Nutshell(9)

As though from a long journey, I return to the womb. Nothing has changed on the balcony, except I find myself a tad drunker. As if to welcome me back, Trudy drains the bottle into her glass. The cubes have lost their cool, the wine is almost warm, but she’s right, better to finish it now. It won’t keep. The breeze still stirs the chestnut trees, the afternoon traffic is picking up. As the sun descends, it feels warmer. But I don’t mind the heat. As the last of the Sauvignon Blanc arrives I set myself to reconsider. I’ve been away, I escaped over the wire without ladder or rope, free as a bird, leaving behind my now and my here. My limiting truth was untrue: I can be gone any time I like, throw Claude out the house, visit my father in his office, be a loving, invisible snooper. Are movies as good as this? I’ll find out. One could make a living devising such excursions. But the actual, the circumscribed real, is absorbing too and I’m impatient for Claude to return and tell us what really happened. My version is certain to be wrong.

My mother is also anxious to know. If she wasn’t drinking for two, if I wasn’t sharing the load, she’d be on the floor. After twenty minutes we go indoors and make our way across the library, then upstairs towards the bedroom. One should be careful, going barefoot through this house. My mother yelps as something crunches underfoot, we pitch and yaw as she lunges at the banister. Then we’re steady while she pauses to inspect her sole. Her curse is muttered calmly, so there must be blood, but not too much. She hobbles through the bedroom, leaving a trail perhaps on what I know to be a filthy off-white carpet strewn with discarded clothes and shoes and suitcases half unpacked from journeys that pre-date my time.

We reach the echoey bathroom, a large and filthy shambles, from what I’ve heard. She pulls open a drawer, impatiently stirs its rattling, rustling contents, tries another, and in the third locates the plaster for her cut. She sits on the edge of the bath and rests her poor foot across her knee. Little grunts and gasps of exasperation suggest her cut’s in a place that’s hard to reach. If only I could kneel before her and help. Even though she’s young and slim, it’s not easy leaning forwards with my impeding bulk. Better then, she decides, more stable, to clear a space and sit down on the hard tiled floor. But that’s not easy either. It’s all my fault.

This is where we are and what we’re doing when we hear Claude’s voice, a shout from down the stairs.

‘Trudy! Oh my God. Trudy!’

The thump of rapid footsteps, and he shouts her name again. Then, his heavy breathing in the bathroom.

‘I cut my foot on a stupid piece of glass.’

‘There’s blood all through the bedroom. I thought …’ He doesn’t tell us that he hoped for my demise. Instead he says, ‘Let me do it. Shouldn’t we clean it first?’

‘Stick it on.’

‘Hold still.’ Now his turn to grunt and gasp. And then, ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Fuck off. Stick it on.’

At last it’s done and he helps her to her feet. Together we sway.

‘Christ! How much did you have?’

‘Just a glass.’

She rests again on the bathtub’s rim.

He steps away, into the bedroom, and returns a minute later. ‘We’ll never get that blood off the carpet.’

‘Try rubbing it with something.’

‘I’m telling you, it won’t come out. Look. Here’s a spot. Try it yourself.’

I’ve rarely heard Claude so forthright. Not since ‘We can.’

My mother too hears the difference and says, ‘What happened?’

Now there’s a whine of complaint in his voice.

‘He took the money, didn’t thank me for it. And get this. He’s given his notice on the Shoreditch place. He’s moving back in here. He says you need him, however much you say you don’t.’

The bathroom echoes die away. But for their breathing, there’s silence while they consider. My guess is they’re looking at each other, into each other, a long, eloquent stare.

‘There it is,’ he says at last, in his familiar, empty way. He waits, then adds, ‘So?’

At this my mother’s heart begins a steady acceleration. Not just faster, but louder, like the hollow knocking sound of faulty plumbing. Something is also happening in her gut. Her bowels are loosening, with a squeaky stretching sound, and higher up, somewhere above my feet, juices race down winding tubes to unknown destinations. Her diaphragm heaves. I’m pressing my ear more tightly to the wall. Against this crescendo, it would be too easy to miss a vital fact.

The body cannot lie, but the mind is another country, for when my mother speaks at last, her tone is smooth, nicely in control. ‘I agree.’

Claude comes closer, speaks softly, almost at a whisper. ‘But. What do you think?’

They kiss and she starts to tremble. I feel his arms move round her waist. They kiss again with soundless tongues.

She says, ‘Scary.’

And responding to a private joke he replies, ‘Hairy.’

But they fail to laugh. I feel Claude push his groin into hers. That they should be aroused at such a time! How little I know. She finds his zip, tugs downwards, caresses, while his index finger curls under her cut-offs. I feel its recurrent pressure on my forehead. Might we go to bed? But no, thank God, he pursues his question.