Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
31 March 2023
Hi Hon,
Country retreat for One: Day 1!
The property (which you so cleverly managed to remind me of, and just in time, too), consists of a manor house at the apex of the driveway, with a parking bay to one side. On the other side of the drive, separated by a wide lawn, is the rental cottage. It was once the gardener’s residence, I suppose, although it seems like an odd place for it. Still, what would I know?
There is a couple hundred metres between them—which the website might have mentioned—as it took me several exhausting trips to and from the car to get my gear in.
Not that I’m complaining. The manor house is quite ancient looking and set against a messy backdrop of pine trees which creep up the ridge. It’s framed by a couple of majestic oaks that afford a glimpse of the slate roof, the chimneys, and crumbling gable or two. The oaks’ spreading limbs shade most of the house, including the imposing front door beneath a turreted portico. The whole aspect is quite depressing and I’m glad to be as far away from it as possible.
There’s clearly nobody there at present.
My little cottage, on the other hand, could not be sweeter. It has two bedrooms, one very small, and a main area with a wooden 80s-era kitchen etc. Barely bigger than Mum’s place. Luckily, I only brought basic supplies: milk, a loaf of bread, some pasta and sauce. Eggs. The fridge is a bit of a joke, to be honest. So I’ll pop out in a week or so, mindful of the Easter weekend, to stock up. Oh ye of little faith, betting that I won’t last the fortnight!
The lawn between the cottage and the manor looks recently mowed and is perfect for croquet (according to the website). But I shall be content with the tangled veggie garden in the rear of my humble retreat. There are some fruit trees facing onto a paddock, where I fully expect to see horses.
It’s heaven, darling. Absolutely perfect. Robot would love it.
How’s your chest? If you must refuse antibiotics, do drink your fluids. And get some rest. The office can manage for a few days without you. At least you’ll get some time off over Easter, surely?
Of course it’s best you didn’t come. I was disappointed, but now I see how right you were. It’s terribly damp here, even when the sun is shining. You’d almost certainly have contracted a secondary infection—maybe even pneumonia, with your lungs. And who knows where the nearest doctor is? I certainly didn’t pass anything on the road that looked like a hospital or even a clinic. I mean I didn’t pass much of anything at all, once I left the M4, and began the descent into the valley that seemed to go on forever. The unpaved road saturated in a brackish light that thickened the nearer I got to the actual property. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said I’d taken the wrong turn. Who knew there was anything this remote left in the Cotswolds? Or a valley so deep?
Still, it is best that we take some time apart. You concentrate on feeling better and I’ll focus on clearing my head. There have been so many distractions, recently, at home. It is time I started pulling my weight, although you’d never say that.
My little car is just visible from here, which is comforting in some way I can’t quite explain. Not that I need to go anywhere. Not yet.
Haha, I’ll last out the two weeks, don’t even doubt it—and then you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face. And the hundred quid you insisted on, “just to make it interesting” will be mine. All the better to buy you dinner with, darling. It’s the least I can do for arranging this for me. If this place doesn’t get the creative juices going, I don’t know what will.
Do make sure Robot gets his water, won’t you? And take care of that cold.
Love,
Max.
Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
1 April 2023
Hello love,
How are you? Did you get my last email? Also sent texts, messages, etc. Whole periods of the day where it’s SOS only, so who knows what has and hasn’t gotten through. My phone did ring once, and I wondered if it was you, but I didn’t recognise the number. Tried to call back just in case you were using a phone at the office, but it just rang off.
I play music all the time, which is counterproductive, at least for me. But I have to confess that I find the silence so absolute here as to be quite unnerving. Birdsong in the morning, of course. But muted as if my noise-cancelling headphones are on, which they’re not. And then, nothing. Well not nothing. A kind of resounding absence of nothing. As if the whole place is holding its breath, intermittently released in a muffled wet rattle from the woods.
The escarpment on both sides of the canyon, perhaps carved by some ancient river, lends a subterranean cast to the place even on the sunny side—my side—by day, and it is utterly dark at night. I’m not talking about the velvety dark of a spring evening in London, but a kind of road-kill black, the colour of rot—pallid stars barely visible in the slit of sky.
My go-bag had a few sleeping pills left in it from the last time—you must have missed them when you went through it—and I’ve taken one. Two perhaps. But something tells me I’ll need to save the rest. You’d think I’d be zonked after working so hard over the last few weeks—making calls, updating my CV and whatnot. But at night, I lie in the tiny cottage bedroom and think of you both. Is Robot eating? You know how he goes off his food when I’m not there. I do hope you’re being patient with him, Bec.
Love, M.
Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
2 April 2023
Hey,
I didn’t want to come, you know. Not alone. But we both knew some time apart was for the best. It’s so dreadfully hard to focus in London. Well, being let go at work didn’t help, but that’s no excuse. It’s tough for a lot of people. Except people like you. Oh I know you’ve said you’ll take care of me, but that makes me feel even worse. Sorry to be a bore. We’ve been over it. But just so you know. If I could take it back. What I said. Of course you want the best for me. Of course you’re not what I said you were . . . too shameful to repeat.
Can I ever make it up to you, Bec?
In a word, the anxiety is closing in. Which means I’m not sleeping and the vicious cycle continues. You were absolutely bang on about going through my bag. I had been hitting the Xanax pretty hard. I’m so sorry I made a scene about you insisting I leave them behind. I know you meant well, but I’d kill for some relief from this nagging panic. It’s the gurgling gagged silence. The intermittent rhonchi. Perhaps from the woods, or maybe closer—I’m afraid it could be an animal trapped in the manor house. But who would I call, even if I could?
Nothing that a good day’s work can’t fix. That’s what I miss, apart from you and Robot.
And yet, I can’t work if I’m half-dead with lack of sleep, can I?
Of course I know you love me. And yet, to go through my bag like that, Bec.
Max
Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
3 April 2023
Darling, the yoga routine you put me onto is the absolute best! Sorry about the last email. I was having a moment. Much better today. The WIFI has totally clapped out, so it’s a matter of saluting the sun from muscle memory. It’s been raining for a few days, and I’ve been working indoors, cosy as can be.
At least I’ve found the source of that irritating rattle. The paddock is a bog, not even a barn in sight, and the gates swing open and shut intermittently. So much for horses. Who’d have a farm in this festering arsehole of the country, anyway?
I decided to do some work. Revise an old lecture, make yet another reading list—impossible of course to do anything online. In fact I don’t know what I actually did, but it was three o’clock in the morning when I woke up, the laptop dead beside me. That was yesterday. Or was it the day before? The clock says two in the afternoon now, but with that false twilight through the window, it’s hard to believe it. The big house appears closer as if refracted through water, the parenthetical oaks smaller, if that makes sense.
Hugs, M.
Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
5 April 2023
The sun has come out again! Mucho happy once more in my little cottage garden with the blighted veggies. Rain drops drip-drrrrp-drrrrrps from the walnut leaves on to the bench with a maddening gurgle that the music mostly masks, pardon the alliteration. It’s the garden that’s taking up my focus now. Partly because I’m running out of food. I found some new tomatoes, and some tough little beans. It’s just a matter of trying to coax the cucumbers into life and weeding the lettuce patch. The big house looms and appears to be somewhat closer to the driveway than I remembered. It’s hard to believe I’ve been here less than a week. It feels so much longer.
Fifteenth century, you say. And still owned by the original family? Trust you to have found a place like this. Your connections never cease to amaze me, but what would I know about your world, Bec? So different than mine. If you were here, I’m sure we’d be able to laugh at the way the light tricks one into thinking that the house is moving. But I don’t blame you for not coming. I’d been so vile, pushing you away. Robot is partly to blame. The way he growled when you came into the room, ran off with his tail hooked between his legs. Of course he’ll get over it in time.
I know that you only want what’s best for me. I was out of my head, that time, I swear, trying to leave with Robot in the dead of night. It was the meds. I was suddenly so terrified. So gripped in abject fear of, well. You. What you could see in me, possibly? What you wanted of me?
I’m no one.
The rain has stopped, and the paddock gates are still. But I can hear that gurgle again. Like water sloshing through a pipe somewhere on the big house, a clogged drain I imagine.
Just call, would you? I’ll feel so much better once we’ve spoken. I promise I won’t make a scene. Picture me with my head facing the sun and my phone held high to catch your signal.
Maxine Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
4 April 2023
Hey babe,
It’s just not happening. So I think I’ll head out of here in the morning.
You won.
Seriously, though, I’ve barely slept since my last email, whenever that was. I’m not hearing from you, is the problem. Where are you? Last night—just as I finally began to drift off—the whole cottage started shaking! It was just a dream I suppose, but how can I be dreaming when I’m awake?
So I gave up and went to the window. The almost full moon had risen above the escarpment and what I saw made me want to scream.
The manor house was getting closer.
That turreted entrance way was well and truly out of the shadow of the trees and was drenched in moonlight. The pewter glare off the high slate roof hurt my eyes. And then I was back in bed, not knowing how I got there.
Am I going crazy?
Your Max.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
5 April 2023
I’m packed and ready to go. It’s true, you know. The manor house is getting closer. Like it’s preying. Or praying. Crouched half in the feeble sun and half out. The pine trees pining. Left behind. At night is when it moves, when it thinks I’m asleep. But then the little cottage shudders me awake, and from the window, I watch it freeze under my gaze, like in a game of Mother, May I?
I must leave. I’ll do it during the day, tomorrow, when the house is rooted, as if under some spell that it only frees itself from at night. Listen to me. What rubbish.
But first light. I’ll make a dash for the car. I have so little to carry now. The food’s all but gone. I don’t have a hundred pounds, Bec. I don’t have a penny. I can never repay you. I’ll be in your debt even more deeply than I already am. Interest on top of interest. Although you say it doesn’t matter. You say it doesn’t accrue. We both know that’s a lie. And there’s the student loan to consider. The unpaid credit cards. One must eat. One must pay for one’s mother’s medications.
I’ll be ready to leave by morning.
M.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
6 April 2023
I woke to find the turreted entrance way of the Manor House barely ten metres from the front door of the cottage now. Note the capitalisation. Blocking the sun, like the Bank of London.
I ate some shrivelled tomatoes, and a cucumber from the garden for breakfast.
And then, weak as I was, I opened the door, my go-bag gripped purposefully in my hand. I calmly turned left between the buildings toward where I left the car, now totally blocked from view. The mud from the rains had formed a kind of trench, a moat, and it sucked at my shoes—I hadn’t thought to put Wellingtons on—until I was ankle deep in the thickest sludge. I had to hold onto an ancient windowsill for support. A brick came loose from somewhere above and clipped me on the temple, and blood ran into my eye. I panicked at the sudden slick heat, and managed to free myself from the mud, and somehow made it back to the cottage in tears.
The bag left behind, slowly sinking. I suppose I should be grateful. That could have been me.
My stomach is in turmoil. The cucumber was bitter. There is a taste of garbage in my mouth. I took a scalding shower, scrubbed the mud off. My flesh stills smells acidic, unwashed, and I find myself scraping at it with my fingernails, as if to peel off the offensive layer in order to free what lies beneath.
Lies. What lies. White lies.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
6 April 2023
Later . . . I’m picturing Robot stretched out on the porch, his ears pricked for my return. Where are you, Bec? Are you in the kitchen reading this? In the bedroom? At lunch? I can’t really see you. Not anymore.
I can see Robot, lying with his chin on my lap, or bringing me his lead for our walk. I’m on the sofa now, stroking his absent head, the light from the window blocked by the Manor House. It is so close that I can smell the decayed vines that cling to the shutters. A vivid yellow lichen spreads across the brickwork, the kind you see growing on gravestones.
The inscription above the door of the house says Lytton Hall. Lytton is of course, your name. Were you too embarrassed to tell me that it was yours? I’d forgotten about it, more or less, from research I’d done for some unfinished book or another, but never put two and two together . . . white lies.
Your wealth bothers you, as if it’s something to be ashamed of, but that’s because you’ve always had it! Seriously, what I wouldn’t give for a history that goes back six centuries? That’s positively hot, Bec. Mine barely goes back a generation. I’m a non-event. A speck in time, like one of those dim dying stars above the ridge. I never knew my grandparents—a grocer, I believe, and a housekeeper on one side. On the other, both dead in a car accident before I was born. Mum in a nursing home as you know. Dad run off, ditto. So boring, so banal.
The most interesting thing about me is you.
You envied me, remember? So light, you said, stroking my hair. So free, unencumbered by the past. What you would give to be free from history, to be able to be anything you wanted to be, anyone at all. What I’d give, I said, to belong to time so irrevocably, so irretrievably. To belong to anything.
To you.
I couldn’t see then what I see now. You always knew. It frightened me, how you arrived just at the right time, when I needed you most, when my loneliness, my fear threatened, well, to bury me alive. But I see now how wrong I was to be afraid. You belong to me, too. We’re meant to be. Irrevocably. Irretrievably.
I couldn’t leave now even if I wanted to, Bec. I’m too weak to try again.
I’m too weak to come home.
Max.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
7 April 2023
The door of the Manor House and the door of the cottage are finally flush. Mouth to mouth you could say. French kissers.
I had a sex dream last night. Have you ever had a sex dream about a house?
Was it consensual? Who’s to say?
I wanted it in me, against me. I woke wet. Like with you, Bec. I wanted you but you frightened me. You frightened Robot too. How cross I was with him! He whimpered when I scolded him for growling at you, and he hid in the kitchen by the back door. Because, how I needed you! That’s why you came into my life. I summoned you, somehow, in my miserable poverty, my ill health, the constant nagging fear, the surreal strain.
And there you were. To have and to hold. Rich, beautiful Rebecca Lytton.
Robot had to know how you kept me. He stopped growling because I begged him to. I told him. That finally I got someone I deserved.
Oh, Robot. Your head is so strong, that cleft down the middle of your skull, so smooth, I could peel your pelt off like an orange. We’d never have to worry about the bills, about the vet, Mum’s meds . . . never have to eat peanut butter for days or get ill from rotten fruit swiped from behind Tesco.
Bec, you freed me from my job. From my family. You had enough money for both of us. And all I had to do in return was let you consume me. Disappear here.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
13 April 2023
Come, Robot. Here boy! Come to Max. I’d never hurt you. I’d never peel you away from yourself.
Max Bailey
RE: Hey
To: Rebecca Lytton
13 April 2023
It’s too late. There is no way through but through, like the yoga video says. I chewed herbs from the garden to give me the strength to do it.
Quite a job to pick the lock, but I found the tools in the garden shed, and then it was just a matter of time. I was always clever like that. Robot loved to watch me do repairs around Mum’s place. When it was just him and me. Before you came along. I wish he was here now. I wish he could have seen me break through.
We are joined now, the Manor House and the cottage. Coupled. Not merged yet, but soon. In time. What will that look like? I don’t know. For now, I stand as if chained to the doubled threshold, typing these words on my phone. Or maybe only thinking them. Dreaming I’m dreaming.
But it’s not a dream. The phone’s torch tunnels into the darkness ahead. The entrance widens like a throat into a vast hall. I look back once into the dark cottage, then move further, step by step, into the Manor House. I find tins in the once grand kitchen, now given over to mice and worms. For a long time I roam past the many open rooms, doors flapping like tongues. Up the circular stairs. There is my car just visible through the grime coated over the landing window. Damp brown leaves plaster the windscreen, an oak branch lies across the bonnet.
I’d call for Robot if I had the strength, but I fear it’s too far for him now.
The damp rattle is all around, grows louder, then falls away to almost nothing. I follow its source to a cobwebbed four-poster in a top floor bedroom, on which reclines a woman’s skeleton in a stained nightgown, her bones carrion-black, her eye sockets gnawed by rats. The bedclothes are long eaten away and on a side table there are bottles and vials, a faint odour of strychnine, once used to alleviate the symptoms of pneumonia. I smooth down the few strands of hair, and it comes away in my hand.
I lie beside you and wait for sleep.
We move through time, enchained. It was you, always only you, who led me back. Not for a cure. Too late for that, love. But just to lie here. In time. With you.
