Nutshell(25)

Hammered by drink and lost sleep, bearing me upwards, she continues towards the bedroom. It was never meant to work, she’s telling herself. It was just my foolish spite. I’m only guilty of a mistake.

The next step is close, but she won’t take it yet.





TWELVE


WE ARE ADVANCING on slumbering Claude, a hump, a bell-curve of sound baffled by bedclothes. On the exhalation, a long, constipated groan, its approaching terminus frilled with electric sibilants. Then an extended pause which, if you loved him, might alarm you. Has he breathed his last? If you don’t, there’s hope he has. But finally, a shorter, greedy intake, scarred with the rattle of wind-dried mucus and, at the breezy summit, the soft palate’s triumphant purr. The rising volume announces we are very close. Trudy says his name. I feel her hand extend towards him while he’s on a downward plunge through the sibilants. She’s impatient, she needs to share their success and her touch on his shoulder isn’t gentle. He coughs into half-life, like his brother’s car, and takes some seconds to find the words to pose his question.

‘What the fuck?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Jesus! Wake up.’

Drawn from the deepest phase of sleep, he has to sit on the edge of the bed, so the complaining mattress says, and wait for his neural circuitry to restore him to the story of his life. I’m young enough not to take such wiring for granted. So, where was he? Ah, yes, attempting to murder his brother. Truly dead? Finally, he’s Claude again.

‘Well blow me down!’

Now he feels like getting up. It’s 6 p.m., he notes. Enlivened, he stands, stretches his arms athletically with a creak of bone and gristle, then moves between bedroom and bathroom cheerily whistling, with full vibrato. From the light music I’ve heard I know this to be the theme tune from Exodus. Grandiose, in a corrupted romantic style, to my newly formed ear, redemptive orchestral poetry to Claude’s. He’s happy. Meanwhile, Trudy sits in silence on the bed. It’s brewing. At last, in dulled monotone she tells him of the visit, the kindness of the police, the discovery of the body, the early presumption as to cause of death. To each of these, delivered as bad news, Claude chimes, ‘Marvellous.’ He leans forward with a moan to tie his laces.

She says, ‘What did you do with the hat?’

She means my father’s fedora with the broad brim.

‘Didn’t you see? I gave it to him.’

‘What did he do with it?’

‘He had it in his hand when he left. Don’t worry. You’re worried.’

She sighs, thinks for a while. ‘The police were so nice.’

‘Bereaved wife and all.’

‘I don’t trust them.’

‘Just sit tight.’

‘They’ll be back.’

‘Sit … tight.’

He delivers these two words with emphasis and a sinister break between them. Sinister, or fractious.

Now he’s in the bathroom again, brushing his hair, no longer whistling. The air is changing.

Trudy says, ‘They want to talk to you.’

‘Of course. His brother.’

‘I told them about us.’

There’s a silence before he says, ‘Bit dumb.’

Trudy clears her throat. Her tongue is dry. ‘No it isn’t.’

‘Let them find out. Or they’ll think you’re hiding something, trying to stay one step ahead.’

‘I told them John was depressed about us. One more reason for him to—’

‘OK, OK. Not bad. Might even be true. But.’ He trails away, uncertain of what it is he thinks she should know.

That John Cairncross might have killed himself for love of her, if she hadn’t killed him first – there’s both pathos and guilt in this recursive notion. I think she doesn’t like Claude’s casual, even dismissive tone. Just my guess. However close you get to others, you can never get inside them, even when you’re inside them. I think she’s feeling wounded. But she says nothing yet. We both know it will come soon.

The old question arises. How stupid is Claude really? From the bathroom mirror he follows her thinking. He knows how to counter sentimentality in the matter of John Cairncross. He calls out, ‘They’ll be wanting to talk to that poet.’

Summoning her is a balm. Every cell in Trudy’s body concedes the death her husband owed. She hates Elodie more than she loves John. Elodie will be suffering. Blood-borne well-being sweeps through me and I’m instantly high, thrown forwards by a surfer’s perfect breaking wave of forgiveness and love. A tall, sloping, smoothly tubular wave that could carry me to where I might start to think fondly of Claude. But I resist it. How diminishing, to accept at second hand my mother’s every rush of feeling and be bound tighter to her crime. But it’s hard to be separate from her when I need her. And with such churning of emotion, need translates to love, like milk to butter.

She says in a sweet, reflective voice, ‘Oh yes, they’ll need to talk to Elodie.’ Then she adds, ‘Claude, you know I love you.’

But he doesn’t take this in. He’s heard it too often. Instead he says, ‘Wouldn’t mind being the proverbial fly on the wall.’

Oh proverbial fly, oh wall, when will he learn to speak without torturing me? Speaking’s just a form of thinking and he must be as stupid as he appears.