Free Sheer Blue Bliss by Lesley Glaister

stupid, so narrow-minded, not to recognise the genius of Patrick. Still, that’s good for Tony, good, shows how special he must be, to know, to know that Patrick was absolutely right, to sense that what Patrick invented is the thing that could save him from himself. Can’t touch a woman ever again because if he does, well … don’t think about that … but there is this other way of being happy, more than happy, of achieving bliss.
    Tony actually loves Patrick whose childhood is so vivid to him he can smell it sometimes, if he closes his eyes: the hot stink of tomato plants behind glass, the cat-piss under the privet, the sourness of the white-splashed laurel leaves.
    Patrick’s childhood is more vivid to him than his own, his own he doesn’t want vivid. No way. It wasn’t a proper childhood at all only a kind of waiting, he can’t count it as childhood not in the sense that there was any fun or play, or anything to remember, nothing he wants to remember at all.

FOURTEEN
    Grief is like another country. Connie travelled there for months. Her heart, not just her heart, her womb, stomach, liver and spleen all contracted and blackened; her eyes were dazzled by strange brightness. The sun never stopped shinning that autumn and winter. She’d squint at it, puzzled. One day it shone on a light frosted crust of snow and Sacha forced her out to walk in it. She walked as if hypnotised by the breaking of the crystals underfoot, the softness beneath. It was so white, like careful celebratory icing on the smooth branches and twigs of the beech trees. She thought how Alfie would have delighted in scuffing up the snow with his heels. She remembered the earth- and grass-stained boulder they used to roll up on the lawn at home, the belly of the snowman, how heavy it grew, how it creaked as they pushed it picking up squashed berries and bird-droppings, how hot inside their coats they got, their woollen gloves huge and clogged, wet fingers numb. How in the thaw the snowman would be the last thing to go, how it would sit on the lawn for weeks, a grubby nub, gradually shrinking until it was gone. And remembering that, she started to cry.
    This was a new place again and it was as if before – that numb dazedness – had been easy, had been nothing. Now the tears came in waves that engulfed her, that she gave herself up to until she thought she would go under and drown. The ugliness of grief dismayed her, no romance in the chapped skin, blocked nose, eyes rimmed with red.
    Sacha, sitting by her bed, didn’t try and stop her crying like Mother would have done. Connie wanted her mother to soothe her but then it was her mother for whom she grieved: she ground round and round in that terrible cycle of realisation and pain. And Alfie, dear little war-loving Alfie … and Father. It was too much and she felt her heart break in her chest, thought that was just an expression before, never knew that a heart could really break. Sacha there saying, ‘That’s good, good, Con, you cry. Cry.’ Sacha’s hand bigger and rougher than her mother’s would have been. Connie stared and stared at it, the thick thumb, the dry texture of the deeply fretted palm, the minute brown hairs on the backs of the fingers, the paint or ink stains beside the nails. Not the soft white scented hand for which she longed – but when she looked up there was such tenderness in the brown eyes, lucky Sacha’s eyes were brown not blue like Mother’s or Alfie’s, not grey like Father’s. Sacha solid enough to hold on to, a still thing in the sweeping grief, a big, dry hand.
    Sometimes in the midst of her grief Connie would have an awareness, just for a moment, like a swimmer coming up for air, of something else that Sacha was feeling. And that was fear. Although she never said so, Connie knew that Sacha was thinking about Red in Africa and sometimes she would find a thread of strength to hope, for