Chloe

by Freya North

  ‘Time for what?’ William teased.

  ‘To move on,’ Mac said cautiously.

  ‘And go where?’ feigned William.

  ‘Where you will let people come to you,’ replied Mac, punching William’s heart with a force that vanquished ambiguity. William laughed loud and sharp, shook his head and regarded the old man.

  ‘I’m a potter,’ he explained as if to a child.

  ‘Precisely!’ Mac proclaimed. ‘You live in clay on a cliff with a goat.’

  ‘And,’ qualified William, ‘I am very happy with it!’

  ‘But,’ cautioned Mac, holding his index finger aloft before pointing it directly at William and poking him on the biceps, ‘for how long?’

  ‘For the foreseeable future,’ William proclaimed sternly, smacking his knees and trying to close the conversation. ‘And if, Mac, I find I’m lonesome, I’ll find me a wife and breed me a chile!’

  His Texan accent served only to rile Mac who responded with the thickest of Cornish burrs.

  ‘And who’ll have the cliffclay manan gohte?

  William paused.

  ‘Heidi?’ he asked while his smile spread. Mac hurled a cushion at him.

  ‘Just keep your peepers open,’ he winked at William, ‘and should someone knock,’ he continued, tapping at his chest again, ‘let ’em in.’

  William leapt to his feet, eyes narrow above a wry smile. He peered under Mac’s chair, under the table; he removed books and looked behind them, he hurried to the kitchen and then back again.

  ‘I can’t see anyone here!’ he sang a little too sarcastically.

  ‘That,’ said Mac, his look piercing straight through William, ‘is because no one knocked.’

  ‘And yet you’re a clay-caked, content old potter!’ said William triumphantly. Mac wore a half-smile that made William shift and shumble and hold on to the armchair while darting his gaze to and from Mac with a meek grin.

  ‘Content, yes,’ said Mac, rising. He came very close to William, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and rocked on his heels, observing him reprovingly. Then he stood absolutely still and grabbed William’s chin in his left hand, pinching at the flesh not wholly inadvertently. He placed his right hand over William’s heart and gave his chest another uncompromising shove.

  ‘Content, yes,’ he whispered while the stillness of the room hung to his words. He held on to William’s desperate-to-dart eyes, dropped his own and then raised them again, staunchly. ‘But I’d love to have been blissfully happy.’

  William drove back slowly, at a pace safe enough for him to gaze from the window and ignore Mac’s words. And forget Mac’s tone. At Peregrine’s Gully, he walked in and out of the rooms, trailing a hand gently along the window-sills and walls; letting fingers dab at the soil around the houseplants, dip in and out of his bowls and vases which were on display and not for sale. He pulled his hands quickly and lightly over the tightly packed spines on the bookshelf wall, like a pianist sweeping over a vast keyboard. Only there was silence. But William did not observe it for long. He sprang up the carpet-bare staircase in a dissonant dance of sorts and tried not to be disconcerted by certain creaks that were suddenly unfamiliar. He went into the spare bedroom and strummed his old guitar badly while trying to guess how much the small change half filling the oversize whisky bottle amounted to. Enough, he reckoned, for a whole round of whiskies. Only, William never stood a round because he rarely went to a pub. And when he did, it was for a bitter shandy and solitary supping well away from the bar.

  He caught sight of himself in the large mirror propped against the wall and immediately diverted his gaze to its flamboyant driftwood frame. Slowly, however, his eyes inched their way back and soon, William shuffled over on his knees to have a closer look. He grabbed his chin the same way Mac had, clamping and closing his grasp until his lips puckered and he looked quite silly. He scrutinized his face and noticed for the first time that his eyebrows were not symmetrical. He saw that his forehead was lined and that none of the furrows traversed his brow unbroken. As if he had suddenly thought better of the worries that had caused them. As if the lines had been broken off mid-thought.

  His hair needed a cut.

  I’ll go to St Ives, tomorrow.

  He glowered at a blackhead on the side of his nose and pinched it hard, unsuccessfully. Further along, another two taunted him but he decided to leave them alone and eat more fruit instead. He found an ingrowing hair on his throat so he jutted his chin to stretch the skin while scraping his nail persistently until the offending hair sprang released; far longer, darker, than the surrounding bristles. Like the solitary oak amongst the scrub at the boundary of Peregrine’s Gully.

  I’ll have a proper, cutthroat shave at the barber’s. St Ives tomorrow.

  There was now nowhere left to look but at his eyes and his first glance presented him with the spectacle of his pupils shrinking. Because it was far easier to look at his eyes rather than into them and beyond, he sat cross-legged and, placing a hand over each eye in turn, spent quite some time observing the antics of his pupils instead. On his way to have another peer at the lines on his brow, he caught full sight of himself. He looked swiftly away, unbuckled his legs and got to his feet, wincing at the sound of his creaking bones more than at the sensation itself.

  I’m getting old!

  You are!

  He walked out of the room avoiding the mirror, making a note to take the whisky bottle to the bank in St Ives the next day. There was bound to be enough for a haircut and some potions and lotions to banish blackheads and furrows.

  He went through to his bedroom and its bareness after the clutter quite startled him. He stood against the radiator, scorching the palms of his hands, while gazing out and over the cliffs to way beyond the sea. Though he rocked against the heat and felt it course a path from the base of his spine right up between his shoulder-blades, he shuddered with a chill that was not physical but affected him totally.

  ‘I am not unhappy,’ he stated out loud, his eyes tracing the curl of the iron window lock over and over. ‘And I am perfectly content,’ he reasoned as he walked over to the window to check the lock and see if there was perhaps a draught which had made him shiver. The old windows, however, appeared to be in excellent order. William returned to the radiator. He looked at his shoes and decided he could do with a new pair. He could afford them now, too, whether or not the funds from the whisky jar stretched that far.

  St Ives, tomorrow.

  ‘I am not lonely,’ he laughed briefly, ‘and am quite content to be on my own. Alone.’ Through the window, he could see that the afternoon had turned windy and grey. He kicked his shoes off and let his socked feet slide in little semicircles over the floorboards in front of him.

  ‘If you can happily be alone without being lonely,’ he said quietly, ‘does it necessarily follow that if you are not unhappy, you are thus happy?’

  The room was silent. The question hung unanswered. A sudden gust from outside threw a small twig against the window but William could find neither meaning, nor an answer, in this.

  ‘Is it not preferable just to be content? I rather think I’d be a happy man if I remained content the rest of my days.’ Still caught in a pocket of breeze, the twig jittered against the window. ‘And I doubt whether I’d die bitter for having never tasted blissful happiness!’

  After all, just how mind-blowing and life-enriching, just how sweet, can Mac’s hallowed ‘blissful happiness’ be? wondered William as he skated across the floorboards, over to the window. Carefully, he opened it and retrieved the dancing twig. In was safer in his hands. But its life was gone instantly, and it lay still, brittle, and somewhat forlorn in his hands. Suddenly, the bedroom was too bare, too stark. He looked at his bed and wondered whether, ever, someone might share it with him. Not once had he invited Morwenna to stay. Sex had always been conducted at her place. William had kept Peregrine’s Gully secret and sacred. He had kept Morwenna out. There had never been a woman at Peregrine’s
Gully during his residence, though what difference this had made, or would have made if otherwise, he was unsure. William looked at the bed again. Would there ever be?

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ he said loudly, grabbing his genitals defiantly, ‘not bemoaning!’

  For the time being, he was still more than happy to have the metaphorical bed back to himself, and his own bed all for himself.

  But will you remain so?

  And are you blissfully happy that you sleep alone?

  He placed the twig carefully on the pillow, the side of the bed he did not sleep in. As he wandered through to the bathroom and made a note to buy toothpaste and cream cleaner tomorrow in St Ives, he understood that blissful happiness most probably eluded people on their own. A small and almost unwelcome voice deep inside pointed out that it was undoubtedly a sublime state created within oneself by another.

  ‘And I don’t need anyone. Certainly not “another”.’

  To be sure, William. But might you not, quite simply, want someone?

  ‘Not anyone.’

  No. Not any old person. But perhaps, at some time, a someone?

  ‘There’s Barbara and Mac. They are very important to me.’

  But have they ever made you blissfully happy?

  ‘Blissful happiness has not been noticeable for its presence in my life. I wouldn’t know.’

  But a taste of it might be very nice indeed?

  ‘God, this place needs a good dust,’ says William very loudly as he runs his fingers along the window-sill while walking quickly down the stairs; too quickly to hear the creaks. ‘I’ll buy polish and new dusters in St Ives, tomorrow.’

  If you make it, William; usually you think of umpteen excuses not to go.

  As Chloë cycles to work, she passes a man walking purposefully in front of her with a large whisky bottle half filled with coins. She estimates that there is probably enough to buy a high-tech gel saddle and a bell for her bicycle. As she free-wheels down into town, she wonders where one acquires such bottles. It would be a good idea to start a collection of her own; Jocelyn’s inheritance is now dwindling proper and waitressing does not pay much.

  William has left the car some way out of St Ives. He resents pay-and-display parking but a sly ten minutes on a yellow line last month taught him an expensive lesson he’d rather not repeat. As he walks down into the town, the weight of his bottle of change suggests that a good lunch might very well be purchased from its proceeds too. A bicycle swishes past him, picks up speed and disappears from view over the hill.

  But not before he has caught a glimpse of the rider; hair in deep red twists and twirls ribboning out behind her, catching the light of the November morning and adding its own luminescence to the day.

  William catches his breath. And he is not sure why.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Well, they have to meet, don’t they – it was practically decreed in Chapter One. And, though we realize there is an aged army of Jocelyn’s compatriots standing in the wings to assist, how are William and Chloë ultimately to come together? Will they even like each other? And will she stay? Oh, the disappointment of it if they don’t and she doesn’t. Chloë’s year, however, has been more than just a journey leading to this lovely man; it’s been a quest for home, a search for strength and for herself. It won’t be wasted time if she doesn’t find William.

  But wouldn’t it be good if she did. …

  ‘Ho! Our piskie sends missive!’

  ‘About time, I’ll say.’

  Peregrine peered at the letter through Jasper’s spectacles held at arm’s length. They went through to the drawing-room and Jasper silenced Gardeners’ Question Time because not even clematis chrysocoma took precedence over Chloë Cadwallader. Peregrine found his own spectacles under the Radio Times and returned Jasper’s, placing them daintily on the tip of his beau’s nose. He settled himself into the old armchair and rested his slippered feet on the pouffe for which Jocelyn had exchanged a jar of Branston Pickle on a trip to Algiers in the 1960s.

  ‘Now, let’s see,’ he muttered, scanning the letter while a be-thimbled Jasper darned socks patiently, observing him over his spectacles every now and then. ‘Oh!’ Peregrine exclaimed, pushing the letter on to his lap, tutting and grimacing, and then picking it up and reading on. ‘Dear!’ he continued, pulling his lips into a pained contortion. ‘Buggery buggerdome!’ he fulminated quietly, rubbing his eyebrows and shaking his head. Jasper remained silent but for a momentary wince when the needle went wayward. Peregrine held the letter aloft, cleared his throat and read, with no need for a warning against bla bla-ing.

  ‘She says she had an enjoyable week’s holiday, has spent an interesting month waitressing and living in pleasant digs, but can’t see the point of staying on so please could she come back to stay with us until she decides what to do and where.’

  ‘Just like that?’ gasped Jasper, pricking himself again. ‘No punctuation?’

  ‘Not in the opening line,’ affirmed Peregrine, remarking that the rest of the letter appeared to be punctuated appropriately. ‘She says here, I can’t see why Jocelyn sent me here – apart from it being one more place I previously did not know. I do like it here, quite a lot actually, but as I can find no link here with Jocelyn, there seems little true purpose to my staying. I worry that just liking the place isn’t reason enough – Jocelyn must have had something up her sleeve, but I can find no indication of what it is.’

  Jasper finished the socks, held them to the light, rolled them into correct pairs and threw them at Peregrine. ‘Continue!’ he implored, turning his attention to a tapestry cushion he had started the week before.

  Peregrine gathered the socks and lodged them between the small of his back and the chair.

  ‘She goes on to say, I know I’m not what you’d call a socialite, but I’m getting a little bored of my own company. Why does she use “getting” when she could very well say “I have become” or “I am now”?’

  ‘She’s lonesome,’ said Jasper, ‘leave her be!’

  ‘She says she is not lonely, that she does not mind being on her own,’ clarified Peregrine.

  ‘Ah,’ responded Jasper, ‘but does she say she is happy to be so?’

  Peregrine conceded that he could not find mention of the word in the letter, but then nor does he see ‘unhappy’. ‘She says she misses Wales: But in a wistful way; neither Scrabble nor Monopoly are possible by oneself and reminiscing requires a minimum of two participants. I had my solitude in Ireland but, in retrospect, though I was often lonelier there than here, it was a good time, good for me – and ultimately for Gus too, I think. Here, though people are friendly, no one knows Jocelyn so I question why I am here. I miss my Fraser and he misses me too, but we do not long for each other and I know I could not really live with him permanently. Anyway, he wrote to say how Braer has thrived in its first month as a guest house and I know he does not now need me. I couldn’t go back anyway, not so soon. It would be going backwards.

  ‘I’m sure I gave as much in the other countries visited as I received. Was I not a great help to Gin? Ultimately, so much more than just an administrator to Gus? Wasn’t it I who enabled Fraser to find the direction and confidence previously eluding him? So what’s my function here? I miss all three countries in some way or other; each gave me something precious and unique. But such gifts I was able to take away with me. I have them with me here – but I’m just not sure Cornwall is where I should set up a mantelpiece on which to put them. I’m having fun as a waitress, I’ve met a really nice girl there much my own age, but I can’t be doing this for the rest of my life. Only what else could I do? And down here? I think I should come back for a while, don’t you? Would you mind? Perhaps we could look at the map together.’

  Peregrine and Jasper looked over to a photograph of Jocelyn and raised their eyebrows in unison.

  ‘Chloë’s almost there,’ Peregrine considered, ‘at least she likes the place and has gone ahead and organized herself.’

&nbs
p; ‘Perhaps she just needs that little prod now – as we all prophesied she might,’ said Jasper after a while.

  ‘Time for the phone call?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Mac walked slowly around the ground floor of his cottage muttering, ‘Good Lord! Good Lord!’ to himself, to his plants and to a confederation of pixies gathered on yesterday’s newspaper spread over the kitchen table. Later, William asked him what it was that the Lord had done to warrant such repeated praise. Mac said ‘Oh, nothing! Nothing!’ in an exceptionally breezy way. Puzzled but not overly curious, William left him preaching to the pixies and spent the afternoon glazing jugs instead.

  FORTY

  ‘Have you heard of somebody called Michael Mount?’ Chloë asked Mrs Stokes, waving Peregrine’s letter at her.

  ‘Mount? Mount,’ mused Mrs Stokes, ‘Michael Mount,’ she laughed heartily, ‘you mean St Michael’s Mount!’ and she laboured the word into ‘sunt’ to make her point.

  ‘No no no!’ sang Chloë trying not to sound rude. ‘A Mister Michael Mount.’ She scanned the letter. ‘Lives in Carn Tregen?’ She repeated it twice, with the ‘e’ soft and then hard.

  Mrs Stokes twitched her top lip and pulled her eyebrows together, humming into the crook of a finger. ‘Tregen,’ she confirmed with a soft ‘e’. ‘Any more?’ she asked, determined that she did indeed know everyone between St Ives and St Just.

  ‘Doesn’t say much,’ Chloë said forlornly, wafting the single-page letter again. She read from it verbatim: ‘Clodders dear, it really wouldn’t do to leave Cornwall before you’ve given it a chance. We think it a very nice county. Remember, Jocelyn only ever had your best interest at heart, and you’ve said that you do like the place and the folk you’ve met. Jocelyn trusted you’d be happy there so don’t let her down by giving up. She knew you well, did she not? You seem to have carved a little niche for yourself too, even if it seems a little unglamorous just now. Do you not think it could lead on to something? You could be running the restaurant soon – or even setting up on your own. Don’t be defeatist or too proud.