How tall is he? About six foot? A little taller than Fraser. Yes, about six foot. Thirty years old. Why does that seem a nice, safe age? What colour is his hair? Tawny, as in owl.
But does he like me in the way I like him?
Does he find me attractive?
Might we get it together? How might that happen? What do I have to do towards it?
Slowly, William began to occupy a great deal of Chloë’s precious day-dreaming time, and a great proportion of her night-time thoughts too. Such secret meanderings were sometimes supremely erotic; mostly, though, they were decidedly romantic. The more brazen she became in her mind’s eye, however, the more shy she became in his company. And, though she cursed herself sternly, it appeared that she was unable to rectify this. Moreover, because she presumed the strong character in her fantasies to be preferable, she felt compelled to keep the more timid version from William’s view. Thus she took on extra shifts, spent more of her spare time with Jane and, once or twice, even asked Mrs Stokes to say she was out should William phone. And yet still William accosted her thoughts. Of course he did. In desperation, after a disturbed night of highly lustful dreams and subsequent self-reproval, she phoned Fraser at the tiniest mention of dawn the next morning.
‘MacWallader! Good God, I thought you were phone-bic!’
‘I am, usually.’
‘What’s up? My letter’s in the post – I promise, I swear. Chloë? You still there?’
‘Can I come back? To Braer?’
‘What’s up?’
‘A man. I think.’
‘Hussy! I like it!’
‘Fraser?’
‘Sorry, bunny. What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. Yet.’
‘Oh? Well, is he nice?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Is he a looker?’
‘He’s pretty gorgeous. Well, I think so.’
‘Ooh! Well muscled? Tell me he bulges – oh, tell me he does!’
‘He’s fit, Fraser; athletic looking. You know, lovely in Levi’s?’
‘Wow, Chlo! I need to sit. More!’
‘He’s a potter. He lives in a picture-perfect cottage on a cliff with a goat called Barbara.’
‘MacDoubleYou. I’m gasping. Marry him. Or else I will.’
‘Can I come back, then?’
‘What? Why!’
‘Because I don’t know what to do.’
‘Do you think he rather likes you too?’
‘Hmm.’
‘Would that be an affirmative mumble?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well then, you most definitely can’t come back here. Well, you can – but not without him – there!’
‘Fray-zer! I need you. I don’t know what to do.’
‘I think you rather do.’
‘What do you think, Barbara?’
She’s a goat, William, and even if she does hold opinions on the matter, she is unable to tell you – or, rather, you are incapable of understanding her.
William has suddenly decided that he probably ought not to get involved with Chloë. He tries to reason that his freedom and privacy are of supreme importance in his life. He also considers whether she hasn’t become a little more guarded, somewhat cooler of late. Certainly, he hasn’t seen her so often recently. Not as often as he’d like.
Not that I’ve missed her.
Not that much.
Not much!
He tries not to acknowledge that he fears Chloë leaving Cornwall, and the chance of it, for some other country. Where there may be someone else. It is not as if there was a space in William’s life before, which Chloë has now actively filled, but he is in no doubt that if she were to go, a dull void would take her place.
And then he would be afforded only glimpses of memory. And what use would those be?
A glance of her porcelain neck.
Her incomparably soft twirls and curls, so rich and red that they radiate light. Oh, the feel of them!
Eyes mahogany, sometimes conker, lately a rich chocolate too.
The sight of her, yes, but the sound of her more so; the sound of her. She makes funny noises while she reads. She sings under her breath as she walks. And she hums with his pottery, caressing his senses and affirming his merits as a ceramicist too. But he hasn’t heard her for a while.
‘Oh God, Barbara, isn’t to actually hear, more preferable than merely to recall, to remember?’
Barbara regards him as if he is a fool.
‘Of course it is, damn it.’
Ridiculously early one morning, after mulling over more possible uses for Number Three Penbeagle Street, Chloë sits cross-legged on the bed, swaddled in William’s jumper which she has consistently neglected to return. The postcard reproduction of Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) lies, a little dog-eared, in her lap. Sixty-one years old when he died – what an injustice! She decides swiftly not to let the Andrews know, let alone the artist himself. She comes across Mr Andrews on his customary early morning ‘blow through’.
‘Where’s your wife?’ she asks.
‘Charming!’ he exclaims. ‘Will I not do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Chloë says honestly. ‘I think it’s Women’s Things.’
‘Hmm,’ he contemplates, ‘biological er, disturbances?’
‘No!’ Chloë cries. ‘Well, I suppose it could be – all because of a man I’ve met.’
‘Now that’s not like you, Chloë dear,’ says Mr Andrews, very interested, ‘not like you at all. Sit down on the bench and we’ll have a chin-wag. Rex! Heel! Good dog.’
‘I’ve met a chap.’
‘You’ve met a chap.’
‘Yes.’
‘And his name, girl?’
‘William Coombes.’
‘And has he a respectable trade?’
‘He’s a potter.’
Mr Andrews considers this, and then considers it good.
‘Remember the urns at Ballygorm?’ Chloë continues. ‘They’re his. Not only that – the ceramics I so loved at the South Bank last year too; which I remembered even when I was in Antrim. Isn’t that weird?’
‘Actually,’ Mr Andrews counters, ‘I’d think it rather comforting in some small way myself. This huge world full of people revolving around their own minor worlds and yet you two, it seems, destined to meet.’
‘Yes,’ Chloë agrees, ‘because if it hadn’t been in London, or even in Ireland, it would still have been here.’
‘So why is it my wife whom you seek?’
‘Oh,’ mumbles Chloë, ‘I don’t know. You know? Just a chat, some advice. I think.’
‘Advice, hey?’
‘A cure for a stomach full of butterflies?’ Chloë suggests meekly.
‘Gone off your food?’ Mr Andrews asks, and it sounds like ‘orf’. Chloë nods. ‘Can’t sleep a peep?’ he furthers. She nods vigorously. ‘Mind wanders and dances around in circles?’ Chloë agrees. ‘Not altogether unpleasant a sensation, is it!’ he declares.
‘No,’ Chloë concedes, ‘but strange.’
‘And would you be happier if it were to subside, disappear even?’
‘No,’ declares Chloë, suddenly alarmed, ‘absolutely not.’
‘Well then,’ Mr Andrews declares.
‘But,’ falters Chloë, ‘is it safe?’
‘It’s safe,’ he winks, ‘dear, dear girl.’
She feels slightly easier, though she’s not sure why, and thanks Mr Andrews accordingly. She takes off William’s jumper, folds it and places it on the chest of drawers. She would, of course, be forgetting it accidentally on purpose when she next saw him.
Mr Andrews woke his wife rudely.
‘Mr A!’ she declared. ‘Gracious me! Put that thing away. And put me down at once.’
‘Cadwallader,’ he declared, wrestling with his garters, ‘is in love.’
The last Tuesday in November was when, finally, William, watching Chloë climb and wriggle her way through the ancient holed stone of Men-an-Tol, realized he was running up the one-way street of being in love with her. He did not tell her so just then, as the emotion itself was too raw and unexplored; the notion simultaneously baffling and intoxicating, uninvited and yet not unwelcome.
Chloë had, in fact, found herself in much the same place the day before. Two pages from the end of Rebecca, she suddenly stopped reading. Reaching for the closest thing to hand that would serve as a bookmark, she slipped a National Gallery postcard of a Gainsborough double portrait between the pages and put the book down. She walked over to the window, juddered the sash up and thrust her face full on against the spiky chill of November.
‘Heavens,’ she said, smiling and frowning, ‘I wonder if I’m falling in, you know, love?’
She knew her feelings to be as strong as the wind and as fresh as the air, and if that was how being in love felt, then it was a condition to be welcomed.