Chloe

‘Isn’t he that showjumper?’ Kerry asked.

The wood crept part way up a slope, rather like a beard. The floor of it was covered with pine needles and mulch – rather like bristles. It was soft underfoot and smelt heavenly. From the top, Chloë could see that the farm was relatively isolated. She could make out buildings way over the other side of the lane but these were so far away that it was impossible to tell whether they were merely barns and byres or a dwelling. No smoke from there. Rising in jagged steps beyond was the Skirrid mountain, most onomatopoeic.

I’ll climb that one day. Maybe I’ll ride up. Would you like that, Percy?

Gin Trap’s directions brought Chloë and Kerry back into the yard on the dot of four – she could pick out the chimes of a grandfather clock. It wasn’t coming from the house which was directly in front, but somewhere to her left. It was on entering the tack room that she discovered it, tocking patiently, brass pendulum swinging in a most leisurely fashion. Though she had been at Skirrid End for just over an hour, already the tack room seemed as good a place as any for a grandfather clock. Chloë bade goodbye to Kerry and said she could see no reason why she shouldn’t take her out on another hack on Sunday.

‘Brilliant. Ask if you can ride Barnaby – he’s smashing. Liver chestnut, fourteen three, three-quarter Arab. Needs a kimblewick though.’

‘I see.’

The small of Chloë’s back nags ever so slightly. It tells her that five years has been an inordinate absence from the saddle. She rubs it tenderly and picks out the piece of chaff nestling in the corner of her mouth. She inhales deeply and closes her eyes. What is it?

I think that’s bread.

And?

Something else. Everywhere. Fresh, clean air. Hang on, tractor diesel, just faintly, over there.

And?

Sheep? No, horse. Of course. And? Wet earth.

Wales.

Wales.

She opens her eyes and takes a broad look around her. A smile breaks over her face and brings light into the darkening yard. Wales. As Peregrine said, a splendid idea. An hour and a half was all it had taken to feel settled, content and at home. And yet she had never been to Wales before. With the relaxed swagger of one who spends all day in the saddle down on the farm, Chloë saunters off towards the farmhouse, in search of hot bread and gingham tablecloths and this curious woman called Gin Trap. As she nears the porch, she sees a figure propped leisurely against it. It’s shadowy but it is most certainly a he. It must be the antipode.

‘Yo, Chlo! I’m Carl.’

Carl is possibly the best-looking man Chloë has ever set eyes on.

SEVEN

Forty-five bowls.

Forty-five side plates.

Forty-five dinner plates.

Forty-five dessert plates.

Pale white glaze rimmed in blue, please.

By Valentine’s Day.

Many thanks. Thirty per cent

deposit paid to Saxby Ceramics.

Balance on delivery.

The 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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘Pale white glaze rimmed in blue. They mean, of course, dolomite with cobalt oxide. Philistines!’

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘You’d better come over at once, dear boy!’

It was precisely the advice William was expecting.

‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

‘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 – the latter would suppose the former, hence the resolute whistling.

The New Year had been one of the wettest on record and the ground ran beneath his feet like the slurry in the basin of his wheel after a day’s work. As he strode the well-known route he rued the fact that it had been months – last autumn at least – since he had visited Mac. He knew his phone call was unnecessary, that he was always welcome; but he knew too that a phone call more than once in a while, a visit for a visit alone and not for advice, would not go amiss. Mac was well into his seventies after all. And after all, Mac was Mac.

Michael Mount, commonly known as Mac, was William’s mentor. He had taught him everything he knew about clay but, most importantly, he had instilled in him the intrinsic magic of the stuff and had inspired him more than any teacher at college, more than any studio potter studied and lauded. More, therefore, than Bernard or David Leach, more than Lucy Rie, more than Thomas Naethe even. For it had been Mac who had wrapped William’s hands around a ball of terracotta clay when he was nine years old. With his own hands covering, and uttering not a word, he had squeezed hard over William’s until the clay was quite warm and had compacted under his fingernails, colouring every line and gulley in his palm.

‘It’s like the earth,’ William had gasped in awe, scrutinizing his hand.

‘Well, it is called terracotta, dear boy!’ Mac had said gruffly, having always felt awkward about conversing with children.

‘No,’ insisted William, ‘the earth – look, in the palm of my hand. Rivers of clay, Mac. See how it’s dried here? That’s an earthquake. And see this,’ he explained, holding the terracotta ball aloft, ‘this is like the world too – see? From my nails and your squeezing? The Himalayas. The sea. Here’s England, this patch here.’