Where the West Wind Blows

by Mary Middleton

  “I want to paint your portrait,” James says, “I want to paint you in the nude.” At first, I refuse, but in the end he persuades me and I spend the next week naked, dying of boredom and exposure, my nipples standing out like buttons in the cold. He doesn’t speak to me much but, intent on his work his eye is either fastened to his canvas or on a part of my anatomy.

  To my surprise I find it deeply erotic to be laid across a draped couch, my body open to his delectation. I squirm with a longing I cannot hide and several times over the course of the next few days, James is compelled to put down his palette and come across to the couch to alleviate our mutual need.

  Afterwards he curses at the dishevelled drapery and no matter how hard we try we cannot rearrange the sheet in just the way it was before. As I reposition myself provocatively on the couch, I laugh and stretch my satisfied limbs, rosy with love.

  At the end of each day I beg him to let me see the portrait but he won’t allow it. “Not until it’s finished.” He wraps me tightly and safely back into my robe, pushing me gently from the studio. “Go make some dinner,” he laughs, “while I clean up in here. And get some clothes on, woman, are you shameless?”

  I am not allowed to see the painting until it is complete and, all the while, I imagine he is painting me as a Venus, a romantic, shining vision of plump, rosy-hued loveliness in the manner of a Titian or a Picou. So, when I see myself depicted in the style of Picasso, with three breasts and an angular multicoloured face and six arms, my outrage is colossal.

  But, after I’ve calmed down and we are friends again, the painting becomes one of my favourites. We hang it in our room and every time I see it the warmth of those chilly hours is rekindled, the gentle, laughing intimacy of that magical week.

  Today the portrait is locked in a bank vault.

  I can’t even bring myself to look at it.

  I still miss him; in bed, at dinner, in the studio, while I’m out walking but the worst time of all is when something funny happens and there is nobody there to share it.

  That is when the solitude bites the deepest. A million small instances that would have been made memorable by laughter now pass by unmarked. If he were here now, we would be laughing and inventing stories about the mysterious Mr McAlister. James’ livid imagination would conjure nefarious deeds, underhand dealings and, together, we would fashion him an imaginary life as a smuggler or a pirate but, without James to fire my fancy, I can only see Mr McAlister as he is; damaged and sad…like me.

  And because of that, with each turn of the tide, he comes to occupy my thoughts more and more.

  Seven

  Each time I see him now I turn my feet firmly in the opposite direction. Mrs Davis looks after me, I tell myself. She wouldn’t give me advice if it wasn’t necessary to do so. Each time I go into her shop she gives me left over buns and offers me bits that she has put by, knowing I will like them. She even goes so far as to pick up paint and paper from the art shop in town after she has been to the cash and carry.

  “If you are going to be here for the long haul, you need to be getting in some firewood for the winter,” she says. “Here, if you telephone and tell him I gave you his number, he will bring you a load over and even stack it in the shed for you. Huw the Log is very accommodating. He is my grandson and, even though I say it myself, he is a lovely boy. He deals with all the firewood needs of the village.”

  As I take the scrap of paper and thrust it into my jeans pocket, it doesn’t occur to me that she might be matchmaking. I suppose I will still be here for the winter, I’ve nowhere else to go, although I’m not sure how long I can stay.

  Apart from Mrs Davis, I’ve made no friends. Everyone has partners and the clubs and meetings are all designed for couples, unless of course, I want to go through the trauma of the pub in the next town. The courtship rituals of the local youth are primitive to say the least and, even if I were to attract a lover, I’m far too long in the tooth for coupling in the car park with a stranger. It is companionship I need. A friend and a lover, someone to care for me forever but it seems to me that, now, forever is likely to be a lonely place.

  As I walk home with the shopping bag digging sharply at my knees I ponder the next few months ahead. Autumn will be over soon and winter upon us in all its vengeance. The days will draw in and there will be no more evenings spent on the cliff top sketching sunsets or getting up at dawn to watch the start of the lonely day. It will just be long, drawn-out, solitary nights and short, rushed days before darkness obliterates the light again.

  I’m not sure I can take that. It is one thing being lonely on a bright, breezy day but another thing entirely in a cold, wet winter. I will have to think long and hard about staying …but if I don’t stay here, where on God’s earth will I go?

  I am not ready to go home.

  I doubt I ever will be.

  It is lunchtime. I huddle over a book and shovel scrambled eggs into my mouth. The kettle is singing on the hob, telling me it’s time for tea and, stifled from being indoors all morning, I pour the liquid into a thermos cup and take it onto the beach to drink it on the sand. Finding my favourite niche in the rocks where I am protected from the worst of the wind, I settle my mug in the sand, link my hands beneath my crooked knees and gaze across the empty sea. An inky ocean slaps at the rocks, white gulls cry and, far off in the village, a small dog yaps persistently.

  James should be here, sitting behind me, wrapping me in his arms, whispering in my ear, groping up my jumper, laughing and tempting me to naughtiness on the deserted beach. There would never be anyone to tempt me into bad behaviour again and my life stretches ahead in an unbroken plain of celibacy that I am far too young for. My fiftieth birthday is still a year or so away and I’m the sort of woman that needs a companion. I’m not designed to be alone.

  Everyone needs to be loved.

  That night, I dream of James again. We are tumbling and turning in a sea of undulating linen, my legs wrapped around his waist as he fills me with love, his hands stroking, probing, kneading, skilfully leading me onward, up and up until I am full of him. I can feel love blowing all around us. My eyes are closed and I am smiling ... washed with contentment. James, I whisper, James, James … I catch my breath, bite my lip …

  I wake up, body throbbing as it always is after such a dream. Almost sobbing with a combination of loss and frustration, my hand trails down between my legs, fingers probing my own wetness to seek a release of sorts – the loneliest kind.

  After that dream I cannot rest. I am plunged suddenly back into the dark hole, the blackness of my future mocking me again. I had thought I was beginning to recover but now I am where I started and I think that perhaps my preoccupation with paint and canvas has just been a façade, a decoupage screen, a conjurer’s trick.

  I am no further forward.

  I doubt I ever will be.

  The light has barely begun to leaven the dark when I leave the cottage and follow the path to the top of the cliff. I cannot settle indoors, loneliness is like a virus, my body is itching to be loved and I hope a long relentless walk will tire me out and make me sleep. I plunge my hands deep into my pockets and climb steadily; the wet shale of the surface giving way beneath my feet, making me slip and slide, impeding my ascent. When I finally reach the top, the cleansing wind lifts my tumbled hair and I wrench it back, hold it fast and with grim satisfaction, scan the pink stripe of the horizon and the mercurial darkness of the sea.

  I walk for about half an hour and then sit on the damp grass and watch a seal far below me, nosing its way along the shore. If I were a seal I wouldn’t need a reason. For a seal, life is life, he doesn’t ponder on how long his time on earth will be, or how short. He lives for the moment, the next wave, the next fish, the next mating.

  I wish I were a seal.

  I watch enviously, intrigued at the unexpected glimpse into the life of a sea mammal. I share the wonders of the morning with him until the chilly fingers of dawn begin to creep up my skirts and beneath m
y anorak, I get up and walk to and fro, banging my body with my arms.

  I am not ready to go home. In the distance I can see I left the attic light burning and I can just make out the outline of the cottage; a grey lump in the twilight. I know I will find warmth there and that the bed is soft but the memory of that erotic dream still lingers. It is as though I have been recovering too quickly and James has come to me in a vision. “Whoa,” he says, “slow down, you are going too fast. Don’t forget me. Not yet.”

  But it isn’t too fast. Forgetting James is slow, painfully slow. Sometimes it feels I am trying to pull myself out of a tight, dark box and no sooner have I managed to get my head out and my hands on the rim, than someone comes along and stamps on my fingers, plunging me downward again. It is better out here in the cold where the black box seems a little further away. Here, the wind and the rain blow the danger of darkness away; not far enough but at least, out here, I can breathe.

  A movement below takes my eye again and I see the seal has returned and is silently drifting among the jagged rocks. Keeping my eye on him, I lean closer, following the white wake that betrays his path.

  “Get away from the edge!” A loud voice cuts through my musing and I let out a scream, almost losing my footing as strong fingers suddenly dig into my bicep, big hands tugging at my shoulder, pulling me backward, throwing me to the floor.

  My heart is banging beneath my ribs, my mouth suddenly dry with shock.

  “M - Mr McAlister? What are you doing? I was watching the seal.”

  I scramble to my feet, my heart beating a tattoo.

  “Was y’ now?” His face is pale as he sits down on a scattering of boulders and begins to roll a cigarette with trembling fingers. His tongue runs a long the edge of the paper as he surveys me with one eye closed. “It’s a little early t’ be out seal watching, even for you.”

  “What does that mean? Even for me?”

  “I mean, woman, that y’ keep odd hours. I’ve seen you, on the beach at midnight; on the cliff top at dawn. I’d like t’ know what you’re about.”

  I scramble to my feet.

  I am gob smacked.

  What I’m about?

  “What about you?” I retort, the anger beginning to overspill and take control of my tongue. “If I’m keeping odd hours then you must be too, or you’d not know of it.”

  He leans back, extracts a hip flask from his pocket and makes a harsh humourless sound, like a dog barking.

  “That’s a fair point but you have to confess, it’s not usual for a lass to be wandering around in the wilds after dark.”

  “I like the dark.”

  He offers me the flask but I refuse it with a negative jerk of my head.

  “Scared of it, more like. Or scared of yourself. Or your cottage. What is it? Is it ghosts or your own thoughts that drive you out here in all weathers?”

  I open and close my mouth, astonishment and irritation warring, fighting for victory. He is an aggravating man. I screw up my eyes and give rein to the rough side of my tongue.

  “No wonder the village people hate you, if this is how you treat people.”

  I turn to storm away but he lets out another bark of laughter, his next words arresting my movement.

  “Hate me do they? They know nothing …” He subsides into silence, chewing the inside of his mouth as he stares narrow-eyed across the sea, the wind whipping his hair.

  In my pocket I can feel my sketchbook digging into my hip and I long to take it out. I study his face and know I could capture him in a few quick lines, I know I can. He is just a collection of thick, heavy marks on a page.

  I hope he doesn’t notice the close attention I am paying to his bone structure, pigment, skin tone.

  I am fascinated, in more ways than one.

  “Why do they hate you?” I am startled by my own question and, from the way he looks up at me, one eye closed, the hip flask halfway to his quirked lips, I can tell I’ve surprised him too. He lowers the bottle un-tasted and keeps me pinioned in his sight.

  “I murdered my wife,” he says, stunning me with his honesty.

  I stay where I am; shocked out of my self-absorption. The silence stretches as I try to discern if he speaks the truth or is seeking only to frighten me. I am intrigued, and too curious to be afraid.

  “Really?” I say at length, taking a tentative step closer. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence I take another step and, when he holds out the flask, this time I take it from him. “Why did you do that?”

  He watches me warily as I sit down on the rock beside him, smell again the sea wind and the whisky, the hint of fish. Without wiping the lid, I put his flask to my mouth and take a swig, the burning taste of it trickling through my body, burning me up and warming my blood.

  Eight

  I continue to walk alone. Sometimes I feel, if I could just go far enough, I would find myself again, bump into the person I used to be coming from the opposite direction along the footpath. Slowly, I am waking, forgetting to be miserable, letting my grief slip like a shawl that is no longer required.

  Day by day I begin to notice more wonderful things, the play of light on the water, a family of dolphins off shore, a treasure of tiny shells washed up and left high and dry at low tide. I tuck each experience away in the sketchbook of my mind, telling myself that, one day I will bring the memories out, shake out the dust and give them colour and light – one day, when I can laugh again I will share it with someone.

  Often now, I go for hours without thinking of James or worrying what my future will hold. I find myself absorbed in small things, the structure of a sea shell, the way the sand trickles through my fingers, marvelling that there should be so much of it, amazed that it is constantly forming, constantly shifting, constantly increasing.

  Infinity.

  One day the whole world will be nothing more than a pile of sand and, with nothing to bind the planet together, it could just all blow away in a sudden gale to drift about the universe, taking the whole of humanity with it. Not even a memory of our species left, for there would be none to remember.

  Nobody left to mourn.

  Such is life; such is love.

  Suddenly I become acutely aware of the rock I am leaning on. It has been here since the world began and, now, it is my resting place. How many other people have halted here, looked across the sand, eaten a picnic on its rough, scarred surface? I take out my sketchbook and begin to transcribe the pattern of the rock onto the page. In my head I am planning a great abstract, powerful multi-tonal strands of stratified rock as a metaphor for human DNA.

  This rock and I, we both have a story.

  My hair blows across my face, strings of nuisance, getting into my eyes, catching in my mouth, tangling with my tongue. My marks on the page are insubstantial, just like a promise. My pencil keeps moving, building a picture, increasing the shadows, deepening the lines, perfecting the image. Just as my time here will be short, the day will come when this rock is also no longer here. Slowly it will turn into sand, like our dreams, James’ plans, our love.

  And, as for my drawing, in all likelihood there will be nobody to ever see it. Even if I return to my attic and transfer it to a giant canvas, paint it with rich browns and greys, a touch of purple, the people who view it won’t understand it. It will really never be anything but marks on a page. The scrapings of my mind.

  If I hang it in a gallery, give out free tickets and bring a thousand people to look upon and venerate my representation of this rock – that still won’t make it permanent. Everything, my paintings, my sketches, even the earth itself, are just fleeting things.

  Like love.

  Like James.

  Like me.

  We are all transient. Temporary.

  Only death is permanent.

  Near the bottom of the page, where the rock meets the sand, I begin to sketch in the cluster of bladderwrack and mussel shells, concentrating on the sheen of the water, the shine on the surface of the seaweed. I work fast an
d purposefully and when a shadow passes over the sun, spoiling my vision and stealing my light, I look up in some annoyance at the intrusion.

  And there he is, Mr McAlister, seemingly as solid and immoveable as the rock itself and my brief creative brainstorm blows away in the wind.

  “That’s not bad.” He squats down at my side and takes the drawing from me. I clamp my lips in a straight line and sit tight, irritated at the intrusion, at his rudeness but at the same time, reluctant to take up the fight with him again.

  “Thank you.” I go to snatch back the book but he jerks it away and begins to flip through the pages. My heart sets up a steady, sickening thump, making me uncomfortably aware that I am alive. “Give it back.”

  He lets out a yelp of humour and waves the book beneath my nose. “Now, he is a handsome fellow. Anyone I know?”

  Furious now, both at him and myself, I scramble up and lunge for my notebook. There are umpteen sketches of him, every one of them not quite right, recognisable but with something vital lacking, making the representation of his mobile face nothing more than a mask. He turns into the wind, hunches over the book, flipping the pages, examining each likeness, glancing up at me from time to time. He is thinking, considering, while I wait, arms folded, fuming with anger, until he straightens up and hands back my property. “Why would you want to sketch an ugly bugger like me?”

  I shrug and turn away so that the breeze blows my hair away from my face. I feel like a sulky child caught out in mischief.

  “Your face is interesting, different.”

  “You’re not kidding. I’ve certainly never won any beauty contests.”

  He hands me his flask and I shake my head in rejection but he nudges me.