*
Iris stands by her open kitchen door, lights a cigarette and watches water splatter down the side of the house from a clump of matted green where some crack or block – she doesn’t want to think about what exactly – has for a year or so caused this to happen. Brown suds are rising from the drain and when she opens the cupboard by the sink it releases a mouldy vapour. She looks up at the roof and down at the drain.
The museum is also prone to leaks and blockages. Water drips from light fittings and buckets are deployed. The work room in the stores, however, is temperature-controlled and windowless.
Iris enjoys the absence of time and weather, and the hours spent alone with a single object. Waiting for her in a plastic container in the laboratory sits the merman or ningyo. This one is somewhere between one and two hundred years old, and was obtained by a Dutch merchant at a fair in Japan. He has a fish’s skin, bones and tail but dog’s teeth, cat’s claws and a face that is neither animal nor human. X-rays have given Iris some knowledge of his construction, confirming muddled layers of flesh and paper, and revealing the wire and nails that keep him in place.
There are ningyo who stand up and scream, and those, like this one, who crawl towards you on their bellies. His tail is negligible but he’s hauling his heavily ribbed bulk forwards with powerful arms. His mouth is open wide and one taloned finger is raised but his intentions are unreadable. For all the detail of his teeth and claws, his eyes are a couple of empty whorls. The pale fur on his head, arms and back (fox or rabbit) gives him a senile or venerable air – not so much monkey as monkey god.
The merman has been in storage for twenty years and Iris has to recommend whether or not he can be put back on display. She’s about to complete a conservation analysis and is worried about the varying requirements of skin, paper, metal, fur and bone. There are also dangers to be considered. If an object has elements of taxidermy then it may have been preserved with formaldehyde, or disinfected with arsenic or mercury when it arrived at the museum. The merman, intended to bring protection and luck, was probably poisonous. Iris does not find this ironic. It is a practical challenge.
His carton has been lined with chemically neutral packaging. Blocks of foam hold him in place and acid-free tissue has been used as extra protection and support. Though carefully contained, the merman has not been concealed. The wrapped object must remain visible so that the person unpacking it can see what they are about to touch.
The story was that if you ate the flesh of a ningyo you’d live forever but would eventually kill yourself out of boredom. Or that if you took a ningyo from the sea and held it captive, you’d be cursed. Or that there was a golden future ahead that would bring with it a deadly plague and only by possessing such a creature could you enjoy great prosperity while rendering yourself immune.
The merman is an example of what happens when different elements are forced together in an attempt to produce something magical. He belongs in the medical gallery alongside the surgical instruments, the dentist’s chairs and the doctors’ brass nameplates because he is a warning and the warning he gives is a kind of cure.
a crowded room
Helen is walking back into the party when she catches sight of Raif and his face lights up. She feels a pulse of delight just as she realises that it’s not her he’s looking at. She watches him walk towards the person who has thrown this switch: a small woman, not young, a solid presence in a plain white dress and flat shoes. While she looks unremarkable, she draws the eye. She seems particularly clear and still.
The party, to launch a fellowship for which there is no sponsor as yet, is in a large plain room in one of the central colleges. It’s full of people who know each other and who’ve come straight from work. Helen is feeling out of place in her salmon-pink velvet dress, her stilettos and bouncy blow-dried hair. She has just spent a long time in the Ladies, studying herself under feeble light. The only other women who have dressed up as much as she are younger. They’ve been brought along by men who have no conception of this as a date and who are locked into conversation with each other. These women stand alongside Helen at the mirror and take their time adding to their already overdone faces.
Helen is tall and tapering and widely admired but now she rounds her shoulders and watches Raif. He and the woman don’t kiss hello, the woman doesn’t even smile, but Raif is grinning and standing up taller. He says something in the woman’s ear and she laughs and puts a hand on his arm as she introduces him to her group.
This is a chance meeting in a room in which both Iris and Raif belong. They’re on common ground and so feel a little released. Raif can walk towards Iris without hesitation and she can claim him. In the conversation that follows, they give the impression of knowing each other well. She recalls how he almost dropped the cloud mirror out of a window. He counters that he caught her as she fell down the station steps. They don’t look at each other but stand side by side, similar in their posture, Helen notes, as if announcing that they are of a kind.
Such attractions are being played out elsewhere in the room and on the whole they mean nothing. A man is talking to one woman while his body twists towards another. A student has placed herself in her tutor’s eyeline, unaware that she keeps patting her hair and licking her lips as she pretends to listen to her date. A man has placed his hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder as if stopping him tipping into the arms of the person they’ve just met.
These are signals rather than messages. Helen knows this. She’s read about it and discussed it with friends, and she can tell that the man and woman she’s standing beside are surely having an affair. Why else are they being so attentive to each other’s partners, smiling to the extent of baring their teeth? She knows what it is to catch the blast of someone’s attention or to feel a taut line to them wherever they are in a room.
Even though she realises that it’s not a good idea, Helen walks over to Raif. He takes a long moment to acknowledge her and when he does, he introduces her by both name and surname, like a colleague, so that a woman – not the one in the white dress – says that Raif has been complaining about departmental politics and are they as awful as he says?
I don’t know. I’m not. I’m—
She wants to say Raif’s girlfriend (or partner?) and he might say We moved in together last week, and there would be a round of warm congratulations. But the woman who addressed her isn’t interested. She was just being polite and the conversation has rolled on. Raif is at his best. Iris says little but seems at ease. She doesn’t look at Helen, who is willing her to do so. Close up, Helen realises that Iris is possibly older than Raif and that she is a force. Her plain dress, her hair, are background.
Someone taps Iris on the shoulder so that she turns out of the group and – hand on his arm again – takes Raif with her into a new tight knot. Those remaining consider Helen. One says firmly how lovely it was to meet her as they fade away. Iris introduces Raif to the director of her museum, who says hello and moves on.
During the brief time in which Raif and Iris are alone, they hand each other a key. He begins.
You alright?
Just about. You?
Neither is suffering. This is how they tell each other that there’s a quieter connection to be made.
Oh, I’m fine, he says. But it’s so crowded—
Yes, she says. It is.
Raif wants to intensify whatever this is, to have something to hold onto and carry home.
Are we talking about life or this room?
Or life as a room?
She means to deflect him but he likes this idea and pursues it.
So if your life were a room, what would it—
Walls, she interrupts him. It would be four walls – no windows or doors – gradually closing in.
They are looking so directly at each other that neither is aware of it.
What about you? she asks. What’s the first thing I’d see in your so-called room?
My broken heart.
Iris is
so surprised and so moved that she’s unable to respond before the tall woman in the pink dress reinserts herself. She looks as if she has something urgent to say so Iris smiles and waits.
I’d like another glass of wine, Helen says specifically to Raif.
He doesn’t look at her as he replies.
Then get one.
Helen takes a step back. Raif picks up his earlier conversation with Iris.
So the model is on display at the moment?
Yes. I believe it’s the largest Auzoux made in the Normandy factory.
I’ve seen some of the moulds in Cambridge. The starfish, the fern, the May beetle …
Helen is still there, trying to find a way in.
Model of what?
A horse, Iris explains.
You mean like a toy?
No, an anatomical model.
Didn’t they teach anatomy through dissection?
Yes, but—
Another person taps Iris on the shoulder, she greets them, and when she turns back Raif and Helen have gone.
On her way home Iris concludes that Helen is a colleague who has a crush on Raif. He was being polite but was clearly thrown by her persistence. Iris is pleased with her own gracious behaviour in letting her twice join their conversation.
*
Helen is driving them home.
So did you enjoy that? Raif asks, leaning back and shutting his eyes.
Yes. Although I didn’t really know who anyone was and so it was all a bit—
I did warn you.
But you could have—
You should take the next left. There are roadworks along here.
She knows there’s nothing to be gained by saying anything. This is something else she’s read about and discussed. She knows how he will react and that she will still say it.
When I came over. I mean when you were talking to that woman. The one in the white dress. The thing is, I could see why they all thought I was your colleague. You introduced me as if you barely knew me. I mean I felt like a stranger who’d just walked up and stood beside you.
Perhaps it’s not such a good idea for you to come to my work events. Not if you don’t enjoy them.
But I would enjoy myself if you’d just—
Just what?
You seemed uncomfortable.
I thought you said that you were the one who felt uncomfortable.
I know. I did. But I was because you were.
I was or I seemed?
Helen has been redirected from a large room to a small one where they will pick over words – something he is good at. She makes herself stop talking.
The traffic has come to a halt. It’s after rush hour and before pub closing on a weekday, yet these last two miles will take as long as the rest of the journey. The lights turn green but no one moves. Helen watches three girls sitting on a bench reading and writing messages on their phones. She can’t tell if they’re best friends or total strangers. Beside them a man is turning small circles, one hand reaching towards passers-by. Is he asking for money or that they keep him from falling? He doesn’t bother the girls, who sit there in a force field of youth.
Raif knows that he’s hurt Helen but not how. He reaches for her hand and she pulls away. The gesture was too deliberate. What does she want? For him to take her hand without planning to first. How can he achieve this?
He’d taken her to the party hoping that if he presented them as a couple to the world, he’d be able to convince himself. He stood there, trying to be the man who arrived with Helen and failing. Then he’d seen Iris and switched himself on, walked over and made a small claim, which she reciprocated.
something is pressing
From three brief meetings Iris has built an idea of Raif that she considers complete, and the sharp tone in which he spoke to Helen at that party has no place in it. She pushes the memory away but it will float back. Meanwhile he stands in her mind, isolated and simplified. He is something in outline, what exactly she can’t say.
One evening she and Max take beer up onto the roof of the stores. Iris hasn’t mentioned David for several weeks and Max is curious. Iris evidently wants to talk about something and it seems not to be David.
I went to that party, she begins. It turned out to be quite interesting.
You met someone.
Not really.
What’s his name?
Why is that the first thing people ask? About dogs and babies and other people. It doesn’t tell you anything.
Of course it does.
Iris wants Raif in the air but not fixed there. She won’t say his name. She brought up the party so that she could see what it was like to mention him and now that she has, there’s no need to say any more. Only something is pressing.
There was someone with him, or who knew him.
A partner?
No. I don’t know. At least, he didn’t seem pleased. The way he spoke to her—
What did he say?
She said she wanted a drink. Like it was an announcement and he was supposed to do something about it.
His date, at least. How did he respond?
He didn’t, really.
But you just said something about how he spoke to her.
Did I?
Iris has arrived at the detail that keeps placing itself in front of everything else.
I think he’s a bit awkward.
Rude?
He was nervous and – I don’t know – logical.
Like you, you mean.
He was like that when he came to the museum.
When was that?
Didn’t I say?
No, you didn’t.
The point is it was ages ago and we barely met but we met again. And before that, actually.
I see.
Iris and Max have had many conversations along these lines. Iris offers evidence of something that she doesn’t, in the end, want to acknowledge. Her friend is quick to formulate and Iris just as quick to deflect. It’s as if she’s being given pieces of a puzzle that she lays out face down. Max offers another part of the puzzle.
How’s David?
David? He’s alright. I think.
Still at his sister’s?
I suppose so. Yes.
But how is he really?
Alright. As far as I know.
It’s a terrible disease.
It’s more of a diagnosis.
But he had those episodes.
That’s what I mean. Most of the time he’s fine.
It is Iris who brings the conversation back to Raif and she’s annoyed with herself for doing so. Described out loud, what she thought of as an enlivening tension sounds so girlish.
I do wonder, she says, what he meant.
Max is still worrying about David.
Who? Oh. Meant by what?
By giving me his card and getting in touch and sending me all these messages.
You write back?
I do. It’s a good conversation.
How often?
I don’t know. Quite often. Most days.
Most days?
Iris looks worried.
Is there something wrong with that?
This is a real question. She likes to do things properly but is often unsure what this might mean.
Nothing’s wrong with it as it is, says Max. It’s just a conversation. Only where’s it leading?
Does it have to lead anywhere?
Do you want it to?
Iris doesn’t reply. Max tries again.
What did you feel when you first saw him?
I recognised him.
He reminded you of someone?
I don’t think so.
So what did you recognise?
I don’t know.
It’ll be something basic. The way he raised his hand or turned his head. It’ll have reminded you of something. Come on, think about it.
I’m not going to think about it.
But Iris is thinking about it all the time.
<
br /> *
Iris and Max are drinking on the roof because it’s one of David’s evenings with the girls. He orders pizza and they watch an episode of a show he thinks they like. No one enjoys it but that’s not the point. Sitting there together puts them back into a familiar arrangement. Then the girls go to bed and he sits on without them.
David’s life is one of empty shapes. He’s a father, a husband, a designer and a patient but none of these in any substantial way. He despises himself for chasing sex, not making money, failing his wife, upsetting his children and being ill, and for not knowing how to solve any of it. There are things he wants to say to Iris but he’s so tired.
Up in the attic Lou is awake but she lies there quietly so as not to disturb her sister. She’s thinking. Things she has long felt are coming into view now that she has the words for them.
Children’s emotions circulate like breath or blood. They cannot be grasped or suppressed because they have not been named. When children are too young to use the words, their parents describe their feelings for them. Now Lou has the words and her feelings are gathering. She needs to say something.
how a heart is broken
Raif was fourteen when his father was killed. The collision happened at night in heavy rain at a dangerous junction on the edge of town. A young mother in the other car died too and while the investigation cleared Raif’s father of all blame, many in the town turned away from the family from then on.
In the City of Love's Sleep Page 8
