Claude
By: Frankie Baxter 🕊
How long does it take to fall out of love?
For them it took less than a year.
After many months of saving-up and wedding stress, Matilda and Craig were finally able to collapse into their plastic, crosshatched pool chairs. They sat and felt their skin begin to burn, the process of it just slow enough for them to not realise their shoulders and nose had crisped to a neon shade of pink. Beside them were two pots of mint chocolate chip soup. Previously they had been ice cream.
But they were happy, they’d done it, they’d vowed their lives to each other, in sickness and in health, so they allowed the Italian sun to soak them as the afternoon flowed into the evening and into the star-speckled night.
Matilda met Craig in university, at the end of a corridor next to a large cabinet of history books. His rowdy, boyish nature and uncouth mess of blonde hair spelled him out as the bad boy of her dreams. She’d never considered that this boy, who would boast the speed in which he could chug a pint, would become the man who helped hold her life together after her mum died. It was this softness and his warm, strong body that could protect her and hold her that she fell in love with.
Matilda loved to create. Sewing, textiles, sculptures, models, oil paints, charcoal drawing. She loved the process of it, the problems and their solutions, and creation of something entirely new. To her, the most important aspect of something was for it to be improved to the best standard possible. Throughout her education and her own creative pursuits, she obsessed over the iterations of her works, critiquing her creations addictively. Adding more, changing parts. Nothing was complete. Nothing was its best version.
Craig met Matilda somewhere, he wasn’t quite sure. His friends thought she was fit, and she had sleek black hair that reminded him alot of a character from a TV show he used to watch. She fit exactly into the template of what he thought he should want in a woman. He responded to her frequent monologues on literature, history and art with a rehearsed smile, eye squint and nod, whilst saying ‘ah’ interestedly. Craig had few hobbies, except for rugby, beer and watching rugby. And reality TV.
But they were married, and with the backdrop of Umbrian hills and each night ending in bruschetta and wine, they had no reason to not be.
Following their day in the sun, Matilda and Craig lay in bed, nose to nose.
“What is your favourite thing about me Craig?” grinned Matilda, resting her head on his chest. He looked at her, looked up and wrinkled his face.
“Uh, why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
“I like your hair. I always have.” he stated.
She was disappointed. She felt as though there was a lot more to her than her hair.
“Anything else Craig?’
“What, was that not enough?” he grunted, “I really like your hair then.” He smiled and rubbed her scalp with his fist in that unbearable way she disliked.
She pushed him away.
“Fine then. Different question.” She put her face closer, attempting to create an intimate emotional moment.
“What is your favourite memory of me?”
He repeated the wrinkled Craig expression, tilting his head back in thought at just the right angle so that Matilda could see the thick mess of nostril hair that had sprouted.
“I liked that trip to Paris, when we sat in that cafe along the Seine. I loved that with you babe.” he replied, and planted a wet kiss on her forehead.
“Aw that’s sweet babe.” See, he did love her.
“Though you wouldn’t stop crying about that dog.” he muttered.
The weekend before Matilda received a call from her Mum to say that their childhood dog had been put down.
“It was a gross thing too, kept on pissing on the carpet when it came to our place, don’t you remember” he snorted, and he turned out the light and rolled onto his side. “Night babe.”
Matilda lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling. That whole week in Paris he had comforted her, reassured her, held her hand as she sobbed in the hotel bathroom. He was kind, he was soft. She felt safe. But now those moments had been tainted by his indifference. Was she irritating? Had she made a drama out of it? She closed her eyes and couldn’t help but question that week. But what about the other times, what about the job rejections, the tough days? What about when her mum died? Did he really care about her then, or was it all a pretence and false sympathy in order to get her to be quiet. The questions gnawed at her. She began to question everything that had led up to then, scrutinising each memory: university, travelling, the proposal, the wedding. Even the vows felt hollow and insincere once she began to analyse the intonation and lift of his voice as he said them. Had he held her hand that day? She remembers spending little time with him during the wedding. Where had he been?
For the rest of the night, the crickets chirped and whispered her worries, and the bed felt smaller and smaller until she questioned if she and her feelings were too big.
And that’s how it was, month after month. She endured it.
To Matilda’s delight, the week before their first anniversary, Craig was away on business somewhere in Europe. To her, this meant a week to enjoy all the things she couldn’t when Craig was there. She could spend time with her friends, make time to read that steamy romance she’d been looking forward to reading, eat a whole cake all by herself and watch the history programme on Thursday evening, not the wrestling highlights. Everything was up to her.
She decided to spend the evening in her shed, her favourite place in the world. This small room looked nearly as if it had been uprooted from the earth due to the clusters of magnolias, tulips, rosemary and other homegrown plants that obscured it. She tipped out all her supplies onto her desk, unaware of what she was about to create, but absolutely exhilarated regardless. Her art brought her to life. She missed it.
And so she began. Paint splashed, needles stitched, and she collaged book pages and magazines into her composition. The dirty stains of grey gouache created gorgeous depth to the piece, the shattered pieces of an ugly vase she glued on gave her piece splendid dimensionality. She sewed on buttons, sprinkled glitter, and adorned it with sequins. With fineliners and thick, wet markers she drew across it, and then filled the fabric with white stuffing, and moulded parts with dripping, dense clay. Then she tore it apart and built it back up. She added and removed and improved and redid.
After many hours, she had finished. It was perfect. She took a step back.
In front of her stood her very own man.
His face was carved from clay, his cheekbones sharp, but his eyes soft, and warm. She’d painted his eyes to appear like pools of honey, sewn his hair with tufts of felt, creating a thick mane. Like freckles, sequins and jewels dotted his body, his smooth skin patterned with drawings and sketches of memories that in the future he could share with her and she could share with him. His body was her sculpture, and she’d filled his porcelain heart with her poetry, and his mind with her stories.
On his pink, watercolour cheek she planted a kiss.
They spent the evening together and they talked about everything. She named him Claude, after her favourite artist: Monet. He was in awe of the body she’d built for him, the mind and thoughts she had gifted him, and the heart she had made beat for him. She read to him, talked to him about history, about art, about the future they could have together. She described to him the struggle she faced in school, the conflict she had with her mother and her biggest fears. He listened.
After a glass or two of wine, she turned to him.
“Claude, tell me, what is your favourite thing about me?” she asked, batting her eyelashes, and gazing longingly into his sweet, warm eyes.
His acrylic mouth told Matilda that he loves how she creates and how the cogs in her mind whir and churn and fabricate the most beautiful things into existence. She swooned, her composition exactly how she’d dreamed it to be.
“And Claude, my dear, what is your favourite memory of me?” she added, utterly lost in his eyes..
He explained to Matilda that each second that passed left him craving for more with her. He wanted to savour her forever, and although he had spent mere hours with her, the memories he favoured most were the ones they were yet to make, the ones where they spent their lifetimes with each other.
Matilda grabbed him and ran her fingers through his felt hair, stroking his face as if to memorise its contour.
“Claude, you love me, right?”
He promised he’d be hers forever.
A day or so later, Craig arrived home. A trail of shoe-shaped mud marks dotted the carpet behind him as he walked to the fridge. He dropped his bags down, grabbed a bag of peanuts, scoffed them, threw the crumbled bag down, spraying crumbs across the tabletop, and collapsed onto the sofa.
The door to the shed was wide open and it appeared to be empty. He couldn’t hear the typical cluttering of materials or Matilda’s soft jazz (that she adored and that he couldn’t stand) pouring out like waves of syrup from the swung-open door.
For the first time in his life, he decided to take a stroll across his garden and visit the curious shed that his wife spent hours in. For the first time, he noticed the foliage that framed it, and felt the shingly stone under his shoes past the patio. Matilda had hand-crafted bird feeders along their back fence. He scoffed and reminded himself to blame her for the bird shit that lined their roof tiles once he’d got his hands on her.
However, the shed was entirely empty. Vacant shelves and bare cupboards lined the walls, and drawers were left pulled-out and containing nothing. Even her large, long craft table was desolate, no longer decorated with paint splatters or accessorised with pots of PVA, bowls of beads and rolls of ruffled lace and fabric, merely a table.
Craig walked back to his house, past the bird feeders and the patio and back into his kitchen. He wasn’t sure what to think or how to feel. He decided it was best for him to put himself to bed and sleep on it.
He lived the rest of his life without Matilda.
She lived the rest of her life with Claude.
About the Author
Frankie is an Art, English and Spanish student who has always loved writing. "My work usually has themes of feminism, nostalgia, love (with a twist) and I like to try out new genres!"