Night Street by Kristel Thornell

tell a dream,’ Clarice offered. ‘To put words to it.’
    â€˜No. Probably wiser not to.’
    She watched a man catch a hat the wind had pulled off his very smooth, bald head.
    â€˜We have a daughter,’ Arthur added, after a while.
    â€˜Oh. And you enjoy painting?’
    â€˜I don’t know if enjoy is the word. It’s new for me.’
    She had begun to tremble earlier at the studio, when she sensed him behind her and then saw him looking avidly at her board. But the trembling was moving to her knees, spreading through her abdomen and chest, her hands and even the bones of her face; the breath in her was distressed. Though she could not have imagined it, she saw now that she had been waiting for this, for something elemental to take command of her body. Was this love?
    â€˜I live with my parents,’ she said. ‘I sort of look after them.’
    They had been facing straight ahead, but—briefly—he glanced sideways at her. She wondered whether her eyes were greener or browner at that moment, if it mattered, what kind of a woman he glimpsed.

9
    A month had passed since his arrival in the studio. Already, though they were only cautiously friends, she knew much about him, collecting facts. He was a shy painter. Painting appeared to be the one area in which he was shy. He was unhurried, loose in himself, most of the time. His stance related easily to the ground beneath him. He walked strongly, seeming to expect a steady flow of good luck. He observed the moving shapes of the sky in the way of country people. He took control of a room without trying. He was a relaxed talker and a teller of stories, loving to entertain a group and quite humorous when the mood took him. Not talking was not a problem for him, however, as it can be for those whose talk is smooth. Silence flattered him like a high-class suit, a generously positioned lamp.
    â€˜Out there’, as he sometimes said, he was a lawyer and you imagined him in this role as trenchant and formidable, always winning his cases. In fact, it turned out he was rather renowned, his name often in the newspapers. Whereas in the quieter world of painting, he was an unknown and a neophyte, feeling his way. It caught Clarice’s attention: he had reduced himself to this. He chose to be unsure, to proceed unarmed, surrendering to the experiment. He was humbled and perhaps a little afraid with a paintbrush, which he held solemnly and also self-mockingly, as if it were a mast bare of flag and he could represent only his own dreamed country. Arthur the man, keen to be a schoolboy again in Meldrum’s classroom. He was both a natural and a self-trained watcher, the good kind; he had sensitivity and maybe a scholar’s humility.
    And she had seen his wife. Bella. In a spotted, black-belted dress. Not the child, thankfully. But the Mrs in her spotted dress, the wifely existence of whom could not be denied. His other half—which was not right, as he was so frighteningly whole on his own. Whole, yet questing, his gaze bruising what it passed over.
    Arthur was a whetstone keeping her sharp, over-alert, perverting her nights so they became a wakeful, sickly, queerly self-satisfied torture. The nights could be difficult. But they ended with a morning-to-be like this one, the fragrant world latent in the reddish dark and the cart in her hand rolling single-mindedly on its wheels towards the sea. When Clarice got to Black Rock, the waves were gentle, nocturnal yet, almost soundless. And she was besotted. Besotted with the sea and besotted with Arthur Blackburn.
    A visual imagination can be a scourge and, with her mind’s eye, she saw scenes she would rather not have been privy to: Bella’s hair being brushed by lamplight, the ripe swelling of her belly with his child, their rapturous intimacy. It seemed unfair that a woman should have a name meaning beautiful, as if she had the monopoly on beauty. Clarice had not found Bella