The New Mrs D (4 page)

‘Here we are,’ he said, reappearing from the outhouse with a grotesque pair of wooden clogs. ‘This is all there was. Could have sworn there were some sandals in there. I could lend you some of my shoes?’ With the poker-hot floor still searing through my soles, a pair of fig leaves would have done right now. However, glancing at his feet, which were at least a size eleven, I decided against the Binnie-the-Clown look, smiled and went for Binnie-the-Clog-Dancer.

‘Guess you’ve been to Holland recently?’ I said, holding out my hands for the shoes.

‘Not me, my friend,’ he replied, brushing off a few cobwebs. ‘And not recently.’

‘Great!’ I laughed. ‘Loud, ugly
and
fusty shoes.’

The rest of the class were still waiting and, as I made my way over, all eyes on me, Chris introduced us.

‘Everyone,’
CLOP. CLOP.
‘This is my good friend, Bernice.’
CLOP CLOP CLOP.

‘Everyone’ was smiling at me, (and the clogs), yet a weird apprehension – bringing about a fresh desire to vomit – took over.
‘I’m Bernice and, oops . . . this is my orange juice.’
For the first time it began to sink in that I was going to do all these new things alone. There was very little I’d done alone socially in my entire adult life and
nothing
, as it happened, that I’d done before wearing silly, wooden clogs. Perhaps a yodel would be appropriate?

As Chris turned, at last, to the task of setting up his materials, a petite, elderly lady with grey hair held neatly in a tight bun waved a sheet of paper in my face. She reminded me of Mrs Pepperpot, a tiny character from some much-loved books of my childhood. Staring down at the clogs, which were the most uncomfortable chunks of wood I’d ever worn (out of a list of none), she said, ‘We all hae stickers,’ in a thick Glaswegian accent. ‘How are ye spelling Bernice?’ ‘GRETA’ was emblazoned on her own sticker.

My relief that any difficult conversations with Chris were over for now was overtaken by a moment of confusion, as it took a few seconds for my brain to decipher Greta’s question. Not because of her Scottish accent, but because trains whizz through Glasgow’s underground system slower than she spoke. ‘Er . . . B.I.N.N.I.E.,’ I spelled out. ‘Most people call me Binnie.’

David called me Binnie. Up until I’d met him, I had been Bernice. Why had I forgotten that?

Beaming an enormous, toothy smile, Greta said, ‘Och, that’s whit we cry they fellaes that tak wir bins awa in Glesga, eh Hughie?’ Chuckling at her own joke – which was just as well because it took a few seconds for me to make out what she was saying – she nudged the little old man beside her who was transfixed by my clogs. He regarded my face over tiny, round glasses before winking.

‘Well, hello young lady,’ he said, his twinkling, mischievous eyes giving me an appreciative once-over. ‘Nice to see mair o’ the talent’s arrived!’

My immediate reaction to comments like this from strangers was often one of outrage. But something behind Hughie’s cheeky smile made me feel at ease, like a kindly, familiar old uncle had just told me how cute I was.

‘Och, awa, Hughie, ye wee flirty Wullie, ye,’ Greta scolded with a somewhat sharper nudge this time, before turning
back to me. ‘Ma husband’s a wee bit lippy, hen. Yeh’ll get used tae it.’

I did the polite laugh again, though I’d hardly grasped a single, solitary word.

‘Hello, Willie,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have much talent where painting is concerned. I don’t know anything about art.’

‘Well, ma name’s Hughie,’ he hooted, ‘but if ye really want to meet the wee guy . . .’

‘Ahem. Do you know Van Gogh, Bernice?’ Chris cut in.

‘Not personally . . .’

‘Well, may I introduce you, as I do to all my new students,’ he said, pointing to a slate plaque hanging off a nail on one of the pergola beams. Chalked upon it were the words:

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint’

then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.

I smiled at him and we gazed at each other for a moment. His eyes held a deep thoughtfulness – no doubt he was worried for David − and I was filled with a terrible remorse, like it was my actual fault. In a flash Hughie broke into the moment, slapping the ‘BINNIE’ badge straight onto my chest, giving it a good rub for super adherence.

‘Aye, weel,’ he said. ‘Van Gogh heard a wee voice say “cut aff yer ear,” an’ then the whole lot o’ they wee voices were silenced.’

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Across the table from Greta and Hughie were a couple of attractive, Nordic blondes who looked so alike they could have been brother and sister. Chris introduced them as Edvard and Ginger and they both nodded a hello but neither spoke, going back to a copy of the brochure they had spread out in front of them – presumably checking the day’s itinerary. I, on the other hand, had completely forgotten what we would be doing. ‘Painting stuff’ just about covered it for me.

The last in the group – an older, cheerful-looking woman with dark plum-coloured hair beckoned me to sit beside her. She wore a bright blue, flowery scarf with an orange vest top and offered a hand in greeting.

‘Hey there,’ she said in an American accent. ‘I’m Linda. How d’ya do, Binnie?’

I shook her hand just as a dark-haired, voluptuous beauty brought a tray of glasses and placed one in front of me.

‘And this is my right-hand woman, Mita,’ Chris said.

Mita smiled, regarding me with deep, mahogany eyes before lifting a jug from the table and pouring ice and water into my glass.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hello,’ she answered with a nod.

‘Can ah get some mair o’ that watter too?’ said Hughie, as he held his glass, grinning like a loved-up teenager. I guessed he would be very thirsty today. Just like me, Mita seemed unperturbed by his attentions. Hughie, I decided, was very much a harmless geezer. A little bold, a little comical and more than a bit brazen, but harmless.

‘Okay class,’ Chris began, smiling at me. ‘We’ll start with a little easy sketching and I’ll explain a bit about perspective.’ The smile was a small gesture but made me feel at ease. Maybe our friendship could continue where it left off in spite of everything. As Mita passed out artists’ pads and pencils, Chris held up a picture that reminded me of a psychiatrist’s ink-spot test. ‘What do you see?’ he asked.

Oh hell! This was where I’d reveal that everything reminds me of a page from the Kama Sutra and get hauled off to a clinic for sex addicts.
‘Is this painting by positions, as opposed to numbers, sir?’

‘I think me an’ Greta did that one back in 1973!’ Hughie piped up. So, warped minds across the generations think alike. Last month I became Smother, now I was Hughie.

The morning was spent sketching the ink spot and a series of inanimate objects, while at the same time, everyone chatted and got to know each other, with some prompting from Chris. He nodded to me first,‘Why don’t you tell the class a bit about yourself, Bernice?’

‘Well, I’m a little hung over after throwing my new husband out of our honeymoon suite last night and downing two bottles of wine . . .’

‘Actually, there isn’t a lot to tell,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if Linda goes first?’

Linda, it transpired, was already a practised artist as she had taken up painting two years ago after retiring from her job as a school principle.

‘I turned sixty, had the chance of early retirement so decided to go find myself,’ she explained.

‘I’d love to do that,’ I said with a sigh. ‘I hate my job.’

‘Well darlin’, take it from an old pro. Don’t wait ‘til you’re my age to start doing what you love instead of working any old raggedy job you hate. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time.’

‘Oh, it pays the bills,’ I sighed, ‘but a part of me wishes I had so much money I could just quit. That’s wrong though, isn’t it? There’s so much need in the world.’

‘There’s nothing wrong in wishing you were rich,’ said Chris. ‘Don’t beat yourself up on that one. I always think of all the good I could do for others if I had loads of cash.’

I paused to consider his words; it was the first time I’d looked at it like that. Whenever I allowed myself to wish for a better life, it felt selfish. People in the world were starving; it wasn’t fair to consider myself anything other than one of the lucky ones. But I knew he was right, I would love to have enough to share − to make other lives easier, not just my own. I considered my childlike scribbles of the morning for a second, and announced, ‘Well, if I’m going to dare to make my fortune it won’t be my art that does it.’

Linda laughed. ‘It’s not bad. This sort of stuff can go for millions of pounds to some art collectors.’ I liked her very much.

Edvard spoke for himself and Ginger. ‘I am an architect and my wife is an accountant.’

‘Ah, figures,’ said Linda. The joke was lost on everyone except me. I threw her a wry smile.

‘What about you, Greta? And Hughie?’ asked Chris. The couple answered at the same time.

‘Retired,’ said Greta.

‘Playboy,’ said Hughie.

‘He’s retired an’ he
reads Playboy
,’ Greta added.

As we all laughed, Chris knelt down and studied my drawing. Taking my pencil from me, he began sketching some more lines over mine. His face was so close to mine it felt a little awkward, like those moments when the optician is peering into your eye with an ophthalmoscope and you’re scared to breathe in case you blow in his ear.

‘I know, it’s rubbish,’ I began.

‘It came from your mind to the paper,’ he said, still concentrating on the drawing. ‘That creative process is beauty in itself. It’s all about personal interpretation.’

‘
Meraki
,’ said Mita, who now sat watching us from a nearby sunbed.

‘Yes indeed,
meraki
,’ Chris replied.

‘I love making art,’ said Linda. ‘Having the freedom of creativity to express yourself is really somethin’ else. But you gotta help me get these lines right, Chris.’

And with that he had gone from me to her.

In half an hour, we were all through with sketching and had moved to watercolour painting on easels in the lower gardens. Linda chose an intricate spray of oleanders to paint, while I picked an olive branch.

‘Funny that I should paint something my husband would love to have from me right now,’ I mused to myself. No-one, except Linda, heard, and she stopped painting to look at me. I explained, ‘Since we’re going to see more of each other, you may as well know, I came here with a husband.’ I felt a familiar sting behind my eyes.
Don’t, don’t, DON’T!

She put down her brush and came over to stand beside me. ‘And he’s gone home?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ I held in my tears and wondered why on earth I’d spilled the beans so early. I didn’t even know Linda.

‘Oh my darlin’, that’s terrible! He cheat on ya with some bimbo?’

‘I haven’t decided yet. The thing is, he is Chris’s best friend. Best not to say too much at the moment.’

‘Well,’ she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re a brave lady, staying on by yourself. You can’t let ‘em stall your whole damn life. There just ain’t enough time for that.’

She gave me a sympathetic hug. Hughie, who was working a few yards in front, chose this touching moment to announce out loud that he’d ‘like to get that Binnie down on some canvas’ and proceeded to paint me – boobs first, judging by the huge, almost symmetrical circles already staring out from the centre of the page. ‘Och, yer an awfy flirt,’ Greta told him. I think. Despite my private misery, I couldn’t help but laugh.

By the time Chris announced a break for lunch, I was beginning to feel sick under the midday sun and my stomach was badly in need of the kind of sustenance only half a loaf of bread and a humungous plate of chips could bring. I was so hungry! However, when Mita appeared with two huge Greek salads, floating in olive oil, my gut lurched again. If vomiting was an Olympic event, I was about to go for gold.

‘Chris? Do you have a toilet I can use?’

He pointed to the empty apartment below his villa. ‘Use the one in there,’ he said. ‘It’s closer.’ I was already off like a rocket – running straight out of the clogs which stayed behind at my easel.

‘And for the rest of today, Binnie will be working while invisible,’ Chris said.

Emerging exhausted and dazed from the bathroom following an unproductive bout of heaving, I looked around the tiny, unlived-in apartment. Dusty and strewn with discarded canvases, it was a quaint single room with a kitchenette partitioned off. The open door revealed a sunny haven I had missed in my rush to get to the toilet. White curtains around a small patio provided welcome shade from the searing heat, as well as a screen between the apartment and Chris’s villa. A garden table and chairs faced over a glorious array of flowers to the horizon beyond. I batted a sudden sting on my arm and realised the air was alive with biting insects, yet I imagined anyone would feel quite happy sitting here on a balmy evening with a bottle of wine and a mosquito swatter.

Toying with the trinkets and vases scattered on shelves, I saw a woman’s face in the mirror on the wall. A woman I barely recognised: tired, sad and resigned, with heavily lined eyes. Good God, where had my spark gone? Once again I mourned the carefree, happier me who had flopped in a disorganised heap beside some guy who’d also arrived alone at the christening of a mutual friend’s daughter.

‘Do you come here often?’

It was a cheesy line to match his cheesy grin but, for a second at least, I was sceptical.
He’s a bit full on. Do I come often to a chapel? What if he does? What if he just wants me to as well? What if . . . oh, wait.
Glancing up at astonishingly deep brown, teasing eyes, I met the face of my future. Towering over me by at least a foot, David looked slightly older than me, with a lick of wavy, dark hair and an assured, over-confident air. I was enthralled, captured and pretty much thrown over his strong, slender shoulders in that instant that I looked at him. For the rest of the day, as we weaved around each other chatting to the rest of the guests, it seemed his magnetism was in the air around me everywhere I went. I knew where he was at any given time without turning my head to look. The attraction was almost superhuman. In the blink of an eye all my cynicism fell away and, deciding he probably wasn’t working in enrolment services for the Almighty, I answered his prayers. ‘A date? Sure. Next Saturday, 7pm? See you then!’