Where the West Wind Blows

by Mary Middleton

  “The tip of your nose is blue with cold, woman. Have some.”

  I take it from him and enjoy again the burning comfort of his bottle. “Thanks.”

  I pass it back, jumping out of my skin when our fingers touch, just briefly.

  His hands are huge, stained with oil, the skin roughened from work, the nails black around the edges. I look up at his face, trying to fathom the aspect of him that I cannot capture in my drawings. “What do you do?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what do I do?’”

  “Work wise. What is your job?”

  He shrugs, “Oh, this and that. I don’t really have one. I grow my own veg, keep a few hens, catch a few fish. It doesn’t take much to feed yourself, not even for a big fella like me.”

  That explains the aroma of fish that clings to his jersey, the mud beneath his nails. Above us the seagulls mourn, their shadows turning in the emerging sunshine.

  “Why did you kill her?”

  He looks down at me and has the grace to flush. My words have affected him. Perhaps he is not so tough as he seems. “Well, you don’t pull any punches do you?” he says at last. “I had my reasons.”

  I don’t know why but I am suddenly consumed with the need to know but his face is inscrutable; he is not going to confide in me lightly. I remember my analyst, teasing information from me and I decide to soften the path by trading confidences. I take a deep breath.

  “My husband died very suddenly, there were no goodbyes, nothing.”

  “Bastard,” he spits, and I flinch in astonishment.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘What a bastard.’ Meaning your husband, for having the nerve to just die without asking your permission first. Did you hen-peck him to death? Was death the only way out for him?”

  “How dare you! You know nothing about it. Nothing about us. We were happy.”

  “Sure you were.” He swigs again from his flask, winces as the liquid sears his throat. “Aren’t we all?”

  I am almost crying with rage, balanced on the cusp of stormy tears but I take a deep breath, determined not to break down in front of him. The far horizon continues to absorb his interest, he is like a blemish on a faultless face. His flippancy is spoiling the perfect grief I have created, making me remember the few times when James and I did fight. The time we almost parted when he accused me of flirting at a studio launch party, the time when I was unsure about a certain model that he spent a lot of time painting one summer.

  “James and I were happy. I was devastated at his death. I still am.”

  “Are you? Or are you just annoyed that he’s left you in the lurch?”

  “You know nothing about it.”

  “No, and you and Mrs Dogooder-post-office-lady know nothing about me either but it doesn’t stop your jaws from flappin’, does it?”

  The sun goes in. I scowl and silence swamps us. We look in separate directions across the beach toward the sea while the wind thrashes against the shore. He is much taller and broader than I am, the bulk of his body is shielding me from the worst of the weather but when he turns suddenly, it buffets my face, blows back my hair. His eyes burn into mine and I am able to look at him properly for the first time. I see anger, I see regret and, to my surprise, I see sorrow. And in that innate sadness I recognise something of myself and feel some kind of a connection. And, as if of its own accord, my hand grips the damp sleeve of his anorak. “Sometimes it helps to talk.”

  “You sound like a fuckin’ shrink.”

  “Maybe I should talk to you then, and prove I’m not.” I pause for a long time, fumbling for words, wondering where to start, while he continues to stare at the horizon as if he is on coast guard duty. In the end I open my mouth and just start blabbing. “James and I met at art school. We were very young and were friends long before we were lovers. He said that was the best way to be, so that if the loving ever stopped, we’d still have a foundation of friendship.”

  “Did it?”

  “Did it what?”

  “Stop.”

  “No.”

  I lower my head and bite my lip, swallow the obstruction in my throat. “He was just turned fifty when he died. We’d spent the morning making love, then after breakfast, he went out to tidy the garden while I washed up before starting to prepare dinner. It was a Sunday …”

  The memory of those lost, quiet, domestic Sundays catch at my heart. The long morning in bed, the newspapers he read from cover to cover, the shared breakfasts, the aroma of fresh coffee, Paul Simon playing on the radio. My life was so ordered then, so safe compared to the knife-edge I walk now.

  “So, you could say you fucked him to death then.”

  Again he has spoiled my perfect vision of my life before. My breath falters and my neck snaps up furiously, but then I see a glint of laughter and realise that, in his own rough way, he is teasing me …as James might have done. He often said that those Sunday mornings would be the death of him. I manage a half smile. “James would probably agree with you.”

  Above us the screaming gulls are turning vast white circles in the angry sky. Gulls have no cares, they think no further than the next fish, the next rocky ledge, the wake of the next fishing boat. I wish I were a gull. It would be better than standing here, pouring out my heart to a half-crazed stranger. I should stop speaking, just walk away from him and slam my cottage door against him but loneliness doesn’t let me. Mr McAlister is the closest thing I have to a friend.

  “Go on,” he prompts and I take a deep breath and continue.

  “Afterwards, when he was gone, I didn’t know what to do. It was impossible to just slot myself back into life without him so I …I …”

  “You ran away. Others have done the same.”

  I am getting a pain from looking up and, with a frozen hand, I massage the warm skin where my neck meets my shoulder.

  “Did you run away too?”

  “After they let me out of prison I did … I came here. It seems to be that sort of a place.”

  “Prison must have been awful. How long were you in for?”

  “Too bloody long but it didn’t seem as endless as the months I spent watching her die.”

  He gets up and begins to stride backward and forwards on the sand while I remain balanced on the edge of the rock. He is like a caged animal, the hard rippled sand trampled beneath his feet until he lets out a growl of despair or maybe anger …I am not sure.

  Then he comes to rest beside me, his body three, maybe four times the size of mine, and sits quietly again. My eyes travel down to his massive fists that are clenched tight as if they are the keepers of a great secret. I am fascinated and acknowledge that, if he chose to, he could extinguish my life just by squeezing them tight about my throat.

  “You did love her, then?”

  He runs a hand over his face, momentarily smudging the outline of his features.

  “Aye, I loved her.”

  His voice is resigned, sad, as if his heart, as if his whole world, holds nothing but emptiness.

  I can relate to that.

  I let this information sink in before I ask, “But why, then? Why did you do it?”

  His sigh merges with the gusting wind and his voice, when it comes, is as angry as the roaring tide, his words a shipwreck as the disaster of his life spills out onto the sand.

  “She was dying anyway. It was cancer. She was in agony and I was the one that had to watch it, day in, day out as she grew worse and worse. She couldn’t take anymore. I couldn’t take any more. She couldn’t ask me to do it but I knew, and in my heart I still know, it’s what she wanted.”

  Christ.

  I wish I hadn’t pressed him.

  He is still living it, everyday, living with the guilt of having killed the woman he loved. He’s been to prison and done his time but still he is suffering and, like me, he will probably suffer forever.

  We are two of a kind.

  If he were anyone else I would reach out and take his hand but he is Mr McAliste
r, and on many levels he terrifies me.

  “The people in the village, do they know what really happened?”

  He snorts. “They don’t give a shit. They hear the scandal, but they are blind to the bloody tragedy of it.”

  “I don’t think they can help it. People just don’t understand grief. They can’t understand. Even though its something we all share and will all suffer at some point, we can’t ever know how it feels …not until it happens to us and we lose someone.”

  “Aye.” He sniffs, rubs his hand over his face again and fumbles for his flask. This time, when he offers it, I almost snatch it from him. Overcome with embarrassment that I have just, in an oblique way, pointed out the similarities between us, I drink deeply, too deeply.

  The whisky burns the back of my throat and I splutter, my eyes watering. He thumps me on the back while I turn red in the face, eyes streaming. Then, when I am recovered, I smile my thanks.

  “Walk with me,” he says, taking me by surprise.

  “Where?” I ask, although I am already following him across the beach, the prints of my footsteps in the sand tiny beside his.

  “Along here a way. I want to show you something.”

  As we head north along the sand he doesn’t talk much but he stops now and again to help me over the rockier places, his huge rough skinned hand engulfing mine. I have never ventured this far along the shore because I’ve always been afraid of being cut off by the returning tide. For the first time the thought strikes me as suddenly absurd in someone who has so longed for death.

  At the foot of the spit of land the locals refer to as Y Pen he stops and urges me to look around the curve of the cliff to a stretch of coastline invisible from our cove and, as I look, the sun emerges from behind a cloud, flooding the landscape with light. I draw in my breath. “Oh, my!”

  Here, the pastureland dips down to the sea, the hills dotted with sheep and the fields and meadows are golden, green and pink in the sunshine. The cliffs below are marbled grey and black above a stretch of tawny sand that, at this moment, is being buffeted and bullied by a steel blue sea. As my eyes fill with tears the colours merge into an abstract.

  “I thought you’d like it. I’ve seen you standing admiring the scenery with your mouth open. This is the best bit of coastline for miles. You can see it better from my boat.”

  “It’s certainly the most dramatic I’ve seen,” I agree, “It’s the contrasts. Have I got time to sketch it before the tide turns?”

  “Go ahead.” He perches on a wave splashed rock, rolls a cigarette while I begin to make short sharp marks on the page. “Want one?” He offers the roll-up to me but I shake my head. “Filthy habit,” he agrees, “I should really give it up.”

  “You should,” I murmur, not taking my eye from the landscape as I rapidly fill the blank page. “It kills you, you know … in the end.”

  I risk a glance at him, wondering if he will spot my intended irony. His mouth twitches.

  “Aye,” he says and, taking a lighter from his pocket, produces a brief spark and blue smoke engulfs him.

  Nine

  A few days later a rusty wagon comes lumbering along the track and pulls up outside my cottage. I open the front door and lean against the wall as I watch a man in a filthy wax jacket leap from the driver seat.

  “’ow’re you?” he says in his deep, local accent as he pulls off his cap. I raise my eyebrows questioningly and he shuffles his feet and looks around the garden, not meeting my eye.

  “I’m Huw, I brought the logs.”

  “Oh, of course. How silly of me, I’d quite forgotten. Come with me, I’ll show where it is.”

  I lead him to the back of the house and show him to the woodshed and he begins to travel to and fro with barrow loads of firewood. When he has been working for about half an hour I take him out a mug of tea and find him stacking the split logs into a tidy stack. By the time the shed is full I should have enough wood to last me a year.

  He pulls off his gloves and takes the cup I am offering, his nails black rimmed, his hands calloused and ingrained with dirt. I wonder why he bothers with gloves. They are the hands of a worker, I think, remembering James’ hands. They had been white with long, sensitive fingers and the only time I ever saw them dirty was if he’d been working with charcoal or pastel.

  Huw avoids my eye and, if I was hoping for scintillating conversation, I am sorely disappointed. He sips his tea, winces as it burns his lip, and nods at the sprawl of weeds and brambles. “You could do with a gardener.”

  “I know. The garden hasn’t really been a priority. I’ve been busy … working.” I wonder why I am so apologetic. It is my garden after all and it was rude of him to point out its faults. I want him to ask about my work so I can talk about my painting, what inspires me, how it feels to splash paint about with such abandon.

  “Oh right,” he says and we stand in silence for a while, the scent of damp soil and wood resin all around us, and in the silence I notice something, probably a rabbit or a blackbird, is rustling in the hedge.

  “How is your Grandmother - Mrs Davis?” I ask, for want of something to say.

  “Oh, fine. Fine. Still running the shop.” He drains his cup and hands it to me. “I’d better be getting on.”

  Glad to escape, I begin to move along the overgrown path. “Just pop the bill through the letter box if you can’t find me,” I call over my shoulder.

  He nods, pulls on his cap and trundles the barrow off toward the wagon. He’ll not win any personality contests, I think as I rinse the cups, watching him through the salty window.

  I escape to my studio and work for a while but I feel unsettled, restless, and my usual ability to lose myself in a project eludes me. In the end, I replace the lids on my tubes of paint and clean my brushes, popping them bristles up into a jam jar.

  I find Huw bent over in the border, pulling weeds. “What on earth are you doing?”

  He stands up. I am not sure if his red face is due to exertion or embarrassment. He dumps the weeds in the barrow and waves an arm at the disarray of the flowers.

  “I got carried away,” he says, “I pulled out one and couldn’t stop. I’ve no love of weeds and it could look really pretty by ‘ere. I could do it for you, if you wanted me to.”

  The colour in his cheeks doesn’t lessen and I am reminded of a schoolboy caught out in some misdeed.

  “I can’t really afford a gardener, Huw. I keep meaning to do it myself, I just haven’t found the time…”

  “Oh, I don’t want paying, bach. I’ll do it as a favour, we are neighbours, after all.”

  “Are we?”

  “Ooh, Yes.” His voice is as soft as the Welsh rain as he comes closer and points up the valley to a corrugated gable among the treetops. “That’s my place there, such as it is.”

  “Really? I had no idea.” In fact, I’d not given a thought to who might live there and I’d hardly spared Huw a thought at all apart from remembering to phone to order my winter fuel.

  “Shall I finish off, then?”

  “Finish off? What, the garden? Oh, I – I don’t know …it doesn’t seem right.”

  “It’s no trouble. I like weeding. I’ve some hydrangea cuttings at home that would go lovely in the dry shade under the hedge there.”

  For the first time he looks directly at me and I can’t help but smile. He looks so wistful, so eager to please, like a puppy. I don’t want the bloody garden doing but he is practically begging. How can I refuse?

  “Ok, ok,” I say, raising my arms and letting them fall again, “just as long as you know I can’t pay you. But don’t go doing anything too fancy, I like it a bit untidy. Relaxed, you know?”

  “Oh, yes, I know. It’s how I prefer it too. No regimented rows of French marigolds, then?” He smiles at me and I realise he is making a joke and I hear myself give a false laugh. At first I’d thought him approaching retirement age but he is not as old as he at first seemed. His face is long and two deep lines that run either side of his
nose fan out to become ellipses about his wide, honest smile. If he would only maintain eye contact long enough, I imagine his eyes would be green or maybe blue. He cannot be much past forty although his clothes and manner are those of a much older man. He pushes back a lock of dark hair and pulls his hat low over his brow before reaching out for another handful of couch grass.

  So, in the weeks that follow, I often find Huw doubled over in the garden, rain or sun and, slowly but surely, the garden takes on some semblance of order. Apart from taking him tea and biscuits twice a day, I don’t see much of him. I keep to my studio and in between my long, tiring walks, I paint with a fury.

  The next time we pass on the cliff path Mr McAlister nods toward the cottage where Huw has started a small bonfire, burning the clippings from the hedge. “You’ve an admirer I see.”

  I let out a huff of irritation, sure he says things to wind me up on purpose but I refuse to be baited.

  “Huw?” I answer breezily, “He is such a nice, gentle man. He’s doing a splendid job of the garden and won’t take a penny in payment but I gave him a sketch last week, in way of thanks.”

  “Oh aye, and did he know which way up it was supposed to go.”

  “Actually it was an abstract and there was no right or wrong way. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”

  “Hmm.” He has no answer to that and I bid him good day and start to walk away but, before I have taken more than a few steps, he calls after me. “I’m out in my boat this evening, would you like to join me?”

  I turn back, briefly contemplating the thrill of a spume soaked boat trip with a dangerous man like him. It is a tempting offer but, still piqued by his innuendo about Huw, I continue to walk backwards, the wind blowing my hair across my face, the back of my head exposed to the cold. I have no intention of letting him see how taken aback I am by the invitation.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I call back, “I’ve made other plans.” I am some way from him when his laughter floats after me but I do not look back although I know he is watching.

  Of course, I don’t really have ‘other plans.’ I never have plans. My time for nights out has passed, I will grow old here, a solitary witness of a thousand lonely sunsets. It’s a sobering thought. Shoving my hands in my pockets I carry along the path with my wellies squeaking on the wet, rabbit cropped grass.