Under My Skin (28 page)

Doreen listens when I tell her about September.

‘OK,’ she says and she is leaning on the kitchen table and nodding into her shoes. ‘This is what I think… you have a great husband who you need to find… and instead of doing that you are going to do something that will completely derail your life.’

‘Not necessarily,’ I answer and I have never seen her look this serious before.

‘Translation…’ she says quietly. ‘Are you completely insane?’

She shakes her head and looks out at the wet street. Her sudden concern is mixed with frustration.

‘You need your head examined,’ she says and now there is a small crying person sitting opposite her as well.

‘Find Larry,’ she says – and I tell her, ‘I can’t.’

And when she looks at me now I have to look away.

‘
Eclaircie
,’ he says and he smiles at the sound of it. His true love is named after a break in the clouds. We stand and face each other.

‘It’s a noun,’ he says, still smiling, ‘it means the moment when rain stops and the sun comes out…’ and here he shrugs, ‘or a sunny spell in your life.’ The barge waits in silence for us, listening quietly under the trees as we talk about her name. Further down the bank, the heat has sent three white cows into the water to drink. When they lift their heads, they watch us with water spilling from their mouths.

The chestnut trees are weighed down with leaves and conkers, and there in the sun-dappled shade
Eclaircie
waits. It is the first week of the month. Our month, the first and last month in our new short life.

His hair is bleached blond from the sun now. His face weathered, his eyes still the same sparkling blue. He is in bare tanned feet with white toenails, faded denims rolled to his knees. His old white shirt has a torn pocket and the tail is hanging out. And he is still wearing the Claddagh – and his heart has turned as promised, for four weeks, for me.

He stops for a moment and watches a jeep drive past. The driver salutes him and he waves back. Then he looks at my
luggage. One bag, that is all I am allowed. His eyes are saying, ‘What are we doing here?’ and mine are answering, ‘Don’t ask me.’

Eclaircie
is painted forest-green, her stern is ivory and she has ample breasts, snow-white in the sun, with a pink stripe on her hull. He tells me that this colour is called Californian Poppy but someone has scrubbed her down and painted those colours and I would never have thought him capable of that.

‘So she’s French,’ I say.

‘No, Dutch.’

I might have guessed.

Strong shoulders, stoic, formidable, impervious and moving into battle now.

He tells me that she was built in 1902 and that she was a ‘Beutship’. A working vessel carrying passengers or freight.

‘Which am I?’ I want to ask and as if he can read my mind, he says, ‘We need a new name for you.’

He tells me about her curved deck line and her sharp bow and she seems beautiful now. He points to a sky-blue bicycle then. ‘That’s for you,’ he grins. ‘For when you cycle to the bakery tomorrow morning. It’s a nice Jewish place on the corner. The best bagels ever and it opens at six.’

He takes my bag and holds out his hand and as I step over the water, we can both feel her around us, holding us up, letting our short time together begin. He opens a low door and I follow him, my heart beating in my chest, and when I need to steady myself he takes my hand again. He looks away quickly then and we are both terrified now that the other one is afraid.

We are standing in a small wooden space with a curved tongue-and-groove roof. There are bookshelves crammed wall to wall. There are books on the floor under the shelves and
then stacked on top of more books until they reach the roof. The wood is polished beech. The floor is white painted wood. The walls are palest blue. His kitchen is at one end, green louvre doors on every cupboard, red mugs, and a low row of shiny copper pans. There is an old blue sofa under the window covered in a throw, two high-backed chairs, for reading, an old record player, shelves of LPs, jazz and blues. At the moment he is listening to Frank Sinatra singing about the summer wind. And right here at this point I feel so afraid and there is only him now, the bull and me, and I must turn to him for help.

‘What is it?’ he asks and his eyes are suddenly wide and full of concern. The only answer is my throat making a sudden swallowing sound.

‘Hey,’ he says and he smiles and steps towards me. It is only one step and I respond by stepping quickly back.

‘Look,’ he says then, ‘we don’t have to…’ He sighs.

‘You look really scared,’ he says and he begins to smile.

I tell him I don’t like the song that he is playing because it is a song that reminds me of someone I used to know really well. He lifts the needle.

‘That’s what songs do,’ he says and he takes the record off.

‘Now we’re learning something about ourselves.’

He walks through a small arched door behind the kitchen. ‘This is the guest bedroom,’ he says and he puts my bag down. ‘Your own bathroom here.’

Across the sitting room is another arched door; this is the one that leads to his bed. The door is open, and there is a cream jacket hanging on a hook. His sheets are fresh white with one pale green stripe around the edge.

He cooks dinner and we sit out on the deck and watch the sun going down. He puts a lot of food out. Big helpings of
everything. Tall glasses of wine. Blue glass tumblers with ice for water. Three different kinds of bread. We eat in silence and there are two mallards watching us. Two males palling around.

‘They can’t find a mate,’ I offer.

‘Or maybe they just like it like that.’

‘Or maybe they’re gay.’

And he looks at me.

‘They’re ducks,’ he says.

And they move away silently with their shiny green heads, their dark earnest eyes, and those comical orange feet.

When the light fades, he brings up a hurricane lamp. He pours more wine and slides down into his chair. The village begins to come to life then and someone whizzes past on an old black bike. Couples appear and sit outside a pub and everyone watches the canal bank. A dog yaps somewhere and small squares of gold appear as kitchen lights are turned on. I try to think of something to say and then I realize that he lives here because he doesn’t have to talk. He is different now, as I have never seen him, sitting in peaceful silence and letting everything else wash over him.

And the water is quiet around us. There is no sound at all as we sit in silence and float.

He wakes me by gently tugging my hair. It is cold and dark and there is just the light from the cabin below. We walk down the steps and stand with both doors open now. He is older and stronger than me and I want one of us not to be afraid.

When I turn he sighs and sends his hands down deep into his pockets.

‘I would prefer it if you shared my bed,’ he says and the words come out, simple and without further complications from me.

There is nothing like fear in his eyes. And I follow him through the doors and we lie side-by-side, facing each other and talking in whispers before we fall asleep.

In the morning the sun has gone and the September sky hangs low into a mist. The water seems darker and the air has a new fresh chill. He is up before me and I lie on and listen to his feet walking across my roof. He makes coffee and he has already been to the bakery and back.

‘Good morning,’ he says and then he trips over my shoes. He picks up a book I have been reading and puts it back into its place. Then he gets up and closes the door.

‘You leave doors open,’ he says.

‘You snore,’ I tell him.

‘So do you,’ he replies and the two ducks are back and listening in on this. I am beginning to think about the bull now in a different way and imagine what he would be like minus the Claddagh and in a nice black suit.

We are different to last night. We have not touched each other yet and we are colder now in the morning light. When he washes up, I watch. And then he stops what he is doing.

‘You like to be waited on,’ he says. His voice is firm and matter of fact. He has left the Claddagh ring on the windowsill beside the open window and then I lift my hand and just knock it out. We watch each other closely now. His forehead moves very slowly into a frown and somewhere inside I want to laugh. The worst part is that it makes a tiny splash.

‘Why would you do that?’ he asks ‘Why did you do that?’ and he turns around and walks out.

‘Where are the angels?’ he asks. We are standing in the foyer of the Conrad Hotel ready to attend the Angel Ball. He looks good and he is polite and well-behaved in his tuxedo after all.

‘I am sure you will be able to account for two places at the table,’ Jonathan said. He came into my office and stood watching my spider plant. He is expecting me to arrive with my husband and now I show up with the bull. We sit in a wide circle. Mrs Kirk is sitting beside him and when her shoulder strap falls, he kisses her shoulder and pulls the strap back up again. We arrange ourselves so it is

– boy – girl – boy – girl – boy – girl – bull.

‘What do you do for a living?’ Jonathan asks.

‘I train racehorses,’ the bull says and I suddenly want to laugh. They are all there with their wives and they are trying not to ask who the new man is. Jonathan’s wife wears a diamond tiara. The only angel at the table so far. Later I dance with him and the bull waits at the bar. Then I find him sitting on his own in the foyer.

‘Those people,’ he says, ‘are the reason I left my job’ – and he hails a taxi and goes back to the barge.

Doreen says that the sex could be amazing. ‘It will be completely savage, or great,’ and then she says, ‘Either way, it will be great.’