Chloe Read online

  ‘Right,’ Chloë said defiantly, ‘I shall leave it to him. And that,’ she said, turning the light off, ‘is my last word on the matter.’

  Quietly, she thought to herself how nice it would be to make love to someone whose accent was genuine. Brett had employed a phoney American twang once his humping exceeded a certain speed, grunting, ‘Oh bay-beh, bay-beh.’ Whether this was an involuntary preamble to his orgasm, or a misguided attempt to facilitate Chloë’s, remained unfathomable. It hadn’t worked, that was for sure.

  ‘I like things like this,’ says Chloë, running her finger along the blue rim of the soup bowl, ‘don’t you?’

  Carl regards the crockery and realizes he does not really have an opinion on it but he wants to please Chloë so he elaborates.

  ‘Ah yih! Dinky, I’ll say. Proper English country style.’

  ‘I agree!’ says Chloë heartily, pausing before continuing crestfallen: ‘I can’t believe you’re going tomorrow.’

  Carl fiddles with a sprig of parsley and reaches across for her hand. He transfers the parsley to her and she munches it distractedly.

  ‘Chlo,’ he says gently.

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  He has taken her to the Bay Tree Bistro. She adores him for it, and more so when he referred to it as the Bay Leaf Café. They have just finished a wondrous soup of field mushrooms and tarragon and are awaiting their main courses. There is a single carnation on the table and Chloë makes small tears at its petals forlornly.

  Carl watches her dipping her little finger in and out of the hot candle wax. He sees that she is anxious and knows that it transcends her unhappiness that the morning will part them. It is palpable unease. At what, he wonders? The main course arrives and they eat for the most part in silence, the quality of the food warrants it. Carl sends his compliments to the chef which Chloë finds endearing. They cajole each other into ordering puddings they are too full for but too greedy to decline. Chloë teaches Carl how to pronounce zabaglione correctly. He insists on adding an ‘I’ in front of the ‘b’; it is easier to pronounce that way and, more importantly, it sends Chloë off into fits of giggles which he finds so seductive. They dither over coffee; Carl collects the bill and they loiter for a while longer, long after the change has come and a tip been left. They play with each other’s fingers and fiddle with their napkins. The waitress eyes the tip from a discreet distance and wishes they would go before they absent-mindedly pocket it. They murmur half-sentences and giggle away the rest. It is late and the proprietor is clearing her throat and looking at her watch as obviously as she can without being impolite. From the kitchen, an abusive chef can be heard ranting in an accent Carl cannot place.

  ‘Brummy,’ explains Chloë.

  ‘Right,’ says Carl. He knits her fingers together and then cups his hands over them. Through the candle’s flame he catches her eyes and smiles at her without using his mouth. He stands and holds out his hand.

  ‘Come, Cadwallader,’ he says.

  ‘How I wish,’ she replies.

  Back at Skirrid End the kitchen light is still on so they skirt around the stables and creep into the tack room. The grandfather clock stands guard and tocks reassuringly. The moonlight turns Chloë’s skin to porcelain and sends shards of light into Carl’s eyes.

  Make love to me, oh, make love to me.

  ‘Shit Chlo, I’m going to miss you.’

  Take me. I want to have sex with you.

  ‘Never met no one like you, girl.’

  Let’s make love. Here.

  Chloë presses her lips silently and softly against his. She does not pucker them into a kiss, just pushes them into his. She can feel him breathing on her cheek. He smells garlicky and faintly of alcohol and to her, just now, right here, he smells good enough to eat. To bottle and keep.

  Carl wants her lips to move. To kiss him firmly – their speciality. He kisses her slowly, drawling it out in much the same way as his sentences. Measured and calm. Chloë kisses him back, scrunching her eyes tight to absorb every minute of the here and now to take with her to the hereafter. Their faces part and they regard one another in the glorious March moonlight. Chloë realizes that she feels too sad to feel sexy and, because she can detect no probing against her appendix, she knows Carl must feel likewise.

  ‘We haven’t –’ she says.

  ‘No,’ he half laughs, ‘we never did.’

  ‘And now we won’t. Ever,’ Chloë says forlornly, rubbing her hand up and down his stomach and keeping her eyes fixed on his belt buckle.

  ‘We didn’t need to,’ says Carl. Chloë is puzzled so she punches him gently, square on the navel. He rocks her in his arms and presses his lips on the top of her head.

  ‘Making love isn’t the whole shebang, Chlo. And sometimes the whole shebang becomes just plain old boring sex. A disappointment. I’ll never forget you, girl. And I’ll ache for you at times when I’ll least expect to.’

  His words are strung as a line of pearls and she lays her head against his chest and listens to his heart beat away.

  FIFTEEN

  William brought the bowl through to the wheel from the damp cupboard. He had thrown it soon after his return from Wales and now, having left it awhile for the moisture to lessen, it was ideal for turning. He held the bowl aloft, like some mystical chalice, for this piece both contained his emotions and expressed them too. He was pleased with the shape; the subtle ogee curve, the furl of the perfectly proportioned lip, the precision of the tapering. Now all that was left was to turn it; to trim the uneven clay off the bottom portion, to develop a foot ring. He looked inside the vessel and then out, judging the amount of clay to be removed so that the exterior would reflect the interior and the weight of the bowl would be even. Then he decided on the positioning of the foot ring. Satisfied, he inverted the bowl and placed it down carefully on the wheel. Slowly, he set the wheel in motion, tapping at the pot until it was precisely centred. Placing three nubs of clay to hold the bowl in place, he positioned himself over the wheel and set it running high.

  William enjoyed turning for it was both science and art to judge how much clay to remove to ensure that the vessel appeared to be of one skin. And there was something immensely satisfying in pressing the loop of a turning tool against the skin of a spinning pot while furls of clay twirled away to reveal fresh contours beneath. Today, it was the deep auburn coiled slithers themselves which solicited William, more than the revealing form of the vessel. As they amassed around the head of the wheel, he pushed his fingers lightly into them, drawing his hand up slowly so they trickled and tickled away. Beautiful and soft curls and coils; sinuous and sensuous in delicious burnt sienna.

  When he was satisfied with the shape, that the form stood complete, he smothered it entirely with the deliciously goopy terra sigillata slip and began to burnish the surface. The Cornish March was mild and William spent the next few days working over the surface of the pot alternately with the back of a small silver teaspoon and a smooth piece of quartz to compact the slip and bring a dazzling sheen to the surface. Finally, the pot shone as if wet, both reflecting and giving off light. From a distance it appeared to have been dipped deep into a clear varnish but close to, it revealed the contours and minute dints of William’s burnishing marks. They were his signature and were as idiosyncratic as his thumbprint.

  This was the vessel that had been inspired by the humming girl just before Christmas. The recent trip to Wales, however, had woven its way silently into its fabric. William had thus decided to smoke-fire it. The finished pot blended contradiction seamlessly. Its form was open and positive, feminine even; but the decoration presented blushes of vivid red against vague areas of sootiness. And scorchings of utter blackness.

  SIXTEEN

  This is the life! I feel so at ease. So at home. Could it be? Could it be here?

  Riding out by herself each day has afforded Chloë the quiet and the time to feel peaceful and in control. After all, the very fabric of Skirrid End and the framework of her
existence there have made her feel safe and sound.

  ‘I like to be given a timetable for my days,’ she explained at length to Desmond; partly because she was working through the concept in her mind, partly because she hoped that a conversational tone would distract the horse from his customary bucking. Desmond, of course, did not answer. But neither did he buck. ‘See,’ Chloë continued, ‘it provides me with structure – I have a function for each day. I am useful. I am needed.’

  And you are looked after and guided. But might you not want to define the structure for your life yourself? At some point? If it wasn’t for Jocelyn, for her death, would you be here? Jocelyn has sent you, Chloë, to her firm old friend Gin. Gin has welcomed you into her home for and because of her late friend. That is not to say that you would not have been given board and lodgings and a room in The Rafters if you had chanced upon Skirrid End as Carl had. But you would never have found yourself here. You never would have taken yourself away. Not unless someone told you to.

  They did. And you are here. Soon you must leave and go on. But you will leave only because it is decreed. And you will travel to where you are told. There is nothing wrong in that, Chloë. But true security is that which you wrap around yourself, by yourself. And home is a place that reveals itself only once you have sought it out. Would you not like to find both? All by yourself?

  Though not warm, the weather is milder and buds crack out over the horse chestnut trees as she rides by. The grass underfoot is vivid green, the snowdrops have gone and the daffodils and crocuses are browning slightly. Robins are still going about their business but now the curlews hold top note in the symphony that fills the valley. Islington might never have existed. Chloë knows now that she will never return. Brett is a name which causes her only a slight shudder. No nausea. Not any more.

  ‘Brett?’ asked Mrs Andrews, creasing her brow to aid recollection. ‘Who he?’

  ‘Who indeed!’ declared Chloë triumphant.

  Chloë started to pack; very slowly and without much enthusiasm. She knew that Gin had an envelope marked ‘Ireland’, whose contents would provide the canvas on which she would colour the next season. She half wished that the greyhound might eat it but she wondered too if it might smell of Mitsuko and she would just like to see if it did. And then perhaps feed it to the greyhound. Up in The Rafters, she has started to make neat piles, a futile activity where a rucksack is involved, but it calmed her to do so. She has not thought about Carl very much the last few days, certainly not to the extent to which she longed for him soon after his departure almost three weeks previously. Having Gin to herself has been a source of comfort as well as entertainment; she was Jocelyn’s great friend after all and Chloë has always felt safe and at ease in the company of Jocelyn’s close circle.

  Frequently, the two of them ‘talk Jocelyn’: if the mood catches the one, the other is sure to be infected. They do not so much reminisce, for such an activity requires both parties to have been present in the past, so to speak. More, they mull over memories of Jocelyn, describing her colours and remembering her traits.

  ‘Remember sherry at five?’

  ‘An institution!’

  ‘With its own terminology!’

  ‘Time for a Tipple!’

  ‘It seems funny with good old Carl gone!’ chipped Gin merrily, placing ‘waltz’ on a triple word score, ‘don’t you think? Chloë?’

  ‘Hmm,’ hummed Chloë, using the ‘z’ for ‘quiz’ with the ‘q’ on a double letter.

  She smiled lightly. She’s itching to know but too awkward to ask!

  Gin was becoming somewhat predictable in her ready deployment of Carl’s name during conversation with, or in front of, Chloë. Whether Chloë was in her sight or merely in earshot, Gin ensured Carl’s name came to the fore. To Gin’s thinly masked frustration (ample eyebrow-lifting and measured sighs), Chloë remained commendably discreet.

  ‘My letters have me beat,’ said Dai who was ignorant of his dyslexia and thus profoundly embarrassed by what he presumed to be an innate intelligence deficiency. Calling ‘Nos da’ over his shoulder, he grumbled out of the kitchen somewhere into the night. Chloë and Gin played on until Gin won by twenty points.

  ‘Most unusual,’ she said, ‘but your mind wasn’t really on it, was it?’

  Chloë conceded with a shrug and a meek smile. Gin sighed and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll bet you’re thinking of Ireland!’ said Gin triumphantly, knowing full well that she was not and hoping therefore for denial and explanation.

  ‘Ish,’ admitted Chloë without qualifying.

  ‘When do you want to set sail?’ asked Gin, changing the subject with you-know-you-can-confide-in-me merriness. ‘Jocelyn told me that you should pack your bags when the first daffs were up.’

  ‘They’ve been up a while!’ said Chloë with some consternation.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Gin, ‘but most premature.’

  ‘I’ve sort of set the end of the month for my departure – if you can bear me. Perhaps the first week of April?’

  ‘Wise,’ said Gin, ‘wise. But don’t make it April Fool’s Day – you’ll find the Irish batty enough without a calendric excuse to go raving do-lally!’

  Chloë arranged the Scrabble counters into increasingly complex tessellations, and jumped at Gin’s suggestion to ‘talk Jocelyn’.

  ‘Funny that Jocelyn never married,’ she pondered.

  Gin did not respond but busied herself making a ‘g’ out of the counters. Chloë continued: ‘For my part, selfishly, I suppose I’m quite glad – perhaps I would not have felt so special if she had had children of her own?’ Gin cocked her head and lifted an eyebrow in a ‘maybe’.

  ‘Do you know Lord Badborough? In Wiltshire?’ Chloë asked. ‘We used to picnic in his grounds – and often in his drawing-room if it rained!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gin quite freely, ‘met the chap once or twice.’

  ‘Was he, you know, Jocelyn’s b–’ Chloë paused, prophesying at once how daft ‘boyfriend’ would sound, ‘– beau?’

  ‘For a little while,’ said Gin openly. She had finished with the Scrabble pieces and was now counting the loose change in the kitchen table drawer, not to mention a number of twenty-pound notes.

  ‘He used to kiss her most greedily!’ said Chloë, thinking of Carl without being able to remember what he looked like.

  ‘Bet she never blushed!’ mused Gin, as she replaced the coins and notes in the drawer.

  ‘No,’ remembered Chloë, estimating that there must have been nearly seventy pounds, ‘she received him most graciously – without humouring him or pandering to his desires.’

  ‘That,’ said Gin, ‘was probably easy for her – Badders was really just one of a long line of suitors who waited patiently and fruitlessly.’

  Now it was Chloë’s turn to fall silent. She cleaned her nails with an obliging fork. ‘Therein lay Jocelyn’s skill,’ decided Gin, ‘that she never toyed with any of them. They all knew that they stood not a cat’s chance in a kennels, but her company was such a delight that they were happy with whatever level she set.’

  ‘Poor things,’ rued Chloë, imagining a hundred of the finest landed gentry fetching pheasant and a good Rothschild bought at auction, laying on the silver and the Elgar to woo Jocelyn by. Expectant and forever optimistic, lavishing attention and hope on her.

  ‘Poor Jocelyn!’ exclaimed Gin with very real woe, shaking her head and looking as though she might weep. Chloë cocked her head and asked ‘Why’ with her eyebrows. Gin did not meet her gaze but looked far beyond it and straight back into the past. ‘The poor duck,’ she said mistily, ‘she loved, she lost and she never found another for she refused even to look.’

  ‘Was it not reciprocated?’ Chloë asked, mulling over this, imagining a man who never knew he was The One; another who spurned her; or another who died, perhaps.

  ‘Oh yes, Chloë,’ said Gin, ‘he was as deeply in love with her as she was with him.’

  This puzzl
ed Chloë. Man meets woman. Love is mutual and deep. Love, surely, is happy ever after. No compromise. No alternative. No procrastination. Amor vincit omnia. Simple.

  ‘Who was he?’ Chloë asked, suddenly appalled that there was an aspect to Jocelyn completely new to her, that she had not known, that she had not been invited to see. She racked her memory but was unable to locate anyone who might fit this role.

  ‘Did Jocelyn never talk of him to you?’ Gin obviously felt compromised and her cheeks bristled red accordingly. Chloë continued to rack, squinting hard at the centre of the table in doing so.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Gin shared Chloë’s focus on a whorl in the pine.

  ‘You’d know so if she had.’

  ‘I don’t recall,’ said Chloë slowly, hoping that she was masking the hurt from her voice.

  ‘You would, I assure you, you would,’ said Gin kindly.

  ‘Might you tell me, Gin?’ asked Chloë, wondering if a light tone might encourage Gin by dampening the strangely grave significance of the situation.

  ‘Gracious girl!’ Gin declared, reddening again until her chin was the only part of her face not burgundy. ‘Couldn’t possibly. It would be like going behind Jocelyn’s back.’

  Initially it hurt Chloë that there was a fundamental part of Jocelyn that had been kept private from her. But, predictably, she accepted and respected quite quickly. Jocelyn would have had her reasons and Chloë’s best interests at heart. Surely. And her privacy was her prerogative after all.

  I’ve had my own secrets after all.

  Yes?

  Goodness, of course! From acquiring trinkets from the corner shop without paying, to the infamous one-night stand.

  Ah.

  Just the once, though. For both.

  Chloë and Gin continued to talk Jocelyn at least once a day, but steered a respectful curve away from anything that compromised her privacy too deeply. Chloë granted Jocelyn’s wish that Gin should be spared no detail of her funeral. Gin clapped with glee on hearing that there had been champagne, and she wept when told that the sound of Louis Armstrong accompanied the coffin.