Limestone and Clay
Page 20
‘No!’
‘It’s all right, we’d need a rope. I only wanted to tell you … I was going to … All afternoon I’ve been deciding whether to go in, go back.’
‘No.’
‘Wait. To go back. Roland’s in there, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘No, I mean I saw him.’
Nadia gives an audible shocked shudder. ‘What …’
‘I saw something that I believe was his skull.’
Nadia turns back towards the little visible light. ‘I want to get out.’
‘Wait. I want to ask … It’s over, isn’t it? Us.’
‘I don’t know, I …’
‘Because if it is, I’ll go.’ He sounds so lonely when he says this. And something in Nadia rebels against his loneliness. She reaches for him. Puts her arms round him, rubs her face into his warm neck where she can feel the throb of his pulse. He presses her bottom tight against him. And in the darkness she feels a terrible shock of desire. It is the strongest desire she has ever felt. It hurts. It is like electricity. And when he touches her she moans. ‘No, not here.’ He cups her sex in his hand and squeezes and it is as if milk is oozing from her breasts, from every pore. ‘Simon, no,’ she says, dizzy with the sensation.
‘Go on then.’ He pushes her out ahead of him, but when the light is a solid thing in front of her, a safe thing that she can attain in seconds, she turns back.
‘I do want you,’ she says. ‘But I don’t know how … how we get over … how can we …?’
Simon doesn’t answer. What could he say? Outside the cave he pulls her by the hand, up the hill above the cave to the very place she stood waiting for him, where she stood with Celia on a skittish day that seems years ago. The sun has gone. The sky is pale blue still, but darkness is leaking from the ground. Simon pulls her down.
Anyone could see them there, anyone driving past and straining their eyes for the sight of lovers on a hill in the heather. And anyone who heard Nadia’s voice would ponder for a moment on the oddness of the call: bird? Wild creature? And then forget.
About the Author
Lesley Glaister (b. 1956) is a British novelist, playwright, and teacher of writing, currently working at the University of St Andrews. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Society of Authors. Her first novel, Honour Thy Father, was published in 1990 and received both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award. Glaister became known for her darkly humorous works and has been dubbed the Queen of Domestic Gothic. Glaister was named Yorkshire Author of the Year in 1998 for her novel Easy Peasy, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award in 1998. Now You See Me was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2002. Glaister lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband, author Andrew Greig.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by Lesley Glaister
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9410-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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