Crustaceans (11 page)

I listened to the rain, the voices upstairs. Cold air poured in through a vent near the ceiling. The door beside us was bolted and shook in its frame. It opened on to a lobby of brickwork and pipes, junction boxes, cables, Ruth's toilet and shower stall. A flight of stone steps led up to her landlady's kitchen and a door to the garden. We weren't allowed to use the front entrance. We came and went by the dark sloping passage at the side of the building. The nearest tube was a quarter-hour walk, and no one we knew lived near us. We would meet them in cafés and parks; pubs, galleries, their flats. It seemed we were always going to meet someone, and often I came late on my own, the directions written out on the palm of my hand, an
A–Z
in my bag and some cakes to pass round. I had a job then in a factory – Uncle Sam's Cake and Cookie Company – from five until eight every evening. Dressed in blue overalls, the top tied round my waist by the sleeves, I scrubbed and scoured the long metal benches and the sinks and the ovens. I scraped and mopped the cake-mix from the floors and emptied the bins into a skip. The women I worked with liked to tease me; I was slower than they were, and sweated far more, though the sweat seemed to make up for my slowness. Women's work! they called from their aisles. In our tea-breaks we sat in a cloakroom, just next to the toilets, and they talked about sex and the uselessness of men and asked questions about Ruth – what she liked and how often she liked it – that I never knew how to answer. They scolded each other for making me blush; they called me
the boy.

I was nervous in London, never quite sure where I was, how the parts all connected, and on the tube trains too I would blush, as if my newness was obvious. Wherever I went I walked quickly, a ten-pound note folded into my shoe, my cashcard and wallet in separate pockets. I spoke to no one and didn't often look up. It was a relief to arrive, to find Ruth and her friends, their familiar faces, and to feel I was welcome, expected. You're talking a lot, Ruth once told me, touching my hand; you're doing very well. But it wasn't an effort; I liked being in company then, though I liked leaving it more, returning home on the night-bus to our basement.

We called it our home. There was nowhere else. Ruth's parents had long since divorced and remarried, and both had moved house several times, a succession of entries scored out in her address book. They lived now two hundred miles apart, in towns Ruth hardly knew. A few of her drawings, she said, were framed and displayed in the guest room at Polly's, but there was little else in the house that she recognised, and nothing at all in her father's. It was nearly a year since she'd last seen him. And though she sometimes replied to her mother's brisk letters – another arrived most Mondays, composed on blue headed notepaper and posted first class – she wrote only to thank Jim for the money he sent her, and the gifts she always discarded. Her thanks were cursory, and she didn't include any news. I said I felt sorry for him – it seemed he could never do right; either he was trying too hard, or not hard enough – but Ruth refused to discuss him, and sulked if I pressed her.

There was silence upstairs. A taxi thrummed in the street; someone shouted. The rain had eased off. Ruth knelt on the bed and unbuttoned her cardigan. She shrugged it from her shoulders and peeled the sleeves from her arms. She drank the last of our beer. Your turn now, she said, and lay down on her belly. She lifted her hips and as I slid into her warmth, my hands tucked under her breasts, she murmured, Be careful, her face close to mine. We hadn't any contraceptives; we hadn't left her room for two days. You're sure? I said. Yes, she said, smiling. Then, Maybe, I don't know …

From my father, too, there'd been money – five twenty-pound notes at the end of October, another five notes for Christmas. He didn't write letters. His cards were signed with just his initials, his monogram, and I hadn't yet written to thank him. Now and then I would remember my grandmother, and sit down at Ruth's desk, though I struggled each time to fill much more than a page. Her replies were equally brief, her handwriting shaky, and often she repeated what I'd already told her:
I see the weather's been cold; I'm glad to hear you're both keeping well; I hope things have improved for Ruth at her college.
And always she enclosed a few stamps – a strip of four, sometimes ten, as if for my trouble. I passed them to Ruth. Her course, she felt, had been a mistake, and already she was looking elsewhere, circling jobs in the paper, writing off for more details, three and four times a week. She wasn't an artist, she'd decided, and never would be. The other students had more talent and more confidence. She said they were
glamorous;
she was sure that she wasn't.

What do you think? she would ask me, dumping the forms in my lap. Could I do that job? Would you want to live there? But it hardly mattered what answer I gave her for she had no intention of applying, not yet. She was merely wondering, supposing, thinking ahead, and often we speculated on where we might be in another twelve months, another five years, or twenty. Ruth said she wanted to live by the sea. She imagined weatherboard houses on stilts, cliff-top apartments, grey pebbled cottages – even a beach hut, a caravan, somewhere we could drive to at weekends. I said the car would be an old one, with white-walled wheels, red leather seats, and I would have my own studio, earn my living from pots. Ruth saw me in thick woollen jumpers, a child on my shoulders, waves rolling in from the sea – advertising images, pictures from the magazines she bought – but there was always a child, a Euan or a Jessica to start with. She said she didn't mind which. I was sure I wanted a boy.

Ruth's breath came in gasps, her face pressed to the pillows, one arm crooked round her head, a tangle of hair. I pulled from her and thrust along the cleft of her buttocks, her legs between mine, and came in long trembling rills on her back. The air was cold on my forehead. She sighed and collapsed. She giggled. What a waste, she said. I kissed her arm and rolled on to my side. She shifted to the edge of the bed and reached down for her cardigan. Here, she said, and slung it over her shoulder; you can mop it with this. You're not serious? I said. Ruth? No, she conceded; I suppose not, and offered instead a pair of my underpants. I propped myself on my elbow and carefully wiped her. So what have you got me? she asked then. What do you want? I replied, and clambered across her. I turned off the fire, the oven and lights, and hurried back to the bed. Ruth waited. What would you most like to have? I said. She dragged the quilt over us, looped her arms round me, her legs. Oh, you know, she replied in the darkness; we've discussed it. We never imagined a future without one.

TWENTY

My final design project at college was a tea-service, the clay the colour of chocolate, pitted and rough to the touch, and though I'd left it behind I still remembered the dimensions, and the firing specifications, all the problems I'd had, and the ways I'd found round them. The thing in itself did not matter, the twenty-one separate pieces, for I'd learned enough in their making – I supposed I could always repeat them – and when my grandmother had looked through the photos and told me these were her favourite, and what a fool I'd been to discard them, I had promised I would make her some more, a replica set, just as soon as I had my own studio, my own wheel and kiln. Three years later it seemed she'd forgotten.

Her house by then had become too large for her, the stairs too much of an effort, and she'd moved to her own tiny flat in a place called the Larches. A social worker had arranged it. There was a cord in each of her rooms to summon the warden. A cleaner saw to the communal lounge and the corridors, a council workman looked after the gardens, but there were no other staff. It wasn't a Home, she'd said when I phoned her, and apart from the woman next door, who dropped by most mornings to talk, there was no one to bother her. On Saturday evenings she bought a raffle ticket and sat for an hour in the lounge with her neighbours. Someone would play the piano and the warden would open the drinks bar. My grandmother returned to her rooms when the singing began. It gave her a headache, she said. On Wednesday afternoons she played two rounds of bingo. Mimi continued to visit on Tuesdays; a volunteer from a neighbouring church did most of her shopping; and she still had her old phone number, her radio and television. She said she was comfortable. She never would say she was happy.

It was the start of the summer when we went up to see her, and our train was crowded with families, tourists and students, their suitcases and backpacks. I carried the tea-set on my lap, the cardboard box too large for the racks, too heavy for comfort. It rattled for most of the way. That night we would sleep at my father's, in my old attic bedroom, and the following morning we would visit the Larches, then catch another train north. We had booked a week in a cottage in Scotland, in a town by the sea. It was to be our first holiday together, the only one we ever would have as a couple. Ruth was thirteen weeks pregnant by then, and her bump was beginning to show, but if my father noticed the change in her shape he said nothing, as we said nothing to him. We hadn't yet told anyone; and I didn't want him to hear our news first.

Ruth and my father had met once before, the previous autumn, though then we had stayed with my grandmother, Ruth taking my bedroom upstairs whilst I slept on the floor of the dining room, as my grandmother thought proper. We had come for the weekend, and visited the graveyard, and passed a long afternoon in his company. There had been no offer of food but he'd opened two bottles of wine and invited Ruth down to his studio and explained the work he was doing, its antecedents and influences and where he thought it was going. Reluctant to join them, I'd sat on the back doorstep and waited, hearing his voice and her questions, the wind rustling the leaves on the trellis, and when finally he'd shown us out to the door I'd watched as he kissed her, his hand briefly cupping the back of her head, a cigarette clamped in his fingers. Afterwards, walking back through the old town, Ruth had called him a charmer. He was flirting, I'd said. I know, she'd replied. He isn't really like that, I'd said; he's nothing like that at all. And, touching my arm, she'd said she was teasing – she thought his charm was transparent; she'd found him suffocating, relentless, a bore. Is that better? she'd asked, and I'd nodded. I mean it, she'd added, watching my face; I didn't like him, Paul.

As we stepped now from our train he was waiting at the end of the platform, and he kissed Ruth again, though this time she turned her mouth from him, meeting his lips with her cheek. He grinned and led us out through the gates to the car-park, his hand guiding her arm, and as we drove in his van from the station it was Ruth alone that he talked to. The house was just as untidy, dim-lit and musty, but there were plates on the table, a salad, some pieces of fish on the grill-pan. He smoked as he cooked, and lit up again the moment we'd eaten. The ash lengthened until it dropped to his lap. He swept it away, and carried on talking. He talked for most of that evening, about his work, other artists, the flaws in their thinking. He offered his views on the state of art education, critical theory, public stupidity, and the waste in arts funding. Ruth had a job with a regional arts council; he presumed she'd be interested. And though he coughed repeatedly into his fist as he talked, still he smoked each cigarette back to the filter, then started another. His cough, he said when Ruth mentioned it, was due to the work that he did, the gases and heat, the dust in the atmosphere. Ruth nodded; I didn't bother to argue; and when Ruth too began coughing, I mentioned our journey and said we were tired; I suggested we should go to bed early.

My father yawned and stretched out his arms. He leant back in his chair and gazed at my box on the floor. He linked his fingers over his head and cracked them. So when are we going to see this crockery? he said then. It's for Grandma, I told him. He looked at me steadily. It was unusual for him to show any interest, either in me or in pottery, anything quite so domestic, but of course there was Ruth – he was different then – and sighing, I lifted the box on to the table; I found a knife and sliced through the Sellotape. My father switched on the lights. He unpacked my work carefully. He placed the bunches of newspaper on the table, as if they too were important, and examined each item in turn, absently stroking his chin, a pair of half-spectacles on the bridge of his nose. And he smiled, smiled at each piece. They were so like real pottery; it seemed to amuse him. I was hoping for a commission to supply Woolworth's, I said. No, no, he muttered, still looking. No, they're better than that, Paul; they have something. They'll do for Grandma, I said. Oh no, he insisted, folding his arms on his chest, the tea-service laid out on the table. It's really not bad, Paul; not bad at all. What do you think, Ruth? he said; is he finally on to something here? And yawning, standing up from the table, she replied, I think Paul's always been on to something. He's better than you think he is. Then she smiled and made her way to the door. Night night, she said.

But whatever my father now thought of my work, the following morning my grandmother shook her head, frowning, and said, You shouldn't have bought it, Paul. No, I can't take it. Her voice was unsteady, and she looked towards Ruth, as if for assistance. I've nowhere to put it, she said. Outside in the gardens an old man was emptying a bag of breadcrumbs on to the lawn. A breeze reversed the leaves on the trees, showed their silvery undersides, and I crouched down on the carpet, began wrapping the plates in their paper. I pressed my mouth to a smile. I don't suppose you have as much room as you used to, I said, and my grandmother agreed, for she'd saved as much of her old furniture and ornaments as she could do, far more than she needed or had space for. The heavy pots in her cabinet were arranged as before. The cups and saucers I'd made on my foundation year, wheel-thrown and clumsy, were again stacked in her kitchen, as if one day she might use them, whilst my earliest pieces, an ashtray, a slab-pot in the shape of a house, still sat by her bed with her pills. Moments after we'd arrived – the door from the dark carpeted corridor unlocked – she'd told us to have a look round. It hadn't taken more than a couple of minutes, and I'd noticed, too, what was missing – the tawny photograph of her wedding day; my grandfather's angling trophies.