by David Nobbs
The moment her head hit the pillow, Kate was awake. For two hours she had longed for sleep, she had had a battle to keep her eyes open. Now she knew immediately that sleep wouldn’t come. Daphne’s macaroni cheese lay too heavily on her stomach.
As she listened to the wind rattling the shutters, she reflected on her first evening at Tregarryn. Arturo had met her off the bus. He’d been standing there at the end of the lane, grinning happily, all pretension gone, save for the fact that he was dressed entirely in mauve. He even carried her bag! She tried not to let her astonishment show.
A loud, staccato fart disturbed her thought. For a moment she thought that she must have farted herself, but then she realised that the noise had come from the other side of the room. There was somebody else in the bedroom, some unknown person, some windy intruder. She tried to sit up, and found that she couldn’t, she was paralysed, a sharp pain ran through her body inside where the paralysis didn’t reach, and she remembered that she was in Ward 3C of Whetstone General Hospital. One of the patients had farted in her sleep. If she had got the geography right, the noise had come from the opposite corner of the ward. It must be Glenda.
What a complicated journey back to the past I’m making, she thought. Here I am lying in bed in hospital in the middle of the night remembering the time I lay in bed at Tregarryn in the middle of the night remembering my arrival and first evening in Tregarryn. Away with sleeping patients and farting Glendas, I will banish them from my thoughts. Back to Tregarryn. My arrival. Will-power.
The lane down to Tregarryn was unlike any road that Kate had seen. Over the centuries it had sunk deeper and deeper beneath banks of earth. There was a bank as tall as her on either side. Out of the tops of the banks, trees were growing. Their contorted roots formed the top part of each bank. Their branches met overhead in an almost perfect canopy. Just a few tiny rays of sunshine penetrated this natural roof. There was the sound of running water, and the ever-present wail of whirling seagulls. The lane made two sharp hairpin bends before emerging from the trees on to the side of a steep hill yellow with gorse and purple with heather, and there below them was a steep narrow valley, little more than a gash in the hostile cliffs, with a tiny shingle beach on which a few very small boats were drawn up. There were some slate-boarded cottages, with slate roofs, and, to the right, the chimneys of a larger house peeped shyly over an unkempt blackthorn hedge. Tregarryn.
The lane led down to the village, and a path led off to the right to Tregarryn House. Arturo opened a white gate in the hedge, made a gesture like a magician, and led Kate into the garden as if it was his invention.
The house was long and low, stone built, with a roof of large, heavy slates. A simple two-pillared portico lent just a touch of splendour to its simple rows of windows.
In front of the house there was a formal garden, in three terraces of gravel studded with little square flower-beds and grand Victorian stone urns. Wide steps led from one terrace to the next, past astonishing objets d’art such as Kate had never seen. A Burmese Buddha. An Inca sun god. An Egyptian king. A Javanese coriander press. A Maori war god. A Perseus by a student of Cellini. A sacrificial milk churn from the Yemen. A gilt-encrusted totem pole from North Dakota.
Kate stared in astonished silence. Arturo told her where they had all come from with such pride that it was as if he had collected them himself.
‘The house was built by an eccentric explorer,’ he explained. ‘Sir Tristram de Vere Boddington. He retired here, and lived a life of complete isolation, surrounded by his collection. He left the house to his great-niece Isobel, on condition that she either lived in it or rented it out to artists who would appreciate the beauty of his collection and be its custodians. She’s seventy-seven, and nobody knows what will happen when she dies, but, in the meantime, here we are.’
‘It’s incredible.’
‘Yes.’
They stood and watched as the sun slid down behind the hill opposite. Suddenly the valley was a gloomy place. Arturo put his arm round her waist, traced the curve of her hips with his fingers, and said, ‘Shall we see how it goes and take your bag up later?’
‘See how it goes?’
‘You can sleep with me or you can sleep alone. There’s no pressure on you.’
‘I’m glad of that. I’ll sleep alone.’
‘Kate! Don’t be like that. Let’s see how it goes.’
‘I know how it’ll go. I won’t sleep with you yet.’
‘What am I to read into “yet”?’
‘I’m not sure, yet.’
‘You don’t mean you won’t sleep with me until we’re married?’
‘I didn’t know you were serious about us getting married.’
‘I would be if you were.’
‘Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we? Would it worry you if I wouldn’t sleep with you until we were married, if we were going to get married?’
‘It wouldn’t worry me. It’d be highly embarrassing, but I’d brave it out.’
‘Why would it be embarrassing?’
‘We’re an artists’ colony, Kate. It’d seem desperately conventional.’
‘It’s nothing to do with getting married, anyway. It’s to do with commitment. I don’t really know you yet, whatever I may have said in Penance. I’ve never even seen your work.’
Arturo led her into the house, up a wide bare wooden staircase, flanked at the top by a pair of huge ivory chessmen.
‘From Bengal,’ he said proudly.
On the wooden boards of the corridor that ran the length of the first floor there were two charming brightly coloured rugs.
‘Bolivian,’ said Arturo, as if hoping that all this detail would impress Kate into sleeping with him.
He opened the end door to reveal a small bedroom, very simply furnished with a bed, a chair and a small pine wardrobe with one drawer. There were no lovely artefacts here.
‘The guest room,’ he said. ‘Oh, Kate, it seems such a shame. Supposing I die young. Every night lost will have been such a waste.’
‘Why on earth should you die young?’
‘I’m an artist. I don’t look after myself.’
‘You’re absurd.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘I think I do.’
‘Oh God! I’m on probation.’
‘We’re all on probation, Arturo,’ she said grandly. ‘It’s called life.’
Supper was taken at a large pine table in a huge kitchen furnished with bulky pine cupboards. The plainness of all the pine contrasted rather sadly, Kate felt, with the glory of the collected artefacts.
She sat next to Arturo. She felt uncomfortable, exposed. She wasn’t used to eating in kitchens. She certainly wasn’t used to having wine with meals. And she had never tasted anything like Daphne’s macaroni cheese before. It was gooey, almost tasteless, and very difficult to swallow. The wine was thin and acid and she wondered if she would ever learn to like it. She tried desperately to relax and not look middle class, but when Daphne, at the head of the table as duty chef, asked her, ‘Well, Kate, what do you think of my macaroni cheese?’ she heard a polite little voice, the voice of a stranger, saying, from deep inside herself, ‘It’s very nice, thank you,’ and felt shamingly wet.
‘That is too too wet,’ said Daphne.
Unlike the macaroni cheese, thought Kate. A bit of sauce would have done wonders. She took a draught of her red wine, and shivered in revulsion against its sharp, raw taste.
‘Cold?’ asked Stanley Wainwright, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was watching her all the time.
‘This house is cold,’ said Olga, who had a round, pale face and looked sickly and had said nothing except ‘Hello, Kate.’ ‘I’m so worried about the baby’s first winter. Snug as a bug in my tum-tum this winter. What about next winter?’
‘We’ll have repairs done,’ said Daniel.
‘If we can afford to,’ said Stanley. ‘That will be a decision for the management committee.’
‘
If it’s as cold in the house next winter,’ warned Daniel, ‘we’ll have to leave.’
‘It’s intolerable that you keep holding this threat to our heads,’ snapped Daphne.
‘Please,’ implored Arturo. ‘We have a guest. Let’s not argue.’
Olga stood up and said, ‘I’m leaving the room because I feel sick, everybody, not out of protest. And it’s no reflection on your macaroni cheese, Daphne.’
Daniel managed a couple more mouthfuls and then he stood up.
‘Best go and see how she is,’ he said.
‘He always goes to her!’ hissed Daphne, the moment he had gone. ‘He always bloody goes to her to stroke her tum-tum.’
‘Is it a crime to care for your wife?’ asked Kate.
‘Oh God!’ Daphne cried. ‘We’ve got another one here. She’s going to tend to his every fucking need.’
Kate smiled stoically, but she couldn’t hide her shock. She wasn’t used to women swearing. Well, she wasn’t used to anyone swearing.
‘I’ve shocked our little chapel girl,’ said Daphne.
‘How dare you talk like that to my guest?’ shouted Arturo. He pushed his plate away. ‘Sorry, Daphne, I’m not very hungry tonight.’
‘Right. That’s it,’ said Daphne, standing up so violently that her chair slid back, scraping agonisingly across the tiled floor. She glared at them and said, ‘I’m never going to cook my macaroni cheese again,’ and with that devastating news she flounced out, slamming the door. There was silence, save for the rattling of the windows, the squeaking of the shutters and the sighing of the wind, saying ‘Seen it all before’.
The silence was broken at last by Stanley.
‘Welcome to Tregarryn,’ he said.
Kate tried to smile, but a great weariness swept over her. It had been a long day and her first evening at Tregarryn had been traumatic. She ached in every limb. She longed for sleep.
Arturo reached across, clasped her hand, and said rather shyly, ‘Would you like to see some of my work?’
Kate knew that you cannot say to an artist, ‘I’m sorry. I’m too tired. Some other time,’ so she said, ‘I’d love to.’
Behind the house, tucked into the hill, a long, low studio block had been built. It was a very basic structure, but slate hung to fit in with the rest of the hamlet.
Almost every available space in Arturo’s studio was hung with his pictures. Their colours were bright, verging on the simplistic. Their shapes were violent. They were full of swirling movement. The paint was applied thickly, aggressively. Nothing in Kate’s experience had qualified her to judge them. And there he was, standing there, looking at her looking at them, waiting for her comments, no, waiting for her compliments. She found his presence deeply unnerving. She sensed that, although the pictures seemed close to abstraction, they were not entirely abstract. She felt that they must be landscapes, but landscapes seen through a distorting mirror. Even if she hadn’t been so exhausted, she wouldn’t have known what to say. A little imp almost persuaded her to say, ‘They’re very nice.’ She could imagine the eruption that would follow.
The silence went on and on. It became dreadful. She longed for sleep.
‘Well?’ he said at last.
‘Oh, Arturo, they’re overwhelming.’
‘Ah!’
He seemed pleased, but not pleased enough.
‘But do you like them?’
It was an inexcusable question, she thought.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, but her natural honesty forced her to qualify it. ‘I’m almost certain that I shall like them.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Oh, Arturo. There are so many of them, and I’m so tired, and you’re standing right beside me, unnerving me, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’
‘Oh no! Heavens, no! Mustn’t say the wrong thing.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, a body of work like this demands very careful consideration. You put a lot of painting into them. I need to put a lot of looking into them. They deserve that. You deserve that.’
‘I suppose so,’ he admitted, slightly mollified.
‘It’s clear to me that they’re forceful, colourful, energetic, complex and daring,’ she said. ‘To my untutored eye they look almost, but not quite, abstract. As I look more, I begin to understand more.’
‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘That’s the intention.’
If only she’d left it there. Whether you’re a salesman, an after-dinner speaker or a lover, stop when you’re winning.
‘That one, for instance,’ she said, indicating a large and particularly swirly picture in the middle of the wall to the right of the door. ‘At first it was a mass of jumbled colour, of aggression and even anger. Now I can see that it’s the cliffs at the end of the little valley, to the end of the beach, with just the suggestion of shingle, and the little boats drawn up there, very subtle.’
‘It’s a portrait of Daphne in the nude,’ he said. He didn’t seem angry, just slightly disillusioned. He escorted her up the wide stairs in silence, and then, at the door to her room, he made one last try.
‘Are you sure you won’t reconsider?’ he said.
‘Sorry. I’m too tired, anyway.’
‘That’s my room over there if you change your mind. Any time, I’ll be there.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m sorry you copped for the macaroni cheese.’
‘Thank you.’ She wanted to say something amusing to end the evening. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t supply the Germans with Daphne’s macaroni cheese. It might have shortened the war.’
He laughed, kissed her, sighed, and was gone. She stood there, in the corridor, shocked and upset with herself for making any kind of joke about the war. It seemed so disloyal to Gwyn.
Now the wind howled and it wasn’t hard to imagine that it was Gwyn’s voice wailing to her from the heavens. That was ridiculous. She didn’t believe in that sort of thing.
She pulled the bedclothes over her head and snuggled deep into the resultant womb. But sleep wouldn’t come.
Her door was opening. She sat bolt upright as it creaked.
‘Don’t be alarmed, my darling. It’s only me.’
She felt for her candle and matches, and lit the candle.
‘Oh, Arturo,’ she said. ‘Won’t you ever take “no” for an answer?’
‘Of course. Of course, darling, but we do live in a democracy, and I do have my views.’
‘In sex, the person who says “no” always has to win.’
‘Don’t you think one day you might say “yes”?’
‘Very probably.’
‘Well, why not say “yes” tonight, then?’
So she told him. He sat on the bed and she told him about Gwyn. She didn’t want to, she didn’t know whether it was right to, but she had to. He sat there, in his mauve pyjamas, holding her very tight, and out it all poured, the tale she had longed to tell her sisters and her mother, but had only been able to tell once before, in a letter to her twin. He sat very still. She cried a little. He licked her tears, licked her salt tears, kissed her gently on the forehead and left the room very quietly, without another word, shutting the door so gently that it was like another kiss.
The moment he’d gone, the tears stopped and she wished that he was still there, she had got Gwyn off her chest, he had been so sensitive, they had been so close, she longed for him to return and hold her. She dried her face and blew her nose and blew out the candle and lay listening to the wind. She thought it was raining, but it might have been a stream running down from the cliffs. She thought about Arturo’s paintings. She began to feel drowsy. She gave herself a wry smile at the thought that his paintings could send her to sleep.
Her door was opening! He’d come back. Her heart began to beat very fast. She made up her mind in a flash, lowered her nightshirt off her breasts, lit the candle at the side of the bed, and turned towards him, holding out her arms, feeling her nipples rise.
‘Goo
d God!’ said Stanley Wainwright. ‘I hoped I might not be entirely unwelcome, but this is ridiculous.’
She gasped and struggled desperately to pull the nightshirt back over her breasts.
‘What the hell do you want?’ she snapped.
‘I had thought you intelligent,’ he said. ‘That is the least intelligent question I have ever been asked. You know what I want.’
‘Get out of my room.’
‘Kate! Please! Be fair. I didn’t know you’d be baring your breasts and welcoming me with open arms. Talking about welcoming me with open arms . . .’ He approached the bed, smiling, and pointed to the flies of his pale green pyjamas. ‘ . . . How about opening me with welcoming arms?’
‘Stanley! Get out!’
‘All too much for our little chapel girl?’
‘How do I know? It might all be too little for me,’ she retorted. ‘And don’t you dare ever patronise me again. I’m fed up with being referred to as the little chapel girl. Now get out, please.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Stanley. ‘Kate, I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’