The Villa(8)

And then of course there had been the rain, of course her shopping bag had broken, sending her items tumbling to the wet pavement, of course the milk bottle had shattered at her feet, so another run to the shop, another four p she didn’t really want to part with.

And by the time she’d returned home, there had been people in the flat, a record playing loudly, blue smoke drifting up from cigarettes and joints, and that slightly sour-sweet odor of too many bodies in too small a space on too warm a day.

It was a sight—and a scent—she was used to. Her childhood home had been like this, too, friends of her father’s always stopping by, taking up all the space in their semidetached in Camden. And there had been so little space to begin with, or so it had always seemed to Mari. When it had just been her and her father, it hadn’t been so bad, but then her father had met Jane Larchmont, a single woman with a daughter Mari’s age. Jane had heard there was a handsome widower living just down the street, and once she realized that said widower was also the semi-famous writer William Godwick, she had set her cap even more firmly. Soon she’d been at the door every day with tea, with cake, with a book she thought William might like, and before Mari had known it, Jane was living in her house, and her daughter, Lara, was sharing Mari’s room.

One of the reasons Mari had left was to escape that cramped, claustrophobic feeling, but apparently it was going to follow her forever.

From the living room, she hears the thunk of heavy glass hitting the rug, a high, shrill laugh, and she sighs, knowing that was an ashtray tipped over, knowing she’ll be hoovering up ash out of that rug tonight.

She’d just bought the bloody thing, too. She’d liked its bright green pattern, hoped it would make the flat a little less gray.

She turns back to her journal as there’s an abrupt shriek from the record player, the song cutting off to be replaced with Pierce’s guitar and his soft, deep voice.

Houses remember.

It was a good line, but where was it leading? What kind of story followed that?

And did she even believe it, that houses had memories? Did the little house near St. Pancras hold on to Mari’s past? Did it see her mother leaving for the hospital one August morning, never to return? Did it see Mari’s father coming in the door, face ravaged with grief, the tiny, screaming bundle that was Mari herself in his arms?

Did it see her slipping out the front door in the middle of the night, just three years ago, her heart pounding, her smile giddy, as Pierce took her hand and led her away?

It’s a romantic sentiment, she thinks to herself, tapping her pen on the paper. But it could also be a sinister one, if the memories are bad. What if the house holds the bad memories inside with the good? What does that mean for whoever lives there?

Her pen scratches across the paper, but before she even finishes the sentence—Mr. Wells says that to her the first day—the music shifts from the living room, and Pierce launches into another song, this one even louder and more raucous, eliciting cheers from his friends. Mari’s next thought skitters right out of her head, like something sliding down a drain.

She puts her pen down.

Pierce is sitting on the arm of the sofa in the living room when she walks in, his head bent over his guitar, his bare foot tapping out the rhythm as he plays, and he’s smiling. This is the smile that first made her fall in love, when she walked into the cramped but cozy front room of their house on that quiet street in Camden, to see her father holding forth with a group of university students. It wasn’t an unusual sight. Mari’s father had been a noted intellectual and writer in the forties, and while a good deal of his glamour had faded—and his literary production had all but stopped—his open-door policy and his love of a good debate meant that there were always some shaggy-haired young men sitting on the sofas: artists, or poets, or musicians.

Pierce was among them that September afternoon, and Mari had felt like she’d been struck by lightning. Only sixteen, she’d never felt anything like that before, hadn’t even known that feeling existed.

Pierce had come back to the house the next day, and then the day after that, and by the time she kissed him in her back garden on an autumn night, the smell of wood smoke and the damp wool of his jumper all around her, she was completely gone.

She’d known that he was married, but it hadn’t made any difference. She was never not going to belong to Pierce, and he was never not going to belong to her.

Mari had known that as well as she’d known anything.

She moves into the room, scooting in close so she can watch Pierce play. There aren’t quite as many people in the flat as she’d thought, just two of Pierce’s old university friends, a couple of girls she recognizes from the pub down the road, and a third woman she’s never seen before, one with long dark hair who shoots Mari a look she’s gotten very used to.

But she ignores it, just like she ignores the girl in the flat across the way who always seems to be coming down the stairs just as Pierce is going up. It’s the price of being with him, and it’s not really even his fault. He can’t help the way people look at him, can’t help that he’s the sort of person people are naturally drawn to.

It’s what will one day make him a star.

That, and his natural talent. Mari’s been listening to him play for years now, in bars and clubs and smaller music festivals. Pierce Sheldon is a name people are starting to know, and if he’s not quite there yet, it’s coming. She can feel it, this whole new life waiting right around the bend for them. If they could just get that big break …