A Trick of the Mind (17 page)

‘It must have been ghastly,’ was all I could say.

‘Yes it was,’ he said. ‘We both loved the sea.’

He paused, stood up awkwardly with his crutches, leant on the balcony and gazed out over the river. After a little while he turned and smiled at me, the dimples that I found so irresistible
appearing in his cheeks.

‘It’s OK though, Ellie, it was a while ago now and I’m ready for a new relationship. Come here.’

I went to him, and he put his arm around me, pulling me to him, and kissed me again, long and hard, and as he did so I had an overwhelming urge to heal everything he’d gone through.

‘The trouble with having this blasted leg to get used to is I won’t be able to go out on the water,’ he said at last. ‘It’ll feel like my wings have been clipped.
I’m determined to get back out there just as soon as they’ve signed me off at the clinic. I’m no good without a boat to muck about in.’

‘Even after what happened to your wife? What was her name?’

‘Stef. But it hasn’t changed how I feel about the sea. It’s where I feel closest to her. Oh, sorry, Ellie, that’s probably a bit insensitive of me, telling you that.
Forgive me.’

‘No, it’s OK. It’s fine.’

‘Look, what you have to understand about me is that the sea’s in my blood, it always was. Her accident doesn’t change that.’

‘What exactly happenned?’

I couldn’t help it, I needed to know more.

Little lights had come on all over the river and high above it too. The sky was alight with a million tiny beacons like fireflies. Boats passed, lit up, music blaring, you could hear laughter
from the decks where people were partying.

‘I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. But then I guess we don’t know each other that well. It’s so hard to get it all straight in my head. How long we’ve known
each other. What you know and don’t know about me. It’s ghastly. I still feel I’m sliding about on ice trying to get a foothold – that there are these fragments floating
about in a vacuum that need putting together but just keep eluding me.’

‘I hardly know anything about you,’ I said.

At least this was true.

‘No, it was one of our first dates, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, hating myself for lying.

‘That night in the pub in Blythburgh,’ he said, ‘was to be the beginning of the first weekend we’d spend together. We were going to go sailing.’

‘Yes.’ I wanted him to tell me more, without appearing to probe.

‘When I first saw you, we fancied each other immediately, didn’t we?’

‘We did.’

‘You know what though? You’re much prettier than I thought at first. You are a million times more gorgeous than I remember. And sweeter. We were going to have such a romantic time in
Southwold. But those guys in the pub didn’t like the idea, for some reason, I think they felt they had some kind of hold over you, being a local girl. And gorgeous with it. And then that one
got a bit heavy with me. And I remember leaving, and you told me not to. But the old drink got the better of me. You were right though, Ellie. Look where it got me, walking off like
that!’

‘It was a pretty big mistake.’

‘It was.’

This was the moment I should tell him we’d never met before I came to see him in hospital. This was the moment I should say I was pretty sure now that my car had hit him on the road that
evening. But that I intended to make up for it by being there for him.

‘Patrick, I—’

‘And you were the only one who came when you heard. Even though you hadn’t known me very long. You have no idea how much that means to me.’

He took my face in his hands, and looked into my eyes. His own eyes were so intense. So full of feeling. Then he kissed me and the kiss was long and deep and lovely.

‘You’re the one I need, Ellie, you can’t imagine how grateful I am to you,’ he said at last, holding me close to him.

How could I disillusion him after all? When he’d been through so much?

He sat down again, and I leant over the wheelchair, wanting to leave, unable to, wanting to stay. He put his hands up and began to unbutton my shirt, peeling it off.

‘You’re so lovely,’ he said.

His hands on my skin released a warmth that infused my whole body.

I knew now nothing mattered, nothing else in the world. Even if I found out after all that I had had nothing to do with Patrick’s accident and owed him nothing, I couldn’t have
walked away any more.

I would stay with him whatever happened. I would help him learn to walk. I was mesmerised by him. His courage. His determination to get up and get on.

The tragedy in his past fascinated me. The vulnerability in him that was there, just beneath the surface, intrigued me.

I was falling for him.

I moved my hand down to his stump and caressed it, gently, through the bandage, asking him if it hurt.

‘Not the way you are touching it,’ he whispered. ‘I think you’re healing it.’ And then he pulled me onto his lap.

I could still feel Patrick when I left, on me, in me, his hands, his mouth, I could still smell him. I could feel the way his bandaged leg grazed mine. I couldn’t get him
out of my mind.

‘Come back soon,’ he called as I left.

And of course I did go back.

I went back every night the following week. I learnt more and more about Patrick. It was becoming crystal clear that he was right when he said no one else had bothered to visit him. That I was
the only one who cared. So I continued to let him think that I was a girl he’d arranged to meet to go sailing with in Southwold. It really seemed immaterial now since in reality we were
getting on so well.

We found out we shared musical tastes. It was mostly romantic, mainstream. Ed Sheeran, John Mayer. He liked Beyoncé too, and Adele. I could hear Finn scoff, but it didn’t matter. I
hadn’t realised how freeing it would be to break away from that relationship, how set in our ways we had become. How set in my ways
I
had become. There was another way, there were
new roads ahead and life felt full of promise and a broadening-out that would encompass things I’d never done or dreamt of doing before.

I found out that, in addition to cycling and sailing, Patrick had circles of friends for each of his interests, distinct groups who he had always met on certain evenings; his golfing buddies,
his poker buddies, the guys he met for drinks. ‘I’ll pick up all those things again once I get used to the prosthetic,’ he told me. ‘For now, all I need is you.’

He told me that after the sea, his great love was for the Thames, that he had worked on it for a few years before he went abroad and made a fortune getting involved in fish futures, glass eels
and other things which were, apparently, now fetching almost as much as gold in futures markets. He explained that he dealt these things online, it didn’t involve actually touching or holding
or even seeing any fish. ‘It’s like a currency,’ he said. ‘We buy and sell, watch the markets, do deals.’

‘How strange. To get rich on fish.’

‘Strange but true,’ he said.

‘So that’s how you can afford a penthouse apartment in Wapping.’

‘Indeed.’

‘What did you work as, when you were on the river, Patrick?’ We were lying on our fronts on his bed, looking out of the window over the Thames. Pepper was on the floor chewing his
favourite rubber bone.

‘I was a lighterman.’

‘What is a lighterman?’

‘A lighterman, my dear, is authorised to carry cargo on the river, whereas a waterman carries passengers.’

‘Goodness. I never knew that distinction before.’

A light breeze blew through the windows.

‘Anything you want to know about the river you only have to ask me.’

I found his cookery books and he revealed that he was a good cook and liked Pacific rim dishes which he made quickly and efficiently, sitting at the table in his wheelchair, or
holding a crutch under one arm. He would text a list of ingredients which I bought on my way back to his after painting all day.

‘Can’t remember where I put the wok,’ he said, one evening. ‘Actually I’m not even sure I have one.’ He sounded irritable. It sometimes affected him like
this, the aftermath of his accident. He was in the kitchen rummaging through a cupboard, which was tricky for him with one arm on the crutch. I looked for it for him, telling him to sit and rest,
but there was no wok to be seen and we made do with a frying pan.

‘I’m sure I had one,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve always preferred cooking in a wok.’

‘It doesn’t matter, Patrick, it’s delicious anyway,’ I said, scooping up mouthfuls of gingery stir-fry, wondering in what other ways his amnesia would rear its head.

‘What I want to know about you, though you must have told me before,’ he said, ‘is, where do you do your painting?’

‘Aha. At the moment I do it on the sitting-room floor in my little flat in Mile End.’

‘On the
floor
?’

‘’Fraid so. I’m just a poverty-stricken artist, Patrick. You have to realise that. I don’t have great assets.’

‘You’ve got that house by the sea, why don’t you go down there and use it?’

I shrugged.

‘Maybe, one day. But I have friends and work here. Anyway. It’s OK. I manage in the flat, on the floor for now,’ I said.

‘You need a studio, baby. I’ve got just the place for you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told you I’m taking care of a load of studios over on Trinity Buoy Wharf. I’ll take you down there and you can choose one. You can’t work on the floor if you’re
going to be big in the art world. I want to see you selling your work for serious money. But first you need a proper place to work.’

Trinity Buoy Wharf, Patrick told me, was on the stretch of the Thames known as Bugsby’s Reach.

I looked up into his lovely smiling handsome face and stepped towards him. I put my arms around him and my lips against his.

He really was too good to be true.

CHAPTER TWENTY

We made our first visit to Trinity Buoy Wharf the following week.

Patrick used his crutches as much as possible, rather than depending on the wheelchair. Sometimes, he didn’t need the crutches at all, determined to manage on his prosthetic.

‘You’re doing really well, Patrick.’

‘With what?’

‘Your walking, of course!’

‘Ah, yes! Well, I guess being in tip-top physical condition helps,’ he said, grinning at my amazement. ‘And a one hundred per cent positive attitude.’

‘You can hardly tell you’re using the prosthetic. I’m sure you’ll soon be running, cycling again!’

‘I hope,’ he said, pulling me towards him, kissing the top of my head.

I drove, Patrick beside me, navigating. It was a warm May day, and the city was throbbing with music, and traffic and the promise of hot nights out after work.

Trinity Buoy Wharf wasn’t far from Wapping, east past the Isle of Dogs then further along the river, over a busy junction.

‘You must know it, you being an artist and a Londoner,’ Patrick said as we waited for the lights to change.

‘No. I don’t know it. I never knew about it.’

‘Hang a right here, then,’ he said. ‘It’s just before you get to the ExCeL and the cable cars.’

We turned right at the next roundabout and drove between the tall walls of dilapidated brick warehouses, host to buddleia blooming madly through their walls. Then we were there. It was a very
different view of the river to the one from Patrick’s apartment. Here was an industrial landscape, warehouses, containers, the spikes of The O2 on the other side and the pillars of the cable
cars pointing up to the hazy blue sky. Behind us, to the west, the towering blocks of Canary Wharf glinted in the sunlight.

The water looked browner, murkier here than upriver.

‘There are whole swathes of the riverside that can’t be developed,’ Patrick was saying. ‘They have protected status. So while you have areas that have been built on that
are worth millions, other riverside locations are left to rack and ruin. These warehouses are gradually deteriorating. They are beside what are known as deep-water ports which have to be kept for
ships to pick stuff up, ballast and sand and so on. And no one can do a thing about it. What a waste of space, don’t you think, when property in London is at such a premium?’

‘I’m amazed. I’d thought every spare square inch of the city had been bought up and developed.’

‘I know. It’s good for struggling artists though, isn’t it? It means there’s space available for containers. Now, we need to show you the studio. Turn left
here.’

We parked in the wide yard flanked on one side by a block made of steel containers painted in vibrant primary colours. On the other sides were older brick buildings and warehouses. ‘Those
are all dance studios and prop workshops and stuff,’ Patrick explained. ‘The former Chain and Buoy Store where they made and tested buoys. And see that?’ He waved over to the
right. ‘That’s the only lighthouse in London.’

The river smell hit us as we got out of the car – silty mud, city grime and, faintly, frying from the nearby diner.

‘The whole area makes you want to look up, doesn’t it?’ he said, taking my hand.

My heart leapt at the feel of his fingers, the way they curled around mine and squeezed them tightly.

He was right. In London I usually hurried along looking at my feet, deep in thought, hemmed in by buildings. I rarely thought to look at the sky. Here though, everything pointed upwards. The
spikes on the dome of The O2 opposite. The columns that held the cable cars moving in a continuous stream like spiders crawling busily along a high-slung thread of silk up in the sky. Pylons
marching across to the east in what might have been a perfect example of perspective, each apparently smaller than the one in front. The overcrowded city had, here, taken to the skies.

Things were in perpetual motion; the stream of traffic on the A13, the red Docklands trains hurrying up and over the old wharves, the boats nosing their way through the surface of the Thames,
planes droning overhead from City Airport. Beneath us the Thames water was a deep toffee brown, patchy in places with lighter cloud where the mud had been churned up.