Sophie sleeps in Nadia’s arms. It is an uneasy sleep and Nadia can hear the bubbles moving in her tummy. She lifts the baby against her shoulder and rubs her back to send the bubbles upwards. Her breasts are pressed against her ribcage by the baby. They are damp and raw, and her nipples sting. She puts Sophie down for a moment and reaches back to fasten her bra and pull down her top. She has a mouthful of drink to try and rid herself of the sickly milkish taste in her own mouth. She does feel sick. She holds Sophie up again and nuzzles her face into the comforting warmth of her neck. The clock on the mantelpiece gives a tinny chime. It is eleven o’clock. The jukebox is turned off abruptly. Nadia hadn’t realised how much noise it had been making; now that the bassy thud has stopped it seems oddly quiet. The clock nibbles away at the minutes; there is the occasional sound of a raised voice from the bar. But the walls are thick. There is also the smell of beer and smoke which drifts through whenever the door into the bar is opened. Not a good atmosphere for a baby. Nadia feels a mother’s indignation. Not good for her tiny lungs to breathe in smoke.
Sophie wakes and is quite violently sick, a sour yellow froth all down her front. Then she begins to cry again, a miserable weak cry. Nadia wipes away the worst of the sick with tissues. There is an acrid smell now, and Sophie feels cold. She should be changed out of the dirty sleep-suit. But perhaps she is still hungry. Nadia picks up the bottle, which has cooled now to blood heat. ‘Let’s top you up,’ she says. Sophie accepts the clear rubber teat happily, almost with relief. She looks earnestly up into Nadia’s eyes as she sucks, a little puzzled frown on her brow. Occasionally she relaxes her mouth around the teat for long enough to answer Nadia’s smile and then resumes her sucking more fervently than before, as if to make up for lost time. Nadia marvels at her purpose, the way she is so much here, so definite a person, so dignified even. She is more relaxed with the bottle than with Nadia’s breast. There is less struggle, not so hungry now, Nadia thinks, proudly, guiltily. She looks at the steady beat of Sophie’s fontanelle. The softness of her head is terrifying, the precious brain protected only by the soft pulsing membrane. Sophie flexes her toes against the tight material of her suit. Nadia holds her hand against them so they have something to push against. Sophie pauses in her sucking to give an appreciative gurgle.
‘Good girl,’ Nadia says. ‘Clever Sophie.’ She bends down her head and kisses the baby. How could any mother ever leave her baby for even an instant? She would never leave Sophie with another person, not with a grandparent, not even with … her father.
But her mind stops when it comes to Simon, for he is not part of the game. He is somewhere outside. The cold fish butts her in the belly with its blunt nose. No. Simon is not in the game. Or the hurt or the anger. No, that is the other thing. And she would not leave Sophie with anyone. Not trust anyone. Ever. Not Sophie’s granny, not even if she begged. It is another presence now that nudges, another memory that rises to the surface. ‘You won’t know what it’s like till you’re a mother yourself.’ It is her own mother. Perhaps it is because she has this baby now that the memory of June is becoming so irresistible, emerging so irrepressibly. All the clichés that are always there on the tip of her tongue are her mother’s clichés, they are what will bring her mother back unwelcome to her mind. All her adult life, Nadia has flinched away from the sayings and the clichés. But they are woven into the fabric of her own mind, together with her flinching, like a fault. And she has to admit there is truth in them, a depressing aptness, a truth that trivialises rather than dignifies her experience of life – but truth nevertheless.
Although she isn’t dead, Nadia has pushed her mother into the area of her mind reserved for the dead or those gone for ever from her life. Sophie has fallen asleep. One of her eyes has not closed properly and Nadia pushes the lid firmly shut, as if Sophie is a doll. The bottle is empty and she has been sucking in her sleep on thin air. Nadia removes the bottle from her mouth, looks at the swollen lips, the little sucking blister on the top lip, then cradles Sophie close.
Once June must have held her like this, close and warm, her own tummy distended with milk. She reaches forward and drains her glass. She feels quite nauseous and fuzzy. She remembers a conversation. It took place in her first flat, shortly after she’d left home to begin art college. It was a huge flat, one wing of a mansion house which had been left stranded incongruously on the edge of a dual-carriageway. She shared it with several other students. She was proud of the flat, ignoring its seediness and focusing instead on the elegant windows that reached the floor, the long tasselled velvet curtains, the Persian carpets. ‘Persian type,’ June had insisted, ‘and on their last legs at that.’ Nadia’s own room was a slice of another, so that the ornate coving on the ceiling was cut off at a sudden angle and almost one whole wall was taken up with a marble fireplace of surreal proportions. Nadia had spent her first few weeks concentrating on her room. She’d painted the walls dark blue and stencilled golden stars on them. She’d dyed sheets dark blue and appliqued them with moons and stars for a bed cover, and curtains that were only slightly too short. She had been proud of it, longing for her mother to visit so that she could show her how grown-up she was, how capable of making her own home. She’d spent an afternoon shopping, skipping a lecture to do so, and bought all her mother’s favourite things, shrimps, flaky-pastry sausage rolls, Battenburg and chocolate éclairs.
Sophie wakes and cries. She is cold. Nadia reaches for a shawl from the carry-cot and wraps her up. She smells horrible in the sicky sleep-suit. ‘I’ll change you in a minute,’ Nadia promises. She turns up the gas fire and walks round with Sophie looking over her shoulder, holding her little fingers out stiffly, gazing sleepily at the garish roses.
June hadn’t said a thing about the room. And it was not the sort of decor that could possibly pass unnoticed. If she’d wanted approval she should have chosen magnolia or muffin, she had thought bitterly, and flowery cushions and scatter rugs. June approved of the tea, though, and munched her way through it as they sat side by side on the edge of Nadia’s sagging bed, talking about people Nadia had left behind in her home town. Nadia felt disgruntled that June didn’t seem more interested in her, more regretful that she’d left. She didn’t bring food like some of the other students’ mothers did. She didn’t ask to meet Nadia’s new friends, or look around the rest of the flat. She didn’t even ask about Nadia’s course. Nadia felt that June had washed her hands of her and the crumbs of Battenburg dried in her mouth and she’d felt on the brink of self-pitying tears.
‘I want to talk to you,’ June said then, not noticing Nadia’s unhappiness. ‘There’s no one else I can have a real heart-to-heart with.’
‘All right,’ Nadia said unwillingly, and then she had been irritated when June started procrastinating, insisting on another cup of tea, which entailed a trip down to the kitchen.
‘Go on then,’ Nadia said when they were eventually settled back on the bed.
June cleared her throat. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses bright and shifty. ‘I’m in a bit of a spot,’ she said eventually, ‘well more than a spot, a … a crisis.’
Nadia was startled to hear June rising from euphemism to a real serious word.
‘Crisis? What? Is it Dad?’
‘No, not Dad. Not really.’
‘What then? Money?’
‘No.’ June sipped her tea, put her cup down on the floor and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief. ‘Nadia, I’m expecting.’
Nadia put her own cup down and there was a pause. She felt cold prickles travel all down her spine – Someone is walking on my grave, she thought and then shook her head, impatient at the way her imagination was so ensnared. She didn’t know what to say. What does a nineteen-year-old say to her pregnant mother?
‘But you’re fifty!’ she said.
‘Forty-nine.’
‘I didn’t think it was possible at your age.’
‘Well now you know,’ June snapped. She picked up her cup a
gain. ‘I found out last week. I’d been feeling off. Periods stopped. Assumed it was the change, well you would, wouldn’t you, at my time of life …’
‘What does Dad think?’ Nadia asked.
June blushed, a dark mottled flush on her neck, her crêpey ageing neck, Nadia noticed spitefully.
‘Your father doesn’t know.’
‘Well you’d better tell him then, hadn’t you? Unless you’re planning to keep it a lovely surprise.’
‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,’ June retorted, nettled.
‘I think you’ll find it’s the pun actually.’
‘I’m confiding in you because I thought I might get a bit of sympathy.’
‘Sympathy!’
‘You see, I’m not keeping it. I’m having it … seen to.’
‘An abortion you mean?’
‘Horrible word.’
‘But still, that’s what it is.’
‘All right, Nadia, abortion. I’m having an abortion. Satisfied?’
‘I suppose that’s the best thing,’ Nadia said. The idea repelled her, the whole idea: her mother – sex – abortion – blood. And the most sickening thing was that she had to know. She didn’t need to know.
‘I didn’t think Daddy was up to it,’ she said cruelly.
‘Well, you see, it isn’t his.’ June said this quickly, looking down at her knees. Nadia looked down with her at the plump knees, white pleated skirt, sheer tights, thick ankles and black patent-leather shoes, high-heeled and pointed. She’d dressed up for this meeting in the scruffy student flat. How pathetic.
‘What do you mean?’ She wondered if her mother’s thick legs were sexy then, to men of a certain age. Her mother! Men!
‘I thought you’d have realised,’ Jean continued quietly. ‘Your dad hasn’t been … well, not capable, for years and years, not since his illness.’
‘I hadn’t thought,’ Nadia said honestly.
They sat without speaking for a short time, listening to the window rattle as traffic roared by on the road outside. Someone upstairs put Genesis on loudly in the room above. ‘So you had affairs?’ she asked weakly. ‘Couldn’t you have just … not?’
‘Not affairs, Nadia,’ June said. ‘And for years and years I did “just not”. But then I met John last year at my French evening class and we got on like a house on fire. Introduced him to your father, him and his wife.’
‘Oh, so he’s married too, this John.’
‘Oh don’t worry, it was all above-board then. Just good friends. Daddy liked him very much. Likes. But then his wife went off last Christmas. Left him high and dry. On the cards apparently, but he’s such a nice man, so discreet – and loyal. But it all poured out one night in the pub after French. She’d given him the run-around all their married life apparently. And …’
‘And?’
‘We started to go out. The pictures, that sort of thing. All quite innocent. Daddy didn’t mind. Encouraged me. Well, he couldn’t come to the cinema, could he, not with his wheelchair, not without a great song and dance and you know how he feels about a fuss.’
‘And now you’re up the spout.’
‘Nadia!’ The telephone rang; someone answered it and shouted Nadia’s name but she didn’t answer.
‘I don’t know why you’re telling me all this,’ she said.
‘I thought … oh I was wrong, I can see that now, I thought you’d be a help. A trouble shared …’
‘You didn’t think about my feelings. Poor Dad. Whatever will he say?’
‘Your dad would understand. He knows I’m still … well, still a sensual woman.’ Nadia winced and picked at a loose thread in her skirt. ‘It doesn’t stop when you’re thirty, you know, madam. Sex. It gets better.’ June stood up. The embarrassment in the air was almost tangible. They did not look at one another again. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ June said, and she tried to say something else but her voice came out as a sob. She went out of the room. Nadia listened to her hard heels clacking on the uncarpeted stairs, feeling only glad that she had gone. She had been left thinking that she had been wronged. For twenty years she has held that against her mother. Held what against her? Her sexiness? Her unfaithfulness? But was it that? Perhaps her father had colluded. The abortion? Looking at it now, Nadia can see that was the only thing she could do. None of it was as simple as it had seemed then. Holding Sophie in her arms has unexpectedly wrenched her perspective. She flounders. Sees herself suddenly, her nineteen-year-old self, as heartless. All her mother had asked for was friendship. Light pours back over the years, cruelly illuminating her cruelty. She blinks.
And then what happened? She never knew. Presumably her mother had had the abortion, there was no more mention of the subject. There was her father’s death only months after that – he had been crippled with multiple sclerosis for years. And then the embarrassing wedding. And that had been the last she’d seen of June. They had exchanged Christmas cards each year. June has tried for years to communicate with Nadia, written, phoned, but Nadia has been uniformly cold and unresponsive. Stupid cow! she thinks now. So heartless? And now there is this lump – well might be – the lump that Iris read in her own palm.
Sophie gives a small expert burp and Nadia smiles. Did June feel such tenderness for her? She holds Sophie out at arm’s length and plays with her, lifts her up and down, until she laughs – perhaps her first laugh – and goes crosseyed with surprise at the noise. Nadia is overwhelmed by a wave of love. What if Sophie rejected – for that is what she had done – rejected her mother when she came to her for help? How could she bear that?
‘Oh my God,’ she sighs. Sophie grins at her and then goes red in the face and fills her nappy.
The crawl narrows to a short squeeze, just one long squirm through, the rock pressing. He exhales to narrow his girth and pushes through. The tightness is only a body’s length, and soon he is able to haul himself out into the Ballroom. Roland christened this the Ballroom because from the ceiling hang thousands of fine straw-like stalactites which when lit from below glitter like an enormous crystal chandelier; and because of the stalagmite columns, three pairs of them, that look for all the world like dancers frozen in time, turned to stone in the midst of a waltz. Simon stands and stretches. His knees are bruised and his back aches. He is sticky and white with the soft calcite – moonmilk – that coats the walls of the squeeze. He and Roland, in their delight at discovering the Ballroom, had danced together, a clownish parody of a waltz, la-la-ing the ‘Blue Danube’, their loud jubilant voices vibrating the straws on the ceiling until they shivered and clinked.
‘No one has ever set foot in this place before,’ Roland had said when they stopped, his voice reverent. ‘No human being.’
They had stood together then, the echo of their voices still reverberating, light from their lamps skittering over the points of the rustling straws and casting long swaying shadows from the dancers. And now Simon is startled by the memory of their loud foolish voices, like an echo trace sounding from the walls, or is it in his ears? Faint concentric circles of sound.
Roland had stood, a big man, bearded, bluff, and in his eyes Simon had thought he had seen tears. Roland had been moved by the beauty. Changed perhaps? He’d turned to Simon and his eyes had been naked, and Simon had understood, would have understood even if Roland had not blundered with words: ‘Makes you wonder, man, what it all means. Is it all just … chance? Christ! All this down here, this fucking beauty, man. Makes you realise …’
Simon breathes in sharply. He feels as if he has been winded by this sudden vivid memory of Roland, the very sound of his voice. Roland, whose last hours alive had been spent in this place, in this quest to make a link. Who had stood in this very spot, moonmilk glimmering on his back and thighs, and thought, no doubt, about Simon and known that he would feel betrayed by the exclusion. For it should have been the two of them. Roland had deceived him. Simon feels cold for the first time. This is what he has always assumed, but it may not have been a delib
erate deception. Perhaps whatever has come over Simon, seduced him down here alone, came over Roland too. Simon cannot ignore the terrible sensation that someone is beside him. This feeling has been growing, it is as if someone is there just at the corner of his eye, just out of his field of vision, and because of the slow sweep of his light as he turns, they are always just out of sight. But there is the sense of a presence. Of course there is no one. That is something you can be sure of underground, so very far underground. The interior of the cave glitters. Last time it glittered so, it had been the rescue party’s torches that illuminated it, their voices that set the straws rustling. Simon had been one of that party. But they never found Roland. Some of his equipment, but not a sign of the man.
This is where he will stop. He can hear the rush of the river. No louder than the sound he remembers, surprisingly. Underground water is unpredictable. The torrents of spring rain may have found another way, may not have altered this river more than slightly. He hears a gurgle below him, near his feet. He steps back and looks down. There is a small but rising pool of water, a perfect swelling circle in a hollow on the floor. As he watches, it swells to the size of a child’s paddling pool and stops. It seems to tense – as if the surface skin has tensed with anticipation – and then there is a sucking sound as it diminishes, shrinks back through a tiny aperture like a plughole in the floor. He smiles, his momentary fear at the sight of the rising water evaporating. Strange he doesn’t remember this. It is an ebb and flow pool. Sure enough there is another gurgle, almost as if the rock itself is chuckling, and the water rises again. On his previous expeditions the weather has always been dry, that is why he’s never seen it before. The limestone is gorged with water. It is a magical thing, the slow regular pulse of crystal water.
Limestone and Clay Page 11
