Limestone and Clay (6 page)

‘Eat some more,' Simon says, wiping his mouth.

‘I wonder if she can tell fortunes,' Nadia muses. ‘I mean I wonder if anyone can, really.'

‘Crete again?' Simon says. ‘Or somewhere new?'

‘I'll get some brochures,' Nadia promises. She nibbles a prawn cracker that dries the roof of her mouth and sticks to it.

‘Finished?' Simon asks. ‘Scrabble?'

‘I'd rather slump.'

‘Oh go on …'

Nadia sighs. ‘All right,' she says, ‘but in the other room by the fire.'

Simon is winning and Nadia doesn't care. He has good letters, that much is clear from the way his lips are pressed together in suppressed excitement. He is as transparent, sometimes, as a child. Nadia smiles. Perhaps he is, will have to be, enough. Man enough and child enough too, if there is no other. But she has thought this before. Easy to be philosophical at the beginning of a new cycle.

‘Go on then,' Simon prompts.

‘It's your turn!'

‘No, I put
ISTHMUS
– double letter, triple word, thirty-two. Didn't you put it down?'

Nadia looks at the scrap of paper she's been writing on. ‘Oh yes, sorry.'

‘More wine?'

She shakes her head. ‘I haven't finished this. I can't go … oh hang on. What about this –' she puts down her letters, proudly. ‘
USURY
. Sixteen. Not too bad, eh?'

‘That's the last of the Us; I bet I get stuck with the sodding Q,' Simon says, frowning now at his letters.

Nadia closes her eyes. The gas fire creaks and pings; Simon's Scrabble pieces click together; she can hear him muttering, testing a word. Outside someone shouts, a car starts up and drives away. Nadia opens her eyes and through a gap in the curtains she glimpses the icy half-eaten moon, revealed for a moment between crumpled black clouds. The telephone rings. Nadia reaches for it. Celia is there, sounding strained, wanting Simon.

‘For you,' Nadia says, handing it over.

She goes to the tape player and puts on an old tape, Carole King, and sings along as the rich voice fills the room with trembling earth and tumbling skies.

She begins to dance, but Simon glares and flaps his hand at her. She turns the music down, still humming, and sits before her letters. She tries not to eavesdrop.

‘Oh …' Simon is saying. His voice is very flat. He catches Nadia's eyes and then looks away, turns away slightly. Giving me the cold shoulder, she thinks. She rearranges her letters. Is
GYPS
a word?

‘Well, that's good I suppose – it's what you wanted – no – no, sorry I can't. No.'

What's the plural of
ISTHMUS
? Nadia wonders.

‘Bye then. Oh, happy birthday. Yes I did. Bye.' Simon puts down the phone and remains where he is for a moment too long, his back slightly turned.

‘Your go,' Nadia says.

‘Do we have to have that?' he asks.

‘I like it,' Nadia says, but she switches it off. She is unsettled by the bleakness in his eyes. ‘What's up, Simon? Everything all right?'

He puts his hands over his eyes and holds them there for a moment. When he takes them away she sees that he has mastered his expression. There is even the trace of a smile. ‘Not really,' he says.

‘What's up?'

‘Celia's pulled out.'

Nadia feels a little surge of relief. ‘Because of the weather? So it's off?'

Simon shakes his head. He fiddles idly with his letters. ‘No and no,' he says. ‘Actually it's because she's pregnant.' There is a pause. Nadia finds she is holding her breath.
FAT
, Simon puts. ‘Six.'

‘Is that all you can do?' Nadia sits back on the sofa. Energy drains from her, she can feel it, running down through her limbs, leaving her chilled. If it was anyone else … She can feel the leak of blood between her legs. ‘Pregnant?' she repeats, and her voice has gone flat. ‘That was quick.'

‘Oh God,' Simon says. He gets up and walks around the room. He goes to the window, pulls the curtain back and stares out at the night.

‘She only said they were going to start trying on Sunday,' Nadia says weakly.

‘She thought she might be then, apparently. Didn't want to say in case she wasn't. Test result this morning. Promised Dan she'd pull out if it was positive. So that's that.'

‘Well, she could have warned you.' Nadia manufactures indignation on Simon's behalf.

‘Mmmm,' Simon says. Nadia's belly groans, a sad sound. Simon snorts in half-amused acknowledgement.

‘Still playing?' Nadia asks. Simon shakes his head. Nadia begins picking up the letters and dropping them into the bag. ‘Lucky old Celia and Dan,' she says, unable to bear Simon's silence, unable to keep an edge of bitterness from her voice. She folds the Scrabble board and puts it in the box. ‘You won,' she says. Simon breathes in very deeply as if he has been winded. ‘What's up?' she asks. He shakes his head. ‘I mean I don't see why you're
so
upset. You and Miles can still go, can't you, if you think it's wise in this weather?'

‘Oh yes.' Simon turns towards her. ‘I'm not upset.' Nadia swallows the last of her – now flat – wine. Simon sits down beside her and puts his arms around her. She pulls back and looks at him, seeing again the bleakness in his eyes. ‘Sorry,' he says.

‘Sorry for what?'

‘Just sorry.' He holds her tight, burying his face in her neck.

There is something she must ask, though she fears the answer. She looks over his shoulder as she speaks, ‘Simon, is it that you still …'

‘No!' Simon exclaims, quite violently.

‘Well then? What's the matter?'

‘I don't know, I … I'm just sorry it isn't you.'

‘Ah.' Nadia closes her eyes again. She lets him hold her, but her own arms are limp. Sorry! she thinks, how trivial a word. But sorrow is apt. It
is
sorrow she feels, but she rebels against pity. She feels, also, rage. But undirected. It is nobody's fault, is it, that Celia's reproductive system is so bloody efficient while her own has proved, so far, duff? What can she do with her rage? Where can she send it?

She does not want him touching her. She moves away, makes herself stiff, her face is like cardboard. He looks at her, puzzled.

‘I'm going to bed,' she says.

‘Don't be miserable, Nadia.' She doesn't answer, chews viciously on the corner of her thumbnail. ‘I see you've been reading Plath again.'

‘So?' She has ripped a shred of skin with her teeth, and it hurts. Tears come to her eyes. She gets up quickly to stop him seeing.

‘Did you think
you
were?' he asks, but Nadia will not answer. He follows her into the bathroom.

‘Get out, will you. Can't I have some privacy?'

‘You should have said,' Simon says. ‘Isn't it to do with me? Nadia, are you angry with me?'

‘Brilliant!' Nadia shuts the door in his face. She brushes her teeth, spits violent froth in the basin. She feels sick from the dinner and the wine and the news, Celia's wonderful news. She puts on her nightdress, gets into bed and pretends to read, ignoring Simon when he gets in.

‘Funny how people who don't like poetry like Sylvia Plath,' he says.

‘
And
people who do,' she retorts, turning the page. ‘Does it threaten you?'

‘Sorry.' Simon snuggles against her but she lies stiff. ‘Of course it doesn't. I do love you,' he says miserably.

‘I'm trying to read,' says Nadia.

Simon sleeps and Nadia listens resentfully to his breathing. I should not be angry with him, she thinks. My rage is not for him. Not really. But how can he sleep while I am so angry? How can he just slip away? It is evasion. It is a dirty trick. She moves roughly, elbows his ribs, but he does not wake, only sighs in his sleep and turns over. They should have talked. Air your differences, her mother would have said. Bring them out into the open. Did she really say that? And what differences? Celia is pregnant. She can hardly blame Simon for that. Nadia is not pregnant. And that's not his fault either. Is it the caving that is making her so angry? But she always knew he was a caver, how can she be angry with him for being what he is? What he has always been. We should have talked, she thinks, then I would be able to sleep. But I am not tired, I've been sleeping all day. How can Simon sleep while I'm so awake? He sleeps like a baby – only babies
don't
sleep at night, people complain. Lucky fertile people complain about their broken nights. How she would love to stumble from her bed to soothe a crying child. Simon groans as if he's having a dream. ‘Bastard,' she whispers. Lines come into her head:

I was angry with my friend
;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end
.

I was angry with my foe
,

I told it not, my wrath did grow
.

I
do
like poetry, she thinks, suddenly sitting up, dragging the quilt off Simon. How dare he imply that I don't!

She gets up and stands glaring at Simon, who lies uncovered on the bed, dimly illuminated by the light from a street lamp outside their window. He sleeps naked, and his precious penis is squashed against his leg, clinging like a leech. She throws the quilt on top of him and goes into the kitchen to heat milk. She drinks it sitting cross-legged in front of the gas fire, wrapped in her dressing gown. There must be a leak in the chimney, for every now and then there is a hiss and shudder from the fire as if a raindrop is finding its way in. There is a low sporadic sound that she cannot identify and then she realises that it is snoring; not Simon, but a rumble from downstairs. Iris's husband, perhaps.

Maybe it's Simon's sperm that's at fault. Simon, lying there so smugly oblivious in his sleep with his soft little leech. She imagines his sperm, inactive or maimed, swimming round in circles, their tails flapping feebly. She wonders if he's thought of that. That it might be his fault. But no. For she
has
conceived. And he told her once about a girl he'd made pregnant, who'd had an abortion. So it can't be him.

She goes into her studio, and looks into the cold cupboard at the drying pots. She could fire them tonight, since she's not asleep. It would take hours for the kiln to heat to temperature. It has to be switched on and off regularly for it mustn't heat too fast. It is a nuisance. Laborious. But it would be a use of the night that hangs so emptily ahead of her.

She picks up and taps the bottom of her pots, listening for the musical clink that tells her that they're quite dry. She hates them, the silly, smug shapes. What do they say? I am a mug. I am mask. I am hand-crafted. Buy me. That is what they are designed to say. I won't make any more, she thinks. The egg-cups are not ready for firing. She should wait for them. But they are such trivial things. She breaks one against her bench. It splits easily.

She loads the kiln, and takes the bungs out to let the first moisture and gases escape as the pots begin to heat. Inside the peep-hole she puts some thermodynamic temperature cones. When the tip of the first one bends the temperature will be right for the bungs to go back in. She switches the kiln on. It hums faintly. She throws the bits of the broken egg-cup into a bin of dried fragments. The good thing about clay is that until it is fired it is green. It can be broken down, robbed of its edges: it can return to formlessness and be remade.

Tea

Nadia wedges some clay, turning it round and round, leaning all her weight on it, pressing into it with the balls of both her hands and then flopping it over, the stiff mass, waking it with her energy into a warmer plasticity. It is slick, grey clay, good, fat, stretchy, strong stuff. She slices through it with a wire, looks with satisfaction at the smoothness of the sliced surfaces, no grit, no pockets of air. It is even and dense. The wedging has tired her arms and shoulders; the muscles complain. She stretches back, one arm over her shoulder, one stretching up between her shoulderblades to catch the other's fingers, a yoga exercise to limber the back and shoulders, but her fingers slip from each other, ungraspable with their flaking film of clay.

And there it sits, a lump waiting to be assigned a form. There is no point, perhaps, but there is no point in leaving it either. No more point in a formless mass in her plastic-lined dustbin than in what it might become. The kiln hums in the corner, there is a little warmth leaking from it despite the insulation, and a hot baked-earth smell. She sat up most of the night waiting for the kiln to heat and now, in the morning, with sharp crumbs of sleep in the corners of her eyes, and undreamt dreams lurking in her head, she works.

And what will she make? She smooths her fingers over the surface of the clay. She thinks of Simon's shoulder, its beauty in the pearly dawn light. And then his sleeping body stripped naked by her anger, anger which for a moment she can't recall. The same body has the power to move her in some moods, anger her in others. And sometimes there is indifference. It is me, she thinks. The capacity of Simon's body to move me depends on my attitude, not on itself. She feels profound for a moment until her mother chips in: ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' the oldest and tritest of her cliches. Said in response to Nadia's complaint about her own lack of beauty. Said, leaning over Nadia's shoulder, gazing into the mirror with her, with an inflection that meant that while she didn't behold beauty
herself
, you never knew what others might see. And Simon thinks she's beautiful; sometimes he says that, and sometimes she is.

She fingers the cold pliant clay. Work, she tells herself, you must work. You must make something. She digs her fingers in and fashions a crude face, hollow eyes, a pinched ridged nose, a gaping mouth. It is an ignorant, frightened face. She screws her fist into it to eradicate the features. Despite the slight warmth from the kiln she is cold. She wraps her hands around the lump, pulls it away from the bench, smooths it into a pleasing shape. It is a curled shape, something entire. A foetus perhaps, snug as a bud and at home like a sprat in a pickle jug – bloody Sylvia bloody Plath. She balls the clay and wanders into the kitchen to put on the kettle.