by Shawna Lewis
“Have you done any sculpture before?” Belinda took a tentative sip.
“Nah. Just fancied having a go. Used to like Art at school though.”
“Me too. I came here once when I was in the fifth form. Have you been before?”
“I had this chap used to bring me. Classy, ’e were. Educated. Knew all about artists and sculptors and that. Lovely smooth hands ‘e had. You could tell ’e’d never done a day’s ‘ard graft.” Her eyes had a faraway look as she remembered.
“Didn’t he have a job?”
“Yeah. ’E were a vicar or priest or whatever they call ’em. Minister: that was it. Don’t know what the difference is. Do you?”
“I think it’s something to do with which church they belong to,” Bel explained. She did know, but didn’t want to seem too clever.
“How long were you together?”
Marnie laughed and probed her right ear with a manicured talon. “Together? We were never ‘together’. ’E just used to go with me sometimes. You know, for a bit o’ fun. You know.” She jerked her arm suggestively.
Actually, Belinda didn’t know. She looked down, abashed, but Marnie seemed not to notice. She gazed reflectively out at the trees, taking slow drags on her cigarette, by now flattened and drooping. She examined her nail-art.
“There was no harm in it. ’E just wanted company – a woman on ’is arm. Mostly, I listened. ’E were ever so interesting… and kind.”
“What happened to him?”
“Don’t know. ‘E just stopped getting in touch. It were about four year ago. Nicest bloke I’ve ever been with – showed respect, if you know what I mean?”
Belinda nodded.
“I missed the money, I can tell you. It was nice to get paid for being treated right.”
“He paid you?”
“Well, yeah, of course. Usual ‘escort’ rates, though I were a bit more than an escort, I suppose. To be honest, I’d’ve gone out with him for free. Not much to look at, but when you’ve lived the life I’ve ’ad, looks mean nothing.”
“Well yes,” Bel murmured. “Anyway, looks don’t last, do they? My Doug was quite a handsome lad with curly hair when I met him, but now he’s nearly bald and has a bit of a paunch. Still the same bloke underneath, though.”
“If he makes you ’appy, you ’ang on to’im, love.” Marnie sounded so much older and wiser than Bel felt, though she guessed they were pretty similar in age. Her mind flitted briefly to her abortive dalliance with the window-cleaner some months earlier. She wondered what would have happened if she’d gone through with it and Doug had found out.
“This chap, Mick, used to bring me to places like this, ’n’ restaurants for lunch. We even went to York once. I loved The Shambles – I could have spent all day poking round them little shops. We went in ’Minster, too – first church I’d ever been in. It were a bit scary though – all them dead people carved out of stone. I liked the coloured windows.”
“You mean the stained glass?”
“I don’t like to call them that. Stains are summat you try to get rid of.Them windows was beautiful.”
She leant out of the pavilion door and poured the remainder of her cranberry and camomile tea onto the ground in a crimson stream. “See that colour? It reminds me of them windows. I love it. Not keen on the taste though.”
Belinda emptied her mug and they set off towards the sound of the chainsaws. It must be their turn soon.
Within an hour, Belinda was staring at her own piece of wood, wondering what on earth to do with it. The log nestled on its side, on a saw-horse, her plinth being too high. All her ideas had fled.
*
Under their individual gazebos, the rest of the group had started work. Some people had clear ideas about their intentions. Others, like Bel, were still waiting for inspiration. She couldn’t get beyond thinking, ‘Where will I put it?
Ambrose strolled over and looked thoughtful. “A lovely shape, that. What do you see in the wood?”
Bel was embarrassed: she couldn’t really see anything.
“Well, maybe a snail just here,” putting a finger to the tree rings where the trunk had been sawn.
Ambrose nodded thoughtfully. “I can see it too. Why not work with that idea and see what happens? You’ll need to take off the bark first anyway. Remove it all and let’s see what else is revealed. It could be a garden ornament.”
Relieved that she’d been given a definite task, she ran to the pavilion and kitted herself out with goggles, gloves, a range of chisels and a mallet. Then she set to, chipping the bark from her log.
It was hard work, but satisfying. Bel found her mind emptying of everything but the task in hand. It felt so good to be here: free but focussed. The trees; the gentle sun glinting through the leaves; the sound of mallets on chisels; the occasional murmur of voices, and everyone in the group absorbed in their own creation. She wasn’t interested in what anyone else was doing. It was enough that she was here. Ambrose would pay her some attention to make sure she was OK but beyond that, she could do what she liked. She forgot to think about the village hall, the kids and her mother. She even forgot to worry about Dorothy.
She smelt Marnie’s smoky breath before she heard the soft tread of her sequinned slippers.
“Coming to the café for some lunch?”
Actually, Bel had brought sandwiches from home but she was ready for a sit down, and nodded her head. It was all part of the experience. Money being tight, she and Doug did little eating out. She checked her purse and followed her new-found friend, smiling at the thought.
It was the school holidays and the café was crowded with families. The atmosphere was affable and friendly, as if the patrons had absorbed communal good cheer with the fresh air and tranquillity. Small children sat well behaved, sucking milk shakes through straws and swinging their legs happily. Mums and dads smiled and joked and rummaged in rucksacks for tissues and cups with spouts. Grandparents struggled to manoeuvre all-terrain baby buggies between the tables; those already seated smilingly hutched in their chairs to open up the aisles for new arrivals bearing trays.
As Belinda followed Marnie to a small table that had become vacant near the window, she stooped to pick up fallen paper serviettes, but was ignored by the chatting adults. Her eyes widened to engage with each child; she smiled in envious sympathy with wind-blown adults trying to spoon-feed reluctant toddlers. She was sorry to have grown out of that world. Those had been her happiest days.
Once seated, she surprised herself by ordering a seafood salad and a flapjack. Doug couldn’t stand anything that came out of the sea and his favourite cakes were jam doughnuts; for convenience, Belinda’s own diet tended to reflect his tastes.
A little bit rebellious of you, Bel! You’ll be trying hummus soon!
The women chatted about Ambrose, the other people on the course and how they came to be there. Marnie had noticed that one chap had knuckles crippled with arthritis. They wondered how he’d cope with the tools. Marnie, it turned out, had done a couple of months’ relief work behind a bar, cash in hand, and had taken her time deciding how to spend the money, a bigger sum than she’d ever had at any one time. She’d seen a poster advertising the sculpture course on the wall of a smelly underpass in Leeds.
It was clear that this woman had lived a life totally unlike her own, yet Belinda found Marnie’s openness comfortable.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked.
“Not far from Leeds, though I moved around a lot. I stayed with different people – foster homes sometimes – or with people my mam knew.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Nah! Don’t think so at any rate. Last I heard she were going off to Crete wi’ some chap who ran a bar. Then I got a text to say she were in ’ospital wi’ serious head injuries and never heard any more. That must’ve bin… ooh… eight or nine year ago now.”
“Can you not find out?”
“Don’t particularly want to. She were a crap mother. Didn’t give a damn where I wa’ or what I were doing, even when I were right small. It’s a wonder I grew up at all.”
“That must have been awful. What about your father?”
“Never met ’im. She ’ad me when she were fifteen and I don’t think she knew which lad ’ad got her pregnant.”
Belinda thought of Melanie. Poor little girl; how would she cope with pregnancy at fifteen? God forbid that it should happen. She made a mental note to have ‘that talk’ with her daughter when she got home. It was difficult to imagine the life Marnie described, though it revealed a glimpse of thrilling uncertainty which Bel thought could be liberating. Her own life, second child in a stable family, married mother of two, dwelling in only four houses in her forty-three years – seemed yawningly dull. It was almost criminal, really, to let it be so uneventful. She was wasting her life. Her only achievements were her children, and once they were grown…what would she do?
When Belinda fished out some snapshots of Aidan and Melanie from her purse, Marnie looked at them with longing and regret.
“They look right clean and healthy,” she said. “I bet you’re a good mum. Let’s see one of Doug.”
Bel didn’t carry one of those around with her and, for the first time, wondered why not. Maybe she didn’t feel such a strong need for him as she did for the kids. She supposed he was her rock, as they say, but her mind came up with an image of a large, immovable boulder blocking her path. Then a line from the old song ‘I am a Rock’, by Simon and Garfunkel: Doug was a rock, but also an island, separate, though fed and watered from the mainland that was Belinda herself. She felt guilty at the thought and changed the subject quickly. Doug, after all, was the breadwinner.
*
Although Marnie was good company, Belinda was beginning to think that perhaps she was not the sort of woman an assistant librarian ought to be hanging around with. Some of the details she was letting slip made her past seem quite seedy, rather than exciting. Her new friend, though, viewed Belinda’s life as a charmed one.
“No, my life is really dull. Yours might have been tough but at least you’ve lived.”
Marnie smirked.
“Shows how much you know! ’Ave you ever ’ad to go on t’streets to get enough food to eat? Or ever ’ad to sleep rough?”
“No I haven’t. Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that, sometimes, I’m afraid that I’ll live my whole life looking after other people and not doing anything for myself.”
“You’re ’ere, aren’t you? And your ’ubby let you come? And your mam and dad are looking after your lass for you? Seems to me you don’t know when you’re well off.”
Belinda felt ashamed as she poured another cup of tea from the pot and smiled at the glances from the couple at the next table.
Back at the site, they separated and returned to their own mental worlds, chiselling bark and studying the form of their pieces. Occasional glances around showed that most others were a little further on, but nothing seemed to have taken shape yet. Ambrose and Paul moved quietly among them, offering help or advice, lifting a heavy piece into a different position or, occasionally, making sweeping cuts with a chainsaw to help a sculpture move towards its creator’s vision.
Belinda emptied her mind. It was wonderful to be able to concentrate without fear of interruption, yet she was not really concentrating. It was more just being and doing.
So Marnie had once been ‘on the streets’. That meant, surely, that she’d been a prostitute? Belinda had never met one before. What was it like as a job? She couldn’t imagine there being much call for it round Sallby.
At the end of the afternoon, bone-weary, Belinda checked in at Hepworth House, a tidy B&B in a detached villa half a mile from the park. She settled in her room before undressing, in readiness for her exercises. The carpet here was thick and heavily patterned… serviceable rather than attractive, but it felt good under her skin, with her eyes closed. She tried to remember the ‘not nice’ mantras, but it was difficult to summon up any enthusiasm for her experiment just now. Just let things flow, she decided. Her breathing slowed, her muscled limbs relaxed, her mind drifted to slumber.
*
Awaking with a start and pangs of hunger, she noticed gobbets of carpet fluff between her bare toes and wondered where else she might find them. Another shower, fresh clothes, a dab of lipstick and perfume and she slipped gently downstairs into the dining room to eye up the other diners while she waited. There were a couple of lone men, both of them around her own age, both quite presentable. If she had been Marnie, she would know how to create an opportunity.
She tried to imagine how it was done: flirting. Did one toss one’s hair coquettishly and gaze into the man’s eyes, fluttering false eyelashes whilst exposing some cleavage? She’d have a hard time to do the last of these, being a 34A cup on a good day. Mostly she just wore a sports bra so there was nothing much to look at. “Seduction in a Sports Bra”: could be the title of a cheap novel. In real life, she thought, it was unlikely ever to happen.
Her hair was too short to toss coquettishly, and the thought of a middle-aged coquette was nauseating anyway. Seduction, rather than coquetry, she decided, but immediately her head was filled with images of Dad during his short-lived craze for marquetry. And once Dad was in her head, he stayed, glaring at her with disapproval as he shaped tiny bits of veneer into a picture of a wolf in a pine forest.
The moment had gone. When her prawn cocktail starter arrived, Belinda concentrated on not letting Marie Rose sauce drip onto her lemon BHS top.
Later, as Dad’s image faded, she gained enough confidence to acknowledge the other diners. One of the lone men, seated at the next table, actually smiled and asked if Belinda had stayed at Hepworth House before.
“No. Have you?” Her voice came out too high-pitched and she was conscious of a strand of cress lodged between her front teeth. She dared not smile back.
“Yes, I’m a regular,” the by-now-charming man replied.
He was tall and thickset, with a shaven head. The charcoal grey suit and white shirt looked incongruous on him: he was built for Rugby League and hod-carrying. The black tie escaped her notice.
“Here on business?”
“Family business. Not anymore though. This might be my last visit.”
She looked at him quizzically, wishing he would turn away so she could fish out the cress.
“It’s been my father’s funeral today.”
Belinda noticed the black tie at last and tried to look sympathetic.
“I’m sorry…” as if it were her fault.
They each finished their super-rich bread-and-butter pudding at the same time. During an awkward silence, Belinda got up to leave the room and remove the cress. As she passed into the hallway, Prince Charming followed. He tilted his head towards another door.
“There’s a bit of a bar in the lounge. Can I get you a drink?”
A jangling in her head like the village hall fire alarm made her gape. This man, this hunk (there was no other word for him), wanted to buy her a drink! Her face burnt but she tried to look serene. Forget seductive; concentrate on avoiding ridiculous.
She asked for a dry white wine. This was the only alcoholic drink she ever asked for. He stood by the tiny semi-circular glass-topped bar and pinged the brass bell while Belinda wiggled the strand from between her front teeth.
The landlady’s husband, Ron, came through from their domestic quarters to serve them where they sat on chintzy armchairs. She found it difficult to relax, though Charmer seemed OK. Belinda supposed he was emotionally drained. It had been a sad day for him.
In a short time he had revealed enough about himself for Bel to know he was neither rugby player nor hod-carrier, but that he worked at two or more night-clubs an
d casinos in the city. His name was Bud Baxter, but on his birth certificate it said Daryl. His dad had been a bugger and treated his mum like a doormat. But when all was said and done, “Your dad’s your dad and you have to do right by him.”
So there’d been a nice funeral package from the Co-op, hymns at the crematorium – Jerusalem and Bread of Heaven, his mam being English and his granddad Welsh – and a finger-buffet wake at the pub in the village. His sons had given him a good send-off, which was more than the old sod deserved.
Bud didn’t ask Belinda much about herself, which she didn’t mind. His life was much more interesting than hers, anyway. Despite this, her eyelids were drooping with weariness and she needed to go to bed. At last, she took advantage of Bud nipping to the Gents’ to gather up her handbag and get to her feet, waiting until he returned to wish him, “Goodnight.”
She just didn’t have the energy for anything else. She fell asleep as soon as she climbed between the polycotton sheets.
*
A gentle knocking on the door roused her enough to look at her watch. 1.30. Sleepily concluding that there must be an emergency, though there was no sound of alarm, she opened the door in her gold-coloured dressing gown.
Whereas in his funeral suit Bud had looked well built and firm, the baggy jersey cotton of his night attire revealed his wobbly bits. Wobbly lots, actually, she noticed. Tears rolled down his cheeks, coming to rest on his darkened jowls. (Bud was a two-shaves-a-day man, as a rule.) His shoulders heaved with sobs. Bel stepped aside to let him in. Her brain was jangling again.
Bud did not take her in his arms as men do in films and TV soaps. Instead, he sat on the green velvet stool facing the dressing table, staring at himself in the mirror and stroking his five o’clock shadow. What he saw was not pretty.
Distressed to see this grown man crying, Bel approached behind him and laid her hands gently on his shoulders in a gesture of comfort. It was impossible to see such grief and remain aloof. He leant back against her. She could smell the beer on his rising breath.
It all felt terribly racy.