Still Water by Catherine Marshall

Author:Catherine Marshall [Marshall, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2015-06-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Gil stood in the centre of his room and contemplated the tree. It contemplated him right back. It was now a don’t-mess-with-me tree, Jem had said. A kick-ass, Quentin Tarantino tree. He saw what she meant but it wasn’t quite what he’d been aiming for. He’d wanted something mystical and powerful, something you would be awed by, not something that if it came to life might sock you in the jaw with one of its branches. And maybe mystical and powerful were still possible. He wanted to recreate it enough that when she saw it this evening she would be impressed, but the precise alterations to make eluded him and he had done this before, rushed a change he hadn’t been sure how to effect, hacked away too much, shaped something badly, ruined it beyond rescue. So he stood staring at it, thinking instead of Jem and her dry, off-the-wall observations and New Age sensibilities, of her common sense and flights of fancy; she too was a mass of contradictions. It was one of their work days and they had therefore spent last night apart: they had agreed to work and play alternate days but when they woke tangled together in his bed neither had any inclination to go anywhere else. Lunches were lingered over into late afternoon. Early evening cocktails became dinner and an easy surrender to the distraction of the night. The balance to his days now was of being with her, working, being with her, the worst excesses of summers past having dropped away and been replaced by such elation he didn’t miss a minute of them. He did, however, miss Cecily and beach parties and nights at Patrick’s, and he wondered would it be a terrible mistake to begin gently introducing Jem to what had been his life, despite her showing no sign of introducing him to hers.

He took his phone from his jeans pocket and texted her. Got sculptor’s block. Want to be with you.

No reply. No doubt she had a queue of customers. He texted a heart and a kiss and looked afresh at the tree.

Come on then, it said. You know what to do. What are you waiting for?

By late afternoon, when the shadows of the window frame were lengthening across his workbench and the heat through the glass had him perspiring from the day’s exertions, he knew the transformation had begun. Minute changes to direction and form were altering the whole sense of the piece, its menace only a whisper now, its implicit life a force for potential good. Or, he reminded himself, it was a skilfully honed bit of wood with some nice turns and appropriate texturing. No point getting pretentious about it. He was, though, slightly more satisfied, slightly less disappointed in himself. He had done some worthwhile work and it was, happily, time to stroll down to the pier and into Jem’s arms.

He walked along the beach, enjoying the sun, the sands still filled with parents draped into

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