| |
EFA WAS INTRIGUED BY the handsome man she passed every day on her way to the brickworks. After two weeks of hand-raised greetings, she left the footpath and picked her way through the damp gorse to his cottage. She tugged off the bandana that kept her hair out of her eyes while she painted. ‘Hi. Efa. I paint on the cliffs.’
She took a battered tobacco tin out of her satchel. The mystery man was disconcerting up close – too still, in a way that reminded her of a cat waiting to pounce – and the smile he offered was tense. It closed his face. She wasn’t offended. She knew the value of solitude. If he wasn’t looking for company she would simply move on.
‘Yes, I’ve seen you.’
‘Man of few words, eh?’ She rolled a cigarette with nimble paint-stained fingers and peered at him from under her fringe as her tongue flicked the paper. Her artist’s eye was tempted, although she painted landscapes, not portraits. Nature at its most raw was what usually attracted her: rocks, earth and the sea. ‘I’ll leave you to your book.’
Alexander laid his book aside and stood. ‘Alexander. Pleased to meet you. Are you painting the brickworks?’ He reached into his pocket and offered her a flame from his lighter.
Efa bent her head and held her hair back. The flare of the flame reflected in the beaten-silver ring on her thumb. ‘The brickworks sell. They’re a local landmark. I’d rather be painting the cliffs but they don’t do so well. I’ve got a thing about rocks.’
Alexander lifted one eyebrow. ‘Can I see?’
‘Hold that.’ She passed him her cigarette and unrolled the canvas against her body to reveal the dark-toothed lines of a broken building, which would have looked savage and forbidding were it not for the glow of the sea in the background, painted with such inspired lightness that it lifted the painting from sombre to stirring.
‘You’re good.’
Efa’s bangles clinked as she rerolled the canvas. ‘Thanks, but if you like that you should see my rocks. That isn’t a chat-up line, by the way.’
Alexander laughed, and for a moment she saw him open and unguarded, the timbre of his gravelled laugh unregulated, free of the tension that bristled in his body language. She smiled at him; it was impossible not to. She was pleased to have prompted the laugh. ‘I’ll be on my way. Just wanted to put a name to the mystery figure.’
‘There’s no mystery here. Stop by again. I’ll make you a coffee next time.’
‘Not anymore there isn’t, and I might just do that.’
––––––––
SHE DID STOP BY AGAIN, on her way to the brickworks. They talked about the weather and cloud formations, staring at the sky as they did so. Before long it became their habit, to share a morning coffee and cigarette.
Efa had lived, in her words, near and around, for years. She entertained Alexander with accounts of local folklore and the local characters. He began to anticipate her visits, brewed fresh coffee, alerted to her arrival by the dogs’ barks and the slap of her satchel against her thigh. They talked about their lives. It baffled Alexander that Efa’s everyday was nearly as rustic as his retreat life in this cottage.
‘Who needs TV and the internet with this outside their door?’
He could see her point, but still. Her existence was so far removed from his own experience, her life so clear it made him wonder if he was getting something wrong. She did have a radio and hot water, ‘and at least I’ve got a shower,’ she told him, amused he hadn’t, while comically edging away from him on the bench.
Efa’s visits meant his days began with laughter, and that was a pleasant relief. Her softly voiced humour ran through him like warm drops of water.
‘It’s the karma of Porth Wen,’ she said, when he tried to explain how the view from this place relaxed him. ‘It blows away the baggage.’
‘I don’t believe in karma, and it would have its work cut out.’
Efa peered at him, creasing the fine lines beside her eyes. ‘So what do you believe in then?’
His instinct was to bat the question away, or to deflect with a joke – ‘Whiskey and good sex’, perhaps – but he baulked at spouting something so shallow. ‘Loyalty, honesty, trust, respect.’ Spoken aloud, it sounded pompous, as crass as the unspoken joke.
‘Blimey! What happened to love and forgiveness? Hard on yourself, aren’t you? Maybe that’s why there’s baggage too heavy to blow away.’
Efa was laughing, her eyes sparkling humour, but the conversation had become too deep for Alexander. He tried to match her wit. ‘What do you think you are? A wise woman or something?’
‘No, I’m just an artist, which means I can see inside your soul.’
‘I bloody hope not.’
‘Let me paint you.’
There it was again, that same request she’d made every day since they’d met. It wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t think of anything more stifling than being studied – especially if she really could see into his soul. He imagined it would look much like the redundant brickworks, derelict and grey... He pulled himself up.
‘It’s time for my walk. Go paint your rocks.’ He took her coffee cup, and Efa collected her satchel without pressing him.
He missed her presence when she was gone. Days at the cottage had begun to feel aimless, and his inactivity chided him. There was work to be done at the practice. He’d stayed away too long.
He could still see Efa in the distance, her body angled forwards into the steep incline of the cliff path. She was just getting on with her life, taking honest pleasure from a simple day and the world she saw around her. Her outlook was refreshing, and suddenly his refusal to let her paint him felt churlish, petty, when she’d given him so much laughter and the gift of banter in his isolation. He’d found a friend, here of all places, when he hadn’t even known he needed one.
He wouldn’t stay much longer, but maybe he would let her paint him before he left.
––––––––
HAVING AGREED TO POSE, the reality of being minutely observed grated. ‘I won’t sit for hours.’
‘I’m not asking you to. Just do your rock thing, rock man.’ Her easel faced the bench beside the cottage, with the whitewashed walls and one square window behind him.
‘Don’t start with that rock-man crap. You’ll be going on about the granite in my soul next.’
‘Or the granite in your eyeballs right now! It isn’t a favour if you’re sulking.’
‘I’m not sulking and isn’t a favour. It’s a thank you. Before I go.’
Efa looked up at the drop in his voice. ‘Say thank you by sitting still then. Just like that.’
He watched her change focus as she framed the picture, looking at him but seeing still life, not person. He relaxed as her brush darted over the canvas in seemingly random daubs. She chewed her lip in concentration and shoved impatiently at her hair when it blew across her face. Alexander experienced an unexpected swell of affection. Am I that absorbed when I’m working? Does treating an animal clear my mind? Is that why I bury myself in work when things go wrong? This trip had at least shown him he didn’t need to do that. He didn’t fall apart when he was left alone with his thoughts. Not if he was careful and kept his mind away from the dark stuff.
‘What is the baggage, then?’
His attention snapped back to her, although she’d spoken so quietly he wondered if he’d heard the question correctly. A needle of irritation hardened the tone of his voice. ‘I agreed to be painted, not probed.’
She didn’t answer.
The sun was warm on his face. He made himself unclench his teeth, berating himself for his curt response to her question. ‘It’s boring. I’m a living cliché. The damaged product of a dysfunctional family.’ The breeze ruffled his hair with the gentlest of touches and he turned his gaze to the sea.
‘Tell me.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘It’s a fairy tale I’d rather not darken this place with.’
‘You think this place only sees it when you speak it out loud?’
He closed his eyes. Was it the place he didn’t want to darken, or her opinion of him? He’d hoped to be someone else here, someone without a past.
His fingers itched for the distraction of a cigarette. He resisted the urge to stand up and go. ‘Mother ran off with another man, and it took me rather too long to get over that.’
Efa nodded, her eyes flicking between the canvas and him, her gaze absorbed and intense.
‘Father turned into a drunken brute and banished her from the castle.’ Alexander felt the dark laugh leap up from inside him. It really was a devilish fairy tale, a comedy of betrayal. ‘Father never got over it, and we all became victims of his bitterness.’
It was hard to think of those dark years after his mother had gone. Looking back was a habit he’d trained himself out of, but the memory surfaced now. The contrast of life at the Hall when she’d lived there, and the loveless chill when she’d gone. The feeling of being trapped in a painful other-world, where loyalty to his father meant hatred for his mother. Of missing her every day, and knowing that ache meant he was less of a man than his father expected him to be.
‘Do you see your mother now?’
Alexander closed his hand on the arm of the bench. ‘Ha! You’ve found the twist in the tale!’ He heard the bitter humour edging his voice, and tried to temper his tone. ‘Yes, we see her now. And as a result of that transgression my lordly father has stricken us out of his will. The castle will pass to a lowly serf.’ He paused. ‘To be fair, the serf has shown more nobility throughout all of this than any of us have. So maybe there’s justice in that after all.’
He thought of James then, stuck at Draymere for all those years after he and Ted escaped. Through the years he spent womanising and playing war games, and Ted made trouble at boarding school and drank his way through university, James struggled on, managing their father and the estate. He didn’t deserve to be stricken. ‘No, that’s not fair. My eldest brother has never been anything but noble.’
Efa’s paintbrush paused. ‘You talk as if you haven’t been, but you went through a lot. Maybe you’re too hard on yourself.’
‘You don’t know me. I’m rather an awful person in the real world. A chip off the old brute’s block.’
‘That’s not what my soulgazing tells me.’ Efa smiled and resumed her painting. ‘It tells me your heart has been broken again.’
‘Not at all. My heart’s made of rock. Isn’t that why you wanted to paint me?’ He laughed again, but the laugh sounded hollow, as if mocking his lie. He folded his arms across his body.
‘Don’t do that, I’ve painted you open armed.’
He uncrossed them again, and watched Efa, her lips parted and her brush moving slower as she picked up her stroke again. Considered, deliberate.
She frowned. ‘Your eyes have been every shade of blue since I started. How am I meant to paint that?’
‘You wanted to.’
‘More chameleon than rock...’ She was talking to herself, stirring colours in a shallow white pot.
‘I don’t let many people look into my soul.’
‘Just the lucky few?’
‘Or the unlucky few, depending on your outlook.’
‘Unlucky? I don’t think so.’
Her contradiction soothed him, met some need he didn’t want to admit. He felt a lightening of spirit that lifted his mood. His earlier affection mingled with something else, an idea, the suggestion of an attraction that confused him. He concentrated on the turn of her paintbrush.
She glanced at him again and laughed, her eyes warm. ‘And now a new shade altogether.’
The tension in his shoulders eased at her apparent sanction, even of this change in the air. He grinned, and she returned to her canvas, but he could see the new awareness in her stance. The kick that he usually got from knowing he was wanted was muted on this occasion.
He knew the dance well enough. The meeting of eyes, the widening of pupils, the thrill of the hunt, not to mention the pleasure at its outcome. The base routine that led from lust to gratification. But Efa was a friend.
She met his gaze. If his eyes were complex, hers were simple: soft blue-grey, still, pupils wide open. He liked that she held his stare without flinch or invitation. Acceptance was what he read, no complication, no undertone.
‘I’m working,’ she said.
He chuckled. She knows the dance too. ‘For much longer? This bench is awfully hard.’
‘Yes, for much longer. I can get you a cushion if your tender arse needs it.’
He smiled and closed his eyes, easy in the moment. The breeze carried the freshest of air, the melodic jingle of Efa’s bangles, the gentle thump of waves...
He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that, his mind pleasantly empty to all but sensation. When Efa spoke again it surprised him.
‘Almost done.’
‘Can I look?’
‘In a minute.’ The brush was in her left hand now, its tip pointing skyward. Efa chewed the end of it as she studied the painting.
The action stirred him. ‘Let me see.’
She stepped back.
Alexander rose from the bench and took a few long strides to the easel. He may not have read invitation in her eyes, but she had clearly read it in his. He caught her hand as it flew to her face to push her hair aside. Her lips parted, he licked his thumb and gently smudged the dash of cobalt in the laughter lines beside her eye. He moved to lead her to the cottage, but she stopped him. ‘No, out here.’
And it was Efa who pulled him down onto the grass, folding her legs beneath her, taking off her boots with a fumbling haste that hinted of nervousness.
‘Slow down.’ He caught her hands when they moved to his shirt buttons.
They lay on the grass, side by side, and he stroked her hair away from her face. Her lips were supple, tentative, yielding when he pressed his own to them. Unfamiliar ground, this slow, unfolding of desire, the sidestep from friendship to passion. It caused him hesitation but then her arms furled around his neck, and when she pulled him close the warmth in her embrace warmed him too.
Alexander knew that he was able to give with his hands in a way he seemed incapable of with his mind or his heart, and Efa’s pliable curves were a novel surprise: softly rounded, welcoming. Her grey eyes watched him as her hand slipped inside his trousers. ‘I knew I’d named you rock man for a reason.’
Her humour melted his lingering confusion, and Alexander laughed.
––––––––
SATED IN THE AFTERMATH, Efa lay on her back with Alexander’s arm around her shoulders. ‘Nice surprise.’ She nudged her elbow into his ribs.
‘It was. You have been. And it’s a long time since anyone surprised me.’ He nudged her back.
‘But this won’t get the brickworks painted, and without my brickwork paintings there won’t be bread on the table.’ She sat up and pulled her discarded clothes towards her.
‘Bread? Funny, I saw you as more of a bean-sprout sort. Don’t tell me you eat gluten?’
‘Yup. Smothered with butter. And I also shag mystery men I find lurking on my cliffs.’ She picked up his shirt and dropped it over his face. ‘Go for your walk, I’m going to paint my rocks.’
‘You’ve worn me out.’
‘One shag? You lightweight!’
‘Not the shag. Making me sit for hours while you painted.’
There was none of the awkwardness that Alexander had feared. Efa folded her easel and packed her satchel. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Oh, did you say you were off?’
‘Yes, but not early. I’ll have time for coffee.’
––––––––
WHEN EFA WAS GONE, the sadness found him. It crept over him while he was cleaning the cottage and gathering his belongings, bringing with it an unwanted longing for another body he knew he would never lie with again. He called to the dogs and made his way down the steep path to the beach, striding across the wet sand to the edge of the sea where the waves chased each other to crash on the shore. He breathed in the salty air. It was time to cleanse the memory of her now. Time to accept the lesson of his foolishness and get on with his life. And if he had to carry this sadness as a reminder of his loss, then he would use it as the spur to make sure he didn’t succumb to such weakness again.
––––––––
HE SHARED COFFEE WITH Efa the following morning. The same easy banter, no hint of the flirtation that had rippled their friendship. She asked him if he would be back to visit again. Alexander thought he would. At midmorning he picked his way along the now familiar path that ran towards the village.
He said his farewells as he and the terriers climbed into the Aston. ‘Hwyl fawr, Porth Wen.’