Too Late to Paint the Roses Read online

  I stared into my half finished bowl of soup, my appetite suddenly gone. If only I could control my despicable habit of blushing.

  ‘You don’t want to take any notice of her.’ I looked up to see Chris smiling at me. ‘She seems to take great delight in embarrassing people. Soon as she knows you’re a bit shy she’s onto you. This isn’t the first time she’s done this to me.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Scarlet-faced, I put down my spoon and began to gather up my belongings. ‘I have to go now anyway.’

  To my surprise he reached out a hand to stop me. ‘Don’t go yet,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve seen you around and to be honest I’ve been trying to get up the courage to speak to you anyway.’

  Flattered, blushing more than ever and totally tongue-tied, I sat down again. He went on, ‘I’m Chris Harding. But you already know that. I’m studying to be an accountant – and hating every minute.’

  I looked at him sympathetically. ‘Really? Why are you doing it then?’

  He shrugged. ‘Because my father was an accountant.’

  ‘He pressed you to follow in his footsteps?’

  ‘No. Both my parents died when I was a kid. My gran brought me up. She’s been wonderful. I’m doing it to please her really.’

  ‘My mother was a teacher,’ I told him. ‘She would have liked me to be one too, but I’m not the academic type. My talents are more on the practical side. I thought I might have to do “business studies” but luckily my dad talked her into letting me do the catering course here.’

  ‘Lucky you!’ He smiled at her. ‘Elaine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at my watch and saw to my regret that I was already late for a lecture. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I really will have to go now. We’ve got a health and safety lecture at two.’ I stood up. ‘It’s been nice talking to you, Chris,’ I said shyly.

  As I prepared to leave he said suddenly, ‘Come for a drink – or a coffee?’

  I paused, my heart racing. ‘Oh – er – okay, when?’

  ‘Saturday – tomorrow? Maybe you’d like to see a film or – or something.’

  I smiled, feeling my heart lift. ‘That would be nice – thanks.’ I began to walk away then stopped. ‘Oh! Where…?’

  He was laughing. ‘Outside college. Around seven. Okay?’

  I nodded. ‘Okay.’

  That was the beginning. On the first date we went to a film and then to a café afterwards where we talked non-stop until closing time. At first it seemed that we had a lot in common. We were both only children and had grown up learning to amuse ourselves and finding it difficult to mix and fit in. But as we saw more of each other it became clear that where my shyness hid a longing to be popular and part of a large circle of friends, Chris was quite happy with his own company. He wasn’t shy so much as introverted and contented to be so. Although his fellow students liked him he preferred to be alone, me being the only exception. Something that made me feel special. We each drew the other out and often sat up late, talking about our hopes for the future.

  ‘What will you do when you’re qualified?’ I asked him one evening as we sat in the pub. He pulled a face.

  ‘Get a job with a firm, I suppose. Then it’ll be more exams if I want to go all the way with it.’ He looked up at me, suddenly serious. ‘What I really want, Elaine, is to be a writer,’ he said. ‘I don’t tell many people that. It’s what I’ve always wanted and I’ll do it one day, I’m determined.’

  I stared at him. ‘A writer – a journalist, you mean – on a newspaper?’

  ‘No, a novelist. I want to write thrillers – mysteries. You know, like Colin Dexter or Ian Rankin. I know I can do it. All I need is for someone – just one person to believe in me – give me a chance.’

  I frowned, not fully understanding his ambition. The authors’ names that he mentioned were like film stars’ names to me, remote and obscure. People you actually knew didn’t write books. ‘You’d like to do it as a hobby, you mean?’

  ‘No!’ He shook his head. ‘As a career.’

  I’d never seen him so passionate about anything. There was a new light in his eyes when he talked about it; a vital determination that showed me a different side to the young man I thought I knew. For the first time this was an aspiration I couldn’t fully comprehend and it made me feel slightly left out.

  Chris explained to me that he had been born and had grown up in Greencliffe with his grandmother who ran a newsagent’s shop but when she retired she’d decided to sell the business and return to her Cornish roots. When Chris went off to university she had moved to St Ives where she had bought a cottage.

  ‘I don’t see her nearly as much as I used to,’ Chris said. ‘I miss her, of course, but I go and stay with her in the holidays. It’s lovely down there. You’d love it.’ He smiled at her. ‘Hey, I know – why don’t you come with me next time?’

  My heart lifted. I was flattered that he wanted me to meet his grandmother, clearly the most important person in his life so far. I’d been dreading the thought of going home for the whole of the long summer break, of the thinly veiled disparaging remarks from Mother and the long silent mealtimes I’d suffered during the short Easter break. ‘Oh, I’d love that,’ I said. ‘But are you sure? Shouldn’t you ask your grandmother first?’

  He laughed. ‘She’ll be over the moon. She’s been on at me for ages to find myself a nice girlfriend and I think you’ll go down a storm with her.’

  Chris’s grandmother, Cecily Harding lived in what had once been a fisherman’s cottage perched high above the sea in St Ives. She stood waiting for us at her gate as we climbed the narrow, winding alley to her cottage. She was tall and blue-eyed like her grandson, her white hair stylishly cut to curl gently round her face, nut brown from the sea air. I liked her on sight. She welcomed us in, chattering non-stop as she showed us round her beloved garden and the quaint fisherman’s cottage she was so proud of. From my bedroom window there was a breathtaking view of the sea that lay below the tumbling mass of cottages that climbed in zigzag lanes above the harbour. Roses and honeysuckle clambered over sun-baked walls concealing little gardens full of scent and colour. To me it was like something out of a picture book.

  Over the meal she had prepared, Cecily, as she insisted I call her, told how she had been born in St Ives and always promised herself she would one day return.

  ‘I had to wait until I’d seen this young man through school,’ she said with a fond smile in Chris’s direction.

  Later, as Chris and I walked along the beach he told me that she had always wanted to be an artist.

  ‘She’s really good too,’ he went on. ‘Watercolour is her speciality, but she never had much time for it when she had the shop. If you want to get into her good books ask her to show you her work. I think she sells some of her pictures to the visitors down here.’

  I got the chance to ask Cecily about her painting sooner than I’d expected. The following morning I woke at dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up intending to go for a walk. To my surprise I found Cecily already up and filling the kettle in the kitchen. She smiled when she turned and saw me standing uncertainly in the doorway.

  ‘Have trouble sleeping too, did you, dear?’ she asked, getting another cup and saucer down from the dresser.

  ‘I thought I might go for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘So did I.’ She looked at me, her head on one side. ‘Want to be alone or could you do with some company?’ The kettle on the Aga began to boil and I stepped forward.

  ‘I’d love some company.’ I reached out towards the spluttering kettle. ‘Shall I mash?’ I blushed. ‘Sorry, that’s a northern expression. I lapse back into it sometimes.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m quite familiar with northerners,’ she said. ‘When we had the shop in Greencliffe we used to get a lot of holidaymakers from up north.’ She smiled her warm smile at me and took the milk jug out of the fridge. ‘Salt of the earth, I always thought.’

  I made the tea and we sat d
own opposite each other companionably at the round kitchen table. Cecily poured two cups of tea and added the creamy Cornish milk. ‘We’ll have this first to fortify ourselves, eh?’

  ‘I took a sip of my tea, watching her over the rim of the cup. ‘Chris tells me you like to paint,’ I ventured. ‘I’d love to see some of your work.’

  As he had predicted she looked pleased. ‘Most of the pictures that you see around the cottage are mine,’ she said, ‘including the one on your bedroom wall.’

  I gasped. ‘Really?’

  Over the chest of drawers in my bedroom was a painting of St Ives harbour in the very early morning. I’d been impressed by the way the artist had caught the pearly light perfectly and the slight haze over the water; the deep shadows under the harbour wall and the dappled light on the wet sand. There was a wealth of detail in the painting: seabirds clustered round the lobster pots, a fisherman in the distance unloading his early catch. ‘But that’s a brilliant picture,’ I said.

  She laughed. ‘Don’t sound so surprised!’

  ‘Oh no!’ I blushed and stammered, ‘I wasn’t. It’s just—’

  ‘It’s yours if you’d like it,’ she said as she rose to put the used cups in the sink.

  ‘Oh no, really, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Yes you could.’ She laughed. ‘I can easily do another. I’ve got so many I can’t count them, sheer self indulgence. I’ve waited so long to come down here and paint and now I can’t get enough of it.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘To the detriment of the housework, I’m afraid.’

  She locked the door and we negotiated the steep steps and winding lanes, emerging at sea level as the tide was coming in, lapping the ridged sand with gentle wavelets. The sun was already warm and it promised to be a hot day. I looked at Cecily as I took a deep breath of the fresh salty air.

  ‘I can see why you love it so much here.’

  She nodded. ‘I miss Chris, of course, but then he’d be making his own life now anyway. You have to let go sometime.’

  I looked at her. ‘You brought him up?’

  She nodded. ‘From the age of three.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Chris has never said.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he remembers much of it.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘George, my husband, had been poorly and needed a break. We couldn’t both leave the shop so Paul and Helen, my son and daughter-in-law, suggested that he went with them on a caravan holiday along with little Christopher.’ She smiled ‘George doted on his little grandson.’ She paused and I saw the pain in her eyes. I put my hand on her arm.

  ‘Please – if it’s too painful to talk about….’

  ‘It’s all a long time ago.’ She took a breath and went on, ‘They were on their way when they collided head on with a coach that had burst a tyre. All three killed instantly. By some miracle Chris survived with barely a scratch.’ She shook her head. ‘Seems he was asleep. The ambulance man said it looked as though George had shielded him with his own body.’ She shook her head. ‘That little boy saved my sanity. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for him. We needed each other and I needed to keep the shop on to feed and clothe us both or I might have gone under.’

  ‘It must have been so awful for you – hard too.’

  ‘It would have been but for my boy. He’s been more like a son than a grandson.’ She sighed. ‘But there – I’ve done the best I can for him and now it’s up to him.’

  I wondered silently if she knew about his ambition to be a novelist and, as though she read my thoughts she said, ‘Ever since he was quite small he’s had this bee in his bonnet about writing. I know the feeling because I used to feel the same about my art but I’ve told him – there’s plenty of time for dreams.’ She smiled fondly. ‘When you’re young you want everything now. Every year as summers came and went and I watched the flowers bloom and fade I’d tell myself that I’d lost my chance to be an artist. It was too late for me to paint the roses and the sea and all the other beautiful things I longed to paint. But Chris was worth the sacrifice and everything comes to he who waits.’ She smiled. ‘And I’ve proved it, haven’t I? When I could see how keen he was on making a career of the writing though, I did make one condition. Chris’s father was an accountant so what could be more suitable than that Chris should study accountancy too? You can’t live on dreams, I told him. Train for a good profession that will stand you in good stead; plenty of time for dreams later.’ She took my hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m glad he’s found you, dear. You’re a sensible girl and I know you’ll keep his feet on the ground and persuade him to stick to his studies.’ She stopped on the quayside and took a deep breath, looking out to sea. ‘Anyway, as I always say, you have to live life before you can start to write about it. Don’t you agree?’

  I did agree but I knew all too well that Chris didn’t see it that way. Cecily was right, he wanted everything now. I felt the weight of responsibility. Cecily had faith in me; a faith I wasn’t sure I could live up to. Back at college I knew he was writing short stories when he should have been studying and that most of the time his mind was elsewhere during tutorials.

  ‘Accountancy is so mundane,’ he told me exasperatedly. ‘So lacking in inspiration and imagination. Three years at uni’ studying maths was bad enough and I only just scraped through with a 2.2. Now there’s this.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I just don’t know how to stick it, Elaine.’

  ‘But it’s not for much longer, is it?’ I insisted. ‘Once you’ve done this course you’ll be able to earn good money, then you’ll be able to relax and write as much as you want.’

  ‘No, I won’t. It takes ages to get fully qualified. I’ll still be studying for exams even after I’ve started working. Years of studying stuff I loath. I just don’t know that I can face it.’

  Inevitably our relationship developed to a deeper level. Chris said he loved me and there was no question that I loved and trusted him. When he was unhappy he often begged me to stay the night with him in his tiny bedsit.

  ‘It’s only you that makes life worthwhile here,’ he’d say with that hint of desperation in his voice. ‘I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you, Elaine.’ So I’d stay and we’d make love. It seemed to calm him and make him happy.

  But although I fell more and more in love with him I sensed that I was only a diversion. There was always the feeling that he kept something of himself back and I suspected that I would always come a poor second to his burning ambition to be a writer.

  I talked to Mary about it, knowing that girls like Cheryl at college would laugh at me, thinking I was taking it all too seriously.

  Mary was hesitant. ‘I know you, darlin’,’ she said. ‘You’re not like some of the girls I know, lookin’ on sex as a bit of mindless fun. I know that to you it means more. Are you sure he’s as committed as you are? If you are and you really love each other, okay. The only advice I can give you is, be careful. I don’t want to see you hurt and there’s many a heart broken and, yes, life wrecked too, by giving in to what turns out to be just a physical urge. You’ll be qualifying next year. You have to think of your own future.’

  We were about three weeks into the new term when I arrived at college one Monday morning to find Chris absent. No one seemed to know where he was. We hadn’t seen each other over the weekend as he had promised me he’d get down to some serious revision for a coming exam. Slightly concerned I went round to his room at lunchtime. I knocked on the door twice to no reply but I could hear movement from inside the room. Finally I called out, ‘Chris! It’s me, Elaine. I know you’re in there. Open the door.’

  When he opened the door I could see at once that something was seriously wrong. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked shaky. My heart gave a lurch.

  ‘What’s wrong? Chris – talk to me.’ As he turned I followed him into the room and put my hand on his arm. ‘Please – what’s happened?’

  When he spoke his voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. ‘It�
��s Gran,’ he said. ‘She’s – she’s dead.’

  I thought I must have misheard him. Not Cecily, so vibrant and enthusiastic, so full of life. He couldn’t mean her. I stared at him. ‘Cecily? She – she can’t be.’

  He sat down abruptly on the bed. ‘Apparently she wanted to paint that wall with the roses tumbling over it before the summer was over. She tripped going down the steps and fell – broke her hip. That was a couple of days ago and they were going to operate yesterday. I was packing to go down there, then this morning they rang from the hospital to say she’d died suddenly in the night.’ He spread his hands helplessly. ‘A heart attack, they said; delayed shock.’

  ‘Oh, my God, Chris. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you ring me?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I never got round to it, I suppose.’

  His face crumpled and I put my arms round him. ‘Chris! Oh, Chris, you didn’t have to bear this on your own. I’m here for you. You know that.’ A thought occurred to me. ‘Are you going down to Cornwall? Would you like me to come with you?’

  He looked at me. ‘Would you? Would you really do that for me?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘You’re her only relative. There’ll be a lot to do, Chris.’ I remembered when my own grandparents had died and how much there’d been for Dad to do at the time. ‘You need someone. Let me help.’ I looked round the room at the clothes strewn around and the half filled suitcase. ‘Let me help you pack a few things then I’ll go home and throw some things into a case. We’ll go this afternoon.’

  I borrowed the fare from Mary and we caught the afternoon train. It was all very sad. The funeral was a quiet affair and afterwards a few of Cecily’s friends joined us for a bite to eat and a cup of tea at the cottage. Next day Chris spent the morning with Cecily’s solicitor. When he returned he was quiet. I asked him if he would like me to stay and help him clear the cottage but he refused.