The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You can’t possibly know how I feel,’ Loopy replied. ‘No-one but an artist can possibly understand how exposed one feels when people look at your work – or worse, don’t look at it. The thought of it makes me feel as if I shall be walking around the gallery without a stitch of clothing on. No, I’m sorry, Waldo, but you really can have no idea how exposed the thought of an exhibition makes one feel.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the very reason they call them exhibitions.’

  ‘Can’t you just be serious for one moment, please? I am having severe doubts as to whether or not I am up to facing a roomful of total strangers come to stare at my infamous daubs and then laughing away behind their fans.’

  ‘Behind their what?’ Waldo laughed.

  ‘Their hands! I meant their hands,’ Loopy corrected herself, not finding it at all amusing. ‘I really am fast coming to the conclusion that this sort of thing just – just is not me. OK?’

  ‘No. No, it most certainly is not OK, Loopy,’ Waldo replied gruffly, looking once more at the end of his cigar to make sure it was still alight. ‘A lot of people are going to a lot of trouble on your behalf and they are doing so because they believe in you. In your talent. So I do not consider that it is perfectly OK for you suddenly to get cold feet. Or maybe you consider perhaps that a public exhibition of your works is not the sort of thing in which someone like you should partake?’

  ‘I never said that! I never said such a thing!’

  ‘I really am fast coming to the conclusion that this sort of thing just is not me?’ Waldo quoted back at her.

  ‘I meant I’m not sure I can measure up to it.’

  ‘How do you know until you try?’

  ‘Sure. And you know all about putting your head above the parapet, right?’

  Loopy glared at him angrily and tapped the end of her cigarette so hard on the edge of the ashtray she knocked off the end. Even more angrily she ground out the now wasted smoke and got up to walk away out into the garden. Waldo let her go at first, carefully relighting his cigar, then wandered off after her, catching up with her as she reached the wall at the end of the lawns that directly overlooked the estuary.

  ‘As a matter of academic interest you have cleared the matter with Hugh, I take it?’ he asked her as she stood with her back deliberately to him. ‘We don’t want this coming out of the blue.’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter whether I have or not since I won’t be going through with it,’ Loopy answered, still well and truly on her high horse. ‘So you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. Or your silly cigar rather.’

  ‘This isn’t really about whether or not this is the sort of thing in which you should partake,’ Waldo said, coming to stand beside her. ‘This is about something else altogether. Something that has upset you – upset you considerably, I would say.’

  Loopy turned to glance at him in surprise, before turning away again. ‘I want to know what Hugh was doing at your house,’ she said quietly, and immediately regretted the question. ‘I know – I know you said I should ask Hugh—’

  ‘And so you should.’

  ‘Is there something I don’t know?

  ‘Ask Hugh,’ Waldo insisted. ‘If you don’t, your imagination will get the better of you.’

  ‘I can’t agree to this exhibition until I find out.’

  ‘That’s entirely your decision.’

  Loopy remained standing with her back half turned to him.

  ‘I saw Hugh with another woman,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I saw him with Meggie Gore-Stewart. The same afternoon you called on me, two weeks ago. I went for a walk, thought I saw his car, when he was meant to be in London still, and went after it. He was having some sort of tryst with Meggie. I mean I didn’t hear everything – but I heard enough to make me think that – that something was going on between them.’

  ‘As I said, Loopy,’ Waldo said gently, carefully stubbing his cigar out on the wall and blowing the ash off into the wind. ‘This is something you should discuss with Hugh. And now I really should go.’

  Loopy said nothing to stop him, instead walking to the nearest flowerbed where she drew a light pink rose to her, inhaling its fragrance before letting the flower go to stare out across the sea.

  ‘I was convinced Hugh was having an affair,’ she said, as Waldo was on the point of leaving. ‘It’s a pretty dismal feeling, I assure you. To imagine the person you love is being unfaithful to you. That he’s been telling you lies, carrying on behind your back.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could I what? How could I know how it feels? Because I can imagine it, Loopy. I’ve had my share of associations with the opposite sex, and not all of them have been sleigh rides. I know what it’s like to be cheated on.’

  ‘Not within a marriage.’

  ‘Imagination is a powerful tool, Loopy. Besides, I have the example of my parents.’

  ‘Your parents.’

  ‘I think we have more pressing things to discuss than my family life.’

  ‘I thought you were going. It looked as though you were leaving.’

  ‘I thought I was going, too.’

  ‘Hugh wouldn’t approve of my having an exhibition,’ Loopy said decisively, as if to close the matter.

  ‘It might have been easier all round if you’d asked him first,’ Waldo retorted. ‘Would have saved a lot of people a lot of work.’ He stared out over the stretch of water that lay between the two long fingers of land. The sea was looking particularly beautiful at that moment, with the sunlight glancing off its restless activity, neither white nor grey, just a stretch of shimmering blue and silver.

  ‘The thing about life, Loopy, is that it’s a bit like the sea. It’s always changing, shifting. Life never stands still. If we understand that, then we can make of it some of each of our own lives. We mustn’t stand still, just accept the way we are – or rather the way we think we are. We must rise to each and every challenge, the way the tides respond to the pull of the moon. If we don’t, we drown. We drown in our own lives. We drown under waves of ennui and apathy and – worst of all – of fear. Maybe you should have an exhibition, and maybe you shouldn’t. But you’ll never know the answer if you don’t pick up the challenge. This is an opportunity to find out something more about yourself, more about the Loopy Tate I’ve been hearing so much of lately – and who knows what you might find on that voyage of discovery? I’m not saying it’s going to be easy – it might be sheer hell for all we know – and there again it might not. It might do what you were talking about the other day – before you let doubt creep into your mind. It might make sense of the rest of your life. And if it doesn’t, what will you have lost? You’ll have exposed yourself to a few derogatory comments maybe. Maybe you’ll find out that you and I were wrong and that you’re nothing more than a very good amateur painter – and if that’s the sole sum of the bad parts, you’ll soon recover. That won’t kill you. And if you have to live with Hugh’s disapproval – that’ll only be transient. If he loves you – which I am sure he does – the ship’ll soon be back on an even keel.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’ Loopy interrupted.

  ‘You know I can’t answer that.’

  ‘I need to walk,’ Loopy said suddenly. ‘I have to sort all this out.’

  ‘Shall I leave you to it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Loopy said, striding off. Then she stopped and turned back. ‘No!’ she called. ‘No. Come with, please? But just don’t say anything. Don’t say another thing. Let’s just walk, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  So they walked. They walked eastwards along the waterside path, watching the ducks and the gulls truffling for food now the tide was out, gazing at dinghies and small yachts trying to catch some sort of wind in the almost still summer afternoon, breathing in lungfuls of clean sea air and kicking pebbles along the stretch of sand where they found themselves when Loopy finally decided to break her silence.

  ‘The trouble is, women did al
most too much during the war, you know, and now – thanks to the wise guys up there in Westminster – we’re being told to go back to the way things were. And that’s not making us feel so good – it’s making us just a little bit fretful, making us seem a little smaller than we’d gotten used to thinking we were. And that’s not good.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Waldo agreed. ‘But where exactly is it taking us?’

  ‘Try imagining what it’s like, Waldo. You won’t find it easy because this sort of thing doesn’t happen to men – but since as you said a while back, imagination is a powerful tool, use it. Use it and try to imagine what it’s like not being needed at your workplace any more. There you are – you’ve been beavering away, doing things you’ve never done before, things they said you weren’t capable of doing, things you didn’t think you were capable of doing, yet lo and behold you are. And the stuff you’re doing is helping your side win the war – because believe you me, Waldo, that war wouldn’t have been won if women had stayed at home. So there we all are, mighty proud of what we’ve done, of how we helped win the war, and what happens? They hand us back our pinnies and just expect us to tie ’em back on and go to it back at the oven and sink. I mean. I mean, what a waste! What a waste of ability! There we are one moment making munitions and aeroplanes, building ships and packing explosives, joining the armed services, dropping behind enemy lines as secret agents, fire fighting, delivering aeroplanes, let alone having babies without anaesthetics – and suddenly it’s get back in to the kitchen time.’

  ‘OK, OK – everything you say makes sense, but what’s it to do with the matter in hand?’

  ‘What I’m saying is it’s little wonder we’ve lost our confidence.’

  ‘Ah. You mean that because of being expected to be the dutiful housewife and mother once again, you’ve lost your nerve. Women like you have lost their self-belief and that’s the reason you won’t allow yourself go stick a few pictures on a wall somewhere.’

  ‘You haven’t understood a word I’ve said.’

  Loopy began to walk more quickly.

  ‘You’re just using all this as an excuse,’ said Waldo, catching up with her.

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘You most certainly are. You’re saying that if it was still wartime it would be different – as a woman you’d not only be allowed to do such a thing, you’d be positively encouraged. But now the war is over everyone is going to stand ready to jeer, saying what in hell does this woman think she’s at? Having an art exhibition? For God’s sake, she’s a woman! Doesn’t she know? Hasn’t she heard that her place is in the kitchen? Hogwash.’

  ‘Hogwash?’

  ‘Pure hogwash and utter hokum, Mrs Tate. You’re trying to find some high and mighty reason for not having the nerve to go through with this. That’s what you’re trying to do.’

  ‘Waldo—’

  ‘Not that you’re not damn’ right what you just said about what women are expected to do now. I think that’s just crazy, and is going to store up a whole lot of trouble – but like I said, it has sweet nothing to do with hanging a few daubs of paint up on a wall somewhere.’

  ‘Waldo!’ Loopy continued to protest, now looking up into his face and seeing the gleam of sheer good humour and mischief in the pair of large dark eyes looking back down at her. And finding herself being quite unable to stop herself from smiling. ‘You …’ she added weakly.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Tate?’

  ‘You’re only too damn’ right yourself, that’s all.’ Loopy took his arm, leading him further along the beach.

  ‘I give in,’ she said. ‘I was actually coming to that – I was about to concede anyway.’

  ‘Sure you were.’

  ‘I just thought you ought to hear it from us ladies’ point of view.’

  ‘I was riveted. Now let’s talk about this exhibition of yours, OK?’

  ‘OK.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘I’ll tell Hugh about it this weekend.’

  ‘You’ll tell him before,’ Waldo contradicted. ‘You’ll telephone him and tell him. It’ll be too late by the weekend. We have to start arranging things as of now.’

  And so on they strolled, talking in fine detail about the exhibition that had now been agreed. It was a lovely day, still fine and unclouded, with the weather turned pleasurably cooler now as August ran into September. The breezes coming off the sea blew stronger and were more bracing, while beyond the mouth of the estuary the seas themselves could be seen to be beginning to run higher as the autumn tides began to build. With the first intimations of autumn gone was the air of oppression that had hung in the air with the all but unbearable heat wave, allowing people to move more freely and in a better mental disposition, since most were only too glad to see the end of what had been a tropical heat. Now the beaches were populated again with children playing energetic games, with barking dogs running in and out of the sea, and with lovers strolling happily hand in hand barefoot in the shallows.

  Meanwhile Waldo and Loopy had reached the far end of the beach where it ended in a dramatic landscape of monumental blue-black rocks that had possibly tumbled down onto the sands centuries ago. They were about to turn for home when Loopy caught sight of a pair of lovers detached from the main body of those on the beach, lying on the sand fast in each other’s arms.

  ‘I suppose this is something else we will have to get used to in these post-war times.’ Loopy raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I guess so,’ Waldo agreed. ‘I have to say it’s not something I can understand. I mean if you want to make love, surely the first thing you want is privacy?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Loopy replied, before suddenly taking Waldo’s arm and swinging him sharply about.

  ‘I take it that was something we shouldn’t have seen, perhaps?’

  ‘It’s not something we shouldn’t have seen,’ Loopy replied, walking away with ever increasing speed. ‘Rather it’s someone we shouldn’t have seen.’

  ‘Might I enquire who?’ Waldo asked, trying unsuccessfully to look behind him, while all the time being prevented from doing so.

  ‘You can enquire as much as you like, Waldo – but I’m not telling.’

  The hold on his arm tightened as Loopy increased her pace, walking as quickly as she could away from the scene of whatever it was she had just witnessed.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell me?’ he pleaded as he found himself finally led off the sands and back up on to Estuary Lane. ‘You seem upset.’

  ‘I am quite sure I don’t want to tell you,’ Loopy assured him, without another backward glance. ‘And you’re also right about my being upset, because believe me – I am.’

  Which was unsurprising really, since the young man she had seen kissing the girl at the bottom of Tumble Rocks was none other than her eldest son.

  Chapter Nine

  Judy Tate sat on the edge of the quays staring ahead of her, not seeing the beauty of the harbour, the sunshine and the children playing, but only grey water, grey skies, and a grey future. Walter would be home on Friday as usual, and after she had poured him his pre-dinner drink she would have, yet again, to sit at his feet and tell him as calmly as she could that there was, as yet, no good news on the baby front. As she walked home she prepared her speech, trying to invest as much optimism as she could in it and as little doom and gloom. After all, they had only been trying to conceive for – what was it – a little over twelve months now. According to what she’d heard from her friends some people took years.

  She increased her speed along the pathway towards Owl Cottage, realising that when she had set out for her walk to collect some groceries from the village shop she had felt so low that she had left her beloved little Hamish behind, and he would be still sitting forlornly in the window waiting for her. Loopy had tried to comfort her with a story, only recently, of a couple she had known who had taken ten years to have their first baby and then had six, which – according to Loopy – might even have turned out to be four too many.

  She took her front
door key from her handbag. Soon as she could she would tell Walter that story, because it was a funny story and it might both cheer him up and encourage him. In fact they would probably end up falling about at the idea of Judy suddenly producing hordes of infants and overrunning not just their tiny cottage but possibly the whole of Bexham, and as always Walter would not be able to resist her nor she him, and the next they knew they would be upstairs in bed trying yet again to make a baby.

  ‘No! No, we would be upstairs making love!’ She suddenly corrected herself as she swung up the garden path towards the front door. ‘Making love, not babies.’

  As she prepared to put her key in the front door latch she heard the sound of a familiar deep voice behind her.

  ‘The first sign of madness is talking to oneself, so they say, but who are they to say so?’

  ‘Mr Astley!’ Judy said, swinging round in complete surprise. ‘What on earth are you doing here? This is hardly on your way to anywhere, is it? This being a dead end.’

  ‘I was following you,’ Waldo said, in a graveyard voice. ‘I need the blood of a maiden every twelve hours. I was just wandering around, wandering and wondering – wondering where this lane would lead to if I followed it – then wondering who that very pretty young woman was up ahead and then realising it was none other than young Mrs Tate. So why not say hello? And pass the time of day – after all, it is such a lovely day.’

  ‘I’d ask you in,’ Judy said. ‘But Walter isn’t home.’

  ‘Isn’t that some sort of contradiction? I would always hope that because her husband wasn’t home, a young woman would ask me in.’ As Judy turned away, looking both confused and amused, he went on, ‘It’s OK, Mrs Tate, I didn’t mean it seriously. Please – there’s really no need to look so worried.’

  ‘My neighbour is an ardent member of the Bexham Secret Police. One look out of her window and I will be the Jezebel of the neighbourhood.’