The Shape of Clouds

by Peter Benson

  ‘Because I like the sound of the word. Bar… cell… ona…’

  ‘And that’s a cop-out.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Why do you think like a film?’

  ‘Sometimes…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because sometimes I think that nothing I do is real. Every time something happens to me, I think I’m in a scene from a movie that hasn’t been made yet. And I can’t help thinking that everybody’s watching me. As if they were at the cinema.’

  ‘What did you do today?’

  ‘Went for a walk. You know that.’

  ‘And it wasn’t real?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’re happier than you were yesterday.’

  ‘I was shocked yesterday.’ She looked around the kitchen.

  ‘I was expecting more than this. If anyone had told me I’d be spending a couple of nights in a…’ She stopped.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Baja?’ I said.

  She looked at the fire, and at her drink. ‘What more could I want?’

  ‘A bath?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said.

  ‘The sea’s warmer than than you’d think. And once you’re in…’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘God! I hate that! It’s the worst!’ She spilt some vodka but didn’t notice. ‘Nothing! How can something you say mean nothing? That’s the kind of thing Jacob says…’ Her eyes widened. ‘… when all the time he’s scheming, or she’s scheming or they’re scheming together.’

  I thought I might say that I had followed her career for years and that I had loved her, and some days I had thought about her all the time. I had wondered what she was doing and wondered, if I wrote to her, would the letter reach her? Would she have read it and thought about me at all? I wanted to repeat that Missing You was one of my favourite films, but I didn’t want to bore her, I just wanted to say it again and if she wanted I wouldn’t mention it again. Instead, I said, ‘I don’t like to tempt people.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Temptation leads to trouble.’

  She snorted. ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘And you know what trouble leads to?’

  ‘No, Michael. What does trouble lead to?’

  I looked away and swimming images of Barcelona came, flowers trailing from a balcony, an open window, curtains blowing in a warm breeze.

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Trouble?’

  Now I narrowed my eyes and I felt my face harden. Deep lines on my forehead, and across my cheeks. ‘Don’t ask me about trouble.’

  ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I knew it. You are on the run.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is your choice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘But you just asked me what more anyone could want.’

  ‘I was feeling dreamy.’

  ‘This isn’t a dream.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  ‘Why. It’s all you ever ask.’

  ‘I’m an American.’

  I told her that I used to be in the merchant navy. ‘I was a captain.’

  ‘No kidding. I went out with a sea captain. God…’ Her eyes drifted, and clouds shaped behind them. ‘A long time ago — 1970…’

  Elizabeth Green’s career had collapsed in the seventies. I remember that from the magazine article. It had been one man after another, and the chase for roles in films that would never be made. The chase for a bottle of whisky. Money going down the drain. Friends forgetting to send invitations. Refusing to look in mirrors. A sandwich for lunch, a whole day in bed.

  ‘… 1970,’ she whispered, then snapped back with, ‘How did you end up here?’

  ‘When I retired I didn’t have anywhere to go. I hadn’t made any plans, I thought the future would sort itself out and it didn’t. So I went looking for one, and this is what I found.’

  ‘Don’t you miss the sea?’

  ‘It’s outside…’

  ‘No. Being on it. The people, sailing…’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘You don’t get lonely?’

  ‘I’ve got Gloria.’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘And the cat.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Animals don’t let you down.’

  ‘But they can’t talk.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. There’re better things to do than talk.’

  ‘That’s true,’ she said, and she caught my look for a moment, held it and turned away. The dog lay down and snuffled into a dream. I poured myself another drink, a large one, and she lit another cigarette. The cat stood up, stretched and lay down again. The tobacco smoke rose in my kitchen, spewed over the lamps and layered itself beneath the ceiling. I closed my eyes and listened to the plastic rustle over the window, and the ocean as it spilled along the shore.

  ‌12

  The sailor thinks he will never meet another woman like Jytte and then he meets Marianne who was born on Skopelos but moved to the mainland. She hated prunes. Her face pleaded, and every look she gave me I kept for ever. She had black eyes and long fingers. How many looks and how many women? How far does one man have to travel before he ends in the arms of one he never stopped wanting? I think about Marianne now and can see her face, but I have to concentrate if I want to separate it from other faces. I have to catch it, hold it, remember some port in some country some year when I was drinking too much and picking fights with locals. My mother had just died and I was about to apply for compassionate leave, and I clutched the man’s leather cap over my heart and wished myself beside her. I wanted to feel the last warmth leave her body, and hear the last breath; I had disappointed her. I wanted to tell her that I thought about her every day, and I wanted to watch her eyes follow a single cloud and close on a sunset; I had failed. I wanted the world to acknowledge her but it didn’t; it coughed like it always does on lonely people.

  I’m with Marianne. We’re lying in bed. She doesn’t know it, but the violin we can hear is playing a lament for my mother’s soul. The music floats over the waterfront and it’s stronger than fate, but not luck. I hang my cap on the bedpost because that’s what she wants me to do, and though I always wear it in bed with a woman I cannot say no. She runs her fingers through my hair and down my chin. I’ve shaved for her.

  ‘Marianne…’ I say, but she puts a finger to my lips. She tips her head back and throws her hair over her shoulder. It’s long and brown. Her curtains billow, and the scents of jasmine and rosemary float in the air. A bottle of wine sits on the bedside table, and a vase of flowers. Her room has a balcony. I get up, wrap a towel around my waist and go to watch the street below, and the ships along the quay. I turn to look at Marianne, who has laid on her stomach and closed her eyes. Her left leg is pulled up, and her hands stroke the sheets. I am overcome with grief, and cannot make love.

  ‘Cry, darling. Cry for me.’

  I want to stay with Marianne but I’d prefer to sail to Tilbury with a cargo of lumber and olives. That’s what she says. I cannot argue, for she is not the love of my life. I cannot tell her about my mother. I go back to bed, turn my face away from hers, and she holds on to me. We lie like that and she sleeps. I can feel her body heaving through the night, sighing and turning for someone else, mumbling another man’s name in a language I don’t understand. The moon sets. We’re in trade, and it suits us both.

  I woke early. The sun rose, birds started their singing. I left the house, walked up to the vegetable garden and sat down. My early potatoes were showing, and a row of broad beans. I had raked and flattened an onion bed, and sown cabbage. I had bought a vegetable handbook, and learnt about the planting distances, and how you must pro
tect your seeds from pests and disease.

  I poked the soil with my boots. Back-lit clouds hung like dusters in the sky. The sea was calm. The tide ebbed. The garden was protected on three sides by a high stone wall I had repaired.

  We ate breakfast slowly.

  ‘I live by the ocean. It’s a new house. I only bought it last year. First real money I’ve had for thirty years. Would you believe it?’ Elizabeth Green was still in my house. I pinched myself. She had brushed her hair. I sat so I could watch the light through the plastic shine on it. ‘I’ve got these picture windows. You can sit in the house and it’s like you’re on the beach.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Malibu. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘I’ve seen San Francisco. That was beautiful — ‘51, ‘53, twice in ‘56…’

  ‘You remember dates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Names and faces?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘So do I,’ she said, and she lit her first cigarette of the day.

  ‘You remember what you were doing in, say, the spring of 1950?’

  ‘April 1950… I was out of Liverpool bound for Valletta, Alexandria. The Levant. I got lost in Beirut, ended up sleeping in a bar.’ I remembered the place. ‘It was owned by a French woman. Sylvia. She was old enough to be my mother.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘No.’

  She blew smoke out as she said, ‘I got married in 1950.’

  ‘1950…’ I said.

  ‘Divorced six months later.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘What was he,’ she said. ‘That’s what you should ask. He was Ray Lebox. Died last year. He was a lawyer.’ She slapped her forehead. ‘God! I should have known but you know how it is when you’re young. When you think you’ve got everything. He beat me up on our honeymoon night, stayed long enough to give me Jacob, then left.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  She shrugged. ‘It was over before we kissed. Serves me right for not asking the right things. The only answer I got was to the question I never asked. He was the first person to tell me my career was over. Thirty years old, dead in the water. I didn’t believe him. I reminded him about Missing You and he told me: “That was six years ago. What’ve you done since then?” I told him I’d made a film a year since then. “But can you remember anything about them?” ’ Her voice dropped, and she asked me, ‘Can you?’

  ‘Mercy Cure,’ I said.

  She laughed, bitterly. ‘Sure. Mercy Cure. That’s what that movie needed.’

  ‘It wasn’t so bad.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Michael,’ and her face hardened. ‘I can tell.’ Her lips thinned, and her eyes. ‘I used to be very gullible. Still am, sometimes. Dumb,’ she said, curling the word around her mouth. She leaned towards me so her face was very close to mine. ‘You won’t take advantage of me, will you, Michael?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to get the chance, am I? Dan’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘The taxi.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, and she held her mouth open, and I waited for her to say something else, something to give me hope, but she didn’t. She looked at the couch I had slept on, and the dog on the floor, and then turned away as the sound of the waves along the shore broke the silence.

  The morning grew warm and still, and the tide flooded the beach. I had work to do in the garden. I left Elizabeth sitting in the kitchen with a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette.

  I was sitting on the wall, rubbing some warmth into my knees, when Dan drove down the road and sounded his horn. I went to the bottom of the garden and waved to him, and waited for Elizabeth to appear, but she didn’t. I shouted, ‘She’s in the kitchen,’ and pointed at the house. Dan climbed out of his car, raised a hand and slouched inside. Gloria ran towards him. I called her back and we walked down together.

  Elizabeth was not in the kitchen. I looked round the rest of the house but she was not there. ‘Maybe she’s down on the beach,’ I said.

  Dan looked half asleep. We walked down to the beach. I said, ‘How was Plymouth?’

  ‘How did you know I was in Plymouth?’

  ‘Mr Boundy told me.’

  ‘Boundy,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Boundy’s full of crap.’

  I laughed but Dan didn’t. He was a thin man, young, with a gaunt face and dark, slicked hair. He smoked and chewed gum at the same time, and walked with his free hand in his pocket. When we stood on the sand he looked as though he did not belong there. He was wearing a black jacket, a white T-shirt, blue jeans and leather boots. He stared blankly at the sea and the offshore stacks, and didn’t move when I suddenly yelled, ‘Elizabeth!’

  Gloria barked, I shouted again and then walked back to the ruins, and checked the weavers’ cottages. I called her name again but she did not appear. As I was wandering around the remains of the old farmhouse, Dan joined me and said, ‘I’ve got another fare at twelve.’ He tapped his watch and scratched his cheek. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and when he coughed I thought he’d burst. The dark and troubled soul of cab drivers… He struggled to light another cigarette, scratched his head and threw a nervous glance at the sky. He watched a cloud, and as it shaped over him, puffing and splitting in the stratospheric winds, despair drifted across his eyes. He looked at his boots. They were scuffed and dirty. He turned towards me, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something important. He looked as though he was about to snap with grief and a deep longing. I could taste the feeling in the air between us, salty like a memory I had of a similar longing. A cathedral of rage in my head, with blackened windows and a red roof. Overlooked on all sides, dripping with storm water, twisted with faded ivy. I said, ‘I’ll check the house again.’

  ‘Okay.’ He looked at the smouldering tip of his cigarette. ‘I’ll be in the car.’

  She wasn’t in the house, but I found her purse on the sideboard. I picked it up and held it to my nose, put it back and went outside. I shouted her name one more time. Gloria lay down. I went to the cab and said, ‘Sorry. I don’t know where she’s gone.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Here,’ I said, and I gave him a tenner.

  ‘Thanks.’ His voice was drifting. He took the money and slipped it into a purse on the dashboard.

  ‘I’ll be in Zennack this afternoon,’ he said, and he drove away. I stood and watched him go, then whistled for Gloria.

  We searched the ruins again, and the beach, but there was no sign of her. I took the cliff path and started to walk towards the point. The dog ran ahead. The wind was strengthening. The sea swelled towards the rocks. I was afraid. We hadn’t said goodbye.

  I never said goodbye to my mother. She had died in the front room of a downstairs flat I never slept in. I still see her there, alone in an armchair with a blanket covering her knees, staring through a gap in the curtain at a child riding past on a bicycle, and then, nothing. No hand to hold, no one to rush into the street wailing. Dust settling on her ornaments, and on the remains of her last meal. Her cat sitting outside, wailing at the back door. She sat dead for twenty-four hours until the milkman called the police. A few neighbours gathered to watch her body carried from the flat, and they whispered that it was a shame and a pity. She had kept herself to herself but they thought she hadn’t meant it to be that way. She had a son, but none of them had ever seen me.

  I was guilty. I had neglected her and never said goodbye. I was not the sort of child a mother wished for, and I was ashamed.

  The funeral was delayed for my return, and afterwards I signed off for a month, and lived in the flat. I wanted to hide and lose my own face. I didn’t want to spend any time with a whore. I didn’t move my mother’s things or clean the house. I lived with the curtains drawn, ate cold food and only went out at night. I drank in the Dock and Chain, where a man can sit undisturbed. During the day I read.

  I thought I was paying penance
for my neglect, but when I joined ship again I couldn’t concentrate on my work, on watch or on my navigation exams. I hadn’t said goodbye and I never would, I hadn’t told her that I always wore the cap, even in bed. I hadn’t asked her if she’d ever heard from my father. I had failed her, and hadn’t understood that I was needed.

  I paid the price. I failed my exams. I began to lose faith in myself. I wore shirts with frayed collars and holed trousers. I told myself that I had done to my mother what my father had done to her. At Rotterdam and Antwerp, Valencia and Salerno I stayed aboard, locked myself in my cabin and left the bars and women to the other men. I didn’t want to leave another woman in my life. I read Russian novels about snow and balls and suicide until my eyes bled, and I went back for more. I wrote letters to my mother, set matches to them and dropped them from my porthole. I leant out to watch the flames tumble and hiss in the dock. I drank whisky alone, and only spoke when I was spoken to.

  Halfway to the point there is a shallow crease in the land, and a fork in the path that leads to the place where I bathe. I stopped for a moment, then followed the way through a thicket of blown scrub and on to a narrow track. This wound down, bending back on itself until it reached a narrow shingle beach. The bathing place is at the far end, sheltered by a semicircle of rocks, protected from the swell by the point. I stepped on to the beach and called, ‘Elizabeth!’ There was no reply. Then I saw her in the sea, swimming out from behind the rocks, and my heart leapt in my chest, and I felt the hands pushing me again. The sun shone on her hair. She waved.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled, and Gloria barked.

  Elizabeth swam towards us and shouted, ‘This is great! Come on in!’

  I touched my cap. ‘You missed your cab!’

  ‘Screw the cab! I’m having fun!’ And she swam back the way she’d come, and disappeared behind the rocks.

  I sat down on the beach and watched the swell break over the stacks. Gulls flocked over them, screaming and wailing at their chicks, diving at each other and the sea. They are one of the pests I have to look out for in the garden. They will come for worms in freshly dug soil, and worms are the gardener’s friend. I have strung cotton over some of the beds, and this discourages them.