Chloe (20 page)

I like laughter and affection. Simple things that give deep pleasure.

‘Me?'

I like company and security. To feel wanted, useful and liked.

Gus and Ronan watched her enquiringly.

‘I admit freely to knowing little about sculpture,' she confessed, laying her knife and fork neatly together on the plate, ‘but I do know that I could stand in front of a Greek statue for days on end, regardless of its ruinous state.'

Ronan raised his glass of apple juice at her. Chloë surged and then told herself to stop it. Gus doffed his head in agreement. Chloë felt encouraged to continue.

‘Pottery!' she declared with aplomb. The men raised their eyebrows to invite her to elaborate. ‘Er, that it can stand by itself – artistically, I mean. That it is often much more than its function. What's the word – autonomous.'

‘A vessel to explore and express?' suggested Ronan. Chloë nodded sagely.

‘They're musical too, you know,' she said.

‘Oh yes?' said Gus. Chloë nodded again, slowly and with conviction.

After lunch, while Gus walked Ronan to his workshop in the barn, Chloë phoned the South Bank Centre in London to request a brochure from the last Christmas exhibition. It arrived the next day.

‘Do you like these?' she asked Gus, pointing to the humming urns. He took the leaflet from her and observed it carefully and at length over the top of his glasses.

‘Yes I do, Chloë. See if you can find out more about the artist. Have some photos sent here. Ask about prices. They'd look good on the terrace.'

Please
, thought Chloë,
how about ‘please'
.

Chloë takes an early night. She excuses herself from the dinner table even though it means forgoing the Bakewell tart for pudding. She explains that she has a headache but knows she could have said the pox, for all the interest that Gus shows.

‘Good-night, then. Busy day tomorrow,' he says.

She walks tall from the dining-room but sighs heavily in the great hall; it seems to echo so she clears her throat loudly to cover it. That Gus might catch wind of her unhappiness unsettles her more than the emotion itself.

I'll get through it. Always have.

In her room, she peels off her clothing and runs a bath; she puts on the radio so that no one can hear her think, and no one can sense that there is anything remotely amiss.

I'm OK. I can cope.

Easing herself gingerly down into the too-hot water, she closes her eyes on the day and remains motionless until beads of perspiration trickle from her forehead to her chest via a run over her nose and cheeks and a tumble off her chin.

Carl. I'll think of Carl.

But she cannot conjure his face or recall his voice; distorting instead his accent into a vulgar caricature.

Remember! Fantasize!

She wonders why she did not give him her address at Ballygorm. She wonders why he did not ask for it. Why did she not ask for the appropriate
poste restante
? Why did he not ask her to write? She knows why and though she has been hitherto content with this knowledge, suddenly today she wishes it were not so; that she could contact him, see him, have him comfort and compliment her. She soaps her limbs carefully with her eyes shut, trying to remember how Carl's touch felt.

I do know that it felt nice. Good old Carl.

As Mrs Andrews had pointed out to her that morning, Carl had repaired Brett's damage and restored an element of fun and pleasure to Chloë's life. ‘Life can suck,' Carl had told her, ‘but if you suck at it for long enough it's sure to taste sweet!' He was uncomplicated, unpretentious and unthreatening, moreover he had a specific function. They had come together knowing full well that they would part. And when.

‘Your three months were hermetic and precious,' Mrs Andrews illumined. ‘The quarrels and other mundanities befalling relationships proper were banned by necessity.'

‘So true,' Chloë responded mistily. ‘We were happy enough to share a predilection for the common Mars bar and the smell of leather without feeling any obligation to discover more profound points of contact.'

No future rendezvous, no ‘When will I see you again?', merely a metaphorical leg up for one another on to the next stages of their lives.

Good old Carl, a man for a very certain season. Though she had shared the winter months with him, when it had rained frequently and been very cold too, Chloë recalls Wales as a bright period of energy and laughter. Here she is in Ireland, where it is mild and the spring is maturing steadily, and yet a sombreness pervades. Here the landscape serves only as a view for Chloë to gaze upon, a backdrop against which she goes about each day. Despite its beauty, she does not feel a part of this terrain and cannot find its
genius loci.
Spring at Ballygorm is a contradiction of sorts for, save for the lambs, the pace is uniformly sedate and controlled. Nature's young colours and freshness are resolutely kept outside the front door to Ballygorm Manor. There is no hapless reshuffle. There is a point to everything.

And yet Jocelyn couldn't have known that there would be a Carl in Wales, just as she could not have foreseen Chloë's reception in Ireland. And Chloë can't quite see that Jocelyn would have been happy for Fate to colour and describe the route she had mapped out for her god-daughter. Chloë can't quite see it; not just yet.

Ronan Brady.

There must be a point to Ronan.

Chloë places her toe inside the bath tap and knows now, with some trepidation, why she cannot recall Carl's face.

Ronan's has taken its place. She can no longer hear Kiwi inflections for the Irish tongue is dominant.

And she kids herself that she wonders why.

Ronan is different. Behind his beauty lies an arrogance absent from, and anathema to, Carl. Brett was arrogant and, as such, repugnant. Ronan, however, wears his arrogance about himself like a rich velvet cloak braided with gold, and it is somehow compelling. Knowingly, he makes Chloë feel uneasy; small, insecure, unsure, and yet she feels drawn to him too. As happy-go-lucky as Carl was, Ronan is intense. Chloë shudders and then laughs aloud uneasily.

Ronan, it seems, can make her skin crawl, and tingle, simultaneously.

‘Just the brooding artist type,' she declares to her distorted reflection in the tiles.

‘Ego!' she says merrily, wondering where hers has gone.

‘A new pair of shoes to try,' Chloë decides as she wraps herself up in a white cotton towel, ‘to see if this pair might fit.'

‘Good morning, Ballygorm Sculpture Trail?'

‘Hullo, may I speak to Miss Cadwallader?'

‘Speaking.'

‘Hullo there, good morning, this is William Coombes here. The, er, potter?'

‘Mr Coombes! Hullo!'

‘From Cornwall. About tomorrow –'

‘Tomorrow indeed – we're looking forward to meeting you and seeing your pots in person, as it were. Do you know what time you'll be arriving? Do you need directions?'

‘No.'

‘Lovely! What time – ish?

‘No, er – I mean, I can't
come.
Unfortunately. Hence the phone call. Hullo?'

‘Oh
dear
–'

‘My father's been taken ill. He lives in Wales. I've been summonsed.'

‘I see, how ghastly. What a great shame.'

‘Yes. Indeed. The pots are travelling by themselves and I've arranged for their collection at Belfast and delivery on to you. They'll arrive tomorrow. Lunch-time.'

‘But you won't.'

‘No.'

‘Such a pity.'

‘Yes.'

‘H
ow is he? I don't have a car. The train took an age.'

‘We tried to call you.'

‘Oh God!'

‘No, no! To say that he's made a marvellous recovery! You'd already left – you needn't have come.'

William wanted to agree with the nurse wholeheartedly but bit back his bluntness.

‘I wish I visited more,' he lied.

‘Cornwall is a long way away – a different country,' the nurse said kindly, ‘and your father's memory is poor. Very poor.'

William found his father pretty much where he had left him; just another figure in a long line of dementia, all slumped in chairs gazing listlessly out of the window deep into their pasts or at absolutely nothing. Mr Coombes was so motionless that, as William approached, his stomach wondered if his father were dead. He stood beside the old man's chair silently, waiting for a blink, a rise and fall of the chest, a twitch of a skeletal finger. William held his breath while his heart racketed. The air was singed with the sharp, acrid smell of urine and decay. And yet William was not prepared for his father to be dead, not ready for him to die.

Breathe!

An empty chair was close to hand so he retrieved it while his father's neighbour nodded and winked at him and chewed his tongue. He drew up the chair as noisily as he could but his father's mouth remained agape, his eyes fixed and unseeing. Gingerly, William proffered his hand and let it rest lightly on top of the old man's. It was not the hand of a dead man for, though cool and papery, a whisper of warmth wound its way through. Slowly, the old man turned towards him. He stared at him intently but William was not sure whether he saw him for there was no light in the eyes, no life behind them. The aperture of his mouth remained fixed. William smiled at him as widely as he could.

‘Hullo!' he said cheerily.

Mr Coombes began a nod but had not the strength to lift his head to conclude it. His chin neared his chest, his gaze now resting near a drawing-pin by the skirting-board. William felt a stab of unwelcome tears, whose provenance he could not fathom. He sat a while longer, sharing in silence with his father the complexities of the bent drawing-pin.

He could have gone. It would have been easy; just jump to his feet, kiss the man cursorily and walk away. The nurses wouldn't judge. Mr Coombes wouldn't register. But William stayed for two hours, moving his thumb rhythmically over the tired landscape of his father's hand. He no longer noticed any smell. He felt most strongly that, inside the waning body, behind the gormless face, in spite of the drooling and wheezing, a brain and a soul were shouting but were unable to make themselves intelligible, let alone heard. Eyes that no longer saw, but had seen. And what they had seen had left an indelible imprint of sadness.