‘Sure enough, my husband had taken everything of his out of the house. It looked very clean with half the pictures off the walls. I sat down and cried for a bit. Not for my husband. Not really. But because… because I had no one to write on my clean, clean plaster and because underneath it all I itched so terribly. I itched so much I could have bitten all the plaster away with my teeth just to be free. It felt so sticky and wet and yet, at the same time, dry and flaking too. As if my flesh underneath was turning to jelly, losing its form since it wasn’t getting sunlight and exposure. In the narrow dark it was flaking apart and when they cut me loose I’d just fall to bits. Like those giant puffy fungus balls you find in the darkest corners of forests. Kick them and they explode into grey, slimy powder. So I cried in frustration and quite a bit of pain.
‘Hang on.’
And suddenly Margaret was gone. She had noticed that the poet in her own right had left her deck chair. Some of the other poets had noticed this too and were looking about in consternation. There was to be a special presentation and they thought their leader had left before she could be given her crystal goblets and book voucher. The orange deck chair and glass looked sad and lost. I scratched my knee and shuffled on the concrete. It was starting to feel a bit clammy out. You came back.
‘Jennifer’s disappeared. They want to give her the presentation but they think she’s slipped away without a fuss.’
I said, ‘She’s been crying all night.’
‘She does this at the end of every term. After each reading.’ You rolled your eyes. ‘We’re her ladies and we mightn’t re-subscribe for the next course. Or if we do, it’s never quite the same experience twice.’
‘No.’
‘We have to go quite soon.’
‘Our coats will be under that big heap.’
‘That’s a point. Jennifer can’t just have slunk off. She’d never find her mac without someone’s help. Not in her state.’
Margaret appeared at the french windows. She resumed her place on the wall. ‘They’ve found her. She’d passed out in the bathroom.’
‘Oh, God!’ you said. ‘Well, we can’t go until they’ve done the presentation. There was hell on when I left early last year. We’re meant to be a group'
Margaret said, ‘I’m sure she won’t take long to come round.’ She said it just the way Chelsea had said the gateaux would soon defrost.
‘Where was I?’ asked Margaret.
‘Up to your navel in plaster of Paris.’
You raised an eyebrow.
‘Right. When his tour finished he came to see me. Armfuls of lilies. Chocolates and champagne aplenty.’
‘He’d fallen in love with you, too.’
‘That’s quite right. It’s very rare, in my experience, that a fairy tale comes quite so true. But in this one instance it certainly looked that way and every one of my feelings turned out to be mutual. Broken legs, ha! I’d have crawled over broken glass and he said he would as well. It’s a rare thing, I’m telling you, and I’ll tell you something else. When you get it, grab hold with both hands and don’t you let go.’
‘No,’ I said, looking down.
‘He gave me personal recitals,’ said Margaret.
You turned away, your shoulders shaking with laughter. ‘I’d sit with my aching heart and my itching lower body and legs in the swivel armchair he’d bought for my convenience and comfort and he’d play. All sorts of wonderful, haunting pieces. He’d play so long we wouldn’t notice the dark steal in around us. It’d be night-time in a flash. He would exhaust the repetoire of everything he knew by heart and he’d sit back, clutching that clarinet of his, puffed out.
‘And my skin, plastered or otherwise, would always be thrilled.
‘This went on for some time. I never got tired of the same old pieces. Well, you don’t, do you? I did once ask if he played any other instrument. And he fixed me with that charismatic grin. God, he was too good to be true, that man. Too good for this world, he was.
‘It turned out he played anything and everything in the woodwind section. He had a natural gift. A real knack. Anything with holes and a place to blow down.
‘It got so that he’d bring a different instrument round each night and we’d have the same tunes. But each time sounding slightly different through something new. Piccolos, recorders, saxophones, even, on one memorable occasion, a kazoo. Which between his lips sounded heavenly.
‘When he played I would weep. Out of love and pleasure and—I think he must have realised—frustration. I’d lose myself in music and, without realising, thrash about on my swivel chair. He’d play even harder, with greater gusto, more beautifully than ever and then I would sob much deeper.
Then one night he came and he took out of his carrying case something I didn’t recognise as a musical instrument at all. I watched dumbfounded as he set it up, with a little smile. Unwound a flex. Plugged it in.’
At this point the poet in her own right reappeared on the Tuscany patio. Back on her feet and surrounded by friends, Chelsea most prominent among them, clutching goblet-shaped parcels. Jennifer’s hair was stuck down wetly on her forehead. She’d had her face splashed with cold water. It was down the front of her blouse.
‘Speech! Speech!’ the poets cried and everyone clapped.
As Jennifer struggled for a few words with which to end the current term of workshops and round off the whole evening, you were poking in your handbag for your car
