world. She was currently all ears, all eyes and she hadn't noticed that Emmeline was testing the taste of coastal soil. He retrieved the child and hitched her onto his hip, not minding the grubby fingers exploring the bristles on his jaw.
‘No. Actually, that had little to do with it. From the 1960s the bridge started to need repairs, and then total refurbishment. It was going to be too costly to fix, but too dangerous to leave standing. So they demolished it.’
The way he said it made it seem so violent. Senseless, almost. Tess frowned. ‘What a tragedy.’
‘Sort of. It was 1974. The seventeenth of December – my tenth birthday. That was my party, that year, I suppose. My parents brought me down with my little gang to watch. It took four seconds, exactly, to reduce a hundred and five years of cast-iron beauty and engineering into a twist of tangled metal.’
Tess let it hang for a moment. ‘And that's when you decided not to be a doctor?’
‘That's when I decided I wanted to build bridges.’
She let Joe have his memory in private while she enjoyed imagining him as a boy, clothing him in her mind's eye in a ridiculous cliché of cloth cap and hobnail boots, shorts and a knitted tank-top. It made her giggle, which brought Joe back to the present and that returned Tess's focus to the here and now between them.
‘The view must have been so different – when the bridge was here.’
‘Spot on, Tess, spot on. The vista isn't the same. I mean, for purists, it's more natural today than it was for those hundred and five years. But I don't know – for me, that bridge enhanced this landscape aesthetically, never mind practically.’
They looked up the valley quietly. Seagulls bickered in a noisy scatter overhead. The sea breeze, south-easterly and quite strong, pestered one side of their faces, the sun the other. They had to squint but they stood there a while longer, still and thoughtful. Joe didn't tell Tess that, on his tenth birthday, building bridges became not just his chosen career but also a metaphor to serve as a life lesson. He didn't tell her this, just then, because he'd have to explain that the drive for it came from his parents’ disintegrating marriage. The one chasm, the only hostile space, the single seemingly untraversable rift that he'd been unable to bridge. The distance between them was never to be spanned.
And just then, Tess didn't tell Joe that she detected both strength and sadness in his story. That his silent thoughts had a heaviness that confronted her. But she did tell herself that she wanted to slip her hand into his. But then she told herself off for thinking such thoughts. And pushed her hands deep into her pockets.
Joe is going to London tomorrow. The day at the Ha'penny Bridge was two days ago. In the intervening time, he and Tess have walked and talked, eaten together, laughed a lot and spent yesterday evening reading quietly in the drawing room before watching News at Ten in the sitting room. She does still sometimes wonder whether she should ask permission. And he does recall the structure he'd imposed on previous house-sitters. He still hasn't given her the pack. But he has to concede, the house seems to have shown that it works well for the two of them.
It is now mid-morning and Joe has finally emerged from his study and is pottering in the kitchen, taking a break from work. He sees Tess is outside, pegging out washing. Emmeline and Wolf are lolling about in the garden. It is surprisingly balmy today, as if a switch has turned off the chill of earlier in the week until next winter. April is two days away; spring is within easy reach now.
He studies the scene in the garden. It is less a Thomas Hardy novel and more an Edward Hopper painting. Tess, with her back towards him, wearing a faded tea-dress and woollen cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, a pair of old cream trainers. The breeze furling the washing around her forearms and causing the skirt to cling to her bare legs, licking at the fronds and curls of her hair which have escaped her scratchy pony-tail. Every now and then she turns her face a little as she stoops to pick up the next item or to check on Emmeline. And it is then that the sun glances off her skin and spins silken skeins from her hair. Joe wants to watch but he doesn't want to be seen and it confuses him that the scene is so compelling. He goes upstairs to his bedroom to pack for London but finds himself drawn to the window, peering down onto the garden, again transfixed by the sight of her sorting socks.
And look, my boxers. I didn't know she'd done my washing.
He is concerned, bemused, how a picture of such dull domesticity can be arousing, but this is the undeniable effect on him. Perhaps it is the feminine presence. Perhaps it is because at this angle, the sunlight has made her dress see-through. Maybe it is just because he likes her, he has enjoyed her company these last few days; it has been simple and uncomplicated yet entertaining and energizing too. And there's that frisson – how she can be stroppy and how he winds her up, that she can make him snappish and curt. It doesn't make him dislike her, far from it, but it unnerves him that he should feel eager to seek peace soon after. He tells himself, London, you prat, London. So he goes back to his packing.
But before he returns downstairs, he hovers on the landing and then goes up a flight to Tess's room. He's not really sure why. She's outside – he has only to go to a window to watch her, unseen. But he doesn't want to see her, he wants to sense her. That's why he's standing at her doorway.
There's not much to see: a pair of jeans on the floor. Socks in a scrunch. And a pair of plain black knickers kicked off nearby. Nathalie accosts his mind's eye; resplendent in her carefully selected and unfathomably expensive lingerie. Gold mesh and miniscule. Joe steps further into the room and picks up her knickers from the floor. Black cotton. He holds them to his nose, inhaling deeply while calling himself a crazy, dirty bastard. But still he goes to his bathroom to masturbate urgently. It isn't thoughts of Nathalie that have excited this state in the middle of a nondescript morning. He didn't think back to all that sex he'd had the week before. Rather, it was the sight of Tess this morning, in a shabby dress and old cardi. It's the proximity of her right now, just out there in the garden. The girl with the plain cotton knickers. And so, it isn't images of Nathalie that he now wanks to, but the still prevalent sense and scents of Tess. He comes and it's exquisite.
He opens his eyes after a moment and stares at the tessellation of tiles. Alone in a bathroom. He feels a little hollow. Tess's voice drifts up from the garden. She's rabbiting on at Wolf and laughing. She's sewn herself into the fabric of his life in Saltburn and yet for years now, he's felt no emotional anchor here – just the practicality of the house. He cleans himself up and goes back downstairs. He feels perplexed and shuts himself in his study where the complexity of calibrations for a forthcoming pitch offers him a welcome distraction.
‘May I use the phone?’
Tess knocked on the study door later that afternoon and called her request through. Joe's been in there all day, she hasn't seen him at all.
‘Sure.’
‘Oh – and would you like me to rustle up some supper later?’
After a pause. ‘Don't worry about me.’
Tess's turn to pause, laying her forehead gently against the door. ‘I'm not worried about you,’ she said quietly. ‘I'll be cooking for myself anyway. It's no trouble.’
A sigh from inside. ‘OK.’
‘Don't let me twist your arm!’ she muttered and stomped off.
‘Look – sorry. Fine – I'd love some food.’
‘OK. And it's OK to use the phone?’
‘Yes. I told you – it's fine.’
That he should sound irritated irked Tess but her desire to spend time with him is stronger. He's just hard at work, she told herself, building bridges.
‘Hullo, Claire? It's your long-lost sister… I'm fine – how are you? How are the kids? Good. Good… I'm in Saltburn – in the North-East… Me – on holiday? Don't be daft!… I've left London – for good, hopefully …A few weeks ago… Heard from Mum? Dad? My mobile doesn't work – shall I give you this number, you know, just for emergencies? No… No …Yes …Pretty shit, really… No –