on your own?’

Though Tess was quiet for only a moment, her silence was pronounced.

She wore the same carefully composed smile but her eyes now belied it, filmed by a sudden smart of tears which he could see she was fighting to control. Eventually, she looked up and nodded. ‘It is hard, Joe,’ she said. ‘Sometimes. I feel quite alone. Sometimes.’

He thought of her on the landing, enslaved by loneliness. ‘Yet you've come all the way up here – did you not leave a support network behind in London?’

‘Em is my family. And I might be stupid – but I'm strong and I will cope. Actually, it's a breath of fresh air up here – even if I have filled it with paint fumes.’

She was trying to lighten the conversation but Joe wanted to say, you're bullshitting, Tess. And he wanted to say, the thing is I saw you crying by yourself. And though he wanted to ask her what was making her cry, he really couldn't do that, could he. And therefore he couldn't very well say, Tess, don't cry on your own. And there were two reasons he couldn't voice any of these thoughts.

What could he do about any of it – not least because he'd be gone again tomorrow?

And who was she anyway? He had to keep reminding himself. Just his employee – that's how she saw herself, wasn't it?

Joe had to concede that any dynamic which had developed over the last few days, was tonight both heightened and limited by wine and time. He was off again tomorrow. Whatever he asked tonight and whatever she told him could have only temporary resonance. He told himself, you're pissed you idiot, so shut up.

Then he told himself he ought to draw on the ability he'd honed over the years to fade a woman into the background of his mind's eye whenever he left a location. Just as she really ought to fade into the background on the occasions he returned to this location. As his previous house-sitters had done without him even asking. The ones who'd asked him for a contract or the pack he'd prepared at the very least. This strange girl might be just another house-sitter, but she was currently doing the sitting at his table at his behest, drinking wine and giving compelling answers to questions he was kicking himself for asking in the first place.

She was a house-sitter who called his place home. Who'd filled it with a baby and constantly clean, line-dried washing. Who'd scrubbed out his cupboards and alphabetized his books. What was he thinking? He simply didn't know. But what he did know was that he was feeling more than he was thinking.

Think London, think London. He thought tomorrow couldn't come soon enough. He thought, I'll phone Rachel – she's always game when I'm in the city. He thought how tomorrow he'd be safely en route back to the way of life he'd cultivated over twenty years; feeling no greater link to London than he felt to France or anywhere else where he had a bridge and a girl.

‘Joe?’ He'd been lost in thought. ‘Tea?’

He cleared his throat but he still sounded hoarse from his long conversation with himself. ‘Please.’

The sound of the kettle busily boiling echoed the fast rattle of his thoughts. Ping. I'll take myself right out of her equation.

‘Maybe Dick'll make his millions, come back, swoop you up and take you to live with him on his ranch.’ (Joe decided that, just as he chose to call Em Emmeline, he'd be referring to her father as Dickle from now on.)

‘Dick? On a ranch?’ Tess baulked. ‘Dick's just a gorgeous, useless, beautiful, crazy dreamer. Even I can see that he's an utter waste of space.’

And, though Joe wasn't too keen on the swoon to Tess's voice, her conviction – heaped as it was with affection and generosity – made Joe quite certain that this Dickle was one area of her life that she really had worked out.

Chapter Eleven

Tess awoke feeling she'd been deprived proper rest. Her sleep had been so busy, so detailed, so involving, that she woke assuming she'd overslept because it felt that her dreams had ensnared her for so long. But the clock said six o'clock and the light, filtering through a gap in the curtains but not making it far into the room, verified this. She knew she had around twenty minutes before Em would wake and these she spent bemused that after over two years during which sex hadn't really crossed her mind, let alone featured on her agenda, three men had infiltrated her sleep in explicit dreams.