Limestone and Clay

by Lesley Glaister

  He swallows the last of his bitter and goes back outside into the sunshine. A group of bikers have congregated outside; their black leather glistens, their polished bikes gleam. He passes them, intimidated by their togetherness, their uniform, their collective gaze, and walks back to his car.

  The door is locked. Nadia lets herself in and at once knows the flat is empty. She inhales and stretches, smiling in the luxury of a solitude where it is possible just to let go. She goes into a trance when she is alone in the house, a rhythm of working and wandering around, gazing in the mirror and watching not her face but her ideas, making coffee and leaving it undrunk. With another sensibility in the house, tracking her every move, expecting to be offered coffee, wondering what on earth she’s doing in the bathroom, she cannot get into this trance and therefore she cannot properly work.

  She breathes easily, glad for Simon that he has gone out in the sunshine. It is over a month since he last went out and today is perfect, the weather safe and golden and blue, the air fragrant and caressing.

  There is a postcard from her mother on the mat. She is on a coach trip of the Scottish Highlands. The card shows a salmon leaping up a waterfall, and confirms her intention of visiting Nadia on the way back – tomorrow. Nadia at once notices the grime on the skirting boards, and sticky jamjars begin to jostle in the cupboards of her mind. June will have to sleep on the sofa-bed in the sitting room, which means cleaning in there, under things and behind things – and she winces, thinking of the state of the bathroom. She switches on the radio and puts on her rubber gloves, throws open the windows and sets to work.

  Simon does not turn back as he meant to, because of a sudden stream of traffic; he does not want to cut across it and so he joins its flow. This time he drives irreproachably, keeping the bumper of the car ahead at an even distance. He drives out of the valley, rising up on the silvery ribbon of road between the hills. Last time he drove this way it was dark. Not real dark but the dark of surface night. He remembers the grinning moon emerging from between the edges of the ragged clouds. Now he drives towards the cave again. The car ahead of him turns off and suddenly behind him are bikers, a ragged leather stream, gaining on him until for a moment he is surrounded and momentarily blinded by sharp blades of sunshine on chrome. He holds his breath and his hands tighten on the wheel, but they speed off, leave him behind, only an insignificant motorist, they roar away revving and swerving theatrically. And Simon is left feeling lonely now, driving high over the moorland.

  Half-grown black-faced lambs follow their mothers, who bustle away from the road at the approach of his car. He stops just off the road in the place he stopped before. He parks and gets out. The first sound he hears is a curlew’s cry, and then the insect buzz which is the colour of the moorland air.

  He walks down towards the cave entrance. The sky is the same insouciant blue and now a skylark lassoes him with its loop of song. He looks up into the dazzling sky. All this light is an illusion, he knows, because he has seen the darkness. He has seen the darkness that is there behind the light, that is the absence of light, that is the threat. It is the darkness to come. And he knows Roland’s last hour. He experienced it himself. A little longer and he would have become stone himself, would have remained in the utter darkness, dissolved his skin and blood and sinew into darkness, left his stone scattered among the stone.

  He recalls the seductive rush of the underground river. How easy it would have been to slip into it, join it, because then there would be no decision, no more struggle. There was that root down there, that slender white probe threading its way through miles of crevices in the rock in search of the river. Such force, such soft, insistent force.

  He sits on the heather in front of the cave entrance, looking into its coldness. He sits there while the sun warms his skin and his hair. The sun moves in the sky, but Simon does not move. Ants crawl on him, a butterfly settles on his shoulder but he does not see it. He is thinking about Nadia and about the letter he posted, which slipped so easily into the letterbox slot. It was a letter of resignation. He has finished with geography, finished with teaching. That much was easy. But now … he cannot take Nadia’s distance. She is pulling herself away, thread by thread, and soon she will be loose.

  Last night he sat in front of the television while Nadia worked. What he watched has gone now, the flicker in his memory as shallow as the coloured flicker on the screen. And as he watched, dazed, he was partly aware of Nadia working behind a closed door, her purpose a mute rebuke. And later, in bed, the smell of henna had made him nauseous and he had held his breath as he entered her from behind, turned his face away from the false bright bush. And she had lain still, hardly even breathing as far as he could tell, only moving his fingers away when he tried to touch her. She had said nothing and sleep had muffled his sadness like a heavy feather pillow.

  And what is he to do, now? There is no going back. He heaves himself up, stiff with hours of sitting, slapping at the flies that have settled on his sweater. How long has he been sitting? He’s lost track, no watch, weeks since he wore his watch. There is a simple way to be out of it. He walks towards the cave entrance. There is that way. He cheated the earth before. After all, the earth won, fair and square. It beat him. That squashing stone … he breathes in, fills his lungs with a gasp at the memory. It is only because others risked their own lives that he is here at all. He could, perhaps he should, play fair. Now, like this, on a golden day when the air is warm and complex with the smells and songs of spring, he could leave and join Roland. This is his choice now. The two ways, the dark door – slit – silly gaping mouth – that leads to the dark, or the bright road that rises up over the moor like a silver string. Leading where?

  Roland is stuck for ever, arrested in the coldness of utter dark. Poor sod. No, that is not for Simon. That would be the easy thing now – the quickest relief. Simon stands up and flexes his legs and arms, feels the warm flux of blood. He goes to the cave mouth and breathes in the dead mushroom smell. No. It is not for him – that cold intimacy. The sun is warm on his hair, he strokes it, the back of his own head, feels the slight coarseness, the warmth against his hand, hair, skin and skull. He is a live and separate thing.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he whispers, and then says more loudly, calls into the gloom, ‘Goodbye.’ There is the faint beat of an echo after his voice like a distant reply. Simon turns away, closing his eyes briefly, wondering whether it is Roland that he is bidding farewell, or something else.

  Nadia lifts the lid of the saucepan. There are potatoes, scrubbed and yellowish under a starchy scum of water. She blinks, puzzled, replaces the lid. The kitchen floor is damp, the insides of the windows clean, the food lined up neatly on clean shelves. The cleanliness makes her light-hearted, as if something dusty within herself has been wiped. But Simon has been gone for hours. There is no note. She remembers with a shudder the last time he left a note. She notices that the car has gone, tries to recall what he said this morning. He didn’t mention going out. She suggested it, and as he nodded a little skin of insincerity filmed his eyes. He didn’t plan to go out then, she’s sure. What did he say? He asked her not to go, that was it. The lightness leaks from her heart. He asked her not to go and she did, just to escape his need. She switches on the kettle for a cup of tea, hoping that Simon will be back soon, wondering whether the potatoes are supposed to be some sort of sign, chasing out the small thread of worry. She wanted him out, didn’t she?

  There is a crash against the kitchen window and she jumps. A bird has landed on the sill, a big, clumsy bird that scrabbles awkwardly at the sill – and there is shouting from outside. Nadia looks out of the window and can hardly believe what she sees. It is like a sort of miracle, Derek, upright and outside, lumbering, calling in his pure high voice, ‘Darling, Darling,’ and looking upwards at the bird on Nadia’s windowsill. Seen from above, he is a great pyramid of a man: peaked head, cascading beard, wide belly, splayed feet in great spreading slippers. Iris hovers anxiously behind him, her hand
to her open mouth, her sparkly shawl falling from her shoulders, her wig glistening like black snow.

  The crow’s clumsy claws cannot get a grip on the narrow sill and he flaps his wings against the glass so that feathers rain down. Nadia catches his eye, bright through the glass. He looks desperate, pathetic, his bald head a startling shrimpish pink. Nadia slowly opens the other half of the window and Darling hops in, regaining his dignity immediately, squawking, scattering a feather or two in the sink. He flaps to the floor and hops jerkily around the kitchen, leaving a long greenish dropping on the clean tiles.

  Nadia leans out of the window. ‘All right,’ she calls to the two upturned faces. ‘Got him.’

  Darling sits on Iris’s shoulder. He is fretful and embarrassed by his silly display. His head leans weakly against her cheek, his eyes are half closed.

  ‘Naughty boy,’ Iris scolds fondly. ‘Dirty little bugger. Never seen Dad so worried, have we?’

  ‘First time I’ve seen Derek outside.’

  Iris smiles proudly. ‘Not much stirs him.’

  ‘Well,’ Nadia says. She is aware of the time, of Simon’s absence, of the cold potatoes snuggling in the pan. The clean kitchen is beginning to smell of crow.

  ‘Spring cleaning?’ Iris asks, nodding towards the bucket and mop and the bottles of detergent.

  ‘My mum’s coming.’

  ‘Made it up, then?’

  Nadia shrugs. ‘Anyway, she’s calling in. First time I’ll have seen her for …’

  ‘That’s good, duck. And Simon?’ Iris screws up her face.

  ‘Out.’

  Darling makes a growling sound and rattles his feathers. Iris clucks absently at him. ‘You should go,’ she says with sudden intensity.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘To Simon.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘If you want him. Go, duck. He’s waiting.’ Nadia opens and then closes her mouth. Iris’s eyes are so intense, the light and the dark, they search Nadia for a response and she closes her eyes against them for a moment, sees Simon, his hair bright in the sun. ‘It’s all up to you now,’ Iris adds.

  ‘Yes.’ Nadia opens her eyes. ‘I think I see.’ She does not, quite, see. But there is a fizz in the air around her, a sense of anticipation, risk, the exhilaration that precedes a leap.

  ‘Then you’ll go?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nadia does not ask where. There is only one place.

  But when Iris has gone and she has cleaned the signs of crow away, she waits, hoping that Simon will return, giving him time. She tries to read the paper and, when that fails, to watch children’s television. She drinks a glass of wine. Unable to sit still, she goes into her tidy studio. She lifts the damp cloth off her first sculpture. She cannot decide whether it is complete and so she does not let it dry. A species of mould has grown on the strange foot/root thing, delicate blue-green tentacles like branching veins. She smooths her finger down its surface. It has an inner coldness that seeps out like breath. Nadia is waiting to cast her other sculptures, first in plaster and then, if she can afford it, in bronze. And then they will last for ever, for bronze will not corrode or shatter. She relaxes for a moment with the satisfaction of that thought. But there can be no denying that she is worried about Simon.

  Nadia fidgets through the misery of the six o’clock news and then she calls a taxi. She waits outside, the evening is still and glorious, muted gold now, the air pungent with wallflowers. As the taxi arrives, she turns and sees Iris watching her through the window. She has taken off her wig and her grey hair is fluffed out around her head. Nadia waves and gets into the taxi. The driver is young and beautiful and knows it. He has the air of a cheeky, beloved child. ‘Hello beautiful,’ he says. Bloody cheek, Nadia thinks, but smiles.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’ll direct you,’ Nadia says. ‘I’m going out into the country, looking for someone.’

  ‘Great,’ the driver says. ‘Nearly as good as “Follow that car.” It’ll make my day when someone says that.’

  Nadia laughs. She settles back. The windows of the taxi sparkle dustily. Once they are through the busy traffic, she watches the houses rush easily past, remembering her laborious pedalling through the rain last time she came this way. It is like another world now, a picture-book world of flowers, children on bright bicycles, and ice-cream vans, even someone trying to fly a kite. They drive through the valley and out past The Hawk. Nadia averts her eyes as they pass. The driver attempts to engage her in conversation, but the nearer they get to the place the more difficult it is for her to move her mouth. Eventually he gives up and leaves her in peace.

  She squeezes her hands together in an attitude of prayer, but it is not prayer, it is will. She is willing him to be there. To be waiting. They rise high over the moorland road. Low shafts of sunlight are dusty on the grey-green heather, exaggerating stunted birches with great sprawling nests of shadow. Nadia holds her breath as they take the last curve round to the place: and there is Simon’s car.

  ‘Thank God,’ she breathes.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘We’re here. Stop here. Just by this car.’

  ‘You sure?’

  The driver switches off the engine and Nadia opens the door and steps out into the thin, clear air. It is utterly quiet and still, not a breath of wind to stir the heather, not like last time, when everything was a confusion of shivery shifting brightness. Her eyes dart around, avoiding the entrance to the cave, but she cannot see Simon.

  ‘Should I wait?’ The taxi driver regards her curiously.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘You sure you want to be left? Alone?’ He gets out of the cab and stands looking around him. ‘Bloody nothing out here.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Nadia says, her voice gone loose with relief. ‘There’s my friend.’

  Simon is standing in front of the cave. Her face splits into an idiotic grin which she cannot control as she counts out her fare.

  ‘Right then,’ the taxi driver says, also relieved, shivering and climbing back into his seat. ‘Be seeing you.’ He slams the door and starts his engine. Nadia runs towards Simon.

  ‘Hey!’ she calls, and he lifts his arm in greeting as he comes forward to meet her.

  ‘Must have cost a fortune,’ he says. ‘Fancy coming in a taxi!’

  ‘How else?’

  Simon shrugs. They’re awkward together. Nadia notices the little wisps of blond hair at the neck of his shirt in the. tender hollow between his collarbones. His face, so indoor-pale lately, is pink from an afternoon of sunshine.

  ‘Come here,’ he says. He takes her hand. There is a strange look in his eyes and she is frightened. Absurd to be frightened of Simon, but still.

  ‘How long have you been here, Simon? Why here? I was worried … Iris’s bloody crow got free while I was cleaning the flat – my mother’s coming tomorrow …’

  ‘Shut up.’ Simon holds her hand tightly. ‘Come with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Into the cave.’

  ‘No!’ He pulls her but she stands her ground. ‘Simon! Are you mad?’

  He lets go of her hand abruptly and she staggers. He turns his back, and she can see his shoulders moving, sense his struggle. She looks at the evil slit in the earth, the single empty eye.

  ‘I only wanted …’ he begins. She puts her arms round him from behind, pressing her face into his back. Through his shirt she can feel his warmth, smell his skin. Through the thin white material she can faintly see his scars.

  ‘Wanted what?’

  ‘Please come with me.’ Nadia closes her eyes. The colour of terror really is yellow. It is there behind her eyelids, an ugly shitty yellow. She can feel the cold of the evening now that the sun is setting, undramatically, a greenish goldness in the west. There is a breeze and goosepimples rise on her arms.

  ‘All right.’

  Simon pauses for a moment and then turns. She doesn’t meet his eyes. He puts his arm round her shoulders. She walks with him, down the lump
y slope. Last time she was here he was underneath. That is what she thinks, remembering how it felt to walk here when he was down there. The irrational fear that her feet were compounding his compression. Now he is out, safe, and she has him. Has she? She puts her arm round his waist and squeezes, feeling the slip of the ribs under his skin.

  They reach the entrance. There is a dripping, a stickiness, muddy slime on the inner walls; the hole is the height of a door but wider; above it tussocky grass and heather sprigs are silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘No,’ Nadia says, stopping. ‘I really don’t want to.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ Simon says. And she lets him pull her out of the light and into the shadowy gloom. She breathes in the dank wetness, the smell of old urine. There is rubbish on the floor, crisp packets, cigarette ends. She breathes very shallowly and lets him lead her in, afraid of what she might be stepping on. Simon gets a torch out of his pocket. It is a small feeble thing, but it serves to light the viscous-looking walls.

  ‘Please, not far,’ Nadia whispers. There is a small scramble down and though Simon steadies her she has to put her hand out to stop herself falling and she touches the cold stone. It is unfriendly. More than that, it feels hostile. The beam of the torch flickers ahead, bouncing and sliding in time with Simon’s footsteps. He lets go of her and walks in front. She follows. She cannot speak. She looks back at the smear of light behind her. Stops. ‘Simon, I …’ She is embarrassed by her voice, ineffectual, a rodent squeak.

  ‘All right,’ he says. He speaks softly. His face is lost to her in the darkness.

  ‘I can’t see you.’

  He turns, but still she cannot make him out, only the deeper darkness of his mouth as it opens, he has the torch pointed downwards, only the edge of his chin is clear. ‘This is as far as we can walk,’ he says. ‘After this there is a chimney – a pot …’