Limestone and Clay (10 page)

‘So Dan knows?'

‘Of course. Actually it was his idea. Not Si … but the general idea.' Celia sips her coffee. She has regained her self-possession now that she has spoken.

‘Dan's idea,' Nadia repeats. Her mind has gone sluggish. She looks at the bread on her plate, the protruding lip of cheese, a viscous tomato pip which has fallen onto the table.

‘Yes. He had the snip years ago – first marriage, one kid. Ten years ago, more. Never dreamt he'd want to do it again, reproduce that is. But then we decided. So it was reversal – expensive, dodgy – or AID, or this.'

‘This. Simon.'

‘Seemed the best option. No need for doctors, nothing off-putting and medical. And I talked him round to considering Si. We both like him. He's good-looking, healthy, intelligent – and there is some similarity between them. I mean, I know Dan's dark and Si's fair, but otherwise …'

‘Interchangeable,' Nadia mutters.

‘Well no, but …' She finishes her coffee. ‘And anyway, when Dan came home we made love.'

‘Straight after? Didn't you even wash?' Nadia shudders.

‘We made love very – well, thoroughly. And that night I conceived. So it does feel a bit like Dan's.'

‘Is that what you're planning to pretend? I mean you and Simon when you plotted this …' Nadia's shock is warming into anger. How can Celia be sitting calmly in her kitchen saying these things! ‘Are you planning to pretend it's Dan's?'

Celia has not noticed Nadia's anger. She pulls a sad clown's face. ‘Don't know. That
was
the idea. Dan's pretty adamant.'

‘
Was
the idea? What's changed?'

‘Well, I've told you, haven't I? You haven't got a biscuit, have you?'

‘No,' Nadia lies. ‘Why did you tell me?'

‘I don't know … I suppose when it came to it, I couldn't stand the deception.' Bully for you, thinks Nadia. ‘I told Si to tell you, I thought he should. But he said you wouldn't Understand …'

‘Too bloody right!' Nadia gets up. She throws her sandwich in the bin. ‘So, does Dan know you're telling me? Or Simon?'

‘Well, no, not yet. But Nadia, I thought you should know. It is to do with you … but it really needn't make any difference.'

‘Thanks very much,' Nadia snaps. ‘And I'm expected to keep mum – ha! – now am I?'

‘I would have thought it was in your interests,' says Celia stiffly. ‘I didn't think you'd take it like this.'

‘Like bloody what? What did you expect!' She pauses, tries to calm herself. ‘You do know Simon and I have been trying?'

‘Yes.' Celia looks sheepish.

‘You do know about the miscarriage?' Celia nods. ‘So you can hardly expect me to be overjoyed.'

‘Oh Christ, Nadia, I am sorry. I didn't think it through, all that side of it. Only afterwards, that's why I came round.'

‘I wouldn't expect
you
to have thought, but I would have expected Simon …' She feels the back of her throat hollowing with impending tears and grits her teeth against them.

‘I've made a mistake,' Celia says dully. ‘I shouldn't have told you. Oh shit.'

‘You'd better go,' Nadia says. ‘I need to work.' She blinks, angry to find that her eyelashes are wet.

‘I suppose you'll tell Si that I've been round. What will you say?'

‘None of your business,' Nadia says. ‘Go.'

Celia goes out of the door. She turns. ‘Honestly, I didn't mean to hurt you.'

Nadia slams the door.

Moonmilk

Nadia's anger is like the bright hot embers of a fire. It glimmers under the greyness of ash, but it takes only the slightest stir, the merest breath, to fuel it into brilliant lashing flame. The anger is a painful thing. It burns her stomach. It leaves no room for food. It heats her ribs until they flutter like hot fans against the stone of her heart.

She wanders around the flat. Everything is very still and clear. There are hard edges around every separate object like the black outlines in a child's colouring book. Shadows are precise like neat, scissor-cut cardboard shapes. The eyes in her masks are very dark and neat – and the slice-shaped mouth-holes.

She stands in the kitchen watching water drip from the tap. Each drop gathers round the outside rim of the tap, then forms itself for the splinter of a second into a perfect crystal pear, reflecting in its minuscule life the blur that is Nadia. And then it drops into the half-full bowl. The circles it creates are swollen ridges riding to the margins of the bowl as the drop becomes one with the greasy water, to be replaced by the next fattening drop.

Celia is fattening with the developing child. Of course, it is imperceptible yet. Of course, it has started to rain. Only an April shower – but the sky has blackened. Nadia looks out of the window, disoriented. The light is strange. The sun still shining somewhere finds its way through the cloud like a torch shining yellow under a grey blanket. The lining of Celia's womb will be rich and velvety red with the quilted, unshed blood. It will be a luxurious place for Simon's child.

The trip will be off then. What with this rain. Nadia feels a spiteful pleasure that he will be thwarted. Simon is not suicidal. Why, he is to be a father! He has everything to live for. ‘It should have been you,' he said. Now she sees, now she understands. She wishes he
would
go and that he would die.

Soon he will be home. Bastard man. He will park his car on the road outside. She will hear the door slam. She will hear his key in the door. She will hear his footsteps on the stairs and then he will be in. Will his hair be just a little wet from the rain? Will he kiss her? He will walk into the kitchen in his bloody beautiful traitor's body and somehow she will have to speak to him. Air will travel back past her larynx to be formed by her throat, her soft palate, her tongue and her lips into words. And what will they be? The flames leap within her and she groans at the scorching pain.

Does she really wish that he would die? Those clumped tea-leaves against the white china of the cup said that he would. But he won't go. Death seems the only possible remedy for the anger she feels. Murder. The shock of absolute cold to quench the flames. But Simon's death? Or Celia's? Or, somehow, the baby's? Or even her own? Nadia grasps her hair roughly and pulls hard for the shock of pain. A tangle comes away in her fingers. To think of killing a baby! The hair is warm. She looks at its dry crinkles. She can understand murder, crimes of passion. It must be an irresistible urge, like the stupid scratching of an unbearable itch which you know will lead to pain, make things worse, but it is just not possible to resist. A temporary madness. She understands this.

In her studio she kneads a lump of clay into ugly shapes, into gaping mouths, malformed fish, mutations. She forms it into a phallus: slick fat grey bulbous. She pinches a nose upon it, pokes eyes and a mouth. It has a look of Simon. Ugly monster thing. She makes the Simon-phallus smile, bow, rubs its face on the rough surface of the bench and then she thumps it, grinds her fist into it until it is nothing.

She cannot be here when Simon returns, that much is clear. She cannot. She cannot be held responsible. She will go out, must go out. Now, quick, before he returns. She will go out now and spend some of the dreadful energy that is in her limbs. She will not be here for Simon when he returns. Because she cannot speak to him, not now, or she might … well, anything might happen. And she cannot
not
speak to him either. Not when he is here, cooking, eating, chatting, washing. Making love to her? What would he expect them to do tonight since he will not be caving? The cinema perhaps? So she could sit like a boiling cauldron beside him.

No, she must go. Not to a friend's, no, not somewhere she will have to be normal. It must be somewhere she can be anonymous, where she can pay to be alone. A hotel. She will take her bicycle, which she hasn't used for months, not for the whole of the winter, and she will just go. Just temporarily disappear. Simon can worry. She will leave no word. Doubtless Celia will telephone and he will know why she has gone. Let Celia tell him then. Let them try and sort it out between them. Let him sweat.

Nadia throws some make-up and a pair of clean knickers into a bag. She ties her hair back with a scarf. She glances at herself in the mirror and hesitates, surprised by the small whiteness of her face. She puts on her cagoule and goes out into the muddy gloom to the communal shed to dig out her bicycle. It is behind a tangled pile of gardening equipment and she steps over this ruthlessly, feeling bamboo canes snap beneath her feet. She hauls the bike over the heap, out into the rain. It is cobwebbed and the chain is dry. The rear light doesn't work. Swearing, she goes back upstairs to search for some batteries. She feels the panic of rush. Simon must not catch her. The batteries in the torch are almost flat. Those in her cassette player are too small. She casts around, panicking, almost crying, and then she thinks of Simon's stuff. He has batteries. Which he won't need. He won't miss them. And serve him bloody right if he does. He can sit and stew. When he knows that she knows … There is a terrible searing inside her and a monstrous painful glee. She finds the ugly cusp of a smile on her face. Get out of this one, Simon. And she will simply be gone.

She runs downstairs, puts the batteries in her light and wheels the bicycle round to the front of the house. There is a banging at the downstairs window. Nadia looks up impatiently. It is Iris. Is it? Iris has a pile of impressive raven – crow – black hair upon her head. Where has it all come from? Nadia lets out a foolish bleat of laughter. She returns Iris's wave. Her back tyre is flat. She takes the pump off the frame, fumbles with the valve, screws on the adaptor. She will pump only a bit, only enough to get going. She must go. What if Simon arrives now? She pumps hard, catches Iris's eyes still upon her. She is waving something and gesticulating. The rain lashes Nadia's face, it is turning to hail, sharp spiteful grit. Nadia finishes pumping, screws up the valve, her fingers giant and fumbling. The hail skitters and bounces on her bicycle frame. She ignores Iris, who is still trying to attract her attention. Terribly rude but there is no time. She gets on her bike and wobbles away. She has to hold her cagoule hood up with one hand or it will blow off. It is hard to pedal. The stiff chain clanks and complains, the tyres are still too soft, but still, it is good to be moving through the darkening afternoon. Good to be
doing
something. It is spring. It should be warm and light but the stubborn army-blanket of cloud and the hail that is turning back to rain seem fitting somehow, more fitting for this flight. She rides head-down, eyes narrowed against the wet, the hood obscuring her vision, so she doesn't see Simon's white car rounding the corner, never realises quite how narrowly she missed him.

Nadia rides out of town, past the park and the rows of shops, through streets of terraced houses, past an empty school. She rides on to where the road widens, where sulphurous daffodils flinch in the long grass verges and the expensive houses are set further and further back from the road. She hears the rubbery sigh of cars arriving home at the end of the day. Is he back yet? The road is slick with reflections and slithering car lights. Cars swooshing past splash her with muddy water. Rain finds its way in at the neck seams of her cagoule, the cold trickles mingle with hot beads of perspiration. Damn Simon, damn Simon, damn Simon is the sound her pedals make clanking against the chainguard.

Nadia puts her foot down and stops for a moment. She has left the houses behind now, ridden through the leafy rhododendrons of the valley. How long has she been riding? Her legs are wobbly with the effort. She breathes hard, her lungs hurt and her heart pounds. She realises that the rain has ceased and ahead of her she sees an oblique slant of powdery light illuminate the top of a hill, turning it a shimmering silver-green, turning a drystone wall to pewter. She looks back. The road slopes darkly away towards the town. She has reached the top of a long slope. It is not so cold now. There is a scent in the air like squashed buds, the sappy smell of spring. She sits back on her bike and freewheels down the hill, tyres sizzling through wetness. She lets her hood blow down and the moist air rushes against her face. It is almost all downhill to The Hawk, a pub on the edge of the Peaks where she will stay. She has stayed here before, but not with Simon. And probably never with Simon, never ever now.

She feels – not pleasure exactly – what? Some sort of satisfaction. She whizzes, daring to go too fast, tempting fate. The bumping of the saddle is almost pleasurable, the green edges of the road are a jumping blur, but the hills are still and clear. There are sheep and there are lambs, some straying onto the edge of the road. The light is like an illustration from a Bible story. She takes some confused comfort from it, sits back on her bicycle, closes her eyes for a moment. And then there is a violent jolt and her thoughts flash – What if I die? What if I break my neck? – before she crashes onto the road. The bike grates past and stops, one wheel spinning almost gaily. She lies motionless for a moment, waiting for pain. What is it that she's done? Tentatively she moves her limbs. And then she hears a car and gets up rapidly, drags the stupid bike off the road. Her hands are hurting, that's all. The palms are skinned, and her knees are bumped. Impatiently, she wipes tears of pain from her eyes. It's a miracle she's not more badly hurt, for there are crystals of windscreen glass scattered on the road. When she was little she used to collect these – they were her jewels.

Simon, she thinks. She wants him to make her better. Or her mother. This thought she tries to snuff out, but it is there. However, she is all alone at the side of the road. And she is all right. No bones broken, that's what Mum would have said. Where did her childhood come from, crowding in so suddenly? Mum would have washed her hands and rubbed in Savlon cream and made her a cup of cocoa. There was a green tartan blanket that came out in emergencies when Nadia or Michael were ill or hurt and needed snuggling on the sofa.