Chapter 9
On the first morning of the painting class, they went into town for art supplies.
The reason for them all to go was so that they could buy their own materials in WH Smith. This was agreed after a short discussion in the shop because Gladdie had suddenly started worrying about the expense.
‘And after all, I’m not charging for my expertise,’ she said, looking aghast at the prices on the painting sets.
‘Good, because we wouldn’t pay you anyway,’ Megan replied. ‘Elisavet shouldn’t have to contribute if we’re doing it for her. Let’s get four of everything and split it between the three of us.’
They agreed that’s what they would do and Megan put their purchases into her straw bag and they went to meet Elisavet on the bridge.
‘There she is,’ Megan said triumphantly.
That was disappointing because Cora had bet her a pound that Elisavet wouldn’t turn up.
Half-hoped it, really. Cora and Elisavet hadn’t really spoken to each other since the incident of the broken Royal Doulton figurine after which Cora had sworn herself to silence.
And the opportunity hadn’t arisen since then because she made sure she was out when she came and she left Elisavet’s wages on the table in a white envelope as usual.
The memory of that gesture, that sweep of the arm, still stung. She wished it didn’t. She wanted to forget it. She wanted to forgive. But there was Elisavet with her dark hair coiled and pinned up in a mock tortoiseshell crocodile clip, wearing all black as if she belonged in an art gallery.
‘She’s obviously looking forward to it,’ Gladdie said smugly. ‘See how happy she looks!’
Elisavet was curved like a ship’s figurehead, her arms on the balustrade, her head held high, facing into the wind. It was an exaggeration to say she looked happy, but there was no doubt she seemed relaxed.
She turned to face them. ‘This bridge,’ she demanded when they got close, ‘tell me, what is it called?’
‘It’s called the Old Bridge,’ Cora said. ‘We’re very imaginative when it comes to naming our bridges.’
‘The Old Bridge,’ Elisavet said thoughtfully, nodding. ‘I like this very much.’
‘It wasn’t always called that,’ Gladdie chipped in with the air of someone in the know. ‘When it was first built it would just have been known as the Bridge, I expect.’
‘It’s a scheduled ancient monument,’ Megan said. ‘A bit like us.’
‘Ah.’ Elisavet absorbed this fact with her usual seriousness.
‘In Prizren, in Kosovo where I come from, there is a similar bridge in the old town. It is much like this, very old, made of stone,’ she waved her hand, ‘with these same cobbles to walk on.’ She added with pride, ‘It is one of our cultural heritage monuments.’
No wonder Elisavet looked relaxed, Cora thought, coming across something wonderfully familiar in an unexpected place.
‘Is it? Fancy that!’ Megan said. ‘What is your bridge called? Something exotic I expect?’
‘Yes.’ Elisavet’s dark eyes shone with humour. ‘It is called the Old Stone Bridge.’
They laughed because it was funny, and pleasing to know that the bridge’s comforting charm was Elisavet’s home from home too.
Gladdie’s painting class was taking place at her house. She put on her butcher’s apron which had a smudge of red paint on it, a badge of honour. ‘We’re going in the garden, as it’s sunny.’
‘Nice day for it,’ Megan said. She put on her loose, navy fisherman’s decorating smock which was polka dotted with cream emulsion. Her grey hair was parted in the middle, and growing out horizontal in a grey, lemony dishwashing-liquid scented storm cloud of frizziness.
Cora had no intention of getting paint on herself. She was wearing her normal everyday clothes, specifically a pair of red drawstring trousers and a floral blouse.
They followed Gladdie out to the back of the house where she had set up four chairs behind a trestle table on the lawn next to the pink rhododendron bush. In front of the table stood an easel displaying her third-prize-winning framed watercolour of the garden. For inspiration, Cora supposed.
Elisavet’s eyes were seeking Cora’s.
Cora looked away. I’m not just hurt, I’m still angry with her, she realised, not only because of that deliberate act of destruction but because Elisavet had assumed she’d had an easy life in an ‘it’s all right for you’ attitude.
She felt totally misunderstood. How could this woman presume to know what kind of lives they’d had?
Their upbeat amiability belied the fact that the three of them had come through tragedy, drama and trauma too.
Course they had. You couldn’t avoid it. It was called living.
It was the way life was, fraught with challenges and regrets.
She watched Gladdie busily rearranging four yoghurt cartons full of water on the table, placing them alongside four mismatched chipped tea plates, a mug of paintbrushes of various sizes, some A4 sheets of paper from their sketchbooks and several tubes of watercolour paint.
Megan caught her staring and let her raised eyebrows speak for her.
‘What?’ Cora replied defensively.
‘Look at Gladdie, bless her, she’s in her element being a teacher again.’
She was, too. Cora sat down at the end of the table on one of Gladdie’s dining chairs. The back legs began sinking into the lawn. ‘Abstract,’ she reminded herself aloud, picking up a paintbrush.
‘You like abstract?’ Elisavet asked, sitting down next to her.
Cora hesitated. ‘Yes. You?’
‘Of course. It’s more interesting, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Abstract doesn’t tell you what to think, it makes you think for yourself.’
‘True enough.’
Elisavet looked from Cora to the painting of the garden that Gladdie had propped up on the easel to inspire them.
Definitely not abstract, Cora thought, waggling her paintbrush at a wasp to discourage it, and she wondered if they were rather subtly taking sides.
Of course, she’d seen Gladdie’s greetings card of a hunting scene, or a robin, which, while not being strictly abstract, was definitely open to interpretation.
After chewing the end of the brush she decided to paint the rhododendrons.
She squirted red paint and white paint in two short parallel lines on the plate, where they lay in stripes like toothpaste, and mixed them together before applying to paper in therapeutically exuberant pink swirls. This didn’t take long.
After half an hour, Gladdie strolled around the table to check their efforts, and she said happily over Cora’s shoulder, ‘Is that me?’ and made a humming sound of approval.
Cora stared at her creation for a moment and resisted the urge to say: I don’t know, is it?
She had just been about to add dashes of green for the leaves but it was much more fun to find she’d been painting Gladdie instead.
‘I might enter it into the Agricultural Society competition,’ she said, sitting back.
She looked across the table at Gladdie’s blue and yellow oval, obviously an Easter egg.
‘What’s that?’ she asked before committing herself to praising it.
‘A blue tit. I haven’t finished it yet.’
Cora put her paintbrush in the yoghurt pot and folded her arms with the satisfactory sensation that she was back at school, having found the exam a lot easier than she’d expected. The sun was warm on her face and the rhododendrons hummed with insects.
To her left, Megan was painting the gnarled trunk of Gladdie’s oak tree. She was touching up the features of an old man’s face in the bark. It looked like her pacifist father, Idwal.
Cora turned to look at Elisavet’s creation. Using a ruler and a pencil, Elisavet had drawn black squares like a crossword grid. Cora narrowed her eyes and tried to let the picture speak to her. Hello? Anyone there? No. Nothing.
Elisavet put her pencil down and turned to Cora.
Cora’s stomach tightened with a sudden pang of guilt because Elisavet looked deeply unhappy. She tried not to notice.
‘Forgive me,’ Elisavet said softly. She touched Cora’s arm, her slender fingers brushing the floral sleeve.
Cora glanced desperately towards Megan and Gladdie, but they seemed to be caught up in their own personal worlds of art. It didn’t mean they weren’t listening.
Cora knew it would be the easiest, most sensible thing in the world to nod and agree, yes, I forgive you, but she clung on to her indignation as if it was the one principle that defined her, because it wouldn’t be the truth and she didn’t.
Her own solid stubbornness surprised her as she was normally quite a nice person.
She rubbed her eyes as a sense of déjà vu suddenly destabilised her.
This was how her mother must have felt when she’d kept the shotgun ready by the back door, waiting for the day she could kill a German and pay back the hurt.
Cora was paying back the hurt now, and why not? Because let’s face it, when it boiled down to it, Elisavet had deliberately and spitefully broken something she knew was special to her. That she didn’t know about Owen wasn’t the point.
Elisavet leant to one side and picked up her bag from the grass, put it on her lap as if she was about to leave. Good. But she carefully took out a bundle wrapped in newspaper and held it towards Cora. ‘Here. Take.’
Cora took it. It didn’t weigh much. She could guess what it was. She could guess, but at the same time she was reluctant to look.
‘Open it, please,’ Elisavet urged her.
Cora unwrapped the sheets of newspaper and as she thought, it was the Royal Doulton figurine. Elisavet had glued it together but there were small pieces missing, and the gaps were letting in gleams of sunlight.
Cora cradled it in the palm of her hand. She felt tearful. It was damaged. It was never going to look perfect again.
‘It must have taken you a long time to mend it,’ she said after a long moment, glancing at her, keeping her voice low and under control. She felt the emotion choke up her throat. She wanted to cry for Elisavet’s unhappiness; she wanted to cry for everything else that would never look perfect again.