“Ooh, that was below the belt.”
It was Andrew's turn to smirk. “I only wish …” He went back to the kitchen, opened the Pinot Grigio, and returned with it and two simple tumblers. “Pardon the absence of stemware; we're going peasant this evening.”
He poured, and they clinked glasses. “To the ever-unpredictable Ms. Nicola Rhys-Jones, née DeLucca.”
“To the phantom date,” she countered. “There one moment, gone … well, at some point.”
He smiled, but sadly. “You don't remember, do you?”
Nicola closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, the bemused look was gone, replaced with what Andrew could only describe as self-disgust. “I'm sorry, Andrew; truly. I don't usually drink that much—well, actually, I do—but I don't usually pass out. I'm utterly embarrassed. I have no memory of last night, apart from your kissing me and my loving it.”
Andrew's voice was gentle. “It's okay, Nicola; you have nothing to apologize for.”
“Oh, but I do. Because I have a confession to make.”
“You don't have to tell me …”
“Yes, I do, and here it is: I've never invited a man to my cottage since I moved here from St. Ives. In fact, I haven't been involved with another man since Jeremy.”
“It sounds to me like Jeremy would put any woman off men for a very long time.”
“Thank you. Yes. That's it, you see; I'm terrified of men.”
“I understand.”
“With one possible exception: you.”
“I'm not sure that's a compliment. I think I'd like to be thought of as having an exciting, possibly dangerous edge.”
She smiled, as if indulging a child. “Want to know why?” she asked.
Andrew nodded uncertainly.
“Because you do understand. You're not like other men.”
“You can't know that,” Andrew said.
“Actually, I can. Want to know how?”
“Sure.”
“First, I'm a witch; I know these things.”
“How come you didn't know about Jeremy?”
“I wasn't a witch then, and don't interrupt.”
“Right.”
“Second, Lee adores you.”
“Is she a witch, too?”
“You're interrupting again, but no, she's not … although, I don't know, maybe she is and doesn't know it yet because, Lord knows, she's different.”
Nicola waited here to see if Andrew would comment again. Instead, he smiled. He knew the game.
“And third …” Nicola paused and looked at him with affection. “A chap who risks his neck for a sheep is not abusive.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Nicola grinned. “So there you have it: my indisputable, three-point, Jesuitical proof of your goodness.”
“My head is spinning, but that could be hunger. Dinner?”
She sank into her chair. “Dinner would be splendid. Thank you.”
Okay, he thought to himself as he finished assembling the salad, one of two things is going on here. Either she has no idea what happened last night, or she does and doesn't want to broach it. Either way, it's not a topic for discussion. He whisked together a Dijon vinaigrette, dressed the salad, added torn basil, grated some pecorino Romano cheese over the top, and brought the bowl out to the tiny dining table by the window looking out toward the sea. Then he brought out plates and forks.
“You will, I'm afraid, have to bestir yourself if you wish to eat.”
Nicola had simply been watching him, like someone at a sidewalk café regarding the passersby Now she swung her legs off the chair arm and rose in one fluid motion, and he was struck again by how lovely this odd woman was. He held her chair and she slipped into it.
“Hello,” he said. “My name is Andrew, and I'll be your waiter tonight. May I top off your glass?”
“You may.”
He began to do so, but she added, “You should pour from the right.”
“Um … there's a wall there.”
She heaved a sigh. “It's so hard to get good help.”
He set the bottle next to her. “Pour your own goddamn wine.” He sat opposite her, and she reached across and poured wine into his glass.
“I hope you don't mind,” she said. “We seem to have lost our waiter.”
“Just as well; I'd rather we were alone.”
She lifted an eyebrow. Was it skepticism? Surprise?
“Shall I serve?” she said.
“By all means, but toss the salad first.”
She did so, in the process scattering lettuce leaves across the tabletop. A fugitive olive rolled off the edge and disappeared somewhere.
He smiled. “I see you've done this before.”
“I lived in Italy; in Italy we do everything con gusto!”
“Ah, but this is England, and in England we like to get at least some of the salad on our plate.”
She passed him the salad servers and took a slug from her wineglass. “Serve your own goddamn salad.”
It was what they did best, this skirmishing. It was fun, and they'd each met their match. And as sharp as the exchanges sometimes were, as the dinner progressed each of them marveled privately that it never crossed the line to nastiness. Indeed, there was more affection, and more excitement, than if they'd been flirting—which is what they were doing, of course, in their own backward sort of way. They'd retreated to the way things were before she'd invited him home, retreated to safety.
In the midst of this, Nicola had the strangest thought: This is what it would be like to have a true companion. After the craziness of courting passes, after the bonfire of passion settles to a steady glow, after real life truly begins, you could have someone to talk to, someone to play with. And it would be safe. The thought—or was it a fantasy?—was deeply seductive. It was something she'd dreamed of since childhood. It was what she'd expected with Jeremy, until he bludgeoned it out of her mind. Could she be safe with Andrew? Could one ever be safe?
“Do you mind if I ask you something serious?” she heard Andrew say.
“What? No, of course not,” she answered, when what she really meant was It depends … what do you want?
“How do you paint those tranquillity panels? I mean, how do you even begin? How do they become so luminous?”
She smiled at him. Why is my first reaction always defensive? she thought. Why do I always assume the worst?
“Ah, the flattery technique,” she teased. “Make her think you like her work and she'll do anything for you.…”
“Will you?”
“No.”
“I didn't think so. But really, I'd like to know a little about how you do it. It just amazes me. The architecture department is part of the School of Design at Penn, so I see a lot of painting. But I've never seen anything like that.”
“So, I'm better than a college student, eh?”
“Come on; you know what I mean.”
“Okay, you're right. I do. I'm just not very good at accepting compliments.”
“I don't think I said I liked it; I just asked how you did it,” he deadpanned.
“Bastard. Okay, I begin with a colored ground.”
Andrew looked blank.
“That's the base layer I cover the canvas with, usually—for those paintings, at least—a cadmium yellow, or an ocher, or perhaps a rose pink. Virtually all of it will be covered by layers of other colors eventually, but somehow the brightness still shows through and resonates, like a visual echo. Also, I find that if I begin with a canvas that only has white priming on it, the painting starts out on too light a key, since everything you apply initially looks too dark against the white.”
She shot him a look. “Bored yet?”
“Keep trying.”
“Right. So then I just start painting.”
She shrugged, then grinned.
He slumped in his chair.
“All right; if you insist. So then it's a process of building layers of color and, in a se
nse, light. I like to think of it as light broken by a prism, or maybe a fractured prism. The idea is to create an almost distilled, saturated light with the pigment.”
“How do you create light from paint? I don't get that.”
“It's partly technique; I lay a small amount of several pigments on the palette, and when I mix my final colors, I really thin them. Sometimes they're almost transparent. And then I build up layers. I'm working with a range of colors—they would seem too powerful on their own, but when I apply them thinly, they turn out soft, almost gauzy. After many, many layers of individual brushstrokes—I never use a palette knife in these pieces—it's as if the painting begins to glow. I've left some of the ground thinly covered, so that it shows through in places, tying the composition together, but primarily it's the color layers that create that softness. And I scrumble with my finger a lot.”
“I don't even want to ask what that's about,” Andrew cracked.
She laughed once, hard, then swiped back. “Get your mind out of the gutter, you creep. ‘Scrumbling’ is a way of blending the colors you've applied next to one another; it softens the effect, makes them—I don't know—more real at the same time as it muddies them. Some people use a blunt brush, or a bit of rag. I use my middle finger.”
“Do you have a clear idea of what you want to create when you begin?”
“No … and yes, in a sense. I'm trying to capture the grace of the natural world. I think most people have lost touch with it. They don't ‘see’ anymore. It's like they move through the world but aren't part of it. And don't even get me started on cell phones. Or iPods.”
She paused for a moment and stared out the window. Andrew followed her gaze.
“Look. Look at the way the setting sun scatters color across the sea, and tints the slopes leading down to it. It's not just yellow on the blue-green; it's so much more. On a night like this, when there's a fog bank or a haze or something out to sea, the light is filtered, gentle. Except where the cliffs cast hard shadows, everything is softened. The world is suffused with mauves and violets. Blues like lobelia and others like Hidcote lavender. A touch of rose and apricot on the waves, where the water catches the western light. The blue-black of the cliffs, except along the western edges, where they luminesce. The way Roger's fields pick up the last light and the grass goes from green—what is green, really; so many things—the way it goes from green to gold, especially at the very tips of the blades of grass, as if each were a tiny torch, a beacon … the last holdouts against the night.”
Andrew said nothing. He was mesmerized. He was used to seeing the world as composed of structures, not of colors. He felt as if he'd been given sight, or at least a new way of seeing.
“Anyway, in the end, all those thin layers of paint seem somehow to refract light differently, softly, a little like that haze out over the sea.”
“Nicola, I can't image how you make that happen, or how long it must take.”
She laughed. “It takes forever, but that's because I keep at the painting as long as it's in the studio. I keep seeing things, keep adding layers. I don't know how to let go. It isn't until the client pushes me to deliver that I do, and even then I don't want to.”
“And that totally different painting of Lee?”
“That's me, too. I haven't completely abandoned figurative works.”
“I guess I meant that I wondered what you'd do with that painting.”
“It's meant to be an anniversary present for Anne and Roger, but I'm having trouble letting go of that one, too.”
“I think I can understand that.” And then he wondered how many other things Nicola had trouble letting go of—the damage Jeremy had done to her, certainly, but this other fear, this far more sinister beast that seemed to live within her.
“Hello?”
Andrew snapped into the present. “I'm sorry; I was thinking.”
“And I was saying, it's getting dark and I need to get home and feed Randi.”
“Okay. Right. Of course.”
“Thank you for dinner, Andrew.”
“Anytime.” He realized, though, that he didn't have “anytime.” He didn't live here. He wouldn't be here for her to just drop in on. It made his heart hurt.
“How about if I walk you back?”
“I'll be okay.”
“How about if I'd like to?”
“That's okay, too.” And she smiled.
They were almost to the bottom of Fore Street when Nicola slipped her arm inside his. “Do you mind if I ask you something serious?” she said, echoing his words from earlier.
“Of course not. What?”
She squeezed his arm gently. “Did we make love last night? We didn't, did we?”
“If you mean did we have intercourse, then no.”
“But we were intimate.”
“Yes, rather magically so, I thought.”
“But I passed out.”
“Yes … well, no, not exactly.”
She laughed lightly, “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I don't know, really; maybe you could tell me.”
“Tell you what? You're talking in riddles.”
He took a deep breath, looked down the empty lane, then turned to her.
“Nicola, I just need to ask you this.”
“What?”
“Who's Johnny?”
Nicola stiffened, halted, and slid her arm out of Andrew's.
“How do you know about Johnny?” she said, stepping away from him as if he were radioactive.
“I don't know anything about Johnny. You screamed, No! Johnny, don't! when we were making love last night. It was like you were in a trance or something. Then you passed out. That's what I know. That's all I know.”
It was as if Nicola had been turned to stone. She stood stock-still, her eyes wide and wary. Finally, frostily, she said, “Johnny does not exist.” It was a warning.
Andrew didn't catch it. “Nicola, look … I saw you go rigid, I saw you struggling to get away. You were terrified.”
“It's none of your business,” she said through a clenched jaw. Then she turned on her heel and walked quickly down the street toward the harbor. Andrew jogged to catch up with her.
“Nicola, I'm just trying to help.”
“Then leave me alone!” she snapped.
Andrew stopped. Nicola continued.
“Don't you understand how I feel about you?” he cried.
Now she stopped and spun around. Her mouth opened but no sound escaped. She turned again and ran headlong down the hill.
He did not follow. And as he stood there in the lane, watching her fleeing form dissolve into the gathering darkness, he wondered if he could even answer that question himself. How did he feel about her? Bewitched, or just besotted? In need of a life with this woman, or just needy? Did he care for her, or just think she needed a caretaker?
He turned and slowly retraced his steps. Halfway back up the hill, just as he passed the tiny post office in Fore Street, he realized he had never been in love before. Not with Kat. Not with anyone. But he was now.
The extreme rainfall accumulations, observed in the Valency catchment, resulted from prolonged very heavy rain over the four hour period 1200–1600UTC. The exact track of the heavy rainfall cells varied slightly during this period, but between the Camel Estuary and Bude the variation was sufficiently small to ensure that the heaviest rainfall fell into the same coast-facing catchments throughout the period.
Brian Golding, ed., “Numerical Weather Prediction,” Forecasting Research Technical Report No. 459, Met Office
ten
Nicola awoke in darkness, her body taut, her sheet pulled to her throat in two clenched fists. She had been dreaming again about Johnny, something she hadn't done for years—not since she left her husband.
Johnny. Her older brother. The handsome one, with their father's broad shoulders and sleek, black hair. The brilliant one, with the effortless straight As right into high school. The ambitious one, who starte
d his drug dealing small in the ninth grade—a few ounces of marijuana here and there, mostly for friends—but who later developed a talent for dealing cocaine. The manipulative one, who got his little brother, who wanted more than anything else to please his big brother, to be his mule, making deliveries in their little corner of the North End, until one day Jamie—the bookworm, the altar boy—came home beaten bloody. Johnny, the cocky one, who thought he could outsmart everyone including his mother (at which he succeeded) and his drug-selling competitors, whose territory he took, incrementally, street corner by street corner, but who were not, in the end, either outsmarted or amused.
Johnny, who began feeling her up when she was only twelve, on the afternoon of her confirmation—she still in her white dress. “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit,” the priest had said, anointing her. “You're a grown-up now,” her brother whispered later, cornering her at the end of her party. He'd been drinking wine and smoking dope; he was fifteen. She thought it must be her fault, because she already had breasts. His hands were all over them.
A few weeks later, he began sneaking into her room at night, when their mother was cleaning offices in the State House. “I've got something for you,” he'd hiss as he slipped under the covers. “A present.” He made her hold it, that strange, hard, twitchy thing, made her pull it till it exploded. “I'm the man of the family now, like Ma says; you have to do what I say. If you squeal, I'll tell her it was your idea—because you're overdeveloped. Oversexed. You can't help yourself. I'll tell her you do it to Tony and Mario after school.” She had a crush on Mario, and her mother knew it. Her poor, nearly illiterate, exhausted mother would believe every word.
She would pretend to be fast asleep when he appeared by her bed, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands tight as claws clutching the bedclothes. He took to slapping her face to wake her, then covering her mouth. It occurred to her that if she stopped developing, he'd leave her alone, so she simply stopped eating.
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