DORSET, 2010
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
The air in the shed smells stale after Christmas. Mouse droppings are scattered on the sheet of paper I left on the table, and the wax crayons have been etched with tiny teeth marks. My feet crunch on grit blown through the gap under the door. I shut the door again and go back into the house.
In the mornings when the light is still gray, I wander around the house in this nothing time between Christmas and New Year’s. I can tell exactly where I am with my eyes closed. The air feels differently charged around the blue chair, the silky wood of the desk, the pile of books. Touching the familiar furniture is like touching my own skin. I look at the photos from Theo’s montage one at a time. Today it’s the baby in the carriage, her eyes serious, looking at the patterns the cherry tree blossoms make against the sky. The picture captures a starfish hand reaching to touch the shadow of the leaves on the inside of her carriage.
I miss the boys and Michael; he had tactfully arranged to cover at work when we thought Ted might be here at Christmas, though he knows we have separated. He calls every night, never in the day; our relationship is still secret from his colleagues. I don’t know what would happen if they found out. I miss him, my body misses his. I find myself craving him unexpectedly. In my darker mistrustful moments I wonder if he knows this, if he wants to gain some kind of hold by his absence. Could he be playing a game? He has stepped across a boundary to make love—should that make me trust his motives more or less?
Ed has gone back to the rehab unit. He’s planning to stay for a few more months, but he gave me no details. He didn’t talk to me about his feelings again either, though Sophie gave me a hug as they left. His words echo on, and I turn them over and over; did I trade Naomi’s life for mine? Now that I have all the space and time I ever wanted, I’d swap everything for a second of her.
Theo phones. “It’s so good to be back home.” Ridiculous to feel a pang. “Think I could live here forever.” As he talks I hear the clink of bottles and Sam’s voice singing Carmen in the background. Once Theo’s relationship with Sam would have taken us time to encompass, causing a shift in the smooth track of our lives and the assumptions we made. Instead it has found its place easily.
After Theo’s call, I try the shed again, shaking the little battered tin tubes of oil paints out of their box into a small heap on the trestle table: French ultramarine, Indian red, Naples yellow, a whole geography of colors. Theo said forever; that’s as far as you can see before you’ve been hurt, though of course he has been hurt. No, it’s farther than that; it’s as far as you can imagine, stretching to all the places and people that you think will always be there. But nothing lasts. Not places, not people, not love, nor the vanishing lives of children. Loss does, and I start to make thick straight lines with Sophie’s charcoal. At the beginning I didn’t see how I could ever manage the hours, then the days, the weeks, the months of forever, the dull metal of her absence never wearing any thinner. As I work, dark crumbs break from the sticks; and I blow them away. The boys don’t talk much about Naomi. The space behind them is full of her, but their lives have gone beyond hers. Mine hasn’t; I’ve endured, that’s all.
I cross the vertical lines with horizontal bars to make a grid, thinking about the colors to put between the lines, luminescent, bordered by darkness but not stained by it; these spaces will represent the boys’ lives. I walk in tight circles inside the shed, trying to think of a color for them, one that sounds a clear note but carries other darker ones within it. It’s difficult to think of a pigment that holds light and shadow at the same time, perhaps a glowing cinnabar orange. I need more colors. I imagine some kind of rich desert dust that has been distilled by wind and heat. Then I remember the Byzantine paintings hidden in the caves of Göreme in Cappadocia. The frescoes on the walls looked backlit by sun even in the deepest caves. They had a rich, hopeful glow that was also somber. I experiment with strokes of oil paint on my easel. Cadmium yellow, cadmium pale? Something extra is missing. White? Red? Orange? I lay my brush aside to wait until I can catch it somewhere else. The sunset, or the yolk of an egg perhaps.
As I turn to go, my fingers knock a little bunch of kindling off the bench. I must have paused to look at a painting on the way to make up the fire, and left it by mistake. I pick it up, pull out a long twig, and twirl it in my fingers. The wood is gray brown, there are tiny bumps where next year’s leaf buds would have formed, the bark is minutely pitted and delicately peeling in places, the stubbed end is split and frayed as if chewed, the ends open and spread like the thinnest fingers. I sketch the twig roughly, then again more carefully, larger, then larger still. Forms and shapes, waiting to change into something else; the idea for a large painting begins to form, a cycle of life. A triptych. An unfamiliar excitement starts to build, so light and distant I’m afraid I will spoil it by thinking about it. I focus on the minute buds, smooth, unformed.
After an hour my hands start shaking with cold and I have to stop drawing. Back inside the cottage, the excitement has gone. In the empty rooms the dark condenses around me, the familiar weight of sadness so heavy that I can’t move. When the bell goes, I can barely walk to the door. Dan is on the doorstep, serious-eyed, hunched in his coat.
“Don’t stand there”—I step outside, putting my hand on his sleeve—“come in. I was hoping someone would call, and here you are.”
He walks in past me, looking downward, suddenly shy.
“It’s good to see you,” I tell him, taking his coat. “It’s been too quiet since Christmas.”
“You okay?” He looks hard at me, the green flecky eyes searching my face.
“Yes, ’course I am.” My smile falters under his gaze. “Well, maybe not okay exactly . . .”
I expect he knows about Naomi from Mary, though I’ve never told her. As he stands there, he seems to be waiting for more, and some of my resolve breaks: “Maybe it’s the time of year, but it’s the second Christmas without my daughter, so it’s like she’s getting further away all the time. I’m wondering what it will be like on the third and then the fourth . . .”
He flushes. “I could stay if you like . . . Would you like me to stay?”
“Have you had supper?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Stay, then. Turkey curry? You can carve the meat off if you want to be helpful.”
He comes in, sits at the table. I give him a glass of wine. He takes off his sweater and rolls up his sleeves as I get the huge carcass from the fridge. Even though it’s winter, his arms are brown from working in Mary’s garden.
“Nice tan.” As I reach into the cupboard for spices and curry paste, I catch his slow blush; Ed used to be easily embarrassed like this. I should know better. “How’s the deciding going?”
He carves carefully, the meat falling in curls on the board. “I’m thinking of going away for a bit.” I glance at him, surprised. “Yeah.” He looks down. “I saved some money. Theo told me about this art course in New York, cheaper than here, even. I’ve applied for the sculpture modules.”
“That’s great, Dan. Where will you stay?”
“Sam said I could stay on a mattress with them.”
“That’s fantastic. Do it.” I fill up his glass again and clink mine against it. “How did you make up your mind in the end?”
The rice bubbles, I tip the turkey he has carved into the simmering sauce. The kitchen feels warm and like home again, as though Theo or Ed was here. Over food he talks about his family, how his mother is fine with his plans, and his father, uncertain at first, has now agreed to help him with the fees. He wants to know what I’m doing. His face lights up when I describe the grid painting.
“Sounds amazing, Jenny. Almost like sculpture.” He hasn’t used my name before; it sounds strange, though I don’t know why. He could hardly call me Mrs. Malcolm. He leans forward. “I’d like to take some photos of your paintings, might give me inspiration.”
I haven’t shown them to anyone. “Maybe,” I murmur noncommittally. His face falls, so I add quickly, “No one’s seen them, some of them aren’t even very good.”
I’m tired suddenly. It’s late. I let Bertie out into the garden and Dan stands up and stretches widely.
“I’ll do the cleaning up.”
“Thanks, but I always do it in the morning.” I fetch his coat, relenting as I hand it to him: “Come back before you go away, Dan. I’ll find something for you to photograph.”
He turns at the door, looks down at me, says, “I want to take some pictures of you too. Your face.”
My face? I feel confused with surprise. Then I laugh. “Not me, Dan. Mary’s got a wonderful face. Take some of the young pretty girls in the village.”
“I’ve taken loads of Mary already and I don’t want girls’ faces.” He looks at me almost angrily. “You’re pretty anyway. Beautiful, actually.”
“Rubbish, Dan.” I try to laugh again.
Stretching behind him to open the door, I jolt when he reaches out and touches my face with his fingers; then he turns and is gone.
I shut the door and lean against it. I hadn’t seen that coming, or had I? I start to clear supper, tipping away the leftover food, rinsing plates, scrubbing saucepans, annoyed with myself. How did I let that happen? Dan is even younger than my boys, yet tonight I had let myself be warmed by his attention—no, I enjoyed it. I’ve been careless; I won’t see him for a while. I’ve traveled further than I had thought from my old life, the person that I had been, the good, happy, busy woman. I climb upstairs slowly. Michael’s text comes through to say good night. I usually text back, but tonight I sit on the edge of my bed, my cell loosely in my fingers, while I stare into the darkness outside. If I go right back, to where Ted and I started, I’ve traveled much, much further.
Remembering back is like watching a film with actors playing our parts; I can see myself in the hot library. I remember the flowery minidress I was wearing and that my hair was piled anyhow out of the way; I was oblivious and absorbed in a dermatology book in the library. I’d come to the university from high school after a gap year in between, and took medicine very seriously, convinced that becoming a doctor was all I wanted. Edward Malcolm was in my year but moved in a different group. He had a car when no one else did; he played cricket for the university. Everything about him irritated me, especially his smooth good looks. I doubt if our paths would have crossed at all if we hadn’t both been so ambitious, and if the library hadn’t been so hot and crowded that afternoon. Summer 1985. I had been sketching out an essay that I planned to enter for a prize worth several thousand pounds. I was glad I had a head start on Ted Malcolm; he was after every prize as well, but he didn’t need the money like I did. The library had been stifling. I scooped up an armful of books to take home, and then bumped into him on the way out. He casually took the top book off the pile I was carrying. I’d fought him for it, laughing but annoyed at the same time. He only gave it back when I promised to go out with him. It began then.
Pulling off my clothes, I get under the duvet. It wasn’t a film, though; romantic films have happy endings. In real life only the beginnings are happy and nothing ends well. But then, nothing really ends.