‘But why did she want to hide?’ I said. ‘She was so popular.’
Deborah smiled. ‘Well, there’s your answer. It’s a curse, but it’s also a game. You give a little, they leave you alone. I gave up in the end trying to make Con see that. She likes you, I can see that. She may even trust you. So you’ll have your work cut out for you if this book’s a hit. I want it to be a hit, don’t misunderstand me. But it won’t be easy, for either of us.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘I thought you should just be aware, is all. It was good to meet you, Laura.’
‘You too—’
Before I could say any more, Deborah began to walk down the short front garden path and didn’t look back. She disappeared past the hedge, and I remained on the doorstep, mystified and getting cold. I tried to comfort myself by thinking about the people I was soon to meet – Margaret Gillespie, Christina, Davy Roper – potentially as real to me as my mother – or even, in this strange limbo I was in, myself. I thought about Green Rabbit and Wax Heart, and The Locust Plague, and how much those books had stuck in me, however much the author of them had wanted to flee. Oh, you and your girls with their difficult times. They fall at your feet and look where it leads you. That’s what Deborah had said. I thought about what my dad had told me: Your mum was easily led. I was convinced that Connie and Deborah had been talking about my mother, and the thought that she might be committed to a fiction that I was going to read before anyone else felt almost too much to bear.
1982
20
Connie dropped Elise off at the roadside of Shara and Matt’s beach house. ‘I’ll come and get you in four hours, OK?’
‘What are you going to do?’ Elise asked, holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. She’d forgotten her sunglasses. Connie was wearing hers, and Elise couldn’t see her expression.
‘I’m going to work,’ said Connie.
‘Where?’
‘Where? Why are you asking that?’
‘I just wondered.’
‘I’m going to be at the house, El.’ Connie smiled at her. ‘Call there if you need me.’
‘Con—?’
But Connie had driven off. Elise watched her disappear into the blazing day. Con, she wanted to say. Today’s my birthday. I’m twenty-three.
*
Shara led Elise straight to the studio. Elise followed the other woman’s gait, her ample backside like half a cello underneath her sundress. Shara was physically everything Elise was not: full-breasted, wide-hipped, with long blonde hair and tanned skin. She reminded Elise of something hauled from the water, a sea lion, perhaps – a beautiful sea lion, half-turning into a woman, with bells on her flippers.
‘What’s funny?’ said Shara, smiling, as she sorted out her brushes.
‘Nothing,’ said Elise.
‘Are you OK to sit there?’ Shara said, gesturing to an old bottle-green chaise longue with tassels round its base.
‘Of course.’
*
The telephone call had come about a week after Elise asked Shara if she needed a model. Shara had apparently changed her mind: she did want a model – and would Elise still like to oblige? It all felt a little suspicious to Elise, and she wondered if a conversation had happened behind her back. Shara, calling Connie with the news that Elise had offered herself. Connie saying, Amuse her, Shar – she needs a distraction.
It was possible. Elise nourished the dark nub of resentment that Connie might want her out of the way. She had felt ashamed of her request to be painted, as if she’d exposed herself in some pathetic way – this desire of hers to be observed, reconfigured, made special. And yet, when the request was passed on to her by Connie, she immediately said yes.
She looked through the large open window towards the sea. It was a stunning California day. The sky was a bright, almost royal blue, and sea grass fringed the bottom of her vision in shades of sage and gold. She could hear waves crashing beyond, but couldn’t see them. The scene felt unreal, as if Elise was admiring something she could never truly access.
She closed her eyes and the vision turned orange, dust motes moving on the insides of her lids. That Connie had failed to remember her birthday burned once again. To not say a word, to not produce a card, to not suggest a nice lunch – to not remember – it was devastating.
‘I’m so happy you said yes to this,’ said Shara, breaking her thoughts.
Elise opened her eyes and looked at Shara. It was Shara who had said yes to this, not Elise – it had been Elise’s idea in the first place. ‘Do you often do portraits?’ she said.
‘I used to do self-portraits, but I stopped.’ Shara gave an empty smile.
‘Why did you stop?’ said Elise.
‘I might paint my eyes, now and then.’
‘Just your eyes?’
Shara busied herself with the paints, the canvas and her brushes.
*
Elise removed her shorts, T-shirt and underwear. She felt a fury coursing through her veins; she wanted Shara to see her. ‘It’s my birthday today,’ she said. ‘So I’ve come in my birthday suit.’
Shara turned back, her eyes skimming the cuttlefish edges of Elise’s shoulders, her dark pubic hair, her small breasts, her flat stomach and slight hips. ‘Happy birthday,’ she said. ‘Can you sit on the chaise longue?’
‘You want me on the chaise longue?’ said Elise.
‘Are you happy not to wear clothes?’ said Shara.
‘Do you want me in my clothes?’
A flicker of impatience passed across Shara’s face. ‘Not if you’d prefer to be nude,’ she said.
‘Fine.’
‘Can you lie sideways, on your hip, facing me?’
Elise settled onto the chaise longue, and into herself. It began to calm her, to be in this familiar situation, where there were no demands on her other than to be still. To be present but also absent, as her real self vanished into the canvas. She liked to watch Shara’s fluid movement of her arm – up to the canvas, away again, up and away – the brush making marks Elise couldn’t see. She liked Shara’s concentration, her air of respect.
The studio door opened and Matt burst in. ‘Where did you put the—’ He stopped. His eyes widened, staring at Elise’s outstretched form before he turned away to face the wall. ‘Shit. I didn’t know—’
‘I’ve asked you to knock,’ said Shara.
Matt turned to his wife, and the couple were looking at each other as if Elise wasn’t there, as if she wasn’t glowing white and naked on the sofa, like a dangerous fruit Shara had plucked from the garden, unsure of how to prepare her, how to peel and eat her. Shara moved into the space between Matt and Elise – shielding Elise, or blocking Matt? Elise couldn’t tell.
‘What are you looking for?’ said Shara.
‘You asked me to renew the house insurance. So I’m doing it.’
‘Right.’
‘But I can’t find the folder.’
‘It’s where it always is, Matt.’ Shara sighed. ‘In the study, third drawer of the filing cabinet.’ Shara’s shoulders were tensed up round her ears. The peace of the room was sluicing through the open door.
‘Fine,’ he said, and walked back through the door, closing it behind him.
Shara turned to Elise, her expression unreadable. ‘Let’s make coffee.’
‘Don’t you want to keep going?’
‘I need a coffee.’
Elise wrapped herself in a large beach towel while Shara prepared a couple of mugs of instant. Once it was ready, the two of them pushed open the back door of the studio and sat on the deck that ran round the building with steps down to the sand dunes.
‘Do you have birthday plans?’ said Shara.
‘I don’t really celebrate it.’
‘If I’d known I’d have bought you a present. You’re sure you don’t mind being here?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Have you spoken to your folks back home?’
‘I
– my dad – no. My mum’s dead.’
‘Oh, gosh. I’m sorry. Me and my big mouth.’
‘It’s fine.’
Shara sipped her coffee, the corn-coloured strands around her open face billowing in the breeze. ‘When did your mother pass?’ she said.
Elise scoffed at this phrasing. It sounded loopy, new age. But the truth was, Shara’s kindness and respect was almost unbearable, making Elise aware that her own reactions to things were constricted, artificial, not mature enough. What Elise felt in that moment was true pain, because Shara was treating her mother’s death with care and importance.
‘She died when I was nine.’
‘Oh, honey. Nine. I’m so sorry.’ Shara put her hand on Elise’s and squeezed it.
‘It’s fine,’ said Elise. She pulled the towel tighter around herself. ‘Her name was Patricia,’ she said.
‘That’s a lovely name.’
‘It’s old-fashioned,’ said Elise.
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Shara looked across the sand dunes. ‘And you and Connie?’ she said. ‘That going well?’
This insistence of Shara’s with these intimate questions! Elise felt dizzy. She couldn’t handle Shara’s assumption that because she felt able to ask these questions, Elise should feel able to answer them. ‘Good, thanks,’ she said. ‘And you and Matt?’
Shara sighed. ‘We’re having problems. Con’s probably told you. She’s never really liked Matt. Did she tell you I lost a baby?’
‘No,’ Elise lied, not so much to maintain the illusion of Connie’s discretion, but because she wanted to learn more from Shara, without Shara feeling that she’d been betrayed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘That must have been really horrible.’
Shara didn’t say anything for a while. Elise swung her legs underneath the deck, feeling the fine splinters of the wood pressing on her thighs. In the low distance, a pod of pelicans sailed through the sky, on the lookout for fish.
‘It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to me,’ said Shara. ‘It was all going fine. And then it wasn’t.’
Elise didn’t know what to say. Shara seemed to sense this, and she turned to her. ‘It is horrible,’ she said. ‘It’s a good word for it. I’d never been pregnant before. And then I was. I’d waited so long. And it was this joyous thing. And the weeks kept passing. And I mean, you worry about it – the usual things. Has it got a heartbeat, is it growing, will it be healthy? But you know that the odds it’ll be OK are usually better. But then – one day, just a normal day, all my worst fears came true at once. You don’t really understand, because you need time to understand it, and it’s difficult to live in the moments of it. I don’t really remember those weeks and months after I lost the baby very well. Every morning, every evening, just waiting to see whether you’re going to be OK that day, or a mess. Whether the pain is going to last for ever.’ She inhaled sharply. ‘That’s exactly what it is. A fucking horror.’
Elise felt overwhelmed with the responsibility of listening to this. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am.’
‘I just wish he would think to insure the house without me having to ask him,’ Shara said suddenly. ‘I expect he’s gone out surfing instead.’ She sighed. ‘Shit. You really don’t need to hear all this.’
‘No, it’s fine. I just wish there was something I could do.’
‘It’s just good to say this stuff. I feel—’ Shara stopped. ‘It’s like the thing that happened, losing the baby – revealed us to each other. We didn’t know each other in distress. I didn’t realize I was gonna be such a deficient person – emotionally, intellectually – in the face of it. I mean, it’s not like it’s the rarest thing in the world. And he’s fucked it up, too. I want him to make me feel better, and he doesn’t ever seem to know what to say to me, how to help me. It’s like our whole marriage was just this . . . game we were playing. It was all fine when we were thinking about the future as just words. But then the future turned up on our doorstep and we went to pieces.’
Elise felt hot in the face. Shara’s emotional articulacy, her frankness – it was so un-English, so unlike any conversation she would ever have with Connie. She had not lived long enough or deeply enough with the idea of motherhood to draw from any well within and lift up an offering for Shara.
‘It’s a really awful thing to happen, Shara,’ she said. ‘But – maybe none of this is permanent, the way you’re feeling?’
‘I know. But it’s happened, Elise. And it’s there, between us. I was six months pregnant. Six months. He doesn’t understand. He thinks another one will just come along.’
‘It might.’
‘But I wanted that one. I wanted that one.’ Shara’s voice went rough, the words were tumbling out of her, her breath and mouth unable to keep up. ‘And we’re not having sex. So that’s a problem,’ she added, a touch of irony in her voice that relieved Elise. ‘And I don’t want to have sex with him. I don’t want anyone near my body.’
‘That’s understandable,’ Elise said. She was getting cold and she wanted to go back in, but she knew she couldn’t move from the deck until Shara decided.
Shara turned to her. ‘Do you feel like that sometimes, too? Like, how pure and nice it is to just know your body is yours, for you? As if you’re inside yourself?’
Elise thought about this. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never felt like that.’
Shara looked disbelieving. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ said Elise.
Shara nodded. ‘You’re young, that’s why.’ She hesitated. ‘You don’t have to make yourself . . . available, Elise. If you don’t want to.’
Elise thought this was a presumptuous and patronizing thing to say. It sounded like Connie. What had these women gone through in the sixteen years before Elise came along, that she did not also know for herself? What was it that happened to a woman in the intervening decade between twenty and thirty – and did it happen to all women?
‘I know I don’t,’ she said.
Shara hesitated. ‘You and Con are serious, huh?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see that. And are you happy out here, in California?’
Elise shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘You think Connie will want to stay here?’
‘Do you?’
Shara thought about it. ‘Truthfully, I don’t know. It’s not like her to be away from London this long.’
‘Right.’
‘Elise?’
‘Yes?’
‘If you ever find that you’re pregnant, have the baby.’
‘What?’
‘I know, I know,’ said Shara. ‘But even so. Have it. Because whatever people tell you, nothing will compare.’
Shara’s voice broke, and she stood up and stepped off the deck into the dunes. Elise watched her walking away through the waist-high grass. The painting seemed forgotten. She wanted to shout: But the baby isn’t here, the baby never made it – how could you know? – but she knew she could not say these things. She understood that grief could make you dogmatic. She understood that in some way, Shara was trying to warn her – be strong, be yourself, don’t follow Connie around like an obedient little pup.
In Shara’s mind, her lost baby was a real person – it was hers. It was a life that she’d been growing, and a life that had been lost. It wasn’t just a concept. Shara’s order to her was both subjective and ridiculous, and yet it held within it an unprecedented, atavistic conviction that Elise had never heard before. She wanted to help Shara, she wanted to respond positively. She stood up and called to the grass.
‘If I ever get pregnant, I will. I promise.’
Shara turned and looked at Elise, and both of them laughed.
21
Elise decided to take Matt up on his offer of teaching her how to surf.
‘Is that OK?’ she said to Shara. ‘I’ll sit for you first, then go to the water for my lesson. If we’re staying here for a while I might as well get used to the ocean
.’
‘Of course,’ said Shara. ‘It’s a great idea.’
She told Connie about the lessons and Connie was pleased. She said it was a shame to have the water there and not try and conquer it.
‘I’m not trying to conquer it, Con,’ said Elise. ‘You can’t conquer the ocean.’
‘True,’ said Connie. ‘But you can try.’
Shara dug out an old wetsuit that she’d had when she was barely out of her teens. At first it made Elise shudder, looking at it. She thought it looked like a dead person with the bones and head removed. But then she put it on, and she was covered in a slick rubber that made her feel strong and aquatic like a seal, not a girl flailing in a swimming pool.
She went to Shara and Matt’s every other day, exiting the back door of Shara’s studio and jumping onto the dunes, running down to the water’s edge where Matt would be waiting for her, his board sticking upright in the sand.
The ocean, Elise discovered, had an obliterating effect. She didn’t mind when she missed a wave and it crashed on top of her body, when she was spiralled inside the water, or when it slammed her to the seabed. She wanted to slam something out of herself. She wanted no missed birthday again, she wanted no age. She wanted to see what the water would give her. She learned quickly, having a natural aptitude – perhaps because she had a low centre of gravity and could hold herself well on the board. She could feel the currents of wind, she could twist and turn and take it all lightly, moving through the tunnel of a wave, like a carefree bug too out of proportion to let a monsoon bother her. She was reckless. And yet Matt fell into the breakers more often than she did.
*
Shara never came down to the beach. She was nursing a grief that no one knew how to label or assuage, because what was being grieved had never made its presence known to anyone but her.
Matt never talked about Shara, only that she’d never been much of a surfer; it was him who loved the act of getting in the water. He was the classic case of the outsider-convert evangelist, a British man brought up on the browns and greys of English rivers and coastal walks, diving into sapphire water. Together, Matt and Elise would paddle out of reach of the shore, waiting for the water to pull them along, as if it was taking them away from the unanswered questions inside the house on the beach. At first, they never talked about anything except how to stay on the board, how to fall off safely, how to gauge when the wave was coming.
The Confession Page 15
