‘What?’
‘If you marry him you’ll buy a little house and have four children, I can see you. You will be the little wife and mother and your painting will die.’
‘Why should it?’ She was taken aback by his anger. ‘Ordinary love, what does that mean?’
‘With me it would be extraordinary.’
‘But you’re supposed to be … a sort of guardian.’
‘That’s just a word. Let me show you, Con, let me at least show you what it can be like.’
‘No.’ She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest, feeling shocked, feeling thrilled, feeling ashamed of the way she heated at his words. He wanted her, he really wanted her.
‘Did he take your virginity?’
‘Not … we didn’t actually.’
‘You are not deflowered.’ She wanted to laugh at the way he said that. But he laughed first and took her in his arms, pressed her face against his chest. Was that when she started to love him? There was so much that was ridiculous about Patrick, but he did know that. He deliberately made himself more ridiculous than he really was as if he was playing up to some caricature of himself. Like a sort of defence, making more fun of himself than anyone else ever could. And looking into his eyes you felt stirred. So much brightness, excitement, so much electricity in him. And something vulnerable. You didn’t want him to be hurt, or disillusioned. You wanted him to make love to you, he was such a lover, such a lover, and all through your life you still wanted that. It didn’t stop even after he was gone.
‘I am jealous,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘I don’t believe myself, I don’t believe in jealousy but I am jealous. I don’t want anyone else to touch you.’ There was a kind of astonishment in his voice. She didn’t know how to reply, just let herself be pulled against him, feeling the heat of him, the pressing of his groin against her, the thumping of his heart. His beard tickled her cheek. ‘You make me weak,’ he said. ‘I stopped myself because you were a child, in some ways a child but … I can see the woman in you. No one has made me weak with longing like you. No one ever.’ And as he talked like that, fast and breathy, his hands slid her nightdress up and she let them.
She let him lie her down on the ground and stroke her legs open. He knelt beside her, ran his hands over her, looking at her, touching her almost reverently. And he did amazing things to her with his fingers. He made her fly till she was almost scared at the way she rose and fell under his fingers and his tongue, over and again like a new bird swooping till she forgot herself, who she was or where, and became only scattering light and a high thin wail.
Only when she was completely lost did he lie on top of her and press himself inside. It hurt and brought her back to where she was, but he murmured so tenderly, ‘All right, all right, just relax, just open to me,’ and she was so proud to be a woman for him, such a lover and such a man. And soon the hurting stopped and she felt complete with him on her and inside her like that, that weight the thing that earthed her, made her whole. With his weight on his hands he raised himself to look into her eyes and then kissed her very tenderly on the lips.
She did love him she did. Red was eclipsed at that moment. She loved Patrick from that morning to the day of his death. They became lovers, regular lovers. Soon he took to sharing her bed on the nights he didn’t stay up working on his elixirs. She’d lie and listen for his feet on the stairs, the landing, and she would hold her breath until the door gently opened and he’d enter the room, a tall shadow. She’d hear the soft sliding and crumpling sounds of his clothes as he dropped them, feel the cool of the air as he lifted the blankets and slid in beside her, warm, warm skin all along her length. It was so gorgeous, luxurious, the warmth of him, the softness of his hair and beard and lips, the way he held her as if she belonged not just to him but to the world.
In the dark she could not resist but in the light she worried about Sacha. Whatever she had said surely she didn’t want this? Connie studied her for a change but she didn’t seem different, not cold or sarcastic. Maybe a little more distant, more involved in her painting. But not bad-tempered or unkind.
One morning, still bleary and musky from bed with Patrick, Connie went into the kitchen. Sacha was at her easel painting. The painting was of the kitchen window, a clutter of dishes, a jug of grasses, the leafy movement of outside through glass. Since the beginning Sacha had given up her studio.
‘It’s not fair,’ Connie said, ‘it’s yours really, the studio.’
Sacha turned. She had yellow paint on her cheek. ‘I prefer the kitchen,’ she said. ‘It’s warmer. It’s more at the heart of things.’ Sacha seemed to live it more and more completely, her painting. If no one else cooked she’d do it but irregularly, painting while the potatoes boiled to mush or the pie crust hardened, looking through narrowed eyes at her canvas as she chewed her food.
‘I feel …’ Connie said and stopped.
Sacha put down her brush. ‘Want to put the kettle on?’
‘I feel …’
‘What about Red?’ Connie flinched. Sacha waited and then filled the kettle herself. Connie watched her broad back, wide shoulders under brown wool. ‘What are you going to say to him?’
Connie shrugged miserably. ‘He already dislikes Patrick,’ Sacha said. ‘Imagine his reaction to … well, just be gentle with him, Connie.’ Reaction to … Connie found that she wanted it spoken out loud, wanted Sacha to say it, put it into words this odd condoned secret that hung between them like some sort of sticky web. Sacha put the teapot on the table, eased the tea-cosy over it, crocheted wool, tea-coloured from all the splashes. She looked directly at Connie for the first time.
‘His reaction to you and Patrick together,’ she said. Connie made her eyes stay on Sacha’s. ‘Hungry?’ Sacha said after a moment, removing her gaze.
‘I like the way you’ve done the grass against the …’ Connie nodded at the painting.
‘I wonder if the smell of paint suppresses the appetite?’
‘Oh Sacha … I feel … I’ve taken over the studio and now I seem to have taken over …’
‘Do you want to pour the tea?’ Sacha went to her easel and added a touch of yellow, the smallest touch to the surface of a cup. The brilliance in that dab made Connie bite her lip. It reflected light in a way that made a sudden pattern, a sense that held the whole together.
She didn’t remotely want a cup of tea but she poured two cups anyway, forgetting the strainer so that dark leaves floated on the surface.
‘It’s all right,’ Sacha said, sitting down, blowing over the surface of her tea. ‘For myself I don’t mind about Patrick.’
‘You don’t mind. You don’t miss …’
‘We haven’t had it off for years,’ Sacha said and laughed at Connie’s face. ‘Don’t look so stricken! There’s Betty.’
‘But …’ Connie stopped. Like a leaf settling on the water realisation came. It had been hinted that Sacha had other lovers but Connie had never seen any sign, thought they must be theoretical rather than actual. But Betty. Betty with the long legs and loud laugh who cycled up from Bakewell, who sat and chatted in the kitchen, joined them for meals, sometimes stayed the night. Of course, Betty was the lover. The thought of another woman had never occurred to Connie. Betty. Ah. It was a gentle shock and a relief. An explanation and a freedom. Connie gazed at Sacha, solid, not glamorous or romantic but lovely. Yes. Of course.
Connie sipped her tea, thirsty now and even hungry. ‘I’ll make some toast, shall I?’
‘But Red,’ Sacha said, ‘I mind for Red. He’ll be angry, hurt, disappointed. He’ll really hate …’
‘Yes.’ Connie sat down again. ‘But he’ll get over it, won’t he? Won’t he? We hardly know each other really.’
‘So you have decided.’
‘I suppose … it seems I have.’
‘You’re going to stay and be with Patrick.’
Connie nodded, surprised to find that decision made.
‘One thing,’ Sacha said after a lon
g moment, ‘there won’t be any babies.’
‘Oh?’
‘Patrick is unable … hard to believe, isn’t it? Very ill as a child, that probably did it. So he goes round firing blanks in all directions.’
Connie sucked her breath in, Sacha sounded suddenly so unlike herself.
‘Well, anyway, I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I want children anyway.’
Sacha laughed and began, quite viciously, to saw slices from a loaf of bread.
And there were no children and they were happy, weren’t they? Weren’t they? Though sometimes a little voice will whisper What if? Sometimes the memory of Red comes to her, his kind of innocence. If his fingers were not quite so skilful as Patrick’s it was only because they didn’t trace the memory of a hundred other women’s bodies on hers. If she had kept true to Red, if she had married him, then what? What kind of life would she have had? Children maybe, a very different kind of life. She would not be taped up like this, that’s for sure, prisoner in her own room, with that young lunatic downstairs ransacking the place again by the sound of it. Not that he could ever find what he is looking for.
Regret is there, yes, regret not for that life so much as because she doesn’t know what that life might have been. And sometimes her heart flinches with the memory of Red’s face when he realised the truth. She did not tell him, not in words. He only had to see the way things had changed. It was almost a year before he came back again. He only had to be in the house to read the currents that passed between Patrick and Connie and Sacha, the subtle way the triangle had shifted. He only had to look her in the eyes. What he read there she is not quite sure but she read hurt in his, hurt and hatred. And that was that. He left and that was one life discarded in favour of another.
Well, what of it? It happens all the time. No regrets, no, no, no, no. Regrets are rats that gnaw at the edges of your heart. Oh it hurts. Mouth dry and the tape makes it hard to swallow. She tries to pull her lips apart, feels the thin skin strain as if it would rip. The tape has a sickening smell. She tries to speak. Of course her voice is still there, makes a kind of ape sound, shapeless. She listens – gone quiet down there now. It is almost dark.
Patrick was her life. Maybe this is the end of it and he was it. You can’t see the shape of a life till it ends. You can’t let yourself mourn for what might have been. All quiet. He’s probably gone out, probably he’s walking on the beach, stretching the muscles in his legs, swinging his arms, the rain in his long blue hair. Only soft rain and the wind getting up. She presses her palms together, feels the muscles contract in the top of her arms and chest, oh it hurts, lifts up her feet to stretch her legs, wiggles her toes to keep the blood flowing.
The tape stinks and pinches and pulls. When he rips it off it will rip this thin skin to rags. If. Patrick all dark. Maybe she can sleep, dark and warm and swimming back and forward in her mind, like her mind is a big warm lake. Yes. She lets her head nod, feels the ache in her neck but feels it far away as if the thick padding of the sleeping bag is between the pain and herself. Between herself and tomorrow.
TEN
Voices. What? A woman’s voice calling? But it’s quiet. Must have been a dream. Was that the sound of a car? Connie screws up her eyes trying to hear, to remember hearing. There is a memory of sound but it’s fading like a wisp of smoke in her head. Her voice batters uselessly against her sealed lips, a stupid reflex. Stop, listen. Think. When is it? How long has gone? The door? Did you hear the door? Oh the wooziness like a ginger fog. Something metallic rising in her throat. Stop, breathe, listen, think.
She can’t think straight with the whisky and pills and pain and stiffness. Though it’s not as uncomfortable as you might think because the fog has a kind of warmth in it, almost a sort of cradling comfort. Or call it a numbing. The skylight is still lighter than the rest of the room, pale angles of paper on the floor. No light on down there. No one there then, the voice just a dream. Where is he? The trap-door is possibly visible as a square of deeper darkness. Might just as well close her eyes for all the good they do peering into the gloom.
What is this? This voice?
There was a voice, a female voice. But whose? No one anticipated. But still they do sometimes come, visitors or people lost on hot afternoons wanting directions or a glass of water. But now? And someone might have come, that biographer or someone, someone who might help. Should make a noise in case. Only wouldn’t the light be on if there was someone there?
She bangs her heels against the floor but it hurts, jarring and sparkling all up her spine to her neck. She gasps, but can’t gasp because of her stuck mouth so a panicky vacuum forms in her chest against which her heart scrabbles weakly. Stop this, breathe, think.
Would it be murder if he left her to die, or would it be manslaughter? Man’s laughter. A hollow laugh. A hollow man. Patrick. No he was not hollow, he was her love, was her life. He was not hollow. A hollow man whose voice was loud. You could laugh at his ideas, men laughed, mostly women didn’t laugh. Not if he chose to look at them so. The way they fell under his spell and she watched that, felt proud because whatever he did with them, he needed her. He could fuck them, wonderfully, amazingly but impersonally as pollen falling on the stigma of a flower. But with her he cried and said his fears out loud and clung. Why on earth would you like that, Connie, why would anybody like that?
Voices outside. Yes. Heart beating up in her throat. She forces her tongue between her lips, just the point of it, pressing against the tape. Listen. Moisten the tape with your tongue and listen. There are voices. His voice and … yes, a young woman’s voice. She moans again and bangs her heels but it hurts too much, you can see stars if the nerves in your stiff heels bang on the floor, see stars right up to your tight taped head.
Door opening, light coming on, throwing a trapezoid of light through the trap-door on to the ceiling and the wall. Giving Patrick back his eyes.
‘I don’t understand …’ This the female voice.
‘I don’t fucking well appreciate being followed.’
‘… not like that, I thought it would be a nice surprise.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You said you’d ring. I was up seeing my mum, I just thought.’
‘Christ.’
‘You said where you were going.’
‘Keep your fucking voice down.’
Quiet. After a pause the girl’s voice subdued. ‘Sorry. I just thought it would be nice to see you again.’
Quiet again. Connie groans as loud as she can but there is no effect. She lifts her heels but the pain in her back is too much, she can’t bear to crash them down again. It’s all right, Con. Help is here. Just listen and wait. Wait.
‘Now what?’ his voice belligerent, making her feel foolish, no doubt, whoever she is, down in Connie’s kitchen.
‘I won’t stay if you don’t want …’ something else muttered. Speak up, girl. Something familiar about that voice. Someone she met in London, or just one of those well-bred types? ‘Brought wine and brought flowers for … where is she?’
‘Asleep.’
Whatever does he think she’s thinking up here? Doesn’t he know she can hear, that she will make a noise, attract attention? Her tongue wriggles a space between her lips and the tape. Forcing air out between her lips she makes a guttural sound, loud, loud enough, surely, for the girl to hear.
‘Can’t we just have a glass … in water … a vase?’ Sounds of movement, the plop of bottle being uncorked. The judder of the pipes, water, the rustle of paper and a faint greenish chrysanthemum smell. Thirst in her throat and right through to her bowels. The pills and the whisky and this fog seem to suck her dry.
Awful thought. Push it away. He said he killed a girl. But that was surely bluff.
She is talking down there, her voice too quiet to hear properly. But she’s asking him something about writing, something about a book. So he is a journalist then, or writer, and she believed that he wasn’t. Getting dull, Con. Maybe his madness is a pos
e? To see if he could get the elixirs for his newspaper – what do they call that, a scoop. But too well done – and if it’s a pretence why tie her up? She sucks air in through her nose and groans again. She wants to shout, Run.
‘See I’m not … ring a cab … maybe I’ll just …’ The sound of a chair grating. The door.
‘NO!’ A shout but then his voice warms, changes colour. ‘No, stay. Sorry, Lisa. It’s nice to see you. Not good at surprises is all. All right?’ Long pause. ‘All right?’
She gives a shrug of a laugh. ‘Mobile’s not working, anyway. Shit. No phone here, is there?’
‘No, looks like you’re stuck.’ The door closes again.
‘Oh dear.’
‘What shall we do?’
‘Better make the most of it, I guess. I feel a bit bad about being here uninvited – and when she’s asleep.’
‘It’s cool.’
The sound of heels on the lino. ‘I like it here, don’t you? I do like all these shells! The way she’s stuck them on the walls. Kitsch or what?’
‘Yeah, well.’
‘Let’s have more wine then? Tell me about … but mustn’t wake …’ her voice quietening. The scrape of a match on a matchbox and the whiff of a freshly lit fag.
Another moan. Why can’t they hear her? Fog closing again but browner and not so warm, still it muffles the pain which is coming everywhere now, back, neck, shoulders, wrists, heels, ankle bones. No, don’t dwell and itemize your every pain. Light coming up and Patrick not in his portrait now, it’s just canvas and he’s hanging a little way away beside it. The light shining up makes a bright streaming navy-blue of the skylight under rain. On the floor is its reflection like a pool, dark shadow drops trickling across the blue.
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