Sheer Blue Bliss (7 page)

Mother and Father and Alfred gone, the house gone. Just gone. A direct hit and why were they not in the shelter what oh what oh why … Gone. Her mind stopped still at that.

‘Finished, madam?'

What? Connie trawls her mind back to here and now, to the leaflet advertising Galbe de Buste, to the empty teacup. ‘No,' she says as a girl with a tray stops at her table. She grabs her cup and holds it against her chest. ‘No. I haven't finished.'

The girl squelches a mouthful of chewing gum at her and shrugs. ‘If you say so.' She goes off with her loaded tray. Connie watches her little bottom under the green nylon overall. That girl must be about the age she was then. She sighs and lets go of the empty cup.

THIRTEEN

Tony wanders between his own flat and Donna's, trying to pace away a morning that drags on and on. He turns on Donna's TV, just gibberish for kids, tries music but he can't stand Donna's taste in music. Can't stand music anyway the way it goes on and on wordless, on and on and tries to mess up your brain with all its tricksy rhythms. Quiet is best, or the sound of traffic. Traffic is OK.

It's gone cold. Rain lashes the window. A yellow leaf splayed like a hand sticks and slides down the glass. Tony piles Donna's post neatly on the table. All junk. Tragic. He touches the compost in the plant pots, moist still. You don't want to over-water, that's worse than letting them dry out, she says. No need to be here then. Funny how he prefers being here than in his own place. Means to keep out, but can't. Women's things. Should he go and visit her in hospital? Should, because once he's gone that might be it. Might not see her again and she is, he supposes, a friend. The nearest thing he's got. Never been good at friendship, Tony. Doesn't need people, that's the thing. But Donna likes him. And he can like her … can he? Because there's no … doesn't fancy her at all. No danger there.

Getting sorted in his head. Not in actuality sorted but he has a strategy. First off, see Benson, go to the Private View. If he can't get in he'll hang about outside and get a glimpse of her at least, introduce himself, at least, begin the process of knowing her. She won't trust him till she knows him, she won't give him a thing till she trusts him. They must not be strangers, not when they've so much in common. Patrick in common. Then go to the exhibition, have a look at the new portrait of Patrick, find out what there is to know. There will be a sign. Find out exactly where she lives. There is sure to be a sign and then he can go there. And it will all fall into place, he can practically feel it inside him, starting to fall.

He cooks his meal in Donna's kitchen with Donna's pans. His own food though, he wouldn't stoop to nicking food. A simple lunch, pasta with anchovy sauce, delicate, salty, a ten-minute meal and stunning. Does Benson like pasta, like anchovies? Soufflé, that's the sort of thing, for an old person, old but sophisticated he guesses, cheese or mushroom perhaps? In one of Donna's cookbooks he finds a recipe for a prawn and asparagus soufflé. Ah, comforting and posh, that's it. What could be more right than that?

Picture me as a boy of thirteen, pale, puny, interned. I had been all but forgotten by my friends. My only companions were my parents, my tutor and the gardener with whom I spent much time. Except for interminable Sundays, my days had a similar pattern. Each morning my tutor came and we trawled wearily through Latin verbs, algebra, capital cities. After luncheon I had to rest. My free time I spent in the garden or in the greenhouse.

‘Do you think it natural,' I overheard my mother say to my father, ‘a boy of his age so transfixed by plants? What does he think he's going to grow up to be – a gardener?'

‘Oh leave him to it,' my father replied, ‘he does no harm. And the fresh air will do him good.'

I had an image of my weak heart like a mouldy plum, with a soft brownish place into which one could push one's finger with no resistance. The rest of it beat in a weak fluttering way, not the regular strong boom-boom, boom-boom I had heard when, as a smaller child, I had pressed my head against my mother's chest.

During my convalescence I had overheard the doctor say, ‘If he catches a chill or strains himself … well …' An unspoken warning that had left me acutely aware of the softening of my heart.

The garden was long. There were stone steps that led down to a lawn edged by herbaceous borders, a shrubbery, the greenhouse and behind the shrubbery where the garden narrowed there was a triangle of scrubby soil and weeds, a compost heap, a gloomy laurel bush with leaves that looked spattered with whitewash, a privet hedge, a stench of cats. This became my private place.

Here out of sight of the house, I used to do a most curious thing. With the doctor's warning about the danger of strain ringing in my ears, I tested my weakened heart. I ran on the spot and skipped with a length of old washing line. I have often wondered whether I was trying to die, but perhaps there was no such morbid intention, perhaps it was only an innate wisdom telling me to exercise in order to strengthen the muscles of my heart. After these first tests of endurance my heart would beat fearfully, a stuttering rush of beats that caused me to sink to the ground trembling and exhausted, but the more often I repeated the test, the stronger it seemed to grow. It was secret, this strengthening of my self, my system. I did not speak of it, or speak of how much better I felt because I had grown to appreciate the status and privileges of the semi-invalid. I told the doctor that I still felt faint often, that I suffered palpitations in the night that woke and scared me, because I had no wish to return to school where I would have fallen far behind my fellows. I liked my afternoon rests, my solitude, my tutor who in an occasional fit of frivolity would sometimes agree to lay aside the books and play cat's-cradle with a length of green string or recite long passages from Edward Lear's
The Book of Nonsense
. I was relieved, furthermore, that my father no longer expected heroic feats from me in the realms of sport or commerce and that thus I would not disappoint his expectations. And best of all I liked to have time to spend amongst the plants.

The more time and attention I paid the plants the more my attention was repaid. I became increasingly aware that they, no less than animals or humans, were sentient beings. I vividly recall my first inkling of this and the experiment that followed.

First I must introduce the gardener who came to us on Tuesday and Friday. His name was Percy Greengrass – I am not sure to this day whether that was his christened name or whether he adopted it himself. I do suspect the former since he never exhibited a single other sign of whimsy. He was old, near-sighted and bad-tempered. His eyes were small and further hidden between whiskery folds of skin and craggy eyebrows so that I never felt myself to have been seen by him, a feeling that gave me a curious sense of invisibility and freedom. He rarely spoke to me, or even seemed to notice me but did tolerate the dogged way I followed him about without complaint.

Greengrass had no special feeling for plants, or rather no consistent attitude. Although he rarely addressed a remark directly to me he muttered and mumbled to the plants, mostly a litany of complaint about work, his wife, food, life and the ‘blinding' world in general. But there was one plant that he seemed to hate, a big scarlet pelargonium that stood on the corner of the bench by the greenhouse door. My mother was particularly fond of this flower and Greengrass was required to make cuttings for plants for the borders and for the house. I fancied that whenever he directed his curses at the plant – he called it a tart, and a stinking whore, expressions which I didn't understand – it would shudder, fanciful notion you might think and perhaps you would be right. The plant was by the door, perhaps it was the vibration of the doorframe or the breeze that made the plant seem to shiver, but when I entered, speaking softly and affectionately to the plant, there was no such motion. However, explanations could be found for this anomaly, perhaps Greengrass's greater weight caused more disturbance, perhaps he jolted the doorframe more when he opened it.

However, the notion that attitude might affect a plant interested me and I begged from Greengrass two cuttings. I took two of equal size, both small sturdy plants with between four and six leaves apiece. I kept one on the windowsill of my bedroom and one similarly placed in the spare upstairs room used as a study by my tutor and me. I chose these two positions because the windows were on the same side of the house, with similar levels of light and temperature.

I watered the plants exactly the same amount and gave them equal amounts of attention – with one difference. I spent ten minutes each morning and evening praising one with great affection, admiring its leaves and stalk, talking encouragingly of the soft roots pressing down through the soil, giving it love. The other I criticised and shouted at, branding it a puny, ugly plant, using the words tart and whore, threatening to kill it one day, saying that I hated it. At first there was no difference, both seemed to grow apace and both attempted to produce a flower-head. One I pinched out gently, explaining to the plant that this was for its own good, that it needed to be bigger and stronger before it flowered, apologising for the discomfort I caused it, the disappointment, saying that one day it would produce the most beautiful flowers ever seen. The other bud I ripped off saying, ‘We don't want to see your ugly stinking whorish flowers,' saying I'd never let it flower, sneering at its impertinence in trying.

After a period of several weeks, to my excited amazement, the experiment began to show results. The loved plant flourished, soon grew too big for its pot, great soft leaves stretched towards the light and it tried again and again to flower, showing great vigour, I would almost say enthusiasm for life. The pace of growth of the hated plant slowed. It didn't die, it just grew more slowly, the leaves smaller and meaner, a paler green, even a little sickly and yellow round the edges, and the frequency with which it attempted to flower was far less than that of the first until in the end it stopped trying. It hurt my heart to see the sadness of the hated plant but I forced myself to keep up the hatred, let no pity soften my scorn. After about three months I brought the plants together on my own windowsill and saw how astonishing the difference. The loved plant at least twice the size of the hated.

I swapped them over, and reversed the treatment and with a few weeks the difference was less. I tried the experiment again, this time with broad bean seeds grown in water – exactly the same result, though even more dramatic, since the very speed of sprouting seemed affected by my attitude to the seed. When I became sure of the plants' sentience, of their response to feelings both positive and negative, I could no longer bring myself to hate the plants, it hurt my own heart to see how they suffered.

These particular experiments came to an end but my view of life, of the world, of the possibilities therein had been irrevocably altered and I was a step nearer to the development of my principle.

Tony wipes a slice of bread round his plate to mop up the gritty anchovy sauce. Puts down the book which he hardly needs to read, knows it off by heart. Looks at Donna's plants, all of them glossy, green, happy. She must be good to them. Once he'd explained to her about Patrick, about his theories, and she had listened and nodded in that way of hers, arms crossed, wry expression on her face. Even told her about the Seven Steps to Bliss, and how a few drops of one of Patrick's elixirs could transform a person – not told her, though, that it was his intention to get the elixirs because she would have asked questions. Why do you want to be transformed? she might have asked and what could he have said to that? No, she never would have understood.
Some people
, is all she'd said, pulling a face.

The leaves are cool between his fingers, he praises the plant like Patrick would have done. ‘Good plant, lovely, beautiful leaf, mate.' Feels a right prat, would if anyone could see or hear. He loves the story of the first experiment, though, feels satisfied whenever he reads it. People in general are so stupid, so narrow-minded, not to recognise the genius of Patrick. Still, that's good for Tony, good, shows how special he must be, to know, to
know
that Patrick was absolutely right, to sense that what Patrick invented is the thing that could save him from himself. Can't touch a woman ever again because if he does, well … don't think about that … but there is this other way of being happy, more than happy, of achieving bliss.

Tony actually loves Patrick whose childhood is so vivid to him he can smell it sometimes, if he closes his eyes: the hot stink of tomato plants behind glass, the cat-piss under the privet, the sourness of the white-splashed laurel leaves.

Patrick's childhood is more vivid to him than his own, his own he doesn't want vivid. No way. It wasn't a proper childhood at all only a kind of waiting, he can't count it as
childhood
not in the sense that there was any fun or play, or anything
to
remember, nothing he wants to remember at all.

FOURTEEN

Grief is like another country. Connie travelled there for months. Her heart, not just her heart, her womb, stomach, liver and spleen all contracted and blackened; her eyes were dazzled by strange brightness. The sun never stopped shinning that autumn and winter. She'd squint at it, puzzled. One day it shone on a light frosted crust of snow and Sacha forced her out to walk in it. She walked as if hypnotised by the breaking of the crystals underfoot, the softness beneath. It was so white, like careful celebratory icing on the smooth branches and twigs of the beech trees. She thought how Alfie would have delighted in scuffing up the snow with his heels. She remembered the earth- and grass-stained boulder they used to roll up on the lawn at home, the belly of the snowman, how heavy it grew, how it creaked as they pushed it picking up squashed berries and bird-droppings, how hot inside their coats they got, their woollen gloves huge and clogged, wet fingers numb. How in the thaw the snowman would be the last thing to go, how it would sit on the lawn for weeks, a grubby nub, gradually shrinking until it was gone. And remembering that, she started to cry.