Redemption Song

by Wilkinson, Laura

  ‘Simon, there’s something else,’ he said.

  The silence on the other end of the phone spoke volumes.

  ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Joe said at last.

  ‘Yup. You might get lucky with the Batman story, but if he follows it up Allegra is sure to find you,’ Simon said. All ‘yos and bros’ gone, he spoke in his clipped, public-school-educated accent. ‘But right now I can’t think of anything we can do. You’re gonna have to sit tight.’ Simon changed the subject. ‘How damaged is the ballroom?’

  ‘Difficult to be sure right now, but the fire service did an amazing job. I reckon it’s salvageable.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news.’

  ‘Sure is.’

  Joe flopped onto the sofa after Simon rang off. Numb. He stared at the chimney breast, its bare brick, the charred logs sitting in the grate, there since April. Not so very long ago he’d thought he might use them again come the autumn. He’d allowed himself to imagine that Saffron might be here, with him, on an early October evening when the temperature grew sharp enough to light a fire. Perhaps she’d not long returned home after a day at the hospital. After a day working on a piece of art – a sculpture from wood or stone – or as a carpenter, he’d have cooked supper and opened a bottle of red, allowed the wine to breathe.

  When she’d hinted she might apply nearby he’d told himself she mustn’t on his behalf. Could he ask her to apply to London as she’d originally planned? Explain that he would come with her? He wasn’t tied to Coed Mawr any more than she was. Less. Saffron had Rain. He would say an opportunity had come up: one he couldn’t say no to; that he had to go immediately but he would write as soon as he’d settled. It would be all right.

  It would mean abandoning plans for revenge. But in truth, what plans? He hadn’t thought about getting even for so long now he barely knew if it was what he wanted after all. Coed Mawr had been a hiding place at first – a dim corner, somewhere no one would think to look. Somewhere to lick his wounds and rebuild his life. Plot retribution. Maybe. But he’d grown fond of the place; more than fond. And there was Saffron. Initially regarded as a distraction from all that felt rotten about his life, she’d shown him all that was good and beautiful and right. His heart hurt; it actually hurt.

  The other option would be to come clean, as she’d done. Saffron might be OK with it; he dared to hope she would. But everyone else in Coed Mawr? Rain, Eifion, Ceri, the members of the church who waved if they saw him in the street? An ache at the base of his neck was growing more persistent, creeping over his skull. A killer headache was on its way and Saffron was due in less than an hour.

  He pushed himself from the sofa and picked up the bag of groceries. He was going to make paella, the recipe scrawled on a piece of paper stuffed in his back pocket. It was the most adventurous dish Eifion cooked, he’d told Joe before dictating the ingredients and instructions, but it was straightforward. ‘Minimum skill, maximum result,’ he’d said confidently. ‘I might take a pan of it over to the Rev next week. Food’s a great comforter, you know.’ Joe agreed, remembering the midnight snacks he and Simon shared in the dormitory. Biscuits and chocolate and crisps, all packed by Simon’s mother, little understanding it was also food for Simon’s tormentors. Plump and shy, Simon grew weightier and more and more unhappy till the day his parents realised what was going on and transferred him to another school. The day he left was the worst of Joe’s young life, but they’d pledged to stay in touch and they had. Simon was a friend and Joe didn’t have many of them.

  ‘Gorgeous smell. What are you cooking?’ Saffron said, as she plonked a kiss on Joe’s cheek and bounced through the cottage door. She felt ridiculously happy.

  ‘Paella,’ Joe said, looking dazed but totally gorgeous. There were times when she looked at him and thought she might evaporate with sheer lust. In the past, she’d heard other women use silly expressions like ‘turning to jelly’, but now she understood it was more stupid than she’d first thought. Jelly was way too solid. In Joe’s presence, hell, even when she thought about him, she became liquid, like jelly before it sets. Formless, slipping about, ready to fill whatever shape she could find, whatever shape Joe desired.

  ‘Yum. Not sure who to eat first. You or it. I’m famished.’ She pushed up against him, sliding her arms round his waist, up under his T-shirt, enjoying the firm sensation of his chest against hers, running her fingers up his spine, skimming vertebrae protected by flesh damp with sweat. She rested her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck, round his ear and along his jawbone to his mouth. Stubble scratched against the delicate skin of her lips intensifying bolts of desire which shot from her mouth to the most secret part of her.

  He took hold of her hands and prised her off him, kissing each palm, before looking at her and smiling. Below his eyes, she saw the purple blush of late nights and worry. ‘You’re cheerful,’ he said. ‘How so?’

  ‘You’re here. Unharmed. Fit.’ She raised her brows salaciously. ‘Very fit.’

  He smiled.

  ‘I’m here.’ She brushed his cheek. ‘The ballroom isn’t damaged beyond repair. Official. And I’ve made a decision.’ It was true. She could hardly believe it, but that morning she had woken with the certain knowledge she must stay near Coed Mawr. She would look for foundation jobs in North Wales’ hospitals. One would have her, she was confident of that; her grades had been excellent. Rain needed her, but, more importantly, she wanted to stay. She couldn’t leave. Not while Joe was here.

  He was staring at her, and though she couldn’t be sure – she still found him impossible to read – she had a hunch he’d guessed. His eyes gave nothing away. ‘I’m hoping you’ll want to celebrate.’

  Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. ‘I will.’ But there was no joy in his tone and Saffron’s legs felt distinctly boneless.

  ‘You OK?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah. Got a bit of a headache, that’s all. Nothing food, wine, beer, and you, can’t cure.’

  After supper they sat on the floor facing each other, leaning against the sofa, heads cradled in hands, legs curled, like a reflection of one another. Each cupped a glass in their free hand. The smoky tones of a dead blues singer poured from the tiny speaker plugged into Saffron’s phone. Shadow divided Joe’s handsome face, a shaft of light from the small window behind her illuminating his amber eye. There was an alien quality to him, other worldly and precious. She ached with love. She pulsed with the need to demonstrate that love; they’d done little more than kiss, explore the external landscape of one another’s body. She’d done with waiting.

  ‘It’s so dark in here, even in summer. Doesn’t it depress you?’ she said.

  He shrugged, indicating that it might.

  ‘I need light. Space.’

  He tugged at her black top and she laughed.

  ‘Around me, not on me.’ She took a sip of wine, her belly fluttering, even after the bowl of paella. ‘So what do you think? I can’t tell if you’re pleased or not.’

  ‘You’re very, very lovely.’

  ‘Loveable?’ she said, a breath more than a word.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he replied, almost as quiet.

  She reached over and placed her glass on the coffee table. Then she took his glass of beer and placed it next to hers. She pushed him gently so that his back rested against the sofa and straddled his thighs. He went to speak and she put a finger over his mouth before pulling her T-shirt over her head and flinging it across the room. Conscious of her pale skin and the freckles splattered across her cleavage, she dipped her head. She couldn’t watch him watching.

  Head still bowed, she ran the flat of her hands over his stomach and across his pectoral muscles. She felt him tremble. He reached out and swept a hand across her chest, embracing her shoulder. Goosebumps studded her arms and she felt herself shudder, though she was not cold. He pulled her into him and before their lips met she whispered, ‘I love you.’

  Melded together, they lay on the floor, exhausted, exhilar
ated. Silent. There was no need for words; there were no words to describe how she felt.

  Joe hadn’t spelled out his feelings for her before the kiss, but he hadn’t needed to. To Saffron, his actions spoke more than any words ever could. Afterwards, he cupped her face and rested his forehead against hers. They lay there for minutes. Sweat dried on their brows. She listened to the sound of their breathing slowing down, returning to the rhythm of everyday life, though her life, her existence, would never be the same again. It had shifted on its axis, permanently. She thought of her mother and marvelled at the progress she had made towards a kind of normality. Rain had lost the love of her life and she had carried on. Only her faith allowed her to. Right here, right now, Saffron couldn’t imagine how that was possible. If anything happened to Joe, to them, she would surely die.

  ‘Let me look at your tattoo,’ she said at last, kissing his knuckles. She prised her hands free from his, and rolled him over. The bats were detailed, like drawings from a natural history book. She could make out the veins in the diaphanous sheath of flesh stretched over the bones of the wings, the small teeth of the bat that snarled as it swept towards Joe’s neck.

  ‘Did it hurt? she said.

  ‘It was worth it.’

  ‘They’re extraordinary. Scary and ugly. And fascinating. They draw the eye.’

  ‘They’re beautiful. Bats don’t deserve their bad reputation.’

  Saffron couldn’t argue with that. Instead she leaned in and kissed the angry bat, her hands clutching Joe’s warm shoulders.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Joe imagined them welded together, the sweat on their foreheads drying like glue to bind them. He wanted to stay like this for as long as possible, delay the parting. He could not leave Coed Mawr; he could not.

  He’d known it would be like this. He loved Saffron, and now they’d given that love physical expression there could be no return to a state of ‘before’. It was why he’d resisted for so long. He’d been surprised by his own restraint. Jesus, he’d wanted her from the minute she’d kissed him so unexpectedly on the promenade on that cold spring night.

  It had been such a long time since he’d been with a woman, he’d been nervous. But it was so natural, so right with Saffron, and it was better than with anyone, even Allegra. Sex with Allegra had often felt like a battle of wills, each of them fighting for dominance, control, desperate to ensure their own needs were met. They were selfish lovers, he realised. It hadn’t been like that with Saffron, quite the reverse. Of course, there’d been clumsy, awkward moments: dealing with socks was never sexy, ditto condoms. They’d clashed teeth occasionally when kissing, Saffron’s hair caught in his fingers, knotted round and round them, their sweat-sticky skin squelched as they rolled and moved apart. But they’d laughed and kissed and known that none of it mattered because lovemaking in real life was nothing like in the movies, even when it was very, very good.

  ‘Stay the night?’ he said, when she’d finished tracing her finger across the images on his back.

  ‘Your sheets clean?’

  He rolled over to face her and screwed up his nose. ‘Think so.’

  She laughed – he loved the sound of her laughing – and pushed herself into a sitting position, pulling her knees to her chest. ‘Oh, Jesus, you should see these carpet burns.’ She inspected her elbows and groaned again.

  His knees and elbows were raw as well, though he’d escaped the ravages of stubble scratches on his cheeks. Her chin was pink too. ‘Let me get some Germolene. I’ve got some in the kitchen.’ He wandered to the door and turned. Her hair was ruffled and matted, her eye make-up smudged, her cheeks and neck flushed. She looked sluttish and sexy and he wondered if she’d ever looked as lovely. He didn’t think so.

  After he’d tended to her burns and she to his, they gathered their scattered clothes and climbed the narrow staircase to Joe’s bedroom. Saffron texted Rain: Don’t expect me till morning Xxxx. They fell into bed and made love again and again.

  Joe stared at the ceiling, despairing, listening to the sound of Saffron’s light breathing as she slept. Would he ever sleep again? After the exertions of the evening he’d hoped he would collapse from exhaustion. He was thirty, not nineteen, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d made love more than twice on the same night. But his mind whirred non-stop, playing the same conversation over and over, ad infinitum.

  He would stay in Coed Mawr. Sod it. Sod Allegra. He would tell Saffron the truth and be damned.

  He would stay in Coed Mawr and keep quiet. It was possible Allegra wouldn’t find him. The newspaper story had been overlooked. Saffron would finish her training locally. They would see each other on her days off, live happily ever after.

  He would leave Coed Mawr and take Saffron with him. He’d make something up to explain. They would go to London or wherever and live happily ever after.

  He would leave Coed Mawr. No. No. No.

  He might have to. He rolled over and watched her. Beautiful, clever, good Saffron. He didn’t deserve her.

  In the morning, Joe felt sick with tiredness and he’d still not come to a decision. He watched her again, as he’d done most of the long, long night, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, a strand of orange hair across her neck, the long, brown lashes resting on cheeks dusted with freckles. The sight of her made him melt. He ran an index finger under a lock of hair, sweeping it over her shoulder. She opened her eyes, dreamy and only semi-conscious.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘What time is it?’ she croaked.

  ‘Just before ten.’

  With an alertness that took him by surprise, she leapt out of bed. ‘I promised Mum I’d set up chapel for the eleven o’clock service. Mrs So-and-so is ill and she didn’t want to call anyone else on a Saturday evening.’

  She rummaged through the crumpled heap of clothes on the floor, retrieved her knickers, turned them inside out and yanked them on, before clambering into her jeans, hopping from foot to foot as she tugged them up her long, lean legs. He must have looked surprised because she added, ‘I’m not staying. Just setting up. You around later?’ She tied the belt of her jeans and scooped out hair caught beneath her T-shirt. It tumbled down her back, her titian waves highlighted against her dark top. He yearned to tug her back into bed, to lose himself, and all thought of what he should do, in her sweet flesh, in the ecstasy of lovemaking.

  ‘Well?’ She stared at him, eyebrows raised, crouched and tying her boot laces.

  How long had he drifted off for? It could only be seconds, she was in a rush. He had to talk to her today, one way or another. ‘Sure. Give me till mid-afternoon. Say three?’

  Christ, he was a first-class procrastinator. Why not earlier? He had nothing important to do. He’d be unable to give a carving he was working on the focus it required. Instead, he’d probably fart around gaming.

  ‘Great. Give me a chance to have lunch with Mum. Catch up. Far side of the beach if it’s still bright? Tŷ Melyn if not? I fancy a Bakewell tart.’ The guest house they’d retreated to after Saffron had told Joe about Ben and the crash and Stephen had become a haunt. It was always empty mid-afternoon and the landlady was friendly and welcoming. If she had no cakes they made do with tea and ginger nuts. ‘My weakness,’ she’d told them, patting her rounded stomach.

  He followed Saffron downstairs, kissed her goodbye, and watched her belting towards the lane. She burst with energy, with the pure joy of being alive. He felt like a man in the dock, waiting for the judge to return.

  Saffron bombed into the manse, splashed her face with water, and brushed her teeth before heading over to the chapel. Rain was checking the PowerPoint presentation as she dashed in.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, flapping her hands and checking the table at the entrance for up to date newsletters and something to do other than look at her mum. ‘I’ll get the Bibles.’

  ‘Don’t panic. You’re not late. How was your evening?’ In her peripheral vision Saffron saw Rain look over from the
iMac. She appeared calm, interested, without any trace of her usual desperation. Such eagerness to please had lessened considerably of late, Saffron noted, and the panic attacks and periods of fevered cleaning had almost disappeared. Her mum looked relaxed and pretty, her blonde curls bouncier than ever.

  ‘Fine.’ Saffron shuffled the papers on the table. It was stupid to be embarrassed.

  ‘That all?’

  ‘It was nice, thanks. Now, what do you want me to do once I’ve got the Bibles?’

  Nice wasn’t the right word. They both knew that. But Saffron didn’t read romantic fiction, or watch romantic dramas. She didn’t have the vocabulary to describe the evening, her feelings for Joe, and she wouldn’t have shared them with her mum regardless. For the mechanics of the act, the chemical, hormonal and physical changes to her body she could have written an essay, but to put into words what occurred in her heart, in her soul? Impossible. She loved him; couldn’t be without him; there was nothing more to say.

  Once parishioners started filing into the chapel, Saffron made herself scarce. After a bath and change of clothes, she prepared a lunch of bread, cheese, and salad and then went back to the chapel to help clear up and prepare the space for the long evening service. She didn’t wash her hair, not wanting to erase his scent, the musky, slightly vinegary smell of him. From time to time, she grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it across her nose, inhaling him, as if to remind herself he existed, that he wasn’t spectre or dream.

  Rain had invited Mair Shawcroft and another elderly lady for lunch. Saffron beefed up the salad, adding more greens and herbs from the garden. She opened a packet of Brie and popped another baguette in the oven to warm it, and washed a punnet of strawberries before placing the fruit in a crystal bowl reserved for special occasions. She threw a linen cloth over the table, and enjoyed the vibrancy of the glistening greens and reds against the pure white fabric.