The Catalyst

by Angela Jardine

  As if conjuring her up with his thoughts, she returned shortly after and he helped her to prepare the evening meal. She seemed more preoccupied than usual but he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. She often had moments of dreaminess, moments when he knew she was mentally back with Jimmy and he fervently hoped such moments of reflection were a positive sign that she would leave him.

  What he couldn’t know was that Jenny had gone to see Jimmy. Not to meet him face to face but just to watch the farm to see if she could see him undetected. In some way she was hoping it would help her come to a decision about her life with him.

  Jasper had been so excited and full of plans for his new life that she had felt a pang of envy, wanting to feel that way about her own life, but so far her thoughts and emotions had simply gone around in a sort of meaningless carousel and she felt as if her indecision was eating her alive inside. She knew she hadn’t been away from Jimmy for long enough but how long did you need when the man in your life slept with every woman who crossed his path?

  Then she would vividly remember the passion and the laughter of the early times, the all-too-brief good times when he appeared to have eyes only for her and the memories of the intimate moments they had once shared would warm her again.

  On the very rare occasions these moments still happened, when they did share laughter and made eye contact she had been willing to believe she was the only woman he truly loved. More often however there had only been arguments and absences and Jimmy’s sullen and increasingly scary moods.

  Despite this, as the dusk was falling on her way back from shopping, she had parked her car in the lay-by on the main road and risked walking down the lane to their farm on the cliff-top. She was relieved to see the outside light shining on Jimmy’s truck in the farmyard.

  She had not thought what she would say to him if she had met him in the lane but now she knew he was inside, she felt a frisson of … what? Some deep instinct for emotional self-preservation told her she shouldn’t let Jimmy know she was there. Even though she was entitled to be in the home she had made something in her wanted to keep her presence secret.

  The windows glowed in the gloom as the farmhouse stood stoutly beneath the ancient Scots pine tree that stood like a loyal and aged wolfhound resolutely guarding it. Jenny made her way carefully round to the kitchen window beside the old tree, smelling the familiar scent of pine as she trod on the spongy carpet of discarded needles, vividly aware of the gentle sibilance of the wind in the tree canopy above her.

  She had always loved the sound of the wind in the pine needles but now she had no time to listen or to feel, no time or mind to allow remembrances of better times seduce her. As usual Jimmy had not thought to lower the blinds and close out the night so she was able to look in, like a refugee returning from exile to a home no longer hers, inhabited instead by some heedless stranger.

  He stood with his back to her, apparently cooking something and, knowing what his cooking was like, she wanted to feel sorry for him but all that rose in her was an anger so hot it scorched her skin. This man was to blame for her exile. Here she stood, watching him working snug and safe in the home she had worked so hard to create, the home she had brought into being out of so little. She controlled an urge to walk in and slap his stupid, uncaring face.

  She watched him turn the slightly singed and mangled results out of the frying pan onto a plate, dabbing at it with a wooden spoon. She breathed with fierce satisfaction, the mess on his plate was all he deserved. Anyway she knew he would just shovel whatever it was into his mouth, hardly noticing it was only just this side of edible.

  Food had never interested Jimmy and she stood silent and dead-eyed in the dark, watching him eat, quickly and without awareness. She suspected he didn’t even taste the food, he had little time for indulging any of his senses other than sight. He lived only for the pictorial, the seen and this sense alone allowed him to work and so to be complete.

  For the most part Jenny had recognised his inordinately developed sense of the visual and accepted this as part of the man as an artist. When it was used for his work, it had not bothered her. Only when he turned the full intensity of his piercing gaze on some younger and more attractive woman had it hurt and she had had to add yet another slight to the innumerable hurts he had subjected her to over the years.

  In those moments her fragile self-esteem had crumbled even further and she had cursed him for his obviousness, his insensitivity to her feelings. She had been unable to shrug off the feelings of worthlessness no matter how much she consoled herself about it being in the nature of most men to look at women, but then Jimmy Fisher was not most men. Most men living with a woman put some sort of brake on their actions or at least tried to, Jimmy simply acted on his many impulses without the merest hesitation or thought for her.

  It had been with a sense of dread that she had realized the older she got the more he would look at younger women and he would care less and less about trying to be discreet. She could only hope that as he got older the objects of his attentions would find him less appealing but how long would it be before that happened? How long could she wait? Instead of being the cherished wife of long-standing she knew she had been relegated to position of housekeeper.

  The renewed realisation of her position in Jimmy’s life reduced her to misery again. The tree above her creaked sympathetically and she became aware her nose was running with the cold. Putting a hand up to her face she was surprised to find it wet. She had been unaware of her falling tears as she watched the man she loved, a man who seemed to have no more use for her.

  Hunching down deeper into her coat, she stepped out of the deep shadow of the fir tree and started to trudge back through the darkness to the car, no longer caring if he looked out of the window and saw her. The sight of him apparently managing well enough without her had strengthened her determination, and even though she longed to be back in her own home, she now felt strong enough to stay away for a while longer.

  It was fortunate for Jenny that she was not able to see into Jimmy’s thoughts, preoccupied as he was by Sunny Smith. He had been pondering on his last words to her, remembering he had said he would call round to check on her and see if she needed any groceries getting. Now it was many days later and he still had not called on her.

  Standing in the wildness of the storm he had promised himself he would definitely go and see her, knowing what he really meant by that and he had daydreamed about how the meeting would go, about how he hoped it would go. Then his mind had raced ahead, seeing them entwined in bed, his mouth on her breasts, feeling himself buried deep inside her. That was when he had really burned.

  Yet, another day had ended and he was left wondering why he had still not visited her. Every time he picked up the keys of the pickup to go down to Porthcarn he had found himself inventing reasons why he could not go and see her. He had canvases to prepare, to string, to label, to catalogue, he had paint to order. He had elevated the making of excuses to some sort of art form and they had given him a strange new outlet for his creativity he now found intensely irritating.

  He had even dreamed of her last night. He had always had an ability to remember his dreams, probably because they were usually extremely vivid and, more often than not, extremely frightening. This dream had seemed more real than his usual dreams, less grotesque and distorted, and although not frightening as such it had been deeply disturbing.

  He dreamt he had seen her facing away from him at a party, full of people he did not know. He watched his own hand reach out to her shoulder to turn her round to face him. She turned around with a smile to greet whoever it was touching her shoulder, until she saw it was Jimmy. Then her smile died and a look of cold politeness came over her face.

  ‘I’ve been wanting … needing … to see you,’ he had watched himself stammer. Even in his sleep he was aware of his heartbeat quickening, felt it falter as a look of unfamiliar coldness sharpened her eyes.

  ‘Why on earth would I want to see yo
u?’ she had asked, her face a blank mask.

  ‘But … but I helped you … on the cliff path.’ Even in the dream he was aware of the pleading in his voice and hated it.

  ‘That does not give you any rights over me. So just go away will you,’ the dream Sunny replied, turning away from him. ‘If you don’t, you will regret it.’

  Her last words in the dream still rang in his head as he woke with a sudden start in the middle of the night. It was obvious to him the dream had been some sort of warning but why he should be afraid of her? She didn’t seem like a cruel sort of woman. From the little time he had had with her he could hardly believe she would ever look so contemptuously upon him but dare he take that risk? Was it only the fear of rejection that kept him away from her?

  Had he been capable of objective self-analysis he might have well have read his dream as showing some deeply hidden self-loathing that had absolutely nothing to do with Sunny Smith, but luckily for him he was a stranger to the art of self-perception. Instead with some unusual, and deeply uncomfortable, insight he was beginning to believe that for the first time in his life, and somewhat belatedly, he might just be in love.

  It would certainly appear his emotions were no longer inviolable and he had elected to walk about with his heart outside his body, wrapped up in the very female persona of Sunny Smith. She had power over him because he loved her. Surely that couldn’t be right? Okay, she was pretty enough, beautiful even, but he had had beautiful women before and he had escaped unscathed. Surely this was only another infatuation … wasn’t it?

  He shivered unable to work it out and nervous of his own newly fledged vulnerability he wondered which emotion was stronger, his fear or his need of her. He frowned, wishing he could hibernate until the feeling passed but what if it was love and what if it didn’t pass? Sometimes love could last a lifetime, that’s what they said, didn’t they?

  And trust, what about trust? You had to trust the one you loved. You had to trust them completely, didn’t you? What the hell was trust? How could he trust her? How could he make sure his heart would be safe in her keeping? He snorted with annoyance at himself. What the hell am I on about? I sound like some sort of soap opera, for fuck's sake! He turned impatiently from such embarrassing thoughts. Right, Fisher, just get on with it. Go and see the woman and take what you want.

  He lay awake for a while longer, re-scripting and artistically tweaking the pictures of them together as they arose in his head, feeling the familiar movement in his groin and holding onto it for reassurance. Come on Jimmy, how scary can it be? She’s only a woman, they’re all the same once you’ve got them into bed. When was the last time one of them refused to give you what you want?

  By the time he fell asleep again he had almost succeeded in ignoring the unnamed fear that knocked on the door of his consciousness like an annoying tune that would not go away. He was going to see her tomorrow and that would be it. Decision made. Sorted.

  On the day Jimmy would always remember as the day his new life had started, the September sun was just rising above the horizon as he gave up trying to sleep and struggled out of his usual turmoil of tangled sheets and Technicolour dreams. Scratching himself he stood dozily watching the dawn as it glittered on the distant horizon.

  Then, as if gathering pace, the sun warmed away the last lingering wisps of mist and chivvied the tired vegetation on the cliff into one last spirited rally of seed dispersal before winter. As usual, he caught his breath at the beauty of this scene knowing he could never tire of it, knowing he would always love the constantly changing light and every fleeting weather mood.

  This land was more than his muse, it had been his one true love, the only thing he had truly loved for itself. A chaotic mix of the wild and the timorous, he knew it to be as volatile as himself, always eluding his attempts to capture it on canvas. Some days he could almost swear he felt the breath on Pan on the back of his neck and hear a sardonic snigger behind him as he painted.

  Coughing throatily, he lit his first cigarette of the day and made a mug of strong coffee to help the coming-round process. He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror as he urinated and knew he didn’t look good today. Gloomily he speculated that there were now more days when he didn’t look good than when he did.

  Jimmy-boy, you’ve not just got bags under your eyes, they’re bloody portmanteaus, he thought dubiously. He almost began to doubt his ability to charm Sunny into whatever it was he wanted of her. What you need is cold seawater, that’ll fix you. Get out there and douse yourself in the briny, you idle bastard.

  Deciding to listen to himself giving himself good advice for once, he took a last gulp of coffee and, picking up a towel, set off for the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Once there he heaved his sweater off over his head and, throwing it down on top of his jeans, dived into the water. The chill of it exhilarated him, forcing his tired body to wake up and he found himself laughing and gasping at the shock to his skin as he bobbed up to the surface before striking out to sea with a strong and purposeful crawl.

  The only witness to his early morning exertions besides the usual phlegmatic seagulls, was Matty Tregoning who was out early as usual, hand-lining in his boat to catch mackerel and maybe a prized sea bass or two if he got lucky. He watched Jimmy with an edgy contempt, ready with a succinct expletive ending in ‘off’ to clarify the situation if Jimmy swam too close to his hallowed fishing ground.

  He had no time for artists, convinced as he was that they were just arrogant work-shy ponces who couldn’t be bothered to do a proper job. The fact he had lost a couple of his more impressionable girlfriends to Jimmy in the past had helped to reinforce this point of view.

  It could only have been the novelty of him being an artist, he thought with a satisfied smirk, didn’t look like he had a lot to offer the ladies as far as I can see. In reality he had been too far away to see how well endowed Jimmy was but still the cruel thought gave him some small comfort.

  By now the cold of the water had become too much for Jimmy and he returned to the rocks and towelled himself off frantically. Then, after dressing hurriedly, he lay down in the growing sunlight just out of the breeze to warm up, like a lizard sunning on a rock, and indulged in yet another daydream of his coming seduction of Sunny Smith.

  The object of his lustful thoughts had already consigned Jimmy Fisher to the obsolete-thought bin in the recesses of her mind. He had not called as he had promised and she had no expectation of him calling now. Thankfully her ankle had mended quickly and she had risked taking the strapping off but Edward had insisted she continue to rest it and had helped her by doing any shopping she had needed.

  He had even cooked more meals for her until she felt, uncomfortably, a bit too beholden to him. He had been extremely kind to her and there was no way she would ever be able to repay him for his care of her. What she didn’t know was how much Edward had enjoyed himself playing the role of her protector and provider and it would have alarmed her even more to know just how much this little episode had meant to him.

  She had insisted on coming in to work at the bookshop today, saying she was bored of staying at home, which was true, but it was not the whole truth. She felt the need to start repaying her debt to him, to ease this feeling of being obligated. So Edward had driven her to work and she had started to clean everything possible as a practical way of repaying Edward’s kindness.

  They had reached a very comfortable level in their relationship that allowed her to try a little tentative humour between them again. She even felt bold enough to mention some of the recent ideas she had had for his bookshop and was gratified to find that Edward seemed keen to try them out.

  They spent some of the day planning what needed doing and how to tackle it so by the time they locked up for the night she found she had really enjoyed her return to work despite the slight ache in her ankle. Edward invited her to dinner in town but she felt she needed to relax at home and she really didn’t need to slide even deeper in his debt.

&n
bsp; ‘Look, why don’t you come and eat with me tonight instead? I’m sure I can find something that’s not too far gone at the back of the fridge,’ she said laughing. He laughed with her and she thought again what a lovely, underused smile he had. It was really quite sexy, she caught herself thinking.

  ‘Okay, I’d really like that ... if you’re sure. I’ll just pop out and get us a bottle of wine. Should I get a red or a white to go with the mouldy cheese and withered carrot?’

  She laughed again, delighted with his newfound ability to tease her, and Edward smiled a little self-consciously at this unexpected side of himself he had just discovered.

  They had just parked in the little quayside car park of Porthcarn when they caught sight of Jimmy Fisher jumping down off the sea wall and coming towards them. Sunny immediately felt herself blushing and wished she could control it. There seemed to be no reason at all for it, unless her subconscious knew more than it was telling her.

  She glanced, embarrassed, at Edward noting with dismay that his face had instantly resumed its old, set look again. She now knew him well enough to know this was his defence mechanism for dealing with things he did not like and she could feel tension emanating from him like radio waves.

  ‘Hello, Sunny, you’ve made it back to work then,’ Jimmy called with a grin. The sight of that boring prat Edward Hervey beside her made him sick but he hid his feelings. Successfully, he thought. Edward knew better but could find no solace in the fact that his presence irked Jimmy.

  ‘I thought I had better check on you and see how you were doing. I’m sorry it’s a bit later than I expected but I had to nip up suddenly to London ... trying to get a show organised up there in Cork Street, y’know and they insisted I go up to discuss it,’ he lied with cheerful abandon, carefully avoiding all eye contact with Edward.