The Catalyst (9 page)

‘Did you have you anyone in mind?’

Although he could not look directly at her he could sense her smiling encouragingly at him and he appreciated the gesture, gratefully aware this was probably the first time Sunny had smiled freely at him. He sensed well enough that all the other times had merely been a mechanical reaction to his own smile but he could not feel any complacency in this new insight. He was not sure it was any sort of victory.

‘No … that is ... there’s no one I …’ he struggled with the ‘love’ word, it seemed too … emotional somehow, ‘y’know ... love ... well, not as far as I know.’

He wished he could just shut himself up, despairing that he had already said too much. What sort of sodding answer was that? He didn’t want to give Sunny the impression he had not experienced the big mystery of love. Anyway, he was not sure he hadn’t, it was just that he couldn’t work out what constituted such a state.

Analysing emotions was like wading through treacle as far as he was concerned, except for lust that was. Lust was straightforward, you knew where you were with lust. Matty had absolutely no problems at all with lust.

‘You know, Matty, it’s not such a big problem.’ She used his name easily now as she concentrated on an answer. ‘You will know who you want to marry when the time comes. It’ll be obvious. It won’t just be a want … it’ll be a need. You’ll find some girl will come along and you can’t stop thinking about her. You’ll wonder what she’s doing whenever you’re apart … your head will be full of thoughts of her, burning a hole in the front of your mind. You’ll be counting the hours until you can see her again and you’ll dream of how your life would be if you could live with her all the time. And you’ll be eaten alive by jealously if she even glances at another man. You’ll want to make sure she’s your property so you’ll want her to be married to you because it will make you feel a little more secure … safer ...’

She stopped abruptly, aware she had said far too much, much more than the situation warranted but he had seemed to be listening closely to her. She could see now his mind was turned inwards on itself but could only guess at what he was thinking.

The truth was that Matty Tregoning had had a revelation. Despite usually being conveniently unimaginative, his mind had now taken such a leap that he had persuaded himself that not only was there an air of mystery about Sunny but that she was also far too complex a woman for him.

It was as if he had instantly recognised his place in this very loose acquaintanceship and that that place was very definitely subordinate. Just at this moment he didn’t quite know how he felt about this. To him Sunny appeared wise and he was aware that not only was he not wise but that he may even, quite possibly, be foolish.

Somehow this unexpected insight made him finally acknowledge the difference between them and with this sudden feeling of disadvantage he was aware his feelings for her had changed. His natural predatoriness dwindled instantly to be replaced by a new feeling of respect.

Sunny meanwhile, leaving him to think, had taken his mug and poured him more tea, vaguely troubled by the picture her own words had painted. There had been no bitterness in them only a recognition of the facts of her life. She had felt no need to be married to David by the bit of paper that had tied them to each other in the eyes of society.

As far as she was concerned her commitment had already been irrevocably made with her mind and body. David however had needed the legalised paper as the symbol of his commitment to her. He had been so enthusiastic about getting married she had finally agreed, acknowledging his need for more security in his life.

What he hadn’t seen in her however was her need for time alone. ‘Down time’ she called it and it had been as necessary to her as oxygen. It was time in which to be solitary, to allow her mind to go into a quiet free fall as if in some sort of healing exercise, a time when she did not have to consider anyone else’s choices or wishes. It was a brief time without compromise.

Well now she had her ‘down time’, now she had more time alone than she could ever have wished for but it was tinged with guilt and there were those strange, fanciful moments when she wondered if David had died to give her back her freedom.

What if, her mind sometimes whispered to her, what if his subconscious had somehow linked to yours as you lay beside him at night and felt your need for freedom? What if his spirit had been bigger, more generous, than yours? Could it have somehow subconsciously engineered the tumours that killed him to give you your life back?

She could not have explained why this strange idea held such power over her but she was unable to shake the bizarre thought off completely and it remained bobbing uncomfortably below the surface of her waking mind.

Life was always a compromise between total freedom and someone else’s wishes she knew but she told herself she had been willing, she really had, to pay that price for David. Only now she had the autonomy she had once longed for was she beginning to see that freedom, perversely, could also be just another word for loneliness.

Abruptly she turned back to Matty to hand him his refilled mug of tea just as he stood up.

‘Sorry ... just remembered something, I’ve gotta go … thanks for the tea,’ he said, giving the appearance of being even more uncomfortable than when he arrived.

‘That’s okay Matty. You know you can always come and talk to me if you need to. You never know, I might be able to help.’

Even as she spoke she wondered why she was saying it to him. Why should he want to talk to her about anything? But it felt right to say it so she left it at that. He stared at her and she could see him debating within himself.

‘Yeah, okay, maybe I will ... maybe I’ll call round for a chat sometime,’ he said, knowing that unless he could find something more intelligent to say to her next time there was no way he would ever cross her threshold again.

There was now no sign of his trademark smile and Sunny found she was strangely moved by his earnestness. He made as if to take her hand but then appeared to change his mind and as he ducked out of the door she was intuitively aware of some subtle shift in their relationship.

It was an unusually thoughtful Matty who made his, by now sober, way back to his lodgings. His meeting with Sunny had suddenly expanded his view of women and he found they were more complicated creatures than he had realised. Usually he divided them into three groups, those who were pretty enough to attract his desire, those who weren’t and could be safely ignored, and those who were there to be teased or twinkled at, to be kept onside for political reasons, like his mother or the pub landlady.

Now here was Sunny creating another group that he felt, luckily, for him, only consisted of her so far. He wondered if he would meet any more of these women who should be respected, not just for their desirability but also for their warmth and wisdom.

He decided he would label this new group ‘Goddesses’, but only in the privacy of his own mind. He remembered inadvertently hearing the word used on some women’s programme on daytime television and it seemed to him to be a very accurate name for Sunny.

Even so, it wasn’t a description he would want his mates to find he was using.

Chapter 8

Matty’s goddess had closed the door behind him with the distinct feeling something good had just happened. The dynamics between them seemed to have changed for the better and she was relieved she now felt no more threatened by his glowing youth and intermittent ardour than she did by amiable old Tom Batten. She felt she had made another friend in the village and that was a good feeling. She found herself smiling as she sat down on the sofa to rest her aching ankle but then wondered again about her constant thoughts of David.

She had rarely lived in the past and had never longed to go back to the good times of her youth like so many of her friends. That had never been part of her mental remit. It had always been easier to stay firmly rooted in the present and she could not say why she was now constantly thinking so much about the past, unless it was some sort of mental clearing process she was undergoing as she grieved. Perhaps it was just another aspect of bereavement.

At that moment her ankle throbbed with just enough intensity to break in on her thoughts and she found herself replaying the recent scene on the cliff, when she had slipped and fallen headlong at Jimmy Fisher’s feet. She had gone over the incident many times since it had happened but she could not have said why, unless it was embarrassment.

On the face of it nothing remarkable had happened. She had slipped and fallen and a stranger had helped her to his home on the cliff top, put a makeshift bandage on her ankle and very kindly taken her to the casualty department in the hospital in Dehwelyans. So why, every time she remembered the scene, was there an inexplicable feeling of euphoria lurking beneath the embarrassment?

Trying to call out her apologies for her inappropriate laughter when he had tried to warn her about the dangers of standing on the edge of cliffs, she had had to hurry to catch Jimmy as he walked rapidly up the cliff path. He had rounded on her fiercely and she had caught sight of his scowling face the second before she slipped in the mud and lurched forward.

Despite the speed at which it happened she had just been able to put out her hands to save herself from falling face down on the one of the many rocks that punctured the cliff path but the fall had shaken her and she had had to turn over and sit on the ground to recover. Her hands were trembling and she inspected the grazes on the heels of her palms before becoming aware of the pain in her ankle, and the fact that Jimmy Fisher was standing over her.

Instantly he had crouched down beside her with a concerned expression.

‘Good grief, woman, you balance like a mountain goat on the edge of the rocks over a sheer drop above the sea and then trip up and fall your length on a simple pathway!’ He took her hands in his, checking the cuts and grazes on them. ‘Now, where does it hurt most?’

She shook her head, too choked with emotion to answer. All of a sudden everything seemed too much. The fall, coming after the turbulent emotions of her morning memories, was just another symptom of her apparently disintegrating life and Jimmy’s face had blurred in front of her as her eyes filled with tears.

She had put her head down and, resting her forehead on her knees, had allowed despair to take over, weeping inconsolably and feeling as if she would never stop. Jimmy had released her hands as if they had stung him and stood back, watching her cry. A maelstrom of emotions rose in him of which, he had to admit, dismay was predominant.

Usually he was a past master at contending with female tears, after all he’d caused enough of them during his life, but those tears had usually left him unmoved as, with a brief and superficial ‘there, there’ sort of solicitude, he had edged out of the door.

He had never been able to deal with Jenny’s tears quite so efficiently though. They had usually touched some raw nerve and he had covered his feelings of guilt with anger, hating having to admit to a feeling of blame. He never understood how she could make him feel so guilty so easily. Now here was another bloody woman crying in front of him, for fuck’s sake!

Suddenly he had no words, no appropriate behaviour, in the face of her abject helplessness. She seemed in despair but strangely, this time, he felt sure he couldn’t really be to blame, could he? Despite this revelation the situation still rendered him completely inept and uncertain. He tried bending towards her his arms outstretched to encircle her shaking shoulders and hold her. He felt … knew … he should try to comfort her. It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

For some reason he didn’t quite feel brave enough to do that so he patted her gently on the back instead. No, wait, wasn’t that what you did with babies? What the fuck was he doing? Why did he feel so awkward, so unable to offer comfort to this woman? He straightened up again, perplexed by the difficulties she posed. It just didn’t feel right for some reason but he knew he must do something for her, there was a cut on her hand that was bleeding freely. He tried again.

‘Come on now, girly ... come on.’ He made his voice as tender as he could as he crouched down beside her again. ‘Let me take a look at that cut.’

Taking her hand again, he peered at the wound, it was not too deep but it was rather muddy and he decided to improvise a pad from a dock leaf growing nearby, reasoning that if they were good for nettle stings they might be just as good for open wounds. He tried to remember any old herbal lore he had heard as he took hold of her other hand and made her press the leaf against the wound.

In spite of her misery, Sunny began to be distracted by this man who was trying so hard to help her. She felt she owed it to him to stop crying but the more she tried to control herself the more the tears fell. She felt embarrassed by her inability to at least meet him half way in his solicitude for her.

Jimmy was thinking roughly the same thing. What on earth was wrong with the bloody woman? Why doesn’t she get a grip? It’s not that bad a cut. He was by now acutely uncomfortable with her. Perhaps she was somehow mentally unstable? A frightening thought rose in his mind. What if she accuses me of rape or molestation? Some women did such things. It would be a case of his word against hers and she was probably some sort of paragon of respectability in the community ... whereas he?

Panicking now he looked about him, wildly hoping to see some walkers on the cliff path that had witnessed the scene and could vouch for his chivalrous behaviour. There was no one, just himself, a weeping woman and a lone jackdaw sitting on a rock nearby watching them with his head on one side, a look of very human enquiry in his blue eyes.

‘Sod off you!’ Jimmy muttered under his breath, feeling he really couldn’t cope with amused wildlife as well as a hysterical woman. His sotto voce obscenity made Sunny look up in surprise at him and he looked down at her to assure her his words had not been for her but the reassurance died on his lips.

Despite the tears still flooding the green eyes in an elfin face, he was struck by the thought that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he wondered how she could have cried so hard and still looked so lovely. Her lips were slightly parted and he could just see the white evenness of her teeth and he knew that he wanted to put his own mouth on top of hers and never take it off again.

Suddenly he felt as if his mind had turned to mush and none of his usual persuasive chat came readily to his lips. All he had was an apology. So he said sorry and although he rarely apologised to anyone for anything, he now found it quite easy. At this moment he would have given anything to have this woman think well of him.

‘I’m sorry ... didn’t mean you to hear that … it was the bird,’ he indicated the jackdaw with a nod of his head, ‘I was talking to him.’

The jackdaw flew off with what Jimmy felt sure was a smirk as Sunny's tears gradually turned instead to helpless laughter. Suddenly life was bordering on the surreal. Having a strange man swear at a bird that had apparently been watching the proceedings with interest piqued her sense of the ridiculous.

‘Please, there’s no need to say sorry,’ she said, trying to struggle to her feet. ‘It’s me that should apologise … I don’t know what happened … I just lost it, I suppose. I was following you to apologise when you were kind enough to be concerned for my safety.’

Now she was standing she suddenly realised she had a serious problem with her ankle.

‘Ow, my ankle …!’ She winced, sitting down again abruptly to look at it and starting to unlace her boot before Jimmy stopped her.

‘Don't do that ... if you take your boot off your ankle will swell even more and we may not get it on again ... and we need to get you up the cliff to my house.’ He indicated towards the farmhouse with a nod of his head, trying to be practical to stop himself feeling whatever it was he felt for this stranger.

Sunny suddenly became very conscious she was injured and alone in a relatively lonely place with a strange man. And a very strange man at that, she thought, looking at the tousled black hair hiding his face as he bent over her ankle, trying to assess the damage. But even in the intimacy this afforded she felt no fear of him, feeling instead as if she had known him for years.

‘C’mon ... let’s get going,’ he said suddenly, putting his arms under her armpits and heaving her to her feet. ‘Hold on to me, that ankle is swelling fast … it may even be broken. We must get up the cliff now and get you to hospital quickly.’

His brisk words were a front. He had known as soon as he touched her that something odd had happened to him and he began to feel grateful to her injury for giving him an excuse to hold her. He wanted to stroke her skin to see how it felt but stopped himself in time. Even Jimmy recognised you couldn’t go around stroking strange women in isolated places. It just wasn’t the done thing, especially if you wanted them to like you and Jimmy knew he really did want this woman to like him.

For some reason he was nervous of frightening her but such consideration for another human being, especially a woman, was a novelty to him and he began to feel quite proud of these newly discovered finer feelings. Well, you’re not quite Nelson Mandela, Jimmy me boy, he thought, but it’s a start.

They had staggered slowly up the cliff path, both very much aware of the feel and scent of one another. Sunny was acutely conscious of Jimmy’s hard, spare frame as he held her, one arm tight around her waist and the other gripping the wrist of the arm she wound around the back of his neck.

The rapidly swelling ankle was unwieldy and she began to feel sweaty and sick with the pain. Trying to hop through some of the more rocky passages on the pathway had slowed their progress until Jimmy abandoned all pretence at nonchalance and carried her over such difficult areas.

He told himself it was to speed their progress to the farmhouse but the feel of her against him made him burn as surely as if she had been made of quicklime. For him the journey was accomplished far too quickly and they were soon sitting in the casualty department of the small hospital at Dehwelyans.

Luckily the ankle had not sustained a break but the sprain was severe and after it had been x-rayed and firmly strapped, he had driven her home. All thoughts of Jenny’s disappearance had been driven from his mind by this adventure and he mentally cast about in the silence of the drive, wondering how he might see this woman again, wondering if it could ever lead to the something more he now found he desperately wanted.

She must be aware of the what’s going on between us, electricity or whatever this feeling is, he thought in frustration. He would have been gratified to know that Sunny was all too aware of him and how he made her feel but, confused by the feeling, she was trying desperately to hide any giveaway signs.

Soon he was helping her out of his old truck and unlocking the front door of her cottage for her.

‘Will you be all right? I mean, for shopping and suchlike?’ He helped her onto the sofa, his hands aware of her body as he reluctantly relinquished his hold on her.

‘Thanks ... I’ll be fine for a day or two. I have some food in. I’m sure it will be enough until the pain eases a bit. Thanks again for everything, Jimmy. I would have been in a real mess without you.’

She smiled up at him then and he didn’t like to point out it was unlikely she would have fallen if she hadn’t been chasing after him to apologise. It was better for him if she didn’t remember he had been the reason she had a badly sprained ankle.

He stood looking down at her, lost for the words with which to persuade her to see him again, desperate to prolong this time with her.

‘I’ll call in again tomorrow and see how you are,’ he said finally, knowing he had to go. He wanted to hold her again but could find no excuse.

For her part Sunny had not wanted him to go. There had been a weird feeling of fitting with him, as if her body had recognised his without any conscious mental processes taking place.

‘I would like that …’ she said. Then, feeling perhaps she had seemed too eager, she qualified it coolly. ‘I’m sure I’ll be fine but if my ankle gets more painful I might not be able to get out to the shop … it would be really helpful if you could just pop by and check.’

So there it had ended, the opening salvo in their relationship. For Sunny there was an almost overwhelming need for this wild and apparently bad-tempered man and for Jimmy there was a startling hunger, not just to possess but also to protect this woman.

He marvelled at himself, he who had never before felt any need to take care of another human being. A tidal wave of feeling had engulfed him and he wanted to cherish her and keep her close. He simply could not explain this new compulsion and, bemused, he realised that now, and for the first time in his life, he felt truly helpless.