Once they had a footing stone poised at the edge, Jamie studied it closely for a moment, pivoting it so that its longest axis faced in toward the center. Then he let it drop. As they added new grounders, they used pry bars to lock the stones together and filled the spaces between with shillet for drainage, ramming it hard with a long iron ramming tool. Meanwhile, Jamie ran the Bobcat back and forth, bringing new grounder stones.
At about four-thirty, Jamie killed the Bobcat's engine and yelled, “All right, you lot, we'll leave it there till the morrow. First round at the Cobweb's on me!”
Andrew was thankful the Cobweb Inn was just on the other side of the car park. As they dragged themselves across the shimmering macadam, Jamie chattered on about the next day's lesson, but Andrew guessed the students weren't retaining much of it. They were all sweat-drenched, filthy, and weary.
Jamie, Burt, and Case, who had the farthest to drive, left after their first pint, Newsome and Becky after their second.
“Reck'n ah'll be orf t'me 'oosbund,” Becky said, mimicking Burt's thick Cornish accent. Andrew had had no idea she was married; she wore no ring. She clapped him on the back and strode out the door.
Flora had just come on duty and she made a beeline for Andrew.
“Don't you be flirtin' with yon Becky, me 'an'sum,” she whispered with a wink. “That husband of hers is a right terror.”
“I should think yon Becky would be terror enough, but we're only working together.”
“On the new hedge, I heard.”
“How'd you hear about that?”
“From Nicki. Saw her on the way t'work.”
“How'd she find out?”
“A little bird, I expect,” Flora said, smiling.
“Lee.”
Andrew was beginning to think the girl was the town crier.
“Thick as thieves, those two,” Flora said, with what to Andrew seemed just a touch of envy. He wasn't sure how old Flora was; late fifties, maybe. Unmarried. Never married? Hard to know. Loved children; probably never had any. Did everyone covet Lee?
“Another pint of Doom Bar, Drew?”
“Sure, but I need to eat, Flora. Too beat to go home and cook for myself. What do you recommend?”
“His nibs, the chef,” she said, nodding heavenward, for the kitchen was on the upper floor, “does all sorts of fancy things, but I'm thinkin' what you need is a big plate of sausage and mash, smothered with caramelized onions. Just the ticket for a workin' man. And the sausages are local-made, not store-bought.”
Andrew thought about this recommendation for perhaps one second, and said, “Done. Bring it on, m'dear.”
Flora came close to blushing, scribbled on her pad, and scurried to the dumbwaiter to send up the order.
And the meal was perfect: the grilled sausages herb-infused and savory, the mashed potatoes creamy, and the onions soft, brown, melt-in-your mouth sweet. There were peas and carrots, too, but they seemed an afterthought.
Later, walking along the footpath in the waning midsummer evening light, Andrew was visited by several small epiphanies. In a matter of days, and despite the English reputation for standoffishness, he had already made friends in this village, friends who meant something important he couldn't quite identify but knew he had not felt before. It had to do with honesty, the absence of pretense, something that did not—and probably could not—exist in the competitive university community he'd lived in for so long. What's more, he felt enfolded and comforted, not just by the tender green hills surrounding the valley and the tiny port, but also by the thick cloak of history that seemed draped over the entire landscape. And the landscape itself—lush in the valley, bleak on the hilltops, wild and windblown on the coast—centered him in a way he'd never experienced before. His ancestors were from nearby, his father said; maybe there was something to heritage after all. And then there was this Nicola—Nicola with the electric touch.
Andrew Stratton crossed the footbridge over the river, climbed up through Minster Wood, passed the tiny Minster church huddled in a remote notch in the valley out of the wind and away from the eyes of marauding infidels, crossed the fields, let himself into Shepherd's Cottage, and was asleep in seconds.
The traditional basis for estimating the actual rainfall accumulation has been to collect it in a suitable container and to measure the collected water at suitable intervals. The measurement process is laborious and requires care. For more frequent and less laborious measurements, automatic rain gauges are widely used which record the amount of rain collected and periodically empty themselves … In a standard rain gauge, rain is collected at the orifice and fed through a funnel to the collecting bucket. From there it is periodically emptied into a measuring device.
Brian Golding, ed., “Numerical Weather Prediction, Forecasting Research Technical Report No. 459, Met Office
six
A diffuse light, cool and bright as a breeze, flooded through the nearly seven-foot-tall multipane window on the north wall of the studio. It had once been the door through which fishing nets were winched up from the quayside below. The thick oak winch arm still hung out high over the pavement. The ceiling of the upper floor of Nicola's cottage was open to the roof peak, and on the south side two permanent skylights had been fitted in between the rafters.
Nicola stood at her easel, working quickly, adding confident bursts of a dusky yellow the color of Dijon mustard to a canvas already awash in pigment. She was working on one of her “tranquillity panels,” part of a series of large, loosely impressionistic abstract paintings commissioned by a private hospital in London. The idea was that they helped people heal.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet was on the CD player and Paul Desmond had just slipped into his characteristically smoky solo in “Strange Meadow Lark.” Brubeck's classic 1959 album, Time Out, was her all-time favorite. She never tired of the quartet's odd-meter compositions, so revolutionary when first recorded and still, almost half a century on, thrillingly experimental. Listening to the album when she painted reminded her that art could soar beyond its accustomed boundaries and still please. Miles Davis had the same effect.
Jazz had been another of Sir Michael's gifts to her. Jeremy's idea of music ran to head-banging groups like the Sex Pistols. Maybe that should have been a clue, but if it was she'd missed it, thinking him interestingly anarchic instead. Another mistake.
When she was growing up in Boston, the air in the cramped DeLucca apartment on Prince Street had seemed perpetually filled with the Italian operas her mother listened to with tears rolling down her cheeks, as if she, herself, were the dying diva. Nicola had never been able to suspend disbelief long enough to appreciate the form; if someone simply burst into song on the street, she kept thinking, they'd be put away. Nicki's own taste ran to British progressive rock: Jethro Tull, Genesis, Cream, the Police, solo work by Peter Gabriel.
But Sir Michael had introduced her to Brubeck and Davis; to Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli; to sax greats like Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins; to piano pioneers like Fats Waller and Thelonious Monk; and to vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday. She found it too wrenching to listen to Holiday, though; her drug-slurred voice reminded Nicola too much of her older brother. Lately, she'd developed a fondness for the blues as well.
It was comical, really. Her youthful music preferences ran to British rock groups; then Sir Michael had introduced her to American jazz. Just as coming to England had felt to her like coming home, her father-in-law had brought her home to the signature sounds of her native land. She swayed as she painted. The hiss and clatter of the river ghosted through the studio window and slipped seamlessly into Joe Morello's drum riffs.
Randi was in his usual place, on a throw blanket atop the Victorian “fainting couch” she'd rescued from a jumble sale and had reupholstered in wine-red velvet.
Brubeck had just picked up the unevenly syncopated beat of Morello's snare drum in “Take Five” when Randi looked up, barked once, and dashed downstairs
. One sharp, happy bark meant a friend; a low growl meant uncertainty. Repeated angry barks meant trouble. It was magical how he seemed to know; as if he received wireless signals through the walls. This wasn't trouble, not with just the one bark, so Nicola chose to ignore the dog. There was a light knock, the creak of the front door opening, then a thin voice.
“Nicki?” the voice called.
It was Lee, Nicki knew. She decided to pretend she wasn't there, and tiptoed behind the sailcloth scrim that served as the wall of her bedroom area. Lee closed the door, mumbled something to Randi, and climbed the stairs to the studio.
“Nicki?” the girl repeated.
She stood before the easel and could tell by the smell of the oil paint and the spirit medium that it was fresh.
Before she could call her name again, Nicola swept out of her hiding place and snatched the girl up in her arms.
“Oof! You're getting too big for me to ambush you anymore!” she cried.
“Why didn't you answer the door?”
“The truth?”
“Yeah!”
“Because, sweetie, sometimes when I'm working I don't want to be interrupted, and …”
“Sometimes you do?”
“By you? Anytime.”
Lee looked at the canvas on the easel. She didn't have the etiquette training yet to inquire politely, “Tell me about your painting.” Instead, she said, “What's this?”
Nicola laughed. “You tell me.”
Lee stood in front of the painting again.
“Pretty colors?” she said, tentatively.
“Well, thank you, but what else?”
“I dunno. Seems like you put a lot of different colors together in little dibs and dabs, but I can't make out what they are.”
“Okay, stand back a bit,” Nicola suggested. “Now what do you see?”
“Same thing: different kinds of blues and greens and pinks and lavender … and kinda sandy colors, too.”
“And what's that remind you of?”
“I dunno.”
“Okay, come to the window.” She placed Lee before the tall window overlooking the harbor, and stood behind her. It was late Tuesday afternoon. The tide was in. The summer sun was still high in the west and winked off the wind-fretted surface of the harbor, except where the cliffs cast a purple shadow.
“Look at the water,” Nicola said.
Lee did.
“What color is it?” Nicola asked.
“Blue, silly!” Lee said.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure! Everyone knows water is blue.”
“Okay, but what shade of blue? Look closely. Is blue all you see?”
Lee was quiet for a moment. She turned to Nicola's painting and then back to the window.
“No! There are lots of colors! Blue and green and pink and lavender and gray from the cliffs and red and yellow from the fishing boat.”
“Okay, now look at the canvas.”
“It's the same!” Lee exclaimed. “But then it's not.”
“Right,” Nicola said. “How is it different?”
Lee stood before the easel, her head cocked to one side.
“It's … softer.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you look at the painting, do you feel anything, sort of inside of you?”
Lee plopped down on the paint-splattered drop cloth that covered the polished wood floor. Randi joined her. The two of them studied the canvas.
The painting was large, and taller than it was wide, almost as tall as Lee. Its principal colors were an almost Mediterranean blue, a rosy pink, and a pale green the color of spring leaves. But there were also dozens of shades in between, punctuated by slashes of mauve, lavender, violet, and yellow, with occasional flashes of orange and red.
After a while, Lee heaved a sighed and said, “It feels peaceful.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” Nicola asked, probing.
“It's like being in my tree. I get all calm, and I feel like I could be in that place, in that feeling, forever.”
Nicola stole up behind her little friend and gave her a quick hug.
“That's what the painting's about,” she said.
“Like being in my tree?” Lee asked, eyes wide.
“No, like feeling calm,” Nicola answered. “This painting's going to a hospital in London, where it's supposed to make sick people feel more comfortable.”
Lee was quiet for a moment.
“I think it will,” she said finally, sagely nodding her head.
“Meanwhile,” Nicola said, “what are you doing down here at this hour? Isn't it time for your supper?”
Lee grinned. “I was watching Drew and those other people building the new hedge up by the car park. They've all gone to the Cobweb now. They looked knackered.”
“I'll bet they are. How's the wall coming?”
“Well, it's only the second day; they're laying grounders.”
“Grounders?” Nicola flashed to her younger brother listening to the Red Sox game on the radio in his room.
“They're the big bottom stones. First Jamie moves them with the Bobcat, then they use levers and pry bars to get them set just right.”
“Who's Jamie?”
“The teacher.”
“Sounds like you're taking this course, too!”
“Nah; Drew 'splained. I think it'll be a good hedge. You should see.”
“Perhaps I will.”
“Drew would like it if you did.”
“What?”
“You know. If you took an interest …”
Nicola shot her a look: “Lee?”
“He's a really nice man, Nicki.”
“That's as may be. But you're not my matchmaker.”
“Well, someone should be!”
Nicola could not believe she was getting advice from a nine-year-old. “Listen,” she said gently, “I love you, and I appreciate that you care about me. But being Cupid's not your job.”
Lee looked at the painting for a while.
“Whose job is it, then?” she asked.
“Nobody I know,” Nicola answered. “Now, I think it's time you headed up to the farm. Do you want me to call ahead and let your mum know you're okay?”
“No,” Lee answered, getting up from the floor and giving Randi a whole-body hug. Then: “Yeah, maybe. Don't want to give Mum fits.”
Nicola stood outside her door, in the lane between her house and the river, and watched Lee cross the bridge and head past the Cobweb toward the path up the Valency. She called Anne, cleaned the paint off her fingers, changed quickly, and walked over to the Cobweb. This time, she left Randi behind.
Andrew was standing at the bar, nursing his pint and chatting with Flora.
“First it's hoisting sheep, then it's hoisting rocks,” Nicola said as she stepped up beside him. “I can't say that's much of an improvement!” She winked at Flora.
“You're telling me,” Andrew said wearily.
Nicola eyed his dirty clothes. “Love your ensemble.”
“Love your perfume,” he countered. “What is that, eau du turpentine?”
“Touché,” she said, laughing.
“Can I get you somethin', Nicki,” said Flora, “or are you just going to talk dirty to each other in French?”
“A G and T, please, Flora,” she answered. This time, she paid for her own. Then she said to Andrew, “So how are your grounders?”
“Grinding. Did you know there's a ton of stone in every three cubic feet of hedge? I'm sure I lifted that much already today.”
“You mean wall?”
“No, I mean hedge. That's what they're called in Cornwall. I thought you were local.”
“Me? Hardly.”
“Yeah, I guess your accent's a little soft for this area. What part of the country are you from?”
“The Boston part.”
“Up in Lincolnshire?”
“No, up in Massachuset
ts.”
“You're joking.”
“Can't be; you're not laughing.”
“I'm just surprised; that's where I'm from. Originally, at least.”
“You're from Boston? What neighborhood?”
“Well, outside of Boston, actually: Lexington.”
“Ooh, the ritzy side of the tracks. No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder no accent.”
“And you?”
“The North End.”
“Hmm. You've lost your accent, too … and adopted a faux British one, I see.”
“Fee, fi, faux, fum; I smell marriage to an English-mun,” Nicola sang. “Thankfully, the only thing that survived that debacle was the accent.”
“Sore subject, I gather.”
“Dead subject.”
“Your husband?”
“Ha! I wish! No, just the marriage.”
“I'm sorry.”
“I'm not. Couldn't be happier.”
Andrew glanced at Nicola for a moment, then turned away. “I'm not sure I believe that.”
“I was referring to the divorce.”
“Want to talk about it?”
This was so un-British it took her by surprise. The only people in Boscastle who knew about her divorce were Flora and Anne. Even her landlady didn't know. The British would never dare ask, and she never said anything about it. Was there something about American directness, about “letting it all hang out,” that she missed? Was this a form of homesickness? Or was it actually something she wanted to talk about, maybe needed to talk about. She wondered. Her answer was indirect: “No more than you'd like to talk about yours, I suspect.”
“Oh, I talked about mine constantly, incessantly, to any and everyone. Then I stopped.”
“Stopped, or just ran out of listeners?”
Andrew laughed. “Just got bored with the subject, I guess.” He clinked the lip of his glass to hers and said, “Fuck the past!”
“I'll drink to that,” Nicola replied.
The two of them stood looking at each other for a moment. It was as if each could suddenly see into the other, through the curtain of bravado and the wisecracks, back behind the wings of the stage they each acted on, doing their respective song-and-dance routines, to the dark place where there was no audience at all, only echoes and one's own secrets.
Will North Page 9
