The Catalyst

by Angela Jardine

  Sunny smiled hesitantly, not knowing how to respond.

  ‘Still, it looks like you’ve been well taken care of.’ Was that a sneer in his words? She glanced at him but his expression was innocent.

  ‘I think I had better be getting home,’ she heard Edward murmur beside her, ‘we’ll eat together another night. Just remember what I told you.’ He turned abruptly without waiting for her reply, he had not missed her reaction on seeing Jimmy and he felt nauseous.

  Sunny nodded, preoccupied with rapidly working out a lie in case Jimmy asked what Edward had meant by that last comment. She was grateful for Edward’s tact, one thing she could not face was the two of them trying to make superficial conversation over cups of tea in her little cottage. Something told her she would have felt like a dog biscuit between two bulldogs. She glanced anxiously at his already retreating back before turning back to face Jimmy.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to call round Jimmy, as you can see I’m almost fully recovered,’ she said, rallying now Edward had gone. She started to limp up the street to her cottage and he automatically fell into step beside her, even limping slightly to make her laugh.

  The unexpectedness of seeing him had shaken her and her hand trembled as she put the key in the lock. Moving to block his view, she hoped he had not noticed. She hoped in vain. He had noticed and it intrigued him. He laughed inwardly. So she’s not so cool after all, he thought with satisfaction. I didn’t imagine everything I felt between us out there on the cliff. Oh God, this is meant to be and it’s going to be so good.

  He towered over her, deliberately standing far too close to her as if trying to intimidate her into something. She turned her head slightly sideways, glancing up at him with a sudden, shy smile he found unexpectedly arousing. He suspected it was a totally natural gesture to her and she had no idea how it made him feel. In that instant he wanted to sweep her up and carry her inside to bed but he knew there would be the usual elaborate, and somewhat tedious, game to play before he got what he wanted from her.

  Sunny too, had been instantly aware of the same overwhelming physical sensation she had felt for Jimmy on the cliff path. He would have been surprised to know she too had had the same thoughts of instant gratification. She too would willingly have cut through all the usual rules of the game at that moment. Only the fact that she felt momentarily shocked at her thoughts stopped her from acting on them. That and years of always doing what was traditionally considered to be the right thing.

  But there it stopped. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, Jimmy’s ebullience evaporated once he got inside the cottage and he hovered about awkwardly near the door, suddenly feeling wrong-footed. By contrast, Sunny’s confidence had grown, especially now they were out of the public scrutiny of the other cottages in the street. She felt a little more in control and even looked forward to finding out more about Jimmy Fisher.

  ‘Would you like some tea, Jimmy … or a glass of wine? Excuse me if I just light the fire first … I feel a little cold.’

  She knelt down and he sat down on the sofa trying to recapture his earlier relaxed attitude, watching her as she lit the fire. Almost like some sort of modern day vestal virgin, he thought seeing her absorbed expression and the graceful movements as she arranged the logs, taking in the girlish curve of her spine as she sat back on her heels.

  He mentally undressed her as he usually did with women but for some reason this time his maleness immediately lost out to the artist in him and he was suddenly struck by a strong desire to paint her. She carries herself like a dancer, he thought, instantly arranging her mentally in a variety of poses. Strangely, given his very physical obsession with her ever since they had met, he only fleetingly realised that this, in the time-honoured way of male artists, could be his way into a sexual relationship with her.

  Now all he could see in his imagination was her standing naked with her back to him, her head turned to one side, a shoulder raised, an arm delicately outstretched, the heels of her feet raised off the ground … poised to sway to one side … poised to dance. Jimmy Fisher had found a new muse.

  ‘Sunny …’ he paused, trying to weigh up his words, ‘would you ... could I ask you … to pose for me? I’d like to paint a life study of you … er … that means ... naked.’

  He watched her closely to see the effect of his words, thinking he should have been a little less direct, a little less blunt. His use of the word ‘naked’ worried him but he felt he should let her know immediately just how he wanted to work with her.

  Even so he hoped he had managed to hide the urgency of his need to paint her behind a bland request, a moderate tone. Just at this moment he felt far from moderate about this new idea and was nervous in case she refused him, in case his unusual honesty had lost him his prize.

  Belatedly he realised he had not asked her at all how she had managed since he had last seen her but it was already too late, far too late to show concern for her instead of exhibiting his own obsessions. At least he now saw his own shallowness and he felt quite cheered that he had recognised this disgraceful piece of emotional analysis.

  Sunny looked up from her place by the hearth, appearing startled by his proposal. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to have noticed I haven’t asked her how she has managed this last week with a sprained ankle, he thought, with a feeling of relief at having got away with it.

  ‘Erm ... okay.... I suppose that would be … yes, why not! That’s very flattering, Jimmy.’

  He had nervously watched her frown as she thought over his proposition, trying to adjust to the idea of being a model, a nude model, but she had agreed with a laugh so he felt that was a promising sign.

  Sunny knew that when he had painted her he would want more, she was sure he was using ‘painting’ as a euphemism for sex. She smiled self-consciously to herself at the crude honesty of the thought and hoped Jimmy couldn’t read her mind.

  Apparently it appeared he could. He grinned at her and she quailed a little before the wolfishness of his smile, but it was only for a second. Mostly she felt relaxed with him and appreciated his directness. Nobody knew better than her that life really was far too brief for too much small talk, too many social niceties.

  ‘Say tomorrow, after work? I take it you are at work tomorrow? Why don’t you come round to the farm at seven … no, six … I can make something to eat … provided it’s beans on toast … and then we can get to work and I can immortalise you.’ He showed no awareness at his own conceit. For him it was just a fact.

  He stayed just long enough to drink a glass of wine, cups of tea now having little charm for him in his heightened state of enthusiasm. He was aware he was delaying the moment of full-on contact with Sunny but he had a strange feeling that when he finally made love to her, he wouldn’t want to leave her.

  He smiled secretly to himself at the ‘made love’ in his thoughts. That was a new one, he didn’t usually think of sex as ‘making love’. He was also aware he didn’t want to make Sunny the village’s latest ‘fallen woman’, an incomer outcast; he knew they still existed in the minds of the older locals.

  He gave himself a mental Brownie point for this newly discovered sensitivity and felt he had now more than fully redressed the balance for his earlier shallowness. Standing close to her again to say goodbye, willing himself not to touch her but mesmerised by her eyes, he found it hard to open the door and leave.

  ‘I must go …’ he said, realising he had been staring down at her for too long. He felt the expected reaction in his crotch as he breathed in the scent of her. In a daze he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, vaguely aware her lips had parted to receive his and he felt them tremble slightly as he kissed her.

  He was gentle but he didn’t want to be. He wanted to grind his mouth on hers and penetrate her with his tongue, wanted to crush her to him until she gasped for breath. His heart was hammering inside him, sending the blood rushing like a tidal wave in all directions.

  The reaction was so overwhelming it startled him at fir
st. He was so used to the physical sensations of lust but somehow there was an extra dimension this time and he found himself thinking, so this is what love is like. Not just an ache in the crotch then.

  Chapter 13

  The next day passed in bursts of restless activity for Jimmy. Unable to think of anything but the coming evening he cleared a corner of the farmhouse’s old parlour to work in. The studio was too cold and draughty and being open to the rafters, impossible to heat, so he decided he would light a fire in the parlour hoping that would make the room comfortable enough for Sunny.

  He tried tentatively sketching a background for his drawing of her but then decided it would be unnecessary. He could see the finished work so clearly in his mind, just a flow of minimal lines with perhaps a splash of pale colour washed over one area; simple enough to be an almost abstract impression yet powerful enough to convey the strength and grace of a dancer.

  He knew he would simply call it ‘Dancer’ and maybe this work would lead to a whole new subject for him. As usual the thought of work, especially new work, excited him.

  If that thought excited him the thought of what might … no, whatwould … happen afterwards threatened to bring him to fever pitch. He had tried not to think about it in case it was somehow unlucky, fearing his performance would be impaired by such over-anticipation. Whenever his mind wandered that way he had tried to rein it in but had failed repeatedly.

  It was unusual for Jimmy to even admit he had feelings much less examine them but now he found himself alternately bewildered and exasperated by his reactions to this forthcoming evening with Sunny. This new behaviour was not altogether pleasant and he was becoming irritated by his storm of uncontrollable emotions.

  Sunny too was having a strange day. She had tried to get on with painting the bookshelves at the shop but had found her mind full of vivid scenes of passion between herself and Jimmy that had left her uncomfortably flushed.

  Edward too, had not helped matters by reverting to his old behaviour, being cool and excessively polite in his manner towards her. She could sense his disappointment in her and had reluctantly admitted to herself he could well be right about Jimmy. He was obviously bad news so why couldn’t she just avoid him? She had tried, mostly successfully she thought, to hide her preoccupation from Edward and he tried hard to hide the fact that he had guessed exactly what she was thinking.

  He found himself alternately annoyed with her and then himself for feeling annoyed with her. He had seen Jimmy leave Sunny’s cottage the evening before and although he knew Jimmy hadn’t stayed long there was something of an obscene jauntiness about Jimmy’s walk as he left that had worried Edward.

  There was such an air of satisfaction about that walk it had instantly brought him a very unwelcome vision of Sunny and Jimmy together. He had blotted it out quickly but not quickly enough and the picture had seriously rattled him.

  Today, suspiciously, Sunny had insisted on coming in her own car to work, saying she had to go somewhere in the evening and although he knew he had no right to ask her if she was going to see Jimmy, he almost could not restrain himself. Eventually he found himself so tense at Sunny’s undercurrent of what he gloomily suspected was anticipation that he told her he was closing the shop early.

  Despite it only being mid-afternoon the day had already been too long and he felt drained with trying to control his irritation. He felt old and tired and he just wanted to go home and sit in front of the television watching whatever came on, game shows, soap operas, anything that would act as an anaesthetic to the soap opera that was real life.

  It had hurt him to watch Sunny agree with alacrity to closing the shop instead of arguing that it made no business sense as she would have usually have done. He almost hated her in that moment for her giddy lack of concern for his feelings before he realised he wasn’t supposed to be having these feelings for her

  They were his secret, he had not declared his interest so she didn’t know how deeply he cared about her. How could she be expected to care how he felt? The cold logic of his thoughts didn’t help him any.

  When Sunny had told Edward she wasn’t going back home to Porthcarn that evening, she hadn’t been telling the entire truth. She had wanted to go home briefly before going to Jimmy’s to have a shower and change her clothes. With a weak revival of a long-ago vanity she wanted to look her best for an evening with him, feeling she somehow needed to bolster her flagging courage.

  She hadn’t needed any powers of attraction for such a long time that she was still not really sure she had any and when he wasn’t with her she began to lose the sense of that electrical storm between their bodies. What she hadn’t taken into account was how nerve-wracking the waiting would be and now, as she stood under the shower letting it drum on her head, she wondered just what the hell she thought she was doing. Jimmy’s desire to paint herwas just a pretence, wasn’t it?

  In fact she was only half right, she still knew too little of him to know of his obsession with his work. Time continued to slip by as she tried to work out all the angles, all the ramifications of what the coming evening might bring. The doubts were gathering and only now did she wonder if he might have a wife or partner, having naively taken it on trust he had the right to pursue her.

  He had invited her into his home so naturally, so easily, there had seemed nothing furtive about his invitation. He could not have done that if he had been living with someone. Surely she was reading the situation right and he didn’t just want to paint her? She had the grace to blush at this thought now but put her increased warmth down to the shower being too hot.

  There was also the troubling echo of Edward’s warning. Jimmy had a reputation for affairs Edward had said and she knew he was not the sort of man to tell lies. He had not mentioned whether Jimmy was married or not and she wondered if he knew.

  She wished now she had asked him more questions about Jimmy but she had been too busy trying to reassure him that Jimmy did not interest her. And anyway how many affairs were enough to be considered scandalous to Edward, who might just possibly be a bit prim? And what exactly did he mean by affairs? Surely a single man was allowed to look for love?

  Everything was suddenly becoming overwhelmingly complicated until she realised that none of it mattered anyway, she just wanted to be held in Jimmy’s arms. The need to give herself up to the physical act of love, sex, whatever name it was given didn’t matter, she just needed to take time to feel the warmth and comfort of another body against hers.

  It was getting on for six o’clock before she left her cottage. Satisfied at last that she looked casual enough to have tea, be painted by, and possibly have sex with, a comparative stranger she sprayed herself carelessly with perfume and grabbed her handbag. Unfortunately, Edward was just driving down the narrow street as she slammed her front door closed behind her.

  Oh rats, she thought guiltily, reminded that she had told him she wasn’t coming home after work. She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen him as the narrowness of the street meant he practically had to run over the toe ends of her boots on his way past her. Waving to him with a false cheeriness as he passed her she quickly followed his car down to the quayside car park before getting into her own car just as he was parking.

  She hoped she was giving him the impression she was just a woman in a hurry, rather than a guilty woman in a hurry. She fastened her seatbelt and started the engine all at the same time in case he came across and tried to engage her in any sort of conversation. Then, flushed with embarrassment at her own confusing behaviour, she found herself surreptitiously watching him in her rear view mirror as she drove out of the car park.

  Edward had had absolutely no intention of talking to Sunny. The casual clothing hadn’t fooled him, he knew where she was going and he hated the way the thought hurt him. He let himself into his kitchen and found the bottle of wine he had started the night before.

  Pouring himself a large glassful he threw himself down on one of the window seats overlooking the harbo
ur and drank as much of it as he could all in one go in the hope it could take away his hurt quickly. It wasn’t the right way to drink wine and it wasn’t the way he usually drank but it might just dull the pain. When the bottle was empty, he opened another.

  Jimmy came out of his back door as Sunny drove into his yard. The timing told her he had been watching out for her and now the reality of being with Jimmy had got this close she found her composure slipping. The underlying reason she was here seemed crude, obvious, so basic somehow that she felt embarrassed and ashamed by the fact. She looked up at him hoping her smile hid the churning of her stomach.

  Jimmy too, was nervous. Unaccountably so, he thought. Surely he had been here so many times before, why was this one so different? He had had a mouthful of witty lines practised in his head but none of them came to mind as he opened the door of Sunny’s car for her. Instead he just stood drowning in her mermaid gaze as usual.

  ‘Well, you’re here then.’ He spoke softly as if she was some sort of injured bird he was afraid of scaring off.

  ‘Of course … I never pass up an invitation to become immortalised.’ She hoped she had hit just the right note of flippancy to hide her misgivings. Despite them however her mind was screaming, hold me, hold me! The sensation shook her. For the first time in her life she desperately needed a man to physically touch her, wanted to feel the warmth of this man’s flesh against hers with a desperation fed by neglect.

  ‘I’m really glad you agreed to come over,’ he said, gesturing towards the back door and thinking, why am I talking like a prat? He took care not to touch her, still keeping his distance until they got inside in case she took fright. After all they were on his territory now and it was isolated up here on the cliff. He awarded himself another of his mental Brownie points for the sensitivity of this observation as he lifted the latch and stepped inside, holding the door open for her.