Not long before we left, on the way back to the car, Ellie hid behind a tree while Tumsh was off chasing a squirrel. When the dog came back he could tell she ought to be there, but he couldn’t see her. He barked, looked all about, jumped with his front legs only, barked again. Ellie cried out, ‘Tumsh! Oh, Tumsh boy!’ from behind the tree, making the dog bark more wildly, then she came strolling round, and the dog ran to her. She went down on her haunches, took its big face in her hands, shaking him side to side, telling him what a fine and silly dog he was.
The light started to go as great grey fleets of cloud rolled in off the sea, filling the sky, erasing any trace of sun and dragging, curled underneath them, light grey veils of rain, curved like tails.
In the car on the way back we had to keep the windows down because Tumsh must have rolled in something horrible; the rain started, and the smell coming off Tumsh and the rain slanting in through the cracked windows and the grey-brown landscape outside made the journey seem long and not much fun.
We were in a long queue of traffic stopped at some temporary traffic lights on the main road back north when Ellie said, ‘We should get away, somewhere.’ She looked at me. ‘You and me, Stewart. When we’ve both finished our courses. If we’re going to stay together. Will we stay together, do you think?’
‘Eh? Course we will. We’ll be together for ever. That’s the general idea, isn’t it? You and me? Together?’
‘Yes. Until we’re old.’
‘Only
She smiled. ‘For ever.’ She held my arm. ‘But we should get away somewhere, don’t you think?’
‘Where to? What sort of place? How far away?’
‘I don’t know. Just somewhere else. Somewhere sunny, yeah? Sunny and hot. Just not here.’ She rested her head on my shoulder as I watched the lights far in the distance turn from red to green, probably too far ahead for us to make it through in this pulse of traffic. ‘Just…away,’ she said.
We started to edge forward.
So I’m sitting in Ellie’s Mini as we potter along behind the in-no-hurry Kia, remembering that day seven years ago, and how low I felt then for some reason. Maybe just the weather, maybe some combination of that and other trivial but still dispiriting details, like the dog stinking of decay, but maybe due to some premonition — through some brief internal glint of self-knowledge rather than anything superstitious — that what she and I had wasn’t going to last for ever after all: wouldn’t last sixty years or even six.
I watch Ellie’s face as we drive in procession behind the slower car. I have missed such moments. I would always do this: just watch her in profile as she drove. I was always waiting for a moment when she looked less than beautiful, when she looked ordinary. Never found one.
Grier, I noticed the other day as we walked from the blinged X5 to Bessel’s Café, can do stealth. On the street, she walked differently, held herself differently — her head down, her expression frowning a little, her gait sort of efficient but gauche, untidy — and basically attracted no attention. In the café she seemed to shake off this magic cloak of semi-invisibility and suddenly she was
I’ve a friend — a close friend by London standards, just an acquaintance given the way I came to think of friends when I grew up here — who’s a fashion photographer and he says you can have a genuine supermodel turn up at the studio and you think she’s the cleaner at first, until she’s turned on whatever it is she has to turn on, the camera is pointing at her and she’s dressed in whatever she’s supposed to be dressed in, however barely. Then she looks no more like a cleaning lady than she does a laser printer. Kapow; lights on, burning.
I guess Grier is like that; whatever beauty she has is dynamic, animated; a function, not a state.
With Ellie, it’s not something she can turn off. I remember her being almost as beautiful when she’s asleep as she is fully awake; it’s there in the depth of her, in her bones, in her skin and hair.
Eye of the beholder and all that. One of the truer clichés, I guess. I’m biased, but I think El’s only got more beautiful over the last five years. There’s a sort of substance to her looks now, maybe even a leavening of sadness or world-weary wisdom informing them; making her beauty seem earned at last, rather than just something she fell so casually heir to.
Or not; I know I’m bringing my own knowledge and prejudices to this evaluation. Would I still think she looks so pensively exquisite if I didn’t know about the failed marriage, the miscarriage, the many things left undone, unfinished? Never mind the hurt I caused her.
