Chloe

by Freya North

  ‘Sure, sure!’ encouraged Chloë as she backed away into the kitchen to yet another round of washing-up. The light outside was hazing and she reckoned it was nearing six o’clock. The afternoon had scuttled past her while she tended to the guests and shared a private wink or smile with the bride. Her groom was most handsome, his speech poetic and honest. Chloë felt softly envious and somewhat wistful but, being unable to conjure up a suitable groom – or even the notion – for herself, she let her heart be warmed unconditionally as she delivered platters of fresh fruit to the tables.

  ‘Coffee!’ hissed the young man. Chloë winked gravely at him and was rewarded with an astonished smile. He was flustered and sweaty but it did not detract from his kind, open face and beseeching hazel eyes. Though he was of medium height and fairly muscular build, Chloë chanced upon his hands which were slender, smooth and decidedly dainty. She realized she did not know where the coffee was, or how it was to be made. And then she realized she did not even know his name but, as she could see that he was engrossed in the petit fours, she hurried back to the kitchen and methodically went through the cupboards saying ‘It must be here somewhere’ under her breath.

  ‘Maggie,’ he said, clapping his hands against his temples and sliding down the kitchen wall until he sat on his heels, ‘what in the name of sweet Jesus!’

  Making coffee for fifty with one cafetière was not feasible so Chloë had improvised with two large saucepans and a sieve.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured, ‘all under control! I’ve tasted it too and it’s absolutely fine.’ With his mouth agape and a strangled squeak from his throat, he motioned to the side of the sink, and to a large steel urn. Chloë looked over to it and then down at her saucepans and the splashes of coffee on her shirt. She turned the gas off, walked over to the urn and placed her hands against it. Hot.

  ‘Coffee?’ she mouthed at the man.

  He nodded, closed his mouth and gulped.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered though she could see he was not cross.

  ‘Och! Maybe they’ll have two cups apiece! Let’s get pouring – here, let me have a taste.’ He spooned himself a sip from the saucepan before kissing his fingers and throwing them to the air. ‘Not half bad, Mags my girl, not bad at all – let’s take from your saucepans first!’

  The coffee was appreciated and most had refills. Evening was slipping into night and when Chloë stood on the doorstep for a breather, silence save the waterfall greeted her and told her that her stay would be good. Slowly, the guests filtered away, shooting a light show over the humpy field in which they had parked out of sight.

  ‘I’ll be a wee while,’ the young man told her with a shake of a bunch of keys. ‘I’m to take the bride and groom.’

  ‘Take them where?’ asked Chloë, scraping trifle from the curtain.

  ‘To their hotel, their honeymoon suite!’ he said in a matter-of-fact way. Chloë looked puzzled, having presumed that Braer House was a hotel.

  ‘Not here?’ she queried.

  ‘Here!’ he laughed heartily. ‘This was a one-off! Sweet Jesus that Braer should be an hotel!’

  With that he chuckled off out of the house. Just the bride and groom remained, Chloë could hear them laughing softly and scuffling in the hallway. She bade them a very good-night and the best of luck and was rewarded with the bride’s posy and another conspiring wink. Chloë tipped her head in the direction of her rucksack and winked back. Sally beamed her a smile and gave her a quick kiss.

  ‘Bye, Chloë,’ she said. ‘I’ll think of you galivanting around Britain! You should write it all down – just the sort of story that us fusty old married women enjoy!’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Stonehill,’ smiled Chloë. She waved them off as the young man drove them away into the night.

  Busying herself by tidying up, she felt suddenly too tired to analyse the day. Wiping the cutlery was far easier a task. The young man returned, smiled at Chloë, scowled at the roasting tins and donned apron and rubber gloves at once.

  ‘Do you know it’s nearly half-past ten!’

  No, Chloë did not, though her aching back would have suggested it was a whole hour or two later. The phone rang but the young man was arm-deep in soapsuds and side plates.

  ‘Could you?’ he asked, cocking his head in the direction of the ringing.

  ‘Hullo?’ Chloë said to the handset.

  ‘This is Maggie Campbell,’ said the voice, ‘is he there?’

  Chloë presumed ‘he’ to be the man at the sink so she said, ‘Certainly, please hold a moment.’ Placing her hand over the mouthpiece, she whispered in the direction of the bubbles, ‘Excuse me, it’s for you.’

  ‘Who is it?’ he hissed over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s Maggie,’ said Chloë.

  ‘Maggie?’ he uttered, dripping foam on to the floor and scanning Chloë’s face in a futile attempt to make sense of the situation. He took the phone from her, not bothered that he still wore his rubber gloves.

  ‘Yes!’ he announced into the receiver before falling silent while an excuse was obviously given. ‘Sorry? They did, did they?’ He stamped and took a soapy, rubbered hand to his brow. ‘And you left it until now to phone? Well!’ he declared and it sounded like ‘wheel’ with the ‘h’, ‘there’s manners for you!’ He tucked the receiver under his chin and raised his gloves and his eyebrows at Chloë. ‘Thank you so much for calling!’ he cooed with sarcasm spiking every word, ‘and goodbye to you too!’ he spat in the gentlest of voices.

  Replacing the handset, he took off the rubber gloves, washed and wiped his hands thoroughly as if they were dirty, and then put the gloves back on.

  ‘Bloody Campbells,’ he hollered at the ceiling, ‘always the traitors! Glencoe in the 1690s and now Braer in the 1990s!’ He continued to glower at the ceiling a while longer before softening his expression and looking over at Chloë who stood at the door with one dishcloth over her shoulder, one over her arm and another in her hands, a concerned expression on her face.

  ‘That,’ he said, looking exasperated, ‘was Maggie.’

  Chloë nodded slowly and tried to look sympathetic.

  He put his hands on his hips and regarded her quizzically.

  ‘So who, if you please, are you?’

  ‘I’m Chloë Cadwallader,’ Chloë apologized, ‘and I’m looking for Fraser Buchanan.’

  THIRTY

  ‘But I am Fraser!’ the young man said, walking over to Chloë with his hand outstretched, ‘Buchanan! ’Tis I! No other.’

  Chloë backed away and looked suspicious. Of course he wasn’t. How could he be? He was little older than she. He was lithe. He had good teeth. No whiskers. She understood what he said, though she could not comprehend a word of it.

  ‘Are you sure?’ was all she could think to say. ‘Really?’

  ‘I am quite sure,’ he assured. ‘I have my birth certificate upstairs if you wish!’

  Chloë shook her head but still observed him cautiously.

  ‘Come,’ he declared, putting his hand gently on her shoulders, ‘sit and have a wee dram with me.’

  He took her back into the dining-room and they sat at the top table, sipping whisky and clinking glasses.

  ‘Chloë Cadwallader,’ he said rolling her name around with pleasure, ‘of course!’

  Chloë looked nonplussed but could think neither what to say nor ask.

  ‘I am indeed Fraser Buchanan. But I am junior, if you see. My da was Fraser too; Buchanan as well, of course. Senior, if you like. He knew all about Chloë Cadwallader! Och! He told me last autumn that we may have a woman called Miss Cadwallader come to stay, though he could not say when. I presumed you to be a wee grey-haired lady with a carpet-bag and a small dog till he explained!’

  ‘Where is your father?’ asked Chloë, overlooking Fraser’s past tense. The ensuing brief silence hung awkward for Fraser but innocent for Chloë.

  ‘He died, Chloë,’ he seemed to apologize, ‘not two months ago.’ He shook his head quickly with eyes
closed, but placed a hand firmly over Chloë’s to ensure her that it was OK, and not to be embarrassed.

  ‘It was sudden,’ he explained, ‘a very good death – unlike your godmother’s.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Chloë muttered. ‘I wish I’d known. Please forgive.’

  Fraser tutted her unease away.

  ‘As I say, it was a good death – and in life, surely that’s what one hopes for?’

  Chloë agreed readily and smiled back, accepting a second measure of whisky and raising her glass to the memory of Fraser senior.

  ‘Did you know my godmother then?’ she asked, the whisky catching her throat.

  ‘Jocelyn?’ exclaimed Fraser. ‘Oh aye. And I knew she had an utterly cherished god-daughter but I never knew it was you, not until my da spelt it out last autumn. Carpet-bag and lap-dog indeed! Aye, I saw Jocelyn often when I was younger, but I had not seen her in recent years and I’m right sorry for that,’ he rued, rotating the edge of his glass across his lips. ‘Da continued to meet her for lunch in Glasgow every now and then but I merely sent my lazy love via him. My mother died when I was a bairn, you see – but your Jocelyn, why, when I was sixteen, seventeen, she was perhaps more important to me than anyone.’

  He watched a smile of recognition light Chloë’s face.

  ‘She was?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, she was that,’ Fraser sighed and fell silent for a while. He gazed into his whisky, swirling the tawny liquid, but Chloë could tell he was not looking at it. She had the feeling he was assessing something of considerable weight and that it somehow concerned Jocelyn. Her eagerness to know more, however, encouraged her to maintain a supportive silence.

  ‘You’ll live alongside me?’ asked Fraser quietly, keeping his eyes away.

  ‘If I may,’ said Chloë sweetly, ‘for the summer. If you’ll have me.’

  Fraser regarded her quizzically, quietly acknowledging her link with Jocelyn. A distant cuckoo clock informed them that it was midnight and Fraser dipped his head slightly at each chirp. Chloë noticed how nicely his hair spun itself into whorls here and there. She pulled her fingers through her own locks in a patient but futile exercise in detangling.

  ‘When I was sixteen, seventeen,’ he explained, drawing breath and then taking a hearty gulp from the glass, ‘I was right down there,’ he pointed well beyond the floor. ‘I was troubled and confused – and utterly alone. I could speak to no one for what I had to say I believed to be unutterable. Despicable.’ Chloë kept quiet and sipped her whisky, running her eyes along Fraser’s slender hands. He was obviously not a farmer. Or a sculptor.

  ‘Jocelyn,’ he continued, absent-mindedly twisting a spiral of Chloë’s hair between his fingers, ‘came on one of her visits – she’d come each season, you know?’

  ‘Because “Scotland’s beauty remains constant”,’ paraphrased Chloë mistily, ‘despite season, time of day, the weather?’

  ‘Aye!’ laughed Fraser, giving Chloë’s hair a gentle tug. ‘You’ll be her god-daughter all right!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I interrupted you.’

  ‘Not at all! Anyway, she could tell something was amiss – when I was sixteen, seventeen – that I needed to talk but was unable to ask. She took me out for the day on some pretext or another. We skimmed pebbles, talked idly, ate rock cakes she’d baked. My tongue was tied, there was lead in my belly. It was excruciating. It was when I said should we head back that she turned to me and put her hand on my cheek. Here,’ he took Chloë’s hand and placed it against his face, ‘right here. She said to me – I remember it word for word – “Whatever you do, wherever you’ll go, whoever you’ll be, we will never cease to love you.” How did she know? Hey?’

  Chloë’s eyes were wide. How did Jocelyn know indeed, she wondered, and what was it that she knew? Fraser scanned her face, Chloë searched back.

  ‘Gay?’ he suggested quietly.

  Chloë’s eyes did not widen but she nodded her head to say ‘Ah ha! I see!’ She let her hand stay against his cheek.

  ‘I’m gay,’ Fraser said openly and most mundanely, ‘but however did she know? Back then?’

  ‘Jocelyn had a gift,’ said Chloë after a moment’s reflection, ‘an intuitive – I don’t know – feeling for the soul, an innate understanding of the psyche – anyone’s! She always knew when I was out of sorts – no matter how brave a face I pulled, how strong a voice I used.’

  ‘Was it not just that!’ Fraser agreed taking her hand from his face and holding it tightly between his. ‘And you know, I think it was her unconditional acceptance that helped my father to embrace it too. She made sure I told him just before they went off for a day out together. When they returned, he held me – he rarely did – as if I were a wee one, and told me he was proud of his son.’

  ‘I’m sure he was,’ said Chloë warmly. They sat and sipped in an easy silence until the cuckoo announced one o’clock.

  ‘You must be ex-haust-ed!’ Fraser proclaimed, enunciating the ‘h’ again.

  ‘I am a little sleepy,’ conceded Chloë.

  ‘Christ if I’ve not even made up your room!’ wailed Fraser, clasping his brow.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Chloë, ‘I mean, you were hardly expecting me. Besides, I feel I could sleep anywhere!’

  ‘With me?’ Fraser asked logically with an open face. Chloë looked up to his amiable eyes glinting warmly, and down to his beautiful hands cupping the empty glass.

  ‘Fine,’ she declared before giggling an aside: ‘It seems I’m destined to have a bedfellow in every country I visit. And you’re hardly likely to jump me, are you!’

  They unbuckled their tired bodies into Fraser’s bed which was old, wooden and vast, and said good-night to each other. Just before sleep took her, Chloë found herself speaking abruptly and very loudly.

  ‘Fraser!’

  ‘Hmm?’ he managed.

  ‘The wedding,’ she asked, suddenly envisaging bridal underwear in her rucksack, ‘here? But Braer House is not a hotel?’

  ‘Not a hotel,’ confirmed Fraser woozily, ‘but my inheritance. I was living in Glasgow up until my father died. An old friend of his – an aunt of the bride – asked if he wouldn’t mind hosting the wedding – you know, opening the house. It was agreed months ago, you see. I could never have reneged.’

  ‘Of course not!’ said Chloë, realizing that she was quite thankful to have arrived on such a day.

  They stopped talking and sleep hovered once more.

  ‘Who’s Maggie?’ she asked suddenly, knowing sleep was impossible without an explanation. ‘Fraser?’

  ‘I put an advert in the local paper for a waitress to help with today,’ he explained patiently, in a flat voice edged with slumber. ‘She answered. In fact, she was the only respondent. I’ve not met her; she’s away at school, you see.’

  ‘Why didn’t she turn up?’

  ‘Because her parents got wind of where she was going. Who she’d be helping. I don’t know them – but they obviously know me. Of me. Of my despicable, queer type. My bent, faggoty species!’

  ‘God, really?’ said Chloë aghast. ‘Do you seriously come up against such prejudice?’

  Fraser sat up in the darkness for he knew he would have no peace from his bedmate just yet.

  ‘It’s funny,’ he explained, ‘I’m tolerated by some of the most unlikely people – and yet loathed by many I would have credited with open minds.’

  ‘The lady,’ exclaimed Chloë, a sudden clarity washing the furrows from her brow, ‘in the multi-purpose post office?’

  ‘Ho!’ laughed Fraser. ‘Molly! Now, Molly thinks I’m diseased,’ he explained while Chloë winced, ‘and yet she adored my father – deceased!’ he smirked. ‘Anyway, when she found out that the poor man’s son was a “you-know-what, one of those”, she never again charged him for his daily paper – as a perverted gesture of condolence! Oh, we laughed long about that one.’ Chloë laughed alongside him. ‘Now I have trouble even buying a paper from her. To say nothing of stamps!
’

  With pressing questions answered satisfactorily, further elaboration could well wait until morning. They bade each other good-night once more and Fraser wished Chloë sweet dreams. On waking the next morning, she could not remember if she had dreamt at all, never mind how sweet or otherwise they had been. She glanced over to Fraser who was still asleep. She was not surprised to see him and was happy that he was there. Noiselessly, she crept out of bed and tiptoed downstairs in search of her rucksack. She rescued the Andrews from the deluge of lacy lingerie which swamped them. Mr Andrews looked decidedly flushed from the ordeal and cleared his throat vociferously.

  ‘Seems like a nice chap, that Fraser,’ whispered Mrs Andrews, digging her husband sharply with her elbow for bristling slightly.

  THIRTY-ONE

  The Cornish summer blessed its visitors and its natives with consistently sunny, balmy weather. Skies of ultramarine were interrupted only in a most photogenic way by wisps of high cloud filtering across in the mid-morning and late afternoon. If it rained, it did so unobtrusively at night. The landscape remained verdant, the gorse dazzling and fragrant, the sea warm, and the cream clotted until it was positively brick-like. The sheep and dairy cows grew plump while the hotel owners and cream-tea sellers became quite fat from the rewards of tourism. William’s summer was going spectacularly. He had finished a series of tall bottles with long, slender necks and tiny openings that made them ideal for single roses or vinaigrette. They were easy and satisfying to throw and the people who came to purchase his pebble pieces for their gardens often bought such bottles for their mantelpieces or kitchens too.

  Living off the beaten track had its advantages, for caravan trails rarely blemished his view. Likewise, the dearth of fish and chips and fudge outlets in his vicinity allowed it to remain relatively unscathed by those holiday-makers dependent on such victuals. Though the popular National Trust coastal trail passed within yards of the boundary of Peregrine’s Gully, William saw this as a boon. He was quick to deduce that the calibre of visitors who preferred to stride the path from Zennor to St Ives, rather than pack themselves into the south beaches and broil, matched exactly potential patrons of his pottery. He had thus erected a small but enterprising, carefully calligraphed wooden sign on the edge of his land which proclaimed ‘Ceramics’ with an arrow, and had since welcomed a steady stream of inquisitive walkers with a penchant for pottery. Such people were rarely ‘just looking’ or, if they were initially, they soon found that they passed William their money most willingly. William would chat quite affably about glazing and the weather, while packaging the wares in wadges of bubble wrap bought in bulk on a whim the previous winter; keeping them safe for collection later, when his clients had traded walking boots for sundresses and sandals.