Chloe

by Freya North

  When they drove to pick up their purchases in the evenings, William surreptitiously arranged other complementary pieces to solicit their eyes and their purses; it was rare indeed for him not to hear ‘Oh go on then! I’ll have that small dish too!’ While smiling pleasantly, he silently trebled an already excessive figure in his head, transferred it on to paper and then added a most courteous fifty-percent discount in red ink. The fact that he would elaborately discount his carefully inflated price tags, further aided sales. William was welding a new-found awareness of marketing with a recently uncovered trait of Cornish shrewdness. He even thought to send his CV with small, complimentary bowls to Country Living and Crafts magazines and was rewarded with short but illustrated listings for his effort.

  After the last of the day’s sales had been collected and William had exchanged pleasantries and shaken hands energetically, he added names and addresses to a somewhat haphazard mailing list. He thought he might send out cards at Christmas illustrating new works (with prices inclusive of postage and packing). It occurred to him that he marketed his wares just as well as Morwenna but remained thirty per cent richer at all times. Not to mention fathoms happier and more relaxed on both emotional and physical counts. At last he was catering for his public, and serving them well, without compromising his artistic needs. He still made mugs and teapots, bowls in sets of six, but he made them to his own specifications, and his anomalously healthy bank account was proof of their success.

  Barbara found her master’s countenance infectious and was pleased to play soppy nanny goat whenever be-ruck-sacked folk appeared at their gate. She even wore a bell on an embroidered collar so that William could hear precisely when to leave his studio, emerge into the garden and brandish his most welcoming smile from his clay-caked smock.

  By early August, having confirmed that most pottery patrons walked and bought in the early afternoon, William could afford to take the odd morning off and would stroll to Mac’s once a week for coffee and an animated exchange of their increasing fortunes.

  ‘I’m clean out of medium bowls now and am selling as many bottles as an off-licence!’

  ‘Well, I’ve been averaging twenty piskie mugs a day – sales that is – but only manage to make half that amount. Demand, you could say, is outweighing supply!’

  The clientele of the local bed-and-breakfast establishments and holiday bungalows raved for Mac’s pixie-embellished pottery, often buying a mug each for the whole family as well as other items that would do nicely as Christmas presents.

  ‘Piskies see,’ Mac would say with a burr and a wink that made tourists melt, ‘are peculiarly Cornish!’

  He was even in cahoots with a local fudge maker who piled squares of his confectionery into Mac’s small bowls, doubled the price that each fetched separately and then halved the proceeds with Mac. They sold well, so well that William reserved his kiln on Sundays as an overflow for Mac.

  Mac was delighted to witness William’s change of fortune and the resultant effect on the boy’s psyche. He saw how the sun had streaked blond into William’s hair, had tanned his skin nicely and deepened his eyes to conker brown. He also reflected on the strange irony that it appeared to be a certain deficit in the love department that had in fact reinstated the spring in William’s step, the glint in his eyes and the enthusiasm infusing his days.

  ‘Ever see that Saxby woman?’ Mac enquired nonchalantly.

  ‘Who?’ smiled William, twitching his eyebrows most becomingly.

  Mac found he could even ask quite openly after the health of William’s father, and was informed that, once the deluge of tourists subsided, William would visit him again. Perhaps in a month or so.

  An incident on the cliffs in mid-August hastened William’s return to Wales.

  Whilst walking to Mac’s he came across his mother, or at least a carbon copy of her for she had been dead some six years. A young boy and his father were deeply involved in an intricate hybrid of volleyball and soccer using an old green tennis ball; their border collie acting as both goalie and referee. All three had concentration etched across their brows, their breathing short but elated. Every so often a peal of laughter accompanied by an abrupt bark rang out as a particularly skilful tackle or blinding goal was executed. They were playing on a perfect pitch provided by nature where the coastal path had climbed to the cliff head and spread out into a downy plateau.

  William had fixed on them from far off. As he approached he heard the tight grunts and clipped laughter of excitement. Nearing, he saw flushed cheeks, watering eyes, hair sticking in shards to the back of the neck and forehead. He caught hold of their expressions of determined enjoyment and observed that the game was as important and satisfying to each of them – the father was not humouring the son and the dog was not a nuisance but an integral part of the game. It was a game, it was play, and yet the resolute effort of the players suggested it was something more as well.

  A good few yards away, standing with arms folded and her back towards the sea, was a woman William deduced immediately to be the wife, mother and mistress. Her stance was at once familiar to him for it spoke of irritation, of patience drawing thin, of dissent about to be unleashed. He knew if he came closer he would see rage burgeoning behind narrowing eyes, screaming out from pursed lips. He reckoned her knuckles would be quite white and there would be marks on her arms from where her rigid fingers dug in. He wanted to go over, just to see, but found that a small voice of dread tinged with fear prevented him. He began a wide semicircle of avoidance but came to a halt when she spoke. Yelled.

  ‘For heaven’s bloody sake!’

  The team froze. Even the ball ceased to roll and seemed to hide in a thatch of longer grass.

  ‘Would you stop fooling around and come along. That ball is covered with dog drool. This is a family walk. Jee-zus!’

  ‘Two minutes!’ the father suggested in a small voice holding up two fingers gingerly.

  ‘No!’ she hollered.

  ‘Muh-hum!’ pleaded the boy, with one hand on his father’s arm.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ she stamped.

  William watched the boy and father exchange fleeting looks of sympathy and dejection while the dog cowered with his head stretched low on the grass. As if he had just been beaten. As if he had done something very wrong. The troop shuffled slowly over to the cliff edge and William turned away, terrified he might call to them ‘Push her off!’

  And yet the pull to turn back to them again was magnetic. When he did, he saw the woman take the tennis ball from her husband and hold it aloft between her thumb and third finger with utter disdain. She let it drop over the cliff. The man’s shoulders slumped, his hands rested loosely, hopelessly, on his hips. The boy hurled himself around the dog’s neck for it was ready to leap and fetch the ball.

  She led. They followed. She spoke incessantly in a clipped, forced voice ordering them to look at the sea and the beautiful landscape, to appreciate.

  ‘Isn’t nature just marvellous! Well? Isn’t it? For heaven’s sake look up and about you! All this lovely fresh air!’

  William had walked swiftly so he could remain in earshot though he was unsure why he so needed to be. It occurred to him that it was the men and the dog who had grasped the point and who were truly enjoying the gifts of the day and the land. She didn’t seem to be having fun at all and, by forcing the family issue, she was in fact underlining that no unity existed at all. It was familiar to William and painful too, though he had rarely played with his father. And he had never had a dog.

  ‘You seem a little –’ Mac laboured over the most apposite word, ‘out.’

  ‘Out?’ asked William, pinching the pixie on his mug though he knew the fired clay would not yield.

  ‘Yes,’ mused Mac, ‘out. Of sorts. Of the window. Not here.’ He allowed William his silence and aided it by pottering off to his kitchen to boil the kettle again. A few minutes later, he was aware that William was there, propping up the door frame and filling the small room with h
is physique and with his discomfort.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Just like her.’

  William spoke the words as if they were three separate sentences.

  ‘On the cliffs. I hardly think of her, Mac.’

  William walked over to the sink and rested his lower back against it. Mac rocked gently against the counter looking out over his small, straggled garden.

  ‘Mother,’ William explained in a whisper lest she should hear. ‘Mother,’ he said slowly, even more quietly, in case Mac was mistaken. Mac nodded sagely without commenting.

  ‘I think I resent Dad for not sticking up for me,’ William said, his voice hollow, ‘but I hate him more for not standing up for himself.’

  Mac put his head to one side to say he understood, please continue.

  ‘I can’t understand why he did not,’ William shouted. He looked at Mac. ‘Why didn’t he?’ he implored. Mac cast his eyes away and back to the garden where the lavatera looked at him blankly and gave no advice.

  ‘He was always nice to her. And to me,’ William said. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘What,’ asked Mac, ‘what is it precisely that grieves you?’

  ‘Why he was with her.’

  ‘Because she was his wife,’ Mac shrugged.

  ‘She can’t always have been like that!’ William protested. ‘Tell me my father had taste, had judgement!’

  Mac fell silent but William was convinced that he was full of information.

  ‘Mac!’ he demanded.

  ‘Your father was – is – a man of honour,’ Mac said blankly.

  ‘He’s feeble,’ William spat, knowing he should direct his anger at his mother but not knowing how to.

  ‘No,’ corrected Mac slowly, ‘just too kind. Too selfless.’

  ‘But if she loathed us so,’ faltered William, ‘why did she stay?’

  Mac snorted lightly at the irony.

  ‘Dog in a manger!’ he sighed under his breath.

  ‘Huh?’ asked William.

  Mac looked at him, scouring William’s beseeching eyes, and thought that ignorance, while not necessarily bliss, was perhaps for the best. After all, he had been given a secret to guard and guard it he must.

  ‘Dog in a bloody manger?’ William repeated, frowning and stamping.

  Mac shrugged.

  She hadn’t wanted him – them – but there had been no way she would have let her have them either.

  William returned to Crickhowell, the long train journey deciding him that, despite the earful he would no doubt receive from Mac, he would buy a car on his return. Something small, hardy and dependable, and as environmentally friendly as a second-hand car could be. He could afford one now, following the busy summer. He could visit Mac more often. Red perhaps? Maybe blue. Metallic grey is nice.

  He found his father pretty much as he had left him, in the queue of senility. Now, however, they had been positioned out of doors, their backs to the long window, in front of which they had spent the colder months. William walked past the display of bulging ankles contained within chewing-gum-grey socks, of shrunken chests clearly delineated behind misshapen polyester sports shirts. Knitted, knotted feet strapped into big-buckled leatherette sandals; ear lobes that looked too large; knees to be ashamed of. Sore-looking shin bones glared out from behind papery, hairless legs; while flaps of crepe-paper skin hung listless from puny arms, gathering in folds around the neck like a turkey. Enough for a book on geriatric physiology, thought William, enough to illustrate a discourse on the merits of euthanasia. He hated himself for reviling them. He tried not to look.

  ‘Hullo Dad!’ he breezed, putting his hand on the old man’s shoulder and squeezing it. It was warm. As if the sun had heated its surface alone, for his father’s expression was quite lifeless. Slowly the old man turned to William and gaped at him, his eyes quite content to rest on his face with no element of recognition.

  ‘Michael?’ he croaked.

  ‘Wi-lee-um!’ William spelt patiently, sitting on his heels and tapping his father’s hand with the syllables.

  ‘Shall we stroll,’ said the old man, ‘over to the ladies?’

  William looked about and saw no ladies. But his father had a glint in his eye and his face now had a light that came from behind and not from the sun.

  ‘Sure!’ said William, helping the old man out of the chair.

  He was surprised that, despite his father’s frame appearing so skeletal and brittle, there was a certain strength to it too. He walked faster than William anticipated and refused to take his arm though William hovered his hand close to his elbow.

  ‘We’ll go da-ha-ha-ncing,’ the old man burst into song and executed a series of surprisingly nimble dance steps, ‘and ro-mah-ha-ha-ncing!’

  Without irritation, William allowed him to repeat the line, atonally, over and over. They strolled to an impressive cedar tree.

  ‘Blast and bugger!’ his father exclaimed. ‘It appears we’ve been stood up, Michael old boy!’ It dawned on William, with a certain discomfort, that his father thought him to be Mac. And he really did not want that, did not want to be mistaken for friend instead of son. Feared the old man might say or do something unbecoming for a father. Did not want to share in his father’s bachelor flashbacks. It wasn’t proper. It was a little disturbing. He led the old man over to the rose bushes and proffered the soft, fat heads to his nose. The old man closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

  ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ he quoted in a very matter-of-fact way and a very good Scottish accent.

  ‘Is it now!’ William laughed.

  ‘Like a melody that’s sweetly played in tune!’ his father continued, having scanned the intervening lines to himself.

  As William led him around the gravel path which snaked neatly between lawn and flower beds, his father continued to recite Burns in exaggerated Scots.

  ‘Fare thee weel my only love!’

  William slowed his pace and tilted his head, listening for the next line though he knew it anyway.

  ‘And fare thee weel a while!’ his father obliged. ‘And I will come again my love –’

  ‘Though it were ten thousand mile,’ William interrupted quietly.

  They had circumnavigated the garden and were back at his father’s chair but he refused to sit. He stood instead with his hands clasped in front of his chest, taking elaborate snorts of the sweet summer day.

  ‘Ah Scotland!’ he cried, quite taking William aback.

  ‘Wales,’ William chided gently, taking a swift look about him to see if anyone had heard.

  ‘Jostling in Scotland!’ said his father, digging him in the ribs and winking slowly.

  ‘You poor old sod,’ said William quietly, knowing that his words did not register. ‘You sad old thing. Lost it.’

  His father winked back but allowed himself to be eased down into his chair.

  William looked along the decrepit queue, some were nodding to themselves while others nodded quite involuntarily. Occasionally, someone laughed out loud but William doubted whether they knew at what they laughed. He observed the small pile of books and knick-knacks by each chair. He thought it most unlikely that his father read, let alone had any interest in The All-Colour Book of Bicycles, which lay underneath a mug by Mac. Or that he had much use for a road atlas of Great Britain which, on closer inspection, had pages missing anyway. William picked the mug up and placed it in his father’s hands. His father sipped and sipped though it was quite empty while William flicked through the book on bicycles. It was badly bound and the resolution on the illustrations was appalling; overlapping purple outlines and green shadows, the type fuzzed in places. The front cover had almost come away but the back cover held on fast. Drawn on to the inside of it, over and over again, was a pattern William was sure he knew but could not quite place.

  Curvilinear. Serpentine. Swirling arabesques.

  He forced the page in front of his father who was reciting Burns again. William held the book steady until his fa
ther’s eyes alighted on it. Something behind his eyes flickered sharply and then died, a light which came on and was then extinguished. His expression changed and became stony and troubled. His head stayed very still.

  ‘Jer je je,’ he dribbled, wrenching his eyes away from the book and into the midst of nowhere.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve bought a car!’ hollered Mac. ‘A motor! Preposterous! You’d better take me for a spin this instant! Interesting shade of? Of?’

  ‘Champagne,’ clarified William, patting the bonnet of the little Renault, ‘it was all the rage a few years ago.’

  They drove to St Just and had toasted teacakes alongside scone-wolfing tourists before journeying on to a small beach known only to natives.

  ‘How was Dad?’ Mac asked, skimming his pebble two leaps further than William.

  ‘Do-lally,’ William replied, hurling a stone as far as he could. It went far enough for them not to hear it splash. They strolled by the water’s edge.

  ‘He called me Michael and suggested we went courting.’

  The real Michael laughed but did not tell William why. For his part, William did not elaborate. And Mac did not ask him to.

  ‘Then he started reciting Burns in a phoney Scottish accent.’

  Mac continued to chuckle and asked which poem.

  ‘Guess,’ said William. Mac was right first time.