‘Every kid tries,’ he said.
‘You’re not a kid.’ She handed him the pad with the fresh sheet showing and passed him a pencil.
‘Draw what you see.’ She looked out at the view; it really was beautiful. And the sheep gave a wonderful detail to the landscape.
When she looked down to see what he’d done so far she started to laugh and he put a hand around her waist, pulling her body closer.
‘Howard…’ He’d drawn a big heart and written their names inside. But she’d dipped her head and kissed him until he eventually let her get back to her drawing.
They found a café and she tookThe Thorn Birdsfrom Howard when he handed it to her. For almost half an hour – a very long half an hour for Bonnie – they sipped on hot chocolates and as Howard readThe Shiningby Stephen King, Bonnie did her best.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘It’s well written,’ she said brightly. ‘I’ll persevere.’ His questioning glance had her admitting, ‘It will feel like a chore, like reading for my nursing studies except not as useful.’ She covered her face. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not what you want to hear.’
‘It’s fine.’ He slipped his book and hers into his bag. ‘Come on, the library isn’t closed yet. We’ll pop your book back. It’s heavily in demand.’
Outside she hooked her arm into his. ‘Are you very upset with me?’
‘Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying with you.’
He didn’t push it much at all over the years, just a gentle nudge every now and then, and sometimes she tried, sometimes she made it through a few chapters of whatever he suggested for her. It was only when they were married that she told him what had put her off reading. They’d been ripping off old wallpaper from the master bedroom of the Victorian terraced house they’d managed to buy in Reading and Howard was already talking about an old bookshelf he’d seen for sale in the second-hand furniture shop down the end of the road.
‘It’ll look good if I re-stain the wood,’ he’d told her. ‘I’d say it could fit fifty to sixty books.’
‘You’re going to fill this whole house with books, aren’t you?’ She’d turned, wallpaper scraper in hand, her hair beneath a paisley headscarf to protect it from the debris involved with decorating. ‘Admit it.’
‘Only if it’s all right with you. We could allocate you a shelf perhaps. Just in case you get into reading some day.’
‘Maybe I’ll have an art shelf instead. You know I’m not bothered about books.’ She carried on scraping but turned at a thud.
He’d fallen to his knees, hands clasped against his chest. ‘Not bothered about books?’ he breathed rapidly as if her comment had wounded him.
‘Get up, you daft man.’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t bothered about you.’ She hesitated. She didn’t meet his eye. She carried on with scraping the paper from the wall. ‘At school, I struggled… to read. I was later to learn than most, and I was always really embarrassed because my friends all got it and I didn’t.’ She could feel him watching her. ‘I wasn’t dyslexic, I was just slower to pick it up. I had difficulty working out the sounds of the letters and the longer it went on the worse it got because I felt stupid.’
She felt his hand on hers and he gently tugged so that she stepped down off the stool and stood facing him. He took the scraper, set it on the windowsill and reached for her other hand. ‘You were never stupid. Please don’t ever say that.’
‘I know, but I felt it. My friends didn’t laugh, nobody in class did, and I know I was lucky for that. But I never felt the enjoyment that my peers would when they opened a book, because I’d be faced with another battle.’
‘But you learned in the end.’
‘I did, but by then, I suppose, I associated books with struggle. And I never really wanted to try for pleasure. My favourite room at school was the art room. In there, I felt I was myself. I could be free; I could do anything. I was a different person. But art was a small portion of school, the rest seemed to involve countless books to read to learn everything.’
‘So reading became necessity not a pleasure.’
‘Exactly, I did it for my nursing studies but there was a purpose for that.’
‘But pleasure is a purpose.’
She leaned in and kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘I’m happy, Howard. For me, painting is my joy; even painting this ceiling tomorrow will be fun.’
Howard raised his eyebrows in doubt. ‘Remember you complained of neck ache after painting the lounge ceiling.’
Her nose scrunched in realisation. ‘I’d forgotten that. But do you understand?’ Suddenly coy she looked down at the bare floorboards. ‘About the books.’
His fingers lifted her chin up so she was looking him in the eye. ‘Of course I do. Painting is your joy; books are mine.’ Then he smiled. ‘You know what else is my joy?’
She began to giggle as he trailed kisses all down her neck. He opened the buttons of her shirt, they peeled each other’s clothes off, and they made love there and then on top of the sheets piled in the corner ready to lay over the floor before they painted.
