by Freya North
Breathe!
An empty chair was close to hand so he retrieved it while his father’s neighbour nodded and winked at him and chewed his tongue. He drew up the chair as noisily as he could but his father’s mouth remained agape, his eyes fixed and unseeing. Gingerly, William proffered his hand and let it rest lightly on top of the old man’s. It was not the hand of a dead man for, though cool and papery, a whisper of warmth wound its way through. Slowly, the old man turned towards him. He stared at him intently but William was not sure whether he saw him for there was no light in the eyes, no life behind them. The aperture of his mouth remained fixed. William smiled at him as widely as he could.
‘Hullo!’ he said cheerily.
Mr Coombes began a nod but had not the strength to lift his head to conclude it. His chin neared his chest, his gaze now resting near a drawing-pin by the skirting-board. William felt a stab of unwelcome tears, whose provenance he could not fathom. He sat a while longer, sharing in silence with his father the complexities of the bent drawing-pin.
He could have gone. It would have been easy; just jump to his feet, kiss the man cursorily and walk away. The nurses wouldn’t judge. Mr Coombes wouldn’t register. But William stayed for two hours, moving his thumb rhythmically over the tired landscape of his father’s hand. He no longer noticed any smell. He felt most strongly that, inside the waning body, behind the gormless face, in spite of the drooling and wheezing, a brain and a soul were shouting but were unable to make themselves intelligible, let alone heard. Eyes that no longer saw, but had seen. And what they had seen had left an indelible imprint of sadness.
William worked voraciously. He was haunted by his father’s loaded gawping. The man he had presumed to be catatonic, moronic even, he now believed to be otherwise. Behind the dull exterior, the wrinkled and puckered skin lying uselessly over brittle bones, a tiny light refused to go out. But it could not venture past the rancid, cavernous mouth to let itself be heard.
‘I’ll speak for him,’ William said, sitting bolt upright in bed in the early hours.
‘Life behind the seemingly lifeless,’ he told Barbara as he rushed to the studio at the first hint of morning.
‘Sound in the silent,’ he mulled as he kneaded a batch of very cold raku clay.
‘Emotion in the inanimate,’ he whispered as he contemplated his memory and the raw material in front of him.
The project consumed him. He left Peregrine’s Gully only once a week to cycle to St Ives and load his panniers with non-perishable goods. He excused himself in advance to Mac, whose delight that he was working once more with such verve far outweighed any disappointment that visits would be forfeited. William let the telephone go unanswered. He ignored Barbara and ate only when he remembered. Slowly the forms took shape. He slabbed and coiled great slumbering pebble shapes, each almost entirely enclosed but for a single small opening. These were round and dark and placed unexpectedly off centre, or at the side, or even towards the base of the form. The holes contradicted the fabric of the shapes. While he glazed the exteriors in the palest of crackles, the openings gave way into utter darkness. Though the forms were so obviously hollow, the holes heralded an interior that was opaque and thick. The pebbles lay peaceful and uniform from most viewpoints until disrupted entirely by the holes. Mouths open. Still and silent. But shouting out pain and panic. And secrets that could not be heard.
TWENTY-THREE
With the grand opening of the Ballygorm Sculpture Trail over a month away and all the plans going smoothly, Gus had become more generous with time off for Chloë and more receptive to her requests for the loan of a vehicle. Without actually being agreeable. He ensured that he was in control of such excursions by never suggesting them; he would offer Chloë simply an afternoon or morning off but never tendered transport. Even when won round, he resolutely sent Chloë on her way with a barrage of warnings to heed, and advice to take. Each occasion, therefore, that Chloë was rewarded with free time, she was also presented with the encumbrance of requesting formally the mechanical means to facilitate her expeditions. Her desire for space and a chance to explore, saw such requests become more reverential and polished. ‘May I’ was soon replaced by ‘Would you mind if I’, which in turn gave way to ‘Please could I possibly’ and, by her fourth excursion: ‘Gus, if it isn’t too much to ask, would you permit me to borrow a car as I’d dearly love to visit Bushmills?’
Invariably, Gus met her petitions with a loaded silence which forced them to hang, insecure and unanswered, in the oppressive air of the study while he gazed out of the window for dramatic effect. A simple and suitable request thus became a very great favour to which Chloë responded with effusive gratitude and barely disguised relief.
Chloë soon came to think on Ireland as the Land of Affable Polythene. Wherever she journeyed, small snags of plastic accompanied her. She was first aware of them on the Antrim coast road; caught on a jut of rock, trapped on a barb of fencing, knitted in branches, wrapped around the signs proclaiming each of the nine glens. Fluttering in the sea breeze, they appeared both to welcome Chloë and to wave her on; certainly she never conceived of them as mess or rubbish. Inland, the scraggy moorland barren apart from ragged sheep strewn like litter over the hills, Chloë was assured a wave from a jag of plastic caught on a thorn bush or impaled on a spear of rusting metal. She found, as she drove from glen to glen, that she drove from one drift of polythene to another. They had the same steadying effect as a compass, the same reassurance as a landmark.
If the furls of plastic seemed almost indigenous to the landscape, the mark of man, then, was a blemish. It horrified Chloë that, apart from the saving graces of Ballygorm and the very occasional medieval castle or early nineteenth-century hostelry, most of the buildings were modern, uninspiring and wholly unsympathetic to the lie of the land. Pastel coloured and stone-clad, lead-effect PVC windows, incongruous Corinthian columns and American soap-opera-style driveways heralded ugly bungalows whose gardens and discrepant rockeries were guarded by listless unicorns or lions of reconstituted stone. The structures sat awkwardly in their surroundings and yet the flourish of pride with which they were conceived of and built was far louder than the lack of taste they exhibited. Still, they hurt Chloë’s eyes and disappointed her greatly. It was not as if she craved the picturesque, for the landscape was too rugged to permit it anyway. Nor was it roses and thatched roofs that she wished to see, but a historical Irish accent instead. Her woe, however, found approval with both Gus and Ronan.
‘Aye,’ brooded the sculptor, ‘they bin rippin’ down their daddies’ homes, and with it, the spirit of the place.’
‘The beauty of true vernacular architecture,’ Gus qualified, ‘is in its blend with the landscape. They do still exist, Chloë, but their survival is in their camouflage.’
And what of the Giant’s Causeway where architecture and geology are inseparable; where Jocelyn would be with the fulmars and the mayweed? Why did Chloë not run there at the earliest opportunity? She did not want to talk to Jocelyn just yet. And anyway, after the Giant’s Causeway, then what?
I use my little sorties, she explained by letter to Jasper and Peregrine, to take stock of the situation. If Gus has been particularly unrestrained in his criticism, or if Mary has been bombarding me with her woes and those of all her family and friends, and if Ronan has been harping on in mixed metaphors about sculpture, then I usually find that the landscape and its people offer some solace.
The land seems to mirror my emotions as well as offer respite when needed, it both mimics and empowers me. There are soft, lyrical passages and there are also great swathes of grandeur. It’s a private place, discrete and independent. I always feel somehow more level when I return.
It was during a secret tête-à-tête with Mrs Andrews (her husband and Gainsborough were playing poker in Sudbury), that Chloë confided the sub-plot for such excursions.
‘And you always go alone?’ Mrs Andrews asked, genuinely interested and rather impressed.
; ‘Always,’ Chloë assured. ‘I always go alone. Firstly, because I’m usually keen to be well away from all inhabitants at Ballygorm. Secondly, because I find I converse quite naturally with the people I come across. I’m not nearly as shy as I was.’
‘And are there many?’ gasped Mrs Andrews, imagining a swarthy race with raw knees.
‘If I search them out,’ Chloë explained, remembering the kindly old boy in a chemist at Cushendall with whom she had put the world to rights for a couple of hours the previous week.
‘Search? Gracious!’ Mrs Andrews clasped her breast. ‘Where do they lurk? Are they terribly uncivilized?’
‘Oh no!’ Chloë laughed, thinking back to the two students with whom she had shared beer and crisps and reverential silence while listening hard to the waterfalls at Glenariff. ‘They’re friendly if you engage them – but it’s as if they’d just as well be left to themselves.’
‘Uneducated?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Ill-mannered?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘Insular, then?’
‘Yes, insular – but in a proud, self-sufficient way. They’re blunt and direct but with a smile and a kind tone. I like that.’
Mrs Andrews furtively removed her stockings and her shoes, stretched dainty toes out in front of her and into the embrace of a gentle breeze before burrowing them in the downy grass and burying the evidence with the skirts of her frock.
‘What do you do, while you walk alone, Chloë my dear? Rarely can I walk off by myself without Mr A becoming all chivalrous and accompanying me. How I’d love to wear trousers and go for a great stomp, talk to birds or myself.’
Chloë laughed while quietly contemplating how it was she who had frequently envied Mrs Andrews the supposed security and grace of privileged eighteenth-century living.
‘Ronan!’ she whispered, suddenly and not a little coyly.
Mrs Andrews’s toes reappeared from the hem of her skirt and wriggled with delight. ‘Do tell!’
‘I’m not sure how to,’ Chloë confided, ‘but it’s something along the lines of a little plan I have. I mulled over it in the study behind Gus’s back a couple of weeks ago and have since developed and honed it during my occasional outings.’
Mrs Andrews’s toes went apoplectic in anticipation.
‘I thought,’ explained Chloë, quietly but through a smile, ‘it might be rather nice,’ she furthered, rolling her words and glancing from her lap to her confidante, ‘to be his muse!’
‘Oh!’ Mrs Andrews declared, hiccuping a little and nodding vigorously.
‘His muse. I thought it might be fun,’ Chloë continued, ‘and half the fun has already been in the thinking about it.’
‘I’ll bet,’ enthused Mrs Andrews.
‘I mean, I’d never have dared contemplate such a thing before.’
‘Before?’
‘Before Wales. No, I mean before all of this. If I was still in London. With Brett. If Jocelyn was still alive.’
‘And have you feelings for the sculptor?’
Chloë searched. ‘He’s, he’s – beguiling. He’s occupying a great proportion of my late-night last thoughts.’
‘Then why do you twist your face so? In this breeze, you’ll stick like that, be warned!’
‘Because, Mrs Andrews, I know full well that Ronan has not, and will not, touch the soft part of my soul in the way Carl did. I am attracted to him – fiercely, I might add – almost solely because of what he is. I’ve never met anyone like him but I’ve read about them, and seen them in films!’
‘From what you’ve told me about him,’ said Mrs Andrews, ‘I’d say the merits of his personality are somewhat questionable for he seems undeniably imperious and moody.’
‘Oh he is, he is,’ agreed Chloë artlessly, ‘he’s a brooding sculptor whose cerebral and emotional millstone has to be sculpted away or else consume him!’
Mrs Andrews patted at her breast quickly and lightly.
‘And you see,’ Chloë declared, suddenly aware of how the standard of her speech improved greatly when conversing with Mrs Andrews, ‘once again it is the very confines of my seasonal sojourn which empower me. The notion that summer and Scotland are around the corner to offer respite or escape is immensely comforting.’
Mrs Andrews cocked her head and implored more. Chloë did not disappoint.
‘My sacred time with darling Carl has paved the way for an indecent interlude with Ronan Brady.’
‘Ah,’ colluded Mrs Andrews, ‘adolescent effervescence gives way to a burgeoning desire most carnal.’
‘Indeed. My first orgasm can’t possibly be my last!’
Though she was immensely proud of Chloë, Mrs Andrews also thought she really ought to raise her eyebrows, so she did. ‘It is not so much Ronan himself who causes your pupils to dilate and who has kindled certain fire deep within you,’ she declared triumphantly, ‘but the idea of him, Chloë dear.’
Chloë was too excited, too high, to speak more. She felt she had now been given a much respected seal of approval to bring her plan to fruition. The fact that it had been granted by a reproduction of a painted image of a long-dead eighteenth-century woman was of no significance to Chloë. She simply wanted Ronan the Sculptor to seduce her. And, from the glint and search in his eyes, the glances that frequently outstayed their intention, she was fairly sure that he wanted to.
And what would it be like?
How does a sculptor make love?
Could I ever, really, be anyone’s muse?
Me? Chloë?
‘Kilkenny limestone,’ announced Ronan, walking around the great block as if he were a lecturer commencing his discourse, ‘is a sedimentary rock indigenous to my home.’
Chloë perched herself on an upturned bucket in the workshop and looked about. Thick rope, a pulley, chisels and mallets and a scatter of gruesome-looking tools. And Ronan, in a boiler suit creased with dust and ripped by his labours. Cobwebs in the eaves. An old tractor half covered in the corner; a rusting pitchfork propped against it as if harvesting had come to a sudden end some years ago.
‘Now isn’t that a stroke a’ luck,’ Ronan laughed, ‘that I should have always yearned to be a sculptor and there, on my doorstep, is one of the finest rocks to work with!’
Chloë regarded the clump and thought the grey-blue surface scattered with ash-coloured dints rather uninspiring but she didn’t say so. The barn was cavernous and chilly but the sun was streaming in and it warmed her back so she was quite happy to stay put.
‘What’ll you make?’ she asked in hushed tones. Ronan did not baulk at her question but held the crook of his finger beneath his nose and hummed and murmured as he paced around the stone. He knocked at his temple as if it were a heavy door.
‘Bugger me – it’s all up here,’ he said, ‘but I’m all clutey with these,’ he explained, holding out clenched fists to Chloë who looked puzzled but understood him to mean either ham-fisted or having the equivalent of writer’s block. She was tempted to go over to him, to cup his hands in hers, take them to her lips, kiss each knuckle. She stayed put; of course she did. She’s in the here and now and Mrs Andrews is nowhere to be seen, or heard.
‘Am I a distraction? Ought I to go?’ she asked tentatively, hoping that he would protest.
‘I’ve been up since the scrake and got nowhere by myself so you might as well stay. If you want.’
‘OK,’ said Chloë, ‘if you’d like me to.’
Ronan grunted with a slight toss of his head and continued his journey around the rock. He walked clockwise and then anticlockwise and stopped at practically all the points of an imaginary compass, squinting at the light, scrutinizing the great bulk before him. He sighed and heaved regularly and stood up and down on his tiptoes, a feat Chloë quite admired considering his caked, steel-capped workman’s boots. She stayed awhile, hoping her presence might liberate the pent-up artistic genius still locked within the swaying, procrastinating, gorgeous Ronan. It seemed she
made little difference and, after sitting silent and reverential for a good hour, she crept away.
Chloë visited Ronan daily for he rarely came to the house.
‘’Tis the dwelling of my patron and I have no place there,’ he had said darkly. The sentiment Chloë understood; its vocabulary and delivery, however, she found affected and daft. She repeated it to Mr and Mrs Andrews.
‘Silly bugger’s a little too far up his own backside, I’d say,’ considered Mr Andrews.
‘Gracious!’ added Mrs Andrews. ‘It’s trouble enough keeping Tom Gainsborough out of our house – to say nothing of the chambermaid’s clothing!’
‘I wish Ronan shared Gainsborough’s predilection,’ Chloë said to them, putting a hand forlornly to her breast. ‘I sit on my bucket in his studio for an hour a day but all he does is sigh at his rock.’
‘While you have your eye on his cock!’
‘Mrs Andrews!’ declared Chloë, blushing.
‘Decorum, dear,’ said Mr Andrews quietly.
It was true. Each day Chloë would visit Ronan and sit motionless with her ankles crossed daintily, trying hard to be alluring in her silence as well as in a slight parting of her lips any time Ronan should look at her. She stole cautious gazes at him as he paced and sighed. A glimpse of a tuft of chest hair at the dip of his neck made her quiver. Secretly, she would urge him to crouch, which afforded both of them refreshing viewpoints and a new, interesting perspective. If facing her, his boiler suit would cling to the muscles of his thighs; turned away from her and the material hugged his buttocks and stretched taut across the breadth of his shoulders.
When his brow furrowed with the effort of being a sculptor, Chloë observed a darkness cloud his eyes into velvet navy. When the sun caught them, or when inspiration alighted, she saw how their blueness reflected the sky and spoke of the sea. Sometimes he rolled his sleeves above his elbows. Chloë thought his elbows quite divine and his forearms worthy of Shakespearian depiction. On days when it was particularly warm, he unbuttoned his boiler suit and rolled it down, tying the sleeves around his hips. A T-shirt, meanwhile, delineated the muscles of his chest, proclaimed his trim stomach and afforded a good airing of his biceps, all of which delighted Chloë.