Sheer Blue Bliss (12 page)

Three months, sometimes sun, sometimes rain sluicing and gurgling in the gutters, but three months spent in another existence where form was broken into planes, where edges became apparent where there were no edges before, edges between light and dark, soft and hard, real and reflection or shadow. And edges dissolved, too, into the subtlety of graduation. And the edge between grief and joy became subsumed in the fierce concentration to capture the form and nature of a moment.

And then October. A day, the day, the anniversary of the day. She did not paint on that day. It was not blue and blazing like last year, but a day of dull low cloud, the brown leaves a squelching porridge as she tramped through the beech wood with Patrick. It was her first day away from the studio. She had taken lately to sleeping in the studio on a folded pad of blankets so that she could lie in the first light and gaze at her work of the day before until she saw what was needed and hauled herself straight up to her easel. Patrick and Sacha had not seen what she had painted. After the first day they had submitted to being kept away.

‘For a while only,' Sacha had said.

‘I don't want you to look or I won't be able to work properly,' Connie had tried to explain. ‘I'll always be worrying what you'll think. I don't want your … your … judgement.'

Sacha had nodded sagely. ‘All right, until the first burst wears off.'

Connie had frowned, thinking what nonsense, this will
never
wear off, this fever for colour, this sudden urgent reason for being that was stronger than the need to eat or sleep or see another person: the need to paint.

But now, listening to the wet sucking underfoot, the scattering of rain on leaves, watching the dark stains spreading on the beech trunks, Connie knew that it had come. The end of the first burst. Today she did not need or want to paint. Today she was tired. It was because of the date, of course. This is the last day I will be able to think
this time last year
, she told herself, remembering Sacha's words on a hot day that itself seemed years ago. Alfie would never be eleven, would never be a man. Mother and Father would never see her grown. She thought this deliberately harshly as if poking at an exposed nerve but though the pain was there it didn't overwhelm her. There was even relief. That year over, that year done.

‘Jay,' Patrick said from behind her, making her jump. She stopped to look up at the pinkish dun of the bird, a leaf fell as she looked, twirling slightly on its fall, and then another. Patrick stood close behind her like a pillar. She leant back against him to feel his warmth. She could feel or sense the soft of his beard against her head and smell something greenish. His arms came round her from behind and held her tight. It was the first time they had touched, Connie and Patrick, although she and Sacha were always hugging and touching each other's hands and hair. The rain pattered high up in the branches and some bird sang.

She rested her head back against him. ‘I don't think I'll paint any more.'

‘Ah, so it has come. Sacha said it would. You will paint, my love.' She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘And when are we to be allowed to see the fruits of your endeavours?'

Connie pulled away and began walking. They had come to a place where the wood changed quite abruptly, the beech trees giving way to pine. A flat wooden bridge spanned the stony river that gurgled beer brown, already swelling with the autumn rain. She crossed the bridge, slippy underfoot, without looking back though she knew he was behind her. Between the sudden lofty pines the air was charcoal grey and chilly. It was quieter, no bird-song and the ground almost dry. It was a shivery place, less friendly than the beech wood where there was lightness between the spreading branches and colour in the undergrowth, where Patrick had pointed out a ring of fly agaric, vermilion spotted with white, nibbled at the edges. ‘Some mice having a good time of it,' he had laughed, stooping to break off a small piece of toadstool and put it in his mouth. Connie had not been surprised – Patrick tasted everything, leaf, bark, petal, twig – but had shaken her head when he offered her a morsel.

Little rain penetrated to the ground between the pines and the ground was soft, earth and dried needles, their footsteps were silent. Connie pulled her coat more tightly around her and thought about her painting. Twenty old canvases and boards Sacha had given her to paint over and she had made twenty puzzling paintings. Each one was a craze of colour. Each one had made utter sense as she worked on it but that morning in the watery gloom of the studio she had not known what they were, or what they were for, whether she could even
call
them paintings in any sense other than that they were arrangements of paint on canvas. That was why she had come downstairs and announced her intention of going for a long walk and only then, when she noticed the look that had passed between Sacha and Patrick, had she remembered the significance of this day. She had been deliberately avoiding knowing the date, hoping it would pass her by unnoticed. But the calendar on the wall would catch her eye.

Seeing Patrick receive Sacha's look and knowing what it meant seemed to wake her from a dream. She had felt she was an artist, that she had found her calling, found a new kind of sense in life, the smell, colour, texture of paint, a new way of seeing. But now it all seemed an illusion, a kind of spell she'd been under.
Why?
She thought of the squares and oblongs of colour.
Why and what for?

‘You can see them,' she said over her shoulder. The dark wood made her uneasy. The towering trees had a definite and different presence from the beeches with their generous rounded limbs. The pines grew straight up, making dark in their competition for light and the carpet of pine needles was almost sterile apart from the occasional yellowish nub of a toadstool head pushing up. Patrick caught her up and put his arm round her. She let him, appreciating the warmth. She liked the way he listened to her, took her as seriously as any other adult. Treated her like a woman and a friend. She smiled up at him, lovely funny man with his spindly limbs and cascading beard.

‘What do you smell of?' she asked wrinkling her nose. It was something like leaf-sap, something like incense, sweet but a bit sickly, too.

He drew his arm tighter round her and stooped to sniff his fingers. ‘I will tell you all,' he said, ‘when the system is further developed. Indeed I may ask your assistance.'

‘How?'

‘Some experiments on the effects of my elixirs.'

‘What are they for, your elixirs?'

‘That's a trade secret,' he said, tapping the side of his nose. They walked along in step and left the darkness of the pine wood, walking through a plantation of young firs barely six feet tall, intensely green, spangled with raindrops constantly shaken and shot to rainbows by the hopping of birds. Sunshine had escaped from a slit in the clouds and Connie squinted in the dazzle of it.

‘There was a most … desolate atmosphere among those pines,' she said.

‘Naturally. Trees have their own cultures, atmospheres, moods.'

‘What?'

‘Beeches are congenial, most deciduous birches are particularly playful and the rowan, well!' he chuckled. ‘And these young firs, like children. Do you feel it?'

‘Mmmm.' Connie removed herself from under his arm and walked ahead a bit so that she could grin. She could never tell whether he was having her on.

‘Mature Scots pines are possibly the most antithetical to repose or pleasure. Though yews give them a run for their money.'

‘Oh look!' In the wet grass was the sudden mauve of a cluster of autumn crocus. Connie crouched over them noticing the glitter of wet on mauve and green, tender petal against coarse blade.

Patrick trampled along ahead of her and she followed, watching the water brushed from grass and bracken splash about his legs, the brown corduroy of his trousers growing dark with the wet. He stopped suddenly and turned, held her in his arms against his chest.

‘I'm all right.' Her voice was muffled against his coat, her nose full of the funny smell. His lips brushed the top of her head.

‘Are you sure, love?'

‘Yes, just that I keep thinking of what it is I am.'

‘And what are you?'

‘An orphan,' she said. ‘Isn't that a horrid word? Sounds like awful.'

‘Orphan,' he said slowly. ‘Sounds like fantastic, too. And you're not just an orphan, you're also an artist. Should I kiss you?'

‘You haven't seen yet. Compared to Sacha's … No!' Connie pulled away from him and shivered. Her hair was wet and her shoes soaked. She walked fast back the way they'd come, her face burning. What did he mean
kiss
, a fatherly kiss, or a friendly kiss. Or did he mean … she could scarcely believe that he meant … She could not look back at him. She hurried until she was almost running. He could not have meant a lover-like kiss, could he? Could he? She looked behind her but he was not following. She sat down on a fallen branch to get her breath back and waited for the shock to come. But it did not come. So he really saw her as a woman, did he? She realised that she had a great big grin on her face – and it was that that shocked her.

TWENTY-TWO

‘The focus of your sensational retrospective has undoubtedly been the last portrait of Patrick Mount.'

‘Undoubtedly.'

‘Are you happy with this emphasis?'

‘Which is that?'

‘That Patrick's portrait …'

‘Well, I rather think that was the point of it, dear.' She sees Deborah – who has seated herself discreetly a couple of tables away – twitch her lips. Why they had to come to this chilly café where even a cup of tea cost upwards of a pound, she doesn't know. She reaches in her bag and pulls out her sorry scrap of cushion, lifts her bottom and sits on it. ‘Terrible chairs,' she says. Whoever heard of metal chairs? This man has the most enormous stomach, she can see the texture of the hairy skin pressing against the thin lemonish cotton of his shirt. He's not a fat man otherwise. She can't take her eyes from this curious rotundity. He's sipping black coffee from an absurdly small cup. He has great thick fingers, she wonders if he has a wife who enjoys them.

The table is too small. It has spindly legs and wobbles which is a most irritating thing in a table. Connie clucks her tongue and sighs. She's fed up with all this palaver, had enough. This is the third interview today, the first one was over the telephone, a disconcerting experience, her mind wandering, bound to have made some
faux pas
, and live radio, too. But who cares? Just get this over and she can go home. She aches for home. On the floor beside her feet is a brown-paper parcel. Paints. She could not resist them. The names of the colours, the pristine tubes, packed fat with all that gorgeous pigment. Not that she has any intention of painting. All inspiration gone. She realises he's said something and is waiting for her answer.

‘Sorry?'

‘Been remarked upon the … strangeness.'

‘What strangeness?'

‘That this last portrait of Mount when he was … what … late sixties looks more youthful than any single other …'

‘Well, none of them are useful.'

‘Youthful.'

‘Yes.'

‘Yes?'

‘Yes, it is odd, isn't it?'

‘Any explanation?'

The back wall of the café is one huge mirror. Connie is in there, tiny, face brown, hair black with its bone-white stripe.
Is that me? Am I really so small?
Despite her purple coat she shivers. The man waits. His face is a study of perplexity. A finger of mischief wags inside her. Might as well enjoy herself.

‘Explanation of what?'

He sips his coffee. ‘With this retrospective and a general upsurge of interest in alternative culture, interest in the … the
fate
of Patrick has been rekindled. What's your attitude to that?'

Connie shrugs her shoulders. ‘Do you think I could have a spot more tea?' The man inhales patiently and catches a waiter's eye.

‘Anything to go with it?'

‘Do you know what I could fancy? It's something I haven't had since I was a girl. Brown-sugar sandwiches. Could you ask him for a brown-sugar sandwich. No crusts.'

He gives the order and the waiter gives her a soppy look. ‘That's a new one in here.'

‘Maybe you'll start a trend.' The man winks across at Deborah. ‘Now,' he taps the end of his pen on the table, ‘where were we?'

‘Search me, dear.'

He frowns over his squiggly page.

‘Is that shorthand?'

‘My own version … ah, your attitude to the renewal of interest in the final
whereabouts
of Patrick.'

‘Well, he'll have passed on by now.'

‘But on that day in 1960 what? Five? Can you cast your mind back …'

‘Of course I could if I so wished.'

‘But you don't wish?'

‘I do not.'

The waiter is back with a tray of tea and coffee but no sandwiches. ‘Excuse me, madam,' he says, ‘would that be demerara or muscovado?'

‘Oh … muscovado I should think. As far as I'm concerned Patrick disappeared from my life on that day. He may have absconded to Patagonia or joined the Foreign Legion or been spirited away by fairies for all the difference it makes.'

‘Has murder crossed your mind?'

It's as if the breath has all been knocked out of her. She opens her mouth but nothing comes to her to say. Deborah half rises from her seat but he waves his hand.

‘I'm sorry, Miss Benson, perhaps that was crass.'

She forces a breath in, a voice out. ‘It most certainly was.' There is a pause. ‘I did love him, you know, despite his …'

‘Of course you did. I'm sorry.' The sugar sandwiches arrive garnished with a sliced-up strawberry and a sprig of mint. The waiter puts the plate down with a flourish, almost a little bow. What does he want? Applause? ‘Despite his …?' the man prods. Connie nods at the waiter. She swallows her indignation and an odd feeling of panic and eats the strawberry before she replies.