The Catalyst (13 page)

On the face of it they were just two friends sharing a house for a short time but it felt like more to Jasper and his inability to understand just what was going on frustrated him. He suspected he was being a control freak. After all there must be many more ways human beings could live together other than the ones usually thought up by society. Wearily, he got up to throw another log on the fire and help Jenny clear away the dishes.

Later, as she cut out fabric shapes with which to decorate some cushions she had brought back from the farm, more as a diversion for her mind than for any practical reason, Jasper read the emails on his iPhone.

Already he was getting twitchy, knowing he would be somewhat out of touch with his business partner, Thierry Montford, until all available methods of contact had been set up. In his business time was vitally important, delay could lose him lucrative contracts and he had many expensive debts. Jasper laughed a little self-consciously as he told Jenny about his marine salvage business.

‘It’s a bit like wrecking ... only legitimate. Well, it’s in the blood down here, isn’t it?’ he said.

She was aware of his pride as he showed her the pictures of his ships on his laptop. On a purely selfish level the fact that Jasper might have difficulty setting up his work from the farm made her nervous. She knew she desperately needed time away from Jimmy to reflect and decide on her next move. She had to get it right and any difficulties Jasper had running his business from a distance could jeopardise this important mental space for her.

His end of the kitchen table was covered in papers and she watched him frowning and making notes on them as he reached absently for his phone again. He pressed a single quick dial button and she knew it would be to discuss something with Thierry.

He did not seem to have contacted Amanda or at least not in her hearing. She felt a little anxious about this, hoping she would not come between them, not realising she already had. Jasper had spoken to Amanda, he had simply not shared the details of their somewhat heated conversation with Jenny and he had certainly not shared with Amanda the real reason why he needed to stay on at the farm for a while.

Putting down her scissors Jenny took the cutout shape of a pear over to the fireside and sat down to sew it onto the cushion cover. The precise nature of the stitching work absorbed her as she had hoped it would, helping to clear her mind of any thoughts of Jimmy and she was glad she had thought to bring her needlework away with her.

Jasper’s voice broke into her concentration. It seemed Thierry was disagreeing on some sort of policy and she watched a Jasper she had never seen before. His answer was forceful and his words were ruthless.

‘Thierry, stop taking this shit. Tell them they agreed the terms and we’ll see them in court if they don’t finish the payments for that job. They made a pile of money out of it and it’s only old man Baines wanting to hang on to more of it for his next project. Tell him we’ve had enough of his time-wasting … and tell him he can find some other company next time.’

He caught her looking at him and shrugged, holding up the palms of his hands towards her as if to hold back some expected onslaught from her.

‘What?’ He grinned shamefaced as she laughed at him. ‘Okay ... so no more Mister Nice Guy, huh?’

‘It certainly doesn’t sound like it,’ she said, strangely pleased he appeared to be able to take care of himself as an adult when he had been so vulnerable as a child, ‘but I’m glad of it, Jazz.’

Their eyes met and she knew she did not have to explain her comment, he knew what she meant.

‘Have you thought at all ... er, much ... today, about Jimmy? I just wondered …’ He found he was holding his breath, wanting her to say no, she hadn’t thought of Jimmy at all. What was he thinking, how could she have thought of anything else? He felt a fool for asking such a dumb question.

‘Honestly? Yes, I have thought a lot about him and I am still very angry with him ...  but I have to be realistic, Jazz. I can’t stay here with you forever.’

He wanted to ask why not.

‘Look … I know Jimmy hardly represents security but ... oh, I don’t know ... I’m just hoping I won’t feel so confused about things over the next few days. I know I need to make some sort of rational decision about my future and I just have to get it right.’

‘Do you think you still ... love him?’

They were both aware of the slight pause in Jasper’s question and both of them wondered why he had paused.

‘Except for the anger I don’t know what I really feel for him anymore. Everything seems so jumbled up, I just know I really need some security in my life especially now I’m ...’ she hesitated, reluctant to bring attention to the fact, ‘getting older. I suppose I just need to accept that Jimmy will never be able to provide me with any sort of security.’

Jasper nodded, heartened by the way she now seemed able to discuss her situation rationally.

‘If you left him I could help you find somewhere to live ... if you didn’t want to live here that is … but, of course you could still live here … if you wanted. I will have to return to London sometime.’ His dismay at the thought startled him. ‘I could pay you to look after it for me ... you could be a sort of housekeeper ...’

His words trailed off and he hid an inward wince, hoping she would not be offended by that last comment. It was one of the things she had accused Jimmy of, but then Jimmy was supposed to be her loving partner.

‘Then you could decide if you needed to continue working at the surf shop,’ he hurried on, knowing she would have liked to have given that up.

‘And what if you and Amanda wanted to come down here for a holiday? I couldn’t be here then ... I would be intruding,’ she said, insisting on being practical.

‘I don’t think I’d ever get Amanda down here … it’s hardly The Maldives, is it?’ He grinned at her. ‘And besides I’m not sure I want to share this place with her, I think its appeal may be too subtle for her.’

He felt a swift pang of guilt at this disloyalty but knew that his words were more or less the truth. ‘But I could still come when I wanted to and I would know the place was in good hands. I would know that it was being looked after … kept clean, aired, properly cared for ...’ He was warming to his idea now and to him it seemed like the perfect solution.

‘Hmm, maybe ... I’m not sure.’

She frowned. She knew it seemed like a good idea to Jasper, so why was she so intent on looking for the flaw in the plan?

A life at the farm certainly painted a seductive picture in her mind, scenes of herself feeding chickens and gathering vegetables she had grown herself gave way to lazy Sunday lunchtimes with friends eating and chatting around the old kitchen table. She was almost won over. Then she pictured Jimmy alone, struggling with  tax returns and shopping for food and knew herself still in love with him.

Jasper, watching all the expressions moving across her face, could see the exact moment when she saw Jimmy Fisher in her mind’s eye. Will she never, ever see him as he really is? Can’t she see it wouldn’t take him long to replace her? Some other, no doubt younger, woman would move in and before long she too would become his next drudge.

Wake up Jenny, he urged mutely, wary of openly criticising Jimmy, knowing he would feel hurt hearing her spring to Jimmy’s defence. He, better than anyone, knew her loyalty could be ferocious and he suspected that despite all the pain she had so far endured at Jimmy’s hands, she still had not yet reached any sort of cutoff point in her tolerance of him.

‘At least think about it, Jen?’

She nodded obediently, the faraway watching of Jimmy Fisher still in her eyes.

Jenny came to his bed in the early hours of the next day. He was drowsily aware of her climbing in beside him clad in the red tartan pyjamas and the woolly socks he had bought her to help her keep warm in the damp air of the unheated bedrooms. He was surprised and touched but he didn’t delude himself she had come for anything more than the comfort of his physical presence as she settled down with her back to him.

He wondered if, in her sleepy state, she had even noticed he slept naked. He was very tempted to snuggle up to her and curve his body around hers as he had the night they had slept in front of the kitchen fire but was concerned that a certain part of his anatomy with a mind of its own might misread the situation. Reluctantly he turned his back on her just in case and soon fell asleep again.

A gentle rocking motion woke him. It was dawn and the bedroom was full of fragile light. Jenny was pushing at his shoulder to wake him.

‘Jazz, Jazz ...wake up … look at the light … it’s lovely ... so beautiful!’ she whispered.

He raised himself on an elbow, gazing bleary-eyed at the sight of the sun sitting on the horizon. The light caught the circle of ancient standing stones that stood two fields away and gave them elongated and vaguely menacing shadows. For a moment he was transported back in time with fanciful imaginings of tall figures in long robes with staffs and flowing beards, fooling the ignorant they were controlling the rising sun with drums and chants and invocations.

He smiled wryly to himself. Yeah, I’m home all right, getting as fey as the rest of them, he thought.

‘Wow, you’re right, that is beautiful!’ he whispered back before asking, ‘Why are we whispering?’

‘Well, you never know who’s listening in this place,’ she said, with mock mysteriousness. He took the mug of tea she had made for him and looked at her as she sat on the end of his bed to watch the sunrise.

She sat with her arms around her knees, her sleep-tousled hair all over the place and he could see the echo of the wild little girl she had once been. A sudden pang of tenderness for her swept over him and he vowed to himself he would do whatever it took to protect and care for her. Such an abrupt revelation of his real feelings took his breath away and he choked on his drink.

Jenny instantly turned to face him with amused concern and that was when he knew for sure it was true. He could bury, hide, rationalise, this sudden and inconvenient insight but it would still be there underneath everything, waiting to surface every now and again like a dolphin breaching the waves. He could never leave, either her or the farm. It would be better just to face the fact now and work his life around it somehow.

‘You okay?’ she said, sensing something major was going on within him.

‘Yeeeess, I suppose I am ... and you’re whispering again ...’ he said absently, thinking he had better get planning a new life, his new life. He should ring and tell Amanda. No, better to talk to Amanda face to face, it was obvious now that he needed to separate himself from her and it had to be done amicably. Amicable with Amanda, he knew, would involve money.

He would need to go to London to sort this. He would need to see Thierry and work something out with the business. Maybe shift some of it down here to one of the local harbours? Did he even still want to run a salvage company? His mind whirled and he was suddenly aware of a rising feeling of excitement. Here was a new and exciting challenge and it exhilarated him even though there was no way of knowing what would happen between himself and Jenny.

Given the strangeness of their feelings for one another it seemed certain they would never be lovers even though he knew his feelings constituted a sort of love. He acknowledged the fact dispassionately, knowing he was on the brink of a new life, a life he suddenly knew he really wanted in a place he loved above all other.

It was only when he was standing in front of a vastly amused Jenny that he realised he had leapt out of bed without remembering he was naked. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered now except the prospect of a new life. Grabbing her hand he dragged her down the stairs and out into the dewy morning.

A late vixen trailing wearily home with a rabbit in her jaws stopped momentarily as if shocked by the man, naked except for his Wellington boots, walking towards the rising sun at the other end of the farmyard. She moved on quickly as he raised his arms.

‘Help me, O Great Sun, help me find my way in a new life.’ He was only partly mocking and he was pleased to hear his foolishness had made Jenny chuckle.

She watched him walking towards the sunrise, admiring his strong shoulders and the intriguing inward curves on the outside of his neat buttocks, wishing again she could have this sort of relationship with Jimmy.

Suddenly he turned and rushed at her, grabbing her so she shrieked with surprise and they stood laughing until they were breathless, their arms around one another in the weak sunlight. It was a good moment, a perfect moment in their extraordinary friendship and he would remember it often and use it to sustain himself in the dark times that came afterwards.

Chapter 12

It was only the next day as he lifted his head from all the planning for his new life that Jasper realised Jenny had still not returned from her grocery shopping trip to Dehwelyans. It was getting dark. She should have returned an hour ago.

He had a fleeting feeling of misgiving and decided they must find her a better car. Her old banger would crumble if anyone crashed into it with too much force. He smiled despite the macabre thought, thinking it was only the mud holding the thing together, shrugging any scarier thoughts away.

As if conjuring her up with his thoughts, she returned shortly after and he helped her to prepare the evening meal. She seemed more preoccupied than usual but he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. She often had moments of dreaminess, moments when he knew she was mentally back with Jimmy and he fervently hoped such moments of reflection were a positive sign that she would leave him.

What he couldn’t know was that Jenny had gone to see Jimmy. Not to meet him face to face but just to watch the farm to see if she could see him undetected. In some way she was hoping it would help her come to a decision about her life with him.

Jasper had been so excited and full of plans for his new life that she had felt a pang of envy, wanting to feel that way about her own life, but so far her thoughts and emotions had simply gone around in a sort of meaningless carousel and she felt as if her indecision was eating her alive inside. She knew she hadn’t been away from Jimmy for long enough but how long did you need when the man in your life slept with every woman who crossed his path?

Then she would vividly remember the passion and the laughter of the early times, the all-too-brief good times when he appeared to have eyes only for her and the memories of the intimate moments they had once shared would warm her again.

On the very rare occasions these moments still happened, when they did share laughter and made eye contact she had been willing to believe she was the only woman he truly loved. More often however there had only been arguments and absences and Jimmy’s sullen and increasingly scary moods.

Despite this, as the dusk was falling on her way back from shopping, she had parked her car in the lay-by on the main road and risked walking down the lane to their farm on the cliff-top. She was relieved to see the outside light shining on Jimmy’s truck in the farmyard.

She had not thought what she would say to him if she had met him in the lane but now she knew he was inside, she felt a frisson of … what? Some deep instinct for emotional self-preservation told her she shouldn’t let Jimmy know she was there. Even though she was entitled to be in the home she had made something in her wanted to keep her presence secret.

The windows glowed in the gloom as the farmhouse stood stoutly beneath the ancient Scots pine tree that stood like a loyal and aged wolfhound resolutely guarding it. Jenny made her way carefully round to the kitchen window beside the old tree, smelling the familiar scent of pine as she trod on the spongy carpet of discarded needles, vividly aware of the gentle sibilance of the wind in the tree canopy above her.

She had always loved the sound of the wind in the pine needles but now she had no time to listen or to feel, no time or mind to allow remembrances of better times seduce her. As usual Jimmy had not thought to lower the blinds and close out the night so she was able to look in, like a refugee returning from exile to a home no longer hers, inhabited instead by some heedless stranger.

He stood with his back to her, apparently cooking something and, knowing what his cooking was like, she wanted to feel sorry for him but all that rose in her was an anger so hot it scorched her skin. This man was to blame for her exile. Here she stood, watching him working snug and safe in the home she had worked so hard to create, the home she had brought into being out of so little. She controlled an urge to walk in and slap his stupid, uncaring face.

She watched him turn the slightly singed and mangled results out of the frying pan onto a plate, dabbing at it with a wooden spoon. She breathed with fierce satisfaction, the mess on his plate was all he deserved. Anyway she knew he would just shovel whatever it was into his mouth, hardly noticing it was only just this side of edible.

Food had never interested Jimmy and she stood silent and dead-eyed in the dark, watching him eat, quickly and without awareness. She suspected he didn’t even taste the food, he had little time for indulging any of his senses other than sight. He lived only for the pictorial, the seen and this sense alone allowed him to work and so to be complete.

For the most part Jenny had recognised his inordinately developed sense of the visual and accepted this as part of the man as an artist. When it was used for his work, it had not bothered her. Only when he turned the full intensity of his piercing gaze on some younger and more attractive woman had it hurt and she had had to add yet another slight to the innumerable hurts he had subjected her to over the years.

In those moments her fragile self-esteem had crumbled even further and she had cursed him for his obviousness, his insensitivity to her feelings. She had been unable to shrug off the feelings of worthlessness no matter how much she consoled herself about it being in the nature of most men to look at women, but then Jimmy Fisher was not most men. Most men living with a woman put some sort of brake on their actions or at least tried to, Jimmy simply acted on his many impulses without the merest hesitation or thought for her.

It had been with a sense of dread that she had realized the older she got the more he would look at younger women and he would care less and less about trying to be discreet. She could only hope that as he got older the objects of his attentions would find him less appealing but how long would it be before that happened? How long could she wait? Instead of being the cherished wife of long-standing she knew she had been relegated to position of housekeeper.

The renewed realisation of her position in Jimmy’s life reduced her to misery again. The tree above her creaked sympathetically and she became aware her nose was running with the cold. Putting a hand up to her face she was surprised to find it wet. She had been unaware of her falling tears as she watched the man she loved, a man who seemed to have no more use for her.

Hunching down deeper into her coat, she stepped out of the deep shadow of the fir tree and started to trudge back through the darkness to the car, no longer caring if he looked out of the window and saw her. The sight of him apparently managing well enough without her had strengthened her determination, and even though she longed to be back in her own home, she now felt strong enough to stay away for a while longer.

It was fortunate for Jenny that she was not able to see into Jimmy’s thoughts, preoccupied as he was by Sunny Smith. He had been pondering on his last words to her, remembering he had said he would call round to check on her and see if she needed any groceries getting. Now it was many days later and he still had not called on her.

Standing in the wildness of the storm he had promised himself he would definitely go and see her, knowing what he really meant by that and he had daydreamed about how the meeting would go, about how he hoped it would go. Then his mind had raced ahead, seeing them entwined in bed, his mouth on her breasts, feeling himself buried deep inside her. That was when he had really burned.

Yet, another day had ended and he was left wondering why he had still not visited her. Every time he picked up the keys of the pickup to go down to Porthcarn he had found himself inventing reasons why he could not go and see her. He had canvases to prepare, to string, to label, to catalogue, he had paint to order. He had elevated the making of excuses to some sort of art form and they had given him a strange new outlet for his creativity he now found intensely irritating.

He had even dreamed of her last night. He had always had an ability to remember his dreams, probably because they were usually extremely vivid and, more often than not, extremely frightening. This dream had seemed more real than his usual dreams, less grotesque and distorted, and although not frightening as such it had been deeply disturbing.

He dreamt he had seen her facing away from him at a party, full of people he did not know. He watched his own hand reach out to her shoulder to turn her round to face him. She turned around with a smile to greet whoever it was touching her shoulder, until she saw it was Jimmy. Then her smile died and a look of cold politeness came over her face.

‘I’ve been wanting … needing … to see you,’ he had watched himself stammer. Even in his sleep he was aware of his heartbeat quickening, felt it falter as a look of unfamiliar coldness sharpened her eyes.

‘Why on earth would I want to see you?’ she had asked, her face a blank mask.

‘But … but I helped you … on the cliff path.’ Even in the dream he was aware of the pleading in his voice and hated it.

‘That does not give you any rights over me. So just go away will you,’ the dream Sunny replied, turning away from him. ‘If you don’t, you will regret it.’

Her last words in the dream still rang in his head as he woke with a sudden start in the middle of the night. It was obvious to him the dream had been some sort of warning but why he should be afraid of her? She didn’t seem like a cruel sort of woman. From the little time he had had with her he could hardly believe she would ever look so contemptuously upon him but dare he take that risk?  Was it only the fear of rejection that kept him away from her?

Had he been capable of objective self-analysis he might have well have read his dream as showing some deeply hidden self-loathing that had absolutely nothing to do with Sunny Smith, but luckily for him he was a stranger to the art of self-perception. Instead with some unusual, and deeply uncomfortable, insight he was beginning to believe that for the first time in his life, and somewhat belatedly, he might just be in love.

It would certainly appear his emotions were no longer inviolable and he had elected to walk about with his heart outside his body, wrapped up in the very female persona of Sunny Smith. She had power over him because he loved her. Surely that couldn’t be right? Okay, she was pretty enough, beautiful even, but he had had beautiful women before and he had escaped unscathed. Surely this was only another infatuation … wasn’t it?

He shivered unable to work it out and nervous of his own newly fledged vulnerability he wondered which emotion was stronger, his fear or his need of her. He frowned, wishing he could hibernate until the feeling passed but what if it was love and what if it didn’t pass? Sometimes love could last a lifetime, that’s what they said, didn’t they?

And trust, what about trust? You had to trust the one you loved. You had to trust them completely, didn’t you? What the hell was trust? How could he trust her? How could he make sure his heart would be safe in her keeping? He snorted with annoyance at himself. What the hell am I on about? I sound like some sort of soap opera, for fuck's sake! He turned impatiently from such embarrassing thoughts. Right, Fisher, just get on with it. Go and see the woman and take what you want.

He lay awake for a while longer, re-scripting and artistically tweaking the pictures of them together as they arose in his head, feeling the familiar movement in his groin and holding onto it for reassurance. Come on Jimmy, how scary can it be? She’s only a woman, they’re all the same once you’ve got them into bed. When was the last time one of them refused to give you what you want?

By the time he fell asleep again he had almost succeeded in ignoring the unnamed fear that knocked on the door of his consciousness like an annoying tune that would not go away. He was going to see her tomorrow and that would be it. Decision made. Sorted.

On the day Jimmy would always remember as the day his new life had started, the September sun was just rising above the horizon as he gave up trying to sleep and struggled out of his usual turmoil of tangled sheets and Technicolour dreams. Scratching himself he stood dozily watching the dawn as it glittered on the distant horizon.

Then, as if gathering pace, the sun warmed away the last lingering wisps of mist and chivvied the tired vegetation on the cliff into one last spirited rally of seed dispersal before winter. As usual, he caught his breath at the beauty of this scene knowing he could never tire of it, knowing he would always love the constantly changing light and every fleeting weather mood.

This land was more than his muse, it had been his one true love, the only thing he had truly loved for itself. A chaotic mix of the wild and the timorous, he knew it to be as volatile as himself, always eluding his attempts to capture it on canvas. Some days he could almost swear he felt the breath on Pan on the back of his neck and hear a sardonic snigger behind him as he painted.

Coughing throatily, he lit his first cigarette of the day and made a mug of strong coffee to help the coming-round process. He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror as he urinated and knew he didn’t look good today. Gloomily he speculated that there were now more days when he didn’t look good than when he did.

Jimmy-boy, you’ve not just got bags under your eyes, they’re bloody portmanteaus, he thought dubiously. He almost began to doubt his ability to charm Sunny into whatever it was he wanted of her. What you need is cold seawater, that’ll fix you. Get out there and douse yourself in the briny, you idle bastard.

Deciding to listen to himself giving himself good advice for once, he took a last gulp of coffee and, picking up a towel, set off for the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Once there he heaved his sweater off over his head and, throwing it down on top of his jeans, dived into the water. The chill of it exhilarated him, forcing his tired body to wake up and he found himself laughing and gasping at the shock to his skin as he bobbed up to the surface before striking out to sea with a strong and purposeful crawl.