The Hermit

ALSO BY LOUISE WALTERS

Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase

A Life Between Us

The Road to California

We Are Family

The Hermit

by Louise Walters

Copyright © Louise Walters 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted according to the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights are reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any or by any means without prior permission in writing of the publisher and copyright holder.

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

A catalogue card for this book is available from the British Library.

Produced and published in 2022 by Louise Walters Books

ISBN 978 1 739109516

Also available in paperback

louisewaltersbooks.co.uk

[email protected]

Louise Walters Books

Northamptonshire

UK

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For all those who love a novella

SATURDAY

It’s the evening of a June day, the heat of summer turning in on itself. The bluebells have shrivelled. A blackbird sings. Long shadows creep across the valley. A kettle whistles and Theo crouches to make tea. He takes it in his enamel mug, without milk or sugar. Strong. A little turquoise car flits through the trees, bright and quick, like a kingfisher. The car emerges from the dense green, disappears for a moment behind the rhododendrons, then reappears, and he watches as it bumps slowly and steadfastly down the steep track towards the row of cottages. It draws to a neat halt outside the gate. The engine is switched off; the car gives a little shudder. It makes hot clicking noises. A pause follows during which nothing happens. Bees, out late. From the car two women emerge. The blackbird takes startled flight. One of the women is middle-aged, the other much younger. A teenager? It’s hard to tell. They are mother and daughter. Any fool can see that, even an old one whose eyes are failing him. He takes it in his stride. He can sense, rather than see, the scowl decorating the teenager’s face. But there’s nothing wrong with scowling if that’s what this world deserves.

The other woman looks hopeful. With a lurch he recognises the pale face, the slim build, the way she holds herself; and of course, the hair, undoubtedly this woman’s crowning glory. The cold breath of regret blows across his neck. He is gripped by dread, unexpected, as he clutches the mug. Rich brown curls coil over her slim shoulders. Thick hair, beautiful. Her one concession to beauty.

He has to sit down. He trembles as he sips his tea. Dew falls. He tries not to think, and refuses to remember. He mustn’t recall anything. He will be done for if it all comes back. Stiffly, he stands. He should go in. But he can’t, not yet. He must keep watch.

He’d always thought she would not return.

She opens the boot of her neat little car and takes out luggage. So she is staying. Is this a holiday? Can it be? The daughter ‒ for it must be so ‒ offers no help. She looks across at him. He looks at her. They are far enough apart for him not to be certain their eyes have met, yet they are close enough to observe each other. He doesn’t wave or nod, and neither does she. There’s never been any call for him to acknowledge the visitors who come here.

‘Carry these two for me, Antonia, would you?’ says the older woman. And it is her. There is no doubt. Sylvia. She was a young woman the last time he saw her, fresh, pretty, innocent, stomping up the track. It was a relief, when she’d left. A broken link to memories he’d wanted buried.

Sylvia looks bitten and stumped. He shivers, long and cold, and grips his mug ever more tightly. Sylvia raises her hand in a half-wave. He nods, but it’s too late to wave back. She has already looked away.

‘Who is that man?’ asks the young woman, her voice a mountain stream.

‘Nobody important. Take this, please!’

The younger woman, for she is a woman, yet also a girl, sighs. ‘Do I have to?’

‘I can’t be expected to do it all myself.’

Sylvia pushes open the gate, and they walk past the large kitchen window of the first of the three cottages in the row. At the porch, Sylvia puts down one of her suitcases and she knocks on the door. He watches, breathless. The woman Sylvia knocks again. The inner door opens. Yellow light floods the porch. He watches, and waits.

‘Sylvia? I thought I heard a car!’ And a tanned thin arm is flung out. They shake rigid hands. ‘And is this... Antoinette?’

‘Antonia.’

‘My dear...!’ The teenager is not rigid, she melts into the frail arms like butter into a hot crumpet and soon both women are sucked in, they are in the house, pulled in by the thin arms that belong to Rosalie.

Minutes later all three emerge, Rosalie with a fob of keys. They straggle, three in a row, to the door of the middle cottage, and Rosalie fumbles for some time with the key in the lock.

‘It’s always been a bit stiff,’ she explains. ‘But you’ll remember.’

‘Yes. I do remember.’

He watches as eventually the door springs open, and Rosalie is swallowed by the dark, until the hall light is switched on. The other two also disappear into the cottage. A few minutes later Rosalie emerges, wishing the new arrivals, ‘Goodnight,  my dears.’ She returns to her own cottage and shuts the door. He hears the lock slide across, the bottom bolt too. He breathes deeply.

He stands up, stretching, and studies the locked door for some time, then resumes his seat on the log. He lights his pipe, and smokes in quiet reflection, as the dew heavies around his feet, and the sun finally dips below the tree line. Calmer now. There’s nothing he can do. Perhaps this was always going to happen, this return. This dredging.

The valley cools quickly even after the hottest days. He watches the cottages, the lights coming on one by one, as curtains are drawn, as figures move across blank and blinking windows. He imagines the explorations in one, the stillness and darkness in another, the tilted ambience in Rosalie’s.

She has a house guest. A young man. An artist. Young. Too young, mercifully. But of course everybody is young now. Once upon a time a young man being anywhere near Rosalie would have driven him out of his mind, but not now, not this one, not quite.

*

The house is dark and cold, despite the heat of the day that’s been. Sylvia remembers this smell: cottagey, ancient, animal. It hasn’t changed.

Rosalie shows them where the light switches are, how the oven works, how to heat water. Sylvia is glad because she has forgotten these finer details. Is it the same oven? No. Not the same oven. More modern.

Rosalie says, ‘Any problems, shout. I’m always around. And I do breakfast every morning, if you fancy it. I do it for all the guests these days. No extra charge, it’s included in the rent. Full English, pancakes, toast... excellent coffee too. Do pop around. About eight o’clock if that’s acceptable?’

Sylvia glances at Antonia who shakes her head. No subtlety. Rosalie appears not to notice. ‘The offer’s there, no offence taken if you’d rather do your own thing. Goodnight, my dears.’

*

‘I’m nipping out for a smoke,’ says Sylvia. They have taken the rest of their luggage from the car and decided who is having which bedroom. Sylvia is in the larger of the three, at the front, looking out across the field towards Old Theo’s hut. Antonia, who does not care for views, has opted for the bedroom at the back, next to the bathroom. The third bedroom, the smallest, will remain unused. Sylvia’s been fiddling with the cooker. She’s got the hang of it.

‘I’ll have a bath,’ says Antonia.

‘You may have to be patient with the hot water,’ says Sylvia. ‘It was always rather sluggish and I suspect it still is.’

‘What does sluggish mean?’

‘Slow.’

‘Why are we here?’

‘Why not?’

‘But why?’

‘For a holiday. I thought it would be nice to come back. You said you wanted to meet... your grandmother.’

‘It’s gonna be boring.’

‘It’s quiet. You’re not used to that.’

‘Is she really your mum?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re nothing like her.’

‘Thank you.’

Antonia heads upstairs. Sylvia picks up her handbag, and she makes her way into the hallway, a yellow and hollow space that smells of dogs even though there are no dogs. It’s dominated by the steep tatty staircase she remembers a guest once slipped down. He’d then threatened to sue (but didn’t). She lifts the latch on the front door.

She sits beneath the kitchen window on an ageing wooden bench. There was always a bench here, but this isn’t the same one. Things get replaced. She lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. She throws her bag on to the ground and looks over the garden, across at the field. The hermitage is still there. Of course. And the hermit is still there. Old Theo, sitting on his log, the embers of his fire descended into a low glow. She recalls the day she left. How long ago? Thirty years? More. Thirty-five? She was seventeen. Work it out, Sylvia. She has spoken to her mother three times in all those years. One call was to tell her Antonia had been born. Antonia was six months old when she’d called. Little interest was shown. The second call was to let her know Anthony had dumped her. The third was to book this holiday.

Sylvia, dragging hard on her cigarette, wonders if Old Theo still wears the same clothes. It was hard to see in the fading light when they arrived. In her memory he wore the one outfit. The tweed jacket, the – black? – corduroy trousers. The felt hat, indeterminate in colour, but so naturally blended with him and with his surroundings, it always seemed as though the hat had grown from his head.

Once, she had been aged ten or eleven, Sylvia had watched him wash his clothes