Page 51 of Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop
‘You’re coming at me with a needle gun, how do you expect menotto tense up?’ Nina demanded.
‘Just grab that stool and pull it closer,’ Claude said to Noah as he completely ignored Nina’s suffering. ‘And if this one barks your head off don’t take it personally.’
‘I hate you,’ Nina told him, which just proved Claude’s point.
Then Marianne appeared with Nina’s Lucozade and the freshly baked cookies and Nina’s pain and rage subsided again. Marianne sat down with a pile of mending and Noah scooted his stool right over so he could have a ringside seat for the tattooing.
‘Did you draw that?’ he asked Nina when he saw the final sketch that Claude was working from.
‘I did,’ Nina replied and she almost gave a guilty start but stopped herself as she wasn’t allowed to make any sudden movements. ‘I used those beautiful Faber Castell pencils that I never even thanked you for because I’m an ungrateful wretch.’
‘You thanked me in the email inviting me to Ye Olde Laser Tag, which was one of the most fun nights of my life so I think we’re even,’ Noah said, pulling his stool even closer so he could have a proper look at what Claude was up to. ‘You really should think about taking a drawing class, Nina. You’ve got some serious skills, which are worth developing.’ Noah looked again at the pencil sketch Nina had done of the old, weather-beaten tree, swallows flying overhead, Cathy and Heathcliff leaning against its trunk.
Nina tucked her head back into the crook of her arm to hide the delighted smile, which she was sure made her look quite smug. ‘Maybe,’ she conceded because there was an art school in Bloomsbury, quite near the shop, and it wouldn’t hurt to see if they did any evening classes for beginners. ‘As long as the life-drawing models are quite fit.’
Noah smiled and shook his head as he often did when Nina was being impossible, then turned his attention back to the needle gun in Claude’s steady hands.
‘You’re doing it freehand,’ he noted in surprise. ‘When I got mine done, the tattooist used a stencil.’
‘I like to go freehand so I can fit the tattoo to her arm better and it makes for a more organic design,’ Claude explained.
‘And I trust Claude to know what’s going to work and what isn’t and to put his own stamp on the tattoo.’ Nina smiled mischievously. ‘I mean, I suppose he’squitegood at his job.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Claude said. He was the most chilled person Nina had ever met. It was impossible to rile him, unless Nina had to ask him to see off a persistent and substandard admirer and then Claude could be absolutely terrifying.
‘I always wondered how tattooists develop their own style,’ Noah mused. ‘It’s not like you can practise on people, is it?’
‘You say that but my brother has a particularly crap tattoo of Bruce Springsteen on his back from when I was an apprentice,’ Claude said deadpan as Noah, Nina and even Marianne looked at him in consternation. ‘Nah! Pigskin from the butcher.’ He sighed. ‘I miss working on pigskin. Didn’t bitch half as much as my human customers do.’
‘Well, if you weren’t so heavy handed,’ Nina grumbled and she wanted to ask Claude to stop so she could stretch but she knew that if he stopped then she’d only have to get used to the needle all over again.
‘“Whatever souls are made of, his and mine are the same,”’ Noah read out the quote fromWuthering Heightsthat curled around the base of the tree trunk on Nina’s arm. ‘Ah! I didn’t get to read this properly on our first date. It was quite dimly lit and I was wearing whisky goggles.’
‘Those Old Fashioneds were lethal,’ Nina recalled.
Noah peered intently at her arm again. ‘So this quote … that’s your mission statement, is it?’
He didn’t sound sarcastic, but genuinely curious, so Nina didn’t bristle. Because although it was etched into her arm for all the world to see and although they’d spoken already about whatWuthering Heightsmeant to her, the quote itself was something intensely personal. It wasn’t a story many people got to hear. She’d told Claude and Marianne, of course, but even Posy and Verity thought that Nina adoredWuthering Heightsonly for its drama and she’d never bothered to correct them.
‘I never read the book when I was at school. Probably wouldn’t have paid attention even if we had,’ she said falteringly. ‘But then someone close to me was in an accident …’ She prayed that Claude or Marianne wouldn’t chime in with ‘You mean Paul?’ but thankfully they both stayed silent. ‘He nearly died. Was on a moped and had a collision with a lorry and ended up wrapping himself round a lamppost. We didn’t know if he was going to make it, if he’d ever walk again, so we made sure that there was always one of us at his bedside.’
Nina’s voice cracked as she talked. ‘I was supposed to be getting married in less than a month and somehow, sitting vigil, listening to the monitors beep and his slow steady breathing … it actually felt like a respite from all the wedding prep. When I thought about the wedding, I got the same nauseous feeling of panic as I did when the beeping of one of the monitors in the ICU ward would occasionally become a shrieking and doctors and nurses would run in from all directions …’ She paused and gulped.
‘So, in the end I didn’t think about the wedding at all. And anyway, the seating plan was the very last of my worries,’ she remembered. ‘In the relatives’ room was a little bookcase and the only reason I picked up the copy ofWuthering Heightswas because it was the one book there that wasn’t by Len Deighton or Jack Higgins. It was hard to get into to start with and then it stopped being hard and every word resonated with me. All the thoughts and feelings I didn’t have words for were there on the page. I was all set to marry my Edgar Linton, even though I didn’t love him, I didn’t even know what love was.
‘And yes, I do know that Heathcliff is like the dictionary definition of toxic but it felt as if I was saying goodbye to ever experiencing that kind of passion. I was sitting there in a hospital only too aware of how short life can be, how it can be snatched away from you in a split second, and so I called off the wedding there and then. By text message.’
‘Nina!’ Marianne gasped, putting down the sequinned dress she was mending. ‘You never said it was by text message.’
‘Well, it’s not something I’m proud of,’ Nina said, ‘but it really felt as if there was no time left to lose. I wanted to be a girl again, “half-savage, hardy and free”. When I thought about Emily Brontë and her sisters, all trapped in that parsonage, but writing with such wild abandon, I felt that I had to start living instead of just existing. Be more like Cathy, even if I ended up broken-hearted …’
‘Or dead …’ Claude pointed out with a tiny sly smile that Nina decided to let go.
‘I was going to look how I wanted to look, eat what I wanted to eat, love who I wanted to love – do things because I wanted to do them and not because that was what was expected of me. So this tattoo symbolises all that,’ she finished and dared to look at Noah from under her lashes though she’d avoided his gaze until now.
She had his undivided attention. His gaze fixed on hers, his expression thoughtful and serious though a smile softened his features when he caught Nina’s eye. ‘I get the impression that you don’t share that story with many people so thank you for sharing it with me,’ he said. ‘For trusting me.’
‘You’ve got a very trustworthy face,’ Nina said and it seemed as if they were having a moment and all of a sudden she felt stripped bare in a way that had nothing to do with her state of undress or the secrets she’d just spilled. Time to break the spell with a quip. ‘If the business analysis thing doesn’t pan out, you could always sell life insurance.’
