Sheer Blue Bliss (2 page)

‘It's so romantic,' Lisa says after a pause. ‘And is it true that you haven't painted again either … not for over thirty years …'

‘Not since Patrick.'

Lisa shakes her head admiringly but Connie feels a pang, hearing it said like that by this fresh-faced girl.
Nothing
for over thirty years.

Jason unpacks his camera clutter, big white parasols and such, and Lisa offers to wash the dishes. ‘Thank you, dear. You'll have to boil a kettle first.' Connie has to hide her smile at the falling face, poor girl hardly expected her to accept.

‘OK,' Jason says. ‘We better get on before the light goes.' He opens the door and stands back squinting round the kitchen through a wedge of sunny dust.

‘I do like the shells.' Lisa strokes her finger over a dusty cockle shell stuck above the sink. ‘Did you stick them all on yourself?'

‘Not this room,' Connie says. ‘Upstairs.'

‘But …'

‘Up the ladder.'

‘Surely not a room up there – there can't be the roof-space.'

‘You come and look.' Connie climbs the ladder again. ‘Patrick did it. We were warned, not the structural strength and whatsit but here it is.' She stands in the room and Jason pokes his head up through the trap-door blinking in the blatant light that floods through the skylights.

‘Amazing,' he says. ‘I am amazed.'

‘It's all right for me,' Connie says, ‘but Patrick couldn't stand up in it. Used to crouch like a monkey, knuckles practically grazing the floor.'

‘But what fun … and the little chair …' Jason looks at the child-sized yellow chintz armchair that sits in the middle of the floor. He pauses as Patrick's gaze snares his. ‘And this is the portrait that all the fuss is about? Extraordinary. Lisa, you must come up and see
the
portrait.'

‘In a mo,' Lisa calls through her dish-pan clatter.

Connie feels a tug inside her, a yank of memory. Remembering the love that was made in this room, light frank on naked skin. Oh there really is something about those eyes, only pigment on canvas, which she put there herself for God's sake, not quite brown, not quite hazel. They meet her own eyes. A little smirk? How Patrick would have loved these two. Such a palaver for a Sunday article about her home. As if anyone cares tuppence.

‘What's it like?' Lisa calls.

‘Fantastic' Jason narrows his eyes again, looking round, searching for an angle. Jason and his camera, halved by the trap-door, bleached by the hot September light.

He backs down the ladder to get his equipment. Connie puts the kettle on again for tea. With her tongue she fidgets a bit of sardine out from under her plate and sits watching Lisa at the sink. The shape of her knickers shows through her thin white trousers, lovely little bottom, neat. How Patrick's fingers would have twitched.

Tomorrow a carrier will come for Patrick. And then she'll follow. The thought of returning to London after more than thirty years: of hotels and restaurants, of gallery chat, traffic, lipstick, teeth, suits, chatter, chatter, chatter … she has to close her eyes. And she must get round to dyeing her hair, the white stripe just will not do. Quite a buzz, Deborah said, Deborah the new agent. Someone somewhere unearthed Connie and to her surprise she feels like it, being unearthed. It's Patrick's portrait that will be the star of the show though, the unknown quantity. Her tongue buzzes against her plastic palate. Upstairs the floor creaks under Jason's feet like an obscure memory.

THREE

Tony blinks against the dazzle of newsprint in the sun. Poor grey speckled reproduction but it is Patrick all right, Patrick very different, beardless, young.
What?
The portrait painted by Constance Benson and never before seen. Although he looks so different, Tony recognises Patrick as if there's some sort of imprint on his heart. Not that he could ever have seen Patrick, who disappeared on the day of Tony's birth: 5th July 1965. But he has photographs, paintings – reproductions of – he has articles and Patrick's memoir, everything Patrick was ever known to write. In Patrick's memoir is a description, never completed, of the Seven Steps to Bliss. Which Tony wants and means to get. And will because Patrick has got inside him somehow, like a guiding spirit, that's it, guiding him on his quest for the elixirs. It's been a waiting game, since he stepped out of jail – price paid, slate clean – till now.

A retrospective exhibition of the work of Constance Benson opens this weekend at the National Portrait Gallery. Benson, controversial portraitist and lover of the late eccentric visionary Patrick Mount, will allow to be shown her last portrait of Mount which she has kept under wraps for the thirty years since his mysterious disappearance.

Careful not to crease the photograph. Tony folds the paper and walks home. Constance Benson, lover. He's surprised, more than surprised, jolted. Constance Benson alive and in London. Somehow he's supposed her dead, or faded anyway from the picture. Feelings fidget within him but he holds them down. It's good, Tony. Get to Benson and take the elixirs. Which she must have if anyone does. If not. No, not possible. Don't even think that, because then? No, think positive. Patrick is leading him and he only has to trust. So, this is it then, this is the start of it. He is on the trail.

He grins at himself in a window, cool customer with his long black hair, white shirt softened by the sun and his body heat, but still a stunning white. Puts his nose down to his shoulder and breathes the warmth of himself, the fizzy yeast smell of clean sweat and starch. Girls look at him as he walks, girls and boys. He exaggerates the swing of his skinny hips. Thirty, could pass for twenty-one easy, could fuck practically anyone on this street if he felt so inclined, anyone would. So magnetic, so charismatic. He has that special, indefinable something that nobody can deny.

Holds his breath entering the front door of the flats, steps over a pile of unclaimed post, legs it up the stairs the no man's land no one cares enough to clean, air dry and teeming with dust-mites, takes the stairs two or three at a time and is inside his door before he exhales. Leans back against it, safe. Donna's TV on next door. OK. Cool.

First, cut out portrait and article. Think later. Next drink milk from white mug. Next, roll fag. Light up, breathe in. Ah yes, smoke hot and clean. Queen Queen Nicotine.

And then the rap rap rap of Donna's knuckles, must have heard him on the stairs, the door's bang. Roll-up pinched in the corner of his mouth he opens the door.

‘Well, I'm off.'

‘Right.'

She stands as if waiting for something. What? Hair is pulled back from her sallow face so tightly that her eyes look slanted. The only bright thing about her is the flash of her red glass ear-rings. Looks dressed for a frigging funeral otherwise.

‘So, aren't you going to say good luck?'

‘Sure … good luck.'

‘And you'll water my plants and that. Got the key?'

‘Sure, oh yes, best of luck.' It comes back to him, something medical, gynaecological, some operation.

‘Nervous as hell!' She laughs and holds out her hand to demonstrate the tremble.

‘You'll be fine. Hey, look at this.' He steps back and picks up the cutting. ‘Recognise anyone?'

She peers, frowns, shakes her head.

‘It's him, Patrick.'

‘Oh … great.' She smiles. Light through a glass ear-ring makes a floating red stain on the skin of her neck.

‘You'll be fine. Don't worry.'

‘Long as I feel better after. Come and see me?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Ha ha ha. See you, Tony.'

‘See you.' He nearly calls good luck again, doesn't, shuts the door. Isn't it the surgeon who needs the luck, the steady hand? He goes to the window and watches her emerge below him in the street. She moves well, Donna. She's plain close up, nothing special, nothing striking, but watch her walking and you can see she's got … some quality, walks like a dancer, small head erect, walks from the hips, her centre. Where the surgeon will put his knife. Ugh. Hates that women's stuff. Withdraws squeamishly from the window.

He catches Patrick's eye. Must get to that exhibition and see that portrait. Constance Benson, the lover. Must get to her. This is it, what he has been waiting for, living this waiting life for. With the scrap of paper in his hand he knows, it's like the right key fitting a lock. You have to be aware, alert. And Tony is. She'll recognise him all right, recognise that Patrick has guided him to her, that he is the one she can trust with the elixirs, the one Patrick meant them for.

And then? But there is no need to think about and then. Because it will be plain after that. Plain sailing.

FOUR

Evacuation. First it was just a word at breakfast time, a word among many others, scarcely registered. Mother, Father and Alfie all eating their sausages, Alfie talking and talking and being asked please
not
to do so with his mouth full while Connie watched the light dance on the cut-glass sugar bowl. Connie tended to be dozy in the morning, a night owl, Mother said, while Alfie was always up with the lark. White milk in a green tinted glass, a minty colour or pistachio like ice-cream at a party once –
pistachio
, made her think of long curly moustaches though it's a kind of nut which Connie had never seen. But still, the milk tasting thick and cowish so she had to swallow quick without breathing. She hated milk but children must drink it. She was fourteen and hardly a child, yet there was the tall green glass of milk by her plate each morning.

War. That word made her sit up straight, made her skin prickle with fearful pleasure. Alfie was full of it, of course, with his toy soldiers and his drawings of cannons and guns.
We are at war
, Father declared solemnly one morning and Connie flinched, waiting for the sound of a bomb or a gun, but there was nothing, only mother's spoon chinking in her cup and a bicycle-bell pinging on the road outside.

But evacuation was a word that became common and crucial: discussions for and against. Tears came to Mother's eyes at the very idea. Alfie was against. He didn't want to leave his home, his friends, his toys or Matty the Persian cat. But most of all he didn't want to miss the war, he wanted to be in it. ‘I will not go,' he proclaimed, his ten-year-old jaw set. But Connie was not so sure. Not that she was afraid of war. She could not believe in it, an abstract thing. War. Thrilling. A fact, yes, but where was it? Autumn turned to winter as usual. The signs of war seemed artificial, blackouts a hysterical reaction yet exciting, too, all that velvety black and the glorious comfort of shut-in light. Christmas came just the same and went again leaving the frosty ash of January. White ferns and feathers on the window for her to copy in her book but no pencil was ever fine enough to catch the detail and breath melted it when you got up close enough really to see.

She wasn't scared of war but evacuation seemed like a door opening into another chance. Chance of what? Connie was ready to step through that door whatever. Home was happy and ordinary, loving and predictable. School had become dull to her. Not that
it
was any duller but her focus had changed. Instead of solids she saw the gaps between them or the light on surfaces, windows, the shiny complex hues of her friends' hair or the apricot fluff of light on their cheeks. She saw how the shadow of her pen fell across the white page and lost her concentration, lost her sentences halfway through. Her marks began to plummet but she hardly noticed or cared. Her body was suddenly aware of itself, aching with the novelty of becoming a woman, the swelling and tingling, the secret wisps of hair and dark of blood – yet she was still a child who had to drink milk and go to bed in summer when the sun was bright against the curtains.

If they were to be evacuated it would be done privately, within the family. Mother would not hear of them going to strangers and Father had a relative. Connie had never heard mention of this relative before. He was a very distant one, second cousin once removed or something. He was a black sheep and he was famous.

‘Hardly
famous,'
Mother said. ‘He's written a book or two, something
esoteric
…'

‘Esoteric?'

‘Not something most folk would ever bother to read. Some fanciful nonsense about plants. Married to an artist. Sachavarelle Mount.'

Connie gasped. ‘I've heard of
her
. There's a picture in the class-room, it's wonderful, a kind of tunnel through trees. You never told me we were related to her.'

‘Well, there you are then.'

Connie felt a breeze blow through the opening door. ‘Where?'

‘Derbyshire … near Bakewell … look on the map.'

‘Why is the relative …'

‘Patrick.'

‘Patrick, why is
he
not gone to war?'

Mother shrugged. ‘Must be some health thing,' she guessed, ‘writing, messing about with plants, that's hardly what you'd call a reserved profession, not like your father's.'

In June of 1940 Father procured petrol from some mysterious source and the family drove north to visit. Just to get the feel of the place, Father said. Connie felt her heart lift as the hills lifted around her. The green was so dazzling, so lush and delicious that she had to swallow and swallow against the saliva that flooded her mouth. Driving through the dappled green of a road overhung by a long arch of trees, spots of sunlight floating in her eyes, she wanted to howl and beat her fists on the leather back of Father's seat. ‘This is what she was trying to get in her painting!' she cried.

‘What?'

‘Oh nothing.' It was so fragile and trembling, how could she ever catch it and make it stay? How could she ever catch the green underwater ripple and the swimming spots of gold?

The house was approached up a long bumpy drive. A square grey house, simple like a child's drawing, symmetrical. It was like a town house but planted on a green rise miles from any town. ‘Very exposed,' Mother said, frowning. The walls around the fields were made of piled stone. A sheep ran bleating in front of the car for several yards, wiggling its woolly bottom. Alfie laughed. ‘It runs like Connie!' he cried and Connie thumped him before she could be stopped.