Limestone and Clay (19 page)

Celia lies with her eyes open in the dark, looking at the glowing red figures on the digital clock. The minutes change so slowly, her eyes hurt waiting for the change. Eventually she turns over and hides them in the pillow.

She thinks about Simon and how he has changed. Living with him five years ago for a few months had been like living with a cheerful, sexy boy. He had seemed almost to lack a dimension, and she had moved in with him to try and discover it; to try to move their relationship on a stage from its sibling casualness. And she had failed. Si had remained resolutely unserious, unprepared for her idea of an adult relationship. When she had mentioned her wish for a child he had shuddered. ‘Never-ever-ever,' he'd said. ‘Too much a child yourself,' she'd retorted and he hadn't minded, had agreed with her. And so she'd given up and left him. He must have been hurt but had disguised it well. They had continued their friendship – caving expeditions, occasional drinks – almost as if there had never been anything between them. When Celia had met Dan and found in him all the things missing in Si she had fallen gratefully into his arms and in with his plans. And Si had seemed completely unperturbed. Even at her wedding, he had been his usual light-hearted self.

And then he'd met Nadia. At first, Celia hadn't taken her seriously as a partner for Si. She was so unlikely, so serious and arty and intense. She had been amazed when Si said, quite casually, that he'd asked her to move in with him. And he has changed since then. Nadia has found in him the dimension that Celia failed to find. It was the despair in his eyes when Nadia lost her baby that told Celia that.

Dan stirs in his sleep and his heavy arm falls across her back. She feels trapped, pinned to the bed by its weight. The bed is too hot and smelly with Dan's alcoholic breath. She feels she'll suffocate, she cannot breathe with the arm on her back like a heavy branch, her face pressed into the pillow. She eases herself out of bed. It is cold. She puts on her dressing gown and goes to the window to look out at the night. The stars are scattered like granulated sugar in the clear black sky. Dan murmurs something in his sleep. Quietly, Celia finds her sleeping bag in the bottom of the wardrobe and takes it downstairs. She lies on the sofa where at least it is cool and she is free from the weight of Dan's arm and the sickly, celebratory smell of champagne. She closes her eyes and imagines a perfect scenario. It is all nonsense, of course, and quite impossible. She wouldn't
want
it necessarily. But there is no harm in dreaming. Nobody has ever been hurt by a dream.

It is Christmas. She is with Si. He holds the baby, a girl, blonde of course, with hair like dandelion seed-fluff. Si's face is the very epitome of pride. He holds the baby up to. see the Christmas-tree lights and she smiles. Her first smile. That is the way it could be. Or it could be Dan holding the baby, she thinks, guiltily amending the scene. And they could be happy, would be happy,
will
be happy. Because it is Dan she loves. Celia feels weak with misery and an intense weariness, a tiredness that makes her bones feel soft. She goes back upstairs to bed and clings on to the slumbering Dan.

‘I hate it when you do things like that,' Celia says. ‘What a stupid thing to do!' She has discovered that Dan unplugged the telephone the previous evening.

‘I didn't want us to be disturbed,' he says. He sits at the table with his chin in his hands. He is bleary and stubbly, hungover from the champagne.

‘It's just bloody stupid! What if somebody wanted us? What if something happened?'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. Just don't bloody do it again.' Celia frowns at him and bites into a piece of toast. She is feeling queasy and trying to pretend she isn't. ‘I hate feeling cut off.'

‘Sorry,' Dan mumbles. She shrugs. ‘You all right?' he asks.

‘All right,' she says grumpily. And then, looking at his crumpled face, feeling guilty about her night thoughts and suddenly tender: ‘Really all right. Sorry I snapped. Feeling bloody awful, actually.'

‘You look it.'

‘Thanks a million.'

‘No, I just mean washed out … pale. Why not go back to bed for an hour?'

Celia shakes her head. ‘That wouldn't help. I thought we might go shopping this morning.
Do
come,
do
. Help me choose some carpets. Then we could have lunch in the Grapes.'

‘OK.' He stretches and grins. The telephone rings and Dan reaches out to answer it. ‘Hello!' he says. His voice is surprised, and Celia's interest is caught. ‘Oh …' his voice sinks, ‘oh no, Christ almighty, Nadia. No.' He looks sharply at Celia and then away. She had been getting up but she sits down again, her knees suddenly weak as if they will buckle and bend the wrong way.

‘What?' she asks, but Dan frowns at her and cups his hand over the receiver. She has gone cold right through. She notices that the tulips on the table are beginning to flag, their lovely scarlet petals turning soft and dark. There are speckles of black pollen on the table-top.

‘I will. Yes, of course, we will. We'll be here. See you, Nadia. Chin up, eh?'

He replaces the receiver.

‘What?' says Celia calmly. If she can be calm, then nothing can be very wrong. Dan doesn't look at her immediately. In the sunshine she notices that his glasses are filthy. She is surprised that he can see. But at least there is sunshine.

‘It's Simon,' Dan says. ‘Looks as if the silly bugger went off last night …'

‘Off?'

‘Curlew Cavern.'

‘No.' Celia holds on to the edge of the table. She swallows. ‘And Miles?'

‘Not Miles, no.'

‘On his own?… Si?' Celia presses her fist into her belly. ‘I don't believe it.' Dan grimaces and shrugs. ‘And is he … all right?' she asks, as if the very act of asking makes it a possibility.

‘Don't know yet,' Dan says. ‘Nadia was ringing from the cave. Rescue under way.' Celia's tongue has stuck like rice-paper to the roof of her mouth. ‘Are you all right?' Dan says. ‘You've gone green. Are you going to faint? Oh Christ, Celia, don't faint. Oh Christ.' He fetches her a glass of water.

She sips it. ‘Of course I won't faint,' she says. ‘We must go.' When she stands up she does feel faint, there is no denying the fizzing in her ears, the fuzziness around the edges of her eyes.

‘I'll make some sweet tea,' Dan says. ‘Put your head between your knees.'

‘No.' Celia smiles at him, feeling fond, forgetting for a flickering instant. ‘Some tea would be nice though.' And then it comes back to her, a swinging fist in her gut. ‘That stupid bloody pillock,' she gasps. ‘Oh Dan, what if he's … remember Roland?'

‘I said we'd be here. They'll ring if … well, when there's some news.'

‘But we must go …'

‘No point, Celie. What could we do?'

‘I don't care! We can't just sit here, waiting.'

‘I'm not sure …'

‘Well
I'm
going … I'll go mad here. If you hadn't unplugged the phone …'

‘What difference?' Dan sighs. ‘Poor bloody cow.'

‘What?'

‘Nadia … sounded half out of her mind.'

‘Yes,' says Celia. She remembers Nadia's face yesterday when she told her about Si, about the baby, how pinched it looked, how her lips had whitened. Her hand goes protectively to her belly, she sees Dan see and his own face tighten. It
is
Si's child, whatever Dan says, she knows it. ‘Poor Nadia,' she agrees.

Dan hands her her tea. She cradles the cup in her hands, puts her face over it to feel the heat rise, closes her eyes. ‘Please,' she whispers, ‘please let him be all right. Please.'

Simon's car is parked just off the road on a patch of gravel. There are other cars parked behind it. They look like cars parked for a picnic, the sunshine glinting on their roofs. The ling is still brown but the long rough grass stirring in the wind has the sheen of healthy dogs' hair. Clouds skitter across the pale blue sky like lambs, dappling the hills with shadow, flickering over Simon's car and all the other cars. Some vehicles have driven down the slope to be as near as possible to the entrance of the cave.

There is an ambulance, three more cars – among them Miles's – and a Land Rover. There are several people standing about – a man and a woman by the ambulance, smoking; a row of onlookers standing at a respectful distance, gaudy in their bright jackets, pink and purple and fluorescent yellow. Onlookers got here first, Celia thinks.

Dan parks the car and Celia gets out immediately and runs down the slope. Wet jewels splash up around her feet. There is a man standing by the cave entrance holding a portable telephone. ‘What's happening?' Celia demands breathlessly, steadying herself for a moment on his arm. He frowns and pulls his arm away, and then recognises her and smiles. ‘Sarah, isn't it?'

‘Celia.'

‘That's it – didn't you and –' he jerks his phone towards the cave, ‘used to have a thing going …?'

‘Yes. What's happening?'

‘They've reached him, matter of prising the bugger out now.'

‘Is he …'

‘In a bad way.' He doesn't meet her eyes. She looks nervously at the dark hole which has been festooned with official-looking orange tape.

The man speaks into his phone. Celia recognises the weak crackly voice of Miles. ‘May I?' she asks.

‘Handing you over to Sarah,' the man says.

‘Miles, it's me, Celia,' she says.

Miles's voice on the other end of the line is reassuring. ‘Wotcha mate,' he says. ‘Si's jammed in down here, clear of the water, thank Christ.'

‘Can I help? I could come down.'

‘Oh no you don't,' says Dan, reaching her and putting his arms round her as if to stop her bolting. The man takes his phone back.

‘He said to look after Nadia,' he says before moving off to speak to the ambulance crew.

‘And anyway you're in no condition …' scolds Dan, and Celia smiles bleakly at this old line which is so perfectly apt. Her legs feel rubbery again. She wants to sit down.

She looks up and sees Nadia. She is standing some distance away on the slope above the cave entrance. She is alone, a small figure in a green duffel coat, arms wrapped around herself, hair tumbling wildly in the wind.

‘Oh God,' Celia says. She lifts her hand, but Nadia does not see, or at least does not respond.

‘Poor kid,' Dan says. He stands behind Celia and she leans back against him, grateful for his steadiness in all the shifting and flickering and unruly glistening of the April day.

‘She looks lonely,' Celia says.

‘Shit-scared, more like.'

‘Yes, but …' Celia gazes at the small figure, motionless but for the writhing of her hair. Nadia's misery communicates itself to her; she feels it as something separate from, beyond, her own. Si is Nadia's. And he is below their feet, squeezed in there, sandwiched in the rock.

‘I'll go and talk to her,' Celia says.

‘I'd leave her be,' Dan advises.

‘No, I must just … you wait here.' Celia walks down and then up the slope towards Nadia. The plastic tape across the cave entrance rattles in the wind.

Nadia does not acknowledge Celia. She is like a little stone statue. Her face is white and set and her lashes are wet with wind-blown tears. There is a bruise on her forehead which shows when the wind lifts her hair. Celia has no idea what to say. They stand for some time without speaking, the blustery moaning wind the only sound. A strand of Nadia's hair lashes Celia's cheek. The man, whose name Celia cannot remember, speaks intermittently on his phone. The ambulance crew cup their hands round fresh cigarettes. Dan looks up at them, his glasses glinting in the sun. The bright row of onlookers fidget. One of them pours a cup of something from a thermos flask and passes it round. Another car draws up and two people dash out of it, one with a camera slung round her neck. A cloud passes across the valley, dimming the scene suddenly.

‘Nadia,' Celia says. She puts out her hand and touches the rough cloth of Nadia's coat.

‘Piss off,' Nadia says through clenched teeth.

‘Nadia, please.'

‘Remember yesterday?' Nadia says. ‘Just fuck off, Celia.'

‘Yes.' Celia withdraws her hand. Tears come to her own eyes.

‘
You're
all right,' Nadia says, glancing her fury at Celia. ‘He might be dead.'

‘No …'

‘He might die,' Nadia continues. ‘You have a part of him. I have nothing.'

‘Nadia …'

‘No one. My arms are empty.'

Celia closes her eyes for a moment. She opens them to find the sun is shining again. She sees the tiny figure of Dan below her. She is confused. Her head is clogged. She does not know what is true or what is the best thing to say. I was wrong, the baby isn't Si's, she could say. Would that be the kindest thing? She doesn't know. She needs advice. It is too complex for this panicky day with the blustery wind and the skittish sunshine, and the dread of what is happening under the earth. What if what she said caused this – caused a row – caused Si to flee into such uncharacteristic foolhardiness? And what if it wasn't even true? Is all this for nothing then? She cannot bear to know.

‘Just let him be all right,' she whispers.

Nadia breathes in a long shuddering breath. Celia sees that her hands are screwed into fists, the knobs of the knuckles shine like ivory. Nadia is holding herself together in the wind, in the gusting misery.

Celia tries to imagine Simon, tries to visualise his face. Are his eyes open or closed? Is he conscious? Who is in his head as he lies there?

‘I'll never go underground again,' she says, and Nadia darts her a look of pure contempt. ‘No, I didn't mean …' she says, realising too late how selfish and irrelevant this remark seems.