Ian McEwan - Nutshell

So I’m ashamed of the attempt, relieved to have failed. Claude (now loudly humming in the echoing bathroom) must be reached by other means.

Barely fifteen minutes have passed since he undressed my mother. I sense we’re entering a new phase of the evening. Over the sound of running taps he calls out that he’s hungry. With the degrading episode behind her and her pulse settling, I believe my mother will be returning to her theme of innocence. To her, Claude’s talk of dinner will seem misplaced. Even callous. She sits up, pulls on her dress, finds her knickers in the bedclothes, steps into her sandals and goes to her dressing-table mirror. She begins to braid the hair that, untended, hangs in blonde curls her husband once celebrated in a poem. This gives her time to recover and to think. She’ll use the bathroom when Claude has left it. The idea of being near him repels her now.

Disgust restores to her a notion of purity and purpose. Hours ago she was in charge. She could be so again, as long as she resists another sickly, submissive swoon. She’s fine for now, she’s refreshed, sated, immune, but it waits for her, the little beastie could swell once more into a beast, distort her thoughts, drag her down — and she’ll be Claude’s. To take charge, however … I think of her musing as she tilts her lovely face before the mirror to twist another strand. To give orders as she did this morning in the kitchen, devise the next step, will be to own the offence. If only she could settle down to the blameless grief of the stricken widow.

For now, there are practical tasks. All tainted utensils, plastic cups, the blender itself to be disposed of far from home. The kitchen to be scoured of traces. Only the coffee cups to remain in place on the table, unwashed. These dull chores will keep the horror at a distance for an hour. Perhaps this is why she puts a reassuring hand on the knoll that contains me, near the small of my back. A gesture of loving hope for our future. How could she think of giving me away? She’ll need me. I’ll brighten the penumbra of innocence and pathos she’ll want around her. Mother and child — a great religion has spun its best stories around this potent symbol. Sitting on her knee, pointing skywards, I’ll render her immune to prosecution. On the other hand — how I hate that phrase — no preparations have been made for my arrival, no clothes, no furniture, no compulsive nest-making. I’ve never knowingly been in a shop with my mother. The loving future is a fantasy.

Claude emerges from the bathroom and goes towards the phone. Food is on his mind, an Indian takeaway, so he murmurs. She steps round him and sets about her own ablutions. When we emerge he’s still on the phone. He’s abandoned Indian for Danish — open sandwiches, pickled herring, baked meats. He’s over-ordering, a natural impulse after a murder. By the time he’s finished, Trudy is ready, braided, washed, clean underwear, new frock, shoes in place of sandals, a dab of scent. She’s taking charge.

‘There’s an old canvas bag in the cupboard under the stairs.’

‘I’m eating first. I’m starved.

‘Go now. They could be back at any time.’

‘I’ll do this my way.’

‘You’ll do as you’re—’

Was she really going to say ‘told’? What a distance she’s travelled, treating him like a child, when just now she was his pet. He might have ignored her. There might have been a row. But what he’s doing now is picking up the phone. It’s not the Danish people confirming his order, it’s not even the same phone. My mother has gone to stand behind him to look. It’s not the landline, but the video entryphone. They’re staring at the screen, in wonder. The voice comes through, distorted, bereft of lower registers, a thin, penetrating plea.

‘Please. I need to see you now!’

‘Oh God,’ my mother says in plain disgust. ‘Not now.’

But Claude, still irritated by being ordered around, has reason to assert his autonomy. He presses the button, replaces the phone, and there’s a moment’s silence. They have nothing to say to each other. Or too much.

Then we all go downstairs to greet the owl poet.

WHILE WE DESCEND the stairs I have time to reflect further on my fortunate lack of resolve, on the self-strangler’s self-defeating loop. Some endeavours are doomed at their inception, not by cowardice but by their very nature. Franz Reichelt, the Flying Tailor, fatally leapt from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 wearing a baggy parachute suit, certain his invention could save the lives of aviators. For forty seconds he paused before the jump. When at last he tilted forward and stepped into the void, the updraught wrapped the fabric tightly round his body and he fell just as a stone would fall. The facts, the mathematics, were against him. At the foot of the tower he made a shallow grave in the frozen Parisian ground fifteen centimetres deep.

Which brings me, at Trudy’s slow U-turn on the first landing, via death, to the matter of revenge. It’s coming clearer, and I’m relieved. Revenge: the impulse is instinctive, powerful — and forgivable. Insulted, duped, maimed, no one can resist the allure of vengeful brooding. And here, far out at this extreme, a loved one murdered, the fantasies are incandescent. We’re social, we once kept each other at bay by violence or its threat, like dogs in a pack. We’re born to this delectable anticipation. What’s an imagination for but to play out and linger on and repeat the bloody possibilities? Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves.

But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There’ll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It’s a reversion to constant, visceral fear. Look at the miserable Albanians, chronically cowed by kanun , their idiot cult of blood feuds.

So even as we reach the landing outside my precious father’s library, I’ve absolved myself, not of thoughts, but of actions, of avenging his death in this life or in the post-natal next. And I’m absolving myself of cowardice. Claude’s elimination won’t restore my father. I’m extending Reichelt’s forty-second hesitation into a lifetime. No to impetuous action. If I’d succeeded with the cord, then it, not Claude, would have been the cause for any pathologist to note. An unhappy accident, he’d record, and not unusual. There’d be some undeserved relief for my mother and uncle.

If the stairs allow such room for thought it’s because Trudy is taking them at the pace of the slowest loris. For once, her hand holds the banister tightly. She takes one step at a time, pauses on some, considers, sighs. I know how things stand. The visitor will hold up the essential housework. The police could return. Trudy’s in no mood for a battle of jealous possession. There’s an issue of precedence. She’s been usurped at the identification of the body — that rankles. Elodie is merely a recent lover. Or not so recent. She might have preceded the move to Shoreditch. Another raw wound to dress. But why call round here? Not to receive or give comfort. She might know or possess some damning tidbit. She could throw Trudy and Claude to the dogs. Or it’s blackmail. Funeral arrangements to discuss. None of that. No, no! For my mother, so much effortful negation. How wearying, on top of all else (a hangover, a murder, enervating sex, advanced pregnancy), for my mother to be obliged to exert her will and extend fulsome hatred to a guest.

But she’s determined. Her braids tightly conceal her thoughts from all but me, while her underwear — cotton, not silk, I sense — and a short summer print dress, correctly loose but not voluminous, are freshly in place. Her bare, pink arms and legs, her purple-painted toenails, her full, unarguable beauty are on intimidating display. Her aspect is of a ship of the line, fully though reluctantly rigged, gun hatches lowered. A woman-of-war, of which I’m the bow’s proud figurehead. She descends in floating but intermittent movements. She’ll rise to whatever comes at her.