IV
Tom
I hope this letter finds you still at MacNair’s. I followed your suggestion. I went to England. I have something to show you. Something that is rather a surprise but I hope you will like it.
Your father has written to me and we’ve spoken on the phone. He’s been so kind. I’m going to Spain, then coming to London. So I wondered, if you are going to be in the UK anyway, whether you would meet me at Sevenstones.
Alice
The drive from the airport to Sevenstones was an hour and a half.
Tom was quiet, staring out at the bare, grey countryside.
Here and there, he caught sight of a tree with a lone rotten apple hanging from its bare branch, the wet black crops in the fields that hadn’t been harvested, the dark and light contrasting again.
He closed his eyes, his head hurting as it did when he was tired.
He felt great calm, being here with his father, the words that they had spoken to each other.
After a while he said, ‘The old house is looking after you, is it?’
‘I love it there, Tom my boy. Absolutely love it. Very strange, being back, after all these years. But there’s a proper bathroom, and the fire works, and it’s cosy as anything, and I can walk to the shop.
Might even have a new bath put in. The old one’s almost rusted away.
’ He hesitated. ‘Of course, that’s up to you … when you’ve decided what you’ll do.’
‘I think a new bath is a marvellous idea.’ Tom smiled, enjoying the reversal of their situations. ‘Dad, whatever you think’s best.’
‘We’ll be there soon,’ said his father. ‘I’ve got breakfast waiting for you. And a surprise!’
‘What’s the surprise?’
‘You’ll have to see, but you’ll like it, I think,’ his father said, looking in his wing mirror and overtaking at speed around a slow-moving car ahead – his father drove as if he were still in a Hurricane, to Tom’s consternation.
‘You know, we always said everyone came into the seven stones at some point or other during their lives … Everyone. I met someone on Armistice Day last month in London who’d slept there the night before a mission.
Known the chap for years, but no idea he’d bunked down there in the war. ’
‘Wonderful.’
‘Dear old Gordon came down for the day, with his wife and children – did I tell you that?’
‘Dad, no, you didn’t, I’m so glad. How is he?’
‘Rather plump, actually, although you have to remember it’s been almost twenty-five years since we last saw each other.
That fellow there – just popping around him.
’ Tom held on to the side of the car in alarm.
‘Where was I? He’s developed a taste for Italian food.
Kept telling me I was making the sauce all wrong.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d got it out of a can and was just stirring it in.
’ They both laughed. ‘His little girl, Angela, she’s a firecracker.
Bright as a button, reading the Narnia books already.
He’ll come down again, now you’re back. Wants to tell you what you should be doing next.
Says Jenny asked him to keep an eye on you.
Wonderful to see him again. Absolutely bloody wonderful. ’
The roads grew narrower, and the sun rose higher, beaming white and grey light through the bare branches into the road. Eventually they turned past Tallboys and crawled up the final sloping lane towards Sevenstones.
Tom felt nervous, as he had every time he’d returned there since Jenny. His palms sweated; his face felt hot. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘What if –’
His father turned to him. ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘You’re quite white. Get out and walk the last bit. I’ll park up. Let yourself in. It’s quite all right, you know,’ he added, patting Tom’s hands. ‘There are no ghosts.’
‘Promise?’
‘I absolutely promise. No ghosts, my boy. Just some porridge left over from breakfast, and a chisel with some shavings I should have cleared up.’
It was as though they were back in Scotland again. Tom got out of the car, unable to speak, and walked the last part of the way, marvelling at this place he knew so well but only in summer.
The garden in winter was bare, the lawn covered with dewy silver cobwebs glinting in the morning sun. He walked along the old lichen-covered wall and passed the pond. The water was frozen.
He could hear someone singing, and he stopped.
The paving stones were not flecked with wild daisies and marjoram.
The roses around the old stone porch had been cut back to grey-green sticks.
Everything was different: ice frosting the grass so that it glimmered; the bare black zigzags of the branches against the sky; and the old, old house, and the stone next to it.
He had the sense that, once again, he was back in the circle, surrounded by a protection that he could not understand but that he had always felt from the first time he had gone there.
The apple trees were bare, gnarled and twisted.
In the hedgerow, a robin called loudly, and he saw its shining jet-black eyes watching him as he stood gazing around him, marvelling at how peaceful it was.
He wondered about his father and mother, under the trees in the moonlight, about how much Teddy had wanted to come back here.
The sun was directly above. For the first time, there among the bare trees, Tom could see where the stone circle had been.
He was standing in the middle of it. He could see the stone nearest the house, then another by the boundary, then another beyond that, and another …
he turned round and round, marking each one in turn, until he counted to seven.