THE HOUSE ON THE HEATH

CHAPTER ONE

"Double room available for single female

in comfortable family house

near Blackheath station, overlooking the Heath.

Telephone Julia Dowler on…."

It was Julia who persuaded Graham to take in a lodger. It was understandable, then, that she would hold herself responsible for everything that followed Ruth’s arrival in their lives.

Sitting in court, day after day, she wanted to shout out that it was all her fault, but that would not have gone down well with the judge and certainly would not have changed the verdict. She was desperate to find a way to make amends, to make everything right again, but some things can never be undone and the events of the previous autumn were among them.

How had it been possible for so much to change, for so much to be destroyed in the space of less than a year? Looking down from the public seats at Ruth being questioned, Julia still couldn’t help thinking back to their first encounter the previous January. She could still see herself in the kitchen when the doorbell rang, glancing at the clock, noting that it was exactly the time she had asked Ruth to come and thinking that Graham would be impressed at someone of her age being so punctual.

‘Mrs Dowler?’ The young woman on the doorstep held out her hand.

‘Julia. You must be Ruth.’

As she invited Ruth in, Julia realised she was unsure what to do. Should she take her straight upstairs to show her the bedroom, as if she were running a bed and breakfast, or sit her down in the lounge, as if they were about to conduct an interview? She decided on neither and took her through to the kitchen instead. It would be easier to make the exploratory small talk that would establish whether or not they were going to get on if she were able to keep herself busy doing something else at the same time.

‘Tea, or coffee?’ she asked, indicating Ruth should take a seat. It was a large kitchen, big enough for the six-seater table she and Graham used for most of their meals.

‘Tea would be lovely, please. Just milk.’

Observing Ruth as she settled herself at the kitchen table, Julia’s first thought was that the dress code for teachers had relaxed a little since she had been at school. Then again, she recalled, many of the teachers she and Graham had met at the parents’ evenings at Simon’s school had been, to them, surprisingly casual.

Ruth wore a draping floral dress beneath a tailored jacket, thick black tights and a pair of ankle length boots that looked more suited to stomping up Scottish mountains than strolling across Blackheath Common. She was about the same height as Julia - five feet and four inches - but a mop of russet hair, tumbling loosely over her shoulders, and her eyes, bright blue against albumen-white, gave her a presence that was at odds with her physical size. A small diamond stud sparkled from one side of her nose.

The dress code had obviously moved on even further in the past seven or eight years.

They had spoken only briefly on the phone a few days earlier. Julia had placed postcards in the newsagent’s window in Blackheath Village and, at the suggestion of Emilia, who helped her do the flowers at St Stephen’s each week, on the staff noticeboards at a couple of local schools and the hospital in Woolwich.

Ruth’s timing had been perfect. Julia had spent the previous few days fending off inquiries from numerous single men, two women who wanted to share the room, three or four couples and one woman who said she couldn’t afford the full rent but could offer a weekly full body massage to make up the difference.

Having promised Graham a progress report that evening and, knowing he would seize on her lack of success as confirmation that advertising was bound to attract the wrong sort, she was resigning herself to removing all the cards and, instead, asking around at church and at her book club when the call came.

‘Here we go again,’ she thought, as the phone lit up once more and she raised her defences.

‘Julia Dowler, hello,’ she barked with, for her, uncharacteristic harshness.

There was a silence, then a hesitant female voice said: ‘Is this the right number for the room to rent?’

‘It is.’

The voice became a little more confident but retained its soft tone. There was a hint of an accent, perhaps Scottish or Irish. Julia couldn’t place it.

‘Oh good. I’m very interested but I do have an important question first.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Julia, bracing for the mention of the boyfriend, girlfriend, dog, drum kit or mynah bird, all of which she had rejected in the previous few days.

‘Does the room have a bookcase? Only I’m a teacher and I’ve rather a lot of books.’

Julia went out the following morning to remove all of her cards.

***

As she waited for the kettle to boil and fiddled with the teapot, the cups and, finally, the biscuit jar, Julia quickly established that Ruth was in her first year of teaching at a secondary school - one about a mile and a half away in Greenwich, rather than the two closer ones at which she had placed her postcards - and was currently sharing a house a little further away, in New Cross, with three other young women.

‘It’s just a bit too busy for me,’ she said.

‘They either have the television on all the time or have big groups of noisy friends around, which is very distracting when I’m trying to prepare lessons or mark homework. I suppose that’s the downside of house sharing but I couldn’t afford to get somewhere on my own.

‘I probably never will, unless they start paying teachers more.’

‘Well, you’ll find it nice and quiet here,’ said Julia, suddenly embarrassed at how presumptive her choice of words might seem.

‘I mean, it would be a bit of a change from sharing a house. It would be more like being part of a family, but without the brothers and sisters.’

‘I wouldn’t know the difference,’ said Ruth.

‘There was only me. I was an only child.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with being an only child,’ said Julia.

‘Our son, Simon…’

She stopped. It had been only a few months since Simon had moved out to live with Nicky and, for Julia, his absence was still too strong a presence. She felt it in every room, particularly the one she was about to show Ruth.

‘Actually, it’s Simon’s old room that would be yours. It’s a lovely big room overlooking the garden. We’ve got another bedroom with an ensuite for any other friends or family that come to stay, so it’s silly to leave Simon’s one empty. Let me take you up to see it.

Julia led the way back into the hall and up the stairs, delighting in the appreciative or admiring comments that Ruth made about the house and its décor as they went. She knew it was a lovely house. She and Graham had been there for a quarter of a century and Simon had spent all of his life there before going off to university. They had resisted the temptation to extend or remodel, to which so many of their neighbours had succumbed; there was plenty of space downstairs and at least one of the other bedrooms would have served a second child well.

While so many of their friends and contemporaries had ridden the rollercoaster of marriage, children, years of mortgage debt, divorce and individual retreat to less salubrious situations, emotionally and materially, Graham and Julia had each infiltrated the bricks and mortar of their home, making their individual and collective marks, indelible and rooted as deep as the willow at the end of their garden. Somewhere beneath the foundations, she felt, those roots were entwined, so strongly embracing that nothing would ever be able to pull them out. From the framed photographs that enhanced every suitable surface to the matching Le Creuset pans hanging above the cooker, they had indefatigably asserted that this was more than their house. This was their home: Julia’s nest, Graham’s castle, Simon’s playground.

The staircase went up at a right angle to the hallway, turning on itself halfway up. At the top, four more steps on the right climbed toward the front of the house, leading to Graham and Julia’s bedroom and the guest bedroom. Simon’s old room was at the back, at the end of a wide corridor that passed the family bathroom, the bedroom they used as an office and the smallest of the five, which housed Graham’s record collection and hi-fi system. As she opened the bedroom door, Julia realised Ruth had stopped halfway along the corridor and was absorbed in the contents of the shelves that lined one entire wall, end to end, from floor to ceiling.

‘I thought I had a lot of books,’ she said.

‘But this is amazing. Such a wide range. I want a library like this when I have my own house.

‘Are you and your husband both keen readers?’

‘I have a bit more time for it than Graham. He does most of his reading on aeroplanes. But yes, we’ve both always loved reading, even though we have quite different tastes. He promises not to make jokes about my fondness for romantic fiction and I have to bite my lip about his dreadful science fiction novels.

‘What kind of books do you like?’

‘Oh, everything. I’m completely promiscuous when it comes to books.’ Ruth rattled off a roster of names, some unfamiliar to Julia and others she was used to seeing on the rack of paperbacks at the supermarket.

‘Quite eclectic, then,’ said Julia.

‘I don’t like putting books into categories,’ Ruth replied.

‘The only thing that matters for me is whether or not when I finish a page I want to turn over and read the next one. It’s the same with music. I like Abba just as much as I love Frank Zappa.’

‘I think Graham likes Frank Zappa,’ said Julia, immediately realising she wasn’t sure of that at all. Not sharing Graham’s immersion in music, she paid little attention to his collection, apart from to note that over the years they had been together it had grown like an oak tree, imperceptibly from day-to-day but steadily none the less.

She pushed open the door at the end of the corridor.

‘This would be your room,’ she said.

‘And there are actually two bookcases.’

CHAPTER TWO

Graham didn’t get to meet Ruth until the day she moved in. She had asked if she could take the room within minutes of viewing it, and Julia had not hesitated in agreeing a moving-in date, two weeks later, on the spot. Over dinner that evening, as Graham was carving his meal into equally-sized pieces before beginning to eat, she told him the new arrival was young, well-spoken, well-read, liked music and, knowing it would reassure him beyond any doubt, a history teacher.

‘Sounds ideal,’ was his only response and Julia privately resolved there was no benefit in risking an encounter that might throw up any concerns before it was too late for him to object.

Ruth arrived on a Saturday morning, in a small van driven by a gorilla of a man whom she introduced as Chris, explaining, as if for the avoidance of any embarrassing assumptions, he was a friend’s boyfriend. Between them, eschewing Graham’s offer of help, they quickly unloaded the van, carrying in two large rucksacks, presumably full of clothes, eight or nine boxes visibly filled with books, a couple of bags of miscellaneous items and, finally, a dark wooden carving, around a metre tall.

‘What on earth is that?’ Graham muttered to his wife as he watched Chris carry it gingerly up the front path. It was clearly some form of modern art, which put him at an immediate disadvantage since he regarded himself as both untutored in, and suspicious of, anything abstract. The closest assessment he could make was that it represented some kind of plant. The top seemed to be a pair of large swollen fruit, a bit like figs, facing skyward, as if yearning to be plucked. They were perched atop a tower of thick supports, like tree trunks, but textured with tiny circles and bumps rather than bark. The base was ringed with a collection of what Graham took to be fallen and rotten fruits, like apples and bananas, but shrivelled and empty.

‘It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?’ said Julia.

‘I’m sure it must represent something though. It looks heavy. I hope he doesn’t drop it.’

With all of Ruth’s things safely transported to her room and Chris the Gorilla departed with the rented van, Graham put his head around the door to introduce himself properly and make another offer of help. Ruth, wearing leggings and an oversized woollen jumper, sat cross-legged on the floor surrounded by books that she appeared be sorting into small piles.

She leapt up and they shook hands rather formally, even though they had done that on the doorstep when she had first arrived and Julia had introduced them. Her grip was firm and he noticed she held on to his hand a little longer than he would have expected.

He wasn’t sure what to say.

‘Are you settling in all right? Has Julia shown you where the bathroom is and everything?’

‘Yes thanks. I’m just getting everything unpacked and sorted. Starting with the really important things.’

She nodded towards the books on the floor and Graham realised her rucksacks and the other bags had not yet been opened. He took in the cover of the book on top of the nearest pile. It was a foreign name, not one he recognised. Further down, he could see a few more familiar names; Margaret Attwood, Doris Lessing, Zadie Smith. Another pile was topped with a biography of Joan of Arc. Graham recognised the author’s name from television documentaries. Of course, Julia had mentioned Ruth taught history. He knew little about the book’s subject except she had been something of a rebel, burned at the stake and inspired a Leonard Cohen song.

Music came to his rescue. Ruth’s phone was already playing quietly through a small speaker on top of one of the bookshelves. Graham recognised Dusty Springfield’s breathy coquetry as she offered Breakfast in Bed and grasped the chance to open a proper conversation.

‘Dusty in Memphis,’ he said, waving his hand towards the bookshelf as if she wouldn’t be aware of the music’s source.

‘I always think of this album as being the real Dusty, rather than her more well-known hits.’

‘Oh, I love this song but I didn’t know it was from an album,’ said Ruth.

‘This is a playlist one of my friends made for me. I don’t know many of her other songs.’

‘The Memphis album is her best ever,’ said Graham, warming to his topic.

‘I have an original 1968 mono pressing. You must hear it.’

Then he caught himself.

‘Sorry, I’m getting a bit carried away. Talking about music tends to have that effect on me. Just ignore me.’

‘Oh no, I love music too. And I’d love to hear the album sometime.’

An arpeggio on an acoustic guitar introduced the next song. Joan Armatrading. Ruth’s friend has good taste, thought Graham. Perhaps having a lodger might turn out to be more enjoyable than he had expected.

Simon dropped by after lunch. Officially, he was there to return his skiing clothes to the loft after a week in the Alps with some of his old schoolfriends, but Julia knew he was also intrigued to meet this new person he had half-jokingly referred to as taking his place in the bosom of the family. Ruth was still upstairs sorting out her things.

‘Do you think it would be okay for me to pop up and say hello?’ he asked his mother.

‘I can’t just breeze in, like it’s still my room, can I?’

Reassured that a knock on the door would be sufficient courtesy, he went up. Ruth had finished arranging her books and was unpacking her clothes. Introducing himself, with the briefest of handshakes, Simon self-consciously averted his eyes from the collection of underwear laid out on the bed and instead focused his attention between the two bookcases, where the carving had been placed.

‘Is that meant to be something I should recognise?’ he asked, hoping his tone sounded bemused rather than critical.

‘I presume it isn’t your own creation.’

‘It was carved by a friend of my mother,’ said Ruth, stepping over to the statue and placing a hand on the top, as if she were about to stroke it.

‘I was given it for my sixteenth birthday and it’s kind of followed me around ever since. I suppose one day it will be a family heirloom for my grandchildren.’

‘Did your mother’s friend tell you what it was?’

A half smile crossed her face.

‘It represents the superiority of the fully-realised female sexual experience over the wasteful and self-indulgent male predisposition to scatter its seed indiscriminately.’

‘Oh.’ Simon studied the statue, unsure whether she was mocking him or being serious.

‘It’s an interesting thing to give a sixteen-year-old girl as a birthday present.’

‘Oh, I think it’s a very appropriate gift for a sixteen-year-old woman,’ said Ruth. She held his eye.

‘Surely you were thinking a lot about sex by the time you were sixteen.’

A fleeting image came to Simon’s mind of his teenage self, sprawled on the bed now adorned with Ruth’s underwear, entertaining an improbable narrative involving one of the girls from his class at school. He looked away, relieved to hear his mother’s voice calling up that she had made a pot of tea and inviting them both down. As he followed Ruth out of the room, he noticed for the first time the music playing quietly in the corner; a woman’s voice, plaintively asking to be saved, saved from whoever the song was addressed to.