‘Tony.’ His eyes go back to the painting. Something about the juxtaposition of flesh that is almost ethereal in its paleness, like something temporary, a trick of the light and the sky that seems solid. Christ, he could write something about this, something quite poncey if he set his mind to it.
‘Well, Tony, nice to meet you.’
‘You’re going …’
‘Yes.’ Opens his mouth to ask, what? Where she lives? What? Can’t let her go, needs her to tell him what next. But before he can speak she reaches into her bag. Her face has gone very red, it’s amazing the way she goes from white to pink to red and back again. ‘Here’s my card,’ she says. ‘If you feel like a drink sometime …’ Her eyes meet his for a moment, terrifyingly genuine, and his heart lurches.
‘See you,’ he says, as she walks away. Watches the sway of her hips until she has gone and then, with his heart beating hard, he slips her card into his wallet and turns back to Sky Before the Fall.
NINETEEN
‘I can’t move,’ Connie said, licking a trace of gravy off her index finger.
‘She’s a wonder,’ Sacha agreed.
Betty, Sacha’s friend, grinned. ‘Only a pie,’ she said. They were sitting on the lawn, beside them empty plates bearing remnants of a rabbit pie and glasses with the last few sips of pea-pod wine, both of which Betty had brought for Sacha’s birthday lunch. Patrick had gone off to his beehives and the three women lounged on the lawn. Betty stretched out her long legs, Connie looked at the straight brown hairs on her shins. A tall woman, nearly as tall as Patrick, with a big humorous face, lots of teeth.
‘But such a pie as never was,’ Sacha said.
Betty threw back her head and laughed, then yawned. ‘I wish my boys were half as appreciative,’ she said. ‘Speaking of which, I have to be going, my sweethearts.’
‘Not yet,’ Sacha’s voice was persuasive.
‘Yup. Must get back.’ She stood up, gathered her fuzz of grizzled hair into a bun and tied a red scarf over it. A bead of sweat trickled down the inside of her knee.
‘Bye,’ Connie said and took the last swallow of the warm thin wine. Sacha went to see Betty off then sat down on the lawn again sighing.
‘She’s nice,’ Connie said, but Sacha said nothing, just gazed at the gate through which Betty had gone. They sat in silence for a long drowsy time then Sacha said, out of nowhere, ‘It takes a year, you know. The first cycle of mourning.’
Connie started. Harry loped out and lay down with his nose by a gravied plate, flipping the tip of his tail up and down hopefully. It was such a lovely June day, the weather so perfect you’d have liked to bottle it. A day just like the day a year ago when Connie arrived with Alfie and her parents. A year that felt like twenty. Looking back to that day was like looking back on herself as a child, another kind of creature altogether. So innocent. There are those who have suffered and those who haven’t and that is the biggest difference between people. Connie thought, looking at Sacha’s face, that is a greater difference than between men and women, or adults and children.
The smell of lilac and the dazed murmur of the bees brought the memory of her arrival back to her, stealthily, overwhelmingly, pushing her back till she lay flat on the grass, the sky pressing down as if it had fallen. She no longer grieved all the time. She had hours some days when she forgot her grief but it was as if she couldn’t get away with it, a few hours off were paid for by more acute grief later.
‘A year,’ she whispered.
‘After a year you can no longer think this time last year we …’ Sacha said. Connie turned her head and blinked up at Sacha, rainbowed through the prisms of wet on her lashes. Sacha did understand. Sacha had suffered. She had loved someone before she loved Patrick, a man called Miles who had been thrown and trampled to death by a horse just days before their wedding. Sacha had told it to Connie one day, her voice flat, her eyes on the window down which rain was streaming. ‘We were riding on the South Downs, a windy, sunny day. He had hair the colour of conkers in the sun. I thought, I am so happy, I am happier than it is possible to be.’ She had given a humourless laugh. ‘That taught me. Never, Connie, never take anything for granted. I was ill after, sick as a dog on what should have been my wedding day – with what turned out to be Red.’ Her hand had gone to her belly and a shadow had flitted over her face. Red still out in Africa, the news sporadic. Sacha so stoical, never speaking aloud the fear that she lived with every day.
Connie lifted her heavy hand from the grass and touched Sacha’s knee. Without her, Connie did not know how she could have lived through the first winter and spring. Sacha was so solid and kind but not intrusive. She never said, ‘Everything is all right.’ She never said, ‘Don’t cry.’ ‘This is terrible,’ she said instead, ‘this might be the worst thing you ever know. You must cry, you must grieve. And it will change you for ever. But you will live.’
They remained on the grass for a long time, quiet. Connie closed her eyes. She breathed in Harry’s doggy smell and the smell of Sacha, paint and sweat; the scent of lilacs and wallflowers. She could hear birds, bees, breathings and rustlings, a little yelp from the dreaming dog. The sun was hot on her eyelids. She lay on the ground until the sky began to lift. An ant tickled her leg and she sat up to brush it off. She hugged her knees to her chin. She was wearing a summer dress that Sacha had made for her out of an old one of her own, faded blue and flowery, loose and cool, but still, sticking to her skin in the heat.
Sacha’s forehead was deeply creased and her mouth pursed in a way that made her look fierce and old. ‘Thinking about Red?’ Connie asked.
Sacha shook her head impatiently. ‘You know what I think?’ she said. ‘I think it’s time you began.’
‘Began what?’
‘To paint, of course.’
‘No.’ Connie frowned at her knees under the stretched material. The idea of doing something, something new, was too much to contemplate. It was all she could do to hold herself together. Patrick came round the side of the house, his bee helmet under his arm.
‘A charming vision,’ he said. ‘Two females in repose. And dog,’ he added, crouching down to rub Harry’s head. He put his helmet on the grass. A bee crawled lazily across the visor. He unbuttoned his thick canvas shirt and took it off. He sat down between Connie and Sacha. The smell of him was strong, the hairs around his nipples shocking black against his whiteness. Connie looked harder at her knees.
‘I was just suggesting to Con that maybe it’s time she took up the brush,’ Sacha said.
‘Got stung,’ Patrick said, showing them a swollen redness on his wrist. ‘And what does Connie say to that?’
Connie shook her head and looked towards the house. The sky reflected blue in the windows. A tortoiseshell butterfly landed on Patrick’s arm.
‘Look, Con,’ he said and extended his arm towards her. The butterfly rested on his skin, opening and closing its wings. ‘What do you see?’
‘I see a butterfly on your arm.’
‘Try again.’
It was a game he liked to play. Sometimes Connie liked it though it was hard. And she was too hot. It annoyed her, he annoyed her the way he’d never let her slide away, always made her engage with him in a way that was demanding, but … she looked at his intense face … but made her feel approved of, too. Made her feel important. As no one else had ever done. So she played along. ‘I see peachy brown, speckled, pink swell, small black fuzz of lines and green beneath, a moving thing now doubled, trembling. Gold, orange, brown, the lightest shadow …’
‘No!’
‘Wisp of grey, no deeper flesh …’
‘And that doesn’t make you want to paint?’ said Sacha.
‘I wouldn’t be any good.’
‘Good is subjective,’ Patrick said. ‘You’re right. Undoubtedly some people won’t think you’re any good. But it scarcely matters. To be doing, absorbing yourself … forgetting … colour … light … space.’
Both of them looked at her, expectant
ly, hopefully even. This pressure was new and unlike them. They must have planned this, decided behind her back that it was time to chivvy her. She jumped up. ‘If I try to paint, it will be when I’m good and ready,’ she said, smoothing down her skirt, flicking another ant to the ground. ‘And if and when I’m ready it won’t be butterflies I paint.’ She stalked off into the house where it was cool and dim and dusty. What would it be then? she asked herself, but glancing back out of the window at Sacha and Patrick together on the lawn she knew it could only be them. The grey and the black, the dark cushions on the grass, the million greens of grass, leaf, shadow, hill, the white feather of dog-tail, the yellowish pale of skin and the speckled sparkle of blue air, pollen- and sunshine-filled. She could see it in paint when she closed her eyes, in patches, freckles, of light and shade, graduations of colour so fine you wouldn’t believe it. For some reason she held her breath and tiptoed as she climbed the stairs into the swallow- and linseed-smelling studio.
TWENTY
Tony loves hospitals. Loves the bare shiny floors, the clink of metal on metal, the high white beds with their boiled clean sheets. Loves the nurses in their uniforms, though he’s disappointed that they’re wearing blue polyester-looking things, like housecoats. If it was up to him there would be more starch and whiteness. Yes, the wife he will never have could have been a nurse, a night nurse, and they would rarely meet – and when they did she might look like Lisa. Those small blue eyes, the fair hair piled on her head with a starchy cap. And as he lay alone at night between hospital-tight sheets he would be proud to think of her at work.
Maybe it’s because he loves hospitals that he’s visiting Donna. Maybe it’s because he likes her, yes, something is stirring in him that feels like like. Lisa set him off, that frightening open glimpse into her, into her eyes. And Donna … well, he may never see Donna again. Donna has only been a part of his waiting life. When he sees Lisa later that will be the end of it and he may never return to the flat. So maybe he is here to say goodbye.
Visitors swarm through the entrance and they all have something with them, flowers or carrier bags full of fruit and chocolate. Of course, that’s what you do on a hospital visit, you take a present. Goes into the hospital shop, looks at the chocolates but she might not like chocolate, did she say, he can’t remember, that she was allergic to chocolate? She’s one of these people allergic to everything, allergic to life practically. Best off with a book or magazine but most of them are crap in here and he doesn’t know what she’s got. Chooses a box of tissues, different colour ones in a flowery box. Tissues are always useful and you can’t go wrong with something useful. Goes up in the lift in search of Donna’s ward.
He sees her before she sees him. She’s reading, not looking around, obviously not expecting a visitor. Her bed is opposite the door with its panel of criss-cross patterned glass. There are curtains drawn either side between her and her neighbours. Her hair is tied back from her colourless face, her eyebrows are fine raised lines. Is she really reading? She looks kind of defiant. He feels shy of her in the high neat bed and almost loses his nerve, but she looks up before he can turn.
‘Tony!’ It’s like a fucking lightbulb’s switched on inside her face, makes him feel bad.
‘Hi.’ Hands her the bag. She puts her hand in, eyes huge with surprise, and brings out the box of tissues.
‘Oh … ta.’
‘Didn’t know what else.’
Light’s off again. Looks as if she might cry. Christ, he’s done his best. But then she shrugs and smiles. ‘Very useful,’ she says.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Sit down.’ She gestures to a chair which makes him way below her. He can’t think of anything to say. Shifts around. Her book slides off the bed, he picks it up, another crap romance. Tragic.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘didn’t see you as the type … to visit, you know.’
‘Said I might.’
‘Still.’ She smiles at him, the smile that makes crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Her eyes are not blue, but muddy green.
‘So …’ Shifts his eyes down to the green honeycomb blanket with the shape of body underneath. ‘How was it?’
‘I was asleep.’ She laughs at the expression on his face. ‘All according to plan … two more days I’m out of here. How’s things?’
Tony nods. ‘Fine, great actually. Donna, reason I’ve come, I’m moving on.’ Her eyebrows meet. ‘Something’s come up, work and that.’
‘Oh.’ She smooths the folded edge of the sheet over the blanket. Her nails are bitten right down to their soft pink beds. ‘Can’t offer you anything … except water … water?’
‘No ta.’ A long silence. He wishes he hadn’t come.
‘I fucking hate cauliflower cheese.’ The voice of a visitor behind the curtain is raised.
‘What can I bleeding do about it stuck in here.’
Donna lifts her eyebrows and grins. ‘They’re always at it, hammer and tongs,’ she whispers. ‘So … what sort of work?’
‘Not a job exactly, more an occupation you might say.’
‘Girl?’ Something funny in her voice, a little twist. New. The woman behind the curtain is crying now.
‘Christ, I’m sorry,’ the man says, ‘I’ll eat the fucking cauliflower cheese, only stop crying, baby, stop fucking crying.’
‘Shall I lend her a tissue?’ Donna says.
‘Actually I did meet a girl, at an exhibition.’
‘Exhibition?’
‘Art. Lisa, gave me her number.’
‘Going to ring?’
He shrugs.
‘What’s she like?’
‘Blonde, blue eyes, kind of pretty.’
‘Sounds nice.’ Her hand goes to her own hair, stringy with grease, fiddles with the ratty rubber band. ‘What were you doing at an exhibition?’
‘Looking.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Patrick Mount’s portrait and that …’
‘Course. Well, ring her then. What you got to lose?’
‘And where’s my bleeding Lucozade you promised?’ The woman, recovered now, demands.
‘I’ll miss you when you’ve gone.’ Donna puts the raw end of her thumb into her mouth.
‘I watered your plants.’
‘Ta.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Why?’ She starts to laugh and grabs her belly. ‘Ouch! Twenty-two, why?’
‘Just wondered.’ Wants to go now, been and done it and now he wants to go, can’t think of another thing to say, hates goodbyes. There’s something he ought to say, something kind or comforting, but he can’t think.
‘Funny sort of present,’ she says. She presses down until the perforations give and tears out the oval cardboard shape from the top. She plucks out a yellow tissue and wipes her nose. ‘Very nice, very good tissue that,’ she says stuffing it up her pyjama sleeve. Is she taking the piss? ‘If you’d brought grapes you could have eaten them all like they do on the telly.’
‘Didn’t have grapes in the shop.’
‘Doesn’t matter I’m …’
‘Allergic to grapes?’
‘No, joking.’ Their eyes meet for a second and he looks away.
‘Best be off.’ He stands up. What he should do, he realises, is kiss her. Kiss her on the cheek because it’s goodbye and she is a friend. She likes him and he … he does like her. Is she expecting a kiss? Her eyes are dry and bright as she looks into his face. He leans towards her. Her skin is sallow and sheeny with grease, he can see the open pores beside her nose. Can’t. Can’t put his lips against her skin. Actually can’t do it.
‘See you Donna, take care.’
‘Yes.’ Her voice is very small. He leaves fast, whack through the swing doors along the corridor where a woman in a dressing gown totters along, a drip on wheels attached to her arm. Makes him go weird. Stops by the lift, finger hovering by the buttons. Can’t do it. Something makes him go back. Stops by the doors of Donna’s ward and l
ooks through the chequered glass. She is clutching the box of tissues to her chest but he doesn’t think she’s crying. Thank Christ for that. Turns away and this time makes it down in the lift and out.
Goes in the first cafe he sees and pulls out his book. The same book she, Lisa, had in her bag. Nice name that, Lisa. Coincidence, she said. But it is a further sign. Watches his tea get cold. The tannin forms a patchy ginger skin on top. When he stirs it the skin breaks into geometrical fragments, clings to the spoon and the sides of the cup. Won’t see Donna again. Raises the cup to his lips but puts it down. Wasn’t tea he wanted in any case, just a fag and a place to sit out of the wind while he makes up his mind whether to ring Lisa or not. Whether to ring her today. The woman who served him is Australian, pretty, dark hair cropped very short, a straight look, sensible, long-fingered. ‘Coming up,’ she said when he asked for tea. ‘Can I git you anything to eat?’ as if she cared almost, took a personal interest. He felt sorry to say no and sat with his back to her to stop himself staring. What is it with him? Women everywhere all of a sudden and he can’t have them, that decision is made. Laughs at a sudden realisation. Patrick! Of course, it’s Patrick guiding him, noticing, steering him. Rolls a fag and opens the book at random. This page! Yes, Patrick is behind this all right, randy bastard. Grins as he reads:
As the attentive reader will be aware, it is one of the highest tenets of my system that one should take pleasure, where it does not give pain, wherever one can in order to increase the amount of pleasure and therefore joy and therefore good in this world. It is enjoyment that lends strength to the plants which nourish the air we breathe and return it, purified, a thousandfold to mankind.
Human and animal sexual activity, when it is of an enjoyable nature, gives pleasure to plants in the vicinity – and even to plants at great distances if they are personally attached to the participants. (See appendix for precise data.) Suffice it to say for the purposes of this memoir that the galvometer shows highly increased vibration in plants exposed to human orgasm.
For a male, and in some rare cases, for a female, novelty is one of the greatest aspects of sexual enjoyment and therefore I have made it my life’s work, and occasional sacrifice, to seek sexual novelty (enjoying, I would estimate, upwards of five hundred women). However, when Constance Benson came into my life I discovered how a rather different sexual pleasure can occur in the context of a deepening love. Constance Benson has been and remains the love of my life. My wife I loved, too, but the love between us was always tempered by the love she had first given to another man – the fiancé who died in a riding accident – and our marriage from the first was based on understanding rather than passion. After the first year of our marriage we turned aside from each other in the physical respect alone. We both had lovers and sometimes early on, we had conjoined experiences – what have been commonly and crudely described as orgies, by my critics.
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