Counting the Ways

Jude Hayland

Description

Grace Barnes, living in her subterranean one-room flat at the nether end of Earl's Court, feels out of tune with striving, self-seeking 1980's London. Meeting Archie Copeland, she is gratified to have found a man who shares her obsession for reading and seems more fascinated by Shelley than shifting share prices. In Oxford, Hester, Grace's mother, considers her estranged marriage to Fergus, who left her thirty years before to go and live on a remote Welsh hillside in pursuit of self-sufficiency. His subsequent appearance at Grace and Archie's quiet wedding is a surprise and she finds it hard to quantify her feelings about him. Soon, Grace is troubled by a distance in Archie, and a tendency to covert actions even though his faithfulness appears absolute. Moving to the countryside seems to offer relief, but the recession of the late 1980s impacts upon them both professionally and Grace is aware of a growing inadequacy in communication between the two of them as they struggle to talk openly.A spontaneous holiday on the Mediterranean island of Kronos provides a respite for them both and they begin to consider a permanent move away, but then Archie suddenly disappears. In the wake of this, Grace uncovers a trail of debts and increasing evidence of his duplicity. Remaining on Kronos, finding a job and friendship, Grace determines to find Archie. Hester is anxious to help, while Fergus is unexpectedly forthright in his attempts to assist. Archie, meanwhile, is forced to confront years of self-delusion. In the shadow of Archie's absence, Grace, Fergus and Hester find themselves facing the truth of their fractured relationships and considering how, so often, it has been the unspoken words rather than those uttered that have contributed towards conflict and separation.Counting the Ways explores the fears that shadow our lives - failure, loss, regret and mortality - and will appeal to fans of contemporary fiction. It also makes an ideal book group read.

Sujets

• Contemporary romance
• Oxford

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788038294
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2017 Jude Hayland

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781788038294

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For George with unconditional love
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Contents
Acknowledgements
About Jude Hayland

Prologue

Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Part Two
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

Part Three
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Carol Randall and Alison Mackie – my early readers who patiently offered constructive comments, ideas and support. I am hugely indebted to my sister, Jane Gaudie, also an early reader and a source of constant encouragement and positivity.
About Jude Hayland
Jude Hayland was born in London and now lives in Winchester. A freelance writer, teacher and tutor, COUNTING THE WAYS is her second novel.

www.judehayland.co .uk
Prologue
The place: Jacob’s Bottom.
The time: the latter part of the 20 th century, early spring 1987.
The man and the woman left the car, walked fifty yards or so along the ridge until he halted, propelled her forward a little. Across the mesh of wet, neat patchwork fields, endless sheep, they looked down towards a flat plain that suggested signs of habitation. A church with a spire, outbuildings possibly. Certainly cows.
“There,” the man said, gripping her shoulder with one hand, pointing with the other, “you see those buildings? Not the farm, but beyond that. That’s the house.”
The woman, Grace, pulling her coat closer against the fine rain, could see little. Just as they had approached the village, he had swung the car sharply up an incline, headed for a narrow single-track road that weaved its way steeply upwards until they seemed to be hanging precariously above the valley. Now she found herself peering through a heavy mist that shielded clear shapes, blending them into an indefinable blur with the grey sky, the undulating land. But she tried. He was so eager, insistent. The enthusiasm of a small boy who wants to share something newly discovered.
“I think so. I think I can see the house. Is it thatched?”
“No, a slate roof. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” Grace said. “Slate is better.”
“Is it? I thought you’d expect thatch in this part of the world. I’m glad you’re not disappointed.” Archie took her arm, protectively. She leant against his shoulder.
“I didn’t know what to expect. It’s all such a surprise, really, so sudden. We’ve not even discussed it properly. The idea of this place, I mean. The country.”
He continued to look down across the valley towards the house. She was unsure whether he’d heard her, her words possibly dissolving into the damp air, snatched away on the westerly wind. It was a nursery plate for children, grazing cattle and haystacks and hares nipping and darting across the land.
“We’re not too far from the coast here either,” he said, “and you know how that’ll suit me. The sea’s no more than three or four miles away, I’d say. And we’re just on the edge of the village so it won’t feel too remote for you. Just what we want.”
Grace felt the dampness of her feet through thin city soles, her hair limp and deflated against her neck. Archie, oblivious, pulled her further down the path so that they could see a cluster of cottages, a building that could be a hall or a village school, then a car park and beyond that a narrow track that led down to a large barn and a long, low house.
“No immediate neighbours, but there are a couple of houses within view. And the lane just leads to farmland so there’s no passing traffic. You won’t mind?” Archie asked then answered for her. “No, you’ll love the peace after London. No more complaints about aircraft noise and people playing loud music into the small hours. It’ll suit you, Grace. It’s what you want. What I’ve had in mind for us.”
“It looks perfect. You’re right, of course. And once there are children…”
“Exactly. Just the place to bring up children. What we’ve planned.”
They had been married sixteen months.
Part One
England
1
Grace could not particularly remember the planning that had taken them to Jacob’s Bottom, but she supposed it had been implied between them, a tacit agreement of sorts. Archie’s actions so often seemed to stem from conversations she could scarcely recall yet had a sense of something remotely familiar. As if her unformed and distinctly vague thoughts somehow translated themselves into speech without her conscious awareness. Even their engagement had felt like an arrangement removed from her as if Archie had proposed while she was running a bath or engrossed in a novel and he had assumed her reply. She remembered feeling faintly astonished when friends of his had rung up to invite them round for a celebration dinner and she had chosen to ignore the alarming possibility that they had known of his intentions before she had any idea. She knew, of course, that they had become engaged, but was unable to pinpoint the exact moment of reaching such an agreement. Still, Archie’s friends were nothing to complain about or choose to shun. Close neighbours of his in south-east London, they had been boisterously warm and effusive towards her from the start, affectionate and considerate as if, having been introduced, they felt all of a sudden contracted to ensure her well-being. They enveloped her wholeheartedly. The two couples, Monica and Bernard, Celia and Cyril, and their assorted children, appeared to live comfortable, established lives in large houses and could afford to support philanthropic causes and hold liberal views. They were the sort of people Grace had always quietly envied, never known, watched only from a distance and believed herself to be too ill-equipped to join. She coveted not their affluence, but their assurance of their place in the world, an ease with their privilege. They appeared able to reconcile their somewhat extravagant lives with professed egalitarian ideals and vociferous support for charitable concerns. They expressed their opinions on local and national matters with astounding certainty so that Grace found herself sitting mute at meals in their enormous kitchens, incapable of matching their convictions. She began to feel inadequate, insubstantial, reduced to nodding her head, making inaudible grunts of agreement. They appeared not to notice. Monica and Cyril in their huge house on Belmont Hill, Celia and Bernard in theirs on Lee Terrace talked on. About street crime and city riots and the miners and Aids. About starvation in Africa and communism and corruption in Russia. They possessed endless opinions, offered endless solutions. She had never personally known such people before, only glimpsed their stereotypes in satiric fiction. Archie, catching Grace’s eye across the scrubbed pine table in Monica’s kitchen, squeezing her hand under cover of Celia’s Provençal tablecloth, would diffuse their intense debates with a flippant remark. Always she would feel grateful for his rescue, his glance of complicit affection and love.
As soon as she and Archie became engaged, the two women, Monica and Celia, took it upon themselves to steer her through the wedding arrangements so that she found herself agreeing that, “Yes, the second Saturday in November sounds fine,” watching as the date was eagerly written into handbag diaries, placed on the calendar on the wall. Archie had beamed at her amidst raised glasses, clutching at her hand as if reluctant to let it go. Grace was elated yet also mildly alarmed at the assumptions surrounding her, at the speed with which matters were galloping. They had known each other only a few months, after all. A lengthier engagement might well have seemed more appropriate. However, she was sure of her love for Archie and it would have seemed churlish for her to quibble. After all, her life outside this splendid kitchen, Celia and Bernard’s kitchen, with its comforting Aga and faint smell of domestic Dalmatian waiting patiently for his night-time walk across Blackheath, was hardly offering a desirable alternative. There seemed little reason to delay what had come to feel inevitable, destined, even. Archie was certain, his friends were very sure, and so she felt it the best course to be contaminated by their conviction. Procrastination had featured too highly in her life and who was she to defy people like them, always so adamant, always so sure, to wave a hand in mild query at this swift course of events?
They had met in March. By chance.