Goodbye Again by Joseph Hone Page B

at her, as she sat on the deck hunched up, in a graceful combination of angled and paralleled arms and legs, face hidden, head bowed between her knees, the crown of damp dark hair, all quite still, frozen in the sun – I wanted to paint her like she was now, there and the-+n.  
    The real inspiration in all my paint-and-turpentine business is this sense of excitement, in looking at a woman, and falling in love with her body, and knowing that whatever happens later, in loving or leaving, you’re going to capture her body, its contours and colours, and the thoughts in her face, and all the sex you may or may not have shared with her – and all the details of her bones, all the shapes and slopes that you were closest to, most intimate and happy with, that the whole complex thrill, whatever the loss or gain in reality, will always be there on canvas, incorruptible.  
    Elsa stood up finally. She looked out to sea. ‘Olives and the oil … It’s lucky I write. And that you paint.’  
    ‘When I did paint. I think Katie – that was her name – was jealous of my painting. I sensed it, it was something she couldn’t do, and wanted to do, and control, like everything else in her life.’  
    ‘I’ve wondered if that was Martha’s problem too – my cookbooks . She was younger than me, a successful attorney, but who came to think she should be writing smart-ass sexy novels about the law and the cops – but she never had that boring gift, and she knew it. So she took it out on me, and my cookbooks. But maybe I’m wrong about Martha being jealous of my work, and there’s no accounting for it.’  
    Silence, until I said, ‘There is accounting for it. There’s accounting for everything and everybody, if you work hard enough at it, in a book or a painting. Or at that Modigliani nude,’ I added.  
    ‘Yes.’ She seemed doubtful.
    ‘Hey, you know something? We could go straight to Paris on this boat.’  
    ‘To Paris – how?’  
    ‘Down the Irish Sea here, and across the channel to Le Havre, then up the Seine to Paris.’  
    ‘Could we?’ She was pleased, like a child.  
    ‘Of course we could! In this good weather, no trouble. Three or four days. She’s a fast boat and I’m a good sailor. I was going to join the British navy once.’  
    ‘All right then, yes!’ she said urgently, eyes glittering.  
    Standing up, semi-naked in the bright light, she dusted herself down, patting her bronzed thighs. It was strange how easy and informal she was, wearing hardly any clothes, with a man she barely knew; as if she’d known me for years and I was her lover.  
    Katie had been just the same, quite unashamed, from the word go. But then I had been her lover almost from the beginning, for she had made the running with me. I’d liked her – her reticence , her independent, secretive air, the original talk and dry wit. And I’d liked the look of her even more. The sense of a fine body, sturdy and sexy, beneath her clothes. I’d never thought to become her lover. She seemed too prim and proper for that. A decorous woman, polite, virtuous, honourable – and married.  
    How wrong even I can be about people.  
    About a month after we’d met, she said she’d been given two tickets for the little theatre in Chipping Norton, not far from the riding school and my old barn. Would I like to come with her? I picked her up in my car. On the way back afterwards, as if in a quite unconscious gesture, she’d put her hand on my knee. She said nothing, and I did nothing, until she’d said, ‘There’s a track off the road a mile ahead.’ It was the track leading up to my barn. I turned into it, drove past the Phillip’s farm, stopped the car, and kissed her chastely, her face faintly illuminated by the dashboard lights. Shereached forward, holding me, wanting to kiss again, relaxed but with an eagerness I could feel all over her body. She took my hand, putting it on her knee, then lifted the hem of her skirt and placed