Sheer Blue Bliss (25 page)

The door bangs. ‘Still up there?' She doesn't answer, hears him moving about running the tap, drinking water perhaps or washing his hands. She will not be bullied. His feet on the ladder, his head appearing through the hole. He smiles almost as if he's pleased to see her. Unexpected, that's what he is, unpredictable, like someone else.

‘Ready?' he says. ‘It's great out there. You ought to get out later. Did you rest?'

‘Yes,' she says, ‘only I don't feel rested.'

‘Shall we get started?' He steps up into the room and the floor tilts towards him. ‘It's doing me good, all this fresh air,' he says. He rubs his hands together just like someone else, yes, just like Patrick.

This is a delusion. Look again. This is not Patrick, nor nothing like. This is old age and exhaustion and yes, maybe it is fear. It is there in her belly clutching. She strokes the little cushion, her nail catching in the shiny stuff, a hair catching in her nail.

‘I can't work this afternoon,' she says. The way he is standing she can't quite see his face. He's looming above her against the skylight, shoulders bent because he's too tall for the room, the light shining blue on his hair.

‘But we must.'

‘I said I can't and I can't.' She sucks in her breath and waits.

‘What does that mean?'

‘It means I can't and I won't.'

‘Sorry.'

‘I won't paint you, Patrick.'

‘What?'

‘I won't.'

‘Did you call me?'

‘Oh oh, it's my neck and …'

‘My name is Tony.'

‘You never said.'

‘I did say. You called me.'

‘I am old,
old.'
Connie's voice cracks as it rises. ‘I am too old for this. I am not well.'

‘I'm sorry but you have to. You said.'

‘I never said.' He takes a step towards her. His shadow falls across her and she stops herself cringing, only grips the cushion between her hands more tightly. ‘You can't make me paint you,' she says, keeping her voice even, reasonable. He lifts a hand. ‘If you kill me then I most
certainly
can't paint you.'

He turns suddenly, the movement sharp enough to make her gasp, and he goes down the stairs without a word. It is very cold. Her heart resumes beating. She hadn't known it had stopped. The skylight lets in the salty stiffening breeze. The sky is grey. Soon it will rain again, that is the pattern the weather is set in, fine mornings, dull afternoons, stormy nights. Is he leaving, simple as that?
Please
. He is opening cupboards, drawers, as if he is searching for something. The kitchen drawer opens, she recognises the scrape of it and the slam shut. No good slamming it it only slides back you have to be gentle with that drawer, you have to know the little ways of a house to make it work for you. Like a person, yes yes, like Patrick you had to know his ways. No one else knew his ways, no one else understood him.

Please go, just leave.

Pain is reaching tentacles down her spine and into her arms. If he left would she ever be calm again? Ever? Yes. Of course. Come on now. A small bird hops on the roof, she hears the scritch-scratch of its claws. Life would resume, she knows it, it would resume. Until the time when she's ready for stop. Which she will choose when it hurts too much, when there's no more point.

He's back up the ladder, something in his hand. A roll of brown-parcel tape. ‘Hold out your hands.' She hesitates then lets go the cushion and holds them out in front of her, palms down. Obey, that's all you can do, obey. She can't prevent the tremble. Her stomach shrivels. So this is it then, this is it, how it will be.

‘Like this.' He puts the tape under his arm and his palms together as if praying. She copies the gesture. He kneels in front of her, pushes up the sleeves of her cardigan and wraps the tape round her wrists, one, two, three times. He bends his head to tear it with his teeth. She feels his breath on her skin, a tickle of hair. The tape feels tight and stiff.

‘Feet,' he says. She stretches out her feet. All she can do is this. It is ridiculous. Why tie her up? But she can't fight or argue and if she does everything right then he'll calm down no doubt, he'll get over this … stuff and nonsense. He pulls off the shoes, starts to put his hands up her skirt to remove her tights and stops, wraps the tape round her ankles over her tights, the sharp bones pressing together, winds round and round and tears with his teeth.

‘Why?' she says.

There is no particular expression on Patrick's face as he watches Connie being taped up. The eyes are just flat areas of paint. Connie is shrinking and shrivelling with fear, and this
is
fear now, full on. All the animation is in the boy, in Tony, all the light in the room has collected round him.

‘Can you get up?' he asks. She moves her head a little side to side. Hard enough to get up before with the exhaustion and the ache, now she would not even try. He rips another length of tape from the roll and approaches her mouth with it. ‘No … please …' She could not bear it, please no.

‘Can't have you shouting.'

‘I won't shout. I promise. Who if I shouted would hear me?'

‘I would. I would hear you and I don't want to hear you. Understand?' His face is so close now, young sheeny skin, the irises of his dark eyes clear against the whites.

‘First, could you fetch me my pills, painkillers, arthritis, and a drink. Grouse.' He stands back and regards her for a moment. ‘Please,' she adds. His eyes travel slowly from the top of her head to her poor stiff feet. He says nothing but goes down the ladder. ‘In the drawer,' she calls and can't stop the quaver in her voice. To be pleading with him. She has never pleaded, never once in her life. He comes back up the ladder with the pills and the whisky bottle.

‘How many?'

‘Three.' They are strong pills and it should only be one but she can't bear this. They might help her bear this. They might even kill her. He tips out three. She opens her mouth. He hesitates but leans forward and delicately so as not to touch her lips, he places one of the pills on her tongue. He opens the bottle and holds it to her lips. It comes too fast and spills down her chin but she gets the burn of it, the lump of the pill in her tight throat. He is gentle in the way he does it, almost tender in the midst of this … this outrage. The last pill swallowed, he presses the tape over her mouth. Runs his thumb across it, across her lips, hard through the tape.

‘We'll try again tomorrow,' he says. She opens her eyes at him, tears swelling in them. Nothing else she can do. Nothing left to communicate with except her eyes but he's not looking, looks at the skylight instead. ‘Don't want hypothermia, do we?' he says and bangs the window shut. He picks up his sleeping bag and tucks it round her, over her knees, folds it under her feet, snugly round her shoulders. Again almost a gentleness before he goes down, leaving her alone and bound in the cold and darkening room.

NINE

It hurts. The bones in her ankles hurt most. She can't get into a comfortable position and her neck aches more and more. The tape on her face pulls at her skin, tight, cold. She has to breathe carefully and slowly through her nose because she
can
breathe though her nose. There is no need to panic. She will not suffocate. Her wrists pulled together like this are dragging at her shoulders and that is growing more and more uncomfortable already. How will it feel by morning if this really lasts till morning? He can't really leave her, surely not. She should have said while she had the chance that she had reconsidered. Why so stupid? Why that sudden stubbornness? She could have stalled and had a better night than this in that horrible bed but able to move at least.
But I won't be bullied
, cries a voice inside, a voice that is separate from the physical pain or doesn't care.

She hits a sudden wall of warmth and fuzz, a kind of giddiness that would take her horizontal if that was possible. It's the painkillers of course, bless them. Surely he won't leave her all night? She is starting to float just above the chair and it is raining now, rivulets of grey light, a soft drumming, impatient fingers tapping on soft flesh.
Wake, wake
. Patrick roaming about downstairs – oh stop it not Patrick but still roaming, the smell of tobacco the sound of the kettle. He says he's killed. Man's laughter is what she hears, not Patrick's because Patrick is dead no matter how you poke him or try to breathe your breath into his mouth. Kissing his mouth, how it happened, how it turned to love.

A month after her birthday, was it, or sooner or later, well, it hardly matters when. Sitting in the conservatory eating salad, big vivid salad grown by Patrick. Patrick drinking beer, God he was better after he gave up brewing that beer, saying, ‘The sexual organs of plants are renewed, they do not age, not like the womb of a woman withering, the ovaries emptying its last stale eggs.'

Sacha flinched at that and pulled a face at Connie. ‘Each flower new and fresh and temporary. Each time a flower fucks it is with new equipment, fresh, young equipment.' Patrick's eyes scorching Connie's face deep red as she bent over her food, trying to avoid the eyes of them both. ‘Each flower a virgin, even on an ancient plant – think of that old magnolia – think, the branches, trunk, old and gnarled, and yet the flowers new-born every year, sex-organs, newborn.'

‘All right, Paddy, that's enough.' Sacha almost snapped, most unSacha-like.

‘Red asked me to marry him,' Connie said, surprising herself as much as them. She had not meant to say, had kept this to herself sucking on the memory of his words, sweet as a secret lozenge in her mouth.

‘Connie!'

‘And what was your reply?' Patrick asked, pulling at his beard.

‘I said I might.'

‘Oh.'

‘Well, that's … it's good news, isn't it, Paddy?' Sacha gave him a long, almost warning, look. ‘You're so young though, Connie.'

‘Young is good according to Patrick,' Connie said, the words jumping spitefully from her mouth.

‘But your painting?' Sacha said.

‘It won't stop me painting. It hasn't stopped
you
painting.'

‘No, you're quite right.'

Patrick, gone unusually quiet, went out then, left Connie and Sacha drinking tea. Sacha seemed embarrassed. ‘That's upset him,' she said.

‘But why?'

‘If you marry you'll leave.'

‘Well, yes, but it won't be for a while. Of course I'll leave one day anyway, won't I?'

Sacha put down her cup and knitted her fingers together. ‘He would have liked you to stay.'

‘What, for ever?' A spider ran down the ivy leaves and across the floor. The floor was littered with dead leaves and the things that live in dead leaves. Sometimes Connie thought she'd sweep it but she never did.

‘Do you think you love Red?'

‘I don't just think it, I do,' Connie said, sounding much more certain than she was. ‘Of course, we need more time.'

‘This blessed war,' Sacha said, then smiled. ‘Well, good. I want you both to be happy. You are … I care more for you two than for anyone. If you are to be happy, then what more can I ask?'

‘You care about
Patrick
, too.'

‘Of course. More tea?' Sacha picked up the pot. Something strange about her, a flush on her cheeks, a fidget in her.

‘What is it, Sacha?'

She finished fussing with the tea and sat back, took a deep breath, sighed. ‘Well, all right then. Patrick had … hopes.'

‘I don't understand,' Connie said, though she could feel the slow drip of understanding.

‘He wanted you to come to him.' Yes, Sacha's face was definitely flushed, her gaze, usually so calm and brown, quivered as if she could hardly look Connie straight in the eye. ‘He thought, he was beginning to think you would.'

‘Come to him …?'

‘Yes.' The memory of her birthday dawn came to her, Patrick's cock rising under the cotton of his trousers, the delighted way he laughed when she asked if she could touch. She felt a sudden twinge, low in her belly. But it was Red who had touched her and brought her alive, Red.

‘Oh. But he's
old.'

‘He wouldn't thank you for saying that!'

‘And, and he's yours.'

‘Don't let that worry you.' Sacha looked down into her cup, her lips twitched.

‘You wouldn't mind?'

‘I
would
mind if anything happened that you didn't want to happen. Understand?'

‘I think so. But anyway, I love Red.'

‘Yes, that's good, that's better. Yes.' Sacha got up suddenly.

‘And isn't Patrick supposed to be more of a father to me?'

Sacha gathered together the plates, ate a left-over circle of cucumber that Patrick had left. ‘Don't worry.' She suddenly bent and kissed Connie on top of the head. ‘Really, forget about it. Don't worry. I'm so glad for you, and Paddy
will
be. I promise, he'll come round in the end.'

And what happened to the love for Red? What did happen? The thick fuzz of the pills makes her feel nauseous, but she can't be sick with tape on her mouth and she will not panic. Not
too
nauseous and at least there's warmth, coming from inside or out she doesn't know, can't tell. A flush on her cheeks that is a sort of shame at her own, what? Wantonness, is probably what it was, she was probably just a wanton little hussy, trollop, tart. Because what did she do a few mornings later? She lay in her bed remembering Red, her legs pressed together, her hands on her breasts. She lay with the morning sun slipping through the open curtains and on to her skin and imagined Red's fingers and how they roused her, his lips and his stubby cock. And then she got up and went downstairs. She put a jacket over her nightdress and Sacha's boots and went out, leaving the door open like before, leaving a trail of footprints on the lawn. Was she meaning Patrick to follow? Impossible to say, but he did follow. He found her by the beech tree. She was thinking of Red, surely it was Red she was thinking of, wanted? But it was Patrick who was there. She was sitting cross-legged beneath the tree, her back against its bark. Was she waiting? He came striding towards her. ‘It will be ordinary love,' he said, anger in his voice.