Composite Creatures Read online

  I did tell Art that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and whether the fertilisers could’ve killed it, but he just smiled, and said, “Don’t worry about it. The company wouldn’t make something that helps one thing and hurts another, and then give it to us in a spray bottle.” When I kept worrying, he suggested I go looking for it between the pansies and marigolds, if that’s what I wanted to do. If I found it, I could drop a jar over it, bring it inside and check it over. We could even draw it together with our birthday gear. He grinned like it was a game, so I shrugged back with an air of coolness, with a slant of the lips to say, “If I come across it again, I’ll come across it. If it’s meant to be.” But I watched through the kitchen window anyway, clutched my mug of tea and pressed it hard against my lips.

  The green lawn wavered like a hallucination through the pillars of steam. As I stood there, I looked ahead to weeks, months, and years of rooting around between the leaves with my trowel, pulling up tangles through the routine purge, utterly focussed on the functions of a life elsewhere. And then, without seeing, slicing through soft green flesh concealed between leaves, hearing the snap of little bones splintering under steel. Or perhaps I’d be sitting on the grass, palms flat to the earth behind me, and I’d feel what felt like a twig by a fingertip. I’d look down and find the frog dried, fossilised, limbs stretched and straining as if mummified just before leaping. What would I do then? If life ended in my square of earth to tend? It would be my fault, and I’d never know what more I should have done to help it survive.

  I hoped the frog was gone. I wanted it to have disappeared to die elsewhere, in someone else’s garden. Where it came from I couldn’t even guess, but I couldn’t see how it would have long left. The sun was burning. Art had left a terracotta bowl full of cold water by the back step to lure it close, but he forgot about it as the days passed, and I stood by as the cool surface retreated to the bottom of the bowl, the last few glimmers of life soaking into its parched, orange skin.

  Art lay in late, and usually slept through my waking. One Saturday I woke with the usual jolt, my hands in a lattice around the back of my neck. I opened my eyes, letting the light between the blinds bleach any dream-shapes still drawn on my eyelids. Art wasn’t there this time; he’d gone to London to deliver an afternoon lecture at a literary festival. One of those events arranged by a publisher to showcase their portfolio, just as much as their authors. Five days of talks, seminars, and schmoozing afterparties, everyone sucking in someone else’s story and twisting it to be their own. Finding a hook and reeling in an audience at all costs.

  I’d heard Art’s script a few times through the wall of his study as I lay prostrate in the bath. Though muffled, it sounded a little like he was singing. His sentences dipped and rose in hypnotic rhythms, full of confidence. He seemed to be able to use his voice to mask everything else going on underneath. Listening to the words rounded with perfect clarity, I couldn’t hear Art at all. He was a stranger from another world, a secret society I wasn’t party to, one that sent me further and further from myself like a bullet from a gun.

  I sank deeper and deeper into the water. Art’s voice must have had the same effect on Nut, as the soft thump-thump-thump of her nightly pacing above slowed, slowed, and stopped. I could almost sense the air of expectancy weighing down through the ceiling.

  While Art was away, I had the weekend left entirely open to do whatever I liked, with whoever I liked. I could embrace the single life again, or I could hide away, re-reading Nut’s manuals and guides for the millionth time. The world – or rather, the house – could be both my oyster and my clamshell.

  I’d thought about it all week, what I might do. Time alone was so rare. But now that Art was gone I was already rattling around the place. Mutely I moved from room to room without a single thought in my head, picking up Art’s odd socks and old mugs, moving small relics from shelf to shelf. It was the first time I’d been alone in the house since we’d moved in and I couldn’t focus. Well, obviously I had been on my own briefly before, but it’s not the same when you know someone’s going to walk in the door again at any moment. It’s that that keeps the air electric. It was so stupid; I’d lived on my own for years before this house, and never noticed the air feeling so emaciated.

  I made myself a pot of tea on autopilot, sifting in five teaspoons of sugar, and sat with a bowl of muesli at the dining table. I ate slowly, each clunk of spoon on bowl chiming obscenely loud, and sipped at the tea but it made my teeth sting.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  I still had all my faculties. Maybe I should have offered to go with Art to the festival, but then again he hadn’t asked me to. Would it have been appropriate? How would that have felt – hearing him talking to the room like that, with authority? What would I have said, if someone had approached me as his fiancée? Or for God’s sake, why hadn’t I arranged to meet Eleanor or Rosa like a normal person? My phone rested in my palm like an alien device. I hadn’t spoken to either of them since the party at New Year, and now it seemed like I just couldn’t remember how to do it or to make it look casual. Also, there’d be so many questions about everything – Art, the programme. I looked down at the engagement ring, still tight around my finger. Was I ready for that? No. No.

  How would I have spent a Saturday alone before Art? There weren’t many of them. I always seemed to be joining meals out with co-workers for an endless stream of birthdays, anniversaries, and all the rest. A treat used to be driving to a museum out of town, usually one of those stately homes, half mocked up in period-style with little interpretive panels. Museums to lives, rather than things. I’d have gone with Luke, who planned those trips like a boy writing his Christmas list. When he got really excited, he’d brush back his curly fringe over and over like it annoyed him. It’d flop down again sweetly over his eyes again every time, but he always kept it long. He used to twist those curls and mine together, marvelling at how they held fast even though they coiled in different directions. He couldn’t resist playing with my hair whenever I laid my head on his shoulder, and no matter where we were, the tickling of his fingers on the nape of my neck were far more vivid than history or promises.

  And of course, before those days I’d been to museums with friends and with Mum when I was smaller, but it was always better to go on my own. With Aubrey, I was her shadow as she ricocheted from room to room, my eyes only on the things she pointed out. And even with Mum, I was led by the hand from gallery to gallery as she picked out her favourite pieces, pressing a finger against the case to point out a bone, or stitch or fraying feather. Her favourite parts then became my favourite parts.

  But that’s not what these places are about. Like how a church should feel, you should lose yourself in the threads of weave. Only on my own could I walk from room to room and really comprehend that these were lives just like mine, once. Every empty glove held a million ghosts, and every portrait spoke to me of the painter, just as much as the painted.

  I could have gone to a gallery or museum while Art was away, sure, I could have. But it was different now. How could I lose myself if I couldn’t even feel myself enough to let go?

  Around mid-morning I pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and rode my frustration with the Hoover in my hand, then the duster, and then disinfectant and a surprising number of cloths of every colour and texture found beneath the kitchen sink. I had no idea where such a range came from – I certainly hadn’t bought them – but an even deeper root around revealed an even greater host of cleaning tools still in their packets. It was like discovering treasure.

  Whenever I had to stop, I filled a glass from the tap, drank my fill, emptied the glass, and washed and dried it immediately. I went through each motion without thinking about all that much, mechanical in both movement and mentality. I used up the entire collection of cloths just from wiping the grime and build-up from the windows. I can’t remember what time I finished, but the light in the house had dimmed, dulling all the shining surfaces with renewed grey
lint. It hardly looked any different.

  I laid myself as straight as an arrow on Art’s side of the bed, staring up to the ceiling, and relaxing my muscles one by one. I’d been to a guided meditation session years before, where you squeezed and relaxed each set of muscles from the toes up. On that bed I hardly had to do the tensing part – I just focussed on letting myself go limp, piece by piece. The house was still silent, apart from a soft shuffling from the loft above.

  I rose again, and opened the cupboard, rooting around behind the shoeboxes and bags for the wide tin of sketching pencils I’d hidden there. Prising open the lid, I saw that the pencils were still as sharp as needles, never having been broken in. I took one of these from the tin and slid the huge art pad out from behind Art’s portfolio folder.

  Tucking it under my arm, I headed to the landing and heaved on the ladder pull, stepping out of the way as it swung down in a creaking arc. I crept up the steps, and then crouched with the baby gate at my back and the paper on the floor in front of me, all the while scanning the room for Nut’s face. There she was in the far left corner, peeking from behind the long wooden bench. Her face tipped sideways and an ear twitched, flicking its funnel towards me curiously. I started to make that tut-tut-tutting noise, reaching out towards her with an open right hand, rubbing together my fingers and thumb. Come on, little girl.

  Nut crept from her corner stealthily, eyes focused on my fingers. Her soft, cushioned feet padded the floor with a soft and graceful thump, thump, thump. She stopped in front of me, flopping down her backside with a sound somewhere between a grunt and a chirrup. Her tail swished behind her, and she faced me brazenly with her wide, moon-like face.

  I picked up the pencil and pad of paper and started to sketch her outline, working from the outside back in towards the heart. For some reason I thought that’d be easier, but Nut ended up shapeless, formless. It occurred to me that if I started from the outside, I wouldn’t get the features inside right – they’d all be the wrong size, and it wouldn’t look like Nut at all. I was sure that I had to get the face right, but no matter what I drew it looked either ugly or alien, and I became angry with myself.

  I spread my discarded attempts on the floor to try to assess where I’d gone wrong. As I scanned my eyes across the scribbled leaves, I noticed a few interesting things. One was that Nut looked completely different in all of them. If someone had walked in there was no way they could’ve known that they were doodles of the same creature. This drawing looked a bit like a wildebeest, this one a little like a lion – a plume of tawny crowning around a scowl. Some sketches looked like nothing in particular but I could still pick out features I recognised. I’d drawn Art’s eyes on her face there, and in this one I’d given her the uncommonly rosy budded lips of a cherub in one of those Renaissance paintings.

  I piled the papers up carelessly, my mission unsuccessful and results frankly a bit weird, and scratched Nut behind a twitching grey ear. Even though I hadn’t anything to show for it, I felt pacified, as if I’d switched off a little part of me and everything had gone quiet. A nice quiet.

  Just then, I heard the phone ring downstairs, so I made my way to the kitchen to answer it, leaving all of my materials upstairs with Nut. I picked up the receiver, stuttering a little on my “hello”. It was Art, checking in after his lecture.

  “How did it all go?” I asked. Breezy. Breezy.

  “It was incredible – they sold every ticket! I ended up there way longer because everyone wanted me to sign their stuff. But the festival was pleased with that, so they’re taking me out for dinner shortly.”

  “Oh right. Who are you with?”

  “Just Kelly right now. Paul was here too but he’s had to leave for another lecture. So we’ll just find somewhere close.” Art trailed off, his voice shrill on the line.

  “Who’s Kelly?”

  “Ah, she’s quite new, first time I’ve met her in the flesh. She’s the publisher’s new Talent Support Coordinator, Officer, whatever, so she’s here for the whole two weeks.”

  “Say hi from me.”

  “I will. You’d love her. She’s so easy to talk to. And she really buoyed me up before the lecture. I had a wobble, and if she hadn’t physically pushed me on I don’t know how I’d have done it. So weird. I don’t usually wobble. Anyway, what’s going on with you?”

  I felt self-conscious then, and told him that I’d been to town to meet Eleanor. I’d come home, tidied a little, and was now going to make a dinner with various tapas bits I’d bought while out. Mature stiltons, sun-dried tomatoes, zucchinis, mushrooms, and homemade bread shot with black olives. He made all the right appreciative noises, and then abruptly changed tone.

  “Anyway, I should go now. Kelly’s waiting, and we need to leave soon so we can find a table somewhere. So–”

  “OK, Art. Send me a message later maybe, before you go to bed.”

  “I will. Love to you.”

  I placed my phone on the table top and placed my hands flat on either side. I had this really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, somehow tight and heavy at the same time. I made my way to the fridge and not surprisingly at all most of the shelves were empty. No answers there. I’d have to restock before Art came home.

  I spent half an hour grilling half a tofu fillet left over from the day before with a couple of wilting asparagus stalks, and boiled up a handful of rice. I plated them, squeezing a few drops of lemon juice over the tofu before heading to the living room.

  Art wasn’t eating alone. So why should I?

  I did a one hundred and eighty degree turn at the living room door, and grabbed a tin of Nut’s feed from the kitchen. I headed up the two sets of stairs to the second floor, setting down my dinner next to the baby gate. Nut was sitting on the paper pad, holding the pencil in her mouth like a moustache. I pulled the pencil from her jaws with the gentlest of coos, and then spooned some of the gelatinous slop into her dish. Grey and formless, it looked awful, but at the sight of the jelly, Nut bumbled over and pushed her face deep in the bowl. Little satisfied slurping and grunting noises filled the air and I relaxed back into my position by the baby gate. As I chewed, I watched Nut’s long tongue lift the jelly into her mouth greedily, and each mouthful she ate nourished me, too. This was just what I needed, after that phone call.

  Then, almost without thinking, I lifted a piece of my tofu and offered it to her on the palm of my outstretched hand. Nut’s face flicked up immediately and she ambled over, peering down at it with eyes fixed on the prize. She sniffed at it slowly and suspiciously. I held my hand firm. Nut’s self-restraint was a revelation. The way she’d been guzzling her own food had seemed so desperate that I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t torn my hand off to get at something new and illicit. After a pause, Nut leant forwards and lifted the tofu from my hand with large, flat, gleaming white teeth.

  I pulled back my hand sharply. I hadn’t realised her teeth would be so, well, like that. Already. They beamed bulb-like between her lips, a crush of pale pearls, far too big for her. She had a gap between the front two. I pulled my cardigan around my shoulders, shivering. Were those teeth uncomfortable for Nut? She was so young, and still teething. Forcing such oversize lumps through tender gums was a horrible thought. I pressed my tongue to one of my molars, and flicked it off one sharp corner.

  Nut licked the floor for any juice she’d dribbled before turning back to her own bowl, unmoved and unthanking. I was pleased. I scooped up the plates and cutlery and headed down the steps, locking the baby gate behind me. I cast a quick look over my shoulder to see Nut sitting in the same spot, watching me over her shoulder, eyes half-closed, tail arcing slowly from side to side.

  In the kitchen, I dropped the plates on the table and picked up my phone. I typed Aubrey’s number from memory and held the phone to my ear, breathing slowly – in through the nose and out through the mouth, just like in meditation classes. The line rang. And it rang. And it rang. And I didn’t hang up.

  When the time came to go
to bed, teeth brushed and body showered, I pulled out the patchwork blanket from beneath the bedframe and spread it across the duvet. I looked at it for a while, tracing my fingers over the chaotic stitches holding the pieces together. As I ran my hand across the knit, my engagement ring, the stone having swung to my palm, snagged on a loop of yarn, and as I pulled away I made one of the gaping holes in it worse.

  I cursed under my breath and tried to weave the wool back through so it looked like it did before, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I turned away, and decided that I’d sleep with the blanket on the bed, and put it away again tomorrow before Art came home.

  Only once I’d decided this, did I click the red “end” icon on the phone. I stared at the screen for some time after it had switched to darkness. I rose from the bed and switched off the light on the landing, totalling the house in the same void: empty, black.

  10

  It wasn’t long after that when Art and I had our first joint appointment of the year at Easton Grove.

  Knowing us both as they did, I felt sick at the thought of telling them about our engagement. Crazy really. For them this was ideal. How much more stable and committed to the programme could we possibly be? We were perfect press release fodder. But there was still this little niggling feeling that I wasn’t ready to share our story. Perhaps it was that I was still digesting it myself. Once I’d done that I’d be ready to wear the veil of a blushing fiancée, but for now it all was too raw, the bridal shroud a storm cloud.

  Art was excited to tell them, and on the drive to the clinic he rolled down the windows so the radio played out loud and melodious on the summer roads. He bobbed his head side to side and sang along, raising his pitch whenever he looked at me to join in. I tried my best, but I didn’t know the words to his music and made do with silent miming. I don’t think Art noticed, he was too busy shouting the lyrics to himself.