The Heart Is a Burial Ground

by Tamara Colchester

  She felt her heart moving. Oh! This was beautiful.

  Bay leaned against the wall and looked at the sun-striped shelves of faded books, being careful not to let her eyes find the one about Egypt with its pictures of girls with the heads of cats and, even worse, one with the body of a scorpion. Her brothers had told her, wide-eyed, that there was a scorpion who could be chopped in half and its head would still eat its own tail . . . Yesterday her mother had firmly taken that book from her room and put it up on a shelf where even its edge was hidden, and as she lay down on the musty bearskin rug sprawled across the floor, Bay tried her best not to search for it. She ran her hand over the worn fur, many scorpions now scuttling back and forth across her mind, and she turned away from the books and stared at the ceiling, imagining her parents above her in their big bed.

  Last night she’d tried to go into their bedroom. Usually, the door would open without her even knocking, and her mother would swoop down and carry her into the darkness towards where her father lay, pulling the covers over them all like a warm dark wave. Then she would find herself tucked in the dark channel between their bodies, rich with the smell of white waxy flowers on one side and grunting animals on the other (they were very different creatures at night). Her father was like a boulder that she could press her back against, her mother the portal through which she could enter sleep. But last night her mother did not appear, so that eventually she’d gone back to her own bed to lie very still as she watched the night turning black then blue with the mothering sound of a wood pigeon going on somewhere in the garden.

  She would not have children.

  The thought was as familiar as the pet dog she loved to pretend she had lost and she lay on the fur rug playing melancholy, pulling together a few of the other sad thoughts (boarding school, funerals) that she often comforted herself with.

  ‘I won’t have children,’ she had told her mother, in great confidence, as they’d sat together on the beach.

  ‘Why, Bay?’ Her mother had looked down at her.

  ‘Because they are ungrateful.’

  ‘Have you been talking to your grandmother again?’

  Bay shook her head. ‘Also children grow up,’ she protested. ‘And then they’re not children any more.’

  ‘We’re always children, Bay, especially with our mummies and daddies. You’ll always be my baby.’ And she had pressed Bay close to her and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘But Grandma doesn’t look after you.’ Bay struggled free and stared up at her mother. ‘She just lies in bed like she’s a baby.’

  ‘Your grandmother’s not well, Bay. It’s hard to understand, but she’s . . . she’s . . .’

  Bay frowned, remembering her mother’s voice trailing into the push and suck of the sea.

  She thought of the way her father had spoken yesterday morning. He had said, ‘She can get her own fucking breakfast.’

  ‘James, she can’t,’ her mother had responded.

  ‘Not can’t, Elena, won’t.’ Then he was stamping up the stairs, the tray in his hands.

  Sitting on the garden steps, Bay had carefully turned another page of the large art book on her lap. Her father had said ‘fuck’. She waited a pause before blindly turning the next page. And what was her father doing up there? She thought of her grandmother’s see-through nightie and her mind raced. She might not have pulled up the covers in time.

  Remembering the feeling of embarrassment, Bay pressed her body into the fur of the dead bear and tried to squash what was moving her insides about.

  She heard a sound, and stopped.

  Listening again, she made out soft noises coming from the end of the corridor.

  Her grandmother’s room.

  She sat up and craned her neck towards it. Perhaps she would go in there today when her mother had her rest to look at the photographs that were stuffed in the wooden chest whose drawers didn’t like to be opened. Many of her grandmother’s pictures had been cut with vicious snips so that heads were missing, leaving her grandmother smiling victoriously beside no one. One that Bay liked in particular was of her grandmother standing with her mother and aunt on the deck of a boat, their bikini-clad bodies all curving with the same lines; Aunt Leonie had lost her head but her mother remained intact. She thought of her grandmother in that picture, smiling like a cat, and then looked down the hall towards the closed door. Yesterday afternoon Bay had been surprised to hear her laughing out in the garden. And when she’d looked out of her bedroom window, she had seen her sitting up beneath the shade of the fig tree, a small table with a bottle and two glasses at her side, talking to a strange woman in a brightly patterned suit.

  ‘Grandma’s dressed today!’ She ran down to tell her mother in the kitchen, who was standing at the sink, tearing lettuce leaves into a bowl. She was wearing a striped shirt, tied underneath her bump with a length of rope.

  ‘Yes, Bay, she is.’ Bay knelt down and examined her mother’s bare feet. The heel of the foot was a dusty white compared to the gleam of her skin on top. She reached a hand out to touch her, but as she did so her mother jumped and the head of lettuce landed on the floor beside Bay with a soft sound.

  ‘You scared me!’ She bent to pick up the salad. Bay, heart pattering, circled her arms round her mother’s smooth leg.

  ‘Who’s she with?’ she asked, looking up at her.

  ‘A friend,’ her mother replied, as she again began to rinse the lettuce under a running tap.

  ‘But she’s young.’

  Her mother had glanced out the window and then back down at the stream of water, peering closer at a lettuce leaf as she cleaned its curled insides. ‘About the same age as me. She’s called Heike, and is a very important artist. She’s one of your grandmother’s special friends. She paid for her to go to a very good art school.’

  ‘I thought she didn’t like paying for things.’

  ‘She’s always taken special care of her friends.’

  ‘But why’s she not in bed? I thought she was sick.’

  ‘She’s feeling a bit better today.’

  In the garden, the two women were laughing, their glasses meeting with a friendly clink.

  ‘Do you wish Grandma was your friend?’ she asked, staring upwards.

  ‘It might have been . . . easier.’ Her mother dried a glass carefully. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she finally smiled down at Bay. ‘I’ve got you, haven’t I?’

  The kitchen was cold and grey now as Bay came down the stairs, as empty as a stage when a play has finished. She began to push a chair towards the fridge and it groaned in protest across the mock-cork linoleum. She was going to prepare her grandmother’s breakfast. She pushed the stubborn bulk with increased determination.

  Milk and a banana.

  She knew what she liked.

  Diana lifted her head from the pillow to see the sun fighting past the edge of the curtains. Already day. She sank back, listening. What in God’s name was that wailing? A child crying about spilt milk. Christ. Groaning, she pressed her face to the cool side of the pillow and tried to ignore the drum-like ache in her head, boom dada boom dada boom. Why on earth were there so many children here? They never stopped crying. Inés should take them to the beach or something . . . Her wrist ached where she had fallen and now she remembered her daughter wrapping the gauze steadily round her wrist. It was uncomfortably tight. No, it wasn’t Inés here, she pressed her eyes closed, Elena was here. These were Elena’s children. And there had been many tears, though Diana couldn’t remember why. Not here but out there, she narrowed her eyes at the door. The ceaseless shouting and squalor of children. Yesterday reasserted itself and she drew herself up with difficulty against the head of the bed. There had been a good Marqués de Riscal and Elena had made a fine ajo blanco for Heike, though the dishes were served and cleared in pensive silence. Really, she shouldn’t offer to cook and clean if she was going to look so miserable while doing so.

  ‘Is she going to be here every year?’ she’d asked as she
’d helped Diana dress.

  ‘Yes, Elena, and I’m surprised at your lack of generosity. Heike doesn’t have a family of her own and, besides, I like to have the occasional artist around. I can hardly count on you for stimulation. All you do is grow children and swim.’

  ‘The swimming’s a necessity.’

  ‘A woman for necessity, a boy for pleasure, a goat for delight.’ Diana laughed as she remembered the phrase.

  Her daughter stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Anyway, Elena, it’s exhausting the way you gripe about guests.’

  There was stamping on the ceiling – someone was running about on the floor above – screaming as though being chased. Quick light steps going round and round and round. Diana widened her eyes and lay back. She’d used to do that around the edge of his study, running her fingertips over the leatherbacks, young skin smooth against the hard skin. Round she went, past the skeleton (Who was she? Who was she? Princess or harlot, actress or nun, pretty and passionate or ugly and dumb?) once, twice, a third time – until he got her – caught! – and pulled her hands high above her head, so that she hung like a trussed bird and his laughter shook her body as though it were her own.

  Rue de Lille, 1925

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Down in the catacombs.’

  Diana nodded and picked up the skull on his desk that he’d taken last week, her fingers worming through the holes where the eyes had been.

  ‘Did you touch all the smooth heads with not a thought in them?’

  He grinned, enjoying his words in her mouth.

  ‘Do you miss Boston?’ she asked in a voice that attempted nonchalance, trailing her hand along the back of the chair he sat in.

  ‘No. Boston is a dreadful city full of nothing. All the men are as tall and organised as their brownstone houses, and the women are sad drab virgins. Don’t ever be a virgin, Rat; it eats you up.’ He looked back down at the letter in his hand as he spoke. ‘Bostonian women are brought up among sexless surroundings, wear canvas drawers and flat-heeled shoes and, once they are married, breed for five or six years and then retire to end their days at the Chilton Club.’

  ‘Mother only . . . Caresse only had me.’

  ‘I didn’t save her in time. Thank God we got out. Christ, what a narrow escape!’ He ran a hand over his face. ‘Far narrower than escaping the shells at Verdun.’

  He folded the letter he’d been reading.

  ‘Your mother writes from Boston that she is desperately bored and that her mother objects to her letting the hair grow under her arms. Ye gods!’

  ‘When is she coming back?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Roccasinibalda, 1970

  ‘Tell us about your interview, Caresse.’ Diana leaned forward and addressed her mother at the head of the long dining table placed at the centre of a large hall whose walls bore the pale half-shapes of the frescoes being gradually revealed beneath layers of milky plaster.

  Caresse gave her daughter a mild look, carefully concealing her alarm at Diana’s light-hearted tone. She was aware of the guests gathered round her, their faces moving in the uncertain candlelight.

  ‘Well, we couldn’t cover everything.’ With slow movements she pressed her napkin to her mouth and then placed it to the side of her plate. ‘A life in half an hour is a somewhat Herculean task.’ She smiled blandly at a young writer from Istanbul.

  ‘What did you choose to talk about today?’ Diana pressed on, undeterred.

  ‘That would be telling.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Harry came up?’

  Caresse declined with a small motion of her head and picked up her spoon.

  ‘Who was Harry?’ a moon-faced girl asked.

  ‘My husband,’ Caresse said.

  ‘A poet,’ said Diana.

  ‘A true original.’ Caresse spoke and it was a command for attention. ‘A prophet, as all poets are.’

  ‘Who was it that said that?’ asked Diana lightly.

  ‘Lawrence.’ Caresse deflected her gaze. ‘He used to call artists “the life-givers of the Universe”, in that insect hum of his.’

  Diana smiled at that, picturing the people swarming across the rugs in the garden as someone swam back and forth in the algae-filled pool (full of life, her mother always said) singing a song with only two words. How had it gone? She hummed it quietly to herself.

  ‘Wasn’t Harry Crosby the nephew of J. P. Morgan?’ a bespectacled young man asked, settling his elbows on the table. ‘I remember meeting a Crosby at a gallery opening in New York a few years ago and being told about a black sheep cousin that had gone mad in Paris during the twenties.’

  ‘And what, in your opinion,’ Caresse laced her fingers together, ‘does “going mad” mean?’

  ‘Losing one’s mind, I suppose,’ the man said. ‘Being unable to take part in the shared narrative.’

  Diana tried to place the young man, and then remembered Ellis telling her that he’d been overheard in the village asking for nut milk. That was right. He was writing a symphony of silence. She looked at him with amused interest.

  ‘If you are given a mind shaped only to a broken purpose, then it might be best to lose it. Then you can grow a new one instead. A fresh head of lettuce rather than the rotten bag of mould we were all handed and asked to asphyxiate ourselves inside. After all, that’s the entire point of this place. A nursery of new thought, each and every one of you seedlings.’

  ‘There’s plenty of manure,’ murmured Diana, turning her glass in her hand, causing Ellis, who was sitting beside her, to snort with laughter.

  ‘And we need new narratives, my dear.’ Caresse smiled coolly at the man. ‘The more insane the better. Insanity is not the problem, inhumanity is. My husband – whom you did not have the fortune to meet – had one of the finest minds I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a few.’ She nodded briskly to the young man, ready to close the subject.

  Diana stopped turning her glass.

  ‘And he fought in France?’ Ellis asked. He glanced at Diana as he spoke, but she was staring ahead of her as though lost in thought.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Caresse replied, masking her impatience. ‘That terrible war. By all accounts, it was a miracle he survived.’

  ‘And you’re currently editing his diaries?’ someone asked. ‘What a beautiful task for a wife.’

  ‘I think so, yes.’ Caresse smiled.

  Diana stared at her plate as though she might break it.

  ‘But the war must have affected your husband?’ Nut Milk returned to his point, blinking a little behind his large glasses. Diana looked at him in surprise. He was entirely undeterred.

  ‘Of course it did. How could it not?’ Caresse glanced at him. ‘But it didn’t define him.’

  Diana’s eyes flicked between the two of them. Her mother hated this kind of talk.

  ‘I think,’ he leaned forward eagerly, ‘that we are all at war. Either with ourselves or our past.’

  ‘We’re hardly qualified to delve into our psyche, my dear, collective or otherwise. What a bore. And if the psyche will reveal anything, let it be freed from the unconscious in all its uninterpreted Surrealist glory.’ Caresse turned firmly back to the man on her right.

  ‘But don’t they fascinate you, Mrs Crosby,’ Nut Milk interrupted again, ‘the small details that make up our lives, the little scars that become the map of who we are?’

  Diana crossed her arms and leaned back, delighted.

  ‘No.’ Caresse shook her head, eyes flashing. ‘I can’t bear details. Never could. They’re for school teachers and secretaries. Endless dates, facts and schedules – death to life! People wrap themselves up in detail as some kind of protection. In my opinion, the only good thing about details is the devil inside them.’

  Watched by Diana, the table laughed. Just as he had, she remembered, when he’d heard her say that all those years ago.

  ‘You know, there are only two things that I hate: war, and tedious conversation.’ Caresse’s
voice rose. ‘I first tried to start our Città della Pace at Delphi in Greece on a little promontory of Mount Parnassus – the birthplace of democracy. The local people were all very excited about it and we had some wonderful meetings with the shepherds and their wives and children, sharing cheese and red wine and ideas under their lovely gnarled trees. Unfortunately, the government opposed what we were doing and threatened to expel us. Of course we stood our ground and things got a little heavy. But when the army came to move us out, there was a beautiful moment.’ She paused and reached out to take a pink-flecked peony from the huge arrangement in front of her. ‘Each of the men had stuck a flower into the end of the barrel of his gun as they came to escort us away.’ She smiled and the guests smiled back. ‘Now, here’s to Life!’ She raised her glass, her eyes slicing the young man out of the toast.

  ‘To Life!’ the table chorused.

  ‘Well, he won’t be coming again,’ Diana murmured to Ellis. She could feel him breathing, a trembling aliveness that smelled of yesterday’s booze. ‘The mung bean shall sprout no more.’

  ‘Your young friend tells me you went hunting for wild boar on Sunday with some of the local men.’ He indicated to where David sat at the other end of the table. ‘Apparently, you’re a crack shot.’

  She laughed, pleased. ‘I should have taken aim at that one.’ She nodded up to the head of the table, where Nut Milk was trying in vain to re-engage Caresse in conversation.

  ‘Diana the Huntress. Where does the name come from?’ Ellis asked.

  ‘My mother, funnily enough.’

  ‘But why Diana?’

  ‘It was her middle name.’

  ‘Caresse Diana . . .’ He waited for the surname.

  ‘She wasn’t christened that. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Back Bay, Boston, but a name like Caresse was hardly topping the birth register in 1891. The family were collectively sick when she changed it. Running off to Paris with a second husband was one thing, renaming yourself in the name of tenderness, quite another. There is nothing more profane to the Bostonian than sex between man and wife. Let alone a woman and life. Now I think they rather like it. I suppose, given enough time, even the most violent rebellion becomes somewhat sentimentalised, which is a pity. It suggests a rather pathetic action of the heart, sort of like the tiresome way children always want to go home.’