Limestone and Clay: A Novel

Salt

From the bedroom, Nadia can hear Simon clattering in the kitchen, as he prepares Sunday lunch. Poised on her shoulders, black nylon-clad legs straightened above her head, she inhales the meaty smell. This moment reminds her of moments in her parents’ house. Sunday morning was a long plain space, a light tunnel until lunchtime. It was a roasty flesh-scented boredom, quiet but for the sluggish ticking of the pendulum clock and the light tapping of her mother’s whisk against the side of the batter bowl.

Nadia exhales and lowers her legs over her head so that her toes touch the floor. The stretch in her thighs is exquisite and the blood pulses in her ears. The Plough.

The lamb is for Simon’s friends, Miles and Celia and Celia’s husband Dan. There will be roast potatoes too, and Nadia knows that Simon is at the sink peeling them, his brow furrowed with concentration as he attempts to peel a potato in one long unbroken spiral. It is a silly ambition. But harmless. Unlike some.

Nadia turns onto her stomach. She bends her knees up and reaches back to grasp her feet. She inhales and draws herself up into a taut rocking arch. Her hipbones are two sharp points against the floor. The Bow.

‘Shit,’ Simon says and she lets her legs go and flops, smiling, knowing he’s broken the peel. She turns over and lies supine, drawing air deep into her lungs, flattening her diaphragm, holding the air tight and trapped and then letting it out in one long smooth stream. She hears the pop of the cork from a winebottle.

Nadia draws in another breath and smells rosemary. She sits up and draws each foot in turn up to bounce on the opposite thigh. And then she stands before the full-length mirror. She is short and well-built –‘stocky’ is her mother’s unflattering description. Her breasts are large and her hips curved above strong thighs. Her belly is a sad hollow. No, no, not sad: it is a scoop of space, of freedom, look at it that way. She turns her back on the mirror and shakes out her hair. It is long, wiry hair, and it stands out around her head in a brown bush. She puts on her red dress and catches her hair back with a black ribbon. She notices the calendar, a photograph of stalagmites; among them, dwarfed by their glittering immensity, a small caver. She keeps her eyes on the picture rather than the date.

Simon is beating something now in a bowl. The tap, tap, tap of the whisk reminds her again of her mother in the steamy Sunday-morning kitchen, the radio on very softly, hardly audible above the cooking sounds, the bubbling and simmering and the spitting of the roast. Family Favourites it would be, with the names of unknown people in places with unknown names that made her both restless and glad to be at home. Her mother would sometimes join in with the radio, singing softly, beating time with her whisk or tapping with a spoon. When lunch was almost ready, the pressure cooker would give a fierce, startling hiss and fill the kitchen with the sudden wet aroma of cauliflower or Brussels sprouts.

Nadia stares at her face in the mirror. Her hazel eyes are insignificant without make-up. Her nose is small and sharp. She draws black lines around her eyes, and fills her pale lips in with scarlet, like sheeny poppy petals. Better, she thinks, and pokes shiny red hoops through the holes in her earlobes.

Simon is sipping wine, standing by the kitchen table flicking through the colour supplement. He looks up. ‘Nice,’ he says.

I didn’t put it on for you, she’d like to say. The sharp half of her would like to say. But that can’t be true for she knows it is his favourite dress, a dress he bought her, insisting that it was just her colour. ‘It makes you glow,’ he’d said. He indicates the winebottle and she shakes her head.

‘Not yet. Anything I can do?’

‘All under control.’

It is April. The window of the flat is on a level with the tops of flowering cherry trees in the park across the road. They make her think of snow. It is April. On Friday, Simon and Miles and Celia are going caving. They are seeking a way between Curlew Cavern and Boss Hole. They will drop down beneath the buzzing sunlit moorland, far down to places never seen, dead places gurgling with sinister streams, places where water rises without warning, where slabs of rock fall and crush and block the way without a sign on the surface. Where people disappear. They are planning to penetrate the secret places of the earth, to find a way between one cave and another a mile beyond. This is their ambition. She thinks of grubs wriggling; she thinks of worms.

Simon opens the oven door to check the progress of the lunch. The kitchen fills with the hot fragrance of lamb and rosemary. Nadia’s stomach growls. ‘Look at this,’ Simon says, holding out the colour supplement. Nadia doesn’t look at the glossy page. She looks instead at him. He is stubbornly good-looking. Even with her eyes narrowed with resentment, she can’t see anything that displeases her. He is tall and golden, hair curls over the collar of his old denim shirt, his cheeks are sharp with a half-grown indecisive beard. His lack of effort annoys her and yet she is impressed.

‘Anything up?’ he asks. His eyes are pale grey and capable of probing.

‘No,’ she sighs, ‘there’s nothing up.’

‘You don’t mind them coming?’

‘Of course I don’t. You haven’t set the table.’ She turns away to find a tablecloth.

Celia is as much Simon’s type of woman as Nadia is not. Celia is tall and smooth and fair with a dry ironic voice. Whenever Simon and Celia stand together, Nadia thinks spitefully of the Master Race. They could be models for a eugenics campaign. Indeed, they were lovers once, long ago; and although it didn’t work – they were too alike, fought like tigers – Nadia resents the warmth that passes between them, the meeting of their eyes, the way Simon will always spring to Celia’s defence.

‘Why is she always so brittle? Such a smart-arse?’ Nadia has often complained.

‘It’s just her way, a sort of shell, you’d see if you got to know her …’ And Nadia has scowled, twisting her fingers in her rough brown hair.

Simon carves the lamb into thick pink slices. Celia leans forward, breathes in the smell and groans appreciatively.

‘Why don’t you come?’ Miles says to Nadia. ‘Not on Friday, but we could organise a trip, just get you down there to see. You ought to know …’

‘Who says?’ Nadia asks.

‘Oh Nadia, Nadia …’ Miles stretches out his hand.

‘Catch me underground!’ Nadia shudders.

‘And Yorkshire pudding,’ sighs Celia. ‘What a little gem he is.’

‘Open another bottle of red, my darling,’ Simon says. Nadia reaches for the corkscrew, flicking him an irritated glance. He only ever calls her ‘my darling’ when Celia is there, and always with a dry inflection mimicked from her.

‘You’re looking great, Nadia,’ Miles says. ‘How’s life?’

‘Fine.’ Nadia thrusts the corkscrew viciously into the cork.

‘Dan sends profuse apologies,’ Celia says. ‘Sorry, but speleological talk is not his forte over Sunday lunch. Causes acute dyspepsia. The whole business, actually. You two ought to get together.’ She smiles once more at Nadia, who avoids her eyes, pouring out the wine. ‘Yes, on at me to pack it in, actually.’

‘No …’ says Miles.

‘Yes. Oh don’t worry. After this jaunt we’re going in for a sprog, if that’s the appropriate terminology nowadays. Had to solemnly promise Dan to stay on terra firma, supra terra firma, actually. Quaintly superstitious as always, he fears me giving birth to a troglodyte.’

‘More a trog than a sprog in that case!’ Miles winces at his own weak joke.

Nadia presses her lips together, feeling them turn papery thin in an imitation smile.

‘Well, congratulations.’ Miles raises his glass.

Nadia waits for Simon’s response, but ‘Gravy?’ is all he says, offering Celia the jug.

‘Hold your horses, Miles, mission not accomplished yet,’ Celia says, looking at Simon through her fair lashes.

Nadia splashes wine on the tablecloth. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says.

‘Salt,’ cries Celia. She stretches over for the salt mill and grinds a little heap onto the red pool.

‘All right?’ Miles covers Nadia’s hand with his own.

‘All right,’ she says. She watches the redness creep through the loose grains. There is enough wine in her to stave off the worst of her feelings. Miles has the sensitivity Celia lacks. She looks at him gratefully. He remembers, that is clear. She narrows her eyes at Celia, who is clinking her glass against Simon’s and laughing. Celia catches the look.

‘Oh hell,’ she says, putting down her glass. ‘I didn’t think. Oh shit.’

Nadia shrugs. ‘Let’s eat.’ The meat is tender in her mouth and the talk is carefully general. Miles asks her about her work, Celia admires the clay masks that hang upon the walls. They are primitive faces, glazed pewter-blue and green. All their eyes are sad shadows, only holes, and Nadia knows she will never make another. As the meal progresses the talk slides inevitably down through pottery and clay into rock and caves, and Nadia closes her mind to it.

The earth turns and the sun shifts across the diners at the table and leaves the room. Clouds gather. Nadia flicks on the light as she makes coffee. Her lunch hangs in her stomach like a greasy ball. There are shreds of lamb caught between her teeth, a rotting, intimate taste. She grinds coffee, her hand on the lid of the grinder, the hard vibration travelling up her arm and making her teeth rattle as the pungent fragrance is released. There is something she won’t tell Simon, there is something she will not even let herself think. She smothers the moth-wings of hope under a blanketing sadness.

It has happened before, too many times to count.

She tips the grounds into the coffee pot and pours in boiling water. She arranges four cups and saucers, of her own making, green and white marbled glaze. She pours thin cream into a jug and knows she cannot drink coffee herself. She puts a peppermint teabag into one of the cups.

‘Doing much teaching?’ Miles asks.

‘No,’ Nadia sighs. ‘I want more … there isn’t the money for non-vocational skills nowadays. I might get a few hours in September.’

‘Shame.’

‘It is. I’d like to be teaching now. I’m not doing much else.’

‘If you can, do, if you can’t, teach,’ says Celia, inevitably.

‘Watch it,’ says Simon, who is a geography teacher.

‘But Nadia can,’ Miles objects, and Simon grunts his agreement.

‘I know,’ Celia says.

‘The inside of this flat is bloody proof of that. Masks, vases,’ Miles casts around, ‘cups …’

Nadia squashes the teabag against the side of her cup with a spoon and watches the greenness spread through the water. ‘I could,’ she corrects.

‘Potter’s block?’ asks Celia.

‘I don’t know … maybe.’

Miles leans towards her, his brown eyes searching. Nadia wishes, not for the first time, that she could fancy him. He would be so safe. He would do all the worrying for her, all the bolstering and massaging of her ego. But he has a long shiny nose, dented on either side where he constantly jams his glasses back, and all she can possibly feel is fond.

‘Teaching is easier,’ Simon concedes. Celia, who tried it once, splutters.

‘Not easier exactly, but clearer-cut,’ Nadia ponders. ‘You go, you teach, you come home, the job is done. And pottery’s a good thing to teach. It’s a skill that anyone can learn. There’s evidence of progress. People are pleased. It’s satisfying to please people. And it’s tactile … there’s something about that, using the hands, playing with mud …’

‘Sounds horribly like some sort of icky primal therapy,’ Celia remarks.

Nadia shrugs, suppressing her irritation. ‘Whereas I don’t know where I’m going with my pots. I’ve lost the … oh, I can’t explain … I’ve lost the point somehow.’

‘Points failure!’ says Celia, ‘also the bane of British Rail …’

‘Oh do shut up, Celia,’ says Simon, and Nadia would have been grateful if his exasperation didn’t sound so affectionate.

‘It’ll come back,’ Miles comforts. ‘Don’t force it.’

‘S’pose so,’ Nadia says. She stands up. ‘I’ll leave you three to it. I’m going out for some fresh air … said I might call in on Sue.’

‘Thanks for lunch,’ Celia says.

‘Thank Simon. Bye, Miles. See you.’ Nadia pushes her feet into her boots and buttons up her coat on the way downstairs. The amount of irritation she feels is quite out of proportion, she tells herself, but still there is adrenaline in her arms and legs that screams to be spent and she strides fiercely along, swinging her arms, punching holes in the air with clenched fists. It is Celia who rubs her up the wrong way – one of her mother’s favourite expressions, and it is very apt. She feels like a cat that has been foolishly ruffled.

It is not just Celia. It is the pathetic flutter of hope that a tiny spurt of nausea, an extra day on the calendar can provoke. If Celia hadn’t said … but it is that sort of subject, always lurking, always a snare. Just forget it, just manage not to register the date, and someone will be there, pregnant, or breast-feeding, or talking about babies. And Celia, no doubt, will have no trouble. There she’ll be this time next year, a baby in her arms, and Simon will want to hold it too, will be bound to. ‘Uncle Simon’, Celia will call him with a self-mocking laugh, and he’ll look with his grey eyes, pupils flared, at the baby at Celia’s white breast, and he will think, will be bound to think, of what might have been. Oh yes, Nadia can see it all.

There has been hope after hope after hope. Late periods, false alarms – only they weren’t alarms but quite the opposite – and then, worse, real confirmed pregnancies that lasted a few weeks until her body mutinied and rejected them. And there was the one that was longer, the last one, the five-month pregnancy that really had her fooled. She hesitates outside the park gates, and enters. Usually she avoids the park on Sundays for that is the time when people parade their fertility. The duck-pond is glassy under the cold sky. It will rain, there is just a rustle of wind, a goose-pimpling of the water, a stirring in the trees which sprinkles blossom like confetti. Nadia’s mother hates ornamental cherry trees for their messiness, their brief spring triumph and then its aftermath: the soggy, brownish, slippery mess of petals. A waste of time, she says, give me a good old laurel any day. Dependable. Nadia finds a smile on her face at this memory of her mother who detests the muckiness of nature, can’t abide autumn, the scruffiest of all the seasons, the most wasteful.

By the water a row of small muffled children throw bread to the quacking ducks. Seagulls wheel greedily overhead, briefly mirrored in the water. A sparrow hops, cocking its head, eager for crumbs. ‘Mu-um,’ a child complains, ‘Sacha’s not giving hers to the ducks, she’s eating it.’

April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January. If Celia gets pregnant straight away, as she is bound to, it will be a new-year baby. Blossom floats past Nadia and sticks to the surface of the water. She walks on, leaving her hope, a little woolly shape, invisible at the water’s edge.

‘Be seeing you,’ calls Miles as he clatters down the stairs.

Simon hugs Celia and kisses her cheek. She turns her lips towards his, but he pats her awkwardly and steps back.

‘Got right up Nadia’s nose, didn’t I?’ she says, grinning in her sheepish way.

‘Well you can be a prize pain in the neck,’ he says. ‘You can’t blame her. I’d have expected more diplomacy from a personnel manager …’

‘Maybe it’s a reaction. I can’t seem to help it.’ Celia buttons up her coat and lifts her hair clear of the collar. ‘I don’t mean anything. I do like her. And, Si,’ she touches his arm, ‘I am sorry about the baby thing. That was clumsy.’

‘Yes,’ says Simon, ‘well.’ He looks away. ‘Say hello to Dan for me. And see you on Friday.’ At this thought he smiles. ‘And we’ll do it. I feel it in my bones this time, we’ll find the way through.’

‘We’ll have a bloody good try,’ Celia says, ‘and if we don’t we’ll try again.’ She leans forward and succeeds in kissing him lightly on the lips. She looks at him in her level, amused way, as if aware of her power, using it judiciously.

Simon listens to her running down the stairs and banging the door. He is irritated. She is wrong to think she still has that power. And she should know that now. Recent events should have shown her that. It is true that the scent of her skin and her clean soft hair can stir desire in him, but not more so than any lovely woman who stands so close. He remembers her long body, pale and almost featureless, small breasts with white nipples, just the faintest pink at the tips, the shallow indentation of her navel, the merest scrap of colourless pubic hair. Her body has a childish smell and it was touching to find the truth of her inside the brittle smart-arsed shell. But he found her unwomanly in an almost perverted way, an elongated child. And eventually, with familiarity, he found her, at least undressed and available, hopelessly unerotic. He never said that, of course, she never knew, and their parting was for other reasons, her reasons, more convenient for him to let her think that, except for this look she gives him that says, We have secrets, there is still something between us. And there is a secret. But nothing else. He fervently hopes there is nothing. Wishes nothing.

He wanders into the bathroom. Nadia’s things are everywhere: her brush, its bristles clogged with wiry hairs; her mascara, powder and eye-pencils; tweezers; a packet of sanitary towels; an ear-ring; some tortoiseshell combs, breath freshener, the red varnish with which she paints her toenails. He has never known a woman to have so much feminine clutter. His other women, Celia included, have been natural, soap-and-water types. Friends who happen to have female bodies.

In the kitchen he looks at the piles of greasy crockery and cutlery, the crusty roasting-tin, and sighs. Strictly speaking it’s Nadia’s job. Cook doesn’t wash. But she’s not there and they were his friends. He picks potato peelings and coffee grounds from the blocked plughole and runs the taps.

Nadia wears a strong musky perfume in the crooks of her elbows and between her breasts. She is darkly, strongly female in a way that used to scare him. Not his type. The first time they made love had been