by Freya North
‘Knock, knock!’ he said, outside the bathroom door.
‘Enter!’ Jasper replied.
‘Are you decent?’ asked Peregrine, hand hovering above the doorknob.
‘That,’ said Jasper amidst sonorous splashing, ‘is totally subjective. But you may avert your gaze should anything offend!’
Peregrine found Jasper swamped by bubble bath, wearing Jocelyn’s floral shower cap and brandishing the loofah.
‘Gracious boy!’ exclaimed Peregrine. ‘Put it away!’
Jasper, of course, merely wielded the loofah more furiously in lewd thrusting movements, from which he derived much hilarity. Peregrine raised an eyebrow witheringly.
‘Submerge that Thing or else!’
‘Else what!’ pouted Jasper.
‘Or I shan’t be reading you the missive just arrived from Ireland.’
Jasper laid the loofah neatly on the side of the bath in between a plastic hippo and a glass jar of dark mauve bath salts.
‘Read!’ he said, settling back down into the bubbles and concentrating on the reflection of his bony toes at the far end of the bath.
‘Hullo Boys! bla bla …’
‘Perers, per-lease! No bla bla-ing!’
Peregrine settled himself, fully clothed, on to the bidet, stuffing a towel against the taps and another behind his head. Clearing his throat, he swiftly scanned the letter, smiling at some parts, looking perplexed at others.
‘Gracious, damn!’
‘What?’
‘Gus Halloran, that’s what – remember how we prophesied that he’d be one way or the other?’
‘Don’t tell me it’s the other?’
‘I don’t need to – Chloë’s done that. Bugger him!’
Jasper raised his eyebrows.
‘I think you’d better just read it, actually.’
‘Righty-ho. Well, I’ve done the Dear-boys-health-and-weather bit.
‘Ireland is a funny place, I think it’s probably very beautiful but to tell the truth, I’ve seen very little. If I had my own way, I’d have seen a great deal more but here at Ballygorm I must do as I’m told for there are consequences if I don’t. Doing as I’m told amounts to working hard all day, each day, apart from Sundays. Sundays I am restricted to places within walking distance because the cars are washed and pampered and out of bounds. Usually I’m too tired to do much other than read beneath one of the great oaks; at least it affords me peace and quiet and a chance to transport myself some place else.
‘Gus is setting up a sculpture trail in his estate and I am typing things and calling people for him. I think his idea is wonderful but unfortunately I will be long gone by the time it opens. Or should I say fortunately?’
‘Here we go.’
‘Indeed, poor Clodders. ‘Darling Jasper and dearest Peregrine. Damn, damn it. I’m feeling tearful as I write. I’m beneath an old oak and have no tissues – the view is so pretty and yet I feel so isolated. I don’t dare phone you as the sound of your voices would be too far away. But I’m not very happy here at all. I can’t say that it’s specifically Ireland I don’t like, for I’ve seen so little of it to judge. And I can’t say that the people are unfriendly for I have Mary the housekeeper who is lovely to me, and Pat the gardener who has few teeth but a great sense of (mostly unintelligible) humour. However, I cannot find solace in these two for long enough, for Gus is demanding on my presence. The work is interesting enough – and I do like sculpture – but, well, Gus, you know.’
‘Gus what, Chloë?’
‘Give her a mo’ – can’t you tell that she feels somewhat humiliated? ‘It’s not that he’s hostile or inhospitable – I mean, you should see my room, all the lovely suppers – and he is most polite. It’s just that he isn’t particularly friendly and I feel a little insecure. I am trying hard but I can’t engage him. Was I just spoilt with the Gin Trap? I don’t know – you know when you love someone, you automatically want to love the people special to them? Well, Gus must’ve meant something to Jocelyn or else she would not have sent me here. And yet, I find it difficult to like him for I feel he is tolerating me merely as a favour to Jocelyn. Or to her memory. And that’s the nub of it, boys – I have no idea who he is in that respect because he hasn’t mentioned her since I arrived. He shot me a look saying “don’t!” when I tried to talk about her. He even asked that I don’t wear my brooch – he says “It’ll catch on things”. And I suppose that’s why I feel lonely – there’s no point of contact here. Gin and I would “talk Jocelyn” for hours on end – often repeating ourselves quite happily. Gin was immediately fond of me simply because I was Jocelyn’s god-daughter and I trusted and liked her from the start because she was my godmother’s pal.
‘Who is Gus Halloran? Do you know? Did Jocelyn? Really know him? Why has she sent me here – do you know?
‘Can you help?
‘Shall I come back?
‘I’m wondering whether I might venture to Scotland earlier – from the Antrim coast you can see the Mull of Kintyre and Ailsa Craig clearly. At Torr Head, Scotland is only twelve miles away and, though I’ve never been there, it does appear to have this magnetic pull.
‘Wales seems a dream away.
‘Islington no longer exists.
‘You two seem so far.
‘I miss you and send you all my love, hoping that you’ll write to me very, very soon. Please don’t phone me, it would make me cry and I mustn’t.’
‘Poor duck,’ said Jasper.
‘Poor lamb,’ said Peregrine.
‘Poor Gus.’
‘Poor man.’
‘We ought really to tell her no more than Jocelyn has,’ reasoned Jasper, scrutinizing his wrinkled skin and trying to distinguish between the furrows caused by his excessively leisurely baths and those attributable solely to age.
‘Indeed. As much as my heart bleeds for Chloë, it is her heart that Jocelyn believed was in need of a little toughening.’
‘Ronan will be arriving tomorrow morning – I’ll be in Belfast. Make sure you’re around from eightish.’
‘Course!’ said Chloë in between mouthfuls of mushroom tart. ‘Please – excuse my ignorance – but could you remind me who Ronan is?’
‘I cannot remind you of that which previously I have not informed you,’ said Gus somewhat irritated, chewing quickly on the quiche and congratulating Mary on it with his eyebrows. The three of them continued their lunch in uneasy silence. Chloë tried to eat as noiselessly as possible and became acutely aware of the clink of cutlery and Gus’s breathing. It was fairly fast and slightly whistling. It sounded angry. Certainly it annoyed her.
Dabbing the corners of his mouth and taking careful sips at his apple juice, Gus took an orange and rolled it vigorously between his hands before peeling it.
‘Ronan Brady is to be our sculptor in residence. You’ll show him to the cottage at the end of the south field. You will tell him that his order of Kilkenny limestone has arrived and you’ll take him to the small barn where it is awaiting him.’
‘OK,’ said Chloë, refusing fruit and looking at her lap. ‘What’s his work like?’ she asked though she would have preferred to remain silent.
‘Sublime,’ answered Gus, pressing his thumbs down into the centre of the orange to part it. A jet of juice speared out and caught Chloë sharply in the eye.
‘Ouch!’ she said.
‘Excuse me,’ said Gus.
TWENTY
‘Look, Morwenna,’ said William to the dirty dishes, ‘I’m just not ready for commitment. Damn no, that’s too clichéd.’ He turned his attention to unloading the washing-machine and spoke to his socks as he hung them over the radiator to dry. ‘Morwenna, I love you but I’m no longer in love with you – no – I don’t feel in love with you. No, no, no! Far too corny.’ William spoke no more to his crockery or apparel but went about the housework half-heartedly until his muttering irritated him so much that he left his cottage for his studio.
‘Morwenna, I just feel we’ve grown apart. Je-sus! Are
there no original sayings for terminating relationships?’
He kneaded and wedged a batch of raku clay with another of fine white, slicing the clay into sections and then slamming them against each other, blending the bodies together and removing any air pockets. He continued his soliloquy, sometimes out loud, sometimes to himself.
‘Damn it, Morwenna’ he cried at a spoutless teapot, ‘I no longer love you and doubt whether I ever did. I don’t want you to be a part of my life and I don’t want to make cups and saucers for you to sell either.’
He turned his attention back to the prepared clay and stared at it for a while. He broke into a smile and chuckled as he divided it into fist-size balls.
I’ll make cups and saucers for my own bloody use!
‘Look, Morwenna, this isn’t working. I feel stifled and I am unhappy. Please understand that I do this not to hurt you. I want to be by myself for a while. I do not want a relationship with you.’
He hurled a ball of clay on to the wheel and started it running high. Dripping water over the clay, he cupped his hands around it and, thrusting his elbow into his hip, sustained the pressure as he began to centre it and commence a good day’s work. There was no room for Morwenna in his thoughts. No room for her at all.
‘He called me Benedict, talked about the War, about Sheffield, and then blabbered for ten minutes solid,’ said William to Mac as they puffed away an afternoon on their pipes, ‘jer, je, je, je!’
‘Dear oh dear,’ brooded Mac, looking with admiration at the cup and saucer William had brought him, ‘what caused the jer je-ing?’
‘Lunacy!’ declared William, his voice breaking.
Mac let it lie.
Morwenna closed her car door, wrapped her coat and her arms around herself and took a deep breath. Barbara hovered with delight at the side entrance to Peregrine’s Gully, her yellow eyes flickering menace, her stubby tail quivering in anticipation. Morwenna refused to establish eye contact and sustained an assertive march to within inches of the goat. Barbara gave an odd gurgle in her throat and pawed the ground, lowering her head and brandishing her stubby horns. Morwenna was about to stand stock-still but suddenly thought better of it.
‘Oh fuck off, Barbara,’ she hissed witheringly, thrusting her knee into the unsuspecting flank of the flabbergasted creature, ‘as if it’s you I’ve come to see.’
He looks up from the wheel knowing the footfalls are not Barbara’s. Acid rises in his stomach and he racks his brains for his little speech. He’s rehearsed it well. And now forgotten it totally. Her presence is unexpected and throws him off his guard so he waits until he sees her from the corner of his eye and she is right inside the studio.
‘Morwenna!’
‘William!’ she says cordially. She is wearing a navy blue woollen coat and dark leather gloves. She looks smart. A grown-up. Intimidating. A little. ‘Am I disturbing you?’
‘Well,’ he falters, glancing at the perfect cylinder begging to be moved into a vase.
‘I’ll not be long.’ Her tone is businesslike and unnerves William further.
‘Everything OK?’ He wipes his hands on his apron but stays astride his wheel. Morwenna twitches her face and gives a strange half-smile.
‘I’ve come with your birthday present,’ she says brightly, thrusting her hands into her pockets and perching on a small corner of the table. William looks perplexed.
‘But my birthday’s not until August!’
‘I do know that – but I thought you’d like it early.’
‘Oh!’
What else could he say? What was it he was going to say?
‘I thought you ought to start your thirties as you mean them to continue,’ says Morwenna with a generous smile. William looks quietly for the present but, apart from her hands, there is obviously nothing in her pockets.
‘Thirty!’ he exclaims. ‘Don’t remind me!’
‘It reminds me how long ago it was for me,’ says Morwenna morosely, silently chastising herself for doing so. William looks at the clay awkwardly, anticipating the you-think-I’m-old-and-ugly tirade.
‘Very nice,’ he says instead.
‘What is?’ Morwenna demands.
‘A birthday present four months early!’
An awkward silence descends for a moment-hour. Eventually, Morwenna rises and walks to the door before turning to face William, tinged by hazy sunlight, at the other end of the studio.
‘For your birthday, William, for your thirtieth, I am giving you your freedom. I want you to turn thirty unencumbered. I want you to be able to look back on all this as something that happened in your twenties – something that was fun at first though it soured inevitably.’
Now that is some soliloquy! She’s taken the words from the jumble inside his mouth and placed them squarely, clearly, in the open. Out in the open, they’ve closed the regrettable situation. William parts his lips in the effort to make sense of all she is saying. Morwenna is tempted to cross over and kiss them one last time. William’s lips are full and sensuous and he used them divinely. And most definitely in the past tense.
A split second hangs awkwardly in the heavy air between them. Morwenna is tempted to back up all she had said with ‘If that’s what you want’. Similarly William, who hates confrontation on things emotional, fights from saying ‘Morwenna, don’t worry, it will all be fine. I just need time’.
But neither speaks.
Waves of gratitude pass from one to the other. Though it hurts, Morwenna is relieved that William has made it easy for her by not contesting. He is enormously thankful that she has spared him the task he was dreading. And he is grateful to her, for he craves freedom.
‘OK,’ he says gently, shrugging his shoulders and nodding slowly with respect.
‘OK, then!’ Morwenna says cheerfully and with dignity.
‘So,’ says William, ‘no more dinner services?’
Morwenna laughs lightly but with an edge. ‘Oh no!’ she says. ‘Neither dinner services nor dinners themselves. You need have no more relations, let alone contact, with either Saxby Ceramics or its proprietor.’
For a good ten minutes after she left, William sat askew at his wheel and regarded the space she had left behind. A space indeed, but not a hole in his life, not something gaping that would need filling – just space. He felt a breeze travel over to him from the open door. He could taste the spring and smell the promise of summer.
At last. And it had been so easy. He laughed briefly. Barbara appeared at the door. He turned away from her and back to the clay cylinder: plain, precise and with potential. He smiled broadly and shook his head in amazement, sharing another moment when he and the clay were inextricable. You could use no ornithological analogies with William; Morwenna had not clipped his wings, nor was she now setting him free to fly on his own. Nor had he left the nest. Or mated for life.
Morwenna Saxby, he realized, had got her hands on him when he was in his malleable early twenties. She had formed him into this straight-sided cylinder; upright but featureless, strong but somewhat dull.
William set the wheel spinning. He slowed the speed. Twisting, he dipped one hand down within the vessel and made a knuckle with the finger of the other which he placed against the outside of the form. In harmony, instinctively, he drew both hands upwards and outwards. The clay travelled and grew and stretched, and the form opened out under his hands. Its body curved before widening beautifully; like the mouth of a trumpet, like speeded footage of a flower opening. William hummed cheerfully. The work was good and it was pleasing. The form: strong and individual.
The cylinder was gone. But it was still the backbone of this new form in front of him.
‘Robert?’
‘Darling!’
‘You busy?’
‘Heavens no, it’s dead this afternoon, quite dead – like most of my patients, ha! It’s a typical A and P Wednesday.’
‘A and P – arthritis and piles?’
‘No, no! Nothing nearly as exciting, merely the Aches
and Pains brigade – they invariably turn up mid-week in the hope of taking a legitimate sicky from school or work for the rest of the week.’
‘And I bet you’re as attentive to Mr Hypochondriac as you are to all your patients.’
‘My bedside manner, you mean?’
‘Ho! I for one can’t get enough of your bedside manner, Dr Noakes. Actually, there are a few A’s and P’s of my own that need closer inspection!’
‘Merz Saxby! Sounds like an emergency! I’ll be round to make you say “Ahh” just as soon as I can.’
‘I’m positively bedridden.’
‘Good. Stay there. I’m on call this evening but I’d rather be called out from the wrong side of your bed than from the right side of mine.’
‘Dr Noakes, it’ll be a pleasure to have you, regardless of interruptions. Oh! By the way, I did it – I sacked William Coombes!’
‘Oh well bloody done! You can do without these prima donnas – how did he take it?’
‘Quite well, it must be said. Sulked a little and said he didn’t want to do any more dinner services anyway.’
‘No grip on reality! Whether this is down to the artistic temperament or just general immaturity I’ve yet to decide. Mind you, what’s the odds that he’ll come to you with his tail between his legs and an armful of crockery when he’s feeling the pinch?’
‘He won’t.’
‘Just wait till he has a hole in his pocket – he’ll be begging you to sell his ashtrays!’
‘He most certainly won’t.’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘Oh I am. I’ll not be hearing from William Coombes again. Though I may hear of him – he is a talented potter after all.’
TWENTY-ONE
Oh!’ Chloë exclaimed, mouth agape and eyes very wide. Ronan Brady was startled and looked swiftly about him.
‘No, no!’ said Chloë loudly. ‘I’m sorry – you surprised me, that’s all.’
‘Were you not expecting me?’ he said, the lilting softness of his southern accent soliciting Chloë’s ears at once.
‘Not at all,’ she responded. ‘I mean, yes I was – but not you.’