Incredible Bodies

by Ian McGuire

  E sat up. ‘He promised he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, well, he said it was an accident.’

  ‘How can you accidentally draw money from a bank account?’

  ‘Quite.’ Her father’s face remained carefully blank. E pursed her lips. What was going on? Was Morris really trying to hurt her again? Had they reached a point where pain was their only means of communication? She felt, as she felt at least twenty times a day, newly and suddenly bereft.

  ‘He wants you to call him back.’

  ‘I can’t call him back,’ she said, exasperated. ‘I always get the same person, Mahmood.’

  ‘Mahmood, yes, I mentioned him. I don’t think it sank in. As I say …’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ What was Morris doing? It seemed like he was in the midst of a nervous collapse: these idiotic phone calls, the job at Sir Savalot. She braced herself against the wave of sympathy produced by the thought of Morris losing his mind alone in a bedsit in Rumpswick. It crashed over her and spread with a sizzle. Still standing, she breathed deeply and tasted again the familiar blend of anger and protectiveness which had sustained her for the last month. She leaned back on the Dralon cushions.

  ‘Was that the only message?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Her father seemed mildly offended by the suggestion. He turned a page in his notebook. ‘A friend. Nick …’

  ‘Nick Kidney?’

  ‘That’s the one. Heard you were in town and wondered if you’d like to meet for tea.’

  ‘How did he hear I was in town? How did he get this number?’

  ‘Good lord, how do I know? He didn’t say. He sounded rather pleasant though. Have you known him long?’

  ‘Four months. He’s an artist.’

  ‘Well there you go. You two must have a lot in common.’

  The thought of her father approving of Nick Kidney was ludicrous. Should she mention the pickled penises? It would be a low blow, but she was certainly tempted. Kidney must have got her parents’ number from Alison via Gloria, she realised. So he would certainly have heard about Morris. What was sparking his interest now, she wondered? Sympathy or ghoulishness? Not sex surely. She would require a quite elaborate hoisting mechanism even to make the attempt.

  ‘Here’s his number.’ Her father removed a page from his notebook and gave it to her.

  The evening meal was beef stew with seaweed.

  ‘Is this seaweed?’ her father asked incredulously.

  ‘Kelp. It’s a nutritional marvel,’ his wife explained. ‘You’ve got twenty-five milligrams of magnesium on your fork right now.’

  E’s mother was taking the pregnancy very seriously. She had even bought a book, Eat Yourself Happy.

  ‘The stew’s fantastically rich in iron,’ she confided to E. ‘I don’t think we need to worry about anaemia any more.’ She said it, E thought, with the chilling smugness of a hitman after a successful job.

  ‘What’s this, Grandma?’ Molly waved an oddly involuted piece of meat at them.

  ‘That’s a ventricle, sweetheart.’

  ‘A ventricle?’ E and her father said it together.

  Her mother was initially jolted by their reaction, but recuperated quickly.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Beef heart is an outstanding source of protein. Indeed, organ meat in general has a lot of nutritional advantages.’

  E’s father shrugged and tucked in.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said. ‘Bit on the chewy side though.’

  E’s mother rolled her eyes forbearingly.

  ‘If you like,’ she said to E, ‘we could drive to the Mothercare outlet store tomorrow to look at prams. It’s next to the Chicken Cavern. We could go there for lunch. Molly would like it – they have a lovely soft play area.’

  ‘Soft play area!’ cried Molly still brandishing the ventricle.

  ‘I don’t think I can eat this,’ said E.

  ‘Are you feeling nauseous? That can be a sign of B6 deficiency.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s just the thought of organ meat. I was practically a vegetarian before the pregnancy.’

  ‘I know, and we’re so glad you gave it up. It’s flirting with disaster if you ask me.’

  ‘We’re built to eat meat,’ her father opined. ‘It’s not always pleasant, I admit it, but it’s a fact. There was no nut roast in palaeolithic times.’

  E ground her teeth.

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked without thinking.

  ‘What?’ Her father hammed a look of mortification. ‘Archaeological evidence. That’s how. There’s no archaeological evidence of nut roasts. None.’

  ‘But how do you know that?’ She was acting like a teenager. It always happened. Their dining room functioned as a kind of time machine.

  ‘Well it’s obvious,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Not to me it isn’t.’

  Her mother grinned and helped Molly with a piece of seaweed.

  ‘I really can’t eat this,’ E said.

  A line of concern appeared on her mother’s forehead.

  ‘It’s not all heart,’ she said. ‘There’s some liver in there too.’

  E put her hand to her mouth. She felt a rolling flush of nausea.

  Her mother and father put down their knives and forks and leaned towards her.

  ‘Do you need a glass of water?’

  ‘Perhaps you should go and lie down for a while?’

  ‘Are you ill?’

  E shook her head. ‘No thanks, the prune juice is fine. I’ll just eat the seaweed. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ said her mother. ‘I obviously didn’t think.’

  They ate for a while in silence.

  Molly looked puzzled.

  ‘Quiet,’ she said.

  They grinned at her in unison.

  ‘Wasn’t Morris a vegan at one point?’ her father asked eventually, sucking at a piece of seaweed that had become stuck in his teeth.

  ‘Yes that’s right,’ said E’s mother. ‘Remember when we went to Bangor that time? He wouldn’t eat an ice cream, and he insisted on reading every label. It took me the whole afternoon to do a shop.’

  ‘That was just a phase,’ E said. ‘Morris likes to test himself sometimes. At least he used to.’

  ‘Oh good God!’ said her father, obviously shocked by a sudden burst of memory. ‘We had to have soy milk in our tea.’ He pulled a comical face. Molly giggled.

  ‘That can’t be good for you,’ he continued after a while. ‘Apart from anything else, where’s your protein?’

  ‘It’s a fad, like Eugenia said,’ her mother agreed. ‘Rather a foolish one if you ask me, but I imagine most people grow out of it. Morris was just a late developer.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a fad,’ said E. She had found Morris’s two months of veganism a severe irritation, but she wasn’t about to admit that now. ‘There are good ethical and political reasons for being vegan.’

  ‘But it weakens you,’ her father said. ‘It must weaken you. Those people you see on the protests for instance. They’re always so pale.’

  ‘Which protests?’

  ‘The road protests.’ E’s father gestured in an easterly direction. ‘They were up in the trees for three months trying to stop that bypass at Newbury.’

  E rolled her eyes.

  ‘I must say,’ her father went on, ‘I always thought Morris looked rather pale himself. I know, sedentary occupation and all, but some days he’d look positively gaunt. I used to wonder whether there wasn’t something wrong with him.’

  ‘Something wrong with him?’ said E, raising her voice despite her best intentions. ‘So why did you never say anything? Why did you keep this penetrating diagnosis to yourself?’

  ‘Your Dad and I discussed it,’ said E’s mother, who had lied so often to save her husband’s dignity that she no longer noticed she was doing it. ‘But at the time we felt that it was inappropriate to say anything. With hindsight, of course, there obviously was something wrong with h
im. How else can you explain …’ She didn’t finish.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with Morris,’ E shouted.

  Molly stopped chewing her seaweed. Her parents stared at her with puzzled concern. E realised what she was saying – surely there was something wrong with Morris, wasn’t there? Whether physical or mental. Otherwise why should he, as her mother had suggested, do what he had done? Why would he threaten (because that was how she thought of it, as a threat) the life of the baby?

  ‘I think I need a rest,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, of course you do.’ Her mother sprang to her feet and started frenziedly clearing the table. Her father sat entirely immobile and then, as Molly watched, began to wiggle his ears.

  Back in the spare room, E telephoned Nick Kidney.

  ‘Kidney,’ he said.

  ‘It’s E. You heard about it then.’

  ‘Morris? Gloria told me he was shagging some woman off the telly.’

  ‘Zoe Cable.’

  ‘Bad timing.’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  She was thinking about his kitchen, their kiss. Trying not to regret what had happened (or not happened). She didn’t need any more mess. Any more complication and she would howl.

  ‘Actually, your dad sounds all right,’ he said.

  ‘He’s awful.’

  ‘Is he really?’

  ‘Will you please invite me out for a drink?’

  ‘So you’re drinking now?’

  ‘No, not really. Lunch then.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Is tomorrow the earliest you can do?’

  ‘For lunch? Tomorrow’s the earliest anyone can do.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ She said it gloomily with the sense that now even the calendar was conspiring against her. ‘I’m feeling a bit unhinged. We just had beef heart for dinner, with kelp.’

  ‘Beef heart and kelp? Jesus, there’s enough iron in there to build a battleship.’

  ‘I believe that was the idea. My mother’s bought a book, Eat Yourself Happy. Don’t laugh.’

  Kidney laughed. Behind him she could hear music, and a clickety-clackety sound of plates? Chairs?

  ‘Am I being too pushy?’ she said, ‘about the drink?’

  There was a pause as if he was actually thinking about it.

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said eventually. ‘It didn’t sound pushy to me. And believe me I know pushy.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Had she ever felt so simultaneously hard and soft, E wondered? Some parts of her were iron-plated, while others … She felt if anyone touched her there she would simply pop like a balloon and fart away pathetically into the middle-distance.

  ‘Come to the studio,’ he suggested. ‘We can order in.’

  What sounded like an air-raid warning whirled up the stairs from the dining room.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Sounds like Molly’s involved in a dispute over pudding.’

  ‘Let me guess: prunes? Figs? Something purgative?’

  E listened for a moment to the cadence of Molly’s heaving wail.

  ‘Sounds like prunes to me,’ she said. ‘Prunes are non-negotiable for Molly. Prunes are the deal-breaker.’

  The wail turned into a staccato bray, like the noise of a winded mule. E got the address of Kidney’s studio and then rushed down the stairs backwards, arriving in time to see Molly’s bowl of inky and testicular prunes replaced by a large, pre-packaged chocolate sundae. Molly beamed, tears dripping from her fire-engine cheeks like rain after a storm. E’s parents glanced up at her guiltily.

  ‘She’s been so well behaved,’ her mother explained. ‘And she ate almost all the kelp.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with refined, white sugar,’ her father insisted. (E noticed he also had a sundae). ‘It’s a myth. You know the real cause of tooth decay? Excess fluoridation. We saw a programme about it.’

  E ate the prunes.

  ‘Great prunes,’ she said unexpectedly.

  Her mother glowed.

  ‘They’re nature’s Prozac. That’s what it says in my book.’

  Nick Kidney’s studio was on the top floor of an old wireworks. As she caught the lift up E was hit by a burst of pre-emptive disappointment. Why was she coming here like this? What could she possibly get from Nick Kidney at this point, right now, that she actually needed? What did she actually need? Everything and nothing. That was one consequence of the hard-soft thing. If she needed anything she needed everything – and in the face of that vast, undifferentiated yearning Nick Kidney seemed so detailed and specific, so inevitably slight, that she couldn’t imagine that all this, whatever all this was, was possibly going to work.

  It was a long, very long, whitewashed room, roofed with safety glass and veined with pipes, pulleys, rails and other industrial impedimentia. Nick Kidney was sitting on an old corduroy sofa, sketching. He stood up and hugged her with his forearms – his hands were black with charcoal. His beard was longer but no more uniform, she noticed; his face looked as tufty as a sand dune. He was wearing paint-marked jeans and a grey vest – his arms and neck and face were muddy brown, the rest of his torso was white. She could see the spiky fringe of his armpit hair, the porky arc of a nipple. She forgot her disappointment.

  Splashed open on the sofa were expensive-looking books of Renaissance art. Taped to a nearby wall were several very large, rough drawings of the crucifixion.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Practising.’

  ‘You practise?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘What about “sod Cézanne”?’

  ‘“Sod Cézanne” was just a metaphor. People are always so fucking literal. It’s seen as a virtue to mean what you say. If you ask me, anyone can mean what they say. You don’t need any talent for that.’

  Kidney had gone back to his sketch. E was wandering through a maze of stacked canvases, oil drums and cast-off latex body parts.

  ‘I’m not sure you need very much talent to lie either,’ she said.

  Nick Kidney stopped sketching and looked at her.

  ‘You’re thinking of Morris of course,’ he said. ‘That’s different. Morris lied for a reason. At least I imagine he did.’

  ‘What reason though?’ she said. ‘What possible reason could he have?’

  Nick Kidney put down his sketch pad, leaned back, lit a cigarette and handed her a sheaf of take-out menus.

  E read them carelessly.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Kidney said.

  ‘Obvious?’ she paused. ‘You mean sex? You think sex is the reason? You think it’s really as simple as that? Because if it is I’m more pissed off than I thought I was. I mean sext It’s so bloody trivial. It’s so minor.’

  ‘Oh I agree,’ said Kidney. ‘By the way, the pad thai is delicious.’ He pointed with a blackened finger. ‘Sex is a red herring. The idea that men are driven by their dicks is a myth. And by that I mean a bad myth and not a good one. Do you know what really gets men going? What really pushes their buttons? Shall I tell you? What are you having by the way?’

  ‘Baked potato with cheddar.’

  Nick Kidney looked dismayed.

  ‘I thought you were eating yourself happy. That’s the culinary equivalent of a call to the Samaritans.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘OK, you want to know the secret of the male psyche. This is your second secret and you’ve only been here ten minutes. Shall I tell you?’

  ‘I wish you would.’

  ‘It’s fear.’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fear of what?’

  ‘Ah well, there it gets more complicated. There you take your pick: failure, success, intimacy, loneliness, death, life – should I go on?’

  ‘Fear?’ She thought about it. ‘No, fear doesn’t make me feel any better. We all have fear.’

  ‘Course we do. Course we do. Existence is terrifying. I mean look, just look.’ He scrambled around on the coff
ee table and came up with a paint-splattered Al Jarreau CD. ‘Look at this. This could easily outlive me. Al Jarreau, Live in London – I find that petrifying.’

  ‘Are you trying to make me feel sorry for him?’

  ‘For Morris? Of course not. Morris is clearly a fuckwit, I mean just look.’ He held out his hands towards E as if presenting her to a large studio audience. ‘Come on. But to go back to my original point. Lying for a reason as Morris did, the reason in his case, being to escape from fear …’

  ‘In your opinion.’

  ‘In my opinion, it’s really no better than telling the truth, no better and no worse. They’re essentially the same. What I’m talking about is the creative lie, the lie for the sake of art. The leap beyond reality into the unknown.’

  ‘That’s just cod-existentialism,’ she said. ‘Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard.’

  ‘Don’t give it names.’ Kidney cried. ‘Please, this is not about names. Look, look.’ He pointed to her bulge like a sailor sighting land. ‘That’s real. This,’ he waggled his sketchbook, ‘is real. Crap perhaps,’ he tossed it aside, ‘but real.’

  E felt herself. She hefted up her bulge and felt it lighten. Like pulling herself up by her own bootstraps.

  ‘What ever happened with you and Gloria?’ she asked.

  ‘Me and Gloria?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was the drug phase. She left me while I was busy taking drugs. I mean, it was several months before I realised she wasn’t there anymore.’

  ‘It seems like everyone has a drug phase these days. It makes me wonder whether I missed out.’

  ‘You never had a drug phase?’

  ‘I had a Bacardi and Coke phase – better for your synapses but worse for your teeth.’

  ‘How about Morris?’

  ‘Morris had a vegan phase.’

  ‘Now that’s a cry for help, if you ask me. Where’s your protein?’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘The drugs? Not really. The drugs are just a thing. You do it, you stop doing it. People exaggerate the drugs.’

  ‘I meant the divorce.’

  ‘Yeah, that I regret. Not that I ever want to live with Gloria again. It’s more the principle. I was brought up Catholic. Marriage is a sacrament.’