Chloe by Freya North

cent
    deposit paid to Saxby Ceramics.
    Balance on delivery.
    T he list had been pinned up for almost a month. William read it cursorily each time he set foot in the studio. Today, he swiped it off the wall, the drawing-pin holding on fast to a snag of the page with ‘five’ written on it.
    â€˜Only forty bowls, eh?’ he muttered under his breath before spying Barbara’s forelegs clipping their way up the two steps to the threshold of the studio.
    â€˜Well, I’ve done the bowls and dessert plates which gives me a month to complete the order. Nigh on impossible. What joy.’ Barbara bleated and pursed her lips around the edge of the list. They tugged in a playful push-me-pull-you sort of way before Barbara fixed her yellow eyes on William accusingly, seeming to say ‘Your heart’s not in it, Billy Boy’. William gave her the list to chew on while he took to a corner of his thumbnail on which to ruminate.
    â€˜
Pale white glaze rimmed in blue.
They mean, of course, dolomite with cobalt oxide. Philistines!’
    â€˜Philistines!’ bleated Barbara who decided that grass was more tasty than paper and wandered off to nibble the new shoots sweet in the shadow of the holly bush. William retrieved the sodden mash that the list had become and smirked to see that it was still quite legible, no smudges, no runs. Clearly, Morwenna had sent him a photocopy, keeping the original for herself.
    â€˜Very cute,’ William conceded, ‘keeping proof of the original order should I have any ideas for improvement. Or change.’
    She had also kept the deposit as her cut, which was unusual.
    â€˜Shrewd,’ said William, ‘just in case I don’t complete the order. Or if things change.’
    But because he was still paying off the washing-machine in monthly instalments, he wedged, kneaded and weighed out five equal balls of stoneware without grumbling and effortlessly threw five side plates. Debussy crackled forth from an aged transistor which was caked in clay, chipped and cracked with neglect. William wedged, kneaded and weighed another five balls. Another five plates soon stood in monotony on a wooden plank.
    â€˜I’m bored, Babs,’ said William, thumping the transistor to silence Cliff Richard (for many years, and due most probably to an inordinate amount of clay in the workings, Radio 2 was the only station transmitted). He began to knead and wedge once more.
    â€˜I’m bored to the very core.’
    Barbara, who was wholly intolerant of melancholia, sneered and sauntered away. William wiped the backs of his hands across his brow, and the fronts of them down his smock, before tiptoeing into the kitchen to retrieve the telephone. Refusing to break his self-imposed law of no-clay-in-the-house, he perched precariously on the freezing cold step and dialled a cottage three miles away. The phone rang and rang but, knowing a similar clay ban was in force, William hung on patiently and gouged clay from under his nails. Finally, the telephone was answered and William leapt to his feet with the receiver tucked under his chin so he could gesticulate wildly.
    â€˜I have ninety pieces to go and am dangerously close to smashing forty-five bowls and throwing ten side plates into the reclaim,’ he exclaimed, a certain glee peppering his rapidly delivered woe. There was a brief silence in which William held the phone aloft and whispered ‘Ninety’ into it for dramatic impact.
    â€˜You’d better come over at once, dear boy!’
    It was precisely the advice William was expecting.
    â€˜I was hoping you’d say that.’
    â€˜At
once
!’
    Barbara accompanied a whistling William to the end of the drive at Peregrine’s Gully before turning back in the hope that Morwenna might turn up on the off chance and provide her with some sport for the afternoon. As was his way, William neither acknowledged the goat’s presence nor bade her farewell