Chloe Page 5

  ‘Too much Bruce Chatwin,’ she murmured distractedly.

  ‘Isn’t he that showjumper?’ Kerry asked.

  The wood crept part way up a slope, rather like a beard. The floor of it was covered with pine needles and mulch – rather like bristles. It was soft underfoot and smelt heavenly. From the top, Chloë could see that the farm was relatively isolated. She could make out buildings way over the other side of the lane but these were so far away that it was impossible to tell whether they were merely barns and byres or a dwelling. No smoke from there. Rising in jagged steps beyond was the Skirrid mountain, most onomatopoeic.

  I’ll climb that one day. Maybe I’ll ride up. Would you like that, Percy?

  Gin Trap’s directions brought Chloë and Kerry back into the yard on the dot of four – she could pick out the chimes of a grandfather clock. It wasn’t coming from the house which was directly in front, but somewhere to her left. It was on entering the tack room that she discovered it, tocking patiently, brass pendulum swinging in a most leisurely fashion. Though she had been at Skirrid End for just over an hour, already the tack room seemed as good a place as any for a grandfather clock. Chloë bade goodbye to Kerry and said she could see no reason why she shouldn’t take her out on another hack on Sunday.

  ‘Brilliant. Ask if you can ride Barnaby – he’s smashing. Liver chestnut, fourteen three, three-quarter Arab. Needs a kimblewick though.’

  ‘I see.’

  The small of Chloë’s back nags ever so slightly. It tells her that five years has been an inordinate absence from the saddle. She rubs it tenderly and picks out the piece of chaff nestling in the corner of her mouth. She inhales deeply and closes her eyes. What is it?

  I think that’s bread.

  And?

  Something else. Everywhere. Fresh, clean air. Hang on, tractor diesel, just faintly, over there.

  And?

  Sheep? No, horse. Of course. And? Wet earth.

  Wales.

  Wales.

  She opens her eyes and takes a broad look around her. A smile breaks over her face and brings light into the darkening yard. Wales. As Peregrine said, a splendid idea. An hour and a half was all it had taken to feel settled, content and at home. And yet she had never been to Wales before. With the relaxed swagger of one who spends all day in the saddle down on the farm, Chloë saunters off towards the farmhouse, in search of hot bread and gingham tablecloths and this curious woman called Gin Trap. As she nears the porch, she sees a figure propped leisurely against it. It’s shadowy but it is most certainly a he. It must be the antipode.

  ‘Yo, Chlo! I’m Carl.’

  Carl is possibly the best-looking man Chloë has ever set eyes on.

  SEVEN

  Forty-five bowls.

  Forty-five side plates.

  Forty-five dinner plates.

  Forty-five dessert plates.

  Pale white glaze rimmed in blue, please.

  By Valentine’s Day.

  Many thanks. Thirty per cent

  deposit paid to Saxby Ceramics.

  Balance on delivery.

  The list had been pinned up for almost a month. William read it cursorily each time he set foot in the studio. Today, he swiped it off the wall, the drawing-pin holding on fast to a snag of the page with ‘five’ written on it.

  ‘Only forty bowls, eh?’ he muttered under his breath before spying Barbara’s forelegs clipping their way up the two steps to the threshold of the studio.

  ‘Well, I’ve done the bowls and dessert plates which gives me a month to complete the order. Nigh on impossible. What joy.’ Barbara bleated and pursed her lips around the edge of the list. They tugged in a playful push-me-pull-you sort of way before Barbara fixed her yellow eyes on William accusingly, seeming to say ‘Your heart’s not in it, Billy Boy’. William gave her the list to chew on while he took to a corner of his thumbnail on which to ruminate.

  ‘Pale white glaze rimmed in blue. They mean, of course, dolomite with cobalt oxide. Philistines!’

  ‘Philistines!’ bleated Barbara who decided that grass was more tasty than paper and wandered off to nibble the new shoots sweet in the shadow of the holly bush. William retrieved the sodden mash that the list had become and smirked to see that it was still quite legible, no smudges, no runs. Clearly, Morwenna had sent him a photocopy, keeping the original for herself.

  ‘Very cute,’ William conceded, ‘keeping proof of the original order should I have any ideas for improvement. Or change.’

  She had also kept the deposit as her cut, which was unusual.

  ‘Shrewd,’ said William, ‘just in case I don’t complete the order. Or if things change.’

  But because he was still paying off the washing-machine in monthly instalments, he wedged, kneaded and weighed out five equal balls of stoneware without grumbling and effortlessly threw five side plates. Debussy crackled forth from an aged transistor which was caked in clay, chipped and cracked with neglect. William wedged, kneaded and weighed another five balls. Another five plates soon stood in monotony on a wooden plank.

  ‘I’m bored, Babs,’ said William, thumping the transistor to silence Cliff Richard (for many years, and due most probably to an inordinate amount of clay in the workings, Radio 2 was the only station transmitted). He began to knead and wedge once more.

  ‘I’m bored to the very core.’

  Barbara, who was wholly intolerant of melancholia, sneered and sauntered away. William wiped the backs of his hands across his brow, and the fronts of them down his smock, before tiptoeing into the kitchen to retrieve the telephone. Refusing to break his self-imposed law of no-clay-in-the-house, he perched precariously on the freezing cold step and dialled a cottage three miles away. The phone rang and rang but, knowing a similar clay ban was in force, William hung on patiently and gouged clay from under his nails. Finally, the telephone was answered and William leapt to his feet with the receiver tucked under his chin so he could gesticulate wildly.

  ‘I have ninety pieces to go and am dangerously close to smashing forty-five bowls and throwing ten side plates into the reclaim,’ he exclaimed, a certain glee peppering his rapidly delivered woe. There was a brief silence in which William held the phone aloft and whispered ‘Ninety’ into it for dramatic impact.

  ‘You’d better come over at once, dear boy!’

  It was precisely the advice William was expecting.

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

  ‘At once!’

  Barbara accompanied a whistling William to the end of the drive at Peregrine’s Gully before turning back in the hope that Morwenna might turn up on the off chance and provide her with some sport for the afternoon. As was his way, William neither acknowledged the goat’s presence nor bade her farewell – the latter would suppose the former, hence the resolute whistling.

  The New Year had been one of the wettest on record and the ground ran beneath his feet like the slurry in the basin of his wheel after a day’s work. As he strode the well-known route he rued the fact that it had been months – last autumn at least – since he had visited Mac. He knew his phone call was unnecessary, that he was always welcome; but he knew too that a phone call more than once in a while, a visit for a visit alone and not for advice, would not go amiss. Mac was well into his seventies after all. And after all, Mac was Mac.

  Michael Mount, commonly known as Mac, was William’s mentor. He had taught him everything he knew about clay but, most importantly, he had instilled in him the intrinsic magic of the stuff and had inspired him more than any teacher at college, more than any studio potter studied and lauded. More, therefore, than Bernard or David Leach, more than Lucy Rie, more than Thomas Naethe even. For it had been Mac who had wrapped William’s hands around a ball of terracotta clay when he was nine years old. With his own hands covering, and uttering not a word, he had squeezed hard over William’s until the clay was quite warm and had compacted under his fingernails, colouring every line and gulley in his palm.

  ‘It’s like the ea
rth,’ William had gasped in awe, scrutinizing his hand.

  ‘Well, it is called terracotta, dear boy!’ Mac had said gruffly, having always felt awkward about conversing with children.

  ‘No,’ insisted William, ‘the earth – look, in the palm of my hand. Rivers of clay, Mac. See how it’s dried here? That’s an earthquake. And see this,’ he explained, holding the terracotta ball aloft, ‘this is like the world too – see? From my nails and your squeezing? The Himalayas. The sea. Here’s England, this patch here.’

  Mac hadn’t the heart to tell the boy that Ireland was usually seen on the left, not the right, of mainland Britain so he patted William on the head.

  ‘Along with diamonds, clay is the most precious thing the earth gives us,’ he said sternly, tweaking William’s ear and motioning him to sit. ‘Man himself was fashioned out of the stuff.’

  While Mac and William’s father shared a pipe and a memory or two, William perched on a stool in a corner and, like Little Jack Horner, stuck his thumb deep and with relish into the clay. Instinctively, he squeezed against it with his first three fingers and began to pinch a slow, clockwise path around his thumb with deliberation and reverence. The ball had become a bowl.

  That afternoon he made two more. The next week he was coiling. Bowls, urns, pots; vessels all for they both contained and revealed space. Intuitively, William made shapes where the space inside determined the form, and he built forms which described the space they occupied. At nine years old, he had no idea he was doing either. Mac was convinced that first afternoon that the child was a prodigy and, as a consequence, saw no need for any specialized child-conversing technique. With this boy he could talk unguardedly about clay; a feat rarely possible with contemporaries. The boy, too, lost all awkwardness and stilted politeness. They could, in fact, just chat. They could also be sound and secure in each other’s silence. The clay had wedged shut the generation gap and had fired impermeable a friendship between them. Far more precious than diamonds.

  For ten years, until he went to college, William arrived at Mac’s at nine every Saturday and Sunday morning and most afternoons during school holidays. That he forfeited a coveted place in the school football team and sacrificed initiation into the intricacies of adolescent sex, bothered him not at all. A vessel, growing and undulating under his hands, damp and silky to the touch, was far more sensual a proposition than a hasty grope in a musty smelling cloakroom. Though he had yielded to the latter on a few occasions, the forms over which he ran his hands invariably felt too bony to ever pose a preoccupation, or even much of a distraction. So, William forsook teenage sport in all its guises and probably saved himself a great deal of injury. He worked harmoniously alongside Mac who produced his renowned stoneware tableware which the local cafés bought in bulk and which he sold at inflated prices to tourists. Dry glazed in trademark earth colours which Mac called ‘home-made Cornish sludge’, his pieces were coveted as quintessential souvenirs of the county, just like Cornish fudge and clotted cream. With the onset of arthritis, his time at the wheel was limited to a precious hour or so a day but his prices had risen accordingly and the last laugh was still all his.

  Mac lived on the outskirts of a classic Cornish harbour village and the smell of fish, diesel and sea solicited William from half a mile off. As he wound his way down into the village and up through the other side, the gulls yelled and wheeled with a scavenging greed absent from those which seemed to circle just for the hell of it over the cliffs beyond Peregrine’s Gully. Alongside the gulls, jovial voices bantered out from the harbour and every now and then a rusty local van stalled and beeped its way through the narrow main street headed for the fishmongers of Falmouth and Penzance. For William, who had uttered hardly a word all week, let alone held a conversation, the noise was deafening and it was with some relief that he let himself in to Mac’s cottage.

  ‘Don’t tell me you have a car?’ were Mac’s first words, his face aghast.

  ‘Gracious no!’ exclaimed William once he had his breath back. ‘Whatever made you think that?’

  ‘That look! On your face. That’s the look people with cars wear when they arrive. That’s what traffic jams and petrol fumes and three-point turns do! Cars distort the physiognomy, dear boy. A facial expression exclusive to the late twentieth century. Like this,’ he scrunched his face tight shut, ‘and like this,’ he said, opening his features but fixing them askew in apparent angst.

  ‘I see,’ mulled William who would have quite liked to laugh.

  ‘So,’ said Mac, with a clap of his hands ushering William firmly inside. ‘She’s still got you making dinner services for the bourgeoisie?’

  ‘Well, for a trumped-up bistro in Crickhowell, at any rate,’ William laughed lightly, unwinding his scarf and settling deep into an old Windsor chair.

  ‘Crick-who’ll? Where’s that then?’

  ‘South-west Wales, I believe.’

  ‘A hundred and eighty pieces?’

  ‘Indeed – with an option on serving platters and small table vases at a later date. I drew the line at ashtrays.’

  ‘As I would damn well hope! Mind you, nice little earner, my boy!’

  ‘Less thirty per cent.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘And, of course, the subjugation of my own creativity.’

  ‘Which, I’d confidently say, is worth far more than thirty per cent. But there we are. And here we are! Welcome, dear dear boy!’

  After two cups each of strong tea, they sat and said not much over a pipe. William was not a smoker and yet with Mac he would gladly puff away an afternoon. He was not sure why, maybe it was to capture any remaining shred of his father, maybe it was to keep Mac company. Perhaps it was just to be polite. Maybe it was because it was downright pleasant. Just as William never had to introduce himself when he phoned, so he was relaxed enough in Mac’s company to sit in affable silence. William noticed, even through the blue haze of tobacco smoke, that Mac was now quite white. And yet his thick head of hair and extravagant eyebrows, his neat moustache and tanned skin gave not the impression of age but of vitality. As if there had been no pollution or stress during his life to colour him any different. William had always known Mac as fair, hirsute and lively. He was merely two shades lighter now, that was all.

  Mac observed that William was leaner than when he had last seen him, and that it suited him. His mid-brown hair flopped becomingly here and there making his dark brown eyes all the more elusive and attractive. He noticed too that William’s complexion was showing the indelible signs of living amidst the tawny moorland and the lash of the sea air. Ruddy, translucent and awash with health and hardiness. Only his hands belied his habitat for they were elegant, clean and pale. A concert pianist, perhaps; a surgeon, maybe. A ceramicist, of course.

  Once the pipes were cool and the fire needed stoking, Mac eased conversation in.

  ‘My boy,’ he started, poking methodically at the embers, ‘I know you don’t need me to tell you to give up the wholesale business and make a go of things as a potter.’ He raised an eyebrow at William and lifted the corner of his mouth to say ‘Well then?’ silently but quite undeniably.

  ‘You’re in the wholesale business of sorts too,’ protested William gently, ‘with your chunky mugs and squat teapots and home-made Cornish sludge.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mac, tapping his pipe and absent-mindedly putting it back between his teeth, ‘but I do not have your skill. You’re the master craftsman. I just churn out – stuff. We both work with clay, but we’re worlds apart in terms of quality, of vocation.’

  ‘You know clay better than anyone,’ said William fixedly.

  Mac chuckled and sucked on the pipe. ‘Hell, I’ve even started putting the odd piskie here and there – peeping behind a mug handle; lounging on a plate rim; peering up from the depths of a jug!’

  ‘Pixie,’ said William.

  ‘Piskie,’ agreed Mac, retrieving a mug with a small figurine clambering over the rim, for proof. ‘See! Positively Walt Disney!’ he
basked.

  ‘But you’re the one who inspired me! Who still does,’ William protested. ‘You showed me just what clay is. What it can do. What it can be. That it is organic, alive. As precious a commodity as diamonds. You are the sole reason that I am where I am and that I work with clay at all. That I love the stuff and that it is my very life-force.’

  ‘Dear boy! You flatter! What I am trying to say is, I know where I’m at – surely that must be the goal of every artist? My limitations as a potter are also my achievements,’ said Mac, giving the clay elf a ping with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I feel neither restricted nor frustrated for I am content to make what I make, glaze as I do,’ he declared, suddenly on his feet, twirling the fire-iron as if he were Gene Kelly. William held the mug and looked at the figurine; the ensemble was unashamedly kitsch and yet a second look revealed remarkable, secret little details that quite took him aback.

  ‘And I know what I want to do.’ He raised his face to Mac and looked most forlorn. ‘But how can I when another depends on me?’

  Mac pursed his lips and leant against the fire-iron, rocking on his heels.

  ‘That Saxby woman has more than one young potter churning out pot-boilers to keep her warm. Toasting more like – she must be making a mint out of you.’ He enjoyed his ‘pot-boilers’ pun but could see it was quite lost on William.

  ‘But Mac, if I don’t – for her … Then I can’t – with her.’

  Mac cocked his head and regarded William until the penny dropped.

  ‘And how great a loss is that?’

  ‘She’s taught me, er, everything I know in that department. I just feel I ought, you know, to stick around? She’s having a hard time – convinced that her youth and looks are passing her by.’

  ‘Aren’t they just!’ chuckled Mac just within earshot. ‘You mean she’s giving you a hard time. Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve taught you everything you need to know about clay and I would hope to goodness that you don’t carry soppy guilt around about that! Though,’ he furthered, tracing a semicircle across the flagstone floor in his slippered feet, ‘a visit a little more now than then would be nice.’