The Catalyst (4 page)

‘Pete, just remembered … gotta go into town … close the door when you go …’

He scooped up the keys to his old pickup truck and hurried out of the door. Pete nodded with all the sagacity his twenty-six years could muster, sipping his hot tea carefully and knowing you didn’t ask questions of painter dudes ... artistic temperament and all that man, they jes’ di’n’t do laid back.

Jimmy lurched the dodgy gearbox of the pickup through the narrow, winding lanes towards Dehwelyans, cursing the tourists that rubbernecked at the scenery and cautiously crept their expensive, too-large cars between the high hedges. The three mile journey seemed interminable. He needed to find Jenny, he needed to put things right, he just … needed.

It was a cold, hard fact he hated facing. Plump little dark-haired Jenny, stoic, loving, capable, fiery. She was hardly beautiful … or was she? Perhaps he had just got used to seeing her. He imagined her now, trying to analyse her looks, was there was something about her? Any pretensions Jenny might have to beauty eluded him.

Fuck, why was she talking to a suit? She must just have had enough of him. He wondered if she could take him to the cleaners if she left. That would be a challenge for them, he thought grimly. How can you have half of sod all? Even the farmhouse was rented.

The search for Jenny proved fruitless even though Millie in Sacha’s coffee house remembered seeing her there. She had been talking to a very expensive looking man, handsome too, she added, eager to gossip and watching closely to see what effect the news had on Jimmy as he tried to hide the unaccustomed anxiety rising ever higher inside him.

He hurried off down the busy street peering in shops, even trying the surf shop where she usually worked though he knew it was unlikely she would have gone there on her day off. Finally he gave up, suddenly realising he knew few of her friends in the town. After all these years, he still knew very little about the woman he slept beside.

The thought of bed brought thoughts of sex, which in turn brought its usual turbulence inside him but even then he knew the feeling wasn’t for Jenny. It was just what the thought of sex did to him. Sex with Jenny was nothing special. It was okay, but it had palled early on in their relationship but then, for Jimmy, sex usually palled quickly after conquest.

So if sex with Jenny was only so-so why was he in such a panic about her leaving him, about her talking to a suit? Because, he realised with a painful spasm, the suit could well be a threat to his work. He tried again to work out how long he and Jenny had been together, thinking that might have some relevance on any settlement Jenny might be trying to obtain but all he could see was the man in the suit.

He knew at once how he would be, glossy, smooth, flattering, smiling … smiling a
t
hi
s
woman. All at once some territorial nature belatedly flared up in him and he was shocked at the fury he felt at the thought. Sixteen years! Yes, sixteen years, that was it, and he had never married her. What a bastard I am, he thought with sudden and thorough self-loathing. But, as was usual with Jimmy, the feeling was only momentary.

The traffic warden, the one and only part-time traffic warden, Dehwelyans finest, quailed slightly in his small and shiny black boots before the murderous gleam in Jimmy Fisher’s eyes as he finished writing the parking ticket.

‘Sorry, boy … waited for you as long as I could,’ he said, wishing he had waited that little bit longer, wishing he was just that little bit taller. He knew he could call for assistance from the police and wondered if he should as this unshaven man loomed with silent menace over him.

Jimmy however was not really seeing the small official amazingly apologising in front of him. The only picture in his mind was the picture of a handsome man in a suit talking to a small, dark-haired woman, smiling into the eyes of a pretty, laughing, dark-haired woman. My pretty, dark-haired woman, you bastard! There was no acknowledgment to himself that in his mind Jenny had suddenly become pretty despite his earlier assessment of her looks as being at best, homely.

Snatching the timidly proffered parking ticket, he crumpled it into a ball and hurled it onto the passenger seat with all the others as he threw himself into the pickup and drove home in a frenzy of hope that she had returned whilst he had been looking for her.

He was out of luck. Jenny had not returned when he got back to the farm and he wandered into his studio trying to distract himself with his work but the painting had no power to hold him now. In the dark, under-stairs cupboard of his mind, a small and terrifying thought lurked like a sinister spider that could move at lightning speed and sting him to death.

What if she really was necessary to his work? What if he could not work without the steadiness of her presence taking care of the details he knew absolutely nothing about? He felt suddenly sick and flung himself outside as if to escape from the thought.

The soft rain that had chased away the early morning sun had finally stopped, leaving a hesitant stillness in the air. Despite the full-looking clouds that still crouched on the horizon, malevolently eyeing him sideways like rain-sodden sheep, he made his way along the cliff path towards the Enys Dhu rocks on Pendew Point.

It soon became evident that he would not be able to walk the rocky path without total concentration today, the rain had made it dangerously slippery. He put his feet down carefully, using the focus needed to keep his thoughts from the prospect of a life without Jenny or rather, much more frighteningly, without fulfilling work.

As usual, the spirit of the land took hold of him as if shushing and soothing his petulant nature and the fear and rage started to evaporate as he scrambled over the tumbled granite down to the sea’s edge. Finally, giving himself up to the overdue luxury of self-pity his eyes filled and, sitting down just above the water, he stared out to sea and let the tears fall. All his frightening thoughts melted away as he wept, leaving him calm and blankly watching the churn of water below as he waited for the next move to occur to him.

Fate of course had other ideas, insisting it was not Jimmy’s turn to decide the next move. Now, as the rocks of Enys Dhu towered impassively behind him, watching and waiting like heavy-lidded idols, Fate weighed up and assessed the insignificant human below them. Should he be given grief and pain or love and happiness? The choice of grief or love, which should it be?

At that moment, as Jimmy Fisher wept away the misery of his day, Fate made her decision and encouraged Sunny Smith to wander into his awareness.

Chapter 4

Right on cue, and despite the day being far from enticing, the outside had beckoned Sunny. It was her day off from the shop and she had been trying to catch up with her housework. Although living on her own meant there was very little housework to do she still felt the need to cherish  the place she thought of as her refuge.

Today however, instead of the usual feeling of being nurtured and protected by the walls of her tiny cottage, she had felt constrained and restless and had needed to get outside.

There were few signs today of the late summer tourists that Porthcarn usually sheltered. The recent rain had sent them into Dehwelyans in search of something to do and Sunny had the village to herself. The narrow streets were drying now after the drizzle but raindrops still trembled like crystals on the bright petals of the pot-plants that stood on doorsteps in narrow alleyways as she strode past, oblivious of her surroundings.

Her morning had been full of frantic mental overload and no amount of housework had helped to divert her from the pictures and emotions of David’s last illness. She had relived with disturbing clarity their initial inability to fully grasp the diagnosis of the inoperable brain tumours that were working, silently and malignantly, to cut off a life at the age of forty-two.

She remembered how she had had to find a stubborn insistence to face down an overwhelming bureaucracy that wanted to tidy him away to a hospice. He had so hated being in hospital it would have felt like the ultimate betrayal and she would have worn the guilt of it like a hair shirt for the rest of her life.

Instead, her gentle nature had steeled itself to fight for him, to allow him to die the way he wanted, peacefully, in his own home. This newfound tenacity had all been worthwhile when, in the few final minutes of restless lucidity, when they both knew without words that the time had come, she bent over him to take him in her arms and was moved by the blue clarity of his eyes as they looked into hers in enquiry.

‘Home?’ he had whispered.

‘Yes, we are home … I love you.’

She had known then that this would be the last time she would be able to tell him she loved him. There had been no such declaration on his part but she did not to let it bother her. It was too late to care about that now.

He had stopped breathing in the small hours of the next morning and only later, when the undertaker had taken his body away, was she aware that the leave-taking was now all but finished. She had curled up on the floor and lain there for hours. For the first time she felt thankful they had had no children to be hurt by the cruelty of such an early and terrible death.

Now there had seemed to be no reason to go on anymore, no need to get undressed, no need to eat, no need to wash, nothing to plan and nothing to think about. There was only emptiness. She missed the solid reassurance of his presence and was left with the confusing feeling of being without a role. Now she had no one to care for, no one to consider but herself and she found herself just sitting, wondering what she had to do, only to remember that she could please herself what she did.

Despite her need for personal freedom it had felt all wrong and her emotions warred constantly amongst themselves. Sometimes grief had the upper hand, at other times there was only guilt at her feelings of relief that he was no longer suffering; but the confusion as to who she was now was always there.

Now, in the fading days of summer, with the memories of David’s death in the forefront of her mind, she felt ashamed of her moments of self-pity, knowing that at least she was not fighting for her life. Today especially, and for no obvious reason, she had been all turbulence and dissatisfaction, feeling like a bird whose cage door had been left open but who didn’t know what to do with the freedom offered.

Had she been able to use any sort of reasoning mind she may well not have set foot outside the cottage. The sky was louring and certainly not conducive to enjoying the full beauty of the scenery but then she was walking because she must, not with the intent of enjoying her surroundings.

As usual she walked quickly, striding up the steep hill that led out of the village towards the cliff-top hamlets and single farmsteads that stared out over the sea until she was soon leaving the narrow lane to walk down the green track that led along the cliffs. She found herself focussed on the sound of her breathing, watching the laces of her boots as she moved, her mind becoming lulled into peaceful suspension.

Gradually she became aware of external things, the reassuring musky smell of the wet earth and the slow dripping of the wayside shrubs as Nature wove her usual healing spell around her. She felt her mood lift at last as she left the shelter of the cliff top bushes and started to walk along the path towards the rocky seashore.

Suddenly the sea appeared in front of her and she was inexplicably seized by the spirit of the place, feeling the need to climb onto a rocky outcrop that stood high above the sea. She scrambled to the top of it just as the sun ripped the grey shroud of the clouds apart and she stood  illuminated in a shaft of sunlight. Lost in the magic of the moment she basked in the welcome warmth before hurriedly pulling off the protective armour of her heavy jumper.

Without thinking what she was doing, she raised her arms, making the ancient and universal gesture of supplication to some unseen Deity. But Sunny was not asking for anything, her gesture was one of gratitude as she suddenly became aware that right now she was, after all, very thankful to be alive.

It was at this precise moment that something prompted Jimmy Fisher to raise himself from his misery and look up to his left towards Pendew Point. Standing on the very edge of the rocks he saw a woman, her arms raised as if in … what? Devotion? Prayer? Just another loony hippy, he thought as he watched, trying to judge her motives.

Even from a distance, he was aware that she seemed to gleam in the sunlight. Her skin was tanned, her slender figure was dressed in a tight white vest top and blue jeans and her hair glinted golden in the sun. She also seemed to be breathtakingly unaware of the risk she took by standing on the edge of a rock so high above the sea.

Abruptly he lost all thought of himself, instantly forgetting his own problems. Instead he was all concern. What if she fell? What if she meant to fall? What should he do?

A picture of rescue helicopters and lifeboats, of brisk, action men in fluorescent orange taking charge of the emergency rose in his mind. They would frown at him, may even curse at him for his lack of action and he would know he should have warned her, should have intervened somehow. Hastily he scrambled to his feet and set off through tangled vegetation towards her.

Sunny meanwhile was in an ecstasy of feeling for the time and place, totally oblivious of the panicking man laboriously making his way towards her through the briars until he arrived, panting on the rocky scrubland below her.

‘Er … ’scuse me … miss?’ he said softly so as not to scare her into any precipitate movement. As if coming back from somewhere far away, Sunny blinked and looked down in surprise at the disheveled man knee-deep in undergrowth below her. She frowned fleetingly in the dazzle of sunlight to focus better on him.

It did not occur to her to be afraid of him despite the fact she was meeting a strange man in a lonely place. Perhaps it would have been better for her if she had felt fright and taken warning from it but then, as she realised later, all hindsight is twenty-twenty.

For his part, Jimmy Fisher felt uncomfortably wrong-footed by the woman’s frown and his own misreading of the situation. It had now become perfectly obvious to him that not only was the woman not going to fall but that she was supremely confident of her ability to balance right on the edge of rocks overhanging the sea.

He felt foolish now and, unable to help himself, he felt he should let her in on his annoyance at the whole day.

‘Well, sod you, lady … I was worried you might fall!’

He turned away abruptly but his bad-tempered leave-taking was halted by a peal of laughter that could have been infectious if he hadn’t been so set on being angry.

Of course, it could all have ended there but it didn’t. Fate had only just begun her tantalising game with these two players. The moment Jimmy Fisher turned his furious face back to Sunny Smith he was lost, they both were.

Surely this just another woman in a long line of women for Jimmy Fisher? How could this unkempt, self-indulgent man be a saviour for Sunny Smith in her self-imposed decline of restless wandering? Perhaps even Fate had no idea of the outcome at this point but the one thing you did know about Fate was that you never knew.

All Jimmy Fisher knew at this moment was that he was looking into the slanting green eyes of some enchanted woman and he drowned in them as surely as if he had been lured away by mermaids.

All Sunny Smith knew was that an inordinately angry man, all heaving chest and sulky mouth, was standing below her and, instantly recognising the small boy beneath the posturing adult, she had not been able to stop herself from laughing. Her laughter however was short-lived as the man turned away again indignantly and strode off up the cliff path. Immediately contrite, she scrambled down from her perch, anxious now to mend his hurt feelings.

So, intent on watching the man’s back as it radiated annoyance at her, it was only a matter of time before she failed to negotiate a particularly treacherous patch of mud on the pathway.