Sheer Blue Bliss (6 page)

‘What does that mean?'

‘Ha … well, best you read it. Though doubtless he'll enlighten you himself before long. But broadly it's about the connection between mankind and plants. These paintings came from dreams he had while formulating his ideas. You can see he's no artist!' She laughed and Connie looked at her, wondering is she being nasty or only honest? Certainly the paintings didn't seem much good to her.

‘I thought they were like dreams. What connection does he mean?'

‘That man could do worse than look to plants for a model of behaviour.'

‘What? Oh …' Connie could hardly suppress a startled giggle. ‘But surely …'

‘Let's go down now, it really is getting dark.' Sacha held out her hand for the last painting. ‘Surely?'

‘Surely plants don't do anything, they don't
behave
at all.'

Sacha snorted. ‘Come on, let's go and find some supper.'

ELEVEN

The Sunday paper has five main sections. Tony reads the News on Sunday, Travel on Tuesday, Life on Wednesday, and he lasts the Review section for three days. Learns things he really doesn't need to know. The Business section he reads only if desperate. The paper has to last the week. You can't read an evening paper at breakfast time and you can't go out before breakfast, except on Sunday when you have to go out to fetch it. He always reads while he eats his breakfast, Weetabix with milk, a pot of tea, a fag.

Breakfast is one of the reasons he finds it hard to contemplate sharing his life, his space, his peace. If someone spoke to him, say, while he ate his Weetabix which you have to do fast while it's still vaguely crisp or else throw it away and start again, if someone spoke to him then … who knows. If someone else crunched or gulped or said a single stupid thing. Because morning is the time when it is hard to hang on, keep on course, and the right bit of the paper, the right consistency in his cereal, these small things … well …

Wednesday is the day. He showers in Donna's bathroom using her pink grapefruit gel to rinse the dirty dreams away. He smooths and tidies Donna's bed, the sheets all limp and twisted. Should wash them but there isn't the time. She won't mind. Back in his own flat he gazes at his own bed. Good to see it tucked in tight, the cold, starched sheets unspoiled.

The milk is cold from the fridge and he pours it on only after his tea is poured and his fag is rolled. The paper is to the right of his cereal bowl, the lighter to the left. The Review is good to read because it's in the form of a large stapled magazine, not a difficult shape to unfold and keep under control. Tony opens the first page and takes his first bite of cereal. It is right. The biscuits keeping their shape and soft wet bite, the demerara sugar is still crystalline, the milk has not yet made the whole thing to mush. Tea hot, cereal cold. He reads the Contents. Stops. A name jumps out. Constance Benson. He starts, chokes, pauses. It's at the end, the crap chatty bit, At Home With … Shakes his head. It's her. It's Constance fucking Benson. It is a sign another sign as if he needs one. He fumbles to the right page, nearly knocks his fag on the floor, picks it up and lights it and looks.

There's a small picture of a tumbledown house under an enormous sky, sand-dunes rolling down towards its gate like waves. There's a red kitchen table with a bunch of wild flowers, there are sea-shells stuck round the frame of a scuzzy window. But the main picture taking up a whole page is golden. The room a dazzle of yellow, chair, floor, light, the old woman isn't much more than a darkness in front of the source of light that is Patrick. Patrick in that portrait, young and beardless with a chin that is so like Tony's you wouldn't believe it. The eyes meet his and his heart tumbles.

He takes a breath of clean hot smoke, a swig of tea and reads:

Portrait artist Constance Benson certainly prefers a life far from the madding crowd.

She lives in a prefab, the only remnant of a settlement built to ease the housing shortage after the war. Long ago the other inhabitants left and there is little sign now of the other houses – temporary dwellings never designed for permanent habitation.

But incredibly the house in which Miss Benson lived with Patrick Mount for several years and has continued to live in for the thirty years since is still standing: a cosy, stylishly dilapidated home.

Mount disappeared in mysterious circumstances over thirty years ago but his memory is still fresh with Benson who has not left her home on the gusty North Norfolk coast since that day.

Although the cosy kitchen with its brightly painted furniture and sea-shell-encrusted walls is the heart of the house, Benson's favourite room is the small loft space which Mount ingeniously converted to a studio for her. It is designed so as to catch all available light and is a triumph of architectural daring. Barely five foot at its tallest point, it has walls that slope down to floor-level on either side.

The studio is kept admirably uncluttered. The only furniture in the room is a miniature armchair, charmingly covered in a faded yellow chintz, which is well suited to Miss Benson's petite frame.

The chair is positioned so that Miss Benson can sit and gaze upon the last portrait she painted – that of her beloved Mount. It is this much discussed portrait which will be the centrepiece of the retrospective of her portraiture which opens at the National Portrait Gallery later this week.

Miss Benson's face clouds when quizzed about the fate of her partner of many years but she says she feels he has never really gone.

This week she will leave her home for the bright lights of London where she will be guest of honour at the Private View of her retrospective show. When asked about her reaction to leaving the solitude of her home after so long Miss Benson laughs. ‘It'll do me good to have a bit of a hullabaloo,' she says, ‘but I'm looking forward to getting home already.'

It's not surprising. The air is so fresh and the setting so tranquil that London really does seem a world away.

Tony lays the paper down and grinds out his fag. North Norfolk Coast, eh? Thank you – he reads the journalist's name – Lisa Just. Thank you, Lisa. It is happening, it really is. Sign follows sign follows sign. It is going to be a cinch.

Tony takes a mouthful of Weetabix and spits it back in the bowl. Bloody mush. Bad omen. If breakfast goes wrong it always is. Have to start again now, the whole thing, fresh tea, fresh Weetabix, fresh fag. The brown mush slops heavily into the bin. Tony rinses the bowl, dries it on a white tea-towel, arranges two more Weetabix one on top of the other, fills and switches on the kettle, rolls another cigarette.

TWELVE

The air roars and the plate glass trembles its reflections of umbrellas and traffic. Through the reflection is the bright peace of the window displays, the perfect people in their perfect clothes. They all look so stern, the plastic? plaster? people, stern and attenuated. September and already they are got up for winter. Connie stares at a model in a long grey coat, black fur collar and trim, pale face, smooth as an eggshell, serious, the lips unpainted, the head smooth and bald but each eye trimmed with a stiff birdwing of lashes.

Connie pulls herself away from the window and in the slipstream of a crowd, enters the store. The air is utterly fake, such a perfumed assault of clashing scents it makes her teeth ring. She goes forward between the bottles and the brightness holding her breath, goes between hosiery and handbags to find the escalator which sweeps her upwards towards Ladies' Fashions.

She has not bought a new item of clothing for thirty years but today she will. Like it or not she will be noticed at the private view, noticed in the right way. She's not having them sniggering at her in her old stuff, daft old bat up from the sticks, not having them humouring her. She'll knock their eyes out, for Patrick's sake. It's just a matter of getting into the spirit of the thing, shopping, dressing up. She's still a woman after all under all the shabby layers, with a woman's taste for luxury still there, still stirrable.

Rising up the escalator she breathes in fabric, electricity, wealth. Purple she is hit by first, silver, royal blue, the colours hum in the brilliant light, mirrors glint back the dazzle of party frocks. Then there are darkness, deep greens and browns and behind everything, more than anything, black: velvet, satin, silk and wool, matt and shiny, pure black and black with a sheen of blue or brown or deep red. She takes a breath. How does a person choose? In a long mirror she catches herself amongst the racks of clothes and turns her head away before the reflection can belt her one. Scruffy old woman. No, only on the outside, no, no. But still she can feel the eyes of an assistant boring into her from behind, critical, accusing,
What are you doing here?
She fingers some jumpers, aware of the eyes, unable to concentrate, to think. The jumpers are appliquéd with penguins and flowers, scraps of wit and silk. She turns eventually to confront the eyes of the figure behind her and finds it's only another dummy done up in purple that is looking nowhere, that has, in fact, no eyes.

Connie smiles at her own foolishness. She relaxes, puts a Fisherman's Friend in her mouth, tries to think properly. The skirts and the dresses seem enormous, even the smallest sizes are long enough to trail behind her on the floor. People seem to have got so
big
these days, so unnecessarily, so
vulgarly
big. The fabrics are luscious, such a long time since she's felt or smelled new velvet, slithery satin. She finds a rack of silk blouses, muted mauves and pinks with a white bloom on them like a peach – or the tenderest private human skin. She picks up a sleeve and rubs it against her cheek. She gets herself into a dreamy state, a kind of trance, hardly looking or trying to think but rubbing the fabrics between her fingers, smelling the newness of them, getting bolder and burying her face in a velvet dress, nuzzling, finding herself wanting to suck the velvet wet like, as a child, she used to suck the corners of sheets.

And then there
is
an assistant, real and breathing, a towering girl all legs and lashes, small sharp head perched up there somewhere near the ceiling. ‘Need any help, madam?' she says polite enough but with an eloquent flick of her eyes over Connie's shabby coat.

‘Purple, do you think?' Connie says. ‘I want a whole new get-up. Would this suit me?' Indicating the dummy. ‘Dress, coat, hat, the lot.'

The eyes travel down to the splitting shoes. Connie looks down, too, her best shoes but obviously they'll have to go. She'll have the works: shoes, stockings, underwear.

‘I'll leave you to browse, shall I?' the girl says, and bolts. Connie grins. This could be quite a lark. But even underwear is not as simple as it sounds: racks, shelves and stands of difficult straps and scraps of lace, shine and sheen and peep-show stuff, Wonderbras, strapless, nude-look, uplift, balconette – the thought of her old vest makes Connie come over queer. She needs a rest before she can think straight. She goes to the coffee shop for tea and a bun. The nearest thing an extortionate
pain au chocolat
, all greasy flakes and bitter sludge, not ideal, but fortifying, at least.

As she munches she reads a leaflet advertising beauty products.
Twenty per cent off our Exclusive Range for Store Card Holders. Open a Customer Account today
. Ho hum. Gel de Bain Moussant, Gel Exfoliant Moussant, Gel Minceur, Galbe de Buste. Breast cream? She could do with some of that, frowns at the memory of her breasts in the hotel bathroom mirror looking so … forlorn.

And then the memory hits her, the deep memory brought back by the sensation in the hotel room, the sensation of air on naked skin. Her nails cut into her palms as it comes back. The studio. October, the sky a blaze of blue, the fire lit, flames pale in the sun. Sacha wanted to paint her nude, standing and looking out of the window, paint her from behind but slightly turned, head almost in profile, hand on the window frame. She had never been naked except for the quick shivery duck between bath and bed, between clothes for night and clothes for day. Strange to let her dressing gown fall and for her limbs, her buttocks, her belly, her breasts – which nobody had ever seen since they had grown – her neck and most of all somehow the vulnerable place between her shoulder blades to be naked, to be seen. She was aware that the air Sacha breathed was able to travel freely and to touch her skin. But Sacha was so businesslike, almost brisk, that she was hardly embarrassed. Actually after a little while of the interesting warmth of the fire on one side of her, the slight chill through the glass on the other, she began to enjoy the bareness, looking down at her pretty body, its creaminess, thinking,
This is mine, this is me
.

A happy moment before.

And now the other memory, the bad one, the one that will always be attached.

Patrick coming up the drive, head down, approaching the house. She watched his long-legged scissoring stride, thought,
Something is wrong
. He stopped and looked up, quickly before she had time to withdraw, looked straight at her nakedness through the glass and though it was too far for their eyes to meet, Connie felt a flinch as their gazes intersected, a sudden hotness on her front, almost a flushing that Sacha might have caught with her paints, a fleeting rosiness.

Patrick on the stairs, then Sacha saying, ‘Have a break, I'll make tea.' Connie pulling on the gown and settling on a low stool by the fire. Patrick in the room, the fresh raw-air smell of him as he approached. A feeling of shyness, pride, what would you call it … coquettishness? so, so foolish, before he opened his mouth and told her the worst. Words that are not in her memory, that her mind rejected. The heat of the fire against her left shin the last sensation, the last coherent memory before a period of confusion in which there were things, of course – an egg in a yellow egg-cup for some reason, Sacha's tweedy arms, stars needling frostily through the curtain gap … oh this and that … but most of all there was loss.