Chloe. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ in the throes of a pre-finals breakdown. They littered her flat and demanded round-the-clock counselling and unrestricted access to fridge (apart from the anorexic) and telephone (often simultaneously). Demanding indeed, with pay and praise as paltry as they were.

      Finally, on a turbulent December afternoon just a day away from the end of term, bolstered by Jocelyn’s legacy and inspired by the map of the United Kingdom, Chloë has decided to resign. She has her eye on a moment to savour and worries that if she procrastinates, or changes into something more becoming, the moment would be lost. Then Lent term would be mercilessly upon her. And Wales would remain unopened. Wales would be forgotten. Closed.

      She could not possibly insult Jocelyn so.

      And there is no law against handing in one’s notice wearing jeans and trainers that should be restricted to solitary evenings safely inside.

      ‘But Chloë, the students need you – you’re their lifeline. If it’s a rise you want, we could, at a stretch, offer you one per cent over three years?’

      Chloë is surrounded by lino and melamine, strip lighting and orange plastic chairs. They are chipped and unsteady. Rain courses relentlessly down the steel-framed windows. A small puddle is forming on the flaking grey window-sill. It is unbelievably drab and depressing and Chloë feels all the more resolute for it. She rejects the pay rise and leaves guilt firmly in the room when she closes the door quietly behind her.

      Well, if Chloë Cadwallader is not to be a student-communication-liaison-welfare-officer, with a boyfriend called Brett and a rented studio in Islington, what is she to be?

      On Christmas Eve, she has absolutely no idea. And now there is no Jocelyn to turn to for advice. And yet, was not her godmother still overseeing Chloë’s education and welfare with as much concern and motivation during her death as she had during her life? Was not her legacy precisely that there was no better place for Chloë to start in the worldwide scheme of things than in the great British Isles?

      ‘Europe,’ Jocelyn had once said to Chloë, ‘is enthralling, the United States vast. Africa is captivating, Asia a jewel. Australasia is glorious and fiendishly far away but Britain, Britain is the garden of the world with secrets of joy lurking in every tiny nook.’

      Jocelyn’s bequest was that her god-daughter should discover and share those secrets. Who knows what she might find. And where. How exciting and what an opportunity. Grab it! Go! Have you gone yet?

      Christmas Eve in Islington. Chloë has pinned Jocelyn’s map above her bed and as she gazes at the four countries, she decides that now is the time to greet Wales. With Mr Andrews’s encouragement, she extends a tentative hand out towards the envelope. But she stops midway and wonders if it is all a little too far-fetched. So Jocelyn had deemed Chloë’s job deplorable and had thought Brett loathsome, but was a voyage to the distant corners of the United Kingdom really the answer? Was it a logical solution? Was it necessary?

      Was it even sensible?

      (‘People who are forever sensible are interminably dull, Chloë sweet. As drab as a black brolly in Islington.’)

      Was it a good idea? Realistically?

      ‘I’ve quit job and jilted the boyf – won’t that do?’ Chloë says aloud with just a touch of a whine to her voice. ‘What if I just move away from Islington – say, try Putney? How about I look for a job in a nice private firm – market research or something? Mr Andrews, please advise!’

      Mr Andrews, however, remains silent, his grin stony and fixed. And Chloë suspects that there is little point consulting Mrs Andrews who appears, on Christmas Eve, the sort of lady who would not speak unless spoken to but might, with a giggle and a glance, sing a little ditty if cajoled and flattered.

      Chloë does not want entertaining, she wants someone to tell her what to do. She can no longer reach out to Jocelyn and seek her advice.

      And yet it is Jocelyn’s advice that is in dispute today.

      Wales, still enveloped beyond reach, is yet tantalizingly close.

      ‘I’ll start packing tomorrow,’ Chloë says decisively.

      Mr Andrews cocks his rifle approvingly, Mrs Andrews giggles.

      THREE

      William bundled the contents of the holdall into his washing-machine, retrieving his toothbrush and razor at the last minute. He waited patiently for the whir and clicks to commence and then watched the water trickle shyly over the laundry. Satisfied that the cycle was under way (it only ever seemed to start under paternal encouragement) he confirmed that there was indeed nothing in the fridge and left the kitchen for his studio.

      The studio was a stone’s throw from the kitchen, which was itself a pebble’s roll from everywhere else; there being neither corridors nor landings at William’s cottage. Incongruously called Peregrine’s Gully, the cottage was compact and thickset. It reminded William of an Exmoor pony; essentially native, ruggedly pretty and inherently suited to its environment. It sat, small and brave, in a gentle acre meadow of its own, flanked on one side by a scar of gorse, on the other by the poor land petering out to the cliff edge. Local sheep often gazed longingly at the grass on the inside of William’s fence and while he was not averse to a visit and a polite nibble, a bellow from Barbara invariably saw them off.

      Barbara was a goat who had sauntered in through a gap in the fence soon after William had arrived at Peregrine’s Gully. He had shooed her and chased her and smacked her rump with a slipper but she had stood her ground, twitched her beard and fixed her yellow eyes on him, lovingly and unrelentingly. He had growled at her, he had waved wooden implements at her and he had ignored her, but still she stayed, nibbling the edges of the grass in a dainty and ingenuous manner. None of the farmers claimed her and a notice in the local paper brought no one. So she was invited, begrudgingly at first, to stay. William called her Barbara after her bleat.

      Barbara adored him; following at his heels whilst he pottered around the garden, standing for hours with her forelegs just inside the studio door while he worked, looking up at him conversationally when he sat to eat in the kitchen, staring alongside him at the washing machine as he coaxed it to work. Barbara gave the postman short shrift and frequently chased cars down the drive or stood defiant, stamping, right in the middle as they approached. She loathed Morwenna. In the early days, she trod on her, chewed her clothing and defecated as close to her as she could. Now, she just glowered at her witheringly or ignored her entirely whilst making eyes at William. Invariably, Morwenna brought carrot butts and lettuce ends as a peace offering, sometimes even ginger-nuts as a bribe, but these placated Barbara only temporarily.

      It was the windows at Peregrine’s Gully that had decided William to rent the property. They had good deep sills affording place and space to his ceramics, and provided some respite from the invasive winter chill. Of the two small bedrooms upstairs, he slept in the one which looked out to the cliffs and onward to the sea. It contained only a bed, a tea chest for a bedside table and the incongruous chintzy curtains that had come with the cottage. The other room, however, was stuffed with the stuff of bedrooms: guitars, books, an enormous mirror framed by driftwood for which he had exchanged a nicely glazed set of mugs, an oversize whisky bottle half full of small change, two chests of deep drawers stuffed full of thick jumpers, and a Victorian oak cupboard he had bought for a song wherein the rest of his clothes were housed. Such items, essentials or paraphernalia, were banned from his bedroom for it was the bare white walls, the uninterrupted run of floorboards, which provided him with the empty canvas, the armature, for new works to take СКАЧАТЬ