Colouring In (32 page)

Gwen! She recovered very fast – partly, I think, due to her friend Henry who she told me about at once. He’s given her a new life: encourages her, takes her out, makes her laugh, listens to her. She looks ten years younger, despite almost white hair now. So suddenly her rather bleak days appear to be over. She tries to explain it sometimes. It’s not pure love and all the complications
that
entails, she says, like it was with some boy when she was young. It’s more, loving friendship. She says neither of them would much fancy moving in with the other, for fear of discovering areas of the other’s life that might annoy, or cause disillusion. Once you’re used to being on your own, she says, it’s not easy to adapt to another’s ways.

So they’re going to remain as they are for the time being, under their own roofs, but secure in the knowledge that they’ll meet several times a week and enjoy themselves. They’re going dancing soon. Gwen’s over the moon at the thought. She said she once had fantasies about being a tap dancer but her mother could never afford the lessons. But evidently she’s a good ballroom dancer. ‘I don’t like to boast,’ she said yesterday, ‘but I’m a natural.’

Gwen, as I’ve always known, is one of those people to whom humility is an instinctive commodity, whose goodness is tangible. God knows she deserves this new found happiness. I love hearing about the things she and Henry do, where they go. Her stories have replaced her readings from the newspaper – not only a blessing, but much more entertaining.

Dan is the jumpy one, and you can’t blame him. His play was finished some time ago, and although he doesn’t keep me up to date with what’s happening, I know that once again he’s in a terrible state of waiting. He gets downstairs every morning first to see if there’s anything in the post – I think he hasn’t a clue that I know what he’s up to. He wears a sort of sad, resigned expression that’s sometimes blasted by what I suppose is a flash of hope. And meantime the postman never brings word.

I pray that this time he will succeed. I pray so hard for that. Dan deserves a measure of success. He’s the best example I know of learning from rejection, of fighting off failure. But it’s time he succeeds, now. If this play fails, I’ve an odd feeling he might not be able to summon, yet again, the energy to start anew.

The morning has sped. I do my small round of mental pictures, as I often do late morning before laying a mask aside. I think of Sylvie and Elli at school – history at this time on a Tuesday, I seem to think. So they’ll be concentrating, they both love history. When the bell goes Sylvie will give her surprised smile, free now of the wires on her teeth, rather pretty. Gwen will be in a shop looking for a dress to go dancing in. She said she was uncertain of her own taste, and would bring it to show me tomorrow, and exchange it if I thought she could find something better …

As for Carlotta. What would she be doing just now? Gazing at the computer she knows so well? How she used to scoff at me for being a luddite, no interest in modern technology. Or perhaps – heavens, it’s ten to one – she’s in her smart new kitchen getting something for Bert’s lunch. She’s probably in jeans and a top that constantly alerts people to her amazing (yes, amazing, I know) breasts. Perhaps she swarms over to Bert when he comes in, and kisses him. Shit. I hate that idea.

I think of Carlotta sometimes, but I’ve come to realize I don’t actually
like
her anymore. I don’t miss her. Our friendship is past repairing and I really don’t care.

Bert: just Bert.

Can’t think what he’s doing. I might ring him this afternoon.

Dan’s in his office, wearing his blank office face, I daresay. I don’t know why he doesn’t leave it, except we need the money. I hate to see him struggling so valiantly for patience. I hate the huge hope which he can’t disguise, because if this play is rejected, the disappointment is going to be greater than any other. And seeing his unhappiness will be almost unbearable. How will I be able to console him? On the other hand, should … but I mustn’t think of that, tempting fate.

I must carry on struggling with this damn needle, straining my eyes. The mask is so near finished – a splurge of scarlet feathers in which pearls and beads of different colours run amok, and from whose corners stream satin ribbons of flamingo pink, each one ending with the curl of a small feather. I have to admit I’m rather pleased with it.

I jab the invisible thread again at the hole in the needle, which is no more than a splinter of light flicked through the window from the sun, and I think how much, to all of us, remains invisible.