Cath Staincliffe: The Kindest Thing

We travelled to Crete and went to Knossos, King Minos’s palace; Neil told me all about the legend of the Minotaur. The site was vast, impressive, but what captivated me was the frieze of the dolphins, the vibrant colour, the energy in it, and the mosaic floors made of thousands of tiny tesserae, I loved the sophistication and elegance of the images, the harmony of composition.

We sailed to Rhodes, entering the harbour where the Colossus once stood. On the island of Kos we got the bus up to the Asclepeion, the first hospital in the world, built on wooded terraces. The place had an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity that not even the clusters of tourists could disrupt. Down in Kos town we sat beneath the plane tree where Hippocrates was said to have taught his principles of healing. Neil filled my head with stories of Greek gods and monsters and heroes. I came to share his fascination with the myths and legends.

Between our excursions to ancient sites we would walk up into the hills where the air was thick with the scent of pine resin and sizzled with the chirrups of crickets and the hum of bees. He would put his hand round the nape of my neck, a gesture that had surprised me at first but by then had become familiar, comforting. He would catch my neck and pull me close for a kiss or hold me like that as we strolled along. I was a head shorter than him.

‘Deborah.’ He’d stop me, circle my waist with his arm and steer me to a tree, the place dappled with shade and insects flittering in the golden pools of light. To the sound of cowbells in the distance, he would make love to me. His passion for me, his appetite, fed mine and the lust showed no signs of abating. On the beach, reading, swimming, roasting in the heat that softened my muscles and darkened my skin, my thoughts turned repeatedly to sex. Remembering what we had just done and what we might do next. Soon I would turn to him and whisper filthy words and sweet entreaties, teasing him until one or other of us caved in, stood, hand shading our eyes, and said, ‘Let’s go back for a bit.’

Neil had been dead for sixteen days and we still hadn’t been able to make the funeral arrangements because the coroner’s office hadn’t released the body. The whole country baked in a heatwave. I barely slept, barely ate, close to nausea much of the time. But the warm nights meant I could roam about the house or my workshop and wait for sunrise. I’m an interior designer; my workshop is a converted double garage at the side of the garden. Most of the work I did myself: insulating the roof, dry-lining the walls and laying the floor, though I got contractors in to sort out the plumbing and electricity. I’ve a free-standing stove at one end that heats the place perfectly in winter.

The part nearest to the drive is an office and meeting area. Clients occasionally come to the workshop to check me out or go over some ideas. The rest of the space is for practical work, drawing table and plans chest, a messy area where I can experiment with paint and other materials: cork, plastics, ceramics. There are shelves lined with reference books and folders stuffed full of research. Some of the books I’ve had since university; others I acquired for particular projects, like the huge volume of nursery rhymes that I return to again and again when I’m considering children’s rooms, or the Gardens of Egypt tome I’d bought when working for a couple who’d met at the Pyramids and wanted an outdoor room with the flavour of the Nile.

The length of the workshop that looks out on to the garden is all sliding glass doors, which gives me the natural light I need. There are plain hessian curtains for days when I want to shut out the sun’s glare. I set it up the year I launched the business. I’d spent fourteen years working for a big design agency, mainly on corporate contracts: hotel chains and supermarkets. It involved more work away from home than I liked and less variety. I didn’t get much holiday, and although Neil’s teaching job meant he was available to look after the children in the school holidays, I wanted more flexibility.

It was a risk going self-employed but I knew if I crashed and burned we’d still have Neil’s salary. We wouldn’t starve. Accepting that productivity would come ahead of creativity until I’d established a reputation, I said yes to all comers. As it was, I struck lucky. One of the clients I’d worked with at the agency had heard I was going solo and recommended me to his boss, who had just won the contract for a new community hospital on the outskirts of Manchester. It involved me designing everything from the colour-coded seats in reception areas to the napkins for the meals service and the pictures on the walls. Eighteen months’ work. After that I could pick and choose, and I built a portfolio of very different projects: hair salon, fusion restaurant, sixth-form college, as well as domestic jobs, refurbishments, loft conversions and the like.

So, sixteen days after his death and I’d spent the early hours in my workshop, awake but eyes closed to rest them, my mind lurching about like a drunk on a dance floor. Avoiding the quicksands of sleep.

At seven I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. Adam had stayed with friends, or so he said, but Sophie came down, got her lunch ready and left for school. She was very quiet and resisted my attempt to make conversation, returning only shrugs or monosyllables. This wasn’t like Sophie but perhaps the silence gave her solace. In the aftermath of Neil’s death someone had mentioned bereavement counselling to me: they offered it for children nowadays. If Sophie couldn’t talk to me about her dad then perhaps she’d appreciate doing so with someone else.

I thought back to how my own mother had handled it when my dad drowned. Not very well. I was nine. We were on holiday, staying in an apartment in Mumbles on the Gower Peninsula. She sat me and my brother Martin down and told us in very simple terms what had happened: Daddy was missing. He’d been for a swim and must have got out of his depth. He wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer and might have misjudged the tides or the current. He had left his clothes on the beach. I imagined them neatly folded, the grey and yellow check poplin shirt, grey shorts, covered with the striped blue towel. His watch in the pocket of his shorts. They recovered his body eight days later. Martin got his watch. I didn’t get anything.

Once I had children of my own, every seaside holiday brought a moment of intense anxiety that rose like bile, then a falling sensation, a rush back to the numb panic of waiting for news while my mother spoke to strange men in hushed tones. The earth sways. I am flirting with disaster, I am tempting Fate, bringing myself, my children here, a sacrifice to the ocean. Neil had told me about Scylla and Charybdis when we were in Greece, the two monsters that sat either side of a narrow strait. If sailors managed to avoid the sucking whirlpool of Charybdis they sailed too close to the grotesque Scylla with her six heads, each with three rows of teeth, her loins girded by dog’s heads. Scylla would drown and devour her captives. I imagined my father struggling against the pool of Charybdis, being pulled deeper and deeper, the water closing over his head, his limbs burning, heavy, feeble. Or Scylla, sated, cradling him in her loose embrace. Dad’s bones clanking softly in the slow current, crabs in his eyes.

Determined to face down my monsters, I dandled the toddlers in the foam along the shore, showed them how to jump the waves. As they grew, I taught them to float and crawl and dive. Allowing myself to fear the worst, I pictured them gone, my eyes racing over the sand and the blue beyond. It’s a talisman: if I dip myself into the foam of tragedy and coincidence, give rein to the dread, then it will not come to pass. Some superstitions are hard to shake.