She follows the bend of the river. Round the corner and down the street the lights of the city are still on, though most of the city is home by now, asleep, waiting. The altar boy; he’ll be asleep in a small bed somewhere over there with the covers up to his neck and the central heating set to come on by itself in the morning. All over town, all the people sealed with sleep into houses whose roofs, sheened with white just now, will be blackened again where the sun hits them in the morning. And that woman, the one on the grave of the dead man. If she’s on the grave tonight she’s wearing a big sheepskin and gloves and a scarf, and has one of those heaters that campers take on holiday with them, and the heat coming off it is lighting up the cemetery and its trees, all their branches bare and iced, evergreen and iced.
There’s sand on the pavement. She can feel it under her feet. Above her, frost and empty sky. She reaches up and shakes frost off a branch of the tree next to the parking machine. The branch in her hand is all tight closed buds. She lets it flick back up and frost crystals fling off all round the tree, like water off a dog.
The clock on the parking machine is covered in frost lit up from behind. She rubs at it with her cold hand. Two forty-six a.m. She leans on the rail and listens. Nothing but the river, and far away at the back of it some people shouting and singing, celebrating. She wraps the coat closed around her and puts her hands in its pockets. A burnt-down candle; a ten pound note; someone else’s random crumbs and dust.
She starts walking, anywhere, she doesn’t know where.
The street is deserted, except for a man coming towards her on the other side of the road. He is out walking two small Jack Russell dogs in the dark at three o’clock on Christmas morning.
There’s a story in that, she thinks as they pass each other by.
It’s too dark to see his face. Merry Christmas, love, he calls across the road to her. Have a good one.
The words are full of thaw.
Merry Christmas, she tells him back. All the best.
the start of things
It was the end and we both knew it.
What’ll we do about it? you said.
I shrugged. I can’t imagine, I said.
You shook your head. Me neither, you said.
We stood useless in the living room. Its furniture was pointless. I realized I was standing as if waiting politely for you to leave. You were waiting too, poised and formal, as if you had just got to your feet to wish a guest goodbye.
I crossed my arms. You put your hands on your hips.
There were black smudges round your eyes as if you hadn’t slept for weeks. I knew I had the same dark round my own. Outside it was sleeting, the evening was bitterly cold; it was the worst month of the year, the one where the days seem darker, the weeks seem longer, the money seems to take longer to reach people’s bank accounts.
I sat down on the couch. You sat down next to me. Though the central heating was turned up as high as it would go, the house still seemed to be full of holes. We both stared at the empty hearth in the wall.
You know what? you said.
What? I said.
We could maybe start a fire, you said.
Yes, I said.
I went to get the matches from the bedroom while you took today’s newspaper apart. Then I went out into the sleet to get the logs from the shed. I chose smaller ones as well as a couple of larger ones and then carefully selected a large wet log from the pile outside the shed and balanced it on top of the load because, as you always say, a wet log burns really well on a good fire. But when I came up the garden the back door was shut and wouldn’t open. I put the logs down. I tried the handle again.
I knocked. I knocked harder.
I picked up the biggest and heaviest of the logs and hammered the door hard with it. Woodlice and spiders and bits of rotten wood jolted off the log. Mossy slime smeared the door and came off all up my hands and sleeves. I took a step back and smashed at the door again. You opened the top part of the kitchen window a tiny crack.
There’s no other way to do this, you said through the crack.
You cheap bastard, I said.
Stop it, you said. You’ll damage the door.
You bet I’ll damage the fucking door, I said. It’s my door. I can damage it if I want. And if you don’t open it right now I’ll break all my windows as well.
It’s my house, you said, and shut the window and locked it. We had had those locks put on by a joiner to deter burglars. I could see you behind the condensation. You were by the kettle, you were pretending I wasn’t there. Steam was coming out of the kettle. You opened the fridge and took out the milk. It was me who’d bought that milk; I had bought it at the shop the day before and you just using it like that made me angrier than anything else. I stood in the rainy sleet and shouted and swore. You acted like you couldn’t hear. You took a teabag pensively out of a box as if I didn’t exist, as if I had never existed, as if I were mere audience to you, out in the dark with the rest of the masses watching you, the star of the film, meaningfully making a cup of tea.
I picked up the biggest log again, swung it up to shoulder height, got my footing and aimed it right at you. But our kitchen windows are double glazed, we had them redone last year when all the wood round the old windows was rotting, and the new glass we’d had put in is reinforced. I didn’t want to look stupid, throwing a log that would just bounce off again. I let the log drop back on to the stones.
Now it was sleeting from all directions; there were slices of wet sleet stuck all over me, in my hair, on my jumper, down the back of my neck. A splinter of sleet was melting on my face. I wiped it off. I couldn’t really feel my hands any more. I had no gloves or jacket, I had nothing, no money or bank cards or phone. Everything I needed was in the house. I thought of my coat and scarf, hanging so simple and so unhaveable on the hook by the front door. I was freezing. I hugged myself. I couldn’t even go and sit in the car. The car keys were in my coat pocket. All I had was the shed key. In a minute, if I got any colder, I was going to have to go and stand in the shed.
Then I realized that since I had the key for the shed I probably also had the spare front door key, which we always keep on the same keyring, the keyring that’s got the small world globe on it. I put my hand in my pocket; there it was, the world on the chain and both its keys attached, and in the same fraction of a second (I could see it in the way you turned at the sideboard and stopped with the cup in your hand) the thought that I might have these keys entered your head; at the very same moment that I started for the front of the house I saw out of the corner of my eye the moment of you in mid air darting forward to get there first.
It was a race. I ran the best I could, but the ground under my feet was slippery. When I reached the front, my heart beating hard and high, I was just in time to hear it, the click of the double lock and you, the winner, triumphant behind the door. You were laughing. It made me want to laugh too. Then the beginning of wanting to laugh made me want to cry.
There was no way in the world I was going to cry in front of you, even if you were on the other side of a door and couldn’t see me. In the light from the living-room window I worked the spare front door key off the keyring. This was quite hard to do because the ring of the keyring is quite tight and my fingers were so cold I could hardly move them. When I’d finally got it free I lifted the letterbox cover and posted the key through the door. I heard the lightness of it hit the mat. I heard your laughing stop. I let the cover fall shut and I turned my back and went.
We are in bed with our backs to one another. The wind is
howling on the roof and battering at the cardboard taped
over the broken window. I can still smell the fire; the smell
of it is all through the house, like some ash-scented animal
has slunk muskily about, marking its territory in all the
rooms.
We are inches away from each other. I can feel the reach
of each inch. In the end I give in and begin.
Remember the time you didn’t come home all night, I say,
the time I hadn’t a clue where you were and I thought you
were dead?
You laugh gently behind me in the dark.
I’m sorry, you say.
No, it was good, I say. It was good to see the morning
like that. It was the spring, remember?
Actually, you say, I was just thinking about the time last
summer that you fell in love and it wasn’t with me.
Ah, I say. I laugh. I hope the laugh sounds wry and
apologetic.
No, it was good too, you say, it was really good, you
know it was, it was good for both of us. I mean, I know it
was good for you, and for me personally, well I found out
all sorts of new things.
Like what? I say.
I really don’t know, you say.
No? I say.
No, I mean that’s what I found out, you say. I found out
what it means not to know.
Like that time we were in the Underground, I say, and the
train doors shut and I was still on the platform right behind
you and you got on the train and the doors closed before I
could get in?
I remember, you say behind me.
And we were miming at each other through the doors of
the train, I say, and then the train began to move and you
were saying something through the glass but I had
absolutely no idea what it was you were trying to tell me.
Embankment, you say. I was telling you Embankment. I
wanted us to meet at Embankment.
But I had no idea what the word could be, I say, there was
just your mouth making this shape over and over and I
couldn’t hear what it was, then your carriage all lit up going
into the dark and all the other carriages going after it with
all the people in them, and then just the opening of the
tunnel and nothing but the adverts for alcohol and airline
companies and below them the rails, always so shining, like
the fact that they’re dangerous seems to be something to do
with the way they shine, and I was standing there and I
couldn’t imagine at all what it was you’d been trying to tell
me, I was making the shape of it with my own mouth but
the only word I could think of that fitted the shape was the
word ombudsman.
We are both laughing by now. We turn in the warm space
we’ve made in the bed. I feel your breath on me in the dark
as you say it.
Ombudsman, you say.
Ombudsman, for God’s sake, I say. I didn’t even know
what it meant. I still don’t. I couldn’t think of any reason
why you would ever want to say it to me. So I thought it
must be, it has to be, another word. Then I thought that
maybe it was the word embarrassment.
Embarrassment, you say. Yes. Let’s meet at Embarrassment station. I’ll be waiting for you at Embarrassment.
Because it had been a bit embarrassing, I say, what with
the people on the train and on the platform seeing the doors
close on us and everything, so it could have been
embarrassment. Then I thought that maybe what you’d
been telling me was two words, not one. Something like
embarrass me, or embrace me. And then there was nobody
left on the platform except me, it was all different people
waiting for another train, and then their train came in and
they got on and people got off and I was still standing there
on the platform talking to myself, going embarrass me, no,
embrace me, no, employ me, no.
We laugh towards each other. Then we’re silent again
and I have no idea where it is you’ve gone to inside your
head. I wonder if you’re thinking of that night you didn’t
come home. I think about my other love, then how I’m
standing on that platform, the trains coming and going one
after the other, the people and the dead air in the
Underground shifting round me each time, and each time
I’m wondering should I get the next one and go to the next
station along the line to see if maybe you’re there waiting
for me? But what if I get there and you aren’t? Worse, what
if I go somewhere else but you’re on a train on your way
back to find me? Perhaps, I think, I should go back to the
café we’ve just been in. Or perhaps it would be sensible to
go to one of our favourite places, the diner, or the place
where all the roads meet and the flower shop is, or the
Chinese place, or the restaurant with the rooftop views, and
wait for you there. Or if all else fails I could go back to the
main station and catch the train home.
But all I can think to do, and all I really want to do, is
close my eyes and sink down till I’m on the ground there on
the grimy platform, because all round me for miles is the old
cave of the Underground and above and beyond it the city in
winter, a city I thought I knew, only now it’s as nondescript
as sea and me a stone tossed into it going down to its
colourless floor.
The house creaks round us. I lean against you in the bed.
The bed creaks. You lean back hard against me and it fills
me with a hope so open that I’m scared to acknowledge it. I
can still smell fire and embers; tonight I can smell the season
the way it’s usually only possible to at the very first
moments of its return, before you’re used to it, when you’ve
forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the
flow of things shifting and resettling again.
I put my nose against your skin. You smell of you. You
always smell of you, though there are, I know, variations on
the scent of you; the summer smell of deep leaves and sweat,
the autumn smell of smokiness, the winter smell of fire and
clean worn wool, the spring smell I can’t remember exactly
and am waiting to know again.
You lean down and speak by my ear.
Embankment me, you say. You say it as quietly as
breathing.
What? I say.
Embarrass me, you say.
Okay, I whisper. I will if you embalm me.
I will, you whisper back. But only if you imbue me. And
would you like me to imbue you?
Yes, I say. Please. Start now.
The key hit the mat and I stopped laughing.
I stood by the front door and listened.
I tried to check through the window. I couldn’t see anything but my own reflection and the reflection of the room behind me. I went round the room switching off all the lamps and then back to the window to try to see through it.
I went into the kitchen again to get my cup of tea. I stood in the kitchen for a while holding the cup. I came back through the dining room and the living room and went upstairs, where I carried the cup from room to room. I tried to look as if I meant to do this though there was nobody to see whether I did or didn’t; the rooms were all empty. You were out there with no coat. The weather was filthy. I opened the bedroom window. The sleeting had stopped; I looked up and down the road. There was nothing but wet cars parked outside houses.
I shut the window and locked it. The fact that I was worrying about you when you so clearly weren’t even thinking about me, wherever you were, annoyed me. All round me in the room there was nothing but things. That hairbrush on the dresser was mine but the hairdryer, which we both use, was definitely yours. The dresser was mine; it had belonged to my mother. The bed was ours. The duvet was yours. I went to sit in the bathroom, the room with the least number of things in it. I looked at the empty bath. Its surface has been badly in need of re-enamelling ever since we bought this house.