Sheer Blue Bliss (8 page)

This was a new place again and it was as if before – that numb dazedness – had been easy, had been nothing. Now the tears came in waves that engulfed her, that she gave herself up to until she thought she would go under and drown. The ugliness of grief dismayed her, no romance in the chapped skin, blocked nose, eyes rimmed with red.

Sacha, sitting by her bed, didn't try and stop her crying like Mother would have done. Connie wanted her mother to soothe her but then it was her mother for whom she grieved: she ground round and round in that terrible cycle of realisation and pain. And Alfie, dear little war-loving Alfie … and Father. It was too much and she felt her heart break in her chest, thought that was just an expression before, never knew that a heart could really break. Sacha there saying, ‘That's good, good, Con, you cry. Cry.' Sacha's hand bigger and rougher than her mother's would have been. Connie stared and stared at it, the thick thumb, the dry texture of the deeply fretted palm, the minute brown hairs on the backs of the fingers, the paint or ink stains beside the nails. Not the soft white scented hand for which she longed – but when she looked up there was such tenderness in the brown eyes, lucky Sacha's eyes were brown not blue like Mother's or Alfie's, not grey like Father's. Sacha solid enough to hold on to, a still thing in the sweeping grief, a big, dry hand.

Sometimes in the midst of her grief Connie would have an awareness, just for a moment, like a swimmer coming up for air, of something else that Sacha was feeling. And that was fear. Although she never said so, Connie knew that Sacha was thinking about Red in Africa and sometimes she would find a thread of strength to hope, for Sacha's sake, that he might return home safe.

But mostly Connie couldn't get past her own pain to wish or hope for anything. Patrick was kind too. He didn't know what to say to her but he would bring her things: a fat white hyacinth in a pot, a branch of fir cones, brown acorns, scarlet butcher's-broom. He wanted her to take some mixture he'd made from plant essences but Sacha absolutely forbade it. When he came to her room he'd stand awkwardly wringing his hands, his beard wild, his eyes bright with sorrow till she wanted to tell him it was all right. But it was not all right. It never would be right again.

And then one day the windows were opened and there were daffodils, daffodils everywhere. Such
yellow
and a soft greenness in the air. Walking then on legs that had grown weak, sometimes with Sacha, sometimes with Patrick, spotting the way the bracken grew curled up in tight foetal buds; leaf spears everywhere; green sparks igniting on twigs; bird-song, she felt the spring in herself.

One day feeling the hot roll of a tear down her cheek é why? Oh something Alfie would have liked, a grass-snake perhaps or a bird's nest, she felt bored. Bored with tears, impatient.

New again, a new feeling like one of the bracken fronds beginning, just beginning, to unfurl and then the tickle of a smile that started in her diaphragm, a tickle stretched by her lips curving up, the tilting of her eyes, a rush of pleasure. The first moment she forgot and smiled, chuckled, laughed: she was walking with Patrick that day, they paused by a pond in the wood and were confronted by the shocking, hilarious, preposterous sight of frogs, dozens of them, hundreds, clinging and clambering and croaking. ‘Mating,' Patrick said and to her horror and delight scooped up a ball of frog, a female sandwiched between two males. ‘See how they grab on,' he said, trying to disengage one but it was impossible. ‘Only the first one gets it, but still this other fellow won't give up. Sometimes they're so desperate for it, the males, that they drown the female, drag her under in their struggle to mate.' He crouched and replaced the frogs at the edge of the pond. He lifted and held out to her a clotted mass of jellied spawn that made her shudder, then smile. ‘Touch,' he said, and her smile turned to a chuckle and then a laugh that almost hurt it had become so strange to her. Not funny, nothing funny really, but it was the breeding frogs that first made her laugh.

The day of the frogs, the day she laughed again and her heart started to mend – not mend entirely because a heart will always bear scars – was the day Connie began to experience a new guilt. Her grief had been threaded through with guilt that she had lived while they had all died. She should have gone back to London with them and died too. Or at the very least she should have persuaded Alfie to stay with her, when really she'd been
glad
that he had gone back, glad to be left to start her new life alone. She remembered the white handkerchief fluttering from the car, Alfie's farewell. That guilt was such a staggering weight to bear. And guilt that she was rich too, not rich but comfortable, had
benefited
, all Father's investments and what have you, hers.

But with the spring and the gradual lifting of her spirits a new guilt grew. Not something she could ever voice to a soul, not a worthy or explicable guilt like those she'd gulped out one dark night to Sacha. This was a sneaky feeling of exhilaration that caught her now and again, caught her unawares: that she was
free
. Free to be who she wanted. Young and free and happy, alive in her lovely body. This feeling she weighed down as if she was piling stones on a light puff of silk that wants to rise in the breeze, weighing it down with deliberate sadness, focusing on all that she had lost until she caused the breeze to drop, the silk, her spirits, to drop.

FIFTEEN

You could get used to hotels. You collect your key from some smart piece at reception, you press the button and you step into the lift which is carpeted and mirrored so you can stare into your own eyes as you rise. You only have to remember your floor, master your key-card – what is wrong with a proper key for goodness sake? – then you shut the door behind you and it is all yours, the great bed made up for you in your absence, all tidied, the bathroom stuff replenished, thick dry towels. It is private and thrilling.

Connie flings her bags on the bed and lies down. She has spent £500 on clothes, lipstick, shoes. It makes her dizzy to think it.
Five hundred pounds
. A sin. Thirty years ago she could have lived for a year on that, royally. Her last coat cost £3.12/6d, that sum sticking in her head for some reason. Patrick was there when she chose that coat, fidgeting because he hated shops, but she made him help her choose and the pinkish tweed was a good choice only now it's finished with. She runs her finger down the chipped buttons. She may never wear it again, not now she has her new and snazzy London look. The assistant at the
PAY HERE
desk hardly blinked as she wrote her cheque, as if people spend like that every day – well, most likely they do.

She lies on the huge bed feeling tiny, her ankles together, her hands folded on her stomach, but it's no good. She's too tremulous to rest. When she shifts the bags crackle. She gets up and takes off her old coat, her dreadful shoes. Fingers trembling, she opens the first bag, almost afraid to look at what's inside – things that are like scraps of dream carried back into daylight. She bought everything in a rush in the end, getting impatient, not wanting to be in that hot shop for ever.

From the bag she takes out a silver-striped box, under the lid folded in black tissue paper is the first item: a glossy green brassiere trimmed with lace. She tried it on in the changing room, amazing item, amazing feel, she's never worn such a thing before. Strange what it does to the whole body, that feeling of grasping, two silky palms cupping her breasts upwards and together, giving her a shape, an attitude, that makes her want to jut her hip and toss her head. She takes out a pair of matching pants, not very warm pants by the look of them, a scrap of silk, a scrap of lace held together by shoelaces, and the cost! She holds them up to the light, almost nothing there. Complete extortion, that's what it is. Still, it's a shame to be a woman and never know what it's like to wear such a pair of pants, to wear a silky uplift brassiere, anyway, that's what she told herself in the lingerie department and it may be true.

She arranges the underwear on the bed – how Patrick would have liked that, or would he? You never could tell with Patrick – and takes out the other things, a green dress with a hundred buttons, knee-length, quite demure, a purple velvet coat and hat, black tights, lipstick and shoes …

She saves the shoes till last, hardly breathing as she removes box from bag, lid from box and lifts them out one by one. Shoes she's never seen the like of before, dream shoes. The feeling when she saw them on display was like … like love … the nearest she's felt since … goodness knows. The shoes are green suede, soft and bright as velvet grass with small heels and buttoned straps and each one is sprinkled with diamonds. Not diamonds, you fool, she smiles running her fingers over them, only paste or what have you but still, they glitter like diamonds, like ice-crystals on grass. Something her father used to say … oh! Twinkle Toes when she danced by the fire, or on the lawn, now she'll be Twinkle Toes all right in her new get-up. Tonight she'll show them, no fuddy duddy old recluse, Constance Benson, nothing to smirk behind her back at. She'll show them and she'll show Patrick, too. How proud he'd be, proud of her all done up in her new togs with her glittering shoes.

SIXTEEN

He washes up the pan, the plate, the wooden spoon, the fork. Dries them with Donna's ‘Desiderata' tea-towel and replaces everything in its exact position. The kitchen clean and shiny. Next time he cooks it might be at Constance Benson's house. Feels a whizz of adrenalin in his veins. Time to get ready, shower again and shave and dress. Because then it will be time to go.

He sees her, midget in a purple hat with a tall blonde bitch. He's been hanging about outside the NPG in the pissing rain since they chucked him out, watching the taxis spewing out the chosen few. He recognises Benson immediately, a silvery shock up his spine.
This is it, this is real
. The face is old, of course, but still there are the same deep eye-sockets, slightly beaky nose, curve of high brow. Constance Benson in the flesh, Patrick's lover. Hard to see it, she's so teeny and gaudy, like something carved on the side of a fairground organ. Still, this is it, it is happening. He steps forward.

‘Excuse me.'

Benson would have stopped. Her eyes flick to his face but the younger one, who is sheltering her for the two-metre dash with a white umbrella, urges her on and Tony has to back away. What do they think he is, some beggar? Some nutter? That he is dressed so smartly seems not to have registered. His shirt, even wet with London rain, is the cleanest most gleaming thing in the entire vicinity.

‘You don't understand,' he says, ‘if I could just have a word with Miss Benson …' But what word? What word could there be? He hasn't rehearsed this, hasn't got a frigging script. He waits for Patrick to help,
trusts
that Patrick will help but Patrick lets him down. He should have filled Tony's mouth with the right words, the words that would have stopped her in her tracks, made her look, made her
see
. But no, there is nothing there. The tall bitch gives him a look like a chip of cut glass in his eye and hustles Benson away up the steps and through the doors.

He nearly loses it then. Walks in the rain with the light splashing up round his ankles, feeling sick. Gets on the Victoria Line at Oxford Circus, numb, wet, warm, almost steaming in the crush. Arm above his head he hangs in the crush aware of the smell from his armpit, anxious reek, odd, a vegetable smell, like sap from hogweed or something, tough and sour, something vaguely remembered, a river bank, hedgerow trampling and crushing. Forget that childhood shit. He stares at an advert for contact lenses, thinks about that bitch's eyes and Benson's, which did look at him. Must get her alone, be alone with her, must find her.

Just wait. Just have faith. All things come to he who waits. There will be a sign, a further sign and then it will be all right. She will give him what he needs. Then his life will start. All right?

But … if it never comes … if there is nothing …

The train, almost empty now, stops in the tunnel just short of Brixton and Tony catches the blank eyes of a youth, looks away quickly, notices the sheen of nylon over a pair of fat knees further down the carriage, sees the flat meaningless glossiness of both, gets a pain in his gut that almost doubles him. Not pain, not in the usual sense, but a sensation of nothing … an ache … an awful glimpse. Like a voice saying
You are a fool, this is all nothing, this is nothing
. What? Like a knee in the heart.

He groans aloud, curious eyes swivel and he turns it into a yawn, feeling like the fucking dick-head that he is. There was no voice, not really, and with a jolt that shakes him out of it the train starts and the knees cross showing a paler glimmer of thigh and the eyes of the youth opposite narrow and spark. The train stops, doors open to spill him out. And there on the platform before this … this
fear
can really get a hold, there in front of him is Patrick – on a poster. And those eyes anything but empty meeting his. And what is that but a sign? Get a grip, Tony, don't lose it now. The fear lets go, sighs off down the hot tunnel. Stupid. But human. After all he is only human. Tony pauses by the poster. Smiles at Patrick, ‘Thanks, mate,' he says.

SEVENTEEN

Everyone is so tall and the noise goes on over her head. Connie has drunk several glasses of red wine and cannot prevent herself smiling whenever she looks down at her twinkling shoes – though her plastic teeth must be black by now. Not that the shoes are comfortable, they squeeze her big toe joints and tilt her forward so she has to lean back and that gives her a nag in the lower part of her back. High heels are hell.

‘Do you paint at all, Miss Benson?' a young man asks, the umpteenth time she's been asked that tonight. He smiles down at her, head tilted in anticipation. His teeth too are wine-stained, she frowns and runs her tongue around her own.