Sheer Blue Bliss (10 page)

‘Books,' he says. What does it matter? Won't be seeing her again. He could say any old bullshit, anything at all.

‘Fiction or …?' She is ready to be impressed. But he can't decide what it is he writes. ‘Gawd, it's like pulling teeth!' She is a giggler. Tony hasn't giggled for a long time but he remembers the feel of it, lifting up the lid of his desk to hide himself from the teacher, the rubbery pencil-shaving smell as the giggles burst in him and out of him like bubbles.

‘I'm doing a thing about Mount,' he says.

‘Really?' She waits for more, a strand of hair stuck to the corner of her mouth.

‘Actually, I don't talk about a piece while it's in here.' He taps the side of his head.

‘Oh I understand.' She is suddenly serious. She brushes the hair away from her lips. Christ, she is adorable. He looks away.

‘I did a piece on Benson,' she says.

Everything seems to go very still. ‘What?'

‘At Home With … it was sheer luck, the woman who was assigned went into early labour – little boy, really
sweet
, called him Mercurio though poor thing – so it was luck but I jumped at it, of course.'

Tony forces his mouth to move. ‘You.'

‘I interviewed her, yes. God it was a scream! What she gave us for lunch!' Tony watches her speak. This is different. Of course it is different.
This is it
. This girl is the sign and signal, the focus, the point at which meaning starts. ‘I've always loved her work,' she is saying, ‘so the chance to go to her home …'

‘You've been to her house?' The rest of the cafeteria is a blur and this woman shines, pale hair, scarlet cheeks, the mole coming and going as she smiles and speaks. He wants to grab her and squeeze out what he needs to know, but cannot do that. She has been sent and he must honour her. Feels something in his gut like Patrick rubbing his hands randily together. Of course it would be here that the sign would come to him. And of course, Patrick
would
make the sign in the shape of a shaggable woman. Not that he will.

‘Yes and it's like in the middle of
nowhere
, you know? And really …
ramshackle
. All the same …' She sips her coffee. ‘All the same it was very nice, sort of quaint. She's got sea-shells stuck all over the walls. It's romantic, isn't it? All that stuff about how they loved each other so much …'

Tony makes his face smile and relaxes. She isn't going to disappear.

‘Have you read Mount's Memoir?'

‘Got it here.' Tony pulls his battered copy from his jacket pocket.

She gasps. ‘This is
so
weird,' she says. She opens her bag and rifles through, pulling out the same book. ‘Coincidence or
what?
I've never even seen another copy.'

‘I don't believe in coincidence,' Tony says. Her eyes are small but they are the lightest blue.

‘It's funny though, isn't it?'

Tony looks at his watch. ‘Gotta go.'

‘Just come and see the painting of Constance Benson first.'

‘OK.' Can't hurt, can it? Can't run, anyway, not without more … more to go on.

The painting is hung on a perspex wall. It is sky through glass.
Sky Before the Fall
, it's called for some reason. In front of the window a nude girl stands, slim and shimmery pale. Her long brown hair hangs down her back in a plait, the tapered end just touching the cleft between her buttocks. She is turned so that the small point of a jutting white breast is visible, and the cheek and the edge of her slightly smiling mouth. It takes his breath away.

‘This is the only portrait of Benson by Mount … not really a portrait painter. Well, it's hardly a portrait, is it, not in the usual sense. I wonder …' She pauses. ‘I wonder how Sachavarelle felt when Patrick and Constance got it together. I wonder if she minded, I mean. They all lived together for quite a while before Sachavarelle died.'

Tony shakes his head. ‘It's Afuckingmazing,' he says when he can speak, and the woman giggles.

‘Lisa,' he says, tearing his eyes away from the painted flesh.

She turns and stares at him. ‘How do you know?'

‘Ah,' he says.

She blinks, then laughs. ‘You saw the article!'

He nods. ‘Lisa Just.'

‘Well … I'm … flattered.' She looks down at her toes, twists her hair round her finger. ‘So, what's yours?'

‘My what?'

‘Your name! Gawd!'

‘Tony.' His eyes go back to the painting. Something about the juxtaposition of flesh that is almost ethereal in its paleness, like something temporary, a trick of the light and the sky that seems solid. Christ, he
could
write something about this, something quite poncey if he set his mind to it.

‘Well, Tony, nice to meet you.'

‘You're going …'

‘Yes.' Opens his mouth to ask, what? Where she lives? What? Can't let her go, needs her to tell him what next. But before he can speak she reaches into her bag. Her face has gone very red, it's amazing the way she goes from white to pink to red and back again. ‘Here's my card,' she says. ‘If you feel like a drink sometime …' Her eyes meet his for a moment, terrifyingly genuine, and his heart lurches.

‘See you,' he says, as she walks away. Watches the sway of her hips until she has gone and then, with his heart beating hard, he slips her card into his wallet and turns back to
Sky Before the Fall
.

NINETEEN

‘I can't move,' Connie said, licking a trace of gravy off her index finger.

‘She's a wonder,' Sacha agreed.

Betty, Sacha's friend, grinned. ‘Only a pie,' she said. They were sitting on the lawn, beside them empty plates bearing remnants of a rabbit pie and glasses with the last few sips of pea-pod wine, both of which Betty had brought for Sacha's birthday lunch. Patrick had gone off to his beehives and the three women lounged on the lawn. Betty stretched out her long legs, Connie looked at the straight brown hairs on her shins. A tall woman, nearly as tall as Patrick, with a big humorous face, lots of teeth.

‘But
such
a pie as never was,' Sacha said.

Betty threw back her head and laughed, then yawned. ‘I wish my boys were half as appreciative,' she said. ‘Speaking of which, I have to be going, my sweethearts.'

‘Not yet,' Sacha's voice was persuasive.

‘Yup. Must get back.' She stood up, gathered her fuzz of grizzled hair into a bun and tied a red scarf over it. A bead of sweat trickled down the inside of her knee.

‘Bye,' Connie said and took the last swallow of the warm thin wine. Sacha went to see Betty off then sat down on the lawn again sighing.

‘She's nice,' Connie said, but Sacha said nothing, just gazed at the gate through which Betty had gone. They sat in silence for a long drowsy time then Sacha said, out of nowhere, ‘It takes a year, you know. The first cycle of mourning.'

Connie started. Harry loped out and lay down with his nose by a gravied plate, flipping the tip of his tail up and down hopefully. It was such a lovely June day, the weather so perfect you'd have liked to bottle it. A day just like the day a year ago when Connie arrived with Alfie and her parents. A year that felt like twenty. Looking back to that day was like looking back on herself as a child, another kind of creature altogether. So innocent. There are those who have suffered and those who haven't and that is the biggest difference between people. Connie thought, looking at Sacha's face, that is a greater difference than between men and women, or adults and children.

The smell of lilac and the dazed murmur of the bees brought the memory of her arrival back to her, stealthily, overwhelmingly, pushing her back till she lay flat on the grass, the sky pressing down as if it had fallen. She no longer grieved all the time. She had hours some days when she forgot her grief but it was as if she couldn't get away with it, a few hours off were paid for by more acute grief later.

‘A year,' she whispered.

‘After a year you can no longer think
this time last year we
…' Sacha said. Connie turned her head and blinked up at Sacha, rainbowed through the prisms of wet on her lashes. Sacha did understand. Sacha had suffered. She had loved someone before she loved Patrick, a man called Miles who had been thrown and trampled to death by a horse just days before their wedding. Sacha had told it to Connie one day, her voice flat, her eyes on the window down which rain was streaming. ‘We were riding on the South Downs, a windy, sunny day. He had hair the colour of conkers in the sun. I thought,
I am so happy, I am happier than it is possible to be.'
She had given a humourless laugh. ‘That taught me. Never, Connie,
never
take anything for granted. I was ill after, sick as a dog on what should have been my wedding day – with what turned out to be Red.' Her hand had gone to her belly and a shadow had flitted over her face. Red still out in Africa, the news sporadic. Sacha
so stoical
, never speaking aloud the fear that she lived with every day.

Connie lifted her heavy hand from the grass and touched Sacha's knee. Without her, Connie did not know how she could have lived through the first winter and spring. Sacha was so solid and kind but not intrusive. She never said, ‘Everything is all right.' She never said, ‘Don't cry.' ‘This is terrible,' she said instead, ‘this might be the worst thing you ever know. You must cry, you must grieve. And it will change you for ever. But you will live.'

They remained on the grass for a long time, quiet. Connie closed her eyes. She breathed in Harry's doggy smell and the smell of Sacha, paint and sweat; the scent of lilacs and wallflowers. She could hear birds, bees, breathings and rustlings, a little yelp from the dreaming dog. The sun was hot on her eyelids. She lay on the ground until the sky began to lift. An ant tickled her leg and she sat up to brush it off. She hugged her knees to her chin. She was wearing a summer dress that Sacha had made for her out of an old one of her own, faded blue and flowery, loose and cool, but still, sticking to her skin in the heat.

Sacha's forehead was deeply creased and her mouth pursed in a way that made her look fierce and old. ‘Thinking about Red?' Connie asked.

Sacha shook her head impatiently. ‘You know what I think?' she said. ‘I think it's time you began.'

‘Began what?'

‘To paint, of course.'

‘No.' Connie frowned at her knees under the stretched material. The idea of doing something, something new, was too much to contemplate. It was all she could do to hold herself together. Patrick came round the side of the house, his bee helmet under his arm.

‘A charming vision,' he said. ‘Two females in repose. And dog,' he added, crouching down to rub Harry's head. He put his helmet on the grass. A bee crawled lazily across the visor. He unbuttoned his thick canvas shirt and took it off. He sat down between Connie and Sacha. The smell of him was strong, the hairs around his nipples shocking black against his whiteness. Connie looked harder at her knees.

‘I was just suggesting to Con that maybe it's time she took up the brush,' Sacha said.

‘Got stung,' Patrick said, showing them a swollen redness on his wrist. ‘And what does Connie say to that?'

Connie shook her head and looked towards the house. The sky reflected blue in the windows. A tortoiseshell butterfly landed on Patrick's arm.

‘Look, Con,' he said and extended his arm towards her. The butterfly rested on his skin, opening and closing its wings. ‘What do you see?'

‘I see a butterfly on your arm.'

‘Try again.'

It was a game he liked to play. Sometimes Connie liked it though it was hard. And she was too hot. It annoyed her,
he
annoyed her the way he'd never let her slide away, always made her engage with him in a way that was demanding, but … she looked at his intense face … but made her feel approved of, too. Made her feel important. As no one else had ever done. So she played along. ‘I see peachy brown, speckled, pink swell, small black fuzz of lines and green beneath, a moving thing now doubled, trembling. Gold, orange, brown, the lightest shadow …'

‘No!'

‘Wisp of grey, no deeper flesh …'

‘And that doesn't make you want to paint?' said Sacha.

‘I wouldn't be any good.'

‘Good is subjective,' Patrick said. ‘You're right. Undoubtedly some people won't think you're any good. But it scarcely matters. To be doing, absorbing yourself … forgetting … colour … light … space.'

Both of them looked at her, expectantly, hopefully even. This pressure was new and unlike them. They must have planned this, decided behind her back that it was time to chivvy her. She jumped up. ‘If I try to paint, it will be when I'm good and ready,' she said, smoothing down her skirt, flicking another ant to the ground.
‘And
if and when I'm ready it won't be butterflies I paint.' She stalked off into the house where it was cool and dim and dusty. What would it be then? she asked herself, but glancing back out of the window at Sacha and Patrick together on the lawn she knew it could only be them. The grey and the black, the dark cushions on the grass, the million greens of grass, leaf, shadow, hill, the white feather of dog-tail, the yellowish pale of skin and the speckled sparkle of blue air, pollen- and sunshine-filled. She could see it in paint when she closed her eyes, in patches,
freckles
, of light and shade, graduations of colour so fine you wouldn't believe it. For some reason she held her breath and tiptoed as she climbed the stairs into the swallow- and linseed-smelling studio.

TWENTY

Tony loves hospitals. Loves the bare shiny floors, the clink of metal on metal, the high white beds with their boiled clean sheets. Loves the nurses in their uniforms, though he's disappointed that they're wearing blue polyester-looking things, like housecoats. If it was up to him there would be more starch and whiteness. Yes, the wife he will never have could have been a nurse, a night nurse, and they would rarely meet – and when they did she might look like Lisa. Those small blue eyes, the fair hair piled on her head with a starchy cap. And as he lay alone at night between hospital-tight sheets he would be proud to think of her at work.