After You Left(45)

The men become bored with Chop Suey. They’re looking at Christina now. I wonder if they remember her from their intense previous visit.

‘This one isn’t happy, because she’s crawling on the grass and looks sad,’ Martin says.

‘But we can’t see her face to know if she’s sad,’ Michael says. ‘All we can see is that she’s looking up at a house.’

‘You don’t always have to see somebody’s face to know they’re sad,’ Martin adds, looking at me a mite too closely, as though I’m giving something away. Or perhaps that’s just my imagination. ‘Sometimes, you can just tell from how they are.’ His voice has a tender quality that touches me.

‘If we can’t see her face, we might think she’s beautiful. If we saw it and it’s ugly, we wouldn’t care about her. The artist knows how we think.’

‘I think we can’t see her face because Christina could be any one of us,’ Michael adds. ‘I think this is what the artist intended. She longs for something she can’t have again, and we’ve all done that in life.’

Gosh! I think. He’s quite insightful about art. I like how he brings a bit of a personal interpretation that speaks of his own lurking disappointments.

‘That’s crap!’ Martin fires back. ‘It’s because she’s ugly. In all my life, I have known this to be true. Nobody’s interested in ugly people. I’ve been ugly all my life, and it got me nowhere, but I’ve known some very beautiful people who were successful.’

This makes me chuckle.

‘Well!’ Michael titters, too. ‘That’s a very intriguing theory about ugly people you’ve got there, Martin. You should copyright that. You could make millions.’

‘I tell you, ugly people and sad people. Nobody wants to be around them. Ugly women never marry rich men. Christina’s not ugly, but she’s sad. Maybe that’s why she’s ended up all alone.’

‘It’s because she’s so alone in all that dull-coloured landscape,’ Ronnie chimes in. ‘The only thing there is the house that she can’t go back to. You know what? I think she’s lonely. I think she wants a man.’

‘That’s what I was just saying, dumbo,’ Martin says. ‘She’s alone and she’s not very pretty, and she can’t get a fellow.’

I have to cover my smile. This is proving to be quite an entertaining day. I notice, though, that Eddy just sits quietly on the bench. He’s wearing the same bright-red shirt he wore on the first visit. He’s so thin, even with the help of a thick shirt tucked into his jeans; it’s hard to imagine him the way Evelyn described him that day she first saw him in her garden. And yet I can easily picture them riding together in his truck on that first outing, him driving them through charming coastal villages, their picnic at the beach, their afternoons spent up in her bedroom, his declaring the certainty with which he loved her . . . her telling him – what were her words? We go nowhere.

I stare at the back of his fine-shaped head, and suddenly I recognise something about myself. The vivid way she described him has made me fall for him a little myself.

Perhaps we’ve undergone some telepathic thought transference, because Eddy turns and looks at me. He smiles. Something about the expression is self-aware. A connection flickers briefly between us and then is gone. I go and sit down beside him.

‘What do you think, Eddy?’ I nod to Christina. I can’t help looking at his wonderfully expressive hands: the long, tapered fingers, the hands of a working man who had an unexpected artistic side. Did he, I wonder? I will have to ask Evelyn. ‘This was Christina’s home that she loved so dearly. Do you think Christina was wrong to leave?’

It’s not as though I believe that oblique overtures about the past will get me anywhere. I just keep thinking of how he’d spoken last time, and Evelyn’s belief that it could happen again.

He doesn’t seem to register my question. At one point, though, his eyes comb over my face like he might be recognising me from his last visit. I’m on the cusp of saying something to perhaps bridge the connection, but by the time I can think of what, the moment is lost. ‘Not chatty today, Eddy?’ I gently squeeze his hand. ‘I get my quiet days, too. We’re a lot alike, you and I . . .’ At the sight of our hands together, I inexplicably choke up.

We fitted like teeth on a zip . . . she’d said. How I loved that. Could I claim the same about Justin and me? And, if not, is that why he might have someone else?

‘I’ll not pester you, if you’d rather I leave you alone.’ Uncertainty cleaves a huge hole in me.

‘What would you call this painting if you had to name it, Ronnie?’ Michael asks.

Martin beats Ronnie to an answer. ‘I would call it The Sound of Silence.’

‘That’s a great title, Martin. Why would you call it that?’

‘Because there are no dogs, no tractors, no cars. It’s very quiet there.’

‘What would you call it, Eddy?’ I try.

And, without a beat of hesitation, Eddy says, ‘I would call it Regrets.’

‘Why would you call it Regrets, Eddy?’ I glance excitedly at Michael, who gives me a short, pleased nod.

‘Because she’s yearning for something she’s let go.’