Chloe

by Freya North

  An owl haunted the valley with his call. Chloë inched open the window and seared her nose with the scent of mid-winter. The Usk was babbling busily, despite the hour.

  ‘That everyone is where they should be makes me feel safe. Safe, confident and eager to continue in Cornwall. Because I know now that the genius loci – the spirit of the place – is found not just in the lie of the land but through the contentment and commitment of those who dwell there.’

  ‘I spy,’ enthused Chloë, today in the back seat, ‘with my little eye, something beginning with, um, “h”!’

  ‘Hedgerow!’ Mac triumphed. ‘“Little lines of sportive wood run wild”!’

  ‘Wordsworth!’ exclaimed Chloë quietly, catching Mac wink at her from the rear-view mirror.

  Jocelyn! thought Chloë, remembering how her godmother had quoted great Wordsworth in her letter for Wales. She touched her brooch subconsciously for reassurance and then found she needed none. How was that?

  A year on. A year full on.

  How easily she could have remained the Chloë that Jocelyn’s first letter had found – seemingly trapped in a hostile city, locked into an unfulfilling job and smothered by totally the wrong man. Chloë gazed at the back of William’s head. Tawny-wicker-basket-owl. She widened her gaze and took in the back of Mac’s head too. Two men so dear to her now, and yet unknown this time last year.

  I was living in a city which so sapped me, too good for a truly lousy job, and I was too precious for awful Brett. But how did I come to be here, today? How in heavens did I do it? How did you get me here, Jocelyn?

  I could easily not have gone.

  And though in some ways I’ve been cushioned by my travels, my inheritance – a year out, as it were – I reckon I’ve learnt far more than ever I could, snared in London. A year on. I’ve grown. Up.

  She looked out of the window. Gwent, Wales. Previously unknown, now familiar. Remembered always for introducing Chloë to fun, frolics and unconditional acceptance.

  Across the water, Antrim, Northern Ireland.

  Where I learnt to express myself, stick up for myself, and found that I’m actually quite strong.

  Way, way ahead, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, Scotland.

  Where I discovered a brother and learnt how to fly, up and onwards; strong enough to decide to continue on my own.

  Underneath them all, Cornwall, England.

  Where I alighted with all that I’d experienced. And where, at last, I have found my home, my métier and the man I think I’ll love forever.

  Heavens! How the notion of those three concepts had previously unnerved me.

  Chloë accepted a boiled sweet from Mac and sucked it while her head juddered against the window. She saw her hazy reflection in the glass; swallowed sweetness.

  Hullo, I’m Chloë Cadwallader. I’m happy that I am.

  ‘“M”, “m” – “m” for Mountain,’ William said, inadvertently interrupting Chloë’s thoughts. She was pleased though, the here and now were fine. This trip back to Wales was suddenly so much more than just an enjoyable jaunt; it was affirming, proving to Chloë just how far she’d come, how happy she was with the place she had found, the space she had carved.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ she cleared her throat and asked William, brushing away a tear that no one saw.

  ‘Nearly. Your go, Mac.’

  ‘I spy, bla bla, something beginning with “J”!’

  ‘J?’ laughed Chloë. ‘You may as well have said “q”! What on earth begins with “j” in Wales – apart from Jones-the-Thingummy!’

  ‘J,’ pondered William.

  ‘J,’ mused Chloë, ‘je, je, je –’

  ‘Here we are!’ announced William, crunching up the deep gravel drive of the nursing home.

  ‘J for what?’ demanded Chloë as she helped Mac from the car.

  ‘Je-jar of je-juniper je-jelly!’ Mac announced, pointing to the curious home-made condiment Gin had foisted on them.

  ‘Ah!’ laughed Chloë, wondering why Mac was regarding her so quizzically.

  William was quite shocked to see that the customary early winter demise of a proportion of the residents had not been made up for. The remaining rattle of old bones now made a hollow echo in the vacuous room. He was slightly anxious and walked ahead of Chloë and Mac. How he wished his father would stride over and say ‘Chloë! Delighted to meet you. Heard so much about you from William.’ How he would love his father’s approval, whatever it was worth.

  He saw him immediately, now not so far down the dwindling line of window gazers, sitting still and listless. The old face, nearly transparent, cracking into a semblance of life with a gentle tap to the shoulder.

  ‘Benedict?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘William!’

  The recognition lasted but a moment, but in that time William saw his father’s eyes glisten and felt a lump knot itself in his own throat. There was too much to say and no time to say it. But a strong squeeze from his father’s hand and a full smile from William spoke silent reams. By the time Chloë and Mac arrived, William had turned into Benedict, and his father into any old Alzheimer’s victim.

  His eyes lit up with a lively sparkle when Chloë’s face came close and smiled at him.

  ‘Hullo!’ he said shyly, holding out his hand that Chloë might take it.

  ‘Hullo!’ she cooed, holding his hand between both of hers and perching on the footstool. She asked how he was and he said he was as fit as a fiddle, thanking her very much. Lovely day, she declared. Lovely jubbly, he replied. They continued to converse happily about their health and the weather. Chloë removed her jacket and laid it neatly over her knee, remarking that wasn’t it warm for the time of year. Balmy, he said, only it sounded inescapably like ‘barmy’. She tried not to notice that he was staring at her breasts but it was difficult to ignore as he had started to drool; moistened lips, saliva slipping. A bony finger trembled its way towards her. She held her breath. Mac and William were talking quietly and were unaware of her discomfort. His finger neared her as the dribble reached his chin. However, he touched only the brooch; lightly, tracing the pattern with ease and confidence, and with no hint of a shake. She unpinned it and wrapped his hands around it. He clasped his hands very tight and looked Chloë full on while tears filmed over his eyes.

  ‘Je, je, je,’ he whispered, bedraggled.

  ‘Juniper jelly jar?’ asked Chloë kindly.

  Unexpectedly, he gave her a most reproachful look.

  ‘Is he je, je, je-ing?’ whispered William gently in her ear. She nodded. ‘Let’s get a cuppa,’ he suggested, laying his hand gently first on Chloë’s head and then on his father’s brittle shoulder.

  ‘Hullo, old thing!’ says Mac, easing his stiff frame into a plastic chair and taking a share in the footstool with William’s father.

  ‘Hullo!’ he booms back.

  ‘Well,’ Mac declares, ‘some welcome!’

  They sit in affable silence. William’s father unbuckles his hands just enough for Mac to peep at their precious contents.

  ‘Je,’ he starts.

  ‘Je,’ Mac responds with sincerity. His patience gives his friend the impetus to try and finish the word; searching for his tongue and his strength, sifting through memories that are just too beautiful and sad.

  ‘Jocelyn!’ he declares at last in a hoarse whisper, breathing the word out as if it could well be one of his last. He sighs with relief, as if only the scourge of a stammer prevented him from saying it sooner.

  ‘Jocelyn!’ Mac confirms. Their eyes light up and a smile is shared. ‘And all is well, old thing,’ says Mac, coaxing the brooch from him, ‘very well indeed. Amazing what a gentle shove can achieve.’

  He kisses the old man on the forehead and they hold hands and share their past silently until William and Chloë return with sweetened tea for everyone.

  ‘Perers!’ Jasper fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, tapping his chest, thighs and buttocks extensively. ‘Peregrine!’r />
  ‘On the lav!’ came the distant reply.

  ‘Letter from her ladyship,’ Jasper bellowed, ‘and I am in want of spectacles!’

  ‘I’ll just do the paperwork and then I’ll be with you!’ shouted Peregrine.

  Jasper took the envelope through to the drawing-room and sat himself down, tapping the letter against his knee to the tune of Mission Impossible.

  ‘Not so impossible after all!’ He winked at a photograph of Jocelyn. Peregrine floated in and sashayed over to him, curling himself neatly on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Darling,’ he declared, ‘you’ll find your glasses on top of your head! But oh, ’tis too late! I’m here and be-spectacled, so I shall read. Hand it over – now – young man!’

  Pushing his bottom lip out and batting his eyelids, Jasper gave Peregrine the envelope.

  ‘Let’s see what grammatical atrocities the girl presents today, shall we!’

  ‘Even if they’re utterly appalling,’ said Jasper, pulling up his silk socks and wincing at his scaly shins, ‘I’d like it in full. No bla bla-ing, if you please.’

  ‘Yes, master!’ lauded Peregrine, using a pencil to open the envelope. They rejoiced in discovering three pages written on both sides. Peregrine scanned through quickly. ‘Ha!’ he cried. ‘Ho!’ he boomed. He laid the letter flat on his knees and fixed Jasper with a smile and a twinkle not seen for some time. ‘They’re coming to stay!’

  ‘Read,’ Jasper hollered, ‘verbatim!’

  ‘Darling Ladies, it’s me and I brandish apologies for the tardy gap between letters. I’ve been very busy and most preoccupied. She underlines “most”. William is still a tremendously nice fellow but he is now much more too. Oh, do listen to this Jasp! I have fallen irrevocably in love with him and want to be with him always. Irrevocably! Ah, the poppet! Cliché Cadwallader continues: He is music and light, colour and depth and I do love him so. I sleep safe and happy and I awake content and grateful. We travel to the dark side of the moon and back, and stand at the still point of the turning world. Have we not warned her of plagiarism?’

  ‘Hush, Peregrine, you’re far too hard! This is a first for Chloë. We were there too, remember!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The dark side of the moon, of course. Now stop taking the mickey and read the bloody letter, would you?’

  ‘Were we on a package tour? Ouch! That hurt! She says that Number Three is taking shape. She’s painted the walls a mottled damson she claims would make Fraser proud. Picked out the skirting and cornicing, sanded and varnished the floor entirely herself, and stripped the front door down. If it’s this satisfying before I’ve even opened for business, my career looks rosy indeed. Ah! Jasper, she asks, I’d so love you to cast your eye over the garden. We’ve cleared out the rubble and, though small, the space is crying out for the touch and vision of a true horticulturalist. I’d like it to be aromatic – William reckons it will be a sun trap during the summer. Any ideas? Perhaps you and Peregrine might like to come and stay? Fraser is coming in February, which is his off-season, to do adventurous things with calico and muslin. How about late January? How about it indeed?’

  ‘I’m counting the days!’

  ‘Little minx – listen here! You see, we’d love to return the hospitality – which is a somewhat presumptuous way of asking if William and I could stay with you in a fortnight. He’s having a show of his ceramics at the South Bank again – they’re to die for but for heaven’s sake don’t take that literally when you do see them! Please say we can, and say you will!’

  ‘You can!’ sang Jasper.

  ‘We will!’ cried Peregrine.

  ‘That it?’

  ‘Gracious no! Another page to go! I see now, she says, why Jocelyn sent me here. It is not so much her link with the place, I don’t think, as her intuition that it would suit me unconditionally. She was right, clever lady. I longed for her in Wales, I craved her in Ireland and I searched hard for her in Scotland. But I found her here in Cornwall. How I love her and all I have learnt from her. I’ve felt closer to her here than in any of the other locations and yet I don’t need to talk to her so much and I seek her approval less often. How strange!’

  ‘No, Chlo, not really.’

  ‘Not at all! And so, she concludes, my days are full with my recent finds! There was buried treasure here in Cornwall but it took me a year and a journey to learn how to look for it. Now that I have found it, I am going to hold on tight and cherish all that I have. In that way I will be doing Jocelyn proud and keeping her memory alive, don’t you think? I’ve struck gold in William, but the jewel that I found is that Cornwall is my home. And it’s heaven. There’s no place like it – I never knew. William told me this morning that I make him “blissfully happy”. Me! Can you imagine! Do I really have that power? That gift? I always thought true happiness was solely of one’s own making – but William makes me far happier than I could ever have made myself. And did I tell you how beautiful his pots are?’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘Yes. Can you believe she began her last sentence with an “and”?’

  ‘That’s our Chloë!’

  ‘Our Clodders indeed. What fun it shall be to see her.’

  ‘And him!’

  ‘Together. Clever old Jocelyn!’

  ‘Wily old thing!’

  Peregrine went over to the mantelpiece, bowed to Señor and Señora Andrews, and then brought back a photograph of Jocelyn taken a few months before she died. Swathed in velvet; wrapped in her bright countenance. There was something going on in her eyes that could only be read in retrospect.

  ‘Ah well,’ sighed Jasper, winking at Jocelyn, ‘the circle is now complete; the tale told; the picture perfect.’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Peregrine, ‘the old girl can finally turn in her grave and go to sleep, settled and content.’ He took the frame and buffed it lovingly against his cashmere pullover.

  EPILOGUE

  Mr Andrews unfurled a cream silk stocking up and over his leg, admiring his shapely calf muscles in the driftwood mirror as he did so. He procrastinated over which pair of calfskin shoes he would wear and, by the time his wife gave her melodious rap to his door, he had whittled it down to any of three pairs.

  ‘Which oh which?’ he implored her, fret and worry etched persuasively across his brow.

  ‘The black. With the plain buckle I think.’

  ‘You are a doll,’ he sighed, ‘but which cravat, in heaven’s name?’

  ‘White damask,’ she exclaimed as if it were a very simple question.

  ‘And the tricorn edged in gold?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I want to look dandy for our girl Cadwallader. After all, it is her generosity that has seen us so comfortably ensconced in this delightful abode.’

  ‘And away from those bloody Latino counterparts in bloody Notting Hill,’ Mrs Andrews furthered with a little shudder.

  ‘Language, dear,’ chided her husband.

  They looked around them. All was neat, tidy and comfortable. And deserted. It was nice to have the place and some peace to themselves, having arrived late the day before when nearly every chair was taken and all the muffins had gone. The silence now was welcome. Soon enough, the healthy din which had surrounded them the previous day would no doubt be upon them again; conversations in earnest, letters spoken out loud whilst being penned, poetry being recited quietly in a corner. Not that they minded, they were quite looking forward to it. Colourful. Friendly. Ambient.

  Mrs Andrews straightened the lace panel on her sky-blue frock and fluffed the frill of her sleeves.

  ‘Oh, you look divine!’ enthused her husband in a gruff voice laced with desire. ‘Come here, wench!’

  They embraced tenderly, Mr Andrews bucking gently up against the skirts of his wife’s dress while she wriggled daintily against him.

  ‘Mr Andrews,’ she declared, quite breathless, ‘per-lease!’

  She walked over to the driftwood mirror and straightened her
straw hat before pulling it jauntily to one side. Running a finger over the oddment of tables and chairs, she held it up for her husband to inspect. It was perfectly clean.

  ‘Good old Chloë!’

  ‘Quite the house-proud hussy,’ Mr Andrews declared.

  ‘Oh, she doesn’t live here at Number Three,’ Mrs Andrews informed him, ‘she’s still in those funny digs near the beach and the artists.’

  ‘Not building a love nest with her potter chappie?’

  ‘No. Or “not yet awhile” as Chloë herself said to me yesterday. They are, however, building their love on very firm foundations. They are taking their time and luxuriating in all the various stages of finding one’s true fellow.’

  ‘Sensible and sweet,’ said Mr Andrews.

  ‘That’s our girl,’ his wife replied. She went over to the window which looked out to the small sunken garden at the back. An ivy had started to clamber up a trellis. Snowdrops peeped out here and there, and small green shoots stuck their heads above good soil to see if it was a good time to grow. It was.

  ‘Come, my love,’ Mrs Andrews called to her husband, ‘see the magic woven by old Queen Jasper.’

  ‘Dinky!’ rolled Mr Andrews. ‘Isn’t that grand!’ They admired a large, burnished terracotta urn out of which a healthy pieris was beginning to blaze.

  ‘Is that one of his?’ asked Mr Andrews.

  ‘Need you ask!’ his wife retorted, sweeping her arm in a wide arc to direct attention to the large consignment of William’s ceramics elsewhere in the room. She sat herself down demurely in a small, comfortable sofa festooned with cushions. He stood beside her, his leg cocked, his hand in his pocket. She took a paperback book from a small, rickety table at her side and placed it in her lap.