‘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.
She sniffs, remembering the rough texture of the rug, its comforting smell, its fringe which she plaited into stiff tufts. She picks up her bike. The front wheel is twisted right round. She straightens it and notices that the chain is broken. It trails like some segmented thing, a fossil worm. Useless. ‘Shit,’ Nadia says. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ She picks the chain up gingerly between her fingers and pulls the rest of it off. She puts it in the saddle bag and, hobbling a little, begins to wheel the bike the rest of the way to the pub.
‘You must be joking, mate,’ Miles says. ‘It’s been pissing down all week.’
‘Yes, well.’
‘Maybe next month?’
‘Maybe.’
‘How about a pint?’
‘No … Nadia, you know.’
‘She OK?’
‘OK.’
‘See you then.’
‘See you.’ Simon puts down the telephone. Miles is right. What is the matter with him, he wonders, that he could have seriously contemplated …? And where the bloody hell is Nadia?
He might as well eat since she’s not here. He’s ravenous. Eat what? Should he cook for her? He puts on the kettle and surveys what’s in the fridge. There is all the stuff he bought yesterday, the food he’d be eating if he was going caving. Well, why not? It is the food associated with caving that is one of its pleasures for Simon. As many calories as possible, hot, greasy comfort foods before and after. He eats bread and jam while his bacon and sausages sizzle in the pan. When they’re nearly done he breaks in a couple of eggs. Nadia will be angry. She’ll have planned something else, no doubt, realising that he’s not going. Of course she’s realised that, otherwise she’d be here, nagging and whinging. The voice of doom. He turns the eggs over and breaks both yolks. He swears, squeezes the bacon and sausages over to one side, slaps some more fat into the pan and adds a slice of bread.
While he’s waiting he takes a stack of exercise books from his bag. He’s planned badly this weekend. Thirty essays on Demographic Problems in the Third World to plough through, and a batch of badly drawn maps of the shopping arcade near the school. However did he come to be a geography teacher? What is Celia’s definition of geography? The reduction of the fascinating and particular into the tedious and general. Cutting the world down to size – the size of a curriculum. But then she gave up teaching for something far more lucrative. Perhaps it’s time for a change.
He tips the frying pan so that the hot greasy mass of food slithers onto his plate. He pours brown sauce on top, hitting the base of the bottle with the heel of his hand. If he were going … as he swallows he feels a lump rise in his throat as if to meet the food, so he has to swallow hard to get it down. It is a strange sensation – reminiscent of he doesn’t know what. He eats all the food, speeding up, drinking great gulps of tea hot enough to scald his mouth.
Bloody Nadia. He’ll give her a fright. He’ll go out, take his stuff as if he’s gone. And then what? He’ll go for a drive, he’s too restless anyway to stick around this evening. Nadia will be so smug. What would they do? The cinema? Most likely she’s planned a meal. Well tough luck. He finds that he’s blaming Nadia for his disappointment. Illogical. But still.
Resolved to go out, he washes quickly and dresses as if for caving, putting his jeans and shirt over his thermal undersuit. He picks up the rest of his gear, even stopping to fill his water bottle. If Nadia returns now, he’ll feel a berk. He leaves a note. Nothing specific. See you soon, sleep well, love Simon. Leave her wondering. Silly cow. He hurries downstairs looking this way and that – she is not in sight. He gets into his car and drives away.
The single room that Nadia is shown into faces the road and the bleak darkening hills beyond. The pub is on a bend, an accident blackspot; cars veer dangerously past, headlamps swinging past the window.
‘Thanks,’ says Nadia. ‘This is fine.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it, dear,’ says the landlady. She is a big smart woman with a hairdo as stiff and snowy as a meringue. Nadia’s teeth grit against the pungency of her lacquer. She goes out, giving Nadia a doubtful look. No wonder. Nadia is wet, shivering, pathetic. It is chilly in the cramped room, which has a damp unaired feel, as if it has been empty and unheated all winter. Nadia hangs her cagoule on the back of a chair. She pulls her woollen jumper over her head and squeezes it over the sink. She hangs it on the radiator. Her jeans are soaked too, and ripped at the knees. She didn’t notice before, they were so muddy and stuck to her skin. She peels them off her goosepimpled bluish legs, cursing herself for her stupidity in not bringing a change of clothes. She is effectively imprisoned in this room now until her things are dry. It is a miserable room. Just right, she thinks, looking at the limp olive curtains and the tin waste-paper bin with its pattern of racehorses. On a squat table is a kettle, at least, and some sachets of coffee, powdered milk and teabags.
Nadia fills the kettle, awkwardly twisting it to fit the straight spout under the twisty little tap. She turns the lukewarm radiator up and is startled by its fierce clanking. The back of her T-shirt is damp but she keeps it on. In her rush she didn’t even think to bring a nightdress. She wraps a starchy towel round her shoul
ders and climbs into bed with her cup of tea. Yellowish blobs of undissolved milk-powder float on the surface. She wonders what Iris could read into these. She has nothing to read – didn’t think to bring a book. There is nothing here but a Gideon Bible and a pile of pamphlets advertising local attractions: a tram museum, a sculpture park, a stately home, illuminated show caves. Fun for the tourist. She begins to cry.
As Simon’s car swooshes along the wet road, he reflects on how many rules he would be breaking if he was actually to go underground tonight. No sane caver would attempt it in this weather. Suicide, some would call it, if they didn’t appreciate how well Simon knows the cave system, didn’t realise the extent of his skill. Never venture underground alone – well, that is a rule made to be broken. A rule for the uninitiated. Always inform others of your whereabouts. Nadia knows, or will when she returns and reads his note. If he was going to do it, he would be covered in that way. As it is, all he is doing is driving. He might stop and look at the entrance to Curlew since he’s going that way. Rehearsing, one might say, enacting the possibility. He switches on the radio and music swells, a voice urges him to tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree and he laughs and joins in, feeling suddenly idiotic and free. He drives very fast, on the edge of danger, turns up the music. It is almost freedom. He swallows and recognises now the lump in his throat: once he played truant, flagrantly walking past the school, flaunting the rules. Then, as now, he had this difficulty swallowing. He laughs at himself, a grown man, a teacher now himself, a deputy head possibly, before long, if he sticks with it. He swings past a pub on a dangerous bend. Its windows are dull rectangles of light. He considers stopping for a pint but the pub is behind him before he’s decided. He doesn’t want to turn back, this rushing forward is thrilling.
No alcohol for twenty-four hours before a caving expedition, that is the strict – largely ignored – rule. It is good to be alone – but if only he could be going underground this evening. Though, of course, if he was going underground he wouldn’t be alone. Miles and Celia would be in the car. Or Miles, at least. And they would talk trivially, laugh, find humour in the slightest thing in the suppressed excitement of their anticipation.
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