Limestone and Clay (3 page)

‘Did I tell you about the goose?' Simon asks.

‘Goose?'

‘It fell down Boss Hole – in the eighteenth century I think it was – and three days later it emerged from Curlew Cavern with its feathers all singed – by the fires of hell, they said. That was the first inkling that there was a way through.'

‘But if it's never been found in all this time!'

‘Doesn't mean it isn't there.'

‘Doesn't mean it is, either, Simon.'

‘It
is
there. It just hasn't been traversed, that's all.'

‘I don't want to argue about this again, but,' but she can feel the anger rising, the wheel of the argument creaking round again as it has creaked round periodically throughout their time together, ‘but is it worth risking your life for … for a hole? Would Roland say it had been worth it, do you suppose?'

‘I know what I'm doing. And anyway, I'm not sure that he wouldn't think it was worth it.' Simon draws into himself, with a stubborn set look that Nadia recognises and which drives her irresistibly to goad him, to wipe the look off his face, to make him think.

‘It's perverted,' she says.

‘Perverted! That's a new one. How do you work that out?'

‘To put yourself in danger for the fun of it …'

‘Fun!'

‘What then? Oh yes, sorry, the physical challenge, the physical
and
mental challenge. It
is
perverted, well decadent at least, to do that when other people have no choice but to put themselves in danger. What about miners? What a cushy life you must lead if you have to set up these challenges, flirt with death …'

‘Oh give it a rest.' Simon reaches for the remote control and switches on the television. He flicks through the channels: hymns, wildlife, shrieking comedy, hymns. He settles for the wildlife programme and they stare together at a translucent magnified shrimp building a home from huge crystalline grains of sand. Inside, as it works, the tiny engine of its innards vibrates and pumps, and its long whiskers wave.

‘This minute creature,' explains the narrator, ‘works ceaselessly to create ideal conditions for the survival of its young.'

‘Christ!' exclaims Nadia. ‘I'm having a bath.'

Simon watches a starving salmon beat itself to death in an effort to reach the right place to lay its eggs. It loses its fat sleekness and grows an ugly hook of a jaw so that it cannot eat, only fight for survival in the battle for the next generation.

He flicks through the channels once more. There is a roar of synthetic laughter; a well-heeled congregation, their mouths agape at the climax of a hymn; a fat man singing on a hillside. He switches the television off and unfolds a large hand-executed underground map. A diagram of two cave systems with a maddening gap between them. It is for him to join the ends; not join them, of course, but discover the link. That is what he must do, and then there will be time to think. For it
is
dangerous, what he proposes to do, and no, it is not worth dying for. But he has to do it. He is set on it. All the things that Nadia says may be true. Some of them, but not what she says about decadence. For how can adventure, discovery, be decadent?

He wanders into the bathroom. He likes to see her in the bath, compact and wet. The scented bath-foam she uses glistens on her body, catches in her pubic hair in a thousand points of light. She wears a silly bath hat, and lies back with her eyes closed, ignoring him. He dabbles his finger in the water and she slaps it away'as if it is a fly.

‘Was Scott of the Antarctic decadent?' he asks. ‘Or Ranulph Fiennes?'

‘Yes,' Nadia says.

She is impossible. He gives an exasperated snort and returns to his map.

Nadia is the first, the only, lover Simon has had who wasn't a friend first. Most of them have been cavers. And he has shared with them the dangerous risk of trust. You have to let go, let yourself go into it, trust your fellows, know your safety is uppermost in their minds, just as theirs is in your own. Comradeship is nearer the truth than friendship, though Simon balks at the sentimental ring of the word – a clean exchange – unlike romantic love with its sticky emotional residue. And there is never more sense of achievement than in the exhausted jubilation at the end of a successful expedition. And more so, the nearer danger has approached; for then there is the feeling of having got away with something. He shakes that thought away. Most of his other lovers have been a part of this, and their love-making has never been so much an end in itself as it is with Nadia. More an affirmation of survival. Not for a long time has he been unfaithful to Nadia, not since he accepted that she had him. He has not been what he considers unfaithful, at least.

He studies the map. It is a sort of puzzle. And he thinks he has the answer. It has only to be proved. There must be a link between the two systems: he is convinced there is a link. It is a way which has been tried. Five years ago a caver died – as Nadia never fails to remind him. His body was never recovered. He was simply lost. There is a place at the end of the mapped section of Curlew Cavern where it is necessary to duck under the surface of an underground stream for a few metres. Beyond that, the roof opens out and there is a dark hole, a crawl that slopes up, away from the water. Simon believes that this crawl must lead to the long shaft that is the end of the Boss Hole System, but the aperture is not visible there. Poring over maps, pacing the springing surface of the moor, Simon is more than ever convinced.

He had been down there with Roland Charles, the caver who died. Together they had mapped the caves, experienced the excitement of almost, only-to-be-proved discovery. But Roland's last attempt had been solo. Stupid. And he had paid the price. A solo death among the limestone, bones whitening in the rock. Since then, out of respect for Roland's memory, as well as fear, no one has been back. It has taken Simon years to regain his determination, and months to persuade Celia and Miles that it is not foolhardiness to try again. Celia is the most cautious. It is she who is most often the voice of reason, the most fastidious checker of equipment, maddening often but slow and safe. A reassurance. And she is the slimmest, too, the lithest, the one most likely to be able to squeeze herself through the tiny gaps between the plates of rock.

It will be done this time. The stubborn earth will not hold out again. Underneath the tussocky moor there is a way and it will be traversed. And Simon will be there.

He avoids the word ‘obsession'. In the context of caving, it's a word that suggests hazard and irrational action. But still, in Simon's dreams, night after night, the limestone yields to him. He penetrates the whiteness. It gives way to the probing of his torch beam. The water parts for him, the air is pocketed sweetly against the cave roof, and the squeeze is no squeeze but an easy crawl which opens into triumph. This is the happy dream he has, a bright dream: after the easy crawl there is a rimstone pool, the water is so clear it is invisible, still as no surface water can ever be. Under the water is a round blue bowl, and in the bowl is a heap of golden coins. Treasure glints in the crystal water and an eyeless fish of palest pink swims round and round the bowl. All around are white stalactite straws, pencils of frost reaching from ceiling to floor. He shivers with the cold beauty and then he awakes. If dreams are omens, he does not believe this, but if they
are
to be considered omens, then surely this is a good one?

In the dark, in the rain and the wind that scour the moorland, a lost sheep stumbles. Its woolly legs bend under it and the heather gives way, a pad of fibrous earth splits over a gap between rocks and with a startled bleat the sheep plummets down a deep vertical shaft. Its back is broken by the fall. It lies on loose shale in the utter darkness. Its feeble mind makes no sense, sees no shape, and because of the merciful snapping of its cervical vertebrae it feels no pain. In the black cold numbness it closes its eyes and knows no more.

Sand

Nadia wakes with a sour taste in her mouth. It is early. She watches the cold light extend through the gloom, illuminating the open wardrobe, the hanging clothes, sharpening the narrow black shadows and folds.

Between her legs there is a stickiness. If it is blood then it is over. Once again. She lies still. All that is visible of Simon is one shoulder, grey in this light, and the ruffled back of his head. After five years she can still be moved by his beauty, the soft wing of shadow cast by his shoulderblade onto the smoothness of his back. The strong curve of Simon's shoulder is like marble in the early light, a virtuoso sculpture, solidity and life captured in dawn and grey. She imagines this shape in clay, massive, hollowed, glazed grey with a tinge of pink to indicate dawn, or life.

There is a definite dampness. She gets up carefully, imagining the brownish map she will leave behind on the pale green sheet, but in the gloom there are no colours and she cannot see. In the bathroom she finds no blood, only a white moisture. As she sits on the toilet she feels sick, an awful, definite nausea. Recognisable, undeniable. The silly hope is there again, flapping its wings against her diaphragm. But she is tired of it, the rhythm of hope, despair and resignation that prints its pattern over her months and years. She should have learnt not to hope by now. Think about something else.

Her feet are cold on the kitchen floor. It is not yet seven o'clock. She lets up the blind and finds the sky flushing with just the pink she'd like to use for a glaze if she was to sculpt the shoulder, an impossibly subtle rosiness which glints on wet slate roofs and makes them glow, which plays with the cherry blossom, spreading a faint shadowy blush on its whiteness like the warmth of skin.

Nadia makes a pot of tea and returns to the bathroom while it brews. She runs hot water in the basin, splashes her face, and, feeling sluttish, scrubs inside her nightshirt at her armpits. She rubs cream into her face and brushes her hair. She frowns at her reflection. There is a dark hair growing on her upper lip. She tweezes it out and the sharp sensation brings tears jumping to her eyes.

She pours the tea and takes it in to Simon. ‘Time,' she says. He groans. He has moved, hunched himself under the quilt so that his shoulder is hidden. Nadia sits cross-legged on the bed. She runs her hand over her legs, shaved smooth last night. Her toenails are coral pink. The tea tastes dirty. This is familiar, but she drinks it resolutely. Simon is sensitised to every clue. She will not let the stupid hope out of herself, she will not infect him. She thinks of a drawstring bag, the neck tightly drawn up to trap its wriggling contents. She purses her lips to match.

‘OK?' Simon asks, eventually pulling himself into a half-sitting position and reaching for his tea.

‘Fine,' Nadia replies. Her fingers smell strongly of soap, a comforting smell.

‘Period started?'

‘Uh huh.'

‘All right?' Simon asks carefully. He is wary. Her reactions vary at this time, sometimes she cries, sometimes she is fiercely bright, but she has turned away so he cannot see her face. She pulls on a pair of black tights.

‘Fine.'

Simon has been looking at houses. This is a secret. Family houses with gardens and extra bedrooms. It is not only Nadia who suffers a loss of hope each time she bleeds. He had thought she looked pale, noticed she avoided coffee, thought perhaps … but she is like bloody clockwork. It is only recently that it has become real, the possibility of fatherhood and thus the disappointment.

He remembers a woman called Grace, a girl really. He and Grace and several others – all student teachers – had shared a tall damp house in Tooting Bec. He closes his eyes against Nadia leaning forward and shaking her breasts into a scarlet bra. He sees Grace, Grace who never wore, was far from needing to wear, a bra. Her hair was short and blond, neat as a swimming cap, and she had a wide pale mouth. In his memory Grace sits at the table eating toast and golden syrup. She wears a long woolly jersey – his – and hockey socks, but her thighs are naked. Grace had a gangly, sexy style. Cool thighs. They had become lovers just because they were both there, and house-sharing somehow became living together without him noticing. Simon remembers a ‘coming to' in a supermarket, holding the wire basket while Grace chose cheese and fruit. He realised that they must seem to be, to other shoppers, a couple. That indeed they were a couple. He looked at the way the short hairs lay on the back of her neck, the way she frowned and fingered an avocado for ripeness and handed it to him for his opinion, and panicked. This was not it, now what he meant, or wanted. He had dropped the avocado and turned to bolt, but Grace had grabbed him by the arm. ‘What's up with you? Aren't you well?' And he had had to say, ‘I'm fine,' and follow her round the shop, his heart thudding dully.

He had planned to tell her that evening that he wanted to go, but she had cooked steak and opened a bottle of wine and he couldn't spoil the evening for her. And she had turned on the gas fire and worn a silky petticoat she'd bought at a jumble sale and her nipples stood out against the silk like beads and he hadn't been able to say anything at all. And he has always been convinced that that was the night he impregnated her.

That was a terrible time. He opens his eyes and there is Nadia fluffing her hair with her fingers. She feels his eyes upon her and turns round. ‘I thought you were going in early,' she says.

‘Just getting up.' He closes his eyes again to see Grace's white face. ‘Pregnant,' she is saying. And he feels his real self peel away and his false self staying calm, talking about the sensible thing, casting around for sources of cash while his real self panics, its face the face of Munch's scream. She had resisted, but he was resolute. Escape was purchased. He could never touch her again. A sliver of him, a sliver which he doesn't countenance, despised her for her obedience. He had stayed with her for the six weeks in which they weren't allowed to make love and then they parted, cleanly, for it turned out that she despised him too for causing her to snuff out, with no apparent regret, their future.