Astonishing Splashes of Colour (45 page)

I saw my mother die. Sometimes while I lie awake in a silent ward, I go over it in my mind. I think I can see it again. The bright colours of the skirt, her scream, my scream. But I’m not sure if I can remember the feeling. Going over it, replaying it, freezing the image, I try to grasp the terror, but I can’t quite. I’m sure it’s there, somewhere inside me. I want to find it because I think it would help me sort it out. I want to recapture my last memory of my mother and frame it. It’s the only part of her I have left.

In between crying for Martin, I have started to cry for myself, for the small child on a mountain in Austria, who watched her mother die.

James is with me. He’s always here. Sometimes he talks, sometimes he reads, sometimes he just sits. When he’s not with me physically, he’s in my head. I tidy the blankets for him, rearrange the flowers, but he still finds something to do. My books need to be facing the
same direction, he wants to straighten the pillows. He tries to be frivolous. One day he brings a tiny clockwork frog, and we watch it whizzing across the top of my water jug. Ninety-five percent for effort. But I put it safely away when he comes again. I can see it disturbs him.

He has changed. I’m afraid that he likes me as a child, so he can look after me, and when I grow up, he might become redundant.

A letter arrives from Smith, Horrocks and Smith, solicitors. The Peter Smith on my answer machine. He should have written in the first place, then we might have sorted things out earlier, although I would probably have thrown it away unread. Granny and Grandpa have left me their house in Lyme Regis. I am greatly moved by this. No strangers will be moving through their dust, sweeping it away, modernizing it.

“What about Margaret?” I say to James. “Shouldn’t they leave it to her?”

“You’re named in the will. There’s no provision for Margaret.”

“She didn’t telephone them, I’m sure. That was a lie.”

James shrugged. “Does it matter? They wanted you to have the house.”

So many things we don’t know. We think we know them, but we’re wrong. We think we remember things, but the memories aren’t reliable.

“Should we go and live there permanently?” says James.

“I don’t know,” I say, thinking about our separate flats. Why does it matter that you live next door to each other? Dr. Cross said. You can make your own rules. “We could just use it for holidays.”

He seems pleased. He doesn’t want to lose the bare empty air in his flat. “That’s a good idea.”

“Then we can have holidays whenever we want to without going on an aeroplane.” He smiles. “Once they let me out of prison.”

He stops smiling. “Don’t say that.”

“But it might happen.” I want him to be prepared.

“Let’s worry about that when we need to. Not now.”

We sit in one of our silences.

“I’ve been to see Dr. Cross,” he says very quickly. “She’s arranging for me to see a counsellor. There’s a long waiting list, though.”

I open my mouth to speak, then shut it again. I want to ask him what he said, what she said, how it went, whether he likes her. Then I see that he can’t tell me. This is the man who can’t cope with a brightly coloured rug.

“Should I try to find my real father?” I say one day.

He watches me. He is careful. “What do you think?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Maybe, then.”

So maybe I will go backwards. It might be possible. There must be people who remember the hippies in the pink van. I have the sense that I’m catching up with myself at last, after all those dreams of chasing my own skirt through empty rooms, all the wandering in circles, the trips round the number 11 bus route.

“James …”

He waits. He knows what I’m going to say.

I can’t go on.

One of us has to say it. “We won’t be able to have children,” he says.

“No,” I say in a low voice. “No forwards.”

“We can do other things.”

Yes. Have a cat, a dog.

“There are lots of people who don’t have children,” says James.

“Yes,” I say.

The silence hangs around us.

“We have to manage without—make a life that doesn’t involve children, doing things we want to do.”

I find it hard to speak. I look at the ceiling and see a tiny spider rushing along with an appearance of purpose. Does it know where it’s going? I think. Or where it’s come from?

“Yes,” I say.

acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following:

Jackie Gay, Emma Hargrave, Penny Rendall and Tindal Street Press for all their help and support;

Chris Morgan, Pauline Morgan, Gina Standring (without whom there would be twice as many adverbs in this novel), Jeff Phelps, Dorothy Hunt and Joel Lane for their many valuable words of criticism and belief;

Terry, Yvonne, Anna, Simon and Nicholas Gateley for their generosity in giving me space in their house.

P
RAISE FOR
Astonishing Splashes of Colour

“Beautifully subtle…. It draws the reader in page after page.”

—
Boston Globe

“Morrall’s ability to plot the destruction and reshaping of Kitty’s mysteries, while still plausibly unpacking her character, is nothing short of stupendous.
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
is a brave and startling book, tinted, shaded, and stained like life itself.”

—
Philadelphia Inquirer

“Compelling…. Morrall is a sure, sharp writer, and she understands the single-minded nature of grief—Kitty’s thoughts are determined and clear, even as they spin wildly out of control. The other characters are astutely observed, each one appealingly unusual without falling prey to seeming artificially odd.”

—
Newsweek

“With strong, first-person narration and a uniquely fresh perspective…. [Kitty] lives on the periphery, observing people while walking among them, and we accompany her on this often unreal journey.”

—
Miami Herald

“
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
remains ‘a core of truth, suffused with a golden glow, becoming more pleasurable the more [it] wander[s].’ For even madness is not without order and logic; it has a vision and an arc of forward movement even when it’s turning in on itself.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“This finely constructed novel … [by a Man] Booker Prize [Finalist] … should please readers of both popular and literary fiction.”

—
Library Journal
(starred review)

“Wellington, a memorable heroine, narrates
Astonishing Splashes of Colour,
a terrific debut novel by British writer Clare Morrall.”

—
Buffalo News

“A remarkably tender and unblinking look at a woman coming apart in the wake of her grief…. What’s truly ‘astonishing’ is how Clare Morrall reveals the fugue state as a work of art, illuminating the creativity behind the sorrow and how we subsist on a diet of our own stories when there’s nothing else to eat…. Equally dangerous and endearing,
Astonishing Splashes of Colour
is a poignant tour through the many moods of loss.”

—Laurie Fox, author of
The Lost Girls

“Morrall has created an ethereal novel of loss and redemption that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. As the story is told through Kitty’s engagingly intimate voice, the reader is compelled to follow her wanderings, searches, and flights. Characters are brilliantly drawn, the pacing is perfect, and the tone is never maudlin. A finalist for the Man Booker Prize, this is a novel to be savored.”

—
Booklist

“Astonishing Splashes of Colour
commands us from the first page…. As Kitty hurtles toward madness, we are unable not to follow. And to care. To care very, very much.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of
Twelve Times Blessed

“An extraordinary, gripping novel written with no sentimentality. A wonderful piece of writing—it is astonishing that she has never been published before.”

—Professor John Carey, chair of the Man Booker Prize

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Tindal Street Press Ltd.

A hardcover edition of this book was published in the United States in 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

ASTONISHING SPLASHES OF COLOUR Copyright © 2004 by Clare Morrall.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03517-2

First Harper Perennial edition published 2005.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Morrall, Clare.

    Astonishing splashes of colour / by Clare Morrall.—1st ed.

      p. cm.

    ISBN 0-06-073445-0

     1. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 2. Birmingham (England)— Fiction. 3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Book reviewing—Fiction. 5. Childlessness—Fiction. 6. Married women—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6113.O75A75 2004

823’.92—dc22                                                                                 2004040895

ISBN-10: 0-06-073446-9 (pbk.)

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-073446-6 (pbk.)

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