Will North

by Water, Stone, Heart (v5)

  The Valency reaches the sea at Boscastle, and its tributary, the Jordan, flows into the Valency in the centre of the village … Their catchment (the area they drain) is relatively small—at 20 square kilometers (km) or 7.7 square miles—and steep, rising more than 300 metres (m) or 984 feet (ft) in 6 km (3.7 miles).

  Brian Golding, ed., “Numerical Weather Prediction,” Forecasting Research Technical Report No. 459, Met Office

  eight

  Lee was pretending she was Margaret Mead. She'd heard a program about the lady anthropologist on BBC Radio Four's Women's Hour, a program her mum listened to. Lee liked the idea of going to faraway places to study people. That's what she was doing now, from her own private observation perch at the Welly. She liked the fact that her mum and dad let her come. And she liked studying the grown-ups. It was like being in her special tree, spying on the walkers going by below her. She thought she should be taking notes, like Miss Mead did—that's how she thought of her, “Miss Mead,” her partner in anthropology. She should bring a little notebook next time; there were so many interesting things going on.

  Take Colin Grant over there, the chap who owned the witchcraft museum. She'd heard he was a witch himself, which was confusing, since she thought witches were only women. He was talking to Harriet, the woman who sat in the little booth in the museum selling tickets most days. She had on a long, clingy black dress with a scooped neckline. Was she a witch, too? Maybe her broomstick was out in the car park. She noticed that Harriet's eyes almost sparkled as she listened to whatever Colin was saying. She likes him, Lee concluded. That's obvious. But Colin didn't look at her as he talked. Instead, he looked to one side, as if he were talking to Harriet's left shoulder. From time to time, Harriet would move slightly, so as to be in Colin's line of sight, but he'd shift his head away again. Then, after a few minutes, he nodded to her shoulder and took his leave, and Harriet's eyes stopped sparkling. Maybe he knows she likes him, but he doesn't like her. That's so sad. Or wait! Maybe he really does like her, but he's too shy! She liked this explanation better. But then she thought maybe it wasn't very scientific to like one explanation more than another. Boy, this was hard work.

  Jack and his wife, Mary, now, that was easy. Mary just beamed when she sang along beside Jack, and always patted his leg after they finished a song—as if she was saying, That was fun; do another! Lee frowned. Of course, since they're married, probably that's what she's supposed to do. Lee wasn't sure about that. She knew her dad and mum loved each other, 'cause they were always telling each other they did. Really, it was embarrassing sometimes. But how did you know someone liked you if you weren't already married to them? Like Brian and Flora down at the bar. Flora took Wednesday nights off at the Cobweb so she could come to the Welly for the singing. Leastways, that's what she said. But she spent all her time sitting on a stool at the Long Bar, chatting up Brian, which he seemed to like. Maybe she had a bad voice and just liked to listen. But then about the only thing she seemed to listen to was Brian. So maybe it was Brian she came for, not the singing? Did Brian go to the Cobweb on his day off? This would require additional research.

  She watched Drew and Nicki for a while and couldn't figure them out. Seemed to her the best thing they did was give each other a hard time, and sometimes she punched him in the arm. What was that about, anyway? But they laughed, too. So did that mean they liked each other? She kinda hoped they did. She liked Drew a lot and she liked Nicki at lot and she thought of course they'd like each other, too. But watching them here, and at the Cobweb last Sunday afternoon, it was hard to tell. She knew Miss Mead looked for little signs that told you what people thought of each other, and that seemed a good idea—like the way Lee looked for signs in the woods up in the valley: disturbed branches and leaves on the ground by the river that told you where deer came down to drink, or circles on the still water behind the weir that told you a fish had just eaten a bug, or rooks screeching when you got too close to one of their nest colonies, or the way the leaves on some trees will show you their silvery undersides when the wind changes just before a storm. But people signs were turning out to be a lot harder to figure out than nature signs. It was annoying, really. She wondered whether she should think about becoming a zoologist instead.

  It was just coming up on eleven when Jack's voice rang out on another song and the crowd picked right up.

  In South Australia I was born.

  Heave away! Haul away!

  South Australia, round Cape Horn.

  We're bound for South Australia.

  Then the by-now-well-oiled crowd joined in on the chorus, singing out:

  Heave away, you rolling king.

  Heave away! Haul away!

  All the way you'll hear me sing.

  We're bound for South Australia.

  By the middle of the song, the room was ringing, with men and women taking equal pleasure in the sea shanty's bawdier lyrics.

  There ain't but one thing grieves my mind.

  Heave away! Haul away!

  It's to leave Miss Nancy Blair behind.

  We're bound for South Australia.

  I run her all night, I run her all day.

  Heave away! Haul away!

  Run her before we sailed away.

  We're bound for South Australia.

  Andrew was well into the following chorus before he remembered what Nicola had told him about the way Jeremy treated her, and his throat clenched. But she was standing right beside him singing as lustily as anyone in the throbbing room, and she sang the next stanza looking straight at him.

  I shook her up, I shook her down.

  Heave away! Haul away!

  I shook her round and round and round.

  We're bound for South Australia.

  Thunderous applause and much hooting followed this song, and Andrew realized it was their traditional closing number. The crowd began milling about and drifting slowly toward the entrance; the singing was over for another week. There was much chat and shaking of hands and clapping on shoulders by the men and good-bye hugs by the women.

  Lee found him and said, “See? See? I told you!”

  Andrew laughed. Roger scooped up his daughter and Anne whispered something to Nicola. Slowly, the rowdy energy in the room dwindled to a happy sigh, like air from a leaky balloon.

  Nicola asked Andrew to walk her to her door, but all the ale he'd consumed suddenly demanded attention. “Listen, Nicola,” he said, “I need to make a quick stop at the gent's first.”

  “You do that, Mr. Stratton,” she said with a slightly woozy slur that made his name come out “Sshtratton.” “You can catch up with me. Think you can remember the way?” Then she winked and headed for the door, hips swinging.

  Andrew stood there in the Long Bar of the Welly, astonished, until his screaming bladder brought him back to reality. When he got back from the bathroom, most of the crowd was gone and Flora circled the room collecting empty glasses for Brian. Flora intercepted him.

  “Mind what I said, luv,” she cautioned.

  “‘Careful how you go’?”

  “That's it.”

  Andrew felt offended and must have looked it.

  “No, luv; it's not her I'm worried for, it's you,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze.

  Andrew crossed the hotel's car park, walked a few steps down to the end of Dunn Street, then turned left before the bridge and walked down the lane beside the river toward the harbor. He felt like an imbecile. He didn't understand Nicola's invitation, or Flora's warning. One was more mysterious than the other. Or maybe it was the beer making him stupid. No, he felt perfectly clearheaded. What, then? A woman with whom most of his previous interactions were best described as jousting matches had invited him back to her place—for what? A nightcap? The night? And one of her friends was warning him to be careful, for his own sake. It was completely bewildering. It was also exciting, a feeling he hadn't felt since … well, he couldn't remember when.

  He knocked lightly at Nicola's door.
r />   “Come upstairs. I've something I want to show you.”

  The voice was above him and he looked up. She was leaning out the studio window. The cream-colored linen dress glowed in the moonlight.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel …,” he began.

  “I have no golden hair to let down, in case you haven't noticed,” she said, giggling. “And anyway, the door's open.”

  He entered Nicola's cottage. Randi greeted him with his standard single bark, then raced up the stairs. Andrew followed. Nicola was waiting for him beside her easel.

  “Hi,” he said, feeling suddenly awkward. “You look so lovely.”

  She made a teasing, and slightly unsteady, curtsy and said, “Thank you, sir. But I'm not what I wanted you to see.”

  “Nicola, I think you may be the only thing I want to see, ever again,” he said, amazed to hear himself say the words.

  She smiled, a wide, bright-eyed grin, but then said, “Stop that, you silly man, and pay attention.”

  Andrew realized then that her watery painting was no longer on the easel. There was something else in its place, covered with a sheet.

  “Close your eyes,” she ordered.

  He obeyed and heard her sweep the sheet off the easel.

  “Right. Open them.”

  Before him was a painting of a girl dancing across a flower-strewn meadow by a stream. But not just any girl. He recognized Lee instantly. And it was not just any painting. Nicola had captured not only the image but also the spirit of the girl and the world she inhabited, a world of trees and grasses and wildflowers and water that shimmered with a light he could only describe as ethereal.

  He sat heavily on the edge of the chaise. “My God, it's … it's … perfect.”

  Nicola sat beside him. The two of them looked at the painting for a long while and said nothing. Andrew could feel the warmth of Nicola's skin radiating through the thin linen.

  “You're the first person I've shown it to,” she said, finally.

  “Then I am deeply honored.” Hesitantly, Andrew put his right arm around Nicola's shoulder and drew her gently toward him. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “I love that little girl,” she whispered.

  “Me too,” Andrew said. “I always wanted a kid just like her.”

  “But your wife didn't?”

  “Right. Except now she's having a baby with my replacement.”

  “Christ.”

  “What about you and Jeremy?”

  “We tried. It didn't work. Thank God.”

  “I think you'd have made a pretty terrific mother,” he said. They were both still staring at the new painting. Andrew turned his head and placed a light kiss on Nicola's left temple.

  She leaned into him a little closer. “Thanks.”

  “For the compliment or the kiss?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nicola turned and looked at the man beside her. His eyes were green-gray, she now knew, with a downward slope toward the outside edges that made him look perpetually wistful. It was a good and gentle face. A caring face. Genuine. She straightened and kissed his lips lightly, tentatively.

  “I think you are a good man, Andrew Stratton,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

  She watched his face fall.

  “I used to think I was, but since Kat—”

  “Shhh,” she said, and kissed him again. It felt to him like forgiveness. But then he drew back.

  “Wait. I need to tell you that I lied to you last night,” he said. “She didn't just leave me for someone richer. I was too embarrassed to tell you the truth, partly because I think she was right. She said she was divorcing me because I was passionless. Because I have ice in my veins, she said.”

  Nicola looked at him, her head tilted. He wasn't sure she was focusing.

  “She was wrong, you know,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because your lips are warm. Very warm. And sweet.”

  Andrew smiled at Nicola and said, “I think one of us is drunk.”

  “Um-hmm. You shouldn't drink so much.”

  She kissed him again, harder this time. He responded in kind, his hands cupping her chin. Their tongues met and it seemed to Nicola that the studio evaporated like mist and the entirety of reality was the dark, warm, wet world of their exploring tongues. She closed her eyes and felt desire rise from somewhere subterranean. It would have astonished her had she been sober, but she wasn't, and instead it engulfed her. She swiveled to her left and straddled Andrew's lap, facing him, pressing her lips to his, running her hands beneath his shirt, her fingertips tracing the small, tensed muscles on either side of his spine. His lips moved to her ear. She heard him whisper, “Oh God, Nicola,” and then felt him nibble his way down the side of her neck, burying his face in her hair, then tracing a line with his tongue downward, downward, along the lapel of her wrap dress to the point where the two sides crossed at the hollow between the tops of her breasts. Nicola groaned and arched her back, pulling his face into her. She laced her fingers through his curly hair and pressed closer, as if trying to absorb him through her pores.

  Andrew Stratton could barely credit what was happening, and it was a struggle to keep his head clear. This in itself took him by surprise. When he had made love with Katerina, a part of him had always stood to one side, watching, monitoring. It wasn't that he had some bizarre need to be in control; it was that he was intent on pleasing her, on bringing her to orgasm, which was no easy task. He never permitted himself to dissolve into sex. And besides, who knew what void he might spin off into if he did? But with Nicola, he was poised at the very edge of that chasm, not so much afraid to fall as eager to leap.

  The situation was almost incomprehensible: a wonderful, talented, and undeniably lovely woman was kissing him, clutching him, her breath ragged, her desire undisguised. He wasn't at all sure how it had come about. The two of them had been so busy trading snappy remarks to keep the distance, he hadn't noticed the distance had been an illusion, that he'd been falling in love for days. And Andrew suddenly also understood—the way someone struck by lightning comprehends the fragility of life in a way no one else can—that he'd never loved this way before. After Katerina left him, his heart had shriveled like a hard, infolded black raisin. But now it was plumping up again, growing fuller than it had ever been before, growing larger, it seemed, than could be accommodated within his chest.

  Nicola kissed him again, urgently, and struggled to unbutton his shirt, eventually yanking it over his head. She had not said a word and her eyes were squeezed tight, as if she was in pain. He took her by the shoulders and laid her down upon the long chaise, stroking her face, then her neck, moving his hands gently. Slowly her dress fell open and he ran his palm along the perfect, G-clef outer curve of her left breast, then along its mirror image on the right. He cupped each and marveled at their weight. Her skin was silky and darkly tanned, except for two small, creamy bikini triangles from sunbathing. Her areolas were large, a dusky rose color with a coffee-tinged circumference, her nipples tall and stiff. He placed his hands atop them, lightly, barely connecting with the skin, and felt the heat radiating in both directions. Nicola made a sound somewhere in between a sigh and a moan and seemed to sink into the cushion beneath her, like someone falling through a cloud. Her muscles, so taut only moments before, softened.

  Andrew lay beside her on the edge of the chaise and, with great care, as if Nicola were made of thin lead crystal, explored the supple landscape of her body using only the tips of his fingers. He was suffused with a tidal gentleness; he felt like a worshipper, a pilgrim. He wanted to tell her how full of her spirit he had become, how overwhelmed he felt by her acceptance, by her desire.

  And it dawned on him at last that it wasn't that he lacked passion, it was that he had so little experience in expressing it; he did not know the vocabulary of love. For years, he'd just assumed that Katerina knew from his actions, from his constancy, from his eagerness to attend responsibly to all the details of their
life together—from his serving—that he loved her. And he'd been very, very wrong. She did not understand that language. Or perhaps she did but did not value it. Or perhaps they had never really been in love. Certainly, he'd never felt the way he did now: amazed, entranced, transported. And, suddenly, the words were coming to him, in a flood: wonder, enamor, ardor, cherish, head over heels—nouns, verbs, adverbs. Out of nowhere. He felt like a thesaurus of endearments.

  Yet with all these words, all these emotions, he still felt tongue-tied, so he tried to speak through his fingers, adoring this miracle beside him with touch. His fingertips glanced across her eyebrows, slipped down to the rise of her cheekbones, then followed the curve of her chin lower, to her collarbone and out to her shoulder, and then slid down her side, climbing and descending the velvet ridges of her rib cage, rising again along the hard slope of her hip, rounding the perfect curve of her rear, and floating along the surprisingly muscular length of her thigh. Moving upward again, he mapped the buttery skin along the inside of her thighs. Then, finally, his fingers reached the lush tangle of dark, silky hair foresting the cleft between her legs. Heat and perfume radiated from it as if it were tropical. The heat drove him on; the perfume intoxicated. The middle finger of his right hand skipped along the moist folds there, and found, at last, the source.

  Nicola suddenly went rigid. Her eyes flew open.

  “No! Johnny, don't! Please!”

  Andrew tried to hold her, but again she screamed, “NO!”

  Her feet found purchase on the chaise and she struggled backward, pushing herself up the sloped arm of the chair till she teetered on its edge, flailing her arms in defense, yanking at her dress.

  Andrew had shot to his feet and now stood beside the chaise, transfixed with shock. Nicola was staring straight ahead, eyes wild with fear, but also glazed. He suddenly understood that she was somewhere else—not with him in her studio, but off in some distant, private hell. He grasped her shoulders, as much to keep her from tumbling off the arm of the chair as anything else.