Limestone and Clay (5 page)

‘Strictly speaking, but I have Darling … no harm done, more part of the family than a pet.'

‘Darling?'

‘My crow.'

‘Crow … what,
inside
, flying about?'

‘No! In a cage …' Nadia leads the way into the kitchen. ‘Drives Derek barmy with his racket.'

‘Derek?'

‘My old man. Claims he does. Really, you know, he's quite partial to him. Derek that is. Can't speak for Darling. I'm Iris, by the way.'

‘Nadia. Coffee? Tea?'

‘Please.'

Nadia switches the kettle on again. ‘Is it legal? Keeping a crow in a cage? Isn't there some law about wild birds?'

‘Don't ask me. Can't have him flying about loose, can I? Imagine the mess! And he was a present. Can't turn your nose up at a gift horse, can you?' Iris has taken off her raincoat. She is a stout woman with a hard, corseted body under her lacy pink cardigan. ‘Mind if I take my shoes off?' she asks, easing her feet free of her tight high-heels. There is a dent in the fat on the top of each. She wiggles and stretches her toes.

Nadia spoons instant coffee into two mugs. She is dazed by Iris. ‘Sugar? Milk?' she asks.

‘Please.' There is a faint odour of nylon and leather. ‘Been on my feet since first thing. If I don't crack it today, I said to Derek, I'm packing it in. And what have I done? Sod-all.' She smiles ruefully.

A pale sunbeam escapes from behind the clouds and shines through the window onto her grey hair.

‘Cheering up,' Iris observes. ‘Said it would.'

Nadia sips her coffee. Her belly is aching, and her back. She is filled with a sensation of falling and loss. She could easily cry. She wishes Iris would go. She closes her eyes and sees a star falling, a silvery trail.

‘Poorly,' says Iris. ‘Knew you were. What is it? Flu? There's a lot of it about.'

‘I'm all right,' Nadia says.

‘Look …' Iris opens her case and brings out a fistful of lipsticks. ‘Apricot, Amber, Bee-Sting, Coraline and Plum … frosted or gloss … Pumpkin Pie, Rhubarb, Sunset … and …' she squints at the tiny label on the bottom of a tube, ‘Fandango … that one's not bad actually. Want to try?' She winds up the stubby orange stick.

Nadia shakes her head. ‘Sorry, not in the mood.'

‘Fair enough. Just have a whiff of this.' She squirts Nadia's neck with an aerosal spray. ‘“Addiction”, they call it. I ask you! Who dreams up these names!'

Nadia winces at the sickly artificial smell.

‘Does smell like bog cleaner, doesn't it?' Iris says cheerfully, and Nadia finds herself laughing. She is weak and light-headed. ‘Oh I know it's all a load of crap – do excuse me – but it is a job. A side-line, at least. And people do buy it apparently.' She looks mystified.

‘Side-line to what?' Nadia asks.

‘Fortune-telling.' Iris grins. ‘That's my main job. I'm on Enterprise Allowance. It doesn't make
me
a fortune, unfortunately, but
c'est la vie
. Hence the side-line.' She flicks her hand disdainfully over the lipsticks.

‘Do you advertise?' Nadia asks. ‘I mean how do you find your customers?'

‘Clients, I like to call them. Word of mouth, duck. And ads in shop windows.'

‘I'd never have guessed,' Nadia says. ‘I mean you don't …'

‘Don't look the part? No. Maybe I should. What do you think? I'm thinking of changing my image. I could dye my hair black. What about some scarves? I could paint my face with all this muck,' she indicates her samples, ‘and Darling could ride on my shoulder …' Nadia laughs again. She wishes Simon was here. He'd love this. ‘Or perhaps not,' Iris adds. ‘He's a bit sporadic in the toilet department.'

‘How's business?'

‘Not booming.'

‘How long have you been at it?'

‘Always. But I've only just become a business.'

‘What do you do?'

‘All the usual things. Cards, palmistry, tea-leaves, the crystal ball – though I've never got the hang of that. More of a gimmick. Don't know why I'm telling you this. Too honest, that's my trouble.'

‘What's best … I mean which do you prefer?'

‘Hmmm,' Iris frowns.

‘Maybe I'm being nosy,' Nadia says.

‘No, no … palms and the leaves, I think. I'll tell you a secret – Nadia, is it? – it doesn't have to be tea-leaves. I can read anything like that. Soup bowls, toothpaste spits in the sink …'

‘You can't!'

‘You'd be surprised,' Iris says, and her blue eye and her brown eye twinkle so that Nadia cannot tell whether or not she's joking. ‘You might laugh, but I foretold disaster in my nephew's bowl of Frosties.'

‘Disaster?'

‘Well, misfortune.'

‘What happened? Sorry, I
am
being nosy.'

‘Nothing that couldn't be solved. And he's a roofer now. So, shall I do yours?'

‘Oh no … another time perhaps … I'm really not in the mood.' Nadia suddenly feels terribly tired. Less unhappy, but exhausted. When Iris goes she will make some toast and take it to bed, have a glass of brandy perhaps, that will knock her out, and while she's waiting for sleep she'll read some Sylvia Plath. Simon finds it irritating when she retreats under the quilt to do this. Silly, self-indulgent, neurotic cow, he calls the poet, offended by the fact that a woman could kill herself and leave her babies. And Nadia partly agrees. But still, she loves the voice she hears, and death has crystallised it bright and steady as a star. Nadia has yearned pregnancy and children through her words: she has longed to be cow-heavy and floral in a Victorian gown; she has longed for the clean cat's mouth, the little one, the clear vowels rising like balloons. It is a strange comfort with the draining-away of hope to read the words. It has become part of her ritual.

The sky has darkened again and a flurry of raindrops and petals hit the window as if flung by a fist. Nadia gets up and switches on the light.

‘Wish it would make up its mind,' remarks Iris.

‘Well, that's spring for you,' Nadia says.

‘I'll be off.' Iris forces her feet back into her shoes. ‘You look done in. Thanks for the coffee.' She stands up. ‘Sure I can't interest you in anything? I didn't show you the eye-compacts did I? On special. Just look …' She brings from her case two flat eyeshadow compacts. ‘Amazon – browns – or Fjord – blues – what do you think? Amazon's more your colour, I'd say.'

‘All right,' Nadia says, to hurry her. ‘I'll take the Amazon.'

‘Really?' Iris looks startled. ‘Maybe my luck's on the turn.'

At the door, she turns and looks at Nadia, leans forwards almost as if she is about to kiss her.

‘It'll be all right,' she says.

‘What?'

‘I'll do your palm another time, shall I? Just knock, duck. Any time.'

Nadia listens to her weary feet clumping down the stairs. Then she makes toast and takes it with a glass of brandy to her rumpled bed and before she sleeps she reads her favourite Plath poem,
You're
. The last lines, a new mother addressing her baby with such tenderness and wonder, make her smile and then cry, and she falls asleep with the prickly sensation of tears drying on her cheeks.

It is late. Simon has a Chinese dinner for two on the passenger seat and a tissue-wrapped bottle of wine on the floor. He gets out of the car, holds the warm greasy package against his chest as he locks it and looks up at the windows of the flat. It is all dark. Out? he wonders, annoyed. The meal and the wine were bought on impulse. The date, April 10, had wagged at him from the staff-room calendar, a vaguely significant date, something or other that he shouldn't forget. He'd remembered Nadia's back turned to him in the morning, disappointment, perhaps. And after his staff meeting and his game of squash he'd stopped at The Golden Dragon and ordered the chef's special dinner for two or three. Only after he'd ordered the meal and was waiting, sipping a glass of lager, had he taken the trouble to think clearly. April 10 was Celia's birthday. A date he'd had branded on his brain once when he'd forgotten. It had nothing to do with Nadia. He'd grinned foolishly into his drink, like a man in a sitcom, feeling tempted to share the joke with the Chinese waiter who brought him his meal. He'd resisted, but stopped at the off-licence on the way home and bought a bottle of sparkling wine to complete the joke.

But it seems she isn't in. The flat is in darkness and the curtains undrawn. He puts the food on the table and switches on the light, irritated to find the table still covered with the remains of Nadia's breakfast. He turns the oven on low and puts the brown-paper package inside.

He goes into the bathroom to pee and sees blood in the toilet, a dried spot on the seat, a bright red pool under the water, startling against the white porcelain, and experiences terror and pity. Menstruation frightens him. In theory it's all right, but the actuality of the blood, the terrible intimacy of sharing a bathroom with a menstruating woman, the peculiar blood tang in the air, he cannot bear, or can only bear by hardly thinking, hardly breathing in. It is more now than that too, it is a scarlet punctuation, a regular full-stop.

He flushes the toilet and washes his hands. He goes into the bedroom and flicks on the light. He is surprised to see Nadia crumpled in the bed. She opens her eyes blearily.

‘Hello! I thought you were out.'

Nadia grunts something unintelligible. She looks dazed, a waker from a deep dream. Simon sits down beside her on the bed. Her hair is a wild bush and her cheeks flushed. He is pleased that she is there. ‘Belly ache?' he asks sympathetically. ‘Had a good snooze?' Nadia nods. ‘Tea? Wine? I've bought us a take-away. Chinese.'

‘Good,' Nadia says and her voice is soft and scratchy with sleep. ‘Tea first.'

Simon makes tea for her and watches her as she sips it, her hands wrapped round the mug. She looks happy in a tremulous way, like a child after tears.

‘Been in bed all day?' Simon asks.

‘No … what time is it?'

‘Nineish.'

‘Really? Oh, I forgot it was your squash night. Oh … good …'

‘Why good?'

‘The day is nearly over, that's all …' Nadia gets up. She is wearing the long T-shirt she uses as a nightie, and leggings too, all baggy at the knees. As she passes him, Simon gets a whiff of some terrible perfume. While she's in the bathroom, he straightens the bed, finds Sylvia Plath's
Collected Poems
and frowns in Nadia's direction. When there has been a loss before, she has taken to her bed like this and read Plath. But she wasn't pregnant. She wasn't even late. Or perhaps she was. She never said.

The kitchen is full of the smell of scorching brown paper. Nadia rescues the meal from the oven and, burning her fingers on the sharp edges, opens the silver-foil trays and arranges them on the table: beef and black beans; chicken and cashew nuts; sweet-and-sour pork; Cantonese noodles; prawn crackers; spring rolls. The hot smells quarrel in the air.

‘How did you know?' Nadia asks Simon.

‘What?'

‘That I hadn't cooked?'

‘Intuition,' Simon says, grinning as he eases his thumbs under the wired wine-cork.

‘But what if I had?'

‘But you haven't …'

Nadia accepts this, quells her irritation. After all, this is a treat. ‘Are we celebrating?' she asks, and the cork pops out and hits the window. It's a softening-up, she thinks, because of Friday, because I disapprove so much of what he is going to do. Not disapprove; because I am terrified. The wine fizzes into the glasses. Simon's chin and cheeks are flecked with golden stubble. The light catches the ends of his long lashes. She cannot bear to think of him below the earth, crushed in the dead rock, or drowned in secret water. But that is more important to him than her. I
am
jealous, she admits to herself, smiling wryly, feeling absurd. Jealous of the earth.

‘Here,' says Simon, handing her a glass. ‘Cheers.'

The wine is cold, the bubbles sharp as grit. Nadia shivers. ‘Cheers.' They clink their glasses together. It is strange to be hauled so abruptly from the fuzzy vagueness of her dreams. All afternoon she has been rising and falling like a seal, her head above the surface for a moment, registering the passage of time, the moan and splatter of the weather, and slipping easily back, sleep closing like a watery skin above her. It is strange to be hauled from that to a mysterious celebration in the harsh electric kitchen light, the sharp bubbles in the icy wine, the raindrops glittering street-lit orange on the black window-glass. Simon follows her eyes, gets up and pulls down the blind. It makes a sharp smacking sound and her mother says, quite distinctly, in her head, ‘Pull yourself together,' and she is aware all at once of the mess she is, her unmade-up face, the huge unbrushed blurr of her fuzzy hair. She tries to smooth it around her head.

‘Let's eat then,' she says. She spoons noodles and crispy balls and translucent orange sauce onto her plate. ‘Good day?' she asks.

Simon fills his own plate, licks black-bean sauce off his fingers. ‘The usual. Get anything done?'

Nadia shakes her head. She tells him about Iris and the cosmetics. ‘Did you know she was a fortune teller?' she asks.

Simon pulls a face and shakes his head. ‘Good God, no. More of a school dinner lady, or a shop assistant.'

‘Snob!' Nadia says and flicks him with a noodle.

‘Did she tell yours then?' Simon asks.

‘No … but I might have it done. For a laugh. She's really nice, funny. You should meet her. She's got a pet crow.'

‘Hmmm.' Simon looks dubious. ‘I wouldn't encourage her … A crow, you say? Isn't that illegal? Don't know if I like the idea of a crow in the building.'

‘Oh don't be such a fogey. Simon, I've been thinking, why don't we book a holiday?' Nadia looks at him hopefully. The thing to do is look ahead. Not worry about Simon's safety, forget about babies. Book a holiday somewhere hot and lazy where the wine is cheap. She wouldn't want to be pregnant then, she fools herself, not allowed to drink, exhausted, nauseous.