by Neil Rowland
“You’d better ask her about that,” I answer.
“I believe that her new husband is also a Christian.”
“He’s a prehistoric pagan,” I assure myself.
“What’s that?”
“Can you say that again?”
“I heard that your former partner is a regular church goer lately.” Was she trying to torment me with this? Did Marilyn marry more than one man? Liz and Dick get back together? Terry and Julie cross over the river?
“Is it any wonder?” I remark.
“Sunday service, evensong, choir practice and fund raising fetes,” Corrina elaborates.
“Like she doesn’t want to be alone with him,” I argue.
“Who do you mean? Frank Noggins? They attend church together, as I understand it.”
“I respect Liz for her Christian faith. I respect Dylan.” Just not Frank.
“But don’t you find her beliefs objectionable?” she challenges.
“Why should I. That’s her trip. It helped her to cope with divorce. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Does that make you feel vulnerable?” Corrina suggests.
“Vulnerable? How?”
“You don’t understand or share her faith. Isn’t that the most important part of her?”
“I didn’t understand her fully. Including her faith. I thought I did. But I was wrong. I was wrong about her. Finally she lost patience and cut me off.”
“What great fun this is!” she declares.
Again my attention is returned to the diamond-shaped handkerchief above her head. “Is that dangerous enough for you?”
“This is a well-kept secret,” she comments.
“I have others.”
“But your business is in trouble?” she blurts out.
“No more than anything else in my life, I can assure you.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she tells me.
I consider from under the shade, with my back to the cool smooth bark. “Everybody thought we were crazy to begin a business like that. Kites and balloons. They didn’t look ahead...and see that people would have more free time. You just can’t predict, so you need to keep a wide horizon.”
“You always have a pithy philosophical thought ready.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“But a good idea doesn’t belong to one person, does it? Not even the person who first thought it up? Even if it was original once,” she remarks.
“Sounds a bit too philosophical to me,” I reply. “Anyway, I told you. My kites are no secret. You can see me flying them most Sunday mornings. So what took you so long to get here?”
“I already explained, Noah, that I noticed you on the down....with your kites. They stand out and you were giving an exhibition. There’s no need to be so jumpy,” she admonishes.
“We were about to pack up. What took you?”
“I went to call on an old boyfriend of mine.” She speaks disjointedly. “But he was out.”
“Did you try dredging up the bottom of a lake,” I suggest.
“This is tremendous fun, Noah.”
“My youngest lad likes that kite as well.”
“Does he? How lovely. Can I buy some kites off you? For myself, that is, not professionally speaking, as last year.”
“You can buy as many as you like. Do you turn away customers? When they want another album of your nose flautists?” I comment.
“Can you demonstrate some other models? I can’t buy your products without learning about them.”
“Don’t pull so hard on the line,” I advise. “That little kite almost flies by itself. You can keep that one, if you like. Try not to mess it around.”
“That’s really sweet of you. Then I’ll take this one back home with me.”
She stares up delightedly into the puffy blue sky, digging her biking boots into the silky grass, delicate hands weaving into the air. Much of the negative radiation between us has evaporated, in this rush of tenderness that a shared interest provokes.
I re-convince myself that she’s my last chance for happiness. But I just had a bad experience.
“How am I doing with this?”
“Keep a hold.”
“Feeling better now, Noah?” she calls over.
“Much.” Her presence was putting my head into a more positive warp.
She pretty much vanished from the action and turned up again from nowhere - like a girl in a David Lynch movie: One of the later Lynch films in which the viewer needs a psychogenic substance to create any sense out of the drama before their eyes. But has Corrina Farlane come back to heal my wounds or to rend them? When it comes to matters of the heart she’s difficult to pin down. My future’s a blank cheque.
Corrina used to be employed by an insurance company, ‘til she quit to work for the Whig Wham music people. She heard their pitch and began a more creative career. She’s been adding her own lick to the world music scene. This is where I came in, as the dishy older guy, with his dirigibles and, unknown to either, a broken heart.
“Why didn’t you come out to see me before?”
“We didn’t make a firm date, did we?”
“Did you get a terrible hang over after that party?” I wonder.
“Not particularly, if you must ask.”
“I’ve never seen a girl nip back so many beakers of vodka,” I say.
“I wasn’t particularly yucky... although I did have a bit of a sore head, if I can remember.”
“Did you ruin your position in the office?”
She turns to look at me. “I shouldn’t say so.”
“Why not?”
“Are you interested?”
“Then this other guy at the studio isn’t anybody special? No, I don’t mean bloody Ashley either.”
I listen to myself utter these juvenile questions. This is what happens when you are back on the singles market, just shy of forty nine, following a huge coronary. But should I stay home nursing my memories? My memories are unravelling like stitches. But I don’t want her sympathy. No, not her sympathy.
“Are you serious about this new boyfriend of yours?” I say.
“Who do you think was the old one?” she asks. A neat thrust.
“Nobody special then.”
“There are a lot of interesting and attractive guys in Bristol.”
“Happy news for Bristol,” I say.
“You know what I mean.”
“Has there ever been any special guy in your life?” I ask. It’s rare that I get this close and personal to her in conversation.
She doesn’t give anything away. You could write down what I know about her personal life on the back of a postage stamp.
“I prefer to keep my distance,” she admits.
“Oh, why is that?” I reply.
“I don’t know, Noah, but if you get hurt or they let you down, or anything like that... then your life is suddenly dictated by this guy. You offer that man the chance to take over your life.”
“Isn’t that a danger we all have to run?” I comment.
“Just months, or weeks before you didn’t know this person. Suddenly you can’t exist or function without him. I’m never going to expose myself to that.”
“You’re pretty tough, aren’t you?”
“Am I?”
“So you keep all your emotions in check?”
“That’s about it.”
“So you are a complete person already.”
“I keep my feelings to myself.”
“You don’t want to grow? You don’t want to absorb new experiences?”
“I’m not going to allow any guy to stay on board.”
“Didn’t you ever allow me on board?” Only for a ride to the shops
, apparently.
“If you don’t mind, Noah...I don’t enjoy phishing about for my individual profile,” she objects. “There are places you don’t go.”
“Tell me about it,” I reply.
I get echoes from her inner life, but she cuts them off. I don’t have to be holed up in the Chelsea Hotel to feel the underlying melancholy of this young woman. I’ve become sensitive in that way. Maybe she’s justified in not revealing her deepest thoughts and feelings to me or to any guy. But I never know where she’s coming from.
“I’m getting cabin fever, aren’t you?” she says.
“Here on the down?”
“Let’s go off somewhere.”
Chapter 20
Even if her heart is clamped shut, Corrina has explored some of the secrets of kite flying.
James is disgusted and baffled by our reunion. He’s content with Classic FM on a Sunday evening, along with his meteorological charts and his two neutered tabbies. After scraping his fish dinner out of a can he’ll set off on a long walk along the towpath. He has a lovely house on the loch of the canal. Sometimes I envy him. No wife, no kids, no worries. But he can’t smooth my mind of Corrina. He thinks I’ve completely lost it over her. I help James to finish clearing away and taking our gear back to the company van. In the process of doing these jobs I regain confidence on my feet.
I told myself that I had only over exerted. Forgot about my condition for an hour or two. The chainsaw massacre. Otherwise I’m fit and sturdy, I convinced myself, as I got back on to my Cuban heels. Determined that she wouldn’t notice anything wrong, further to what she’d already seen in my face. Somehow I found enough willpower to wash over the scenes of horror again. To prove that I was back to match winning fitness.
Maybe the kites put her into a more cheerful phase, as she agrees to visit the pub with me. My pleasure at this made me forget about our mode of transport. She invited me to climb on to the back of her Triumph. I was holding on to her waist, but I didn’t have a helmet. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked me to take such a big risk. Again it could have been my last.
Her take on the highway-code is unconventional. She’s colour blind for starters. She doesn’t always see the red light. Her road manners are not impeccable. She wouldn’t have persuaded Dylan to ride on a motorbike with her.
As she catapults across the face of Bristol, I hold on grimly. Kites are no longer uppermost in my thoughts. Getting from A to B, without reaching Z, is roughly the idea. I have to be more careful about risking everything. She swept me up on her chrome horse and thundered back into the tunnel of love. It’s long and dark. It could be a blind alley.
This is just like old times. Fortunately we get there in one piece. We’re still in one piece; or at least she is. She snorts and snarls into the closed harbour and pulls up in front of her favourite pub. There are muscled guys windsurfing across the water. Apparently she is drawn to wherever they congregate. Like a dire warning on a cigarette pack, they jump to my attention. She’s got an infallible instinct for hunks doing their exercise. Why take me along for the ride? Even in my racquet sports days I was never quite the bronzed god. Love and beauty was mostly in the head for my generation. The evening is drawing in and these rippled guys are finding something risky and strenuous. They’re balancing on the water, pushing their sails into the wind. Apparently she finds them irresistible.
Shakily I dismount her iron horse; I unhook myself stiffly from the leather seat and find the ground, engine heat collected between my thighs. I experience euphoria to be still alive. She’d hurtled through Bristol like Satan’s child spat out from fiery hell. Luckily the cops could no more recognise me on this occasion, than when I scattered the opera crowd that night. They wouldn’t have been able to focus properly.
Corrina Farlane leads me into the ancient pub, as everywhere else. I’m glad to let the bar prop me up. We decide to nurse our drinks outside. There’s an evening chill, but Corrina doesn’t mind. She’s impervious to extremes. But it’s far too late to listen to advice now. We watch the sun set like an atomic test. I discover a string of hot air balloons in the sky, threading a route between the ideal kite flying hills, into the flaming dusk. Wishing I was up there in a balloon too, gazing down at creation from a height, where I am happiest; getting a grip on the fret-board of the great Stratocaster.
But I don’t look away for long. Corrina is a hypnotic presence. Her voice is easy on the inner ear - its fricative timbre. The final rays of Sunday gild her fluttering hair, illuminate her lapis lazuli eyes, which ravish my heart effortlessly. She could strip the pain of Casanova. I still adhere to the powerful illusion that love can save my life. Why bother living otherwise?
Taking me by surprise she invites me back to her place. Trying to discover where she lived was like trying to get the secret ingredient of coca bloody cola. As autumnal darkness falls we shoot back into the centre, rapid as one of those bullet trains that nearly ran me over in Tokyo. Man, I don’t want to go back there. I’m holding on for dear life again. She’s ready to invite me back for cocoa on her own terms. She’s shacked up in a house share in Clifton, I discover, only a few streets away from Big Pink. She chains up that infernal machine after I jump off on to wobbly legs. She explains that the house is owned by one of her bosses at Whig Wham. That megalomaniac music exec with a synthesised piano. Was she dating the guy? Who can say. Best advice is to keep cool and say nothing at this stage. What’s the reward of being competitive? She shares with three other women.
Looking at the unpacked boxes she hasn’t been here long. All her personal stuff, half unwrapped, not quite finding its home. Our dreams of independence can be disappointed, I know from my own experience, when Liz and I began to set up home together. Corrina’s in the upmarket part of the city, but the property hasn’t been well maintained, in either fabric or decoration. She must be in contact with our landlord during his twilight years. Full of character detail, the estate agent would no doubt wax. The parade of empty shops begins at the end of the world mews.
“I have my ambitions,” Corrina tells me.
“Got to start from somewhere,” I reply.
“Saving for a better place, if you want to know.”
“Sensible.”
“You’re not in any hurry are you? Stay for some dinner?”
No, I tell her, as the internal compass begins to whir like Nairn’s meteorological instruments, through a gale. She’s not working up to getting laid, is she? I feel hungry after all that activity from running about the down; and from lying on the grass of the down. Corrina leads me through into their shared kitchen, dusty, crammed and aromatic as a herb and spices shop in a North African souk; offering a view into a long and tangled back garden.
“You ought to trim back those apple trees,” I suggest. “For the autumn. Have a word with Bob. I would come around myself to... He’ll be able to help.”
“I’m sure we can snip a few branches,” she assures me.
That image of a souk is inspired only by friends’ travels. As I sip my wine at the table Corrina rifles through a shelf of curled, stained cookery books.
“I’ll try one of my favourite North African dishes,” she decides.
“I guess you learned all about them at Whig Wham.”
“This job has exposed me to all kinds of influences, actually. It’s been very exciting,” she says.
This dish consists of couscous, roasted vegetables and a type of lamb casserole in an orangey sauce. She cooks with speed and verve. The meat has been prepared in advance. I chop up some vegetables, while she offers instructions. I’m enjoying myself; we seem to be compatible. This is how I might have imagined our life together, until a coronary interrupted our courtship.
We eventually sit down to our succulent, pungent meal, tossing out mutual compliments, not only to the dead sheep. This could have worked, I tell myself. But our rece
nt history still doesn’t look very appealing, however we serve it up. Our taste buds may be luxuriating in Morocco or Tunisia or wherever, but our thoughts still go back to Crete. No offence to that island of course, but that’s where it happened, isn’t it; that’s where the fuse hit the explosive powder.
“Oh yes, this is amazing, isn’t it. Fabulous,” she announces, waving a spoon around.
I’m conscious of eating too much lately. I am trying to fill the empty space. Many evenings I have to combat boredom at home, whenever my kids are out on the town, or perhaps raving in a field or an empty warehouse somewhere or - in Luke’s case - bolted into his room. Inevitably I raid the fridge; while I’m watching a movie; I have a Truffaut boxed set at the moment; accumulating another couple of pounds around my middle, which doesn’t sit pretty on my overall skinny cardiac’s body. At least you’ve got a healthy appetite, I tell myself. But if I imagine that a healthy appetite is going to save me, or even make me feel better the next day, then I’ll just fall flat on my stomach.
“Open another bottle of wine, Noah.”
“Thanks, honey,” I reply, reaching over to her rack.
“Paul Jacob offered me a dozen bottles of Pinot Noir off his chateau. He has another recording studio over there. It’s absolutely fantastic... The sound. Some of the biggest names in world music have recorded there.”
Paul Jacob is one of her bosses: an egomaniac rocker who has served on United Nations special missions. I try to keep authority in my voice. “Every recording studio has its own sound. Sun Studio? Stax?”
“He’s invited me there over Christmas. While they’re remixing the Whig Wham sampler album.”
“Impressive. But I stay clear of remixes,” I insist, knocking back another wine lake.
“That would depend on the producer,” she tells me. “Paul’s the best.”
“Fine,” I remark. “You know, this has been really great... spending the afternoon with you. Calling into the pub... This,” I elaborate, indicating the meal with a fork. “We should definitely do this more often.” I try on the charming, affable mug of a settled and experienced guy, whose company is to be enjoyed and accepted.