Suzannah Dunn - Commencing Our Descent

Suzannah Dunn

Flying too high

With some guy

In the sky

Is my idea

Of nothing to do.

Yet I get a kick

Out of you.

‘I Get a Kick Out of You’

Cole Porter

Cover

Title Page Commencing Our Descent Suzannah Dunn

Epigraph EPIGRAPH Epigraph Things which are Not A Weep from a Wound Treaclier Quick, Slow Dead Give-Aways Tripwire Tense Ruinous Blue Waylaid Wish Make No Bones Good as Gold Acknowledgements Keep Reading About the Author By the Same Author Praise Copyright About the Publisher Flying too high With some guy In the sky Is my idea Of nothing to do. Yet I get a kick Out of you. ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ Cole Porter

Things which are Not

A Weep from a Wound

Treaclier

Quick, Slow

Dead Give-Aways

Tripwire Tense

Ruinous Blue

Waylaid

Wish

Make No Bones

Good as Gold

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

About the Author

By the Same Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

‘Decisions? Don’t look at me.’

But this is exactly what he does: he stops sawing through the thin copper pipe as I reach the top stair, he turns around and looks. And when he has looked for several seconds, he says, ‘You’re so pale, you know, Sadie.’

Jason’s own hair and eyes are the colour of charcoal, perhaps a touch warmer, closer to burned wood, scorches on wood.

‘Yes, thanks, I do know.’

My pallor is more than compensated for by hair the colour of pomegranate pulp. I am a lucky redhead, if that is not a contradiction in terms: none of the legendary temper, no incendiary freckles, and my skin lacks that blue tint of exposed bone. Philip says that my skin is the colour of Chardonnay; but he is kind, he is my husband. He says that I caramelise to muscat whenever I catch the sun.

Jason says, ‘But because you’re pale, you’ll always look young. Younger than me, anyway.’

‘I am younger than you.’

He is thirty-five, I am thirty-one. Earlier in our lives, when we had had fewer years, four of them would have made the difference of a generation: he would have been playing rugby on Saturday mornings when I was playing with my dolls; he would have been into punk when I was impressed by Genesis; smoking dope when I was sipping Pernod-and-black. Nowadays, four years is no time at all, but our lives are incomparable for other reasons. He is a father of four, the eldest of whom is fifteen.

‘Decision number one: I want to know where you’d prefer me to run this pipe. You have two options: beneath these floorboards here, or …’ he swivels, to point, ‘along this wall, which is less pretty but less work for me, less of a bill for you.’

I sit down on the top stair. ‘Give me a moment.’

He resumes his sawing: a sound effect for a music hall magician. ‘Enjoy your walk?’

Hal’s walk. Before Hal came, four months ago, I rarely walked as far as the local shops. When I agreed to take him on, I read in a book that a Labrador should have an hour each day off the lead. And I do everything by the book. He lives for his trips to the park, which seems very little to ask. So I take him twice each day. Between these excursions, he dozes on his bed, slumped or curled but somehow tuned in for the sound of my arm slithering into a sleeve or for the change in tempo of my movements that implies that I am going to leave the house. Sometimes he knows before I do that I am thinking of leaving. I have had to become careful, self-conscious of my signals, because I hate to turn him down, to have to watch the droop of his ears, those blond velvet triangles. Whenever I do leave the house without him, his stare – sideways, heavily-lidded – seems to accuse me of going alone to the park.

During our walk this morning, the clear sky was punctured by a knuckle of half-moon. Leaf-laden trees made a foreshortened horizon of green thunderclouds. The hedgerows were scattered with convolvulus flowers like washed but un-ironed hankerchiefs. Hal and I encountered other regulars. Firstly, the childminders: a bespectacled, tattooed man and a hennaed woman with their two battalions. Childminders, surely, because the children are too numerous, too similarly-aged and dissimilarly dressed to be their own. Four toddlers were strapped into two double buggies. Others were on foot, on small and unsteady feet, taking small and sometimes reluctant, even petulant, steps.

Further on, I exchanged nods and smiles with the polite middle-aged couple as he, with her support, was venturing from his wheelchair; he managed a little more than last week. Then we passed the elderly, hobbling man and woman, both of them as arthritic as their dogs, her Alsatian and his dachshund. We were passed in turn by the cheerful, late-thirties mum who strides behind her baby’s plush pushchair and kicks a tennis ball ahead for her puppy to chase. We avoided the wrinkled but elaborately made-up woman who throws a small plastic naked doll for her miniature dog to fetch. Today, there were irregulars too: one of the benches was occupied by a canoodling couple of kids with masses of matted hair and layers of army surplus clothing. They were sharing a bottle of vodka for their elevenses. As Hal neared, they bellowed to their dog to ‘Play nicely’.

None of them will be there when we go back this afternoon: by four o’clock the day will have drained from the park. Even the groundsmen will have stopped work and gone home. Hal and I, too, fail to take the afternoons as seriously as the mornings: in our half-hour we will manage a lap rather than a lap and a half. A mere break, a breath of fresh air. Hal will be contemplative, his nose close to the ground, his concentration as thorough as that of an avid reader.

‘Anyway, this pipe. Oh, don’t pull that face, Sadie. And don’t tell me that I’ll have to wait for the man of the house to come home before I can have a decision.’

‘You could build an Eiffel Tower from these pipes before he comes home.’

‘Still working hard?’

‘Still working hard.’

‘Still at the hostel?’

‘Manager now.’

‘And how is he?’

‘The same. Fine. Thriving. Busy.’

‘Good. Let’s give the Eiffel Tower a miss and hurry up with this.’ He brandishes the sawn-off pipe.

‘I’m a Libran.’

‘So?’

‘So, I can’t make decisions.’

‘You believe in all that?’

‘No. Just happens to be true, in my case.’

Hal is coming up behind me. He is only ever inelegant when on the stairs, his four legs encountering something designed for two. Determinedly digging his way up the steps, plucky but gawky, he looks like a puppy.

‘Hal’s a Taurus.’

‘Hal’s a dog .’

‘He’s a typical Taurus.’

‘He’s a typical dog , Sadie.’

While I rub Hal’s head, his ears, he is butting my hands. I am perversely proud of his prettiness. Would I love him quite so much if he were plain? I did adopt him unseen. His previous owners, friends of friends, were going to live abroad for several years. Having been persuaded to take him, I drove the two hundred miles to fetch him. I had been told that he was a Labrador cross: the look of a Labrador, but smaller. I had not been told that he had the slender face of a deer, that he was all cheekbones.