Ian McEwan - Nutshell

A toast to love and therefore death, to Eros and Thanatos. It appears to be a given of intellectual life, that when two notions are sufficiently far apart or opposed, they are said to be profoundly linked. Since death is opposed to everything in life, various couplings are proposed. Art and death. Nature and death. Worryingly, birth and death. And joyously iterated, love and death. On this last and from where I am, no two notions could be more mutually irrelevant. The dead love no one, nothing. As soon as I’m out and about I might try my hand at a monograph. The world cries out for fresh-faced empiricists.

When my father speaks, he sounds closer. He’s coming back to the table.

‘Well,’ he says, most genially, ‘that’s the spirit.’

I swear the deathly, loving cup is in his hand.

Again, with both heels I kick and kick against his fate.

‘Oh, oh, little mole,’ my mother calls out in a sweet, maternal voice. ‘He’s waking up.’

‘You failed to mention my brother,’ John Cairncross says. It’s in his manly poet’s nature to amplify another’s toast. ‘To our future loves, Claude and Elodie.’

‘To us all then,’ says Claude.

A silence. My mother’s glass is already empty.

Then comes my father’s drawn-out sigh of satisfaction. Exaggerated to a degree, merely out of politeness. ‘More sugary than usual. But not bad at all.’

The styrofoam cup he sets upon the table makes a hollow sound.

It comes back to me, as bright as a cartoon light bulb. A programme on pet care laid out the dangers while Trudy was brushing her teeth one rainy morning after breakfast: unlucky the dog that licks the sweet green liquid off a garage floor. Dead within hours. Just as Claude told it. Chemistry without mercy, purpose or regrets. My mother’s electric toothbrush drowned out the rest. We’re bound by the same rules that dog our pets. The great chain of non-being is round our necks too.

‘Well,’ my father says, meaning more than he can know, ‘I’ll be going.’

Claude and Trudy stand. This is the reckless thrill of the poisoner’s art. The substance ingested, the act not yet complete. Within two miles of here are many hospitals, many stomach pumps. But the line of criminality has been crossed. No calling in the deed. They can only stand back and wait for the antithesis, for the antifreeze to leave him cold.

Claude says, ‘Is this your hat?’

‘Oh yes! I’ll take that.’

Is this the last time I hear my father’s voice?

We’re moving towards the stairs, then up them, the poet leading the way. I have lungs but no air to shout a warning or weep with shame at my impotence. I’m still a creature of the sea, not a human like the others. Now we’re passing through the shambles of the hall. The front door is opening. My father turns to give my mother a peck upon the cheek and throw an affectionate punch at his brother’s shoulder. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

As he goes out he calls over his shoulder, ‘Let’s hope that bloody car starts.’

A PALE, THIN plant seeded by drunks in the small hours struggles for the remote sunlight of success. Here’s the plan. A man is found lifeless at his steering wheel. On the floor of his car by the rear seat, almost out of sight, is a styrofoam cup bearing the logo of a business in Judd Street, near Camden Town Hall. In the cup, the remains of a pureed fruit drink, laced with glycol. Near the cup, an empty bottle of the same lethal substance. Near the bottle, a discarded receipt for the drink bearing that day’s date. Concealed under the driver’s seat, a few bank statements, some for a small publishing house, others for a personal account. Both show overdrafts in the low tens of thousands. On one of the statements is scrawled, in the handwriting of the deceased, the word ‘Enough!’ (Trudy’s ‘thing’.) By the bank statements, a pair of gloves the dead man wore now and then to conceal his psoriasis. They partly conceal a balled-up newspaper page bearing a hostile review of a recent volume of poems. On the front passenger seat, a black hat.

The Metropolitan Police are understaffed, overstretched. The younger detectives, so the older complain, investigate at their screens, reluctant to waste shoe leather. When there are other, gory cases to pursue, a conclusion in this is conveniently at hand. The means unusual but not rare, easily available, palatable, fatal in large doses, and a well-known resource for crime writers. Enquiries suggest that as well as debts, the marriage was in trouble, the wife now living with the brother of the dead man, who had been depressed for months. Psoriasis undermined his confidence. The gloves he wore to conceal it explains the absence of fingerprints on the cup and the antifreeze bottle. CCTV images show him at Smoothie Heaven wearing his hat. He was on his way to the home in St John’s Wood that morning. Apparently, he couldn’t face becoming a father, or the collapse of his business or his failure as a poet, or his loneliness in Shoreditch, where he was living in rented accommodation. After a row with his wife he left in distress. The wife blames herself. The interview with her had to be suspended a few times. The brother of the dead man was also present and did his best to be helpful.

Is reality so easily, so minutely arranged in advance? My mother, Claude and I are waiting tensely at the open front door. Between the conception of a deed and its acting out lies a tangle of hideous contingencies. At the first touch, the engine turns but does not start. No surprise. This vehicle belongs to a dreaming sonneteer. On the second attempt, the same wheezing failure, and so too on the third. The starter motor is sounding like an old man grown too feeble to clear his throat. If John Cairncross dies on our hands, we’ll all go down. Likewise if he survives on our hands. He pauses before trying again, gathering his luck. The fourth is weaker than the third. I conjure a view of him through the car’s windscreen, mimicking for us a quizzical shrug, his form almost obliterated by reflections of summer clouds.

‘Oh dear,’ says Claude, a man of the world. ‘He’s going to flood the carb.’

My mother’s viscera orchestrate her desperate hopes. But on the fifth, a transformation. With slow heaving and comical popping sounds, the engine internally combusts. Trudy and Claude’s straggling plant grows a hopeful bud. As the car reverses into the road my mother has a fit of coughing from what I take to be a cloud of blue exhaust blowing our way. We come inside, and the door is slammed shut.

We’re not returning to the kitchen, but climbing the stairs. Nothing is said, but the quality of silence — creamily thick — suggests that more than fatigue and drink are drawing us towards the bedroom. Misery on misery. This is savage injustice.

Five minutes later. This is the bedroom and it’s already started. Claude crouches by my mother and might already be naked. I hear his breath on her neck. He’s undressing her, to date a peak of sensual generosity unscaled by him.

‘Careful,’ Trudy says. ‘Those buttons are pearls.’

He grunts in reply. His fingers are inexpert, working solely for his own needs. Something of his or hers lands on the bedroom floor. A shoe, or trousers with heavy belt. She’s writhing strangely. Impatience. He issues a command in the form of a second grunt. I’m cowering. This is ugly, sure to go wrong, too late in my term. I’ve been saying this for weeks. I’ll suffer.

Obediently, Trudy’s on all fours. It’s a posteriori , doggy style, but not for my sake. Like a mating toad, he clasps himself against her back. On her, now in her, and deep. So little of my treacherous mother separates me from the would-be murderer of my father. Nothing is the same this Saturday noon in St John’s Wood. This is not the usual brief and frantic encounter that might threaten the integrity of a brand-new skull. Rather, a glutinous drowning, like something pedantic crawling through a swamp. Mucous membranes slide past each other with a faint creak on the turn. Hours of scheming have accidentally delivered the conspirators into the art of deliberative lovemaking. But nothing passes between them. Mechanically they churn in slow motion, a blind industrial process at half power. All they want is release, to clock out, taste a few seconds’ respite from themselves. When it comes, in close succession, my mother gasps in horror. At what she must return to, and might yet see. Her lover emits his third grunt of the shift. They fall apart to lie on their backs on the sheets. Then we all sleep.