by Freya North
‘End of the month. October.’
Fraser scrunched his eyes tight. When he opened them, they were quite wet.
I feel so loved, Chloë marvelled to herself later, for the first time perhaps, someone actually needs me. Cares if I go. Wants me to stay. Maybe I ought to, for a little while longer.
The feeling of well-being, of strength, which she experienced on a solitary walk through the dew to the waterfall the next morning, decided Chloë that she would journey on at the end of the month. Not because she had been told to. She found she actually wanted to.
Jocelyn would be proud.
Yes, she would indeed. So are we. And you should be too, Cadwallader. No advice sought from Jasper and Peregrine. Didn’t even consult the Andrews. Fait accompli.
Fate.
I can’t wait.
Fraser wanted to ensure that the remainder of Chloë’s stay would be filled to the brim with quality time. He woke her at the first mention of dawn each morning and kept her with him until the cuckoo yawned its protest from the wooden clock face in the early hours. He dreaded her leaving, he abhorred the idea of Braer without her. Of being without her. On his own. He did not want Chloë to go to England. It was far away. It was England. He wondered whether to pretend that he did not know of an envelope marked ‘Chloë: England’; that the one so titled in the bureau drawer wasn’t for her after all but for someone else. Didn’t she know, he had a cousin called Chloë. I mean a sister. Friend. No, a colleague. Ultimately, he did tell her of the envelope but she said she didn’t want it just yet.
While walking alongside Loch Lomond one morning, an idea came to Chloë practically out of the blue.
‘Fraser?’ she started, slowing her pace and holding her head at an acute angle.
‘MacWallader?’ he responded, ruffling her hair.
‘I think I have an idea,’ she continued.
‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘you think so, do you? Either you do or you don’t, surely?’
‘Hush up and listen! You know Braer?’
‘Aye, I think that’ll be the house in which I live.’
‘It has, what, six bedrooms?’
‘Well, seven officially – the room with my windsurfing gear and the piano.’
‘Even better.’
‘Put it on the market, you mean?’
‘Gracious no!’ cried Chloë, stopping dead. She looked over the mirror surface of the water. No one was about. Something rippled the surface. A fly, perhaps. A buzzard could be heard but not seen. Ahead of them, the fingers of the glens dipped into the loch along its length. Was it the clarity of the water that brushed them blue and violet? Or was it the hues of the land, cloaked in bracken and smothered with heather, that spun colour and definition across the loch?
‘Fraser?’
‘MacWallader!’
‘Look!’
‘Goats?’
‘Yes. Wild?’
‘Oh aye! They may graze for free and it is forbidden to kill them. They kept Robert the Bruce warm while he hid in the cave – later Rob Roy’s cave. Did you not know?’
‘No! Really?’
‘Oh aye – why shouldnae be?’
‘Indeed – Robert the Bruce hey!’
‘The Bruce, Chloë, him indeed.’
The fragrant scent of pine surrounded them. Ahead, Ben Lomond soared.
‘Fraser?’ Chloë started again.
‘Yes, MacWallader, I be he.’
‘Remember Edinburgh? Mrs MacAdam? The pink and the gold and the green? Shoes by the front door?’
‘How,’ bemoaned Fraser, performing a quick tap-dance, ‘could I forget!’
‘Braer!’ declared Chloë before walking on ahead in silence but with purpose.
‘Tell me if I’m being unreasonable,’ Fraser started, ‘but would it be at all possible for you to elaborate just a little so that I may get a drift, just an inkling, of what on earth it is you’re driving at?’
Chloë twisted her nose and dug him hard in the ribs until he yelped with indignation. She chased him to the water’s edge and rugby-tackled him to the soft ground. They let their laughter subside and their breath come back.
‘Remember Mrs MacMad’s abhorrence of your – er, deviant sexuality?’ asked Chloë theatrically. Fraser regarded her slyly, knowing she meant no offence and yet still unable to grasp her allusion.
‘Aye,’ he said slowly. He watched Chloë’s lips come together. ‘You’re going to say “Braer” again, aren’t you?’ he chided; Chloë nodded enthusiastically.
‘Braer!’ she declared.
‘I thought so,’ said Fraser despondently. ‘You may as well say it again, for I’m no nearer understanding you!’
‘Braer,’ complied Chloë, ‘turn Braer into a weekend retreat for nancy boys!’
Slowly, very slowly, Fraser’s brow softened, his eyes spun shards of light and a smile of prodigious proportions criss-crossed his face. He pounced on Chloë and pinned her to the ground, spreading himself over her in the missionary position. He kissed her square on the lips. And again. And again. But soon he smiled so emphatically that he could not pucker his lips and his teeth grazed hers. Then he jumped up, pulled her to her feet and danced a perversion of the polka and the tango before steadying her and hugging her tight.
‘You bloody genius girl!’ he marvelled, and it sounded like ‘guh-rrl’ in his enthusiasm. She shrugged her shoulders and said it was just an idea. ‘Just an idea!’ cried Fraser. ‘MacWallader, it’s a veritable brainwave. It’s the answer to my prayers and to my bank manager’s probings!’ He twirled her about again. ‘Shall we go back and talk colour schemes?’
‘Let’s!’ said Chloë, twirling around with her arms outstretched. The loch scumbled over a tumble of rocks, the secrets of Time its very own.
Fraser and Chloë scrutinized each room at Braer, sucking hard on pencils and filling reams of notebooks. With deference to Mrs MacAdam, they decided on colour themes for the rooms though they forsook gold, pink and green for Magenta Divine, Mellow Yellow, In the Navy (Fraser’s room), Blush (Chloë’s), Cream Dream, Indigo Jones and Calamity Brown. They spent a hectic day in Glasgow, choosing knick-knacks that looked more expensive than they were; buying paint, overalls and rollers; ordering beds and blinds, and swathes of muslin and calico to ‘drape around’. They bought plain china and simple glasses in bulk and fought over whether cloth or paper napkins were more suitable. Chloë said, ‘Cloth! Or I’ll take my idea back and leave tomorrow!’ Fraser obligingly bought forty gingham napkins and said his guests could always wear them as neckerchiefs if they so wished. They bounced their heads against a variety of pillows before plumping for polyester which were half the price of duck down and, the assistant assured them, fire retardant, allergy free and guaranteed to hold their shape.
‘Furniture!’ wailed Chloë as they sat in the garden on their return, exchanging the fumes of the city for the fresh, sweet air of Drumfyn. ‘You can’t have a room with only a bed!’ Fraser brushed her worries away and took her up into the attic.
‘Should I have a full house,’ he explained, ‘I’ll have to sleep up here. To do that, I must clear it first. And, as you can plainly see, there’s enough furniture lying around up here to-bedeck – well, a guest house!’
The attic became their den, their snug, and they clambered up there at all times of the day and night, sometimes with coffee, sometimes with whisky, once with a bumper bag of marshmallows. They came across Fraser’s English essays book and found much hilarity in reading the stories out loud. They found a box of Lego and Stickle-Bricks and whiled away a whole day absorbed in their recreation of the Manhattan skyline. They snuggled up on a brown, corduroy beanbag, spoke of the past and postulated on the future.
‘Well, I’m sorted, I’m going to be a landlady,’ Fraser declared, finding a box of kitchen utensils and placing a sieve on his head, ‘but what about you, Chloë? What’ll you be if you’ll not be my cherished chambermaid?’
‘At the mo’, I really have no idea,�
�� Chloë replied earnestly, checking Fraser’s knee-jerk reflex with a rolling-pin, ‘but I will know. And you’ll be the first I tell.’
‘Promise?’
‘Cross my heart.’
In between times spent Up the Attic, the pair were embroiled in a decorating frenzy. But, as the Blush and In the Navy rooms were already done, it was not too difficult a task to see to the remaining five.
‘Especially,’ qualified Fraser through a mask of Creamy Dreamy freckles, ‘as paint effects and the “distressed” look are so in vogue!’
‘Just as long as the effect of the marbling in Magenta Divine does not cause migraines – and guests in Indigo Jones do not find it distressingly cobbled together!’
They assaulted the walls and each other with paint-sodden rags and rollers, brushes and sponges and a floor mop that created a wonderful effect. The bride’s underwear, which Chloë had continued to guard much to Fraser’s amusement, proved excellent for more detailed mottling around window frames. Doused with Mellow Yellow warpaint, Chloë went to the post office to buy up all the onions that Molly had. Molly eyed her suspiciously, her arms locked around her bosom.
‘Onions!’ she muttered in I-know-what-you’re-doing undertones.
‘Yes,’ said Chloë openly, ‘we’re decorating the house and if you keep sliced onions around, they absorb the fumes of the paint.’
‘Oh aye,’ said Molly not believing a word, ‘we’ll say nothing about para-gliding then.’
Chloë was puzzled. The old woman continued, ‘Come girl! That politician! Trussing himself up and putting an onion in his mouth for a – For Indecent Personal Pleasure!’ she spat. ‘Was he not a para-glider?’
Chloë tried not to laugh.
‘Pa-ra-phil-ia,’ she said very slowly in a calm voice, ‘and it was oranges, not onions!’
Molly regarded her sternly as if to say, well, did they not both begin with ‘p’ and surely that was the point?
‘Actually,’ continued Chloë slyly, ‘that reminds me, Fraser did want oranges, didn’t he. I’ll take a dozen. And a couple of metres of that cord.’
On Chloë’s last night, Fraser presented her with the envelope marked ‘England’. They regarded it together, handed it back and forth but said nothing and left it unopened, propped against the ketchup bottle while they had their last supper.
‘Will you make coffee?’ Fraser asked her. ‘In a saucepan, like on your first day?’
Of course she would. Should they melt a tub of ice-cream too? Absolutely. Abso-bloody-lutely gor-jesus! The combination was wonderful; the ice-cream adding symbolic and necessary sweetness to the evening, the coffee strong enough to tide them through to the early hours.
‘Fraser?’
‘MacWallader Fair?’
‘Your dad,’ Chloë faltered. Fraser tipped his head and regarded her. A question had been welling within her for days, weeks even, and now it burned lest it should go unanswered before she left. And yet she was suddenly in a dilemma whether to ask at all, and how to phrase it.
‘MacDoubleYou – what is it? My da, you were saying.’
‘Your da,’ Chloë repeated distractedly. ‘Jocelyn?’ she furthered. ‘Were they –?’ she wondered only half aloud. ‘Did they –?’
Fraser laughed softly through his nose and shook his head, smiling and sorrowful simultaneously.
‘No, Chlo,’ he said with audible regret, ‘they never did. My da let that part of his heart slip into the grave with Mam. And I believe Jocelyn’s heart was dedicated elsewhere too. I canna be sure. I never did ask. Perhaps that’s why they were so close. They both appeared resolute in their fidelity.’
‘And why she felt so safe here,’ said Chloë, ‘so at home.’
Chloë was somewhat sad. She’d half envisaged Fraser senior being the suitor of Jocelyn to whom Gus had lost. She’d half hoped he might have been, because Fraser senior must have been at least as lovely as his son. And Jocelyn, of course, was incomparable. And it would have tied her closer to Fraser, made him almost a real brother.
‘My da remained in love with Mam till his dying day.’
Chloë gave a resigned sigh after a few minutes’ silence and respect. ‘It’s time,’ she said, regarding her knees sternly as the cuckoo protested that it was three in the morning. Fraser placed the envelope marked ‘England’ on a cushion, knelt at Chloë’s side and presented it to her ceremoniously. They examined the envelope in turn and, instinctively, took it to their noses. No Mitsuko. No reason not to open it. No, please don’t go. I have to. You can come and stay. I’ll visit. Me too. I’ll write. Don’t phone. I’ll write too.
‘Don’t open it!’ shrieked Fraser as Chloë took her thumb to the corner of the envelope. ‘Say it says “Birmingham”! Or “Croydon”! Then you’ll not go, Chlo, and yet you must – wherever it might take you. Otherwise it’ll be like breaking the chain, a circle left incomplete, the last page of a book missing.’ He touched her chin and tilted his head, big eyes soft and sad, ‘An unfinished symphony,’ he declared, patting Chloë’s knee bravely but casting his eyes away.
As Chloë tucked down in Blush for her last night, or what was left of it, she reached for her rucksack which was on the chair at the foot of the bed, the flowers moved temporarily to the window-sill. She patted it fondly, stroked the straps and laid her hand firmly against its side. To Chloë, it was more animate than its red canvas exterior might suggest; though it was she who carried it, did it not contain and transport so much of her too?
‘Here we go,’ she whispered, ‘last stop.’ The rucksack, however, never answered her. Chloë sat back on the bed and regarded it with a nod and smile. She reached over to the bedside table and retrieved the envelope marked ‘England’, still unopened. She lodged it behind the straps of the rucksack and then slipped down into the bed, pulling the sheets up to her chin. But she did not switch off the light. She listened hard to the silence and closed her eyes to absorb it for posterity. The early hours in Scotland, she decided, were wholly unique and as unlike those in Ireland as the Welsh nights had been. What were English nights like? Could she remember? Well, she’d find out soon enough. Did Islington count? Not any more.
She was indeed ready to leave Scotland though she loved it so. She must complete the circle, add the last link to the chain, finish the book, though she debated whether her sojourn could be defined a symphony in need of completion.
‘I’d settle for a small tune,’ she said quietly, ‘a ditty. Something plain and simple.’
Around the chair hung her jacket; Jocelyn’s brooch glinting softly in the light squeezing in through the crack in the Madras curtains. There on the chair was her rucksack. Behind the straps, the envelope marked ‘England’.
‘Open it, child!’
‘Mr A, I’m sleepy. It can wait.’
‘Tush, do you imagine we’re not burning to know where we might be going!’
‘So you want me to open it now? Right now? This minute?’
‘Well, how will you know which train to board? Which direction to head? Where on earth to go? Of course open it right now, this minute!’
Chloë took the envelope under the bed covers because paper tearing seemed twice as loud in the small hours.
‘Oh! Before I forget, I met some friends of yours – acquaintances – at the gallery in Edinburgh.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Mrs A,’ said Chloë with a wink, ‘they say he was quite a catch!’
‘I think, my dear,’ said Mrs Andrews, drawing back her shoulders, smoothing her skirts primly and sidling away from her husband ever so slightly, ‘they rather said “cad”.’
Chloë, however, was scrutinizing the fourth map torn, of course, from the same source as the others. This last letter, however, she decided to leave for the long train journey tomorrow.
THIRTY-SIX
Chloë my girl,
Bay View Guest House
St Ives
Cornwall
Call them first to confirm the reservatio
n.
See you there!
Jocelyn
THIRTY-SEVEN
The room is small and narrow. A riot of pink flowers papers the walls up to the picture rail before rampaging over the ceiling, with a brief interlude for a cornice the colour of strawberry ice-cream. The curtains are also floral and very pink, but of a different hue and pattern to the wallpaper. The lampshades and bedlinen, in shades of anaemic raspberry and limp fuchsia, are strewn with flowers too. There is a tapestry picture of a bouquet but it is crooked. A china posy, whose petals are for the most part chipped, teeters on the window-sill. The carpet is swirled with eddies of cerise, blotches of salmon and streaks of a colour close to raw bacon. Pink, pink, to make the boys wince!
The room is filled, gorged, with flowers yet none are real or even remotely like true flora. Some have uniform, rounded petals, but are certainly not impatiens; others have petals perfect for love-me-love-me-not plucking, but are definitely not daisies; some look vaguely like pansies but oversize thorns curtail the illusion. Most inappropriate, most unbecoming. The overall impression of the room neither evokes summer, nor the countryside, nor even an overstocked florist. Its enduring effect, rather, is to bestow on its inhabitant a headache of ponderous proportions.
Pink, pink. Chloë shuts her eyes tight against the barrage and the confusion and the botanical inaccuracies of her surroundings. Her heavy head, aching from a long journey and further pained by these pretend posies and all this pinkness, rests gingerly against a bedstead of padded velvet the colour of well-chewed bubble gum. She is fully clothed and though her brown jeans and bottle-green jumper clash with the room, she is too tired to rectify it, too tired to change. And anyway, she does not own one piece of clothing that is remotely pink. (‘Pink,’ Jocelyn had warned her at a very young age, ‘would be the ultimate insult to your intelligence – and to your hair!’)
Chloë lies stiffly on the bed, with hands loosely clasped beneath her breasts; she is very pale and her hair, a little lank and damson dark today, accentuates her wanness. She could very well be an alabaster effigy in a chantry chapel of some lesser cathedral, save for her chunky, lace-up boots which tap and twitch every now and then.