Read Online The Scattering by Jaki McCarrick - Free Book Online Page B

blonde girl asked.
    â€˜Oh, it was a Guston retrospective.’
    â€˜Ah. The clenched fist. Painting, Smoking, Eating .’
    â€˜You know his work?’
    â€˜Oh, indeed. I’ve even been to his house in Connecticut.’
    â€˜You have?’
    â€˜Sure. Guston believed his studio was filled with all sorts of angels and ghosts, did you know that?’
    â€˜No,’ Natalie replied, dismissively.
    â€˜He used to have a poem, Auden, I think, on his wall. Just like you have here. Let’s see… it said the ghosts that haunt our lives are handy with mirrors and wires .’
    â€˜What does that mean?’ Natalie asked, perplexed.
    â€˜That, maybe, sometimes, they’re there to help.’
    â€˜The ghosts?’
    â€˜Sure.’
    Patricia wanted to ask where the ghosts were on the day of the robbery, but thought better of it.
    The three women huddled together in the centre of the shop discussing Philip Guston and painting, while at the furthest end of the store, by the World collection, the couple with the dreadlocks tried on Patricia’s much-prized African war-masks.
    *
    Patricia stared out at her daughter smoking a cigarette on the promenade wall. ‘She has been a different person,’ she said with a sigh, ‘since we came. She has bloomed. But the robbery shook her. She thinks I’m going to have to close.’ The blonde girl pulled out a dark opal-like stone from her pocket.
    â€˜Have you seen this before?’ she asked, and placed the stone in Patricia’s hand.
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜It’s called seraphanite. Chanellers, healers use it. I know that sounds a bit, well… but the vibrations are very strong, don’t you think?’ As she turned the stone around in her palm Patricia wanted to laugh – and went to return it to the girl.
    â€˜No, I want you to keep it,’ the girl replied. ‘Please. Hold it close. It will protect the shop.’
    Patricia saw how sincere the girl seemed, how genuine in her insistence she keep the stone.
    â€˜Won’t you have something in exchange?’ she said, ‘like a bracelet?’
    â€˜No, it’s a gift. I don’t want anything in return.’
    Patricia held the rock up to the light. Thin flecks of silvery quartz glistened in feathered ribbons of white. It radiated an intense heat. Immediately she thought of Giovanni. Once, before she’d finally left England for Ireland, she’d opened the door of their summerhouse in Devon to the frail figure of her old art lecturer. She had ushered him in and tenderly held him, noting his dank, sour smell. ‘Why did you go my little Patricia?’ he had said, over and over. (She had always loved how he called her ‘little’.) She had never given him an explanation for her sudden departure from the Academy, nor did she tell him at the house. Patricia saw herself with Giovanni on that sultry evening, watching the light fall on the yachts and trawlers of Salcombe Harbour as they sailed out towards the English Channel. It had been so warm they had eaten on the porch and listened to the waves lap the low chalky cliffs. She never heard from him after that visit, and read some months later in The Times that he was dead.
    â€˜I have to be getting back now. But please, keep the stone. And remember, you must never give it to anyone else. I’d rather you hurled it into the sea. What has been taken from you will come back.’
    Patricia felt a tremulous shiver in her stomach. She knew the girl was right. Her luck would change. It had to. A renewed sense of trust in herself and in her destiny filled her.
    â€˜Thank you,’ Patricia said.
    As the doorbell resounded, Patricia watched the blonde-haired girl walk eastwards towards the rocky part of the coast until she could no longer be seen from the shop. Patricia saw the Japanese screen and grabbed it. She rushed up to the other two, who were about to exit, and offered