better change,’ she said, so they changed into clothes that didn’t matter, gardening clothes, and he drove her out to Morvah. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked, waiting beside him in the porch as he took the key from its hiding place in the rafters.
‘Pretty bad,’ he said. ‘But it’s only words, not pictures.’
He let her in and went to turn on the lights while she stared, taking in what Phuc had done. ‘It could be worse,’ she said as he came back to her. ‘He hasn’t touched the altar – most people would have done something to the altar – and he didn’t do anything to the flags.’
‘Or start a fire.’
‘Or start a fire.’ She actually smiled a little at that, then sighed. ‘Come on. If it’s not dry yet we can scrub a lot off with white spirit and at least blur the words a bit before we paint over them.’
They shut the door behind them and worked there all evening. They scrubbed off the worst of the paint with solvent then dried off the patch of reddened wall with an old towel from the car boot. Then they painted over it with undercoat to stop any traces of red coming through.
Carrie called by as they were cleaning the brushes. She had driven down to St Just to fetch fish and chips for them and had also brought a bottle of red wine, glasses, fruit cake and the radio. ‘Thought you might as well make an evening of it,’ she said, then left them alone as she was playing in a euchre drive for the lifeboats back in one of the pubs.
They listened to a Prom while eating their supper and waiting for the undercoat to dry a little at least, then they painted on two coats of emulsion. They broke off in between to do something they had not done in years, taking a moonlit walk across the fields behind the church to the view out to sea from Chair Carn. It was an unusually still night, retaining some of the day’s warmth. The air bore the sweet scents of hot grass and honeysuckle and, nearer the sea, the foxy musk of bracken. They saw a barn owl hunting and, as they stood to watch it, she took his hand and kissed the back of it, which somehow felt as intimate a gesture as if she had unbuttoned his shirt and kissed the skin above his heart.
They painted the second coat to a series of motets by Tallis, who was Composer of the Week, barely speaking as they worked, then cleaned up in bitterly cold water from the graveyard tap. They drove home in silence but with the car windows open so that the smell of paint about them was rinsed by the warm night air.
For the first time in nearly fifteen years they made love. (He would not realize it had been that long until the morning, when he took in her tea and went to shave.) It was not earth-shatteringly passionate – they were both too surprised for that – but for him, at least, it felt like a deep restoration, at the roots of his being, a true forgiveness from the flesh rather than a light and easy one from the tongue.
DOROTHY AT 34
Nearing the end of her first decade of married life, Dorothy felt she must have aged more rapidly in the last ten years than in the twenty-four preceding them. This was odd in that, compared to those of most new wives, her life had outwardly changed so little. She lived in the farmhouse she had grown up in, she still lived with her mother, who had created a kind of flat for herself, with its own front door, at one end of the house, and she still knelt in the same pew in church and taught Sunday School there. Ten years on it was still a surprise to receive a letter or invitation dignifying her as Mrs Barnaby Johnson for she secretly still felt like Dorothy Sampson or simply Dulcie Sampson’s Girl .
Her mother, she was coming to realize, was always right. Her stern predictions of what lay in store for the wives of priests had all come true: the lack of privacy, the lack of money. But her mother had soon acquired a deep respect, almost an awe, for her son-in-law and never breathed a word of I-Told-You-So when she and Dorothy
‘Pretty bad,’ he said. ‘But it’s only words, not pictures.’
He let her in and went to turn on the lights while she stared, taking in what Phuc had done. ‘It could be worse,’ she said as he came back to her. ‘He hasn’t touched the altar – most people would have done something to the altar – and he didn’t do anything to the flags.’
‘Or start a fire.’
‘Or start a fire.’ She actually smiled a little at that, then sighed. ‘Come on. If it’s not dry yet we can scrub a lot off with white spirit and at least blur the words a bit before we paint over them.’
They shut the door behind them and worked there all evening. They scrubbed off the worst of the paint with solvent then dried off the patch of reddened wall with an old towel from the car boot. Then they painted over it with undercoat to stop any traces of red coming through.
Carrie called by as they were cleaning the brushes. She had driven down to St Just to fetch fish and chips for them and had also brought a bottle of red wine, glasses, fruit cake and the radio. ‘Thought you might as well make an evening of it,’ she said, then left them alone as she was playing in a euchre drive for the lifeboats back in one of the pubs.
They listened to a Prom while eating their supper and waiting for the undercoat to dry a little at least, then they painted on two coats of emulsion. They broke off in between to do something they had not done in years, taking a moonlit walk across the fields behind the church to the view out to sea from Chair Carn. It was an unusually still night, retaining some of the day’s warmth. The air bore the sweet scents of hot grass and honeysuckle and, nearer the sea, the foxy musk of bracken. They saw a barn owl hunting and, as they stood to watch it, she took his hand and kissed the back of it, which somehow felt as intimate a gesture as if she had unbuttoned his shirt and kissed the skin above his heart.
They painted the second coat to a series of motets by Tallis, who was Composer of the Week, barely speaking as they worked, then cleaned up in bitterly cold water from the graveyard tap. They drove home in silence but with the car windows open so that the smell of paint about them was rinsed by the warm night air.
For the first time in nearly fifteen years they made love. (He would not realize it had been that long until the morning, when he took in her tea and went to shave.) It was not earth-shatteringly passionate – they were both too surprised for that – but for him, at least, it felt like a deep restoration, at the roots of his being, a true forgiveness from the flesh rather than a light and easy one from the tongue.
DOROTHY AT 34
Nearing the end of her first decade of married life, Dorothy felt she must have aged more rapidly in the last ten years than in the twenty-four preceding them. This was odd in that, compared to those of most new wives, her life had outwardly changed so little. She lived in the farmhouse she had grown up in, she still lived with her mother, who had created a kind of flat for herself, with its own front door, at one end of the house, and she still knelt in the same pew in church and taught Sunday School there. Ten years on it was still a surprise to receive a letter or invitation dignifying her as Mrs Barnaby Johnson for she secretly still felt like Dorothy Sampson or simply Dulcie Sampson’s Girl .
Her mother, she was coming to realize, was always right. Her stern predictions of what lay in store for the wives of priests had all come true: the lack of privacy, the lack of money. But her mother had soon acquired a deep respect, almost an awe, for her son-in-law and never breathed a word of I-Told-You-So when she and Dorothy
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