And, because they might as well now, Mary and Jonno took tea.
“Was that all right then, with the Uncles?” Jonathan couldn’t manage above a whisper yet.
“I think so. Yes. They say what they mean—so, yes.” She rocked against him, grinned. “And it was all right with me, too.”
“Oh, good.” And he grinned as well.
The rattle of spoons and crockery in the warm, stunned room was making them feel a little as if they’d become, somehow, delicate, a pair of happy invalids. Then their appetites overtook them and they cleared the plate of cake, then worked crumbs and butter and marzipan and much more of themselves into the sheets.
But now that the Uncles were home, they lowered their voices—to show respect.
Mary made love to Jonno again on the twenty-second of October, because it was her birthday.
“Thank you for the present.”
“Don’t mention it.”
And then—avoiding the terrible Mother Davies—they managed again on the twenty-seventh, because they were both intoxicated by the terrible lack of time they still had left and because—having had five long, still days of reflection—they wanted to.
On the thirtieth they wanted to again because they were missing each other and Mary would be gone soon and because she’d passed Mrs. Davies that morning in Bethel Lane and immediately needed, more than anything, to be sliding along Jonno’s cock, to be wet with him, and making him push his breath against her neck in a way that his mother, Mary guessed, could very probably not imagine.
On the thirty-first they did it by mistake because they had met to say goodbye—the Uncles out climbing the valley—and had both been intent on explaining to each other why having sex now would only make them sad. They had it anyway and were sad, but also wonderfully painstaking and intent. And this time, their last time, he could be naked in her: the round, silk push of him. Her period was only a day or so away, already tender in her breasts, and she could safely catch him up and have him all, live, to remember, to be really there.
Mary thought of Foal Island and, cooried warm beside all of Jonno’s pulses, she felt increasingly cheap. Tomorrow she was leaving—no more Uncles, no more valley, no more Jonathan. A lock in her thinking turned, cold and surprising, and reminded her of what it frightened her to find she could still want, even here and even now.
Her new future hissed at her, made her blood bolt in a way she hoped that Jonno wouldn’t notice, because it was secret, even from him: beyond simple, visible nakedness. This was what she stripped down to, beyond the bone, this odd, free emptiness. And she did believe that she wouldn’t have to make herself lonely for ever, she did feel that she would, in the end, come back to Jonathan, live out her future gently with him here. But she was still going to leave him tomorrow. And that did still hurt.
She woke on the first of November, having failed to notice Hallowe’en, and found that every detail of the house was waiting, ready to lacerate and cling. Her sheets breathed Jonno at her and were full of how quickly he showed he was pleased to be pleased. They reminded her of the temperature of his smile.
In the bathroom, here was the stupid pot with the blue plastic lid where Uncle Morgan’s teeth swam their nights away and suddenly she liked it and wanted to see it regularly. His spare inhaler, his bottles of pills, the little daily fight to keep him breathing showed itself to her, inescapable. Bryn’s thousand-year-old dressing gown, hanging soft at the back of the door, she wanted to touch it, because it was almost him.
Downstairs in the kitchen, the Uncles were doing their best. They played with toast and jam and appeared to eat. They were immaculately brushed and soaped and shaved, both cleaned to an especially startled pink. Morgan’s inhalations fretted more than usual under his cardigan.
“All right, then, girl? Thought you’d never get up.”
“I think I was tired.”
Bryn cradled his teacup, “Well, no wonder.” He stared at the tablecloth—fresh on this morning, white with blue embroidered flowers. When she sat, he raised a grin to meet her, but couldn’t quite persuade it to take.
Mary frowned back a burst of helplessness. “I’m sorry.” Her voice waylaid her: was not as she intended, not firm, or cheerful, or strong.
“For what, love?”
“I don’t know.” She caught herself back, imposed what she hoped was control. “For all the time . . . I’ve been too much with Jonathan. I should have spent more time with you.”
Bryn’s hand muffled down over hers, his skin always finer than she remembered. “You were with us, too.” Ridiculous, tender palms, vulnerable fingers for a man to have. “Don’t worry yourself.” That made the final push, broke the whole pain down on her. “If you do, you’ll worry us.”
Mary swayed with the ache of losing them—the two most elegant, good and dependable gentlemen she knew. The Uncles looked on, stuttered into a clasp of hands. The fridge hummed and ticked.
Then Morgan said, for both of them, “We do love you.” A kindness which mauled through her, making her almost unwilling to listen when he added, “You have to go, though. We all know.”
“Don’t be sad for us. We don’t require it.” Bryn swung up and round the table to hug her so powerfully that the pressure made her breathless as well as glad. She wanted to shrink, to regress and be a small person again in his arms, to slip back with him to a place without decisions or change.
He kissed her forehead, light and neat. “How are you now?”
“Good. Good enough.” Her words were still frail, and also low, to make them privately his. “Is that a new sweater?”
“Well. It is, yes. We opened our Christmas presents to each other. Cheer us up.”
She hugged him quickly, to ease out the turn in her stomach. “Now . . . You’ll start me crying again.”
Morgan chipped in, “And my cardigan—that’s new as well. Thanks for noticing. Funny colour. Bryn’s never been good at colours. Have you, Bryn?”
Which eased the atmosphere enough to let Bryn squeeze Mary’s shoulder and trot back to his seat. They all relaxed by a few degrees and tried to be simply a family having breakfast and chatting.
And, of course, they did have to talk about her trip. They ran over the route of her journey again, praised the many sandwiches Morgan had made, exchanged reassurances about her money and her spare money, telephoning, letters and all the ways they could think to keep near to each other while they were apart.
When it was time, Mary left the house and climbed Charter Road unburdened. Bryn had shouldered her rucksack before she could stop him and gravely threatened to fight her if she tried to take charge of her holdall. Morgan contented himself with the carrier bag of sandwiches and bottled water.
They processed along flat-fronted streets of houses busy with the signs of redundancy payouts and heavy, pointless time. Woodwork had been painted and repainted, windows and doors replaced, stone cladding and satellite dishes installed. The video shop, the off-licence, the bookie’s and the post office, the late-night shop, were all defended with roll-down shutters and grilles. They were living through nervous days.
Under the additions and improvements, the lean, low rows of houses stayed much the same: accommodation built to hold the workers required by a long-failed copper deposit and a web of narrow coal seams, now worked out. Planted without warning in a steep, damp cul-de-sac of green, the town had become accustomed to a rising scale of abandonments.
At the bus stop, Bryn dropped Mary’s holdall and twisted out from under her rucksack, inhaling and stretching one arm with relief. Morgan leaned his back against the wall, life whistling between grey lips. “ Duw, you need a bus to get to the bus, don’t you?”
Bryn shook Mary’s hand, darting in with the movement and making a hollowness clamber in her arms.
“You’re not going?”
“No. Just shaking your hand.” He touched his fingertips to her hair and briefly tensed his mouth. “Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet. Don’t
know that one, do you? That little corner beyond all the world is full of smiles for me. You’re my corner. Always.” He nodded, placidly, agreeing unrepentantly that he was being sentimental. “You’ll knock ’em dead, you know. They won’t ever have seen a Mary Lamb. Hoc vince.”
“By this, conquer.”
“That’s right.”
And the Uncles waited until Mary’s bus came, kissed her in a rush, helped with the luggage, gave her peppermints for the journey, a touch more cash, and then waved and waved and waved her a good goodbye.
After she was gone they had tea in Ianetta’s, feeling oddly exposed with only themselves there and no one in between. They linked arms gently going down the hill, taking it slow.
Although it was barely midday when they got home, they drew their curtains and went to bed. Then they made quick, despairing love in the manner of the recently bereaved. Morgan used his inhaler. They both slept.
A still dawn. Nathan lay in his bed and felt day bloom around the house in acidic green and dusty, mineral blues.
It’s today.
The undiluted thought of her birled in him, tingled his thighs, made him lunge at an unsteady stack of plans for his day.
I could wear the suit. Formal. Bad thing.
I should be only a little bit formal and much more welcoming.
Welcoming. Good thing.
The suit without a tie—relaxed and welcoming and, really, forget about formal altogether, because, for all she knows, I might look like that all of the time.
Or I could just wear my overalls. They were good enough to die in.
Joe’s taking the boat to get her. He’ll bring her in and I can meet her on the jetty.
But I don’t have to. Joe’s feeding her at the Lighthouse, I could see her then, when she’s more settled.
Or in her house. When she’s alone. Or any time. I’ve got years. Pick my moment, get the right one.
Jesus Christ, will you listen to yourself? This is a four-mile-long island. When she lands, she’ll raise the population to a less than magnificent seven. You aren’t going to miss her in the fucking crowd. Why don’t you just meet her accidentally?
I am pathetic sometimes.
No. I am pathetic quite frequently.
He dressed in his overalls and banged his way through making coffee and eating buttered bread.
No appetite? Butterflies in the tummy? You asked for this, though, didn’t you?
Shut the fuck up.
Go and clean her house again—sweep it out. Put a little jug of rustic flowers on the window ledge. Perhaps a little introductory note.
He scowled away the temptation to do any such thing. The place would do fine, without any more work—it wasn’t so long since the last occupant had left. It was wind- and watertight. There were no particular signs of mice. Monstrous spiders were, no doubt, lurking in every fissure—that’s what you got for living in a field—but she wouldn’t die of spiders, might not even be scared of them. He would cut along in an hour or two to set in fresh blankets and sheets. She could make her own bed.
Could she make her own bed?
She’s nineteen and not an invalid, of course she can.
Having dealt with the bedding, he walked Eckless further to the north and west and sat amongst the little rocks that edged their favourite bay. The tide was in, as he’d known it would be. Nathan was getting used to the timing of these things. If he waited long enough, the water’s breathing calmed him, licked him to a stop, like a patient partner. Looking down to his left, he could watch the oddly slow push of the tide between the Seven Brothers. Forced around and over the seven rough pillars and stumps of rock, the sea produced a gallery of impossibilities: apparently solid inclines, vitreous whorls, flawless sheets and cobbles and dust clouds of itself. He was beginning to love it—being with the sea.
Eckless crab-trotted up to drop into a nap against Nathan’s back. The dog settled and nudged, a grumbling but comfortable dead weight—also now used to the rhythms of the bay and the rhythms of Nathan.
Go on, avoid the issue.
I’m not.
You are, you’re going to work now, aren’t you? She’ll wait by the little post office in Ancw, undoubtedly afraid, but you will not go and help her, you will work. Joe will come and get her, make her feel safe, and you will work. He’ll motor her out and you will not meet her, you will not even watch her arrive— you will work. He’ll land her, help her with her baggage, and you could be there, too, but you’ll be working, won’t you? Because you have no bottle, not a drop.
He tried not to feel that he was failing. There was simply something he wanted to finish and he felt he should do it now. He had his notebook and should make the most of this little peace to get something done.
This wasn’t running away, or avoiding an issue, this was timing. Now was the best time to be here and do this—he could spend whole years of days with Mary later, there was no need to rush things now.
This was Nathan, keeping sensibly busy with a few corrections to a text, having decided he wouldn’t see Mary yet and that he’d be better to wait. He was very familiar with having to wait.
He stared hopefully at his page. Underlined the title.
New Found Land
It was a story that he’d been attempting to write for a stupidly long time, although stories weren’t really his forte and he didn’t quite know what he’d do with it when it was finished, or who would care.
New Found Land
My arm was around her; not investigating, only resting, slung low on her waist, and the pleasantly heavy meeting of our sides made me feel I could topple at any time. I was, in fact, imagining that I might fall, drop neatly down with her and see what transpired.
I was drunk, of course, but we knew I was drunk and were not even mildly concerned. My particular brand of drinking only ever made me over-deliberate in largely harmless ways and slightly more inclined to touch. This had always been something about me we chose to enjoy.
Behind us I could vaguely hear our party: our friends in our home: our invited guests. We’d abandoned them for a good ten minutes now, but were feeling no guilt.They had their pick of our music, they could talk, they could finish my booze. As long as they kept the noise down, they could do what the fuck they liked—we didn’t mind.The only thing we wanted was for them to leave us be and not come to the kitchen in search of ice, or lemons, or cocoa. Or us.
I’d opened the door to the garden, trying to get us some air, and we’d immediately decided, without ever needing to speak, that we would ease ourselves right outside and be with our plants and our dark. We had carefully left our politeness and responsibility indoors and had, quite quickly, become extremely happy.
The night had hugged us up in a high, open breath of green. I’d staggered a tiny bit, tipped back my head and found I was thumped off balance again by the clarity, by the wholly implausible size of the sky. I opened my arms to it all and then faced her, wanted to hold her, did just that.
I can remember this precisely, because I am the remembering type of man. Things are not quite as they should be with my mind. I pay too much attention, pay it in full, to every mortal thing. My future and its aspirations are quick to disappear or to contract, but my memory only ever accumulates. I wake up on many mornings with a heaviness in my head.
But maybe everyone is like this, more or less. Maybe everyone who is right now, like me, walking down Spadina Avenue, is also walking, trapped in thought, down quite another avenue that Spadina calls to mind. It could be that the whole of Toronto is clattering with pedestrians in possession of Russian doll heads, each one helplessly closing the present in shells of the past. Like me, they may conduct a conversation as if it were all they could need, but meanwhile they’ll be reworking something from quite another time: a threat they were too shy to utter, a stalled intimation of love: they’ll be mending their last botched argument, making it come out right.
I do hope this is so. I would like not to be the only one bouncing th
rough echoes, recollection muscling in to make reality nervous and incomplete.
My arm was around her, around Maura.
Why that again?
Perhaps I miss her.
Not perhaps—of course. Of course I do.
It’s nearly Hallowe’en here, I’d forgotten that was coming, lost my place in the year. The shop-window displays are full of pumpkins, painted in God-awful colours and already gently exploding down into mush and pools of pumpkin blood and gentle, fungal fluff.The darker shades seem to last longer. The only one I’ve seen still perfect was a shiny, undertaker’s black. Which could explain the funeral dress code—an attempt at deflecting decay.
I would consider painting my head black and, therefore, escaping corruption of all kinds, if I didn’t know that any such efforts would be a decade or three too late. I’m all past saving.
My arm was around her, hungry, like it is now, anxious to clasp and be sure of her. I was pondering the ebb and swell of her ribs and trying not to cup too hard at the slight give of flesh above her hip. I loved the softness of her there, but she would tut and sigh away if I explored it too much—she said my doing that made her feel fat.
I said my doing that made me feel lycanthropic with desire.
“Love?”
Maura didn’t answer, simply rocked once, hard against me, and completely reconformed my concentration.
“It’s late, love.”
“Mm.”
“I should go back and tell them they want to leave.”
But I didn’t. I stayed and put my mouth to the pulse in her neck, licked it. I felt her muscle tense to meet me. I inhaled.
She smelled very slightly like a stranger: disguised with other people’s cigarette smoke, the make-up she would only wear for guests. All the scents of a dutiful hostess: my good friends’aftershave and her best friend’s perfume, appropriate kisses and sociable hugs.
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