When I dream, my mouth still tastes of Maura, her sweet salt, and the sun is once again spinning, numbing my mind’s eye.
Nathan capped his pen and set it down, then rested the side of his head against the desk, the cool of paper at his cheek.
How was it for you, then, you stupid fuck?
A trill of lust was nagging the small of his back and he wished he would just go away and leave himself alone.
And why the last two paragraphs? You don’t need them. You’re imposing a false circularity on a story with nothing circular in its nature—all to avoid putting emphasis on what should be the final line. All because you can’t stand to end with Something lovely to get up for in the morning. You can’t handle the wholesale fucking impossibility of that. So you’ve bottled out. You’ve even lost your narrative backbone now.
Nathan straightened, frowned, hugged himself round a yawn and then, sleek and quick and mortal against his arms and neck and chest, he could feel Maura, exactly Maura, as if she’d lifted from him, no more than a smile ago. And then, of course, came the acid scald of loss.
He hugged tighter, self against self, jolted again by the shock of his own nature, the reflex that would always kick him into writing the very things he would like to leave lie, into staring where he shouldn’t even look, because that’s where the life was. There was never a genuine choice involved, never the chance to skim out the hurt and leave the joy, to edit his commitment—there was only his mindless, nerveless appetite, the knife-point compulsion to make all of everything speak, no matter what— to always try for that. If it would make for a better sentence, he knew, he’d consent to anything.
I have a backbone, I have more fucking backbone than I can bear.
The following morning, when Nathan was lying in and grimly clinging to unconsciousness, Mary was up and breakfasted and even attempting to work. She was drinking her fifth cup of coffee and trying to think very hard in the general direction of her novel when the telephone rang. The beginnings of her book were tending to stodge together palely and then grease away again like so much over-animated pasta. Prolonged consideration of her ideas seemed only to fire them with an incomprehensible spite, so she was glad of any interruption—even if this was no more than yet another false alarm, another trick of the unremitting heat.
“Mary.”
It still surprised her how little it took for her to know him: the beat and curve of his voice through her name, his inhalation before speaking, that one, small opening breath.
“Jonathan?”
“Yes, I . . . Yes, it is. Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . are you? What are you doing?”
“Just now? I’m worki—”
“Oh, I’ll call you back, then.” He failed to hang up.
“No, no. Don’t do that.” Her hearing tensed, still anticipating disconnection. “I’m working at this . . . umm.” Novel really did seem a hugely misleading and silly name for a couple of dozen sheets of worried paper. “This, ah . . .” But it did seem to summarise what she was trying to produce.
“Book?”
Which is, of course, the other word—the one I could have used, if I’d wanted to show I had any control over my language of sodding choice. “That’s, yes—a book.” Not that I can even currently control my pulse. Fuck, why is it so bloody easy for him to do this, to make me feel him, to make his voice touch?
Because I want it to be easy, because I want it, full stop. His voice, his touch—the way they are—were—when we were together properly.
And, Jonno, what are you thinking, man, while I’m thinking this? It would all be easier if I knew.
She heard him sigh. His mouth always softened when he did that, the way it would before a kiss.
“I did think, Mary, assume, when you were . . . in my mind . . . I had guessed . . . you’d be ready for that—I mean, doing that, by now—writing a book. Or that you’d maybe have written a book.”
He’s breathing too loudly—nervous.
He swallowed audibly, beginning to slide towards desperate small talk. “What kind of book is it, then?”
“Just now? Very short.”
That sounds like I’m taking the piss now. And I am, but out of me, not him.
“It’ll be good, though, Mary. I’m sure it’ll be good.”
No, this is fucking nonsense. We can’t start discussing bloody literature— Jesus Christ.
Even so, I would like him to think it was good—what I write—if he ever saw it. Which he knows. Clever bugger. Clever, complimentary bugger.
She tried to be firm, no nonsense: to talk very casually about what so happened to be her job and then move on. “I’m not really even started, love. Really—I spend half my time staring at nothing and the other half walking about.”
“What did you call me?”
She played for time, “Hm?” surprised by how quickly her words could bolt ahead of her, dodging caution.
His voice nudged closer. “What did you call me?”
She shut her eyes. “Love. I called you love.” The admission drummed patiently under her ribs. “I—it felt, it felt like what I should say.”
“That’s . . . good.”
They lost themselves in a hot pause, until Mary attempted to ease the tone, to keep it light. “I should have said cariad, shouldn’t I? Now that it’s fashionable to be Welsh.”
“Cariad. Gwn.”
“I don’t know, though. Wyddoch chi, pam dylwn I ddysgu Cymraeg? ”
“Why should you learn it? Why really learn it, beyond what you get at school? Who knows. Pwy a wyr? Because it’s part of who you are. And if it’s not, you should leave it alone—it’s done you no harm. Cardiff’s full of fashion-victim Welsh—Welsh is where the money is—so that’s all you hear when they’re talking: arian—cash. Or people trying to be what they’re not. But then, you get that everywhere, I suppose. And I don’t honestly care much about it, or at least I don’t want to, right now—Mary?”
“Yes?”
“When you called me . . . what you called me . . .”
“Love.” The syllable knocked at her again, always a slightly unexpected pressure, new each time.
“Yes.” A gentle push of breath. “What did you mean?”
And that was a question to answer at once, or not at all, but she couldn’t reach a wording—the answer wasn’t in words.
“I see. That’s what I thought.” He sounded slightly too brisk now, and brittle. “You meant nothing much.”
“No. That’s not true.”
“Then speak to me, for Christ’s sake. Please.”
He was upset now—she hadn’t meant to make him upset. “I’m trying, but . . . Fuck, if I was good at speaking, I wouldn’t write. I mean, if you—if you come by here . . . when you come by here, we’ll be able to see what we both mean, we’ll feel it.”
“Feel?”
Oh, shit, I know—he’s going to tell me that the last time he felt me, it didn’t exactly go down too well. God, is there really any point to this? Are we ever going to reach a place where we don’t just offend each other all the time?
“Yes, feel. If we can be—oh, bloody hell, I don’t know.”
“You were going to say gentle. If we can be gentle.”
“Or careful, or—yes—anything like that.”
“All right, then—careful. And I’m sorry for having been anything else.”
“That’s . . . yes. Me, too.” Hope settled in her, airless and breakable, but definitely there.
“Look, I’ll call again before—before I see you. If you don’t mind. Bryn gave me your number and said you wouldn’t mind.”
“He was right.”
“And I should do the same favour for him, really. Give you his number.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know he told you he was going off somewhere and was all mysterious. Well, he’s down here in Cardiff, having tests.”
“Tests? What kind of tests?”
“See?—he said you’d worry. But
I thought it would be better if you knew, because then you could ring him and stop him getting bored. He’s gone into the hospital for a sort of medical, I think, but don’t say that I’ve said so, that he’s joined a private insurance scheme and now they’re checking him over. But it’s embarrassing his socialist principles. Not that I blame him at all. I mean, what the hell can he really expect to still get from the National Health? Anyway, I’ll give you the number and then you can ring and cheer him up.”
“Of course.”
And he darted in, quietly, as if this was of no significance, “And I could give you my number here.”
“Yes. Yes, you could. And I could ring you, if that would . . .”
“Yes.” Mary could hear that he was smiling. “That would . . .” She recognised the mumbling, humming laugh he sometimes made when he was finding himself ridiculous. “It would make me happy to hear you, Mary. It would.”
A memory teased up over her and pushed in: the turn and the smooth heat of licking his tongue: the need that would balance between her hips, the first ache, the way in.
For the rest of the day, Mary tried to keep working: the thought of the taste of Jonathan, here and there, spilling in when her concentration ebbed. Perhaps in an effort to resist this, to be professional, she drove especially hard at her opening chapter and found it surprisingly amenable to sudden discipline. By the time she leaned back in her chair and discovered she was hungry, there were five new pages to flop on to her tiny stack.
And this was the very thing she could phone and tell Bryn—the day’s achievement, something they’d both like.
She searched for him, “Bryn, Mr. Lamb, Bryn Lamb,” through a chain of women’s voices, all speaking from different departments, different wards, and it seemed to Mary that a hospital should be more careful, should keep a better check on who was where. The last transfer left her listening to a phone as it rang out and rang out, until, finally, with a concussion of noise, the receiver was rattled up.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Lamb. Come in and see him today, did you?”
“No, I live away.”
“Ah, well, then, maybe tomorrow. He’s asleep now—bit poorly—but we’ll tell him you called. His daughter?”
“He doesn’t have a daughter.” Which it felt untruthful to say: as if he were really her father, now denied. “I’m his niece, I suppose. Yes, that’s what I am. He’s asleep?—Bryn?” Something about this seemed unlikely, made it temptingly reasonable to demand that he should be woken and brought to the phone, or else that the phone should be taken to him, that her uncle should be allowed to speak. That she should be allowed to hear him.
“That’s right—he’s sleeping. You’re the one who writes, aren’t you? He said.”
“Yes, I . . .” Mary couldn’t ignore how very tangibly inappropriate this particular admission seemed. “I write.” And although this also seemed somehow shameful, she heard herself add, “I suppose, if you wouldn’t mind, you could tell him five pages and then I’ll explain what I mean tomorrow. At least, he’ll know what I mean already, but I’ll explain more . . .” But she wanted to be talking about Bryn, and to Bryn, not about her job. The dumb space left after her sentence petered out seemed to suggest that what she was saying hadn’t really registered and wouldn’t be passed on. “Is that all right? You’ll tell him?”
“Yes. Lovely. Bye, then.”
The emptied line dropped into place, Mary feeling bullied, aggrieved. The woman had sounded unhealthily breathless, older, careless, stout— not the sort of nurse that Bryn would like.
If she is a nurse—she could have been a cleaner, a porter, someone just passing in the hall—I wouldn’t know.
She gave a small huff of concern, just as Bryn would have.
This is silly. He was right, Bryn—I do worry. Even if there’s no need. And I’ll be speaking to him in the morning. He’s bound to be awake in the morning, I’m sure they wake them up at the crack of dawn.
“Oh, yes, he’s awake, but he’s not here. Mr. Lamb, was it?”
Mary thought this wasn’t the woman that she’d spoken to before.
“He’s having a procedure this morning.”
Her tone was firmer and she sounded slightly Irish—actually, the voice was quite different.
“A procedure?”
“Yes. But if you came in this evening, he’d be . . . You’re his niece?”
“Yes. Mary.”
“Yes, he talks about you all the time. If you come in this eveni—”
“I live away, though.”
“In the valley?”
“No, further than that.”
“Ah, well.”
Mary could taste the disapproval in both words.
“Do you want me to . . .” A dark chill came at her, surprising and knowledgeable, exposing the balance of her day. When she spoke, her words seemed just enough to fray reality. She couldn’t quite believe her situation any more. “Should I come . . . ? I mean,” absurd idea, this, completely absurd, “is there something wrong with him?”
“He’s a bit poorly. Perhaps if you call later. Could you do that?”
“Of course.” Mary had started to feel tired, now, and chill. “I can. After six? Or later?”
“Probably later. Say, eight.”
“Well, that’s fine. OK. Eight.” And she walked herself over to Nathan’s house, still holding her phone, and her faith not entirely convinced when she gazed at the tilt of the ground, the fall of light, the structure of her hand.
Joe and Nathan were both leaning, shirtless, against the cottage wall. Nathan noticed her first, smiled and then made a little spring forward. If he was, as he appeared to be, slightly concerned, she could find this only distantly interesting—nothing touched.
“Mary? Are you OK? You look . . .”
“Yes. I’m fine. Well, just worried. I think I’m worried. I shouldn’t be, though. I have nothing to worry about.”
Eckless woke up from the grass when he heard her and came forward to prove himself wholly convincing beneath her hands—the big bone of his head and the bump of warm, sleepy fur.
While Nathan flustered behind them, Joe set his arm at Mary’s back and steered her indoors, clear through and into an armchair in the living room. Nathan battered about domestically in the kitchen, keeping close to his kettle. Joe knelt beside her, methodically listening: his hard, hot palm arched above the back of her hand on the armrest. He smelt of earth, she noticed, of a greenery that had been dried out from everywhere on the island but his garden. Something in his always very obvious health, the strength of life about him—a kind of shine on his skin—made her calmer. She almost didn’t need him to speak, although he did in any case, reassuring.
“Poorly could mean anything. Hospitals have a whole range of their own infections, he might have picked something up while they did their tests. Ah, here’s something to set us right.”
Nathan paced carefully in with a tray of tea things and irregularly sliced bread and butter. Mary noticed his left thumb was bleeding at the knuckle—fighting with the bread knife again—and saw a faint, pale line across his forearm, the sign of some old injury. He set down the tray, smiled at her and backed away, only turning quickly once he was safe in the kitchen again. For a moment, he showed her the thick, curved scar beneath his right shoulder blade. Her resistance broke: the thought of him hurt, of him opened and then worked at in the hard glare of an operating theatre, made her have to cry for him, for Uncle Bryn and for herself.
Joe stroked at the back of her neck. “You’re tired. Too much work going on, I think. You don’t have to write everything at once.”
“But this week, I mean, these last days, it’s been a way to not have things on my mind, you know? Like a place to go to.”
“Don’t do that.” Nathan was back in the doorway, now wearing a crumpled T-shirt, a plaster on his thumb. “I always do that and it’s no use. Most of the things that I always do are. Don’t do it. You start off avoiding awkward moments and you end u
p just typing over your life.”
“This isn’t an awkward moment.” She was surprised by how angry she sounded.
His face trembled into a frown and he trotted to her, took her free hand and—apparently unsure of what gesture he should make—kissed it. “I know, I know. This is you being frightened for someone you love. I know. I’m sorry. Another thing I always do—say the wrong thing.”
Joe, for almost the first time since she’d met him, seemed hesitant when he spoke: or rather, seemed to be shaping what he would tell her far more carefully than usual. “I never want the people I love to be harmed. All I ever wanted for the island was that my friends should come here and be well. Getting well, getting better: that can be hard and terribly slow. But then, the progress is precisely as important as the goal. And you, Mary Lamb, you are better. You arrived better. You’re here to have all the best things we can give. Here you won’t ever come to any harm. I promise.” He kissed her forehead and then spoke with what she couldn’t believe was anything other than complete authority. “You will always be looked after, that’s your nature. I happen to know.” He glanced at Nathan, then stood abruptly. “And for now, Mr. Staples will be doing the looking after until you can make your telephone call and find out what’s what. Eight o’clock and you’ll know. It’ll be fine. All right, Nathan?”
“Of course. Of course, it’s all right.” Nathan kissed the top of her head now, pulling back after, clearing his throat vaguely, wandering off to fetch a chair, bring it closer and sit. “You know, I . . .” Nathan rubbed his hands together, stared at his nails, while both of them heard Joe, easing the front door shut, leaving them alone. “I hate hospitals. Even before I had anything much to do with them myself, they never seemed a great idea—not somewhere that I wanted to be.”
He was trying to distract her, they both knew, trying to tell her a story that might name and then defuse her fears. Mary wanted to thank him, but felt that if she tried to, she might start up crying again. So instead, she joined him in talking the bad things away. “Well, you wouldn’t want to be in hospital because you wouldn’t want to be ill.”
“Mm. But then, being ill always seems less serious than being ill in hospital. The operation . . .” He swallowed, let the taste of the word make contact again, while she wished he would look up and let her smile at him and that, perhaps, he would move again to come within her reach. Nathan simply carried on, “Going in for the operation worried me more than the cancer. The thought of lying under their hands, letting them cut at me, spill my blood, allowing them to part my ribs—it seemed far less natural than having a cancer turn me into something else. Cancer—that’s not an unreasonable way for a writer to die. We spend our lives trying to be a growing medium, after all.”
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