Sheer Blue Bliss

by Lesley Glaister

  The hot-water bottle has warmed a space on one side of the bed. She curls round it, stomach burning through all the wool. Movement outside, the outside door opening, him in or out. No lock on this door, if only he would leave … oh Patrick who she needs, bloody bugger that he is, was, is. Paint him indeed! Paint him. As if he can threaten her. As if she’s anything to lose. Not asking but telling!

  The blankets on top of the sheets are heavy with damp, an awful smell. Last time she slept in this bed it was with him, his long body angled round hers, warm, warm. And now he is only bones. She is uneasy in this room, hates to think of the cold under the floorboards, that deep cold sand.

  And sheets not changed for thirty years! Thirty years! She finds that she is sniggering. Sniggering! With that lunatic at large. Stop it. These sheets almost stuck together at the edges with the damp, mould probably. There must be some of Patrick left in this bed, some old skin cells, hairs. She can almost feel the arthritis starting up again in this damp. The floor nearly as soft as the bed itself. Face facts, Connie, the place is deteriorating faster than you are. Built as temporary in 1945, lived in for over fifty years, not bad, not bad at all. Patrick and his improvements. Crazy when he built the studio. Impossible said the architect who used to come and bring a different woman every time only they were all practically identical: slim, dark, wavy hair, you couldn’t risk calling them by name – Sue, Lou, Pru – whatever it was he was searching for in them he never found. Patrick going ahead, hardly a one to take advice, she grins in the dark at the idea of it, built a floor, a window in the roof and he was right, it worked, and if the place is starting to lurch now well, who’s to say it wouldn’t be lurching, in any case?

  Hard edge of the rubber bottle against her, slosh of water as she moves. Someone moving in her home, some other mind thinking what? Planning what? Is this fear? A heart that she can hear and feel beating, a body curled round a rubber bottle, head under the mouldy sheets, smell of rubber, the heating of damp cloth, almost a kind of steam and her own whisky breath rebreathed. Her back is to the door but she doesn’t dare turn over. Aware of the door through the blankets and the sheet and the slab of dark behind her, but her body is locked now in position, can’t move. It’s as if the hot-water bottle is beating like her own huge heart ripped out to which she clings. He could open the door and come in with a knife, an axe, a brick, and the light within her would be smashed. Would there be pain … that is almost of more concern … not afraid to be dead, only of dying, afraid only of the knowing and the pain.

  How will she sleep and how will the night ever pass? The moment returns when she thought, crazy for a second, that he was Patrick. No, she never really could have thought … Patrick, Paddy, my love, take me. Oh that would be a joke if she could go tonight, float off, of natural causes they would say. Is fear a natural cause? What a turn it would give whatsisface, waiting for his nine o’clock appointment, if she didn’t emerge. What would he do, bring her tea in bed, kick open the door and yell? And there she’d be, stone cold.

  If this is fear, it’s not as terrible as she thought it would be. Or is this not full fear yet, if fear is a mountain is this only the foothills? The tiredness, Lord she’s bone tired from all the excitement of the week, the travel, the blast of life. And now this shock of … of invasion. And alcohol, she’s had her fill of that. Perhaps, tomorrow, if she’s spared, in the light of day it will all seem different. Maybe then she’ll be paralysed with fear. She snorts, suddenly aware that what she feels most strongly right now is affronted. Is that the way to feel in this predicament? What is the right procedure, etiquette? God, her face is grinning now, gums clamped together in the slidy way that’s become a comfort. If Patrick was here they would be, surely, the two of them sniggering, stuffing the blankets into their mouths for fear the lunatic potential mad knifeman outside the door might hear and be enraged by their mirth.

  Oh yes, Patrick might be gone but he is still her solace. They just did get on like that, laugh at the same awful things. Eccentric so he was but she did love him. Back to the wood then, to that first touch. Memories of the beginning still the sharpest, the colours faded through the years so that recent things, even the gaudy London stay, is muted. But bright that sixteenth birthday. May flowers gathered on the way back from the dawn walk. Sacha greeting her with a kiss. Happy Birthday, did Patrick find you in the wood? Connie awkward then not knowing what Sacha thought, whether, knowing Patrick, she would have assumed an attempt at intimacy.

  She spent most of the day alone, painting the flowers she’d gathered – campion, cranesbill, cornflowers and red and white clover – the studio windows wide open to the sound of birds; the swallows feeding their squealing chicks; an occasional visit from a butterfly or bee; now and then a breeze stirring the flowers in the jar, the smell of paint and swallow dung and pollen all combined.

  Then there was the tea-party. Sacha had invited a couple of critics, friends, people they thought Connie should meet. And there was Martin Redmartin. Oh yes, Red. It could have been a different life.

  She had painted all that day, pressing the thought of the party from her mind. So full of feelings, she could hardly contain herself, hardly lose herself in the colours, hardly keep herself away from the window or the mirror. There was excitement and fear, too, she’d grown shy during her time in the country, most of it spent alone or with Sacha and Patrick. Visitors came to see Patrick sometimes, to listen to his ideas, but Connie stayed out of the way as much as she could. Many of the people were strange in the way they dressed and behaved, her parents would not have approved. Most of them were women who Patrick often entertained in his shed. Patrick attracted women all through his life. It was one of the mysteries about him – he was not obviously attractive, he was eccentric, obsessive, quite idiotic sometimes. But they fell at his feet. Loved him. And Connie loved him, too, despite everything. But there could have been another life, there could have been Red. Does she regret her life, does she?

  Oh but that day, it was almost sultry, she felt guilty that she could be so … taken up with things – joy in the flowers, the paint, in a feeling that she really was stepping through the girl door into the woman world – guilty that she could be so happy when Mother and Father and Alfie were gone. Happy in a way, and about things, they would never have understood, would have found shocking. And she was frightened, too, because new people were coming to look at her work, so fearful that the brush trembled between her fingers when she let herself think of it.

  And conscious of a strange full feeling in her chest and belly when she thought of Patrick in the dawn, a scene that had quickly gone like a dream in her memory, all dew and sparkle and the strange heat of that new touch. And more guilt at her fascination, guilt because of Sacha, because anyway, all that, it is not nice, it is not – surely not – right …

  And later, bathed and dressed in the new blue dress Sacha had made her, a very grown-up dress, nipped in at the waist, silky stuff that clung to her small breasts, swished silkily against her thighs as she walked. Watching people arriving from the studio, the tops of their heads, not so many people, four or five. The first glimpse of Red’s head, dark shiny brown. Cora Mansfield with a voice that could carry for miles, in a mad green dress, not even clean, her long white hair loose around her shoulders. Alex Waverley, quite an honour that he should have come, respected artist, critic, and Duffield, too, collar, tie, even a monocle or is she fabricating now? The two of them surely were a couple, homosexuals, although at the time Connie had no idea that such a thing was possible. Connie hid upstairs until Sacha came to lead her down to meet the guests.

  Red was not expected, some sudden chance of leave, what a coincidence that it had been her birthday, that he had arrived just in time for the party. She had been so curious to meet him, seen the photographs and Sacha’s paintings of him, a tousled brown-haired boy, sturdy in woollen sweaters that Sacha had knitted. In one he had such a frank stare, hair in his eyes, smudge on his cheek, sleeve of his sweater unravellin
g that she could hardly bear to look at him, such a boy, reminding her of Alfie. Sacha said little about Red, but on the rare occasions when she received a letter from him she wore it inside her clothes against the skin of her bosom so that Connie could hear it crackle when she moved. And then there he was, on her birthday, home on leave.

  He was stocky, like Sacha, and not tall and his eyes were an unexpectedly vivid blue in an olive complexion. The skin on his neck looked so very tender above the collar of his uniform that she could not take her eyes off it. Odd to fix on such a place – but such tender tender skin it made her want to touch. He shook her hand and his fingers were firm and dry. Hands always important, could never love a man with clumsy hands, even the intruder’s hands are … no, no, don’t let him into this, cling to this treasure and do not let him spoil. Red’s hands, the fingers slightly tilted back at the tips, small nails cut square, purposeful hands that held on to hers so firmly.

  Praise for her work. Before tea they all came up to the studio and she waited, back to the door, heart in her mouth, for their verdict though she didn’t care, she told herself, liar that she was. But they liked, enthused, praised. Red gave her a slow smile and raised a finger to his brow, in a sort of salute. His mouth was slightly crooked, she noticed, tilted up more one side than the other, and his smile got inside her and made her smile. Then there was the beer that Patrick brewed that was so odd and strong that if you drank too much you hallucinated. Something to do with the yeasts or moulds, something that he cultivated, refined later in his elixirs. Splendid beer, unique and almost worth getting sick on, she used to think.

  It was such a beautiful evening that at the last moment Patrick and Red lugged the dining table out on to the lawn, everyone else following with the plates and glasses and food. Sacha lit candles that kept blowing out in the warmth of the evening breeze. Red sat beside Connie – a little closer than necessary – but the beer made her smile and perhaps rest her thigh against his under the table? Perhaps she even increased the pressure? Or not … She snorts at her own memory, startling herself, remembering where she is, breathing in the rubbery, whisky, mouldy air of the bed. She snuggles away from what’s behind her and up to the bottle, the comforting slosh of warmth.

  Patrick in his absolute element held forth from the head of the table, splendid in a shirt dyed purple, his hair brushed out, his eyes bright. They were eating corn on the cob, it all comes back to her, the slippery beaded yellow butteryness of it and threads getting jammed between her teeth. Each of them held a hot cob with a linen napkin and dug their teeth in, suddenly savage like a pack of well-dressed wolves. Patrick, his mouth half full, suddenly looked up and posed a question:

  ‘What does stigma mean?’ One of his trick questions, of course, the answer would prove some point or other. Sacha smiled at Red and shrugged as she gnawed at her corn.

  ‘Some stain on character?’ Red tried. ‘To stigmatize – to criticize – to brand as unworthy?’ He darted a look at Connie. Approval? Sacha certainly looked proud.

  ‘Precisely.’ Patrick put down his corn and steepled his buttery fingers, eyes mischievous above them.

  ‘Come on, darling, get to the point.’ Cora leant forward and wagged a grubbily elegant finger.

  ‘Also places that bleed … the stigma of the cross … or the stigmata is that?’ Duffield spoke diffidently, a spot of melted butter on his chin.

  ‘Stigmata’s the plural, darling. A morbid spot that bleeds. Disease,’ Alex Waverley said, relighting a candle with his silver lighter.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Patrick eager, coming to the point now, almost as if coming to the boil. ‘What else?’

  Sacha put down her cob and wiped her mouth on her napkin. ‘Part of the female genitalia of a plant,’ she said looking apologetically at Red. ‘The vulva, to be exact.’

  ‘Isn’t that illuminating?’ Patrick netted them all in his gaze. ‘Same word for the vulva and for such opprobrium. To stigmatize. Ha!’ He took a swig of beer and froth hung creamily from his whiskers. ‘What are flowers but sexual organs?’

  Red flicked Connie a look but she was used to Patrick and only smiled, noticing the heat along the length of his thigh where it touched hers.

  ‘They have been desexualised. That’s what botany has done. What must be undone.’ Patrick banged the flat of his hand on the table and made the glasses jump.

  ‘Really, darling,’ said Cora giving him her long red smile.

  ‘Flowers are just great glorious erotic blurts. Great fragrant open beckoning cunts and erect cocks shooting sperm. Pollen! Pollen? And filament, can you imagine a word more … more flimsy for what it is? Oh!’ Patrick leant back and ran his hand down his body and around his genitals.

  ‘I say,’ said Alex Waverley, putting down his corncob.

  Connie sneaked a look at Red. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, ‘he goes off like this. It’s the beer.’

  ‘Patrick, do calm down,’ said Sacha. ‘You’re putting us off our food.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Duffield, and Waverley nodded.

  ‘What’s the matter with you all? After all, what are you eating?’ Patrick looked from one of them to the other, his eyes resting on Cora whose smile was drunken, fond. She must have been one of his lovers, Connie realised, just from that knowing look.

  ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell us, darling,’ Cora said.

  Patrick picked up his half-eaten cob. ‘Each one of these,’ he pointed to the kernels, ‘is a separate ovule. Each strand of the silk you tear off before you cook this – you know, the silky pubic stuff – each strand is in actual fact a vagina,’ his eyes went dreamy, ‘a long, sinuous, silky vagina.’ Red dropped his cob and Connie, dizzy with the drink, had to bite her knuckle in order not to laugh.

  Duffield changed the subject, mentioning Jacob Epstein’s sculpture that he and Waverley had seen in London and the talk slipped into war talk, the situation for the Jews which made Connie shudder though she couldn’t quite believe it could be true. She looked sideways at Red, flushed from the beer and conversation, the only one at the table who had taken part in the war that still seemed, despite everything, despite even her loss, an abstract thing. His uniform beside her, the material of his trousers, rough through the thin stuff of her dress, the only bit of war that she had touched.

  ‘He’s a bully,’ Red said to her later. Only the two of them were left sitting at the table. The shrubs and lawn were dark, the sky a clear turquoise glass upturned. One big low star pricked the sky. A splash of laughter spilled from the house which was all in darkness, the blackout being observed for once, for the benefit of the guests.

  ‘No he’s not.’

  ‘You don’t like it, the way he humiliates people?’

  ‘No, but he truly doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘How Mother puts up with it …’

  ‘She understands like I do, it’s not bullying, Red, it’s, it’s … enthusiasm. He’s really very … lovable.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘Want to walk?’ Connie stood up.

  ‘Yes. Warm enough? Why not fetch a cardigan or something?’

  Connie’s arms were cold but she didn’t want to spoil the effect of her dress. She slid her palms up her arms, the skin cool.

  They walked across the lawn and Connie led the way between the trees, the same path she’d trodden at dawn. ‘He doesn’t mean to upset individuals,’ she said, ‘he means to upset ideas. Do you see the difference?’

  ‘He could be more sensitive about it.’

  ‘He could be.’

  Between the trunks the shadows whispered and rustled with settling life. Connie slowed down and took his arm, felt him stiffen and then relax.

  ‘You know I’ve never much liked Patrick,’ Red said. ‘I was pleased for Mother of course that they met. She seems to like him. I was seventeen, old enough to leave, when they … when they set up together. It is a funny set-up, isn’t it? For a girl I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘With his w
ell-known … proclivities.’

  ‘Well … this is all I’ve got now,’ Connie said.

  ‘Yes, I know, you poor girl … it must have been …’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You don’t want to talk?’

  ‘They are dead. What is there to say?’ Connie pulled away and walked fast. Her dress rustled about her legs. His footsteps thudded behind her.

  ‘Sorry, Connie. Can we just scrub that?’

  She walked without speaking, counted ten steps. ‘Yes,’ she said and slowed and this time his arm went round her, warm dry hand against the chill skin of her upper arm.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Red stopped.

  ‘An owl,’ Connie said. ‘No, two owls. One calls toowit and the other answers toowoo.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Well, that’s what Patrick says.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  They laughed. Red pulled her against him. His chin was rough against her cheek and she could feel the heat of him through his tunic. ‘What will become of you, little one?’ he murmured into her hair.

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Patrick’s reputation with women …’

  ‘It’s not just Patrick, you know,’ Connie said, ‘your mother, too … she has her … adventures. Apparently.’

  ‘Well, that’s up to her. There could even be doubt cast upon the proximity of …’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Speculation about you, do you realise that, Connie?’ She heard a pause in his breathing: he was waiting for a clue. She pulled away again and walked forward into the darkness, very dark between the trees now, too dark to walk without stumbling.

  ‘Your own speculation is this?’