Chapter 23 Kate
KATE
O, let me teach you how to knit again.
Ellie’s sewing machine is set up on a dark wooden table set at right angles to a huge window.
The cream quilt is stretched out over the table, a landscape of soft, undulating hillocks of fabric.
Pia throws her arm wide to the view beyond the window.
“I seem to be sewing a pocket of English countryside . . . I don’t know .
. . something neat and contained. And just look at that. ”
Kate does look. The view is vast. It would be impossible to take in the sky within a simple glance.
She turns her head to the left and to the right to take in the whole.
Today, the sky is an ethereal, watery blue.
It looks as if clouds have been spilt across it, streaking it white.
In some places, larger patches of white have pooled.
At the horizon, the clouds seem to drift until they butt up against a solid, luminous line of sand.
Between this and Pia’s house sit wetland meadows and marshland: layers of green, rust, and ocher, dissected in places by the line of a dike or a fence-like band of reeds.
No. The quilt does not capture this. Kate thinks of her attempts at painting and wonders if anything ever could. The quilt is cozy Middle England, but this landscape is something else altogether.
“Are you enjoying it though?” Kate asks.
Pia has moved across the large open-plan room to the kitchen area, where she is now preparing coffee and retrieving something from inside the black AGA.
“I do quite enjoy it,” she admits, “especially the hand sewing. I think there is something soothing about the repetition of pulling a needle through fabric.” Pia places the coffee on the low table by the three gray sofas that form a horseshoe, looking at the view.
“Wienerbr?d?” Pia asks, nodding at the plate of pastries.
Kate has never heard of wienerbr?d, but it looks delicious. When she bites into the flaky layers of pastry, her taste buds are flooded with a glorious mixture of blueberry, lemon, and almond. Pia certainly can bake.
Kate gazes around her at the beautiful living space. “Pia, how can you say you’re not creative when you cook like this, and can create a space like this?”
Pia nods dismissively at the wienerbr?d, but she studies the room more seriously. “I don’t really know. It just happens.”
“But how does it happen?” Kate is intrigued.
“Well, I guess I always look at magazines and books on design. I remember places I have been. Then I just let it sit. It’s like . . .” She says something in Danish. Then tries to explain, “Like a meditation that is more like drifting. And from there, ideas emerge.”
Kate shakes her head. “And you say you’re not creative.” She grins. “That’s just how it is with me and painting. It’s not about chasing ideas. I have to give myself time and relax into the things and experiences that inspire me.”
“Like a mackerel cloud swimming in the sky.”
“Exactly.”
“Kate, I still may not be doing so well with my quilt, but thank you for asking me to join this group. It is a good thing to be part of.”
“Tay is an interesting girl,” Kate comments.
Pia nods, stirring her coffee. “I think she has had quite a tough time. I get the impression she doesn’t have much of a family.”
“She has Bardy.” Kate wonders why she feels defensive.
“Ah, Bardy,” Pia grins at her.
“What?” Kate feels herself coloring.
“You don’t think you and . . .”
Kate moves some crumbs around the plate with her finger. “You once told me that you didn’t like to be second best.”
“Did I?”
“Music, and your family?”
“Ah, yes. When you are surrounded by people that are good at it . . .” Pia shrugs.
Kate suddenly wonders about the other kids at school. She was always “Kate, the one who can draw.” Did that make other children feel like they had very little to offer?
“And?” Pia prompts.
“Oh, just that I find I don’t like being second best either.”
“Ah,” Pia says, with understanding. “There could never be anything between me and Bardy,” she insists.
“I know that, but you can’t deny he has got a bit of a thing for you.”
“Has he?” Pia says vaguely. Disinterested.
Kate wonders if this is what Bardy would say if someone were to tell him Kate had “a bit of a thing” for him. She knows he likes her, but nothing more. He certainly doesn’t look at her like he looks at Pia.
“How’s your painting going?” Pia asks.
Kate perks up. “Better, definitely better.” Then she laughs, pointing at the view, “But when I look at this, it kind of makes me want to give up. It’s not just the light, but the colors I’m struggling with.
This feels like . . . well . . . like a whole world.
I feel like sometimes I’m getting somewhere with the sky, and sometimes I’m really painting the land and water in the way I want to. But it doesn’t seem to come together.”
“And it is always better to come together,” Pia says with a twinkle.
Kate grins. “Sure is.” She changes the subject. “Are you going to Leonard and Linda’s tomorrow for supper?”
“Definitely.”
“I do like them,” Kate says, “although I wish Leonard would wear his hearing aids. Did I tell you Linda nursed my sister, Alice, when she was dying?”
Pia leans forward. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”
“It was oh, eight years ago now. But I can’t tell you how good it is to know she was looked after by Linda.”
“Tell me about Alice,” Pia says simply.
So Kate does. All except how Alice laughed when Kate painted as JoJo Rose. And also about the secret guilt that still sits deep in her heart, of the time she let her sister down. In turn, Pia tells Kate about her sisters.
They are on their third coffee when Noy bounds into the room. They can hear Brenda behind him, lumbering up the stairs to the first-floor living space, “Lovely walk. Thank you for letting me take Noy Boy out.”
She reaches the doorway and pops her head around. “We had such fun, didn’t we, boy?”
But neither of the women are looking at her. They are staring at Noy, who is now investigating the empty plate of wienerbr?d.
Having made sure there are no crumbs left, he sits at Pia’s feet looking up at her, a slightly quizzical look on his face.
Kate thinks he might well be puzzled. So is she.
Having caught her breath, Brenda bustles into the room. “Doesn’t he look smart! I do so love to knit, and now the grandchildren are all grown and into their designer brands. Well, I have all that wool just sitting there and Noy Boy hates the cold, don’t you, boy?”
Noy is sitting in front of Pia wearing a smart new sweater in cerise wool—not unlike the color of Lou’s sweater. It is edged in orange. He also has a matching hat with orange stripes, at the back of which is a large purple tassel.
Brenda is beaming.
Noy looks perplexed, and it may be Kate’s imagination, but he seems to be looking at them, brows drawn together and a “why me?” expression in his eyes.
However, Kate thinks Pia’s expression is the one she likes most. The immaculate, elegant Dane looks like someone has just hit her in the face with a very smelly fish.
And Kate finds that once she starts to laugh, she can’t stop.
Kate is still smiling at the memory of this moment when the taxi drops her off outside Leonard and Linda’s house the following evening.
She had suggested sharing a lift with Pia, but Pia is coming directly from a meeting in London.
Pia had not been angry with Brenda—or certainly had not shown it.
But she had been firm in insisting that she did not wish for Noy to be dressed like this.
Kate had heard the steel in Pia’s voice, but she was not sure Brenda did.
She just kept saying, “Of course, of course. He’s your Noy Boy,” while smiling and patting the whippet.
Kate might not like Brenda’s choice of knitwear, but you can’t deny she loves Noy.
Kate gets out of the taxi and pays the driver.
The house in front of her is a mix of flint brickwork, wood, and glass.
It is far more modern than she had been expecting, even though she had remembered Leonard and Linda saying it was a new build.
She realizes she has made the mistake of presuming that, because they are older, they would want something more traditional.
She thinks it is a spectacular house, and what a position—tucked into a large bowl between sweeping sand dunes.
It must be barely a minute’s walk down onto the beach.
Linda emerges from the broad, wooden front door. “Come on in. You’re the first.”
A few minutes later, Kate is inside, being given a guided tour by Linda.
They start in the kitchen, a vast airy room, with a long modern table that looks like it could sit twenty.
There is a broad ash wood shelf running the length of the room, displaying numerous photos of their sons and families—mostly taken by the sea.
Large glass doors look out over a garden planted with different types of grasses intersected with pale stone paths.
Kate thinks it is the perfect complement to the backdrop of sand dunes.
“So, this leads to the hallway, bathroom on your right . . .” Linda looks over her shoulder. “When you get to my age, that is always the first thing you need to know.” She moves on, arms sweeping left and right. “Sitting room off to your left, and Leonard has a study to the right, with his piano.”
Kate peers into a huge square room filled with long, low sofas and chairs in different shades of blue. There is an enormous fireplace and modern seascapes on the walls—one of which she recognizes, by a famous local artist. “It is wonderful, Linda.”
“Come on, down here, this is the fun bit.” Over her shoulder, she adds, “I must admit when Leonard suggested this next bit, I thought he was going too far, but the family and kids just adore it.”
The broad corridor opens up, and to the left of Kate is an area the size of a small sitting room. Linda flicks a switch, and the lights come on behind a wall of glass shelves.
“I love it!” Kate exclaims.
They are standing in a small bar. Shelves gleam with bottles, there is a counter with barstools, and lower tables with small cube-like chairs around them.
The walls are covered in family photographs.
A pink neon sign above the bar reads Leonard’s in swirly script.
Linda raises her eyes to heaven. “The boys gave it to him. He loves it, of course.”
“Go on, Linda, you love it too,” Kate teases.
“Of course I do,” Linda admits, “just don’t tell Leonard.”
The doorbell sounds just as Leonard enters the room, accompanied by two Labradors. “Leonard, you get Kate a drink. I’ll get the door.” She peers through the long, thin window beside her.
“Ah, looks like it’s Bardy.”
Kate’s stomach lurches.