Where the West Wind Blows Read online

  Where

  the

  West Wind

  Blows

  Mary Middleton

  Copyright©Marymiddleton, 2012

  First Edition

  The author, Mary Middleton, has asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, are purely co-incidental.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  WHERE THE WEST WIND BLOWS

  There are surprises to come, and it is a pleasure and a privilege to enter into this slice of Fiona’s life, and accompany her on the journey to calmer waters...but not too calm, for surely the best lives are always lived in a stiff but invigorating breeze?

  Another triumphant page turner for Mary Middleton, with penetrating observation and deep empathy for her characters, don’t miss it! –

  Helen Spring, author of Memories of the Curlew, Chainmakers and Strands of Gold

  .

  One

  “DEAR GOD, Please make it stop now …”

  I’ve been in the habit of addressing God as if he were a benign uncle since I was about six years old but this time it isn’t just a school test or a date I have to get through, not even the untimely death of a pet. No, this time I am desperate and ill-equipped to deal with it.

  There are no instructions.

  James is my best friend, my only friend; in fact he is the only person on the planet that I care about ... and that cares about me. I can’t lose him. “You can’t take him, God, not him. Send him back to me, please …’

  God doesn’t listen. I feel like a child again, denied the resurrection of my rabbit, only a million times worse. I stand with my back flat against the wall and watch as they struggle to revive him. I am in an alien world. The beeping monitors; the metallic rattle of the trolley; the crack of the plates that they lay upon his chest; the lifeless leap of his body.

  The nightmare scene imprints on my mind.

  I will never forget this.

  I repeat the same prayer over and over, fearful that if I stop silently chanting the words, no help will come and the alternative is something I cannot, will not, contemplate.

  It is three days since James collapsed, three days and two nights that I have been sitting here at his bedside, clutching his unaccountably warm hand and composing useless prayers to a God I am swiftly losing faith in. This can’t be happening to me, not me. I’m a successful artist with my own swish gallery in London, a beloved studio that I designed myself for James to build. James. My adoring and adored husband.

  He is a painter too, it was our art that brought us together and kept us together; art and our unshakeable, all-encompassing love. Twenty-five years is a long time, three times as long as most couples last, but we are as much in love now as we ever were. It can’t be the end.

  We are not ready for this.

  It can’t stop now.

  Since the very first days together we have been so involved with each other that the rest of the world has never really mattered. We were university students when we married, little more than children really, but we wouldn’t wait and as soon as I reached eighteen, when James was just twenty, we scurried along to the registrar’s office on rainy Saturday morning and made the arrangement legal - unbreakable. Since that day, neither of us ever so much as looked at anyone else. We shut ourselves away, engrossed in our own world, a wonderful, intimate world smelling of turps and oil paint, with multi-coloured canvas walls to shield us from the curious stares of strangers.

  They are all strangers, for no one comes into our home. At the gallery we mix with colleagues and customers but our home remains exclusively ours. In the early days we make love everywhere, every room, every surface, at whichever hour the fancy takes us.

  I am laughing at James dabbing bright blue pigment from his body after a session rolling on wet canvas on the studio floor. He looks up at me, eyes bright, blond hair flopping over his paint-spattered forehead.

  That blond hair has long since faded to grey and the forelock is now a lot further back – but to me, he is still that laughing young man.

  Shaking away the memory, I look up at him, imprisoned in a clinical world. I frown at his body covered in bubble wrap, the yards of plastic tubing, the monitors, the machine that is breathing for him and I know in my heart that he is gone from me already.

  I close my eyes and throw back my head, hanging on for dear life to his limp hand. “GOD, don’t do this, not this, please. I will be so good; I swear it. I will never ask you for another thing, never.”

  God doesn’t listen.

  I return home in a haze of disbelief and when I open the front door, I am engulfed by familiar smells, familiar things, shared objects that used to bring me comfort. James’ slippers wait by the fire, his paper still open on the arm of his chair, and a scattering of china strewn across the carpet by the French door, his hat still where it landed when he fell.

  James is sweeping up leaves in the garden. I am indoors in the warm, sipping a steaming mug of coffee. I watch him through the window, wondering what to cook him for his dinner. Then the door opens and he is there, not looking like himself at all.

  I put down my cup. “James?”

  His face is grey, his expression vague like an unfinished portrait. Before he falls, he looks at me, his brow furrowed in confusion as he reaches for the table. His body spasms and he grips at the cloth and I am on my knees beside him, scrabbling to loosen his collar, screaming his name.

  His cold hand closes over mine and I look into his abstract eyes that gleam with the last flickering of love.

  No, don’t!

  *

  “Is there anyone I can call for you?” The woman who volunteered to drive me home is kind, too kind, her powdered face too close to my own. I draw back from her, shake my head, wrap my cardigan tight about me and swallow the stabbing shard of iron in my throat. I look around the empty room, my heart hollow.

  “Nobody,” I croak.

  It is the loneliest word in the world.

  This isn’t home, not any more. The fire is out and my breath makes small clouds of vapour in the air. I should eat something, make a warming drink, take a shower but instead I perch on the arm of the sofa and stare at the cold ashes in the grate. The hearth is like my life, ashes, flaccid, cold ashes, all warmth extinguished.

  I close my eyes.

  In a moment James will come whistling in, kneel down with paper and kindling, strike a match to drive away this gnawing, frozen pain. He will slide his arm around me, leave a warm kiss on my frigid cheek and ask me if I want a cup of tea. But, although I wait until the clock on the mantle chimes a funeral knell at midnight, James doesn’t come.

  Each stair is a mountain. I drag myself to the top and steel my nerve to open the bedroom door. I can sense him more strongly in here. In this room the memories are overwhelming. It was our sanctuary, our nest. It is the place where I learned to peel away my protective skin and let him burrow into the core of me.

  My coat slides from my shoulders and falls to the floor, and still in the paint-splattered clothes that I’d been wearing when James fell, I climb into bed. I clutch his pillow, still rich with the scent of his hair, and stare unseeing into the darkness.

&nb
sp; It was his heart they said, some undiagnosed problem, some stupid little malfunction. If only we had known, if only there had been time to say goodbye. But there were no last minute things. All I will ever have is that last, silent message of love and a sort of apology as he clutched at the tablecloth, dragging it with him, destroying my best coffee pot… along with my life.

  Losing him is the cruellest thing.

  Letters and cards of condolence begin to arrive. Rectangular envelopes flutter from my fingers to make white block patterns on the brown carpet. I read the trite, uncomprehending messages of comfort before soldiering them along the mantlepiece. They don’t really understand …or care, I tell myself. It is only etiquette that prompts their whispered verses, badly constructed rhymes purchased in some corner shop. There is no compassion, no real sympathy and, while I sit here with a knife in my heart, they are going about their lives, shopping, working, loving, planning holidays. None of them can understand how I feel. They think it is enough to seal a few kind words into an envelope and then forget about James.

  Forget about me.

  At the funeral I shrug off their shrouded kindness and turn again into the grief to let it suck and swallow me in like a black hole. Heartache is my only comfort. I hate them as they gather, for beneath their black coats the wind reveals a flutter of orange, pink or blue – this is a temporary sorrow for them. This time tomorrow they will have put off their mourning and begun to move on.

  But I am head to toe black.

  I will never forget this.

  I am darkness, right down to my aching bones.

  James leaves instruction for a wicker coffin, no flowers; he asks to be lain in a shady dell in an aspen grove with bluebells planted above him. He leaves detailed instruction for the disposal of his defunct body and each one of his possessions is carefully itemised. His paintings are left to charity; his equipment to the university while I am left his share of the house and business. But he has forgotten to leave a directive as to what should be done with me. He should have left a note telling me what I am to do, how I should feel.

  But he gets his last wishes. I give him that much although, by the time it comes to carrying out his arrangements, I am so brimful of anger that if he walked into the room now, I would want to kill him.

  There is no one to tell me what to do, how to live, how to get warm, how to sleep, how to eat, how to carry on, how to be me. I wish someone would tie a label upon my ear bequeathing me to a new owner.

  Day by day, I draw deeper into myself. I cast off the bright colours that were my signature and paint dark, demonic pictures, monochromed nightmares that become real at bed-time. I paint until my back and neck are screaming with agony and I can stand up no longer, then I lie in our empty bed, wrap my arms around my trembling body and try to shut out the memories. I am so far removed from death, so lonely and I cannot stop the deep, racking sobs from tearing me further apart.

  Two

  Loneliness is a sort of madness, it consumes, it burns, it screams in the night and it never lets you rest. Each breath becomes a torture, each moment an anguish because I am alone and I cannot reach him and I don’t know what to do.

  It should be easy to take a step forward. One foot in front of another; that is all it takes. A baby can do it. It has never been difficult before but now I cannot motivate myself and I don’t really want to. The future is empty of James and all I want is to dive back into our past, bury myself in the dark, stinking ground beside him because it seems a much better option than living alone. I used to be strong, I used to be ambitious but now, it seems as if my backbone has crumbled clean away.

  The silence screams, mocking my misery and my unspoken fury. Our home is a torment of memories. The bed we shared, the bath we splashed in, the rug we made love on, the table where … I close my eyes, take deep breaths that seem only to aggravate the ever-constant ache, as if life itself, as if the simple act of breathing, is the wrong thing to do.

  Surrounded by mocking memory I fear to even raise my head, take my eye away from the canvas. My life, such as it is, might yet last for another forty years. I do not think I can bear that. The future holds too many inhalations; too many steps before I can finally beat out the hurt and extinguish all feeling and get rid of this pain. I want to stop hurting.

  Somehow half a year passes but these feelings do not recede, they grow stronger and each night I retire earlier and earlier to our bed. It is empty, the mattress vast but somehow it is full of him … for now. Slowly, imperceptibly, the unchanged sheets are giving up his scent, his pyjama top that I clutch each night is absorbing the smell of me instead. I am losing him, even forgetting his personal aroma, the solidity and the joy of him. I try to clutch at his memory, wanting to squeeze it tightly but, like an old photograph, he is fading.

  But he is vivid in my dreams.

  James rears like a sculpture above me, his limbs glinting in the light of the moon, coated with sweat, his eyes smiling as he loves me, his presence like the scent of a garden on the wind. His memory rubbing and tickling, coming close, pulling away, his lips and fingers teasing, his presence, his essence possessing me.

  I buck my hips in desperation and wake, my clitoris throbbing, breasts aching.

  Alone in our vast, soft bed.

  With shaking limbs I slide from the sheets and drink deeply from the glass of tepid water on my bedside table, close my eyes and wait for my body to cease its lustful pounding.

  I can’t stand this. This cannot go on. I miss him so much.

  I put on my slippers and go quietly downstairs to the kitchen with the wraith of my love wafting just behind.

  Downstairs the moon floods the world with a bluish light that turns my kitchen into the Damien Hirst painting, the one with the skull and the ash tray and the knife. It illuminates the worktops, tints the white ceramic sink, the washing up on the drainer, the cold tap dripping slowly, like time …like life. The table is scattered with papers, dirty cups and saucers, an abandoned sketchbook, unread newspapers that I should have cancelled and, on the wall above the worktop, a row of glinting metallic blades tempt me, offering an answer.

  I kneel on the floor in my nightdress. The blood flows in orgasmic warmth. There is no pain, just relief, just acceptance and a sort of bliss. It will be over soon. I sigh with satisfaction and the happy red mouths on my wrists smile back at me.

  My eyes close …

  Happy red mouths - smiling.

  Three

  I wake in a grim, grey room. There are bars at the windows and drab floral curtains form individual bays, compartments for our sorrow that afford no privacy. The covers are drawn tightly across my chest, restraining me, trapping me, holding me so firm I can scarcely move. I turn my head and see a jug of water on the clean, scrubbed bedside table, a clear plastic beaker, a box of Kleenex. I inhale the stench of misery, and the stench of the living dead.

  I don’t know where I am or how I got here. Fear creeps from my belly to take possession of my throat and I want to scream, I want to tear back the covers, I want to run away, from this bed, this nightmare, from myself.

  I open my mouth …

  The curtain about my bed is pulled sharply back and she is there; a vague memory flickers, colour flashing and fading. I’ve seen her before, I remember her now. A girl in a drab dressing gown with lank hair and bandaged arms … like mine.

  I don’t know her name.

  She makes herself comfortable on the end of my bed and begins picking restlessly at her dressings. “It’s itching like mad,” she says, “but they won’t let me have them off, even though I’ve told ‘em I’m allergic.”

  My mouth is dry, the medication is making my breath stink, my tongue thick and grey. I drag myself from sleep, pull myself up, my wrists throbbing dully, and stare at her blankly, blink around the ward at the other patients, all in various stages of madness.

  My shrink, or the therapist as I am supposed to call him, tells me they aren’t mad at all, just ‘displaced’ or ‘unhappy
’ and I have the sense to agree with him, knowing he will never discharge me if I do not appear rational – whatever that is.

  Not that I want to go home. I can’t face that. Not yet. I can picture the once cosy domestic kitchen space. The floor stained with my blood, the scuffed red footprints of the paramedics patterning the tiles. If the parcel hadn’t required a signature the postman would have left it on the front step but this day, to my detriment, he had taken it to the back door and seen me through the window. If only he had just gone on his whistling way I’d still be lying there now; or my body would be. My soul or whatever part of me it is that hurts so much, would be some other place, hopefully with James or at least in oblivion where pain and loneliness are no longer paramount.

  “Don’t you have any friends?” When I shake my head, shamefaced at such a confession, my therapist raises an eyebrow. “None at all? No family?” I shake my head again. My mum died years ago, having spent the last of her energy helping me through university. I had been so wrapped up in James and my career I’d barely noticed her passing. And as for children, well James and I had decided against them, fearing they would get in the way of our painting, our joint career, that gargantuan thing that was us.

  For the first time, I realise that had we had been less selfish and produced a brood of disruptive offspring, I’d have someone to lean on now, lots of small replica James’ ready to take me in and let me grow old in the bosom of their families. I’d have sons and daughters; grandchildren. If only we had been less unconventional I would have someone to love me now, a sort of build-your-own security package. But no, we made the decision and as a result, I grieve alone, and to grieve alone is so very hard. I never thought he’d run out on me like this.