Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (7 page)

Legs shaking, I clamber out. “Why?”

“I have to return his cages before he misses them.” Beneath the brim of her soft brown hat, Claudia’s gray eyes twinkle with triumph. “This is a nature preserve with plenty of old oak trees and lots of nice juicy acorns.”

That night I share my bed with a handsome silver-gray tabby named Max and wake up to the smell of bacon and eggs. I pull on a pair of old jeans and an Irish sweater, and follow my nose to the kitchen.

Its uneven plaster walls are colorwashed in lavender. Pine shelves, heavy and knotted, hold cookbooks and casserole dishes and blue earthenware plates I remember from childhood. Bunches of dried sage and rosemary hang from oak beams that criss-cross the ceiling; copper pans gleam from their hooks on the wall. The middle of the room is dominated by Claudia’s bleached wooden table. The one she used to paint on. The window, unfettered by curtains, looks out across a carpet of heather. Beyond lies the sea.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Claudia says, piling my plate with an old-fashioned English fry-up—grilled kidneys and tomatoes, bacon and eggs, and lashings of fried bread. Between her and Sophie, I’ve eaten more cholesterol and carbs in the past ten days than I have in ten years at home.

We gossip while eating and then Claudia shoves off to check on her traps. I head the other way, toward the water. The ground ends and I look down sheer granite cliffs to a small, crescent-shaped beach about two hundred feet below. How do people get to it? I don’t see a path. Maybe it’s one of those stubborn bits of coastline that refuses to give way to picnic hampers and daytrippers.

“Come along, Jill,” Claudia calls out.

Her back garden is an Impressionist painting—a tumble of textures and hues with bright points of light that focus the eye. Snapdragons and nasturtiums, all the colors in a box of crayons, spill across the path, alongside clumps of Michaelmas daisies that dissolve into clouds of white gypsophila and bright blue plumbago. I smell lavender and thyme. A hint of rosemary. Beside the back door, two stone rabbits crouch beneath a garden bench. A wooden squirrel perches atop a pile of clay pots. My shoes are muddy, so I scrape them on a hedgehog boot brush with beady eyes and an upturned snout. I pat its little head before going inside.

Claudia’s picking up her car keys when I reach the front hall. “Hurry up. We’re wasting the best part of the day.”

“Why don’t you relax and let me drive?”

She hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” I say.

It’s a day filled with windswept beaches and tranquil bays; of solitary stone farmhouses and stunted trees that grow sideways out of the soil. We drive through sunwashed villages with streets barely wide enough for a car, and past tiny beaches where old wooden boats lie in the sand waiting for the next tide to release them.

At four o’clock, we stop for tea in a café near Land’s End. Clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam. Milk bottles filled with sweet peas and freesia. Lace doilies, bone china cups. Starched napkins, white linen tablecloths.

“When’s the last time you saw your mother?” Claudia says.

I almost choke on a scone. “The day I left England with Richard. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

My mother, if she’s still alive, would be eighty-seven by now. Does Claudia know where she is? If so, I hope she doesn’t tell me because I really don’t want to know. I never talk about my mother, not even with my own sons. Like all small boys, they used to be fascinated by monsters and gargoyles. They played scary games, and their unknown grandmother was always cast as a witch or a vampire. They weren’t far off the mark. I gulp at my tea.

“Careful, it’s hot.” Claudia looks at me, eyebrows raised, waiting.

Dammit, if anyone deserves an explanation, she does. “I tried to see her, once, about twenty years ago. Richard had a business meeting in London. I phoned my mother and asked if I could bring the boys out for a visit. I thought, stupidly, it might be easier for us to patch things up if the kids were there.”

“Surely Edith wanted to see her grandchildren.”

“You’d have thought so,” I say. “They’re the only ones she’s got.”

“What happened?”

“She called me a slut, said my sons were a couple of poor little bastards, and hung up.” Dear God, I can’t believe I’m carrying on like this, telling Claudia stuff I’ve kept hidden for so long, I’ve almost convinced myself it never happened.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Things got worse between us after Daddy died.”

“I know, but don’t beat yourself up over Edith’s lack of mothering skills. None of it was your fault. It was—” Claudia rearranges spoons and puts the lid back on the sugar bowl.

I lean forward. “What?”

“Nothing.” Claudia stands up. “I’ll take care of this.” She places a ten-pound note on the table and something in the set of her jaw tells me to back off.

It’s dark by the time we get back to Claudia’s cottage. The phone rings, Claudia answers, and hands the receiver to me. “It’s Sophie,” she says.

“Jill, Lizzie rang up. I’ve been trying to get you for ages.”

All my alarm sensors go off at once. “What’s wrong?”

“Cathy’s going to hit Connecticut.”

“Who?”

“The hurricane.”

“Cassie!” I glance at my watch. “What time did she call? Did she sound worried?”

“I’ve been gone all day. Working. Lizzie left a message.”

When I finally reach Lizzie, the connection’s so bad we both have to shout.

“Fergus and I are going to your place now to batten down the hatches,” she yells.

“Should I come back?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she says. “What would you do? Stand on the beach and pretend to be Moses?” There’s a burst of static, then Lizzie again. “Fergus has a truckload of plywood. We’ll put some on your windows and—”

The line goes dead.

Claudia hands me a glass of wine. “What’s wrong?”

I fill her in and she suggests we turn on the TV. “Maybe the news will have something.”

But it doesn’t.

“In less than twenty-four hours,” I tell Claudia, “my living-room furniture could be floating in three feet of water. Not,” I add, “that it would be any great loss.”

Claudia pats her lap and the tabby jumps up. “Tell me about your cottage.”

“A few small rooms with a fabulous view.” I shrug. “It was my reward for enduring fourteen years with Richard. He got a new wife and the mansion in Mount Kisko; I got the kids and a beach cottage with rotten floorboards and bad plumbing.”

“Would you like to get married again?”

“Sure,” I tell her. “I’d love to find the right guy, but most men my age want women twenty years younger.”

“Not all of them,” Claudia says. “Look at Prince Charles.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why did you really leave England?” Claudia offers more wine.

I hold out my glass. “Because I needed to get away.”

“But why America? You could’ve moved to Ireland instead, or Wales.”

“I thought I was in love with Richard.”

“You were in love with someone else, though. Weren’t you?”

The night of Keith’s nineteenth birthday, Colin and I went to the fort. By ourselves.

While the adults chatted over cocktails in the Lombard’s living room, us kids hung about in the kitchen. Sophie and Roddy Slade were wrapped around each other, slow dancing, oblivious of everyone but themselves. Hugh and Keith were arguing politics with two boys from school. Colin took my hand and we slipped out the back door. I don’t think anyone saw us leave.

For once, I had no trouble with the plank. Colin went across first. He turned and held out his arms. I let go of the branch I was holding and floated toward him, not caring about the ten feet of blackness beneath me.

We sat on the splintery floor amid dried leaves and bits of twigs and who knows how many dead insects, not daring to move, until Colin lay down. He tucked his hands beneath his head. I didn’t know what to do. I continued to sit, looking anywhere but at him. This wasn’t like being at the pictures. It wasn’t like being in his dad’s car. Music filtered across the Lombards’ back garden. Everyone, except us, was at Keith’s party.

Colin and I were in the fort.
Alone
. The possibilities scared me to death.

He reached for my hand and pulled me toward him. We kissed. His tongue found mine and his hands fumbled beneath my blouse. It had a Peter Pan collar and puff sleeves and I absolutely loathed it. Colin’s fingers undid the clasp of my bra—something else I loathed because it wasn’t lacy or sexy like the ones Sophie wore. It snapped open and my breasts fell loose. He took off his shirt; then my blouse. My nipples grazed his chest and I gasped, all worries about my ugly clothes forgotten. We weren’t Jill and Colin any more. We were Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster, and this wasn’t the fort, it was a deserted beach in Hawaii.

“Oh, Jilly,” he moaned, wrapping his arms around me. One of his legs slipped between mine. He tensed, then shuddered, and I could feel warmth and wetness.

I had no idea what had happened. I honestly didn’t.

Not then.

Colin kept hugging me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to be like this.”

I hugged him back, bewildered, and willing to forgive him anything.

“I’ll take you home,” he said, helping me with my blouse. My fingers were shaking. I couldn’t do up the buttons.

He dropped me at the end of my driveway. He kissed me goodnight.

I never saw him again.

Cornwall

September 2010

Claudia’s voice, yelling up the stairs, wakes me at eight the next morning. “Jillian, come here. That storm’s on the news.”

I leap out of bed and race down to the living room without bothering to put on my robe. Claudia’s minuscule TV is on.

The screen switches to a clip of generic storm coverage with waves crashing over a seawall and trees bent sideways by hurricane-force winds. The camera pans a deserted street, awash with water, where a solitary figure struggles to remain upright. Bits of lumber and cardboard fly past. The news item ends. It’s followed by a report from the London stock exchange.

Claudia turns it off. “How close is all this to you?”

“Too close.”

She nods. “Tea?”

I follow her into the kitchen where sunlight streams through the window and the kettle welcomes us with a cheerful whistle. Hurricanes and floods seem half a lifetime away. Poor Zachary. He’s terrified of storms. Last one we had, he scuttled under my bed and didn’t emerge till I opened a can of tuna.

Claudia places two mugs on the table.

“I feel so helpless,” I tell her. “I ought to be doing something.”

“Like what?”

“Corralling my cat and worrying about the roof blowing off, I guess.” I look around Claudia’s lovely kitchen and notice a calendar on the wall. It’s a delicate woodland scene with squirrels and badgers, rabbits, mice, and a fox. Butterflies dance like marionettes on hidden strings against a shaft of sunlight. Sprays of flowers—white daisies, blue forget-me-nots, yellow buttercups—grow amid ferns at the base of a large weeping willow.

“Did you do this?” I say.

Claudia nods. “I do the odd painting for a wildlife society. They use them for greetings cards, wrapping paper, and calendars.” She takes it off the wall. “Here. I’ve got plenty more.”

“Thanks. It’s fabulous.”

The phone rings.

“It’s my daughter again,” Claudia says. “She wants to speak to you.”

Sophie sounds anxious. “Heard anything from home?”

“The lines are down. I can’t get through.”

“Jill, I know you were planning to come back tomorrow, but could you come up today, instead?”

“Why?”

“Because I prepared way too much food for last night’s banquet. Keith and Penny Lombard are in town for the weekend, without the kids, so I invited them for lunch tomorrow. Roddy Slade’s coming, too.” She pauses. “Oh, and bring Mum with you. Tell her the doctor can fit her in on Monday.”

“Roddy Slade?” Claudia says, when I tell her about the change in plans. “That’s a name from the past.”

“It sure is.”

“I wonder what he looks like now.”

“You’ll get to see for yourself,” I say, then tell her about the doctor’s appointment.

“Oh, bother,” Claudia says. “Who’ll take care of my squirrels?”

Max jumps on the table. “What about your cat?”

“I’ll ask Nora to feed him.” Claudia waves toward the front of her house. “She lives right across the street.”

“You mean she’s—”

“The farmer’s wife.” Claudia grins. “Her heart’s in the right place. She doesn’t like what her husband’s doing to those squirrels any more than I do.”

“Will she tend to the traps?”

“No, but now and then she tells me where he hides them. I hate to think what would happen if he ever found out.” Claudia shudders. “He’d probably drown her as well.”

We get back to London and find Sophie in her kitchen surrounded by stacks of disposable casserole dishes and large flat trays covered with tinfoil. Her hair’s a mess and her hands are covered with pastry dough. While she and Claudia exchange floury hugs, I pick up the phone and try to reach Lizzie. No luck. The lines are still dead.

“Did you get through?” Sophie says, sliding a pie in the oven.

“Nope. Have you heard anything more?”

“Just what I saw on TV this morning. But it must be over by now, surely.”

“I hope so.”

Claudia takes my arm and pulls me into the living room. “About this little party tomorrow,” she whispers. “Sophie didn’t cook too much food. This is really for you.”