Chapter 13 #2
“Basically, we’re all in love with your husband, Cora,” Dorie had said.
Another laughed, “And our husbands are probably all in love with you.” But Cora knows that is just a kindness; she is a blank, a void.
The field above them is defined by peaks and troughs running parallel, cascading down its length every six feet or so.
“Now what do you think caused that?” Dorie says to no one in particular, and Gordon tells them how the land would have once been divided into strips to be worked by different families, and how ridges and furrows formed through repeated use of non-reversible plows.
Cora lets herself lag behind, imagining this space full of people, a seventeenth-century allotment.
She notices how the sun catches the rise and fall of the grass, making the crest of each ridge shine brighter like waves of hair and the sheen of one hundred brushes before bed.
But then Gordon is shouting. He is running toward her and, for a moment, she doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he reaches her.
He is charging her, and she stands frozen, waiting for impact.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, he is scooping her up—“Come on, slowcoach!”—and he is carrying her, spinning her, whooping, as he sprints to catch up with the others and her arms are around his neck and she is laughing with relief as a blur of buttercups and undulating fields streaks past her eyes.
She sees it from above, from the front. Through other people’s eyes.
Through the click of a shutter. There, honey on toast.
They climb Broadway Tower. Inside the old stone folly, the rooms are small, and Cora makes sure to stay near Gordon or one of the women; to not put herself in a position where she could end up alone with one of the other men.
She looks at the view across the hills, down over the small town of Broadway, which nestles at the bottom.
And she wishes she could stay up here forever.
They are warm-limbed and glowy-cheeked by the time they get back to the hotel and fall onto easy chairs to recover, before returning to their rooms to change for dinner.
Cora puts on makeup in the bathroom mirror and Gordon stands beside her to shave, and for a while they talk to one another’s reflections.
“I saw you enjoying that scone earlier,” he says, and she smiles, remembering the moment he’d caught her eye.
But then he adds: “Might be an idea to rein yourself in at dinner,” as he looks her up and down in the dress he’s picked out for her to wear.
She takes a tissue from the glass box above the sink and turns away to dab at her face, trying to avoid smudging her mascara.
“Come on, Cora. It’s not an unreasonable thing to say with your family history.” A second invisible knife. Her father’s fatal heart attack when she was seventeen, and the guilt he knows she still feels.
After his death, she’d stayed on in England for a few days, not wanting to give up a hard-won role in a new ballet.
A decision she quickly regretted. At night she’d lain awake trying to picture her father bent over his vegetable patch dibbing seeds into the soil with an earthy finger.
She could conjure his shape, but the image evaporated as she failed to summon the clothes he wore.
When she’d gone home for his funeral, she’d opened a cupboard one night and asked, “Is there Ovaltine?” Her mother had apologized.
“Oh, no, sorry, Daddy hasn’t drunk that in years.
” And she realized her father’s evening routine had changed and she hadn’t been there to notice.
Her memory of him outdated long before his death.
Gordon stands behind her, wraps his arms around her waist, and, for a moment, she thinks perhaps he’s just been tactless, but then his palms settle one just above her abdomen, the other just below, in an instantly familiar pose.
It is how pregnant women intuitively place their hands against their swollen bellies.
He pats the space between. “Bonne Maman,” he says, kissing her neck.
And he smiles at her in the mirror, raises an eyebrow, delighted that even the brand of jam seems to be colluding with him.
Someone is knocking. He slides his hands away, pats her bottom, closes the bathroom door behind him.
It’s Dorie, with the book she’d mentioned earlier. Gordon is thanking her, making polite chit-chat, telling her Cora is in the shower, as she stands, side-on to the mirror, studying the way the dress skims her stomach.
At the restaurant, they order enough dishes to share around the table and, while they wait for the food to come, Alice tells them about an Enneagram course she’s been on that maps people into nine different personality types.
Cora is interested, but the men set in straight away, eager to knock it down before they know anything about it.
People can’t just be boiled down into nine neat types.
Is it actually any more scientific than star signs?
What could you possibly do with that information anyway?
But then Gordon says he’s been reading up on something similar that divides humans into sixteen personality types.
“So, a few more, but both models sound like they have their roots in Jung’s work.
To be honest, I was skeptical initially, but some of us took the Myers–Briggs test at the practice and it was surprisingly accurate in pinpointing our work styles,” he says, rotating the stem of his wine glass between thumb and forefinger.
“It’s helpful when it comes to, you know, understanding how a colleague might see something—it makes conflict less personal. ”
The conversation wanders off into recruitment profiling and Jeremy tells a long story about a headhunter, as Cora sinks back into herself, wishing their talk would turn back to personality types.
When the food arrives, they help themselves and pass things back and forth up the table.
She’s careful to put only a little onto her plate, Gordon’s words still buzzing in her ears, but then he is saying, “Come on, Cora, you eat like a sparrow.” She looks up, confused, as he begins ladling on extras, making a show of piling her plate high.
“And let me help you to some of this dhal too,” he says, sinking the serving spoon deep into the curried lentils.
“Stop,” she says in frustration, putting a hand on his wrist.
It is the lightest touch. The tips of her fingers barely making contact with his skin. But his reaction suggests she used force, his arm careening into a glass of wine and causing one of the other men to dive forward to stop it from tumbling.
Gordon stares at her, his facial expression reflecting her own surprise. And, for a moment, the dinner table falls silent, their friends frozen, all eyes on Cora. Her cheeks flush and she looks down, embarrassed and furious. There is no point trying to explain. It would only make her look worse.
It is Gordon who breaks the silence, feigning rescue. “Well, who doesn’t know their own strength sometimes? It wasn’t intentional, was it, darling?”
Agreement, strained laughter. Then everyone remembers a polite interest in their own plate and absorbs themselves in the task of gathering food onto fork tines.
Finally, the relief of being able to exclaim over the flavors, which eases the way for someone to throw out a conversation starter, some stilted, irrelevant thing the others can grasp onto and spin out until they find a way back to the natural gait of the evening.
But, mentally, they are already in their own hotel rooms, earrings on the little shelf beneath the bathroom mirror, watch placed carefully on the bedside table, saying, “Well, that was weird,” somehow now more ready to turn to one another in the crisp cotton sheets and the comfort of their own imperfect relationships.
Usually when their parents go away, Maia stays at the house.
But Gordon is nearly fifteen—old enough to take care of himself for a few days.
He’s done his homework, eaten one of the ready meals straight from its microwaved container, munched down a family-sized bag of crisps, and, later, he’s going to “a gathering.” He’s not sure exactly what that entails, if it will be just a few people, or a proper party with alcohol and girls.
But he knows Lily is going. She’s the reason he’s been invited.
He sits next to her in maths and lets her copy his answers.
“Thanks, Atkin,” she says. And there’s something about the way she says his surname—slow and deliberate—that feels like she’s airing a bedsheet and letting its billowing softness settle over him.
Her intonation—At-kin—like at peace. He’s not used to people treating him like he might be someone gentle, someone worth getting to know, but he likes it.
He wants to return the favor, to say her surname—Atkins—in the same way, but somehow the s changes things. And anyway, he prefers Lily.
On Thursday, someone in the row behind had said “Oi!” in mock whisper, causing them both to turn around.
“Not you, gimp,” Alfie had said to Gordon.
“Don’t be mean,” Lily had said, turning to see what Alfie wanted.
“I’m having a little gathering at le weekend, Lily. Wanna come?”
“Maybe,” Gordon had heard her say.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Is Gordon invited too?” He’d heard Alfie sigh, heard one of his friends sniggering into his arm.
“I s’pose. If he wants,” Alfie had said.
“Do you want?” Lily had asked, turning back to their desk.
“Oh. Er, okay then.”