Sheer Blue Bliss (4 page)

‘Alfie!' Mother pulled him to her, straightened his tie.

‘A little,' Patrick said, letting go of his beard, ‘but a little hurt is sometimes good.'

The air cooled as the sky dimmed to lavender and pale stars gleamed. Mother and Father stood by the front door. Alfie was in bed and Connie stood in the shadow of the lilac listening.

‘It's not the mess or the dustiness,' Mother said.

‘I know.'

‘It's not the dog hairs. It's not Sacha, she seems, I must say, like a sensible type – quite a bit older than Patrick, wouldn't you say? I'd trust the children to
her
, after all she has brought up a son. It's not even Patrick, although …'

‘Yes, I know.'

‘It's well, it's … it's the lack of I don't know … regulation. You know? You saw how long it took to get that tea together and it was only pikelets for heaven's sake and a pot of tea and it's not even as if we arrived unexpectedly, is it?'

‘Not at all.'

‘It's not what the children are used to at all – and greeting us with a note! They'd run wild, that's what, if they came here. And I don't want to leave them.' Her mother's voice trembled into tears and Connie stepped forward.

‘Oh Mother, it's a wonderful place,' she said, ‘I really want to stay. This is where we would be safe.'

‘Eavesdropping now!'

‘I'm not sure that Alfie wants to stay,' Father said.

‘Well, take Alfred home then, we're not Siamese twins.'

‘Constance!'

‘Sorry, Father, but … it's just so glorious and it's well away from the war, isn't it? What war could there be here?'

‘We'll talk about it.'

‘Please let me.'

‘We'll see.' It was no good wheedling. Connie left them before they could send her to bed and wandered about in the garden breathing in the cooling fragrance of the flowers, watching how the pale roses seeped light, glowing like small planets in the dusk.

And in the morning it was decided that Alfie would return to London and that Connie could stay. ‘But think of it as a holiday,' Mother said, ‘a trial period, nothing is set in stone and if you're homesick …'

‘I won't be.'

‘We're not talking about for ever,' Father chipped in. ‘Understand, Connie, this is a temporary expedient, for the duration only.' Connie smiled past him at the swallows swooping for gnats. They had been left alone to say their goodbyes, Patrick was gardening and Sacha had gone off somewhere to paint.

‘If you change your mind …' Mother held her at arm's length, looking at her as if she was searching her face for something, or memorising her features.

‘Be good,' were her father's last words to her. His kiss was dry on her cheek, her mother's loose and powdery as if she was leaving a trace of herself on Connie's skin. Their embrace, so soft with their breasts squashed between them embarrassed Connie and she pulled away a little too soon.

She stood and waved a white handkerchief, watching the car disappear and appear again growing smaller and smaller on the winding, dipping drive, watching the white flash of Alfred's handkerchief waving back from the window. The air was busy with flying things, the thin squeal of the swallows was like a wet finger on the rim of a glass. She closed her eyes as the car, at last, disappeared. She threw out her arms and twizzled, letting the handkerchief drop, spun round and round and round, her skirt flying out until she was so dizzy she staggered and sank down on the step.

SEVEN

Donna's flat has a sweetish girly smell. In each room there is a bowl of dusty scented petals and dead fragments. The bowl on the coffee table is wooden and the pot-pourri has pine cones in it, twigs, seed-husks. Tony lifts a handful, lets it fall. The sweet dust makes him sneeze. It's good in Donna's flat. It's mostly clean. Donna has this waxy stuff to polish the leaves of the rubber plant with. The plant reaches halfway up the wall. Tony strokes a thick leaf with his finger, cool gloss, no dust here, she must have dusted it before leaving. He can feel the pleasure in the leaf as he moves it gently between his fingers,
caresses
would be the word for the soft stroke he gives it, enjoying the waxy texture on top, the duller veined surface underneath. It's a strong plant, you can feel the force of life in it. Tony has no plants of his own, odd, considering his fascination with Patrick and Patrick's with plants. But when he has settled, when
he
has roots he will root plants to mark the place. And maybe that is not so far away.

Donna has no secrets from Tony. No need to go fumbling through her drawers or her clothes. Did that long ago. There's nothing hidden about Donna. Felt kind of let down to find there was nothing, nothing shameful, not so much as a dirty book or a vibrator in her underwear drawer. She hasn't even had a boyfriend for a year. He likes that she's alone in there, no laughing going on that excludes him, no sex, just her and her telly, music sometimes. They have a chat and lend each other milk, tobacco or a slice of bread. She goes out to work, some local-council kind of thing, comes back, watches all the soaps, goes out mostly on a Saturday night and returns in the early hours alone, sleeps in on a Sunday morning.

Tony stretches full-length on her sofa. Likes to lie like this, feet up on the arm, smoking and watching her big colour TV. A programme about gorillas, such wise sad faces. Gorillas shambling about on their big leather feet, one with a baby on its tit, one stretched out in the sun, feet up on a branch. Tony grins, seeing that he's stretched out just the same. It's good here with the telly and the plants and all, ferns on the windowsill, a spider plant dangling babies, a stubby ginger-whiskered cactus.

It's more friendly somehow than in his own flat. Wouldn't be relaxing like this if Donna was here though, it's just her space he likes. It's female space and female things, accoutrements he gets lonely for. Not another person but another person's things. Sometimes he thinks, when he finds himself feeling lonely – Christ, he even filled in a computer-dating questionnaire once, not that he couldn't get any girl he wanted just with a look – that what he'd like would be a wife who worked. No kids, absolutely no way. A nurse maybe who worked nights, yes, then he could get a job in the day and their paths would hardly cross at all. He'd hardly have to see her. Wouldn't have to eat with her. Can't bear it when people eat in front of him, opening their mouths and stuffing them, the muscular struggle in their cheeks as they chew and then the passage of the messed-up food down their throats. Makes him want to puke. But he does like to cook. Could cook for her, could leave her wonderful things – brioche, pavlova, syllabub – and she could leave him notes saying how delicious, thanking him in a genuine way, he can just imagine it, she'd have that big smart girly writing and she'd sign her name with her initial and a sprawl of a kiss. And he could live with her things, her cosmetics on the dressing-table, her nightie on the chair, the special kind of yoghurt she likes in the fridge, her toothbrush, tampons, bath-oil.

It's ever since he was inside that he appreciates the softness, the sweet smells, the flowery cushion, he hugs it to his chest, the mobile, china birds that chink when you open the door, even the fucking pot-pourri. Inside there was this stink of men, of shit and sweat, farts, testosterone all bottled up and nothing soft; crude jokes and hairiness, bad breath, stiff pricks, almost never a smile or a kind look. He shudders at the memory, buries his nose in the cushion that smells of Donna's cheap scent. Might miss her, the thought jars him, miss someone? He might miss her when he's gone.

No. Getting morbid. He switches off the television which is on about conservation now, and goes into the bedroom. Donna's bed is covered in a pink duvet with rows of white daisies. It's got those matching flounce things to hide the legs of the bed. The pillow-cases match the cover but the curtains don't quite. Beside the bed are two books, romances, both of them have windblown heroines on the front. Donna gets through stacks of this bollocks. Underneath them is her little white Bible with a silver clasp. He's looked in it before to see her childish writing:
Property of
and her name and address. He's opened the Bible to look at the bookmark with a white flower on it and a text:
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these
. She says she reads it but the bookmark has been in the same place for months. He lifts up the duvet, the sheet underneath – pink polyester – is fresh. All clean and ready for her return, her convalescence. It's a deep bed, soft, all that pink. Tony strips off his clothes and climbs in.

EIGHT

The road roars. There is no other word for it. It's no wonder people go mad in this constant hostile poisonous din. It's been roaring all night, she'd assumed that late at night it would go quiet but no, there's been no let up at all. Who are these people and where are they all going? It seems to Constance that the world itself has gone mad, mad with movement, everyone exchanging places, restlessly passing each other going north, going south, east, west, roaring away. If someone would just shout
Stop!
then what a hush there would be, what a stillness.

This is a good hotel. Kensington. She asked to be near the park, the idea of the city terrifying after so long. The idea of being near the park was to be near green, trees, above all to have a bit of peace and
quiet
– and Deborah, not the brightest of young women obviously, put her
here
above the roar of Kensington Gore. The bed is king-size, big enough for three. She lies neatly, head centred on one of four gigantic pillows. It's an odd sensation because she doesn't lie down at home. Never uses the bed, not since she slept in it with Patrick. Tends to cat-nap in her arm-chair or sometimes in the kitchen with her head on her little cushion, resting on the table.

These curtains are dark, stiff material, serious curtains not the fluttering kind. You have to draw them with a cord. She tries to pretend the traffic sound is the sound of the sea but it doesn't work. Although the windows are closed and there is air-conditioning she fancies she can taste exhaust fumes in her mouth. Unbelievable that near her home the sea is breathing quietly, lapping on the sand, that her place is empty. That's a comfort, actually. Her place, her things, empty, waiting.

She turns her head and squints at the red figures on the clock-radio by the bed: 2.45. It's no good waiting for sleep because sleep won't come. Stiffly she sits up, hugs her cushion to her, little bit of home that looks so tattered in this setting, stuffing gone all flat, what will the chambermaid think of it? Stiff in her shoulders and neck, not serious, just a reminder, this hot summer has banished her arthritis, please God for ever. She reaches for the light-switch and the lamps on the walls let out a subdued yellow light. She hauls herself off the bed and wanders round the great room with its giant bed, its two sofas at right angles to each other, its television, refrigerator, kettle. The carpet is cold under her feet and catches on the rough skin of her heels. She feels tiny and cold and very alone. On the walls are prints of windmills in flat fields, anodyne water-colours of the pastel variety. Patrick is hanging at the NPG. The lights there will all be off, she doesn't like to think of him hanging in the dark. She rubs her cheek against the cushion and sniffs its familiar smell.

There is a feeling like a stone in her stomach. Is it hunger or is it only her blessed nerves? She perches on the edge of a sofa which seems to snub her, doesn't even deign to dent under her weight. Why two huge sofas? You could seat eight in here. Connie almost laughed when shown the room which could contain the whole of her house easily and still leave room to swing a good-sized cat.

Tomorrow at six-thirty the gallery will fill. People will mingle and sip wine. Will there be canapés? She adores those fiddly mouthfuls. People who
are
people will be there. Is Connie herself then a
person
? She saw a poster today and it quite took her breath away. Patrick's face, the face that has been hers alone, his eyes met hers through the glass of a taxi-cab window and her heart lurched, like love or fright. Eyes made only of paint, eyes painted with her own brush, yet still her heart can lurch.

He's been dead and gone for thirty years, yet evidently is not dead, not inside her anyway, else how could he have that effect? Just the surprise of it, Connie, nothing more, the surprise of that familiar face in the strangeness that London has become and to top it all her own name CONSTANCE BENSON in red block capitals, oh it's a lark, that's what it is, a nonsense and a lark. So why the stone in the belly? She shivers. Perhaps hunger is what is up.

She picks up the menu that is propped like a greeting card.
Room Service 24 hours a day
she reads and a list of what they have to offer: soup and a roll, lasagne, chicken salad, prawn mayonnaise, something called BLT. She is tempted to order it just out of interest, to see what it is and who on earth will deliver it at this ungodly hour – a grumpy woman in a dressing gown and curlers, a boy in a uniform? Yet how can she think of eating at nearly 3 a.m.? She uses the key to her refrigerator instead, what they call a ‘minibar'. All sorts in here, much more the ticket, little bottles of whatever you fancy, champagne even, nuts and crisps, a bar of chocolate, even a small fluffy toy duck. She takes it out. Cold primrose fluff, a medallion round its neck:
Buckston Ducks Inc. Don't leave me here to shiver. Take me home and love me. I'm only £3.99. Ask at reception for a gift-box
. She shakes it and its eyes wobble. Whatever is the world coming to? Suddenly she feels quite gay, her suspicions confirmed. Yes, the world gone mad. She certainly won't buy the duck but doesn't replace it in the fridge. She sits it in an ashtray instead.