Where We Belong

by Anstey Harris

  ‘And I thought he made a mess when he painted,’ Patch says.

  ‘He didn’t, did he?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m joking. No more than anyone else.’

  I look at the floor: bits of chopped onion, the brown papery skins that came off them, twigs of thyme and oregano that we brought in from the garden, and – worst of all – the shattered porcelain.

  Patch bends and picks up the pieces of the jug. ‘Ouch, this looks valuable. Looked valuable.’

  ‘I told Araminta something like this would happen. She insisted we use the antique dinner service. I’ve got boxes of stuff upstairs that wouldn’t matter.’

  ‘I bet it’s ugly.’ Patch holds the bits of jug together in a vaguely jug-shape. ‘The stuff upstairs. I bet it’s functional and plain and doesn’t add anything to life.’

  ‘I like it actually.’ I squat down near his feet with the brush and dustpan, gesture for him to step out of the way. ‘And it doesn’t matter when it breaks.’

  He has lifted a plate from the dresser; it’s from the same set as the jug. Patch examines the stamp and the number on the back before placing it delicately back on the shelf. ‘This stuff ’s beautiful. Don’t you feel more alive eating a boiled egg from one of these . . .’ He holds up an egg cup so thin I imagine I can see light through it. Its gold and green pattern reflects the window. ‘. . . than some generic old bit of plain white china that probably costs a pound a plate?’

  I sigh, long and loud. ‘No. I feel sick using it. I know it’s all going to get broken. I don’t want the responsibility. It’s two hundred years old.’

  ‘But it’s crockery.’ Patch has picked up a sponge from the sink and is wiping debris from the work surface with one hand, scooping it into the other. He lifts his hand towards me in a gesture that asks where to put the detritus and I point to the compost bin on the side. ‘If you put all this away in a locked-up cupboard somewhere, is it even crockery anymore? Isn’t crockery something we eat off ? Beautiful crockery adds to our life experience while we do something as functional as eating.’ He showers the crumbs into the compost bin. ‘Or cleaning up the kitchen.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can be as philosophical as you about plates.’ I empty the dustpan into the kitchen bin. When I turn round, Patch has taken off his crumpled jacket and is standing by the sink.

  ‘I think that best thing we can do – in the circumstances – is clean up in here then take that wine out into the garden.’ He turns the tap on. ‘Leo’s happily shooting zombies and there’s hours of daylight left yet.’

  My immediate instinct is to say no. But it’s followed, before I have a chance to speak, by an overwhelming desire to do something just for me. Leo is a grown man: he has cooked a fabulous dinner for his friend and they’re together, enjoying themselves. And it’s been longer than I care to remember since I’ve sat, drinking wine and chatting, with a man as good-looking as Patch. I’m not sure I ever have – I whisper a silent apology to Richard who was very handsome, but in a slightly less film star kind of way.

  ‘Do you want to wash, or dry?’ Patch asks.

  And it’s as simple as that. It’s that easy to let someone into your heart. I wish I’d known earlier.

  *

  It was Patch’s idea to take the wine out on to the grass near Atalanta and Hippomenes. I checked with Leo that he was happy for us to go – he can see us from my bedroom window if he wants to. He traded up the bottle of Diet Coke he and Curtis had been going to share for a couple of beers. ‘We’ve got that Friday feeling,’ he said when I told him I was going out to have a glass of wine in the garden. He knows it’s Wednesday and he makes me laugh.

  The way I feel right now, he could have asked for more than one beer each. He’s missed a trick.

  We’ve left the kitchen sparkling and ready for Araminta’s eagle-eyed inspection. Patch chose the glasses, taking great care with the selection in the dresser, holding each one up by the stem and turning it in the light. His hands looked huge against the fragile stems. He pinged one with his fingernail and listened to the noise it made. ‘Uhuh,’ he’d said. ‘Two of these.’

  He hooked the glasses upside down into one hand, the stems safe between the grooves of his balled fist, and took the wine in the other. ‘Corkscrew? Posh stuff this, you know.’

  I pulled open the drawer – the last few weeks have given me cause to know exactly where the corkscrew is – most nights.

  ‘I’m only kidding,’ he said as he stood back to let me through the doorway in front of him. ‘This wine was barely north of a fiver.’

  ‘Is it cold and wet?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Then it’s exactly what I need.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It is an evening from a storybook. The peacock is strutting around nearby. He is waggling his tail-feathers in an effort to attract one of the three peahens who are pecking on the lawn, but none of them so much as glances up. The sun, though it is nowhere near setting, has turned golden and sends threads of light through the trees and dancing, dappled, across the top of the pond.

  We choose to sit on the grass, despite the benches dotted around this part of the park. I don’t think I could sit right beside Patch without making a fool of myself; at least here on the lawn I can pick at daisies, keep my nervous fingers occupied.

  ‘Cheers,’ says Patch and leans in towards me. He touches the edge of his glass – so gently – against mine and the antique glass rings round the flat lawn like a bell. ‘To being here,’ he says, and drinks.

  The wine is cold, crisp. Tiny beads of condensation smudge under my fingers as I hold the glass: they sparkle in the reflection of the evening sun.

  ‘There are worse lives, I guess,’ I say. Immediately, I remember all the other stuff, all the reasons I’m sitting here on the grass – even if this moment is idyllic.

  ‘Someone walk over your grave?’ Patch asks.

  I shake my head, smile slightly. ‘Sorry, I was weighing it all up. Remembering why I’m here.’ That sounds awful. ‘I don’t mean I don’t want to be here.’ I’m getting myself in a mess. ‘By here, I mean this house, the museum, not you.’ I have gone scarlet with embarrassment. ‘Sorry: I sound ridiculous.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. It must have been a wrench. Leo told me you were in London before.’

  I nod again. ‘Islington.’

  ‘He said his dad died.’

  My chest feels tight with Richard’s presence and I have to exhale to dislodge the memory of him that blocks the top of my throat. I nod. ‘Four years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I thought it was more recent.’ And then Patch sits upright, almost spilling his drink. ‘God, sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound flippant.’

  ‘It didn’t. I know exactly what you mean. Leo isn’t very clear on the timescale when he talks about his dad.’ The weight of thinking about Richard here, on this perfect evening, has shifted, settled comfortably in my centre where it belongs. ‘He tends to run it all into “now” – Richard was dead then and he still is. When it happened doesn’t really affect his feelings towards it. Does that sound odd?’

  ‘Not at all. I have a bit of experience in that field. Not in losing my dad . . . I mean in talking to people who see things in slightly different ways.’ He screws his eyes up against the sun. ‘I’m making a right hash of this.’

  I sip the wine. I don’t feel uncomfortable here, talking about Richard. It feels okay. It feels normal.

  ‘What I mean is, I assumed there was a direct link between your husband’s death and you moving here. That you came here because he’d died.’

  I pick a daisy from the grass. With my thumbnail I make a tiny slit through its stem. I pick a second daisy to thread through the hole. ‘We came here because he lived, I suppose, because it’s his family inheritance. I think he even lived here himself when he was young.’ I make my daisy chain longer by three, then four, flowers. ‘What about you? How did you get here?’

  Patch reaches over t
o top up my glass. His forearms are thick and muscular and the blond hairs on them catch the light. He seems to be choosing words, putting them into order before he speaks.

  ‘I was at a bit of a loose end. A bit rootless. I’d moved back to England – I’d been living abroad for a bit. And then this job came up so I moved to Crouch-on-Sea.’

  I need to know. I am slipping out of control with this man. If he has a wife, a girlfriend, I need to know now and to compartmentalise him along with the other things I can’t have and that aren’t for me. ‘Did you come here on your own? Is there a Mrs Patch?’ It’s clunky and crass. I blush again.

  He looks right at me as he answers, makes sure he has full eye contact with me. ‘No. I live alone. I’m divorced, have been for a long time.’

  ‘Oh, I wondered if Poppy and you . . .’

  ‘Poppy?’ He laughs and moves closer to me. He smiles as he looks at me and I know I’m supposed to notice that he’s moved closer. ‘Poppy is young enough to be my daughter.’ He taps my hand with his outstretched fingers and a shiver runs through me.

  ‘Anyway . . .’ He tops up my glass again, though I’ve barely drunk from it. ‘Poppy’s not my type.’ This time his smile is a grin. He takes the tiny daisy chain from my hand, turns it round and round looking at how it’s made.

  I have to keep the conversation going, to focus, but it’s getting harder and harder. The white and yellow flowers look minuscule in his large hand and yet, at the same time, so safe. He presses his fingernail into the stem of the daisy. ‘Pass me another one,’ he says.

  I pick a daisy and pass it to him. There are only a few inches between us now.

  ‘Do you have kids?’ I ask, trying to level things, trying to make this an ordinary moment between two ordinary people. There is the barest fragment of silence, one extra beat in the air.

  ‘I had a baby son but he died.’

  It is like a punch. My face contorts and my words are sucked away.

  ‘It was a long time ago. He’d be twenty-five now.’

  I sit up straight. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Patch shrugs. ‘My wife and I hadn’t been together long before she got pregnant, and then – well – we didn’t stay together that long after he’d died. Didn’t make it.’

  I am speechless: me, the person who has talked endlessly of death and loss, spent four long years thinking of little else. Now I can’t think of anything to say at all.

  ‘And then I sort of went off on one. Travelled – ran away. Started painting. Ran away some more – swore I’d never paint again. Rinse and repeat.’

  I think of my warm solid son upstairs, of his vivid presence, his passion. I put my hand over Patch’s, squeeze his fingers together. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘James. James Patrick Samson.’

  I want to hug him, but I daren’t. I am punch-drunk, pounded; completely humbled by the pain he must carry.

  ‘I’m Patrick too.’ He’s moving the subject away, bringing back the warm sun, the peace of the summer, the setting. ‘My brother couldn’t say it when I was born and so I’ve been Patch since I was a child. But I’m Patrick really. I went full-time Patch when I was an art student and I’ve never gone back.’ He smiles. ‘I’m a big poser.’

  He has threaded more flowers onto the daisy chain. ‘How do you tie it up?’ he asks me.

  I push the first flower through the stem of the last one leaving a stalk sticking out. ‘Like this,’ I say and pinch a daisy head between my thumb and fingers. I push the bare stalk into the base of the flower to cap it off.

  Patch holds the crown of flowers in his hands and places it on my head. ‘Beautiful,’ he says.

  I cannot feel the weight of the daisy coronet but I know it’s there.

  ‘“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”’ Patch half-whispers it, bringing the huge lawns and wide sky down to the single point somewhere between our mouths.

  ‘That’s beautiful.’ I can barely breathe.

  ‘It’s Longfellow.’

  I shake my head. ‘You quote poetry in random situations?’

  ‘Cheating.’ The grin is back. ‘A bloke I worked with in Oz had a tattoo of it. Right down his arm, and I stared at it every day over a factory conveyor belt.’ He rolls onto his back, laughing, and all the sadness dissipates. It is carried away across the lake, catching for a moment in the petals of the water-lilies as it goes. ‘It’s true though, isn’t it? We none of us get out alive and none of us get out without some pain. I’ve spent a long time and covered a lot of miles learning that.’

  ‘Have you stopped running away now?’ I ask him, a tension in my chest like the skin of a drum.

  ‘I hope so,’ he says. He sits up, still leaning back on one arm, and he moves the last inches towards me. His lips meet mine and we are frozen in time, each holding a wine glass in one hand, not daring to put them down or to make any sudden movement that will change this reality.

  When we move apart, I have put a barrier, a marker, between Richard and me. I have moved to a new place.

  The sun drops a halo round the edges of Patch’s hair, lighting his thick eyebrows and throwing his eyes into shade. I am so close to him that I can see the day’s stubble across his chin. I take a deep breath to still the sickening disturbance inside me.

  Instinctively, I look up, convinced I’ll see Leo’s shocked face at my bedroom window or Araminta’s shocked disapproval at hers. There is no one there.

  ‘Now what?’ Patch is grinning at me. His hand has moved to my waist, my knees are touching his as we sit on the grass.

  I am dazzled, wrong-footed. I hadn’t written off this part of my life, hadn’t ever consciously decided to live celibately for the rest of my days: I’m only fifty-four. The idea of being as alone as Araminta – especially once Leo leaves home – is one that haunts me in those cold waking hours when all one’s worries dance around in the dark. I imagined I might meet someone one day, somewhere. But not here, not so soon. Four years concertina into moments, seconds: those four years have – suddenly – been so very short.

  I can’t look up again in case I see Richard standing there, silhouetted against the window of my bedroom, looking down at me with eyes I can’t see but that I know are a fathomless sad brown. I don’t want Richard to wave goodbye to me, I’m not ready.

  Patch leans in, kisses my cheek gently. He waits, his forehead resting on my shoulder, for me to speak.

  The birds are gathering in the long grass and behind the wall in the kitchen garden, ready to perform their evensong. The wine bottle, almost half full, stands at a slight angle on the grass. The barest tufts of white cloud, stripe the horizon without the energy to climb any higher.

  I could not have anticipated this when we walked out here. And that can’t be more than half an hour ago. My world has turned upside down.

  ‘You’re very quiet.’ Patch traces my cheek with his finger. ‘Are you regretting it?’

  ‘I just, well, I don’t know what to do, what I feel.’

  ‘It’s okay to be happy,’ says Patch, and kisses me again.

  *

  Eventually, Patch and I peel ourselves apart and go inside. The peacock trots behind us as we walk towards the kitchen door, bobbing his head and looking for food.

  ‘He wants the stale bread from the kitchen. Leo gives it to him in the mornings.’

  ‘I could eat some stale bread.’ Patch catches me round the waist as I go to walk through the door in front of him, almost knocking the wine bottle out of my hand. He squeezes me tight into him, a proper hug. My nose reaches the shoulder of his T-shirt and I take in his smell: paint and washing powder and faint sweat. I need the hug.

  ‘How much chilli did Leo make?’ he asks me. ‘I am starving – really.’

  ‘He made a ton but, you know, young men eat a lot.’ And I fall silent. My boy has lived to become a young man, his did not.

  He is sensitive
enough to pick up my silence. And kind enough to dispel it. ‘Half the people I work with are young men. The other half are young women. I know exactly how much they all eat.’ He takes my hand. ‘Cross your fingers, I don’t suppose we’ll get a takeaway delivered out here and we’ve both been drinking so we can’t go and get one.’

  The pan of chilli that was cooling down on the range is still there. Leo and Curtis have obviously been down for more, the orange oily tideline has changed dramatically, but there is enough left for us. I know Leo well enough to make me check the long white larder fridge. Two more beers are gone. I put what’s left of our wine in the rack in the fridge door.

  ‘I need to check on Leo.’ Reality bites. ‘Do you want to come and see the apartment?’ My momentary thrill at taking him to see our flat, my bedroom, dissipates quickly. ‘But we have to be careful. Leo doesn’t read body language particularly but that Curtis is a savvy one.’

  ‘I can’t promise,’ says Patch but his smile is wide and open.

  Patch and I walk the same corridors that I first walked through only a month ago. They seem to have opened up: what once felt like dark panelling crushing the air out from around me, feels safe and comforting, an extra layer to protect me from the outside. The hop-pickers’ hessian sacks that line the walls on the upper floors are suddenly interesting, have history in the hundreds of years of use. Patch stops by each and every painting that hangs in the dark hallways.

  ‘This place is incredible. I thought I knew so much about it. I only know the very surface.’ He trails his fingers along the picture rails in the hall, his arms so long that he can easily reach both sides. ‘It’s so much better up here.’

  ‘It used to scare me.’

  He reaches forward, grabs my hand. ‘It’s such a world of history, it’s amazing. Think of all the people who’ve walked through here, touched these walls. What were they doing? Where were they going?’

  ‘They were mostly staff, up here. The family would have been on the next floor down, their bedrooms aren’t open to the public.’ Every now and then, we pass a window; sunlight streams across the hallway and dust dances from the carpet with the vibration of our footsteps.