Ian McEwan - Nutshell

‘Shush!’

We go quietly onto the landing. Trudy leans cautiously over the banisters. Careful now. Distantly we hear Claude talking on the videophone, then his footsteps ascending from the kitchen.

‘Oh hell,’ my mother whispers.

‘Are you all right? Do you need to sit down?’

‘I think I do.’

We retreat, the better to be concealed from the front door’s line of sight. Elodie helps my mother into the cracked leather armchair in which she used to daydream while her husband recited to her.

We hear the front door open, the murmur of voices, the door closing. Then only one set of footsteps coming back along the hall. Of course, the Danish takeaway, the open sandwiches, my dream of herring about to be fulfilled, in part.

All this Trudy recognises too. ‘I’ll see you out.’

Downstairs, at the door, just as Elodie is leaving, she turns to say to Trudy, ‘I’m due at the police station tomorrow morning, nine o’clock.’

‘I’m so sorry. It’s going to be hard for you. Just tell them everything you know.’

‘I will. Thank you. Thank you for this book.’

They embrace and kiss, and she’s gone. My guess is that she’s got what she came for.

We return to the kitchen. I’m feeling strange. Famished. Exhausted. Desperate. My worry is that Trudy will tell Claude that she can’t face eating. Not after the doorbell. Fear is an emetic. I’ll die unborn, a meagre death. But she and I and hunger are one system, and sure enough, the tinfoil boxes are ripped apart. She and Claude eat fast, standing by the kitchen table, where yesterday’s coffee cups might still be.

He says through stuffed mouth, ‘All packed and ready to go?’

Pickled herring, gherkin, a slice of lemon on pumpernickel bread. They don’t take long to reach me. Soon I’m whipped into alertness by a keen essence saltier than blood, by the tang of sea spray off the wide, open ocean road where lonely herring shoals skim northwards through clean black icy water. It keeps coming, a chilling Arctic breeze pouring over my face, as though I stood boldly in the prow of a fearless ship heading into glacial freedom. That is, Trudy eats one open sandwich after another, on and on until she takes a first bite of her last and throws it down. She’s reeling, she needs a chair.

She groans. ‘That was good! Look, tears. I’m crying with pleasure.’

‘I’ll be off,’ Claude says. ‘And you can cry alone.’

For a long time I’ve been almost too big for this place. Now I’m too big. My limbs are folded hard against my chest, my head is wedged into my only exit. I wear my mother like a tight-fitting cap. My back aches, I’m out of shape, my nails need cutting, I’m beat, lingering in that dusk where torpor doesn’t cancel thought but frees it. Hunger, then sleep. One need fulfilled, another takes its place. Ad infinitum, until the needs become mere whims, luxuries. Something in this goes near the heart of our condition. But that’s for others. I’m pickled, the herrings are bearing me away, I’m on the shoulders of the giant shoal, heading north, and when I’m there I’ll hear the music not of seals and groaning ice, but of vanishing evidence, of running taps, the popping of foaming suds, I’ll hear the midnight chime of pots, and chairs upended on the kitchen table to reveal the floor and its scattered burden of food crumbs, human hair and mouse shit. Yes, I was there when he tempted her again to bed, called her his mouse, pinched her nipples hard, filled her cheeks with his lying breath and cliché-bloated tongue.

And I did nothing.

I WAKE INTO near silence to find myself horizontal. As always, I listen carefully. Beyond the patient tread of Trudy’s heart, beyond her breathing sighs and faintest creak of ribcage, are the murmurs and trickles of a body maintained by hidden networks of care and regulation, like a well-run city in the dead of night. Beyond the walls, the rhythmic commotion of my uncle’s snoring, quieter than usual. Beyond the room, no sound of traffic. In another time I would have turned as best I could and sunk back into dreamlessness. Now, one splinter, one pointed truth from the day before, punctures the delicate tissue of sleep. Then everything, everyone, the small, willing cast, slips in through the tear. Who’s first? My smiling father, the new and difficult rumour of his decency and talent. The mother I’m bound to, and bound to love and loathe. Priapic, satanic Claude. Elodie, scanning poet, untrustworthy dactyl. And cowardly me, self-absolved of revenge, of everything but thought. These five figures turn before me, playing their parts in events exactly as they were, and then as they might have been and might yet be. I’ve no authority to direct the action. I can only watch. Hours pass.

Later, I’m woken by voices. I’m on a slope, which suggests my mother is sitting up in bed propped by pillows. The traffic outside is not yet at its usual density. My guess is 6 a.m. My first concern is that we might be due a matutinal visit to the Wall of Death. But no, they aren’t even touching. Conversation only. They’ve had pleasure enough to last till noon at least, which opens an opportunity now for rancour, or reason, or even regret. They’ve chosen the first. My mother is speaking in the flat tone she reserves for her resentments. The first complete sentence I understand is this:

‘If you weren’t in my life, John would be alive today.’

Claude considers. ‘Likewise if you weren’t in mine.’

A silence follows this blocking move. Trudy tries again. ‘You turned silly games into something else, bringing that stuff into the house.’

‘The stuff you made him drink.’

‘If you hadn’t—’

‘Listen. Dearest.’

The endearment is mostly menace. He draws breath and considers yet again. He knows he must be kind. But kindness without desire, without promise of erotic reward, is difficult for him. The strain is in his throat. ‘It’s fine . Not a criminal matter. We’re on course. That girl’s going to say all the right things.’

‘Thanks to me.’

‘Thanks to you is right. Death certificate, fine. Will, fine. Crem and all the trimmings, fine. Baby and house sale, fine—’

‘But four and a half million—’

‘Is fine . In case of worst case, the plan-B plan — fine.’

Only syntax might make one think that I’m for sale. But I’ll be free at the point of delivery. Or worthless.

Trudy repeats with contempt, ‘Four and a half million.’

‘Fast. No questions.’

A lovers’ catechism, which they may have been round before. I’m not always listening. She says, ‘Why the hurry?’ He says, ‘In case things go wrong.’ She says, ‘Why should I trust you?’ He says, ‘No choice.’

Have the house-sale papers come already? Has she signed? I don’t know. Sometimes I doze and don’t hear everything. And I don’t care. Having nothing myself, property is not my concern. Skyscrapers, tin shacks, and all the bridges and temples in between. Keep them. My interest is strictly post-partum, the departing hoof mark in the rock, the bleeding lamb drifting skyward. Always up. Hot air without a balloon. Take me with you, chuck the ballast. Give me my go , my afterlife, paradise on earth, even a hell, a thirteenth floor. I can take it. I believe in life after birth, though I know that separating hope from fact is hard. Something short of eternity will do. Three score and ten? Wrap them up, I’ll take them. On hope — I’ve been hearing about the latest slaughters in pursuit of dreams of the life beyond. Mayhem in this world, bliss in the next. Fresh-bearded young men with beautiful skin and long guns on Boulevard Voltaire gazing into the beautiful, disbelieving eyes of their own generation. It wasn’t hatred that killed the innocents but faith, that famished ghost, still revered, even in the mildest quarters. Long ago, someone pronounced groundless certainty a virtue. Now, the politest people say it is. I’ve heard their Sunday-morning broadcasts from cathedral precincts. Europe’s most virtuous spectres, religion and, when it faltered, godless utopias bursting with scientific proofs, together they scorched the earth from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. Here they come again, risen in the East, pursuing their millennium, teaching toddlers to slit the throats of teddy bears. And here I am with my home-grown faith in the life beyond. I know it’s more than a radio programme. The voices I hear are not, or not only, in my head. I believe my time will come. I’m virtuous too.