“Each day the lord would send another son and each night the boat would be back in Ancw, fully loaded, and the son would be gone. In the end, of course, he had sent all seven of his sons and lost each one. So he had to row out to the island himself.”
“Did he disappear, too?”
“Oh no—although he wanted to, so that he could be wherever his children had gone—he’d become rather softer natured, by this time—it was the shock. But no, he didn’t get his wish. He went to the island quite safely and then killed every one of his horses with his bare hands, each animal coming to him with love, lying down and offering him its neck. Then the lord came back ashore, went to his great house and hanged himself.
“The night he died, cries were heard out at sea, like the noises made by injured birds, and there was a great sound of waves breaking, although the sea was still. In the morning, seven rocks had grown out of the waters beside the island and were named for the seven dead brothers, killed by their father’s pride.
“Later, someone rowed out to the island and took away the horses’ bones and made them into flutes. They had a beautiful tone, but would only play sad tunes.” He bowed his head for a moment, then bobbed it up again with a buttery smile, something about him, as usual, startlingly boyish.
“Which, apart from anything else, is why this is called Foal Island. As a memorial to a great injustice, the island gave up its old name and took on a new one—as a reminder of the foals that were never born and of the impossibility of creation without love. And whether this is factually true, in any way—”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He beamed at her. “Absolutely, absolutely. What matters is that this is how people remember what is important, this is where they are themselves, where they keep what has been stolen, where their words are their own. We always have the stories we make of ourselves, of our topography, our music. That kind of voice, the true kind, will never die entirely, even if it’s turned to stone.” He delicately engulfed a new potato and considered her. “You look sad, dear. Are you?”
“Oh. Well . . .”
“The Lunch makes me homesick. Even though this is all the home I’ve had for years. It is possible to pine for a time, a condition, as much as a place. Wouldn’t you say? Missing your Uncles?”
She was used to the way he asked questions—his curiosity inoffensive, his young eyes disarming. But, even so, when she told him, “Yes, I think I am,” she hadn’t anticipated how she would feel to hear herself being quite so accurate. She was used to the mild evasions, the polite dishonesties, the average fog of the average conversation. People like Louis, people who told the truth and wanted it—got it—back, they were not comfortable. Between Nathan’s demands for specificity and Louis’s confidence in, if not reverence for, words, she could see her verbal life fast deteriorating into a chain of increasingly uncomfortable blurts.
Or perhaps just a vow of silence.
“And . . . um . . . if you don’t mind my asking . . .” Louis hadn’t finished, wanted more. “Jonathan? You miss him, too.”
“No.” Mary watched Louis start to frown. “No, I’m not missing him. There’s no point. It seems rather clear that he isn’t missing me.”
Louis allowed himself an infinitesimal shake of his head. He believed in balance and many forms of generosity and also believed that no one could love without being loved back. Mary thought this was wishful thinking and wished she could think it, too.
Joe, quite naturally, had his own opinions about love—ones he wasn’t sharing over lunch. Instead he sat exactly as he liked to, balanced in limbs and breath, snug between Louis and Richard, at a table with his company of choice but being, in his heart, elsewhere.
He was imagining the desert at evening and walking out and meeting its first kiss: the dissipating rush, the closing tenderness of mineral heat. He was remembering the scent of size, of a scale so monstrous it could strike him free of his personality, make him naked to his blood: the scent of time, or time’s distillate—disinterested, arcane and horrifying. He’d loved it, had known he would love it, had been astonished only by the intensity of that love.
With most of his mind away in the desert, he could make himself free enough to appreciate what was here: his eating, his drinking, his body’s life.
This is water: the taste of water, the motion of water, its changes in temperature, its seeking out of places in my mouth, its soft accommodation to the shape of my throat.
This is meat: the resistance and spring of fibres, the metallic taste of blood.
Mouthful by mouthful, he fed himself with the nature of things, he was aware.
Which placed his thoughts strangely close to those of Eckless, who was sitting opposite, his chin still on Nathan’s knee, his loyal ounces of doggy brain lighting and relighting with uncomplicated—if ardent—life.
MEAT WANT
WAIT STAYBEGOOD
LOVE HERE BOSSMAN
HAPPYHAPPYGOODBOYBOSSMAN
LOVE HERE STAYBEGOOD
GOOD BOSSMAN FEEL GOOD BOSSMAN SMELL LOVE
Richard Fisher, sallow, a neat and meagre eater, was rather less delighted by his surroundings. He was facing Ruth Alvey with apparently complete attention, but also listening to Louis—just to see if he could. It wasn’t that he didn’t have sympathy for, or an interest in, Ruth—he had simply heard her story before. Three or four glasses into a bottle, especially of red wine, and she would usually mumble it out, perhaps in hopes of absolution, condemnation, betrayal—he couldn’t say. Whenever he was this close to her, he would experience a kind of seasickness. Something about her was so dreadfully hungry, he could feel it jar at the roots of his teeth.
“They were a good group, they trusted me. And they worked very well. At first the staff—you know staff—they said we shouldn’t bother with this type of person. They meant non-literate people. But they could all speak, or point at symbols, or sign. They all had something to say. Which is what an institution won’t want, of course, clients with something to say, opinions.”
Richard nodded, as seemed appropriate, and wondered how on earth Ruth could manage to stay so pale. The island hardly offered a tender or sheltered environment, but from looking at Ruth, you might guess she was normally kept in a box somewhere underground.
“Rob, he was especially able. In the time we were there, you could really see him coming on, getting more confident, taking part. He looked the least . . . what would you say . . . abnormal. Really, he was quite handsome. And striking eyes: large and a sort of purple.”
Yes, underground, like a mushroom. Richard tried not to smile, as he thought of her swelling in some moist and nourishing dark, becoming the plump, white object she was now. Just a touch further round the table was his wife—an altogether firmer proposition, altogether more difficult.
“He had this peculiar way of naming things. I’d never come across it before. No matter how anything changed, Rob was inflexible. If the first time he’d been told what water was, it was called rain, then it was always rain. Trees were made of spoon, I remember. And the terms he chose could show you, could tell you bits of his life. Any type of pain was belt because his mother had beaten him regularly—had decided that it was his fault he was soft in the head. Any excess of emotion was medicine because he’d spent years away from home in a hospital where drugging replaced the belt.”
Richard’s wife, Lynda—Richard’s lawfully wedded spouse, Lynda— Richard’s own to have and to hold was right there, next to Nathan. Richard rarely, if ever, sat beside her at lunch because the custom was that partners should dine separately when in public. Even if they were the only two here who were partners.
Richard had never understood the rule. What was the expected disaster it sought to prevent? What was it that couples might do in the presence of food and observers that would be so terrible? What purpose did it serve to make him sit quite so often with Ruth?
Ruth, the mushroom who bit her nails. Richard tried, every time, not to notice and, every
time, failed. The obvious pain of it, the voluntary disfigurement revolted him: the small finger wounds, the livid quick, the fraying and crusting of skin. She had no self-control.
She was still speaking. “I didn’t mean it. I’m not saying it was an accident. After the first time, it was deliberate, obviously, but I didn’t mean it to cause harm. No one need have known. I think he agreed with that. We spoke about it and he seemed to understand. And he’d never changed a definition before, there was no reason to expect it. Trees were spoon, baths were rain, I was Ruth. Then in the group, on a Friday morning, we were having our tea, everyone all together, and Rob brought over a tray full of cups. ‘This is for Andy, this is for Steve, and this is for Fuck.’ Pain was belt and I was fuck.”
“It must have been . . . embarrassing.” He’d heard the punchline he couldn’t remember how many times and still didn’t know what on earth he was meant to say. What could one ever say? What was the point?
Ruth stopped, set down her knife and fork. Richard tried to pay more attention, to concentrate, to focus on this part of the table and not any other. Ruth was squinting with fury, her eyes like malevolent currants in rising dough. “Embarrassing. Hm? Em-bar-rass-ing.” Her whisper arrived with such force that he could feel it in the hair at his temples.
Richard sighed, slipping into place his usual domestic calmness, his most placatory manner. He was very used to being placating. “Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say nothing—but there really aren’t available words to say. The situation must have been horrible.” Ruth continued to wish him ill, unblinking. He knew that he never did manage to be a good peacemaker—not with anyone but himself. With anyone else, he seemed to stay too obviously absent, not even sincerely insincere.
“I never used to understand why Lynda is the way she is, but you make her very easy to explain.” Ruth had the most vehement whisper he’d ever encountered, soured with wine tannin and beef.
And, of course, thinking of this, and not of what she was saying, was one more example of why he irritated people—his mind would wander away from them, escape into fragments and details and, sooner or later, they’d notice his vacancy. They would want, at the very least, to shake him. He knew this and sometimes wished he could change. But, then again, his disengagement had advantages, a peace dividend that was more than generous.
“Look at her—she’s all over Nathan.” Ruth, on the other hand, was all focus and terrier grip.
“It’s fine. He’s my friend.”
“Can’t you see what she’s doing? Don’t you care?”
“Nathan is my friend. He didn’t ask to sit there, it’s where he was put.”
“Where do you think her hand is?”
“It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.” Richard thought about Lynda’s hands, about her fingers, about how he might buy her another ring, soon—one that would suit her especially well. Why not? Why not the quiet life? Why not?
Lynda’s hand was, in fact, on Nathan’s thigh. All through lunch, it had stalked him across his chair and now it had caught him, its thumb exploring the seam of his inside leg.
“Lynda.” Nathan tried to sound as weary as he felt, while speaking very softly and not attracting Mary’s attention in any way.
“What?” In her innocent, purry, the-devil-made-me-do-it voice.
“You know perfectly well. Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
Her paw continued to fuss at him like some hot, soft-shelled crustacean, erotic as a breadboard.
Stop it, stop that. JUST STOP. For fuck’s sake, how many times must a person say they don’t want something before they actually cease to get it any more? Jesus bloody Christ, can’t we put something in her water, can’t we just sew over her active parts, can’t we do anything?
Nathan could have done without this. The backs of his eyes were still miserable after yesterday’s hangover, and his journey back to the island had generally not been good. And he’d wanted, fuck it, to meet Mary in his house, not here. He’d wanted to—yet again—once again—start again, he’d wanted to . . .
Sweep her in your arms and tell her, hn? I am your daddy? Hello, my child?
Like fuck.
Or would you just hold her that little bit longer, discover all over again the way she’s so small and so tight on her bones and the way that there’s nothing about her you wouldn’t bleed for and die for and look after until you went stone mad with the effort of it all, hn? Would you stand there and think of everything you’d lose if you told her the truth and she didn’t like you, just didn’t go for it?
And why would she? Have you seen yourself, lately? You don’t look like a father, you look like shite.
A man with less hair every day who couldn’t get his hands really steady enough to shave. What was that all about? The hangover or the nerves? The thought of seeing Daddy’s little girlie making you jump?
You sad fuck. You can’t stop sweating, because your daughter almost said she missed you. Almost. Turned the room round on you, that one, didn’t it?
A man with a prick that’ll only lift for a bitch he’ll never see again. Practically dead as a sash weight otherwise. If the mad cunt next to you sucked on it all week, she’d barely get a twitch. But if she said the magic word, hn? Maura? Maura? That do it? Maura? Hn?
And, of course, that did start to do it. The simple sound of a name between his ears did begin a nasty lower little throb.
“All right. All right.” Nathan, cautious of Mary and wincing against the clamour in his head, reached out and sneaked a hold of Lynda’s hand. She smirked, as he’d guessed she might.
“Why, Nathan . . .”
He pulled gently, insistently, moving her closer under the tablecloth, gripping her wrist, while he arranged another little matter with his free hand. Then, deliberately, he turned his face to hers and watched: saw puzzlement and then disgust and heard the wet gape of Eckless’s mouth beneath the table, his soft and curious tongue setting out to lap at Lynda’s fingers. He tried not to smile too much while she yanked away her hand.
“Good boy. Good lad.” He patted his faithful hound’s head. “Good lad.”
Lynda carefully wiped her fingers clean on his trouser leg, but Nathan didn’t mind. He didn’t mind that she whispered, “You really are a bastard, Nathan. A poor, bloody, limp-dicked shit.”
“Good dog, Eckless. Good boy.”
His dog leaned back against this hand.
GOODBOYHAPPYHAPPYGOOD
When would it stop: the ridiculous toppling in his heart?
Every time.
Surely it wasn’t possible—surely every time he ever saw her, the seasickness wouldn’t always start, the stomach tensing like a landed fish, airlessly afraid.
Nathan tried not to think of it, not to think of anything. He drifted over to the kitchen window and breathed the roses in. Joe was good with roses, he kept the Lighthouse hip-deep in lazy, blowsy flowers for as much of the year as the island’s climate would allow.
This is good—I can just enjoy this. This is nice.
Her word, Mary’s, the one you wouldn’t let her use.
Shut up.
The rose scent was thick. He could almost imagine it slowing his movements, supporting him in some way. Behind him, he could hear Mary setting the trays with seven bowls and seven spoons, quite used to the Foal Island way of doing things now—the shared cooking and shared serving of Joe’s dearly-fucking-beloved Sunday Lunches. Outside, parchment-coloured blooms, a dab of watered blood at their hearts, bobbed heavily and swayed.
“Well, I’m ready . . .”
She was, too. Skin caramel brown from the summer, more and more gold in her hair, slimmer than when she’d first come here, fitter—she seemed prepared for almost everything he could foresee. Horribly able already to take on anything without his help.
“Nathan?”
He felt completely superfluous unless he looked at her shoulders and then all was well. She was wearing one of those weird kind of glorified vest thi
ngs that she liked and which left her arms and shoulders almost completely exposed—the tender dip and curve of her muscle, the fragility of her bone made him want her to be under constant police protection. The beauty of it all made him want her to become a nun immediately.
Right now—keep her safe from all those bastards out there—keep her from harm.
“Nathan, if you’re going to dish up . . .”
Get a grip, get a fucking grip.
“Uh, yes, yes. I hadn’t forgotten.” And he scampered to the monster fridge and wrestled out Louis’s offering—traditional sherry trifle— naughty-little-boy food. “Lord, they get bigger every time.”
“He gets to take home the leftovers.”
“True.” He dug in and realised how utterly obscene the parting flesh of trifle can sound. Not the sort of thing one’s daughter should have to hear. “Although Ruth’s in one of her down moods, I think—that usually makes her eat her own body weight.” Nathan knew that he was blushing and that he was quite powerless to stop.
“Why don’t you like her? She’s very fond of you. And she didn’t like me keeping Eckless when you went away. You didn’t tell me that she usually did it. I think she was upset.”
“She didn’t give you any bother?”
“No. No, I’m just saying, you mean something to her. You must have noticed?”
Another spoonful left the bowl with a wet, post-coital smack.
She does watch, then, does pay attention, does take an interest. In me? In me?
“Well . . . I know. But . . . it’s . . . she’s fond of me in a way I can’t reciprocate and so I try not to be around her too much.”
“You haven’t told her? That you don’t like her?”
A gob of custard flopped on to the tray.
“Told her—yes, of course.”
Of course. Because I’m so good at telling things, aren’t I? When they don’t matter, I’ll tell them to anyone. Fuck.
“But telling someone not to . . . I mean, she feels the way she feels. No one can help that. I just try not to help. I wouldn’t encourage loving where it wasn’t going to get loving back.”
Everything You Need Page 14