Where the West Wind Blows

by Mary Middleton

  My teacup crashes onto the table and I run from the room, past the open front door and clatter upstairs to my attic, slamming the door. There, I slide to the floor and give way to feeble, womanish tears, tears that I think will never stop.

  I am crying for James, for myself, for poor dead Mrs McAlister, for Jezz and for the whole world, the whole of humanity. There is nothing but endings, nothing but pain for any of us.

  Crying sometimes seems to be the only thing.

  When I am calmer, I sit up and wipe my nose on my sleeve because I don’t have a handkerchief and, as I sit there sniffing, I hear the front door softly closing. I do not move and, when I finally uncurl my legs, wash my face and go downstairs, the night is pulled up around the house like a blanket and the room is in semi-darkness.

  Our cups are still on the table, mine tipped over, liquid drying into the scrubbed pine surface. Jezz’s cup is half empty, or half full perhaps. I gather them up, rinse them beneath the tap, fill the kettle and stoke the reluctant fire again. Then I squat, hands out to the chilly flame and try not to think about Jezz as I wait for it to boil.

  A handful of raindrops rattle at the black window.

  My thoughts are on a loop and, although I tell myself to stop thinking, to clear my mind, empty myself, I have no control and I am consumed with doubt. At length, when I hear the water beginning to stir in the kettle, I get up to fetch the milk from the fridge. As I open the door the internal light floods into the room, illuminating the dark and from the corner of my eye, I see I am not alone.

  I let out a high-pitched, hysterical scream and fall back so that I am sitting on the floor, looking up at him. A figure cloaked in the shadowy corner.

  Relief escapes in a head of angry steam.

  “What the hell are you doing? Are you some kind of stalker?”

  I scramble to my feet as he shifts in his chair, calmly crosses one leg over the other, rotates his ankle. He is deadly calm. “I like things to be clear and we hadn’t finished.”

  “But I heard you leave!”

  “You heard me close the front door.”

  He watches me steadily, his coal black eyes unflinching on my face, trying to understand me. Trying to penetrate my thoughts. I am reminded of my shrink …my therapist. I cannot look him in the eye and, whirling around, I begin to dribble milk into my cup.

  He wants to talk.

  He wants things to be clear.

  Fine, let’s sort it out then.

  Once and for all.

  “Do you want tea?” My voice is tight, angry and inhospitable and when I look at him, my mouth is clenched, like my stomach. He nods and slowly eases himself from the chair to tower above me as if he knows how ill at ease it makes me feel.

  “Fiona, I don’t want to fight. I want to talk. To try to understand. Won’t you explain?”

  His voice is gentle and calming.

  He doesn’t realise that I don’t understand it myself.

  “Fine,” I say and give him a blithe smile as if I am perfectly in control, as if my body isn’t beginning to betray my better judgement …again. “You want to talk, you start.”

  He watches me move around the kitchen, arranging cups and saucers. I am ravenously hungry but I don’t want to offer him food. That would be too reminiscent of the other night, the home cooked pasta we ate in his bed, the sauce he licked from my belly, the spaghetti he looped around my nipple.

  I close my mind, take the other chair and nod for him to sit down again. He clears his throat, his nerves apparent and, after a few false starts, he begins to speak.

  “I don’t know how it was for you, Fiona. I can only tell you how it was for me.”

  I do not reply but remain quiet, almost sulky, while he licks his lips, narrows his eyes. I am determined not to make this easy for him.

  Why should I?

  He has made nothing easier for me.

  He is speaking, so I shake my head to clear my thoughts and try to listen.

  “I killed the woman I love. Can you comprehend what that means?” His voice is hoarse, his gaze unfocussed. “I went to prison for it and, believe me, Fiona, a man like me has a hard time in jail. His motives are irrelevant. He is hated, violently so. My fellow murderers were not people I’d care to know and the others, the comparative ‘good guys,’ well, they didn’t want to know me.

  If they found me on my own they made no secret of the fact that they held me in the lowest contempt. One night seven of them kicked the shit out of me in the showers. I was lucky to get out alive. It didn’t matter that I had a similar low opinion of myself; self-hatred obviously wasn’t enough for them, so they let me have it.

  The mistake I made was believing that when I got out of there, when I was finally free, I’d be able to start over, my suffering would be finished and I could move on. But, far from it, my punishment had barely started but it was mental punishment I got on the outside, not physical. I went back home to Scotland at first but my family couldn’t cope with the shame and, as for my friends, well, they had all moved on.”

  He slurps his tea, replaces the cup on the saucer. Suddenly, I see how hemmed in he is in my home; the chair is too small, the cup is too fragile, the ceiling too low. He doesn’t fit here but he doesn’t belong anywhere and, like the wind and the rain, he is never welcome.

  I mirror his movement, politely drinking too as he continues. “I had thought that coming here, to this quiet backwater where I’m a stranger, things would be easier, nobody would know about me. But bad news has a way of following you. It’s like dog shit on your shoe, you can scrape it off but the stench lingers. Once the villagers found out about my past I had two choices. I could run away again or I could stick it out. So I stayed, on the edge, always the foreigner, always the outcast. It doesn’t bother me.”

  His cup is empty but he clings to it, balancing it on his wide knee while I watch him, and listen. For once, I am concerned with problems greater than my own and am beginning to understand the difference between us. I live in solitude because I choose to but he lives alone because he is shunned.

  I have no concept of how that must feel.

  He shakes his head and his hair, dry for once, falls back from his big, clouded face. “Go on.” I whisper, intrigued, despite myself.

  “That’s how it’s been, for three years, until you came along and tangled yourself around my coat button. That day, when I touched your hair, it was my first human contact since I cradled my dead wife in my arms …that’s if you don’t count the body searches and the beatings I took in jail.”

  I don’t know what to say. I am way out of my depth so I dip my face to my cup again, take a mouthful of cold tea and swallow it.

  There is nothing more disgusting than cold tea.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice is little more than a whisper and I discover I am sorry, sorry for his isolation, his lack of hope. I wish I knew how to make him feel better.

  He snorts rudely and looks at me from beneath his lowered brow.

  “Did sex with me mean nothing to you, then? Because it meant an awful lot to me.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know what it was …I needed someone just then, I suppose.”

  He reaches out, goes to touch me but puts his large, sturdy hand on the arm of my chair instead. I stare at it and try not to think about the pleasure of his touch. I close my eyes while he continues to pour out his heart.

  “For me, sleeping with you, making love with you, was just like jumping off that cliff. Letting go of all the things that have been holding me back. I stepped right off the edge, into the void, the unknown and there you were waiting to break my fall. It was a soft landing, Fiona and I found myself in a place I want to be, a place I never thought I’d want to be again.”

  My eyes slowly rise to his face, which is flushed, almost bashful and I feel a sudden rush of affection. But he is so needy, a relationship would be too much of a responsibility. I would have to be so careful of his feelings.

  And I am the one that
needs looking after.

  Not him!

  Pushing the urge to reach for him away, I cover my face with my hands and shudder a sigh as I mentally climb back into my coffin. “It’s all too soon for me, Jezz, much too soon.”

  He stands up suddenly, dwarfing me, prompting me to get up too and we face each other, with him looking down and me looking up, as if from different planets.

  We are so different.

  Worlds apart.

  Why can’t he see that?

  He holds out his hand. “Can we agree to be friends then? If you meet me on the cliff path you won’t run away from me?”

  I sigh and close my eyes. “I won’t run away.”

  I risk a smile and his face relaxes into softer shadows although pain still lingers about his mouth.

  “Good,” he says. “And if I should have a flask of Penderyn in my pocket, you’ll not be too proud to share it?”

  I nod. “If you should have a flask, I will be glad to share it.”

  It is like a solemn exchange of vows, a promise to be friends in a lonely world. It is all I can offer him. My cold hand is swamped in his hot one and he shakes firmly, sealing the deal.

  “I’ll be seeing you, then …” he hesitates, “you’ll be Ok now? No more tears?”

  “No more tears.” My voice almost breaks on the last word as I follow him to the door and open it, setting him free. For a few seconds his bulk stands out stark against the grey evening sky where one or two early stars are beginning to show through breaks in the cloud.

  He turns up his collar, looks out at the misting rain. “I’m sorry I scared you but things needed to be said. I like the air to be clear. No pressure, Fiona, just friends Ok? No strings until you are ready for them.”

  “No strings.”

  I am beginning to feel like a parrot. He gives a half smile and stomps off, head down, along the garden path and by the time I have closed the door I am beginning to miss him already.

  Fourteen

  Mrs Davis fills my basket in silence, her face pinched with disapproval. I sigh and look around her small shop at the pyramid of chicken soup tins, the baskets of special offer biscuits, the gently humming freezer of yoghurt, milk and cheese.

  “I’ll have some of that lovely cheese I bought last time. Y Fenni, wasn’t it?”

  She bustles across to the other counter and cuts me a section, wraps it in cling film. As she places it beside the eggs in my basket, I am determined to break the steely silence.

  “Mrs Davis, Mr McAlister isn’t what you think. Maybe if you were to speak to him, listen to him, you would understand.”

  Her lips tighten further. “I’ve heard all I need to hear, thank you. Men like that should never be allowed back into society. What he did is unthinkable, unforgivable.”

  I’ve seen Mrs Davis and Huw, donned in their best, setting off for chapel every Sunday. They must have missed the lessons on human frailty and forgiveness.

  “Isn’t forgiveness the Christian way? That’s what I was taught. Surely, it isn’t right to condemn a man unheard?”

  “But he has been heard, my dear. A judge listened to him and a jury declared him guilty. That is all I need to know. I can’t believe you threw my Huw over for the likes of him. You are making a big mistake, bach, consorting with a man like that. What makes you think you are different? How can you be so sure that you won’t one day find yourself his next victim?”

  “We are just friends, that’s all. We pass the time of day when we meet …”

  She shoots me down with a disbelieving look.

  “And stay out until after dark watching the sun set beyond the point. Oh yes, we’ve all seen the pair of you, thick as thieves …or murderers!”

  “Mrs Davis!” I am shocked. She is trembling with hate for a man she has never so much as passed the time of day with. I snatch up my bag, shove money across the counter.

  “His wife was dying you know, he did what he did for her sake, because he loved her.”

  She makes a rude noise. “Well, that is his story but how do you know? You weren’t there, were you? None of us know the truth of it. Not really.”

  The shop bell rings and a young woman enters with a child in tow. They are probably weekenders staying in a holiday cottage. I take my change without saying thank you and smile vaguely at the little boy and his mother as I leave the shop. I am half way home before I realise that I am actually giving credence to Mrs Davis’ spite.

  She might be right, my mind mocks, you weren’t there. You have only heard his side of it.

  I remember the strength of his body, the power of his massive chest, thickset biceps, capable strong hands, big probing fingers. I close my eyes, imagining him hurting me instead of loving me, squeezing my throat instead of kissing it and, suddenly nauseous, I collapse on a nearby rock, letting my shopping drop to my feet.

  I’d never thought of Mrs Davis as a tormenting sort of woman, she has always been like a mother hen, looking after me, making me welcome, her friendly curiosity my only link with the outside world. Now, she sits like a devil on my shoulder, taunting me, still looking out for me, only this time offering advice that I don’t want to hear. The possibility that I have befriended with, slept with and, more to the point, enjoyed sleeping with, a cold-blooded convicted murderer is horrifying.

  I try to be rational and attempt to remember his face, recall the characteristics that attracted me but all I can conjure is a darkness, a wildness and an anger. All of which elements compose the perfect murderer; a virtual Mr Jekyll.

  Can I have made such an ill-judgement?

  I don’t have much experience at making friends, I have only ever had James, not friends, not proper ones. Jezz seems genuine enough and the pity he evokes in me is so strong that I’ve even gone so far as to forget my own sorrows for a while. And, to be honest, for all his roughness and blunt conversation, I like him; I know where I am with him and I enjoy his company.

  He makes me see myself for what I really am.

  At the cottage, I close the front door and open the humming fridge to stash away the cheese and eggs and slot the milk into the door before switching on the grill. Toast provides a temporary answer to most problems. When served piping hot and dripping with butter it’s the ultimate comfort food. I place two slices of floury bread on the rack and stand at the window while I wait for it to brown. My eye wanders across the beach.

  It is days and days since I’ve seen Jezz. Part of me wants to glimpse him dragging his boat across the sands or striding up the path to knock on my door, but the other half of me fears that very thing. I am never really comfortable with him. And now the situation is so uncomfortable I won’t know what to say when I do see him. Whenever I am with him I remember how it felt to be kissed by him, caught up in the storm of his lovemaking.

  And when I am not with him, I remember it too.

  Five minutes later, I am standing over the bin, scraping cinders from the surface of my cremated bread. I like it burnt, I tell myself, it will be fine as long as the butter is thick. Pouring a cup of tea I take my lunch to the attic where Jezz’s likeness stares at me from the giant canvas. The portrait dominates the room, governs my thoughts, just as Jezz is beginning to do in life.

  I sink my teeth into the slice of charcoal and chew methodically, our eyes still locked. He seems to accuse me. The likeness is so real that I almost expect it to suddenly point at me and denounce me as a hypocrite.

  “What?” I demand. “It isn’t as if I believe her.”

  I can scarce credit that I am addressing a portrait, denying my guilt to a smear of black and grey paint. His eyes reproach me, filling me with remorse. Why must I always feel accountable for something? I swallow the piece of toast, gulp my tea and decide to go for a walk.

  On the beach the wind whips up the sand. I screw up my eyes, zip my coat up to my chin and move briskly toward the water. I won’t be sketching today for I’d not be able to keep hold of my paper. My hair is blown across my face, tangling with m
y tongue, stinging my cheeks, obscuring my vision. It is a wild, exhilarating day. The sort that lets you know you’re alive and, for once, I am glad to be so.

  I increase my pace, my footprints quickly disappearing in the wet sand, making it seem as if I have never been there. The cliffs are reflected in the sheen of water and I splash through pools and puddles, the sopping surface splashing up the back of my leggings. As I go I stop from time to time to pick up shells, pretty pebbles, tiny shards of coloured glass worn by the constant movement of the sea into smooth, brightly coloured gems. I become so engrossed in my search that I almost forget how lonely I am.

  The cold, grey tide swirls and crashes at the shore, the gulls tossed like old newspapers across the steely clouds. I tell myself it is good to be here, alone with the elements, battered by the gusting tantrums of the sky and I try not to acknowledge that constantly reassuring myself that things are ok is stark evidence that the opposite is true.

  I don’t see him at first, sheltering at the base of the overhang. His jacket is as dark as the cliff face, his nose a rocky crevice, his blowing hair a tuft of rain-drenched grass. I stop suddenly when I spot him and our eyes meet warily, neither of us knowing how to move forward.

  Then he gives a half smile, holds up his flask, silently reminding me of my promise.

  He doesn’t look like a murderer.

  It is warmer beneath the cliff, the wind is less invasive and we are sheltered from the worst of the rain. My frozen fingers fumble with the lid of the flask and he takes it from me, removes the stopper before offering it back. The liquor is warm and strong, making my eyes water.

  I stifle a cough and hand it back to him.

  He slips it into his pocket.

  “It’s a wild day.”

  “Aye,” he says as I lean against the cliff beside him. “You found some treasure?”

  At first I’m not sure what he means and then I realise that he saw me picking things up on the beach. “Sea glass,” I say and begin to empty my pockets, holding my discoveries out for him to see the beautiful shards of blue, green, amber and even one or two red pieces.