Composite Creatures Read online

  The ground froze that month, tipping each blade of grass like a little silver sword. The soil was solid coal, shot through with the tiniest green shoots. I’d have admired the weeds for their sheer bloody resilience if it hadn’t meant that I’d have to spend hours in the dark, crouching on the bitter earth, pulling them out with stinging fingertips. Gardening gloves were useless for finding the little weeds so I went at it naked, picking at the earth by solemn torchlight.

  Afterwards, I’d sit at the dining table, peeling away the broken nails one by one. Nut would usually leap up at this point in a rare show of athleticism, pushing her face in close to inspect the little pile of milky crescents.

  I’d grab the nail and cuticle wax and take in the glorious lemon scent – I can still smell it now – then take a generous scoop and massage it gently into Nut’s nails. Her claws were sharp and black, with a golden ridge tracking from root to tip. They took a lot of wear and tear, those nails; they were designed for it.

  Nut’s instinctive hour-long runs were as speedy as they ever were despite her increasing bulk. I never put her on the scales like I was supposed to, but she must have weighed in at least thirty pounds. Maybe more. Hold your hands in front of you at hip width, swivel them out around forty-five degrees, and that’s about how long she was at that time. I called her “my Chunky Nut”.

  Each time Nut finished her habitual run she’d flop by my ankles or scramble onto the back of the sofa to sniff my hair, making sure I was still me. I learned which ways she liked to be touched, the meanings behind each little tilt of her head, and what she did with her body when she’d had enough and wanted some time to herself. I fed her titbits of my dinner, and discovered that her favourite nibbles were peas (offered one at a time on the palm of my hand), little prawns, and cheese, particularly feta. She wasn’t keen on fruit, and would wrinkle her entire face when taking in its acidic spray, her round eyes disappearing behind thick, fleshy pink folds. She hated tofu and would turn away in total disgust when I offered it to her on a palm. She sniffed my steaming cups of chai tea and milky coffee curiously, but never took a sip.

  More to entertain myself than anything else I started to teach her tricks. I tried “sit” first, pushing down her back end as I repeated the word, but as her main position was on her rear or flopped on her side she didn’t seem to catch on. I had a little more success with “come”, by coaxing her to the opposite end of the living room with a pea or mini carrot. She’d amble over and push her face into my palm for her reward, and I’d rub her about the ears and reach underneath to tickle her belly. I’d repeat the process over to the other side of the room but by that point she’d have sniffed out some crumb or my plate of leftovers and would be helping herself. I’d flail my arms to get her attention but she’d just look at me over her shoulder and roll her eyes before turning back to her new discovery. I could never tell if she was too clever for the game or too stupid, but, ultimately, she always got her own way.

  It wasn’t until our neighbours started to illuminate their dark bricks with Christmas lights that I started to relax a little again with Nut. Yes, I still felt the aftershock, but I had started to accept that nothing had actually gone wrong. Nut hadn’t escaped, she hadn’t fallen ill again. Our days just continued. We’d had her almost a year, and life had developed its own routine. It was a relief to let my body fall into that rushing stream without having to swim, or paddle, or fight. Finally, I could shut out the light and let the water carry me from shore to shore without fear of drowning. All I had to do to float was keep breathing, keep saying yes, keep being amenable. Yield.

  This was to be our first real Christmas in the house. Last year we’d been too busy making sense of existences crammed into cardboard boxes to think about dressing the place in baubles and twinkling garlands. I had a few festive bits and pieces from my old flat, and even though the artificial green fir and strings of multi-coloured pompoms didn’t sit right with me anymore, I still brought them out and strung them loyally around the living room like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Some of them had been Luke’s, but I only realised once they were already pinned to the walls. I told myself that it didn’t matter, they were only things. Art twisted his face at the sight of them but having come across from Wisconsin with only two modest suitcases he had no heirlooms of his own. His Christmases were to be sketched on a clean slate.

  The idea of festooning each room with only my outdated tat made me feel too naked, so I suggested that we make some new decorations. Art bought into this idea massively, ditching his desk to research homemade baubles. Not long after, I started to find small crumpled pieces of ruled writing paper in every room of the house. At first, I assumed it was Nut running off with Art’s notepads, but when I picked one up and noticed that the paper was too precisely folded, I realised what Art was doing. Every time I found one after that, I took care to open up the ball and turn it this way and that to work out what it was supposed to be. Sometimes I thought I had it all worked out and would mutter “Ah, a penguin,” or similar, and other times I’d have to admit defeat, shrug it off, and drop it in the recycling with the rest of the animal farm.

  The sheer volume of paper-folding failures made me wonder if Art had given up writing entirely. I sat watching him one night at the dining table as he painstakingly cut the paper and pressed it with the flat irons of his forearms. Something about the way he forced his fingers down onto each fold had the same effect on me as fingernails down a blackboard.

  He attempted robins, angels, snowmen, Christmas trees… None of them looked quite right to me, but I smiled encouragingly at each one he finished, finding a home for it on a mantelpiece or windowsill. This was Art’s concentration face; brow creased, the tip of his tongue peeking from between his teeth. I wondered if this was the face he wrote with, in those intimate moments I wasn’t allowed to see. I’d only ever seen the wide-eyes of surprise or the downturned mouth of concern when I interrupted him. Did I like Art’s concentration face? I wasn’t sure.

  Sadly, neither of us saw the flaw in our new paper-crafted decorations until later. The impetus of Nut’s runs sent them wafting behind the TV or in some cases out through the window, even if it was only opened a crack to let the air in. Before long we stopped picking them up, and Nut would trample them, only occasionally stopping to chew on the corner of a snowflake or pin an angel beneath her hands as she ripped it apart with her teeth. Once Art realised that his creations were simply toys for Nut and would never last, he stopped making them altogether, disappearing back into his private engine room.

  Our brief sojourn together ended, I dressed the rest of the house alone, decking the walls and surfaces with my old garish greens and ruby reds. At first, I’d felt oddly sheepish, as if I was dressing a stranger in costume without asking her permission. So, while I wrapped her in cheap, flaking gold, the house held her breath, looked away, and remained aloof.

  But I saved the best for last. A set of four vintage silver-foiled baubles from Mum’s house.

  They’d been one of the few knickknacks I’d salvaged from the clear-out. At the time I hadn’t thought too much about why I was keeping them, I was just aware of the fact they outdated me and Mum, and it would have been a crime to dump them in a skip. What right had I to destroy history? I hung the baubles from the curtain rails, and at night the light from the streetlamps reflected across the walls like moonlight on surf.

  To Nut, each room had become a funhouse. Imagine it – extra obstacles to vault, shiny curiosities with foreign scents to sniff, loud and crinkly textures to investigate under tentative claws. She’d sit for a good hour in the centre of the living room, just watching one of the antique baubles spinning in the air current. What she saw in it I have no idea, but I thought the effect on the walls was hypnotic. I sometimes stood there too, humming softly, imagining how it would be to float on the sea.

  There had been a few times like that, where Nut had imitated me. I’d be watching a film on the sofa with Nut stretched out on the floor b
eside me, only half-aware that both she and I were chewing on our lips. It was a tic Art had pointed out to me only a few months before. Life repeats, doesn’t it? Chewing on her top lip was Mum’s thing. It was just what she did. It meant she was digging deep into some thought, nothing for me to be concerned about. But I saw collectors and dealers misread it as impatience, and give a little to her demands. I wonder now if she knew that and played on it.

  So with me Nut chewed her lip and tilted her head, but even more obvious was her growing obsession with Art’s study. She’d nap outside the locked door, perking up immediately when she heard shuffling from within. The lower three feet of the door was scored with deep furrows, curls of white paint scattered on the carpet like frosting. If Art came out to go to the bathroom or kitchen she’d slither inside, lithe as a snake, and set up home under his desk. She pulled books from his shelves, her fingers now dextrous enough to turn pages. She’d become more vocal than ever, and often mumbled a series of low grunts whenever Art spoke.

  She’d also started to look like him, really look like him. Her face was one thing, but there was a certain confidence in her walk, an elegance in the bend of her elbows and knees which reminded me of how Art moved on stage. Sometimes I caught myself just before I talked to her like I would Art.

  But this confused me. Nut barely saw Art. He still spent days and evenings deep in his burrow. How could Nut be picking up these habits and traits if she didn’t see them enough to know that they were habits and traits? At no point did I assume that these were Nut’s idiosyncrasies – they were definitely ours. Since we spent our evenings together, I could get it if she was picking up my quirks through boredom or experimentation. But Art’s?

  I don’t know if Art was thinking along the same lines as I was. He hardly looked up from his desk to talk about anything. His head was in the sand – not owning up to the truth at home, or even confessing to his publisher that he couldn’t write anymore. I understand; it’s soft and dark down there, and we’ve all done it. Even Mum, ignoring her own body as she succumbed to her cancer. I wanted to pull Art up by the hair and scream at him; Nut has never existed in isolation. She has always been our past, our inheritance, our legacy. You know it now. We both do. Her heart was warm with his blood, not just mine, and perhaps her charms were inherited from (this was the first time I used the word) parents? Hardwired into her being. And did this mean that she had an awareness of these quirks? Did Nut like herself? Did Nut like us? But I never said any of that to him. Never out loud. But I told Nut. I whispered it deep in her ear late each night, when the house groaned in the winter winds and the world slept.

  That was when I felt safest, and, apart from Stokers, I hardly left the house at all. Why would I want to be anywhere else? My plan was for Art, Nut and I to spend Christmas alone, so there was plenty of time to press into the walls of my cocoon. Art had suggested we have another New Year’s party, to mark everything that’d happened that year. It was such a change to hear Art suggest anything social, so I immediately agreed to it – thinking that it seemed like an age away. With almost three weeks booked off from work I was looking forward to switching off and maybe even teaching Nut a few more tricks. Perhaps how to stand on her back legs, or handle a spoon.

  My final week at work dragged as I knew it would. On the last day I decided to leave a little early, so set to packing up my desk – Stokers’ policy – to remove any trace of myself from my cubicle. When the office was closed, management liked the idea of the place being wiped clean. New Year, new start.

  I was almost finished squeezing the last of my notebooks into a drawer when Markus appeared by the side of my desk. His face and neck were puce, his jaw locked tight against his words.

  “Are you off, Norah?”

  “Yep. I’ve tied everything up, not started anything new.”

  Markus laughed under his breath and began to pick at the fabric at the top of my divider wall.

  “I’m glad I caught you then. Come for a minute, will you?”

  I followed Markus through the mostly uninhabited cubes. A few faces peered over the top of cubicle walls, their brows furrowed. A middle-aged woman a few feet from Markus’ office tilted her head as I approached, her tongue flicking off the edge of her incisors. A few seconds passed before I recognised her as Markus’ PA. She’d been out of the office for most of the year, and in that time I’d overheard soft, sympathetic voices in the lunchroom discussing how she’d finally reached the top of the waiting list for an NHS hospital bed, and would finally receive treatment for her greying. Intensive chemotherapy. No mercy. The voices seemed to disagree about the cause of it, though. One thought it must be the city air and shoddy purifiers that Stokers was determined to never invest in, while the other thought it must be something in the PA’s food – “She never ate anything organic.”

  I kept walking towards the woman, wearing what I hoped was a soft, encouraging smile. She looked well to me – thin, I suppose, but her blonde hair was voluminous, sticking out in curls that would normally belong to someone less than half her age. But as soon as our eyes met, the woman lowered her head and started scribbling blindly on a notepad with so much force that the paper was tearing beneath the nib. Her mouth was a tiny little knot now, pinned shut. My skin stung as if doused in cold water.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Markus held the door open with his head down, and waited for me to enter. Against the wall adjacent to Markus’s desk sat Fia, wearing a three-piece tweed suit, and next to her a face I hadn’t ever wanted to see again. The man at our door, pressing his face in at our window. He was completely bald, his head shining under the brutal corporate fluorescence. He wore little round glasses and a vividly blue suit. A bright red handkerchief poked from a top pocket, and a battered flat cap lay across his lap. He peered up at me casually, as if I was simply squeezing past him on a train. Both he and Fia looked like they were dressed for a wedding, rather than the sterile grey of an insurance firm.

  Fia looked up with a smile as the bald man stood up and offered me his hand. I shook it silently and sat in the steel chair opposite the desk. Markus sank into his executive chair, slouching low in the seat, his fingers stacked in a pyramid in front of his face. I held my breath and blinked slowly, demurely, waiting for one of them to speak. No way was I going first. Fia cleared her throat.

  “It’s lovely to see you in your domain, Norah. How long’s it been now?”

  I paused, for effect. “Four months or so. You weren’t there when we brought Nut in.”

  Fia and the bald man looked at each other. “Nut?” Fia laughed, her forehead creased in confusion. “Goodness, yes. Five months. You’ve been very quiet.”

  “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be quiet. Our next appointment with you isn’t until February, isn’t it?”

  The bald man stared, perfectly still. Fia smiled to herself, her finger scrolling up on her tablet. “That’s right. Though there’s been home visits scheduled on a few occasions but you’ve cancelled each one. Is everything alright?”

  I made sure my hands lay open on my knees, placid, and open. “Better than alright. We’ve just been finding it hard to book an evening when we’re free together, and I thought you’d prefer to see both of us, rather than just me or Arthur on our own.”

  “But we have nothing scheduled yet. Have you not found a date?”

  “I’m trying. Art’s hugely focussed on his book, and I’ve been pulling quite long hours here.” Excuses. They came readily to me, shrouding me like moths on bark.

  “But your manager here tells us you usually finish at 5.30pm? And we’ve made lots of alternative dates for you…”

  “I’ve had three letters, which I called you after.”

  “We’ve sent you eight letters, Norah. We’ve not heard from you after the first three. Mr Martin, my colleague here, has called round personally to your house four times to see you and there’s no answer, though it seems like there’s someone home. Can you explain that?”

/>   Why couldn’t they just step back? Why couldn’t they just leave us alone? “The doorbell’s broken. It’s been like that for months.” My voice croaked and betrayed my lies. Why, even now, did I want to see Fia smile?

  She tipped her head. “We need to make sure you, Art and the ovum organi are working out. After what happened this summer, it’s our responsibility to look out for signs of post-traumatic stress. And we need to check your living arrangements. How would it make us look if the ovum organi was being neglected?”

  “She’s going from strength to strength.”

  “Then invite us in. Otherwise we’ll access it another way.”

  “You don’t have the right to come over without my permission, doctor.”

  Fia smiled. “We do, Norah. Ova organi are our property. Its function is our business. As are you.”

  I was struck between wanting to please the woman who held the keys to our happiness and wanting to slap her across her skinny and patronising face. A motherly embrace could quickly have turned to rage, my claws pulling tufts of fake, blonde hair from their roots.

  The bald man was waiting for me to do something. He leant forward and pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket. He clicked the pen five times before speaking and something in my head lurched.

  “So, if we send an appointment for just after New Year, you’ll be there? And your manager will make sure you have the time off?” He peered at Markus over his glasses. Markus nodded, his eyes closed. He swallowed a lump.

  “Brilliant news. I’ll come along to that too. We can discuss any need for a residential stay at Easton Grove in January. Lots of members benefit from that. I’ll bring a key, so we can let ourselves in, yes? We’re family after all,” Fia said, tapping on her tablet. “Speaking of family, how’s Arthur doing?”