Who: Seven M & Jude C
What: Piano. Also introductions.
When: Post train-ride
Where: Ye abandoned house, in the woods.
The house where the woods yawned onto the road that ran parallel had been grand, once. It had belonged to someone who had thought about crenelations and gabling and whether the sloped lawns carved out of the woodland at the back were suitable for parties. The family had long since departed and the woods had swallowed the lawns and all that was left of the house was stone bones, the ribs of its structure gaping blindly at the sky.
It was not uninhabitable. While the roofing clearly lacked (to the extent of being missing) in places there were places where the tiles were good and solid and it was under these sections that windows had been blocked with what passed for curtains. And the house had thick walls and wide fireplaces, which dispelled much of the cold, damp air that was heavy in the branches of the trees and made the ground underfoot soggy.
Jude didn't think of it as uninviting or even unappealing. It looked forgotten and it looked as if it were uncivilized and both these things were true of both brothers who inhabited it. It belonged to no one, and now it belonged to them. There was a slice of porch that ran beyond the roof in front of the door, wooden boards underfoot that in places had rotted through and a haphazard selection of brightly colored plastic chairs clustered together like pigeons under the roofing waiting for a storm to pass. The rain was thick and it came down like knives.
Jude was untroubled by all of the above. He was sat on the doorstep of the main door, with his feet planted outside and his back inside, and a book folded into his hands, the pages yellow and dried and wavy as if it had once been dropped into the bath. He wore worn-in jeans and a button-down underneath a sweater that looked as if it had been unearthed from a thrift store somewhere and a peculiar shade of reddish-brown and his hair was damp, the curls starting to tuft at the back over his neck. He was neither elegant or poetic-looking: Jude was of middling height and built on stocky, reassuring lines that gave a sense of presence, even if he didn't look precisely well-fed.
Now and then he looked up but the rain was heavily obscuring and the book was interesting and by the time arrival heralded itself in the squelch of grass and desidious matter underfoot, he was deeply engrossed in Madame Bovary.