Trespass by Rose Tremain Page B

fetch another chair and sit quietly behind them, as in a box at the ballet or the opera, and watch it too.
    So odd, he thought as he sat down, so unpredictable, the things that become precious to us, become beloveds. Who would have imagined that rain could be beloved by two middle-aged English women? To Africans, yes. To that parched land. Lal used to remember and evoke for him the arrival of the rains in the Cape Province and how the tracks to her grandparents’ farm would become red, beautiful blood murram red, and how nameless flowers would blossom out across the empty veld. But surely Veronica had never thought about rain in this ardent way.
    ‘The thing is, you never know,’ he said aloud. ‘You just do not know.’
    ‘What?’ said Veronica.
    Anthony hadn’t really been aware of speaking out loud.
    ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I was just thinking that it’s good, not knowing. Not knowing what’s going to suddenly make you feel something.’
    ‘Feel what?’ said Kitty.
    She was a spell-breaker. That was one of the many things Anthony couldn’t stand about her. She was this little pedantic spell-breaker with no imagination. What a comedy that she considered herself an artist! Anthony sighed. After he’d moved down here, he’d find a new partner for his sister.
    ‘Feel anything ,’ he said. ‘Rapture, for instance. Or irritation.’
    The rain kept on for three days. The mimosa blossom turned to a brown mush. The house grew cold. Anthony began to feel that England had followed him here, was trying to pinch at his sleeve, but he struggled to fight it off.
    From his window, he stared at the Cévennes, folded in blue mist. Wondered if there wouldn’t be something uniquely wonderful about living up there, really high, so that you could feel the ancient grandeur of things, feel closer to the stars. And get the sense that the world was once again spread out at your feet, that you were lord of your domain – as he had once felt himself to be in his glory years of money and success – superior in your way to everything and everyone who toiled below you in the valley.
    It looked miraculously lonely among all that pine-scented mist, as though it didn’t belong to man at all, but to eagles and silence. And so you would be able just to be. At last, you would be able to stop striving and wait for it to flood back to you: the thrill of being alive.

Now, the estate agents’ car came and went, came and went all the time to and from the Mas Lunel. The starving dogs barked in anguish. Audrun saw the would-be buyers stand in the driveway, frozen by this animal frenzy.
    When she went up there, to take Aramon another pile of clean laundry, she said: ‘If you want to sell the house, you’d better get rid of the dogs.’
    He was fumbling with a broken flashlight, taking out batteries and putting them in again, banging the flashlight on the wooden table. ‘It’s not the dogs,’ he said. ‘They know the dogs will be gone with me. It’s your bungalow.’
    Audrun laid the clean washing on a chair. She’d been going to put it away in the airing cupboard for Aramon, but now she didn’t care to do this. She saw the flashlight suddenly flicker into life. Heard her brother give a snort of pleasure.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, shining the torch beam in her face. ‘They said your house was an eyesore. That was the expression they all used, an “eyesore”. So I told them to buy you out. Knock your house down! There’s a thought, eh? Or I could do it for them. Have them pay me for doing it.’
    He doubled over with his high-pitched, wheezy laugh. Switched the flashlight off and slammed it down and reached for a cigarette. ‘People with money,’ he said, ‘they like old houses. They’re in love with stone and slate and fat pieces of timber. To them, a place like yours is worthless, just a blot on the landscape.’
    Audrun turned away from him, going towards the door. She was about to walk out into the sunshine when she heard Aramon say: