Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (17 page)

“All the time,” I reply. “Geriatric sex fascinates me.” I sit down and sigh with relief that it only hurts a little. “My latest hobby, in fact.”

Peering at me through the steam rising from his coffee, Colin doesn’t look much older than he did the afternoon we shared a mug of tea. He and I had the one with no handle. Hugh and Keith arm wrestled. Sophie wasn’t wearing a bra. I won biggest chicken wings. My God, how young we all were.

“Know what I used to think?” he says.

“What?”

“When I was a kid, a teenager, I thought old people didn’t have nerve endings. That everyone over fifty was numb and there’d be no point in them doing anything that felt good, like drinking beer or having sex, because they wouldn’t be able to feel it.”

My parents slept in separate rooms.

“But I was wrong, thank God,” Colin says, grinning. “Sex gets better with age because we’ve had time to figure it out. We know how the bits and pieces fit together.”

I wince. “You can say that again.”

“If it helps,” Colin says, “I’m a bit fragile, too.” He sucks on a slice of orange. Offers one to me. “I wasn’t always this way.”

“Fragile?”

“No, sex mad.”

“Neither was I.”

Colin hesitates. “Tell me about Richard.”

“Only if you tell me about your wife.”

For a second or two, his face looks as if somebody took it off and put it back on all wrong. Then it passes and he smiles again.

He nods. “You go first.”

All I can remember is the bad stuff. Digging up the good is like looking for loose change between the couch cushions. You know it’s there, but you can’t, at this particular moment, put your hands on it. So I describe family vacations, the cocktail parties and five-bedroom house in suburbia, and how Richard wanted nothing to do with the derelict beach cottage he inherited from a great-aunt. Then I go for broke and tell him about the final straw in my doctor’s office.

“Okay, I’ve spilled the beans,” I say. “Now it’s your turn.”

Again, that look. Is he going to reneg on his promise?

“Come on,” I say, hoping to lighten his mood. “It can’t be
that
bad.”

No worse than gonorrhea.

“My wife,” Colin finally says, “left me for another woman.”

For once, I’m at a loss for words. If this were a scene from a movie, it’d fade away so the characters wouldn’t have to cope. A novel would have those convenient little dots. But this, dammit, is real. It’s not going to dissolve, or dot off, and now Colin’s looking at me, waiting for me to say something.

“What about your daughter?”

He groans and I’m stunned by the rawness of his pain. “I rarely see her,” he says.

“Why?”

“My ex-wife and her partner emigrated to New Zealand. They took Nancy with them.”

“Christ! That’s the other side of the world.”

Colin wipes his eyes with a napkin. “Tell me about it.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Time for her to start thinking about college,” I say. “Maybe she’ll choose one in England. Or the States.”

“Nancy hasn’t left New Zealand since they arrived.”

“Not even to come and see you?”

“I go down there, occasionally, but—” He shrugs. “It’s difficult. Uncomfortable.” His face clouds over again. I’ve seen that look before, in the cafe when he told me about his parents. So now I’m totally stumped. I didn’t know what to say then, and I’m damned if I know what to say now. I can’t imagine not seeing my kids. Yes, my two boys are grown and gone, doing their own thing, but they’re only a phone call away. A short plane ride for Jordan down in Washington; a couple of hours by train or car for Alistair in Boston. But better than that, they’re the foundation of my life.

“A lot can happen in two years,” I say, forcing myself to sound optimistic. “By the time Nancy’s eighteen, she’ll be raring to go. When you and I were that age, going down to Brighton was a big deal. Not any more. Today’s kids are global gypsies. Jordan hitch-hiked through Spain his junior year in college. Alistair went to China last summer. Told me they have the best bones.”

Colin looks up. “Bones?”

“He’s a paleontologist.”

Colin says it’ll only take him an hour to deal with St. Ives, so I send him off by himself. I need time to mull over what he told me about his ex-wife. Plus I’m too stiff and sore to walk around a big old house, listening to a hopeful estate agent gush about inlaid marble and fitted bathrooms.

Climbing upstairs is a challenge. I search out fresh linens and change Claudia’s bed—we made a proper mess of it—and scoop clothes off the floor. My green satin panties are torn. I toss them in the trash. A musky aroma—something old, something a little bit forbidden—lingers like the touch of a secret lover. I wipe the dust from Alexandra’s portrait with my sleeve and examine her face, looking for the woman I saw last night, but her heavy-lidded eyes give nothing away.

Sunlight slants through the shutters and falls in diagonal stripes on the floor. I open the window and fill my lungs with the smell of salt air. If only it were this easy to fling open the windows in Colin’s mind.

I wrestle pillows back into their shams. I fluff them and make a nest on the bed. I crawl into it, pull Claudia’s old quilt over me, and wonder how I’d feel if Richard had left me for another man and taken my sons halfway around the world.

The manor house is a bust and Colin returns at noon armed with warm pasties from the pub, a bag of chips, and two bottles of brown ale. He doesn’t say a word about Nancy, so I don’t either. It’s as if we never had that conversation. I guess this is how he copes, just like he does with his parents. Pretend it didn’t happen. Sweep it under the rug. Or perhaps it’s a case of moving forward and putting the past behind you.

Whatever works for him is fine with me. It’s not my past we’re dealing with, but I can’t help but wonder how I’d react if I were in his shoes.

We pack a picnic and follow a path I hadn’t seen before, down the cliffs to that crescent-shaped beach. I kick off my sneakers and pad down the slope carved by years of violent tides. Waves fling themselves onto jagged rocks. Surf sizzles like soapy foam around my feet and the wind fingers my hair. I breathe in the familiar smell of damp seaweed; dig my bare toes in wet sand.

Colin pulls me down beside him and picks up a stone.

“This is me before we met,” he says, drawing a large, uneven circle. “This one is you.” He makes another, overlapping the first. “And both are you and me—joined forever.”

I catch my breath.

“Before we’re born,” Colin says, pulling me close, “our soul splits apart and half of it is given to someone else. So, all of our lives we’re looking for the person with that other half.”

Me, I’m your other half.

“And if we’re lucky enough,” Colin goes on, “to ever find that person, our soul can say, ‘At last, I can rest. I have found my missing half.’” He takes off his glasses, wipes them on the cuff of his pink shirt. “When I saw you last year, coming down those stairs, I knew the love of my life was the girl I met thirty-five years ago.”

Leaning forward, I trace the outline of Colin’s circles. His hand closes over mine. I shut my eyes, but this crescent-shaped beach—this sliver of sand with its towering cliffs and vibrant ocean—is still there. It’s branded itself onto my brain and I can’t shake the feeling that in some strange, unfathomable way that has nothing to do with Colin, I’ve come home.

Our last afternoon, we tramp along the cliffs, plowing through waist-high patches of purple heather. We scramble over tussocks of sea grass the color driftwood and stop to kiss when bells from the village church strike up a simple carillon.

“Forever, Jilly,” Colin says. “For the rest of our lives.”

Can’t get much clearer than that.

Still, it’d be nice to have him on bended knee, asking me properly.

Colin challenges me to a game of tag and we chase one another around huge thickets of vanilla-colored broom Claudia says are called, appropriately, “Cornish Cream.” Gasping for breath, I collapse among dense little mounds of thrift—clouds of pink blossoms like balls of crisp tissue—and decide to bring one of them home. A memory of Cornwall to plant in my garden.

“They’ll never let you back in the country with that,” Colin says.

I ease a plant from the ground. “They will if they don’t know about it.”

“What is it, anyway?”

“Armeria maritima.”

“You’re not planning to dig up one of those, are you?” Colin points toward a clump of broom the size of Claudia’s Morris Minor. “I suppose you know what that’s called as well.”

I laugh.
“Cytisus scoparius.”

“I love it when you talk dirty. Let’s go to bed.”

My longing for him is suddenly so powerful I have to lean on him as we stumble the last hundred yards to the cottage. Colin takes the flowers from my hands and dumps them in the sink. I reach for his face and draw my finger down his cheek. It leaves a trail of sandy wet soil and makes him look incredibly young—a kid who’s been out playing in the dirt. He picks me up and kicks open the kitchen door.

“A girl could get used to this,” I whisper into his ear, peeking at Claudia’s ancestors. They don’t seem nearly as censorious as they did the first time Colin carried me upstairs. Reckon they must be used to us by now.

Later, when we’re sprawled on Claudia’s brass bed, sweaty and spent from loving one another, I glance over Colin’s shoulder at Alexandra.

This time, she smiles at me. I swear she does.

I’m glad its gloomy and gray. I couldn’t leave Cornwall, or Colin, if the sun were out. But unlike the journey down when neither of us stopped talking for more than a minute, we’re quiet for most of the five hours it takes us to reach the airport. Colin, because I assume he’s wrapped in thoughts about returning to his other life; me because I can’t quell the fear that by loving Colin I’m somehow betraying Harriet. Does he realize she’s gay? He was charming to her at Lizzie’s dinner party. The only sour note was Bea’s joke about the innkeeper’s daughter, and now I know the truth about Nancy, I’m not surprised Colin didn’t laugh.

So, how do I tell him about Harriet and Beatrice? Or should I say nothing? Just invite them for a picnic when he comes in July and let the chips fall where they may? I know I’m being idiotic. I know my imagination has run amok because I’m seeing problems where none exist. Colin hasn’t said a word against gays—just against his ex-wife—and I can’t say I blame him.

We arrive at Heathrow in a deluge, park the car, and race for the terminal. Steam rises from damp shoulders. People shake off umbrellas, fumble for passports and tickets, wait patiently in line. Loudspeakers blare, children cry. Armed guards keep watch.

Welcome back to the real world.

After checking my luggage, we ride the escalator up to the small, dimly-lit restaurant where we said goodbye the last time. Colin nudges me and asks if I’d like another gin and tonic. I settle for coffee and a toasted ham sandwich. He elbows his way to the bar, orders our food, and carries it back to the booth I’ve just claimed.

We’re almost finished with lunch when Colin hands me an envelope. “Don’t open this till you’re on the plane,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Save it for later.” He stands and makes his way back to the bar. Returns with a huge gin and tonic. “Tradition,” he says, and we take turns tasting one another like we did with that mug of tea.

The loudspeaker announces my flight.

We relinquish our table to another couple and edge sideways through the crowd. It closes around me and I lose sight of Colin. He reaches for my arm and pulls me from our intimate hideaway into the open concourse and I feel like a newborn being expelled from a dark, cozy womb into the bright lights and babble of a delivery room.

Trolleys loaded with luggage rumble by. Oceans of people surge back and forth in the midday rush to catch planes for Rome and Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris, and Boston. Colin and I stand in the midst of it all clinging to one another like two souls washed up in a storm.

His voice is a whisper. “You can’t leave.”

Then tell me to stay here and marry you.

“They’re calling my flight,” I say.

We walk, holding hands so tight I don’t think there’s any blood left in mine, to the point of no return. I won’t see him again until the end of July. A bored-looking official hurries me through security and now I’m on the other side and I can’t touch him any more. I drop my bags and turn around. Colin takes a step toward me. A policeman bars the way.

He’s carrying a gun.

The airplane is packed, every row full. I shove my box with Claudia’s squirrel calendar in the overhead bin, squeeze past a couple of businessmen, and sink into my window seat. I pull Colin’s envelope from my purse—what’s he going to surprise me with this time?—and gasp loud enough to make the man sitting next to me lower his
Financial Times
.

“Oh. My. God.”

I count the zeros again to make sure.

But no, it really is a ten followed by a comma and three zeros.

Ten-thousand dollars?

He’s given me a banker’s check for ten-thousand dollars?

No way can I accept this. I’ll have to send it back. Then I finger my bracelet and remember Colin’s words the last time we said goodbye.

It’s the first of many things I want to give you.

After two glasses of wine, the numbers begin to sink in. I look at the check again and imagine all I could do with this money. Fix the roof, buy another car. Pay off my credit card. Or open a savings account and put a serious dent in my home equity loan.

Tell Elaine to take her business and shove it.

Yes.

Well, maybe not quite like that, but I’ll stop accepting her work. I’ll finish off what I have, do a bang-up job on the Summerwind project I’ve already committed to, and walk away.