‘Then He Kissed Me’.
It rained that weekend, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t cold and we enjoyed being naked in the downpours as much as we did in the sun. He’d brought food and wine and cigarettes, most of them hand-rolled with pot as the main ingredient. When we weren’t making love, sleeping or eating we listened to his uncle’s jazz records and talked about so many things, music of course – he even taught me how to play ‘She Loves Me’ that weekend – about our favourite books (his was The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, mine was Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak). His favourite film used to be the 1955 version of Bel Ami but now it was And God Created Woman, he said, because I remind him of Brigitte Bardot. I tell him my favourite is the same as his and because we haven’t made love for a while we stop talking and do so.
After, over cheese on toast and red wine, we smoke more pot and discuss the incredible plans for a moon landing. This moves on to the places we long to visit, together – his first choice is New Orleans and mine is Paris. He says he’ll take me after school has broken up for the summer – and I can tell he means it.
Keeping our secret was easier than you might think; either we were good at hiding our feelings while others were around, or everyone was too wrapped up in their own lives to worry much about ours. My parents were sad that I wasn’t going home as often – of course I went sometimes, I had to – but they were busy and liberal-minded and most of all trusting. My mother guessed I’d fallen for someone, she could see it in my eyes, she said, and in the way my skin glowed. When she asked if I was being careful I said I was, and it was true, we were. She didn’t insist on meeting him, or on hearing anything about him until I was ready to tell. That would have to wait until I was sixteen, naturally, but the weeks and months were passing and though sometimes it felt as though October would never come, like Sir I treasured the private time we had at his uncle’s place when it felt as though we were the only people in the world.
We didn’t always go to the cottage. One weekend there was a hotel in Brighton where we booked in as brother and sister with adjoining rooms and he spent the night on my side of the connecting door. There were trips to the cinema, walks on beaches, out of the way music recitals or concerts where I watched him become so enthralled by the performance he almost forgot I was there. Once we even went to the Albert Hall where his uncle was conducting Handel’s Messiah and his mother was singing soprano. They didn’t know we were right up in the gods and I could hardly see them, but knowing they were his family and that he wanted me to be with him while he watched them perform, told me again how much he loved me.
I was never in any doubt of that.
He didn’t allow me to be.
Do you know what he said, later, I mean much later? He said, ‘She was very young, and yet not young at all – and I was so captivated by her that I could think of nothing else but making her mine.’
That was what he said.
He never denied he loved me.
He would never have done that.
Joely stopped typing and stared down at her now silent recorder. There was no more, only the echo of Freda’s voice as she’d ended their last discussion with the words He would never have done that. Her tone had been low and reflective, even faintly incredulous, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it. Joely remembered feeling moved at the time, and she did again now. Wherever this was going she was in no doubt that they’d loved each other then.
Looking up from her laptop she gazed out at the bleak landscape stretched out before her, swathed in turbulent shadow, impervious to the gusts that were howling and sighing all around it. She watched the sea swallowing up white horses and pushing out more, and after a while she became aware of music playing somewhere in the distance.
Realizing it must be coming from inside the house she made her way down to the library and listened. It had stopped, and as seconds ticked by she wondered if she’d imagined it. She turned back to the stairs to return for her phone and laptop then she heard it again, low and melodic, a single hand playing Mozart’s A Little Night Music.
The hand of young Freda in her private piano lesson all those years ago.
Joely stared at the book-filled wall that separated this room from the studio where David Donahoe had produced his copies of the great impressionists. Was there a piano in there? There must be, because someone was playing it. The notes were being picked out carefully, sometimes incorrectly, and the longer she listened the more she realized how easy it would be to believe that it was the ghost of a young girl bringing those long-ago moments to life.
The playing stopped and silence followed.
Joely remained where she was, sensing someone was still in the studio. She wondered about calling out, but as she took a breath she noticed that the books on the wall in front of her were moving towards her.
Shocked, she stepped back, not sure if she was imagining it, until realization dawned. It was a hidden door and someone was coming through.
‘I – I’m sorry,’ Joely tried to laugh, as Freda came through and regarded her with wintry eyes.
‘What for?’ Freda demanded.
Joely had no idea. ‘I didn’t – I didn’t know there was a door. You startled me.’
‘Then I’m the one who should apologize. Are you all right? You’ve gone quite pale.’
Joely might have asked her host the same question, for she was as white and oddly opaque as a sea mist. ‘I’m fine,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve just finished for the day. I haven’t printed anything out yet, but I can do it now.’
‘I won’t read it tonight so there’s no rush.’
Joely watched as Freda walked to the door that led down to the kitchen, but when she tried to open it she couldn’t.
‘Blasted latch has jammed again,’ Freda snapped irritably. ‘You must pay attention to that. Make sure the door isn’t fully closed or, like once happened to me, you’ll end up locked in here until someone comes and lets you out. Wait there, I’ll go down to the kitchen and come up the stairs to sort it out.’
She disappeared back through the bookcase door so swiftly that it was already shut before Joely realized that she was now trapped in the tower with access only to the writing room above.
A wave of unease swept over her.
She took a breath, and another.
It was crazy to think that Freda had just imprisoned her. Why on earth would she do that? She wouldn’t of course. Nevertheless Joely wasn’t responding well to being shut in here with no way of contacting someone on the outside apart from during the random moments her phone connected to the WiFi. She ran up to the writing room to get it, not because she needed to call or text anyone now, Freda was on her way to open the door, it simply made her feel better to have it with her.
Long minutes ticked by – many more than it would take for Freda to descend the front stairs and walk along the corridor into the kitchen. Joely tried the door; the latch wouldn’t budge. She listened hard, expecting to hear footsteps on the stairs, but the only sound that reached her was the wind whistling in from the sea, up over the cliffs and around the tower.
This was crazy. She wasn’t locked in here.
She rattled the latch, and was about to shout out for Freda when the door suddenly opened and Freda was there.