The House on the Cliff, page 7
‘I’m here,’ she sighs as she walks into the hallway and pulls on a pair of black low-heeled court shoes and lifts her black woollen coat from the hook on the wall. She resents the fact that she’s expected to attend mass every Sunday, pretending that she’s a devout Catholic. She converted to the Church to marry Mike, but she’s never really felt like she belongs. Her roots are firmly in the questioning and doubting, Church of England style of things. As she suspects Mike’s might be these days, too. But that’s yet another thing he doesn’t talk to her about.
‘Good.’ Mike opens the front door and sets off down the stairs at pace. Amanda tries to match his speed but fails spectacularly. She hasn’t worn heels for a while and her balance seems to have deteriorated. Her right foot slips on a step and then her whole body follows. In a split second she falls backwards and finds herself descending the concrete stairs on her bottom, which, despite its current padding, hurts like hell.
She considers swearing, which always seems like a terribly naughty thing to do in such a holy environment, but then her shame and frustration and sadness find another outlet. She starts to cry.
‘Oh… Mandy. Oh… here, let me help you up.’
Mike heard her fall then, from the landing below. Of course he did, she thinks. The impact probably generated an earth tremor detectable as far away as Truro.
She looks up at him. He appears agitated rather than concerned and is holding out his hand. She’s about to take it and dust herself off and try to hobble into chapel, when something inside her snaps. She could pretend she’s feeling fine and go and smile at the other staff, monks and the boys at church (whose attendance is also mandatory) or she could just stay here. She could stay here and not have to put on a brave face for anyone today.
‘No.’
‘You don’t want my help?’
‘No,’ she says, through her tears. ‘I can’t face going there today. I just can’t. You go. I’ll be fine. I’ll make myself a cuppa.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mandy. You’re my wife. They will wonder where you…’
‘Oh, sod… the bloody headmaster,’ she says, momentarily forgetting his name. She forgets names a lot at the moment. ‘Sod the lot of them.’
‘Mandy!’
‘Really, Mike? I’ve just fallen and hurt myself. Don’t you care?’
‘Of course I do. But you’ll be OK in a bit. We can pop back up and get you some ibuprofen, that’ll help…’
Amanda has stopped crying now. Her indignation has extinguished her tears.
‘Bloody ibuprofen! Can’t you see that it’s about so much more than some bruises? Haven’t you noticed how I look? How… different I seem? Can’t you tell I’m not feeling great? Or don’t you even look at me any more?’
‘God, Mandy,’ Mike says, looking around as he does so, no doubt checking there’s no one around who’s hearing this embarrassingly public marital argument. ‘Let’s get you home. Perhaps it’s best you go back to bed. You’re obviously not feeling well.’
‘Finally. You’ve noticed,’ she says, hauling herself up to standing without her husband’s assistance. She begins to walk back upstairs slowly and carefully, using the banister for support. Mike follows behind her, judging correctly that she does not want him to offer his arm or his hand. He opens their front door and she hobbles inside, taking a right into their bedroom. She pulls off her stupid shoes and throws herself down on the bed. Mike wanders in behind her.
‘Look, I’m sorry that I seem a bit… distracted.’ Amanda glares at him. ‘You know how it is at the moment. If I’d known what a terrible state the school was in before I’d arrived, I’d probably never have taken the job.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’d have taken it. It’s a promotion. The promotion you always wanted. You’d have taken it if it was in the Outer Hebrides.’
Mike looks pained.
‘Don’t be like that, Mandy. I know you’re feeling… not great, but we made this decision together, to come here, didn’t we? You wanted to come, too.’
‘Did I?’ says Amanda, remembering the conversations they’d had about it, when Mike’s face had been shining with excitement, and she had felt simply unable to quash his hopes. You can’t do that when you love someone. You have to let them chase their dreams, even when you know the price you’re going to pay for them.
‘You said you did.’
‘Well, yes.’
Mike sits down at the foot of the bed.
‘Look, Mand, I can tell you’re unhappy. I know it’s a lot, asking you to move here, so soon after your mum’s death, and of course the kids leaving home has been a big change…’
‘This is not about Mum. It’s about me. About moving me to somewhere I don’t know anyone, without anything to do, and expecting me to be fine.’
‘I do miss the kids too,’ he says, absent-mindedly running his hand over the duvet cover, as if he’s trying to iron it. ‘But you’ve got a job now. That’ll help.’
‘I just… want them back,’ she says, remembering the hugs they’d both used to give her in the morning in the kitchen, the silly chats they’d have in the car on the drive home from school in the evening, a mixture of terrible lunches, awful homework and amusing teachers. She misses all of it, even though a lot of it had driven her to distraction at the time.
‘I know. But they’re adults now. They need to do their own thing. We need to do our own thing now, too.’
‘Do we? What’s that, then? Work ourselves to death? Never see each other? Because that’s how it feels.’
Mike winces.
‘It’ll be half-term soon. We can go and see the kids, if you like. We could combine seeing Jules with a trip back to see our old friends in London?’
‘If Luke and Jules can spare us the time.’ Their responses to her messages are becoming even more sparse. Once every other day, at most.
‘And then it’ll be Christmas. We can invite them here.’
‘Where will they sleep, even if they both want to come?’ Amanda asks. ‘We don’t have room.’
‘I don’t know. One of them can sleep on an air bed. Or we can ask the monks if we can use their guest accommodation.’ She sees him check his watch.
‘What time is it now?’
‘Twenty-five past.’
‘You can still make the service if you go now. Just tell them I’m ill.’
The truth is, Amanda just wants to be alone. She knows she’s in no mood to try to explain her unexpected rage and her profound sadness, and Mike is too tired to listen properly.
‘Really?’
Mike clearly agrees with her.
‘Yes. Just go. I’ll see you later.’
He grimaces.
‘I’ve just remembered… There’s the lunch after… the one we’ve been invited to at the monastery. Do you still want to come to that?’
Amanda sighs. There goes the quiet lunch à deux she had been hoping for. She knows it’s important that she shows her face, however. And she is also curious to visit the monastery, to meet these monks who run this school. She wants to ask them about the boat tragedy, to see if any of the older monks remember it. And she also wants to find out how she can access the walled garden again. She’s tried to visit it several times since she’d discovered it, but it’s been locked. She wants to know who keeps the keys.
‘Yes. I’ll come. Just give me this hour or so to get myself together.’
‘All right. If you’re sure.’
‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’
Mike leaves quickly, and when the door shuts behind him, Amanda exhales slowly, imagining that all her frustration is contained within her breath. And then she swears, loudly and repeatedly, while thrusting her middle fingers up in the air in the general direction of the monastery, the monks and her husband. This show of defiance is cathartic. She feels her heart slow down a little, enough for her to sit up. She sits there for a while, looking out of the window. It’s a stunning autumn morning outside; the sky is cyan and clear, and there’s dew on the grass below. I should try to walk on my ankle before it seizes up, she thinks, acknowledging privately that it isn’t even that badly injured. It was her pride that had really taken a beating. She knows instinctively that being outside, away from these walls which seem to be closing in on her, will make her feel better. She changes quickly, grabs a thick coat and sensible shoes, and heads out of the flat.
There’s a gentle breeze blowing in. Amanda breathes it in and then turns, letting her face absorb a few rays. It’s a very different sun now to the one they’d baked beneath during their arrival in August. It’s spent most of its time hidden by clouds recently, and even when it does emerge, its power is weakening. Such a difference in just eight weeks, she thinks, knowing that this season signals a descent into darkness which will only begin to reverse in January. It’s a thought she doesn’t relish.
She turns and walks up the coastal path. She’s decided to walk down to the cove, hoping she’ll be alone down there, even though it’s a weekend. It’s so far out of most people’s way, she often finds it empty, except for the odd fisherman or walker.
She’s about to descend the steps to the beach when she spots movement out of the corner of her eye. She turns to look. Someone seems to be walking around the old mine buildings. Her eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but she can definitely make out a human shape, and she gasps when she sees them pull open a door and walk inside. She knows the dilapidated buildings are unsafe – the school issues stern warnings to students to steer well clear. Not to mention the fact that there are large ‘Keep Out’ signs affixed in several places. You just can’t miss them. Who could be going in there, she thinks, and why? Unable to contain her curiosity, she abandons her plan to walk to the cove and instead turns and heads towards the mine. If it’s a student up to no good, she reasons, she needs to find them and send them packing before they injure themselves. That roof, she thinks, looks like it could fall in at any second, and heaven knows what state the floor’s in.
She picks up the pace and reaches the buildings within a couple of minutes. Rosie has told her that the site had closed in the fifties, relatively late compared to many of the county’s tin mines. She’d told her that the mine shaft was apparently covered at the surface and subsequently is believed to have collapsed, but that many tunnels remain underground.
Amanda hasn’t been this near the complex before, but she realises the buildings look even more decrepit up close. The empty engine house and its accompanying chimney are still standing, but she sees that chunks of stone have fallen off the structure, and the salt from the sea has eaten away at wooden window frames and doors. She can also see that it’s still fairly easy to get inside the complex, despite several large signs stuck on doors and windows warning people not to do so. Someone has placed some metal barriers around it at some point, but many of these have been pushed over by the wind, and no one has bothered to right them.
Amanda clambers over one of these and heads for the door she thought she saw the person enter. She sees that it was previously padlocked, but that the lock is broken. Has this just happened? she wonders. Or has it been like this for a while? It’s impossible to tell. She hesitates for a moment and then decides to pull the door open. If there’s someone in here who doesn’t know the dangers, she reasons, she needs to tell them the risk they could be running.
The old door’s hinges scream in protest as she pulls it open wide enough for her to lean in to take a look. There’s very little light inside, despite the bright sunny day. What windows that remain are small, very dirty and overgrown with weeds. The light that’s seeping into the room through the doorway illuminates air thick with dust motes and a stone-flagged floor littered with what look like old sacks.
‘Hello?’ she calls out. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
No one responds. She stands stock-still listening for any signs of human life, but the only sounds she can hear are the cries of seagulls overhead, the waves crashing on the rocks below, and inside, the rustle of dried leaves rolling along the floor, propelled by the breeze she’s letting in.
She thinks for a moment. Should she venture inside and investigate further? But then she considers the possibility of rotting floorboards and roof joists, and the lack of proper lighting, and decides against it. Her phone torch would be insufficient, and going somewhere dangerous without telling anyone where she is would be the height of stupidity.
She decides, on the balance of probability, that she must have been mistaken. Or if she did see someone, perhaps they’re hiding, because they’re up to no good. And she’d definitely be no match for a frightened teenager who’s trying to stay hidden. She decides not to risk it. She will leave them to it, if they’re in there at all. Perhaps, she thinks, she might come back with Mike, to see if there’s any evidence of human activity here, any sign that students have been getting in, or if there’s anything illegal going on the police might need to know about.
Mike, she thinks, shutting the door and climbing back over the fencing. Mike, who will almost certainly not have time to do this with her, not with his management role and the new bloody rewilding club he’s set up in what miniscule amount of spare time he has. How, she wonders, as she makes her way back to the coastal path, how are they going to find their way back to each other? If, she realises with a jolt, they ever will?
An hour and a half later, Amanda has painted on a brave face and is seated at a long wooden table next to Mike. And she’s grateful for that, because everyone else at the table is a monk. The only other people who are not part of the order are the kitchen staff, who are bringing in steaming plates piled high with a Sunday roast, depositing them in front of each diner. Although they all make vows of poverty, she sees this does not necessarily translate into a life lacking in rich food.
There are twelve monks sitting with them. She knows three of them – Father Anthony, the current abbot, Father Paul, the headmaster, and Brother Bede, the deputy head pastoral – but she’s surprised that the rest are so few in number. She’d assumed, given the size of their living accommodation, that there must be at least thirty of them.
‘Is this all of the monks?’ she whispers to Mike, before thanking the waiter who’s just placed her meal down in front of her.
‘Not quite. Some of them are too old to come out of their cells, so food’s taken to them. And there are a couple who aren’t generally seen in public, so to speak.’
‘Why?’ she asks, but Mike isn’t able to answer, because the abbot, who’s sitting a couple of seats down at the top of the table, begins to say grace.
‘Bless us, O Lord and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen,’ he says, and the rest of the monks chorus it with him. Amanda mumbles along with them, even though she doesn’t know this version of the prayer. When the grace is said, there’s a clattering of cutlery and the monks dive into their food. No one speaks for a good minute, and Amanda suddenly has a tremendous urge to fill the void. She has never liked silence.
‘Thanks so much for inviting us,’ she says to the abbot, while cutting up a roast potato. She hasn’t spoken to him at all so far, except for a brief word or two after mass on Sundays. Father Anthony is a kind-looking man of about seventy. He’s sitting at the top of the table, two people away from her.
‘Not at all,’ he replies. ‘We should have invited you before. I apologise. I did ask Father Paul to arrange it before now, but I think things have been very busy for you all.’
Amanda watches the headmaster out of the corner of her eye. He appears not to have heard this criticism, or if he has, he’s deliberately ignoring the abbot. A moment later, he starts a conversation with the monk sitting next to him. Mike seems to be listening to it, Amanda notices.
‘It’s lovely to meet you properly, anyway, Mrs Chapman,’ says the abbot. ‘Are you settling in well?’
‘Yes. It’s a real change, from London,’ she answers, aware that Mike is listening.
‘It must be. Although, that’s what I like about it.’
‘I wanted to ask something, actually, and I’d better do it before I forget,’ she says. ‘About the walled garden. I went in when we first arrived, and it’s amazing. But it’s been locked every time I’ve tried to go in since then.’
‘Yes, sadly, we have to do that, or the boys use it as a hideout for smoking and vaping.’
‘Oh, I see. That’s a shame.’
‘Are you interested in gardening, Mrs Chapman?’
Amanda nods with enthusiasm. ‘Yes. I had an allotment in London. I miss it, actually.’
‘I see. Well, I’m sure we can get you in. Bede,’ he says, raising his voice to get the attention of the deputy head pastoral. ‘Can I ask that you show Mrs Chapman around the walled garden? And perhaps furnish her with a key?’
Bede, who has so far tried to avoid talking to anyone, looks put out.
‘Of course.’ He looks like he’s sucking a lemon.
‘Perhaps this afternoon?’ says the abbot.
‘Yes. Yes. Of course,’ replies Bede, before turning to reach for a water jug to refill a glass that is more than half full.
‘How’s your lunch, Mike?’ asks Father Paul, taking advantage of a lull in conversation to talk directly to his new deputy head.
‘Lovely,’ replies Mike, raising his voice so he can be heard.
‘Great. We had to fire the last chef, you know. He just wasn’t up to it. But this new one is much better.’
Several of the catering staff are still in the dining room, and Amanda sees the expression of the one nearest to her flicker, before their poker face is restored. Whether they knew their previous boss had been sacked or not before this statement is unclear, but if they didn’t then they certainly do now.
