Sheer Blue Bliss (31 page)

‘You could wash,' she says.

Lisa shakes herself as if from a trance. ‘Sorry?'

‘Well, we don't need the police, do we?'

‘Shouldn't we …'

‘What?' The gas lights with a cheerful whoosh.

‘Well, report the … the death … to them. If he is dead. Shouldn't we check?'

‘He's dead all right. Don't see the point of involving the police.'

‘But.'

‘People disappear all the time.' Connie puts tea-bags in the pot. ‘Are you hungry, there's a bit of nice stew left.' She turns to catch Lisa staring at her in a most peculiar way. ‘What is it?'

‘Constance, what did you do with Patrick?'

‘I'll put the stew on to warm anyway.'

‘After you'd shaved him and painted his portrait. What did you do?'

Connie brings the teapot to the table and fills her pipe.

‘What?'

Connie pours two cups of tea and lights her pipe. ‘Sugar?' she asks and stirs three spoonfuls into each cup. They need it, blood sugar, what with all the stress and shock.

‘There are things you'd put in a biography and things you wouldn't.'

‘Absolutely. Now
what
?'

‘Is that a promise, dear?'

Lisa sighs. ‘Yes.'

‘When I'm dead, you can say what you like but I'm far from dead.'

‘You can say that again.'

‘Well. I put him under the floorboards.'

‘What?' Lisa half rises from her chair.

‘Not here. In there.' Connie nods at the bedroom door.

‘Oh my God.'

‘Buried, you understand, under the sand under the floorboards, oh several feet down.' Connie sucks on her pipe, a lovely deep gurgling sound, sweet pungent smoke in her mouth. There are still these small pleasures. Lisa sits and gawps.

‘Drink your tea.'

Lisa takes an absent-minded sip. ‘Oh,' she says, ‘so you've lived, practically on top of him, for all these years?'

‘I haven't
slept
in there, except once.' She shudders, remembering the dreadful night, lying on the damp and mouldering bed like a prisoner with that poor lunatic out here.

Lisa cups her palms round her tea and sips. Her white forehead is furrowed as she thinks. ‘So … assuming he, Tony, is … well,
dead
, what do we do with him? If we're not informing the police I mean.'

Connie looks at the bedroom door.

‘No! We can't.'

‘I don't see why not.'

‘Constance, this is
mad.'

Connie shrugs. Her neck hurts. But it's all falling into place, as things tend to if you're patient. Later, the village, phone from shop, appointment at doctor's, taxi for Lisa and she can get off home. End of an incident and then she can think. Nice as Lisa is, Connie can't think straight with her in the house. And so much to think about, so much to take stock of now. So much changed. Can't live with anyone, think with anybody else alive in the house. Solitude has become habitual and it's not a bad habit. There are worse.

‘Wouldn't we be … isn't it illegal, we might get done for something. Murder?'

‘Oh come on, dear, be sensible. We both know it wasn't murder. If you want to write, what do they call it, an authorized biography, then you, we, keep quiet about the whole … sorry mess.'

‘But …'

‘And after what he did to you …'

‘They'd find the body and ask why didn't we …'

‘How?'

‘How what?'

‘Would they find the body? Why look here?'

‘I looked for him here.'

‘I don't somehow think he'll have told many people.'

‘Maybe not, but …'

‘We'll have some stew to give us strength. And then we'll go up and fetch him. And then we'll bring him down and you can help me bury him. If I can do it, you can do it. And then I'll cycle to the shops and phone for a taxi for you. And you can go home and write your book.'

‘You make it sound so simple.'

‘Don't make difficulties where there aren't any.'

Lisa opens her mouth and shuts it again.

‘And at least it's only sand we have to dig,' Connie says. ‘We can do it, dear.' She pats Lisa's hand.

The casserole lid lifts as the stew inside bubbles, and releases a waft of warm fragrance. Connie gets up to turn down the flame.

Tony is sitting upright in the chair. His eyes are wide open and staring straight at Patrick's portrait. On his face is the most beatific smile. It
is
a beautiful face. Connie approaches and presses on his eyelids to hide the terrible blissful black shine. Behind her Lisa puts her hand over her mouth and gags.

‘It's all right,' Connie says. ‘He's gone.'

‘But … I've never seen …'

‘A corpse?'

Lisa shakes her head, face white, both hands clamped over her mouth. She's trembling.

‘Think what he did to you,' Connie says. ‘Think about it. He won't do that again.'

Lisa kneels down on the sleeping bag, her fair hair covering her face. Connie looks back at Tony. It is sad of course, a young man dead, all that health, strength, grace, those beautiful bones, that wonderful hair. But you have to keep your head on these occasions. Stiffly she bends to remove the little brown bottle from his still-warm grasp, looks at Patrick's spidery writing just legible on the label.
Elixir
7, it says.
Bliss
. Connie closes her eyes, remembering. Her lips against his smile, trying to breathe life into him, hand on the stilled heart. How she did love him. Yes, yes, she did.

She looks at Lisa. ‘When you're ready, dear,' she says, ‘we'll move him down.'

SEVENTEEN

December sunshine slants through the window and makes thistledown of Lisa's hair. ‘Are you ready to go then?' she says. ‘Is this really all?' She nods towards the small suitcase, two boxes that wait by the door.

‘What would I want with any of this lot?' Connie gestures at the room, the squint table, chipped crockery, the gas-heater.

‘I suppose.'

‘It's furnished, my new flat. It's heated. I won't know myself. Tea before we go?'

‘If we've got time.' Lisa looks at her watch. ‘Won't it be funny having Christmas somewhere else?'

Connie fills the kettle, listening for the last time for the judder in the pipes, the fierce spurt of water. Funny's putting it mildly. She feels a pang but she
will
not be sad to be leaving. Last night she didn't sleep, afraid to sleep in case she dreamt. If Lisa asks if she is sad she will say no.

‘So what's it like?'

‘Sea-front, top of a house, stairs, but I can still manage
stairs
, I hope.' A prickle in her voice. Moving somewhere more convenient is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. Don't let anyone think
that
. She's not
that
old.

‘But do you like it?'

‘Sea view. Near the shops. There's a laburnum out the back window. Love that in spring, that
savage
yellow. Light. Warm. What more could I want?' She asks the question ironically but actually it's true. There's nothing much more she could want for since it's impossible to travel back and take another track, or to breathe life into the dead. The gas is nearly gone, it putters weakly, pale-blue petals, but maybe enough to boil just one more kettle on.

Lisa sits, sinks rather, on to a chair. ‘You all right, dear?' Connie notices how pale she's gone, those apple cheeks faded.

‘Fine. No, I guess it just brings it back to me. You know. Being here.' Her eyes dart to the bedroom door and away again. ‘I'm still having counselling and all that. It's just … being here. It just came over me.'

Connie says nothing but of course she agrees and that is why she has to leave, now. The doctor said she needed warmth, proper facilities, but it is memory that is driving her away. The knowledge of what's in there under the sand, one body on top of the other's bones. One little brown bottle thrown in, too. It was all right when it was only Patrick but now she has nightmares, she keeps this quiet, silly,
silly
nightmares about bones embracing and the worst of it is the noise of the bones, the faint almost chink, the intimate rub of them. Does Lisa have nightmares, too? She studies her face, but there is no sign. The roses already coming back in her cheeks, face familiar now as a friend's. She has become, Connie supposes, a friend. Visited once, a month after the … ordeal … with a publisher's contract for the biography and a bottle of champagne. And a present for Connie, a working mobile phone. On which she has kept in regular contact, and now she's here with a hired car to drive Connie to her new home.

The gas pops and goes out.

‘Blast,' Connie says. ‘Damn it. What say a drink then? Just a farewell drop. There is only a drop.'

‘You've been here
so
long …'

‘How it has to be.' Connie sets her jaw. She pours the dregs of a bottle of Grouse into two cups. ‘Cheers.'

Lisa lifts the cup to her lips. ‘Cheers.'

They are quiet. Connie looks round at the place, the cold sun is merciless in its exposure of the rot and grime. Funny how you can live with that so long and never notice and then suddenly … suddenly it is all too much. The tap drip, drips. Don't need a new washer now. That's one thing.

‘Been painting?' Lisa asks.

Connie just smiles.

‘That's
great
, Connie.'

‘Yes.' Connie runs her thumbnail along a deep groove in the grain of the table. She will miss this table. ‘Funny, now I've started I can't understand why I ever stopped. It's so … it feels so
right
. I've so much missed the colours. Tell you the truth I'm cross with myself for wasting all that time. Thirty bloody
years
. In a
trance.'

‘God. It's so so strange.' Lisa flattens her hands out on the table top. ‘Life. I mean that … that awful … but it's left you
painting
again, odd, amazing, I don't know what to say.'

‘Please, nothing about silver …'

‘I
wouldn't.'

The sound of the sea is soft, sucking and sighing. And it will be all right because in Connie's new flat, if she opens the windows and strains her ears, she'll still be able to hear and see it, same old North Sea, same rhythm. And there's a telly, too. She really will not know herself.

‘Well, anyway.' Lisa gets up, the chair grating and toppling behind her. She picks it up. ‘Let's get your stuff out to the car.'

‘Patrick's still upstairs, and …'

‘Of course. I'll fetch it down.' Lisa goes to the ladder.

‘No, no let me,' Connie says, cursing herself. Her hands are slippery as she grasps the ladder. She hadn't known what to do but this is surely wrong. She should have wrapped it, hidden it from Lisa, especially now. It will upset her, shock her. Whatever was she thinking? ‘You stay down,' she says but Lisa comes up right behind her.

Connie steps up into the bright space. The light is cold and icy sharp on the two faces. Patrick and now Tony. Lisa gasps as she steps up. The face fills the canvas, the hair blue, the finely modelled face stark, kind of hungry, the mouth open as if it would speak. But the eyes, it is the eyes that Connie is proud of, that terrify her, that did so even as she painted. They yearn, they almost burn. Black eyes pierced with light, a cold hungry burning.

‘Sit down,' Connie says. ‘I should have warned you. Sorry.'
Stupid old woman, stupid stupid tactless old bitch
.

‘No.' Lisa walks towards the painting as if she is walking through a dream. She puts out a finger to touch the painted cheek.

Connie's nails dig into her palms. The girl could wreck it, take a knife to it, rip the canvas to shreds and she would be perfectly justified. She might just faint away and then what would Connie do?

But, ‘It's amazing,' she breathes at last.

‘Oh.' Connie lowers herself down in her armchair, her own legs gone weak as string.

‘It's so … brilliant. You've got him so … I'm no judge really but I think …'

Connie looks from Tony's terrible eyes to Patrick's and then to Lisa standing so close, gazing so intently at her work. She still feels like the girl awaiting the verdict that first time, Sacha and Patrick inspecting her work the first time ever. That girl still there trembling inside.

‘I'm so glad you're not upset. I should have warned …'

‘No, no.' Lisa runs her finger slowly over the painted face. ‘Funny,' she says, her voice full of discovery, ‘if he wasn't dead I'd hate him but, well, maybe it's just because he's dead I
don't
, not like you'd think.'

‘No.'

She shakes her head slowly. ‘It's like he's got a sort of gap in him, the way you've painted him. You can see it here,' she touches the eyes, ‘a sort of gap. I couldn't see it with him in the … well, face to face but …'

It is so much what Connie wants to hear that for a moment she's speechless. It still works. She can still do it. Nothing in the world could give her more pleasure than that. ‘Yes,' she says at last, ‘that's
it
, that's what I saw in his eyes. Poor boy.' She darts a look at Lisa. ‘Not that what he did …'

‘It's all right. And I'm glad he's dead …' She waits a long time before continuing and Connie knows just what she's going to say. ‘I'm glad he died the way he did.'

‘Blissfully,' Connie snorts. ‘Yes, dear, yes.'

The brightness in the room is suddenly quenched as a cloud covers the sun. They stand before Tony's portrait gazing at the blue of the hair, the terrible shine of the eyes, black splintered with blue, those frost needles of light a genius touch.

Lisa puts the tip of a finger on each eye. ‘It is amazing,' she says again. She reaches up to lift the paintings off the wall, first Tony, then Patrick, and she carries them down.