by Freya North
Spring was creeping into summer. She had arrived when the land breathed a pale, gentle green; now it was awash with emerald. The days were milder earlier and stayed warmer later, allowing Chloë to progress into softer, less substantial clothing. Once or twice she remarked to herself how Carl had desired her in spite of spattered jodhpurs, a prickly Fair Isle jumper and a grey thermal vest. Ronan, however, took no notice of her silk shirt tucked, as she thought, sexily into her jeans and unbuttoned a little on each journey from Gus’s study to Ronan’s studio.
Gus approved of her visits.
‘Artists,’ he justified, as if they were a different race, ‘have low resistance against melancholia. A little chivvying is a very good idea. After all, the Trail opens in little over a month!’
So Chloë sits on her bucket and waits for signs and signals from Ronan. She is pleased that, over the course of a week or two, he has modified his grunt on her arrival, to a nod of the head, and now a relaxed ‘Hi, there!’ She says very little, certainly never interrupts him with a goodbye. The limestone is changing yet she is never there to witness it. Though Ronan broods on the fact that the form remains locked within the rock, that his tools are useless until his mind releases his hands, each day Chloë finds the stone has become smoother, a rhythm more pronounced. Has Ronan imposed this shape on to the rock, or did it exist already and he has merely uncovered it? She likes the way an inanimate object can change and grow. It has started to spiral, like a primeval mollusc, like a great python. It seems to live. Its surface is now smooth and often warm to the touch. And yet it is a lump of rock.
She remains silent though, for she believes that is what Ronan wishes, and anyway, she is still shy of her opinion.
TWENTY-FOUR
Gus was in a foul mood.
‘Where the hell is Chloë?’ he yelled in the empty study. ‘Less than a fortnight to go until we’re on the map and she announces she’s leaving next week!’ Tutting despairingly, he hammered on the window to dislodge the pigeons from their confabulation aboard the Antony Gormley bronze. Mary came scuttling in.
‘Did you call, Mr Halloran?’
‘No,’ he said, reasserting his composure by rolling his head quickly. ‘But have you seen Chloë?’
‘Not since this morning,’ Mary replied truthfully, hoping she would not be pressed further.
‘Is she with Ronan?’ he asked. Mary told him she really wouldn’t know, but could she get back to the kitchen, her bread was ready.
‘Ronan!’
‘Mr Halloran, morning.’
‘Seen Chloë?’
‘Not this morning.’
‘Damn!’
‘Sorry?’
‘We had, er, words last night.’
‘God, and if we didn’t have ’em yesterday afternoon too!’
The men were silent and gazed down at the blue-black sheen of the newly polished limestone.
‘Have you decided where it should stand?’ Gus asked.
‘No, I can’t seem to – half of me thinks the privacy of the wood, the other half craves pride of place right in the centre of the lawn! She’s probably gone for a walk,’ said Ronan.
‘Hmm,’ murmured Gus, turning on his heels and walking away.
‘It’s lunch-time, Mr Halloran,’ said Mary, popping her head around the study door to find him standing by the window, hands in pockets and a pencil twizzling in his mouth.
‘Chloë?’ he said through his teeth while biting hard on the pencil to keep it in place.
‘She said not to wait,’ Mary trailed away, her mouth agape, suddenly horribly aware that her foot was firmly in it.
‘What?’ bellowed Gus, not sure where the pencil dropped and not bothered anyway.
‘She said not to wait,’ Mary repeated quietly but with no suggestion of timidity.
‘You said you had not seen her!’ Gus growled. ‘What on earth is going on?’
Mary cleared her throat and held her head high.
‘I said I had not seen her since this morning.’
‘For heaven’s sake, woman,’ cried Gus, marching over to Mary who stood her ground.
‘I saw Chloë this morning. Poor lass. Took the Land Rover and told me not to cook for her.’ Gus’s eyes zipped around Mary’s face while his thoughts scrambled and his mouth dried completely.
‘I reckon the girl’s had enough of your barging,’ called Mary over her shoulder as she left the study for the kitchen. ‘Lunch is ready, Mr Halloran.’
When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over – a remnant of chaos.
Thackeray
‘Thackeray,’ said Chloë to an inquisitive rock pipit, ‘got it all wrong. The only chaos here,’ she added to a boisterous guillemot, ‘is that within me.’
Chloë had the Giant’s Causeway all to herself. She had parked the Land Rover appallingly in the empty car park, skirted around the visitor centre and scurried down the winding path to the bottom of the cliff and slap bang into the middle of a well remembered O level geography lesson.
Her geography teacher had described it as a ‘lunar’ landscape. Thackeray, erroneously, thought it loony. Chloë thought it quite the most spectacular scene she had ever seen. The glum face she had worn on the journey, and all the previous day, at once opened out into an expansive smile. The gusts from the sea fortified her and the knowledge of Scotland just over the water was reassuring. The beauty and magnitude of the Giant’s Causeway flung a neater perspective on her fraught little world. She was surrounded by the famous network of hexagonal basalt columns, some forty foot high, some a mere step; their regularity and longevity in some way giving structure to her thoughts.
Chloë searched for Jocelyn with her eyes alternately wide open and scrunched tight shut. She scoured the mayweed for her and listened hard to the fulmars and the pipits. She did not understand their language. Jocelyn, it appeared, would not be visiting today. And yet what was it that she had said in her Ireland letter?
I am there still because part of me never left.
Perhaps Chloë did not know where to look. Maybe she was not looking hard enough. Possibly, she was not quite ready to find Jocelyn. Not just yet. After all, what would she tell her? That she had given herself brazenly to a sculptor? Just because he was a sculptor, whatever that meant, and albeit one who was as pretentious as he was introverted? That she had realized her desire to become an artist’s muse but in a way that appalled her? That yesterday she had insulted her host, her godmother’s old friend? She’d confide in Jocelyn anon, once conclusions had been drawn, lessons learnt and decisions made.
For the first time, however, the landscape was not conspiring. It did not mirror her mood. It was, instead, an utter distraction; a sky-blue day with just the occasional vaporous cloud drifting across like a dream, the sea lapping lazily as if it were quite full but just wanted to taste the shore a little more, the sea birds carrying out their chores with chatter and aplomb. And no people. Chloë could not believe her luck for she had seen the ice-cream signs, the postcards furling forlornly in their rusting racks, she had seen the notice for the minibus to trundle the hordes down to the base of the cliff. Perhaps there was no ice-cream today and maybe the bus had broken down; no people to transport, no visitors to buy postcards.
‘Am I complaining?’ chanted Chloë as she tiptoed from stack to stack. ‘I think not!’
She danced her way over those known as the Honeycomb and saluted the King and his Nobles. She laughed out loud and then giggled at hearing her own voice carried by the wind out to sea. She tried to traverse the columns solely step by precarious step but soon found that their differing heights and surfaces caused her to jig and stumble. She went in search of columns that were not hexagonal and, when she found one with eight sides and another with five, she was as thrilled as if they had been four-leaf clovers. Out of breath, she found the stacks which formed the Wishing Chair and sat awhile, breathing deeply and grinning. The sun streamed over her body and she
allowed her eyes to close, to encourage memories of the previous fortnight to present themselves unhampered.
Ronan had kissed her furiously. He could not tolerate another unproductive day just pacing around his great rock and looking unconstructively at it. The form had started to swell as well as spiral, but its direction was uncertain and Ronan was damned if he knew where it was going. He knew where he was going to go, straight into the knickers of this affable young woman. This Chloë. Cadwallader. What a mouthful. Give me her mouth.
As she sits gazing out way beyond the sea, Chloë observes how she would have recalled her tryst with Ronan with more pleasure had not its consequence marred the memory.
Two weeks ago, Gus had gone to Belfast for a meeting with the Arts Council. He had most conveniently dropped Mary in Ballymena for a shop and an afternoon with her friends and had instructed Chloë to go directly to Ronan once she had finished the morning post.
‘I fear he’s a little off schedule, don’t you? I think he works better under the watchful eye of the Ballygorm Sculpture Trail’s administrative assistant, don’t you?’
‘Well,’ faltered Chloë, not happy with the term ‘assistant’, ‘he never seems to do that much while I’m actually there – though he has always pressed on by my next visit.’
‘Which,’ said Gus making no effort to mask the irritation in his voice, ‘merely reworks my sentiments previously expressed.’
Chloë gave him a polite smile and shot daggers at him behind his back.
Gus straightened his tie, hollered for Mary and left Ballygorm for the city, saying they would not be back until late afternoon.
The first thing Chloë did, once the drone of the Jaguar had died away, was to scamper up to her room to change. It was practically June and a most appropriate day for shorts; just gone nine in the morning and the sky was utterly cloudless, the scent of summer, though faint, came in wafts. She teamed her navy shorts with a white T-shirt that had shrunk slightly in the wash and stretched across her most becomingly. A soft woollen cardigan gave the outfit a practical touch and, as she perused the ensemble in front of the tall mirror on the landing, she thought she looked rather good. Her chunky socks and suede boots the colour of butter gave the impression that her legs were slightly more svelte than they actually were. She looked robustly feminine. And felt sexy. Mrs Andrews sent her on her way with her blessing. Mr Andrews pretended not to have seen her.
Chloë had rattled through the morning’s post and dealt with all matters pressing. None pressed very hard and she found herself skipping over the lawn towards Ronan’s workshop within half an hour. As usual, he was engrossed and unaware of her arrival, which afforded her the chance to gaze at him as he toiled. He must have been at it for some time, for the top of his boiler suit was down and his forearms were prickled with perspiration. Oh, how Chloë could have licked them! Instead, she stayed stock-still and silent. Ronan was on one knee with his back towards her, his buttocks delineated appetizingly beneath his blue overalls. With mallet and chisel, he chinked and chipped at the rock, exhaling loudly with the effort in much the same way as a tennis player in his final set. His hair was damp and nicked itself into little curls around his neck. His T-shirt was caught taut over his shoulder-blades and stuck damply between them. Still on one knee he laid his tools down and rested his head on his arm which was pressed against the rock. Sculptor had become sculpture and it made Chloë gasp. He turned slowly towards her, his eyes were slightly bloodshot from trickles of sweat. He had not shaved.
‘Morning. Didn’t see you – or hear you. Been there long?’
She shook her head and then cocked it. She nodded towards the sculpture.
‘Nice work,’ she said in a non-committal voice and with an almost imperceptible jut of her breasts.
‘Coming along,’ he responded, heaving himself upright while his knee joints cracked loudly in the process, ‘finally.’
‘Gus told me to cast a watchful eye over you,’ said Chloë with a coy smile. ‘He’s gone to Belfast. And taken Mary to Ballymena. All day.’ She took her hands from her pockets and slung them loosely on her hips.
‘Yeah?’ said Ronan, ruffling his hair and wiping his mouth.
‘Indeed,’ assured Chloë, lowering eyes ever so slightly.
Who made the first move? It was difficult to ascertain. They seemed to lunge for each other and soon Chloë found herself pressed against the rock while Ronan pushed his weight against her and sucked at her mouth as if he were starved. Fleetingly, Chloë praised the fact that Ronan’s artistic style was undulating and curvaceous; had it been otherwise, the sculpture might not have been nearly so hospitable to her body. Its serpentines provided easy support for her and she soon let go so she could grab at Ronan’s boiler suit and shove him closer. His buttocks were clenched and he moved against her, his erection defiant beneath the coarse material of his clothing. He cupped her breasts, pressing and kneading them, scratching at her nipples. She sucked in her stomach and elongated her trunk to enable him to slip his hand into the waist of her shorts and rip her T-shirt upwards and away. The movement was fluid and fast and, along with the trickle of a breeze whispering over her bare breasts, turned her on greatly. She looked at Ronan. His eyes were shut and his breathing was rasping and urgent.
Chloë grabbed at his arms and pulled her fingers over his flesh; the surface damp, slightly grimy, and she would not have had it any other way. He smelled strong but she filled her nostrils with it. They kissed and chewed at each other’s mouths, chucking their tongues about until their faces were quite wet and Chloë’s stung slightly from the abrasion of Ronan’s bristles. Still his eyes were closed but Chloë did not mind, it meant she could ogle greedily, unchecked. As he sucked her neck hard and thrust his hand between her legs, she wondered why on earth she had chosen shorts over a skirt. He rubbed at her and she moved against him, the tufted fabric at the base of her zip catching fantastically on her clitoris now and then. He wrestled with her belt and fumbled with the button before snagging and tugging at the zip. She wriggled as he pulled but the zip had not finished its course and her shorts clamped themselves to the tops of her thighs. They pulled their mouths apart and Ronan took a step backwards. With a noise midway between grunt and growl he tore her shorts down with one violent swoop. The fabric burned at Chloë’s skin but it felt only pleasurable. Ronan grunted again and smacked his hand up against the gusset of Chloë’s knickers, pressing hard against the mound of her pubis while pinching the flats of his fingers against the soft flesh in between.
Don’t let me come, don’t let me come, willed Chloë, thinking of her own needs for perhaps the first time ever, while Ronan’s fingers busied themselves with the elastic and then burrowed under it, directly into the folds of her sex. And all with his eyes closed.
I want to build my appetite. Savour. Like with Carl. Saviour. Like never with Brett.
Keen to enjoy an orgasm of penetrative making, Chloë wriggled away from Ronan’s fingers and spun behind him so that he faced his sculpture alone and she pressed herself against his back, wrapping her arms around his stomach. She let her hands drop to the easy knot slung from the arms of his boiler suit. A far sight easier than a zip. The loose trousers fell about his ankles leaving him in his now sodden T-shirt and a pair of Y-fronts that Chloë instantly disliked but refused to dwell upon. She eased his T-shirt up as far as she could reach and he then crossed his arms and tore it over his head, affording Chloë a wonderful feast of his back muscles mixed with the heady scent of male sweat. She crouched and licked from the small of his back to between his shoulder-blades before resting her face against him and encircling his torso with her arms. Her hands made a lingering journey over his pectorals, his abdomen and down to his groin. She too had her eyes shut, for it enabled her to see him through the very feel of him. Particles of limestone dust clung to his body. Her face was pressed sideways against his back. Her mouth was open and a viscous drool of saliva crept its way out and down his back. She reached her hands lower w
hile grazing his skin with her teeth. Lower. Lower. There. Y-fronts. Isn’t there an opening somewhere?
Yes. Here it is. And here it is – heavens!
You haven’t said a word but your gasps and groans say it all. Is it me, Ronan? Am I your muse?
Ronan grabbed her wrist and they rubbed him jointly for a few moments. Then he pulled her hand away from his cock and yanked hard at her arm so that she was hauled from behind him and they faced each other again. His eyes were open and locked on to her breasts. He dropped to one knee and pushed his tongue into her navel before travelling it upwards and over to each breast in turn. Chloë looked down on the top of his head, his shoulders, and tried to stop herself wondering if his prick had a dusting of limestone particles too. She couldn’t quite see. Ronan was breathing heavily through his nose. As he sucked at each nipple, he closed his eyes and steadied himself with a hand on each of Chloë’s buttocks. She bucked her groin forward and kept it pressed against his stomach. She could feel a pulse but was unsure whose it was. He gripped the tops of her arms tightly and pulled himself upright. Chloë removed her knickers from one leg and let them fall around the boot on the other.
Ronan put his hand to her throat and pushed, gently but insistently, until she yielded; letting her body tip back until it rested against the sculpture. He eased her legs apart and then, with his hands either side of her waist, lifted her slightly so that she was spread-eagled and supported by the sculpture. She stared at him, his gaze travelled between his cock and her sex. Chloë was holding on to a mound in the limestone with her right hand and grabbing at a deep dent in it with her left. Ronan loomed over her and, with his arms taut either side of her face, his hands catching sharply on her hair, pushed his cock deep and fast within her.