Limestone and Clay

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘Oh yes.’ Simon turns towards her. ‘I’m not upset.’ Nadia swallows the last of her – now flat – wine. Simon sits down beside her and puts his arms around her. She pulls back and looks at him, seeing again the bleakness in his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘Just sorry.’ He holds her tight, burying his face in her neck.

  There is something she must ask, though she fears the answer. She looks over his shoulder as she speaks, ‘Simon, is it that you still …’

  ‘No!’ Simon exclaims, quite violently.

  ‘Well then? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know, I … I’m just sorry it isn’t you.’

  ‘Ah.’ Nadia closes her eyes again. She lets him hold her, but her own arms are limp. Sorry! she thinks, how trivial a word. But sorrow is apt. It is sorrow she feels, but she rebels against pity. She feels, also, rage. But undirected. It is nobody’s fault, is it, that Celia’s reproductive system is so bloody efficient while her own has proved, so far, duff? What can she do with her rage? Where can she send it?

  She does not want him touching her. She moves away, makes herself stiff, her face is like cardboard. He looks at her, puzzled.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t be miserable, Nadia.’ She doesn’t answer, chews viciously on the corner of her thumbnail. ‘I see you’ve been reading Plath again.’

  ‘So?’ She has ripped a shred of skin with her teeth, and it hurts. Tears come to her eyes. She gets up quickly to stop him seeing.

  ‘Did you think you were?’ he asks, but Nadia will not answer. He follows her into the bathroom.

  ‘Get out, will you. Can’t I have some privacy?’

  ‘You should have said,’ Simon says. ‘Isn’t it to do with me? Nadia, are you angry with me?’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Nadia shuts the door in his face. She brushes her teeth, spits violent froth in the basin. She feels sick from the dinner and the wine and the news, Celia’s wonderful news. She puts on her nightdress, gets into bed and pretends to read, ignoring Simon when he gets in.

  ‘Funny how people who don’t like poetry like Sylvia Plath,’ he says.

  ‘And people who do,’ she retorts, turning the page. ‘Does it threaten you?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Simon snuggles against her but she lies stiff. ‘Of course it doesn’t. I do love you,’ he says miserably.

  ‘I’m trying to read,’ says Nadia.

  Simon sleeps and Nadia listens resentfully to his breathing. I should not be angry with him, she thinks. My rage is not for him. Not really. But how can he sleep while I am so angry? How can he just slip away? It is evasion. It is a dirty trick. She moves roughly, elbows his ribs, but he does not wake, only sighs in his sleep and turns over. They should have talked. Air your differences, her mother would have said. Bring them out into the open. Did she really say that? And what differences? Celia is pregnant. She can hardly blame Simon for that. Nadia is not pregnant. And that’s not his fault either. Is it the caving that is making her so angry? But she always knew he was a caver, how can she be angry with him for being what he is? What he has always been. We should have talked, she thinks, then I would be able to sleep. But I am not tired, I’ve been sleeping all day. How can Simon sleep while I’m so awake? He sleeps like a baby – only babies don’t sleep at night, people complain. Lucky fertile people complain about their broken nights. How she would love to stumble from her bed to soothe a crying child. Simon groans as if he’s having a dream. ‘Bastard,’ she whispers. Lines come into her head:

  I was angry with my friend;

  I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

  I was angry with my foe,

  I told it not, my wrath did grow.

  I do like poetry, she thinks, suddenly sitting up, dragging the quilt off Simon. How dare he imply that I don’t!

  She gets up and stands glaring at Simon, who lies uncovered on the bed, dimly illuminated by the light from a street lamp outside their window. He sleeps naked, and his precious penis is squashed against his leg, clinging like a leech. She throws the quilt on top of him and goes into the kitchen to heat milk. She drinks it sitting cross-legged in front of the gas fire, wrapped in her dressing gown. There must be a leak in the chimney, for every now and then there is a hiss and shudder from the fire as if a raindrop is finding its way in. There is a low sporadic sound that she cannot identify and then she realises that it is snoring; not Simon, but a rumble from downstairs. Iris’s husband, perhaps.

  Maybe it’s Simon’s sperm that’s at fault. Simon, lying there so smugly oblivious in his sleep with his soft little leech. She imagines his sperm, inactive or maimed, swimming round in circles, their tails flapping feebly. She wonders if he’s thought of that. That it might be his fault. But no. For she has conceived. And he told her once about a girl he’d made pregnant, who’d had an abortion. So it can’t be him.

  She goes into her studio, and looks into the cold cupboard at the drying pots. She could fire them tonight, since she’s not asleep. It would take hours for the kiln to heat to temperature. It has to be switched on and off regularly for it mustn’t heat too fast. It is a nuisance. Laborious. But it would be a use of the night that hangs so emptily ahead of her.

  She picks up and taps the bottom of her pots, listening for the musical clink that tells her that they’re quite dry. She hates them, the silly, smug shapes. What do they say? I am a mug. I am mask. I am hand-crafted. Buy me. That is what they are designed to say. I won’t make any more, she thinks. The egg-cups are not ready for firing. She should wait for them. But they are such trivial things. She breaks one against her bench. It splits easily.

  She loads the kiln, and takes the bungs out to let the first moisture and gases escape as the pots begin to heat. Inside the peep-hole she puts some thermodynamic temperature cones. When the tip of the first one bends the temperature will be right for the bungs to go back in. She switches the kiln on. It hums faintly. She throws the bits of the broken egg-cup into a bin of dried fragments. The good thing about clay is that until it is fired it is green. It can be broken down, robbed of its edges: it can return to formlessness and be remade.

  Tea

  Nadia wedges some clay, turning it round and round, leaning all her weight on it, pressing into it with the balls of both her hands and then flopping it over, the stiff mass, waking it with her energy into a warmer plasticity. It is slick, grey clay, good, fat, stretchy, strong stuff. She slices through it with a wire, looks with satisfaction at the smoothness of the sliced surfaces, no grit, no pockets of air. It is even and dense. The wedging has tired her arms and shoulders; the muscles complain. She stretches back, one arm over her shoulder, one stretching up between her shoulderblades to catch the other’s fingers, a yoga exercise to limber the back and shoulders, but her fingers slip from each other, ungraspable with their flaking film of clay.

  And there it sits, a lump waiting to be assigned a form. There is no point, perhaps, but there is no point in leaving it either. No more point in a formless mass in her plastic-lined dustbin than in what it might become. The kiln hums in the corner, there is a little warmth leaking from it despite the insulation, and a hot baked-earth smell. She sat up most of the night waiting for the kiln to heat and now, in the morning, with sharp crumbs of sleep in the corners of her eyes, and undreamt dreams lurking in her head, she works.

  And what will she make? She smooths her fingers over the surface of the clay. She thinks of Simon’s shoulder, its beauty in the pearly dawn light. And then his sleeping body stripped naked by her anger, anger which for a moment she can’t recall. The same body has the power to move her in some moods, anger her in others. And sometimes there is indifference. It is me, she thinks. The capacity of Simon’s body to move me depends on my attitude, not on itself. She feels profound for a moment until her mother chips in: ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ the oldest and tritest of her cliches. Said in response to Nadia’s complaint about her own lack of beauty. Sai
d, leaning over Nadia’s shoulder, gazing into the mirror with her, with an inflection that meant that while she didn’t behold beauty herself, you never knew what others might see. And Simon thinks she’s beautiful; sometimes he says that, and sometimes she is.

  She fingers the cold pliant clay. Work, she tells herself, you must work. You must make something. She digs her fingers in and fashions a crude face, hollow eyes, a pinched ridged nose, a gaping mouth. It is an ignorant, frightened face. She screws her fist into it to eradicate the features. Despite the slight warmth from the kiln she is cold. She wraps her hands around the lump, pulls it away from the bench, smooths it into a pleasing shape. It is a curled shape, something entire. A foetus perhaps, snug as a bud and at home like a sprat in a pickle jug – bloody Sylvia bloody Plath. She balls the clay and wanders into the kitchen to put on the kettle.

  From the window, she watches Iris on her way out. It is raining slightly. She watches her hesitate before deciding to put up her umbrella, a clear plastic one inside which her head and shoulders are a blur. Is she off to sell fortunes or Intrigue? It will be Intrigue, because she has her sample case in her free hand. She walks quickly, there is optimism in her stride. Today, perhaps, she’ll make some sales.

  In her studio, Nadia models a hand. She works fast. It is a palm, lying open, all the lines etched clear enough to read. She pauses and relaxes her own left hand on the bench, seeing the way the fingers curl up slightly, the hollowed palm with its net of lines exaggerated by the drying clay. She is curious about the lines, so intricate and so precise, stamped on her palms like brands. With a fine tool she teases the finger-ends into nails like her own, two bitten, one broken, one long. She uses her own long nail as a tool as she works, cleaning out the little wedges of clay from underneath it with her other thumbnail until there is a tiny pile like mouse-droppings scattered around the hand. The wrist is an ugly soft stump. She frowns, slices it off cleanly with a cheese-wire. Is that better? She stands back and considers it. She finds that her coffee is cold and is pleased, for that is a sign of absorption. This hand is the first thing she’s been absorbed in for weeks. It may be pointless, but it is there, a fine, cold gesture, reaching out – or beckoning.

  She looks through the peep-hole in the kiln. The pots are glowing cherry red. The last cone has bowed its head. She turns off the kiln. It makes a shuddery sigh, as if relieved. Now it will slowly cool, creaking and groaning. It will be a day before she can open it and take out the biscuit-fired pots, ready for their glaze. Once the pots are fired they are like stone again, they cannot be broken down except into useless shards. It is mysterious, the process, circular. First there is rock, which decomposes into clay, and then, after the digging, purifying and working, there is the firing, which transforms it into another kind of stone. But fragile.

  She washes the grey clay off her hands, watches them grow pink in the hot water, the basin become filthy with the splashes. She is light-hearted. There is such satisfaction in making use of the morning, having something to show for it. Perhaps this is what she should do. Sculpture, sculpt from the human body. Perhaps she should employ a model, sculpt whole figures, sculpt all the different parts. To capture the language of the body, she thinks, that is it. The hesitations, the confidence, depression, friendliness, tension, exhilaration. Is it possible? As her toasted cheese bubbles under the grill she imagines an exhibition. Body Language? Voice of Clay? The Body Eloquent? There will be rows of faces – not the blank masks – eloquent faces and frozen limbs, held like question marks, exclamation marks, held in the poses that in living bodies are fleeting, are read subliminally. The Sublimation of the Subliminal? No! She grins into her toasted cheese. She eats standing up, gazing our of the window. In the Manner of the Word, perhaps? Iris returns, her umbrella furled under her arm, for it has stopped raining. By the dip of her head and the heavy way she places her feet, Nadia can see that she has had no success, that she is tired and fed up. There is no need to see her face to be able to tell that. This is what she must capture. Perhaps she will not use faces, perhaps facial expressions are too obvious, too easy. Faceless Voices? Who would be her model? Who would be grateful for a bit of cash? She hears Iris banging shut the front door. Iris might. Later she’ll visit and ask her – and perhaps have her palm read too.

  ‘Hello.’ Iris stands back from the door. ‘Come in, duck.’

  Nadia can smell cooking. ‘Are you eating? It’s nothing important. I can come back later.’

  ‘You look better,’ Iris observes. ‘No, do come in, it doesn’t matter. Would you like some?’

  ‘I’ve eaten.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Iris leads her into the kitchen. ‘Your eyeshadow hasn’t come yet,’ she says.

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t expect …’

  ‘Derek, it’s Nadia from upstairs,’ she calls through the wall. ‘Just hold on while I dish up,’ she says.

  She opens the oven and there is a rush of brown meaty fragrance. She brings out a Fray Bentos steak-and-kidney pie risen proud and crusty from its tin. ‘There’s plenty for three,’ she says, but Nadia shakes her head.

  ‘Perhaps I’ll go. You don’t want me hovering while you’re eating. I’m sure Derek won’t.’

  ‘Oh he’s oblivious,’ Iris says cheerfully. She tips a mound of steaming potatoes into a colander, shakes them and pours three-quarters of them onto one plate, the rest onto the other. She divides the pie into a large and a smaller piece. ‘Sure?’ she asks, with the knife poised. Nadia nods. ‘No greens,’ Iris apologises. ‘I know they’re good for you but we can’t stick them. Come through.’

  She picks up the heavily laden plate and, pushing sideways through a dangling door-screen of gaudy plastic strips, leads Nadia into the sitting room. It is a dark room, the light muffled by heavy net curtains, the spaces cluttered with spindly bits of dark furniture, every surface crammed with blown-glass animals, seals and parrots and gaudy dogs. The television is switched on and in front of it there is an enormous red moquette armchair, of which Nadia can only see the back, and above it the top of a dark head.

  ‘Derek, this is Nadia; Nadia, Derek.’ Iris leads Nadia round. Derek fills the armchair as if he has been modelled to fit it. His hair is long and his beard, luxuriant as any prophet’s and liberally clotted with food, cascades over his belly. He nods at Nadia, and returns his eyes to the screen, where an animated fireman is climbing a ladder.

  Iris puts a tray with a picture of Buckingham Palace on it onto his lap and then the plate of food. ‘We tend, usually, to watch TV while we eat,’ he says, and his voice is a delicate well-bred surprise, as if the voice of a wood-pigeon had issued from the mouth of a frog.

  ‘I’ll come back later,’ Nadia says again, wishing to escape from the overwhelming smell of steak-and-kidney and another, stranger, smell she can’t identify. ‘Daft of me to come at lunchtime. I get all out of sync., working alone.’ Derek nods politely, but keeps his eyes on the screen. He begins shovelling potatoes into his mouth.

  Iris beckons her out. ‘I’ll eat in the kitchen, duck. Then we can talk without that racket. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Well if you’re sure.’

  Iris fills the kettle.

  ‘No. You sit down. I’ll make tea while you eat your lunch,’ Nadia says. ‘Much luck this morning?’

  Iris sighs. ‘One stinking deodorant. What shall I do with the profit? World cruise, do you think?’

  Nadia smiles. ‘I wondered if you’d do something for me. A bit of modelling. I’d pay.’

  Iris snorts and a fragment of puff pastry flies across the table. ‘Modelling? Me? What for, a shipwreck?’

  ‘Some work I’m doing – some sculpture.’

  ‘I don’t know … I mean I’m hardly Miss sodding World, am I?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Would I have to strip off?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m interested in your hands and feet …’

  Iris looks at her rough stubby fingers, splays them in front of h
er. ‘Modelling! Wait till I tell Derek!’

  ‘So you will?’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’

  ‘Wonderful. What about tomorrow, could you spare an hour in the morning?’

  ‘I’ll have to consult my diary,’ Iris says, and grins.

  ‘About ten? The other thing is, I wondered if you’d have time to do my fortune this afternoon – read my palm.’

  ‘Bless you. Course I will.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘To you, five pounds. I have a sliding scale,’ she explains, and licks gravy from her lips. ‘That’s at the bottom of it. Don’t mind Derek,’ she says, lowering her voice, ‘he’s sedentary by habit.’ With her fork she mashes a potato into the gravy from her pie. She eats it with a faraway look in her eyes. ‘I fret about his heart. He eats like a frigging horse, but he doesn’t work like one, that’s what I say to him. All he does is sit, sit and eat and sleep. Loves his TV and his papers and a flutter on the horses. Does get into a lather over the horses.’

  ‘Does he get out? I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘Tea’s in the caddy,’ Iris says. Nadia spoons it into the pot and puts on an orange woolly tea-cosy with a pom-pom on the top. ‘Out?’ Iris laughs briefly and then her face falls and in that change of expression Nadia sees the elusiveness she’d love to capture. But can it be captured, made solid, fired even, into stone? And without the use of the face, is there a corresponding body-signal, the beginning of a gesture …?

  ‘He gets as far as the bog, and into bed. Like sleeping next to a wart-hog,’ she says. ‘Snore?’ She smiles grimly and lays down her knife and fork. Nadia recalls the rumbling last night, the sound she’d guessed was snoring, which vibrated through the floorboards.