Chloe

by Freya North

  Chloë breathed in the coconut scent of the gorse and implored William to do the same. She ruffled his hair and stroked his back as he bent tentatively to the flowers.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘I had to stand up straight and all by myself here – possibly for the first time ever. I’m not overconfident, or very ambitious, certainly I’m not that sociable. I’ve always quite liked to be told what to do, where to go. Oh my Jocelyn! And to an extent, she did just that – right up until Cornwall. She sent me to the Gin Trap, who asked me to accompany small children on horseback. She told me to go to Gus, and he ordered me to phone these people, type this letter, order this, organize that. Then she sent me to Fraser, and he told me to take drinks out to the wedding party in the garden; then what colour to paint which room! And though I feel I began then to see a way to express myself, I’d invariably turn to Mr and Mrs Andrews for guidance in moments of even the slightest doubt.’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Who?’

  ‘Andrews,’ said Chloë in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘The only couple I know by that name are a pair of Gainsborough toffs residing on a wall at the National Gallery!’

  Chloë smiled to herself and then over to William. ‘I thought you might,’ she said fondly, ‘and they are the very same.’

  William interrupted her with a kiss.

  ‘Chloë-Chloë-Chloë!’ he chanted like a sea bird. ‘The Girl Cadwallader!’ he declared. He shook his head in amazement and gave a little snort, as if crediting some great coincidence or remarkable revelation. She was so sincere, and that she spoke from her heart solicited his own even more. He slipped his hand into the back pocket of her jeans and gave a little squeeze.

  ‘What?’ she laughed, skipping in front of him and then walking on, backwards.

  ‘That you should have an eighteenth-century couple, albeit painted, as your confidantes,’ he caught up with her and touched her nose with his, ‘and that I should have a goat as mine!’ They walked on, marvelling at their eccentricity, their affinity.

  ‘Anyway,’ she recapped easily over the interlude of goat and Gainsborough, ‘Cornwall and no one. Nothing to do! But I found a little job, all by myself. My comfortable digs. All on my own. I began to make friends with strangers; making my own introduction. And then I found that I had Number Three. The kaleidoscope was still for once, and presented me with a lovely pattern that I really liked.’

  She kissed William. He kissed her back. She raised her eyebrow and he winked at her.

  ‘And what’ll you do with Number Three? Any ideas?’

  ‘Loads,’ she laughed, ‘but only one that I think is really feasible.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘To enable people to venerate the coving and admire the skirting-boards, of course.’

  ‘And how’ll they do that?’

  ‘In a comfortable chair with a mug of coffee or a cup of sweetened tea!’

  ‘What? Just sit there and stare at the walls?’

  ‘No, silly! Well yes, if they want! I thought, in the true tradition of St Ives, that Number Three should share its pleasing proportions with people who will be nourished by them. I’ll do the garden too, so they can sit outside in the summer. And have a think. Or a day-dream. Whatever!’

  ‘So, a Tea Shoppe,’ said William, unable not to sound disappointed.

  ‘Heavens no!’ scolded Chloë, ‘just Number Three. I’ll sell coffee and books, tea and tables.’

  ‘Tables?’

  ‘To write on – poetry, letters, music, fiction – whatever their calling!’

  ‘A space conducive to those of artistic sensibilities!’ William mused, delighted.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Chloë.

  ‘Rather than to those in search of fat scones and clotted cream!’ William continued, grasping the idea and not wanting to let go.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Niche in the market,’ he congratulated, his beam telling her he thought her quite brilliant.

  ‘But,’ said Chloë slyly, ‘they can buy the mugs from which they drink!’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ William groaned jovially, ‘bedecked with pixies and glazed in Cornish sludge.’

  ‘But of course,’ she defended, ‘anyway, Mac’s behind me all the way.’

  ‘I bet he is,’ laughed William, ‘and what’s his cut?’ Chloë wrinkled her nose and her eyes sparkled. William pressed her nose gently with his thumb. Inside, she danced.

  ‘New books?’ he asked, plucking some marram grass and tucking it behind her pretty ear where it became as beautiful as any flower might have been.

  ‘Not practical,’ she reasoned, ‘coffee blotches and tea stains would render them second-hand before they were even bought first time around.’

  ‘Perhaps discounts for customers who bring a book!’ enthused William.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Chloë said.

  ‘We’d better get cracking,’ he declared, ‘if you want to be up and running for the season.’

  ‘I’d planned to do some measuring and a spot of painting tomorrow. Want to come? I mean, join me?’

  ‘Readily, Chloë, will I do both.’

  Chloë and William met at Number Three the next morning. Along with a tape-measure and a clutch of paintbrushes and rollers, Chloë arrived with Mr and Mrs Andrews and introduced them cordially to William. They explained to him that they were only temporarily housed in the postcard and that once Chloë had primed and painted the long wall, they would move from their lodgings at Jocelyn’s house to take residence on it. For the time being, William made two slits in the rim of the polystyrene cup and tucked Mr and Mrs Andrews into it.

  Suitably mounted and positioned on the back window-sill, Mr and Mrs Andrews oversaw the lackeys and remarked to themselves that the job would be done quicker if the labourers did not kiss each other quite so much. Chloë turned Mr and Mrs Andrews around so that they faced the garden and she could no longer hear them.

  Back at Peregrine’s Gully at tea-time, William suggested they rummage in his spare room.

  ‘Look at all this stuff – there’s plenty you might find useful at Number Three. I thought you’d like the driftwood mirror – of course you can have it. We can take it there and experiment with positioning.’

  Experiment with positioning. The words hung loaded. Chloë cursed herself for a short but unmistakable giggle and turned her attention to the whisky bottle.

  ‘It was you!’ she cooed, remembering when she had seen it. Not so long ago, really. Seems an age, actually.

  She dug in her pockets and trickled a clutch of coppers into the bottle.

  ‘Pennies for my potter,’ she said sweetly. William was standing at the other end of the room, holding the guitar and striking a spontaneous chord.

  ‘You’re lovely, Chloë,’ he said, quite unabashed.

  ‘Am I?’ she responded, embarrassed and reddening. ‘Heavens.’

  ‘Very,’ he assured her, ‘heavenly.’

  ‘I think you’re really rather nice too,’ she said softly, eyes wide and smile likewise.

  ‘Does that make us a pair?’ William laughed. Chloë considered this.

  ‘Yes,’ she declared, nodding and clutching her hands in triumph, ‘we match.’

  ‘Does that mean we’re a couple, then?’ asked William quietly, walking over to her and taking her hands in his.

  ‘Yes,’ Chloë proclaimed, squeezing his fingers and taking them to her lips, ‘it does.’

  William lunged for her with a barrage of kisses. She retaliated with a deluge of her own. They stopped, slightly breathless, their eyes hazed, their senses ablaze.

  ‘I –’ William began, stroking her neck and then kissing it. Chloë did not mind that his sentence remained unfinished. She touched his ear lobe very gently and then stood on her tiptoes to kiss it.

  ‘Make love to me,’ she whispered aloud for the first time ever, her words coming as naturally to her as the notion.

  They wriggled each other out of their clothing, the guitar knocked t
o the floor with an atonal crash that they hardly heard.

  ‘Chloë,’ William murmured hoarsely. She held her head to one side, admiring the curve of his neck, the dip of his cheek, the amazing light emanating from his eyes. No sculpture was ever so beautiful. Such beauty could not be sculpted, or painted, for its reality was surely too vast to capture and contain. But it had caught her and she felt absorbed right into it.

  Both the feel of William’s body and the sight of it gave her untold pleasure. Here, at last, was a man with whom she could be both passionate and tender; for whom her surging feelings of love and desire had blended. She needn’t be restricted to one or the other, for William had enabled the release of both impulses in her. Thus they laughed as much as they sighed and their eyes were open as often as they were closed involuntarily with the pleasure of it all. Chloë both stroked and grabbed him, kissed him lightly and sucked him greedily. She looked deep into his eyes with tenderness, and eyed his cock with unabashed desire. Love and lust merged, and the combination was unimaginably beautiful and intoxicating.

  As William pushed his cock deep inside her, he swore involuntarily and apologized beseechingly. Chloë laughed at him sweetly and then let herself gasp and moan at the feel of him moving deep within her, her eyes locked on to his all the while. They found their rhythm in intense silence but when William came, he called her name, holding her face and watching her with incredulity and ardour.

  ‘Oh Chloë, oh God, Chloë, Chloë.’

  But he chanted in his own voice; the lilt of his Cornish accent, as much as his touch, precipitating her own orgasm.

  As he stroked her in that precious, lazy, post-orgasm non-time, he realized how a woman’s body was indeed more malleable than clay and, at last, he deemed it preferable. He was still the clay-caked cliff man with goat, but he had now tidied a space for one other. And she filled it perfectly. And filled it gladly. This russet-headed humming girl who talked to paintings.

  ‘Stay?’ asks William.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ says Chloë.

  Later, when it’s bedtime for them both at William’s home, she finds a small twig on the pillow.

  ‘Dancing twig for my humming girl,’ William explains, clambering into bed swaddled in a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks. She smiles at him and places the twig carefully on the upturned tea chest, next to her brooch and on top of a copy of Poldark. She’s wearing leggings, a sweatshirt and William’s socks too.

  It is freezing.

  It is winter.

  ‘I dreamt about your brooch,’ he told her the next morning as she brewed tea and measured out Quaker’s oats and milk from a beaker into a saucepan. ‘You weren’t in it, though. There was a tall lady wearing it, very elegant and graceful, but kind too. I’m sure I know her, I’m sure I do, but I just can’t place her. Strange. Probably an actress, or something. Maybe the character from a book.’

  ‘Maybe,’ murmured Chloë, who was only half listening. Though the porridge resembled wallpaper paste and clods were forming before her eyes, she was utterly absorbed in the choice of William’s gorgeous handmade breakfast bowls.

  Chloë knew then that she had first fallen for the potter through his pots. Their creator could only be as beautiful as they were, and William’s ceramics were quite the most lovely things she had ever seen. Genuine, secret and so very strong; quiet and serene until the music was released. Here indeed was a man for all seasons, for did he not encapsulate the romance of Carl, the passion of Ronan, the companionship of Fraser? If he was this dazzling in winter, what could he be like in spring! And summer. Ah, autumn too!

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘William?’

  ‘Yes, Chloë, what d’you want?’

  ‘Pardon!’

  ‘You do want something, don’t you!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because you put a “y” in my name?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘You call me “Willi-yum”.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You do!’

  ‘How do I say it when I’m not after something?’

  ‘You say “William” – although latterly, you’ve taken to calling me “Double You”, which I actually rather like!’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I rather like it that you call me “Clop” and “Cadders”. And that, at the height of passion, you chug my name out and then elongate it – like you’re on a roller-coaster!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Chlo, chlo, chlo – weee!’

  ‘And you don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all – no need to blush!’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You are indeed. Anyway, Willi-yum with a “y”, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Shoot!’

  ‘I was wondering, do you not feel you’d like a practice run in the car before we go to London for your show?’

  ‘Pardon? A practice?’

  ‘Dummy run? You know, a long journey: plenty of pit-stops, lots, of mirror-signal-manoeuvre practice!’

  ‘I do know. What you mean is, either you don’t trust my driving, or you want to go somewhere and would I mind chauffeuring you!’

  ‘Actually, well, yes!’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine then – had it been the former, I’d have told you to take the train! Well, where then?’

  ‘Wales – Gin wrote to tell me that the greyhound died and she’s just as sad as she was when Jocelyn passed away. I thought I might visit. I’d love her to meet you. And, er, I thought we might call in and see your father. I’d love to meet him.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I’m thinking! Hmm.’

  ‘Have you thought?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll drive to Wales; I’ll meet Sherry or whoever, and you shall meet my pa.’

  ‘William?’

  ‘What do you want now!’

  ‘Sorry, was there a “y” in there?’

  ‘Loud and clear!’

  ‘Say “Mars bar”, please?’

  ‘Mars bar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, Mars bar! There! Mars bloody bar! Why are you smiling? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Because you say it just like me!’

  Chloë was stricken with déjà vu just as soon as they’d crossed the Severn. It was but a month off a year since she had arrived in Wales with her rucksack heavy, her mind full and her confidence low. How young she had seemed! Troubled, small – a wholly different Chloë; one still choked by a film of Islington and subservience. Now her rucksack was tucked into a corner of William’s spare room. And much of its contents decorated accommodating areas of her bedsit, as well as Peregrine’s Gully and Jasper’s Studio, as Chloë had decided to call it. William did not mind. (Nor did Barbara, who had discovered Chloë’s trainers just inside the kitchen door and thought them quite the tastiest things ever.)

  Mac was joining them on the trip.

  ‘I’d like to see the old boy, wish him Merry Christmas and say goodbye – who knows which one of us will pop their clogs first but I’d say I’m odds-on favourite!’ he had proclaimed to William, in a disconcertingly chipper way.

  Mac sat in the back of the car and watched Chloë trying hard not to fidget. He observed William tap her knee and turn it into a gentle caress. He saw Chloë take her fingers over his and stroke his knuckles. He heard them chat animatedly; finishing sentences for each other, or leaving them half spoken but utterly understood. He saw Chloë shoot William glances that were unseen, and he watched William’s cheekbones rise with the potency of a private smile. Mac was not a gooseberry; he was superfluous, and it delighted him. He sat quietly and absorbed the scene, nodding sagely at all the details.

  ‘Here,’ Chloë pipped, ‘up this lane! A few yards on the left. Oh God, I mean right!’

&nb
sp; It was all strangely familiar to William and when he saw the fruit bowl on the kitchen table he gave Chloë’s pony-tail a loving tug.

  So it was you!

  ‘Chloë!’

  ‘Gin!’

  They embraced warmly and Gin told her she had quite changed: ‘You have colour in your cheeks I’ll attribute to Ireland, strength in your bones I’ll say comes from Scotland, and a glint in your eye that’s pure Cornish!’

  Chloë looked over to William who grinned openly, and then she looked down at her boots while smiling proudly.

  ‘How do you do, William!’ Gin boomed, thrusting her hand towards him and wiping it on her jodhpurs when she saw it was clogged with sugar beet. ‘How’s your father?’

  ‘My father?’ queried William.

  ‘Have you not visited him? Or are you going tomorrow? Don’t tell me I’m the raison d’être for your trip?’ she said, covering the potential faux pas with a loud voice and a lunge for the kettle. ‘Mac! How are you?’

  ‘Dandy, Gin, just dandy!’

  Both caught a drift of the immediate bewilderment racking Chloë and William so Gin fiddled with tea bags and Mac tried to coax Yap from the chair.

  ‘Do – do you know each other? Have you met?’ flummoxed Chloë.

  Gin and Mac stared at each other.

  ‘Don’t know him from Adam!’ Gin declared with a hint of a wink that only Mac saw.

  ‘Wouldn’t know her from Eve!’ colluded Mac, twitching his nose in code.

  Chloë took William on a guided tour. Mac declined to join them. And declined from telling them he knew Skirrid End as well as his own cottage. Gin then took them all to visit the final resting place of the greyhound. She had been buried under a crab-apple tree. With all the remaining Scrabble pieces. Gin vowed she would never play again.

  In some ways, Chloë was glad that they refused Gin’s offer to stay the night at the farm. Skirrid End was sacred to her and to the memory of Carl, for without Carl there would certainly have been no William. They readily accepted the offer of a hearty supper. However, before they had taken a mouthful, they were victims of a hapless reshuffle of absolutely no point whatsoever.

  But perhaps it has a very particular point, thought Chloë later as she listened to William sleeping, gazing out of a small window over the velvet-cloaked dingle to the lumbering hills asleep beyond. While I’m in Cornwall, getting on with living, Gin and her gang are still reshuffling merrily, if haplessly, in the shadow of the black hill. Meanwhile, Gus sups port in the drawing-room, while sculptures surround him, serene and silent. On the shores of the loch, Fraser melts ice-cream over the Aga, and primps and pampers and lusts after his guests. In Notting Hill, Jasper is knitting and Peregrine is most probably doing The Times crossword. Everyone – and that includes me, yes it does – is in their true home. And the world can turn. And the seasons can change.