a worm kinking through a salad. Then he sat up straight, folded his hands pentitently on his lap, found the laugh and killed it. He blinked, sniffed and pinched his nose.
I see, he said.
I’ve got enough for myself. I didn’t ask you to come in.
Yes, of course, said Jack. I’m sorry. It was selfish of me to ask. I’ve behaved badly today. You can’t forgive me, of course, I don’t expect you to. Please – give me a moment, and I’ll leave.
I didn’t––
Please. Don’t speak: it’s my fault: I provoked you. A minute to collect my thoughts.
They remained like that in the kitchen for a long time, Jack sitting upright on the stool with his hands on his lap, head inclined slightly, gazing at the skirting board, Adela standing watching him in the kitchen doorway, resting her weight on one leg, gently rubbing the tips of her thumbs and index fingers together. There was no sound: no birdsong, no music, no engine, no clockwork, no running water, no wind. When Jack began to cry, Adela heard the tears moving, a noise like dust slipping down a shallow slope of brass. Jack’s back bent and his shoulders shook and he clenched his praying hands between his thighs.
Don’t do this, said Adela softly.
Tears dripped from Jack’s jaw and he rocked to and fro. His voice came lost from a roofed-in maze inside him. All the years, it said. All the days. All the hours. When Adela heard the words a memory of a dream she had never had came into her mind. There was a statue of Jack in the desert, up to his calves in blowing sand. The statue was made of soft, porous stone, deeply scored by the wind and the rain. Jack’s face was slashed with parallel diagonal lines and pocked with air bubbles. His hands were outstretched, perhaps offering some gift, but the gift had long since worn away and he looked like a leper appealing for help. Around him millions of figures wrapped from head to foot in twisted black rags were hurrying across the dunes, the cloths streaming in the wind. They carried smoking buckets of fine sand which they would dip into the ground to replenish, without stopping. Every so often one of the figures would fall and not get up, the drifting sand covering them.
Adela went to the clothes drawer, fetched a white cotton handkerchief and offered it to Jack, who took it and pressed it to his face with both hands. Adela sat on the edge of the table, looking out through the window.
My husband was in sales, she said. That was what he said to other people about what he did. It was what he told me the first time we met but he was looking at me in such a way that I thought about sailing ships. I’m in sales, he said, and I thought of him standing up in the rigging of a sailing ship with three masts and a hundred white sails, all hoisted and full in the wind, and all because of me. It was like Are you happy? Happy? I’m in sails! What he meant was he sold car components. He never said that. He said I’m in sales. Like trouble. Or debt. Or love.
I was waitressing in the daytime and clubbing at night. I had friends, good people. I was dead happy half the time. The only thing was I could never take the happiness home with me and enjoy it later, by myself, whenever I felt like it. It seemed simple enough when you had it but it wasn’t, it was complicated happiness, it had too many ingredients, the people I needed, the places I went, the right sounds, the right drugs. I did a little dealing myself and I met some people who helped me out, I turned into a restaurant manager, and I got a mortgage on a basement flat with a garden in a city. That was a change. It was painted and varnished and all the rooms were empty. I walked in the first day with an ornament I’d just bought and put it on the mantelpiece. It made the place look even emptier and I took a couple of days off work and broke the limit on all the plastic I could get. I got furniture, rugs, candlesticks, scatter cushions, little boxes. I had a passion for the little boxes. I had brass ones, teak ones, birch bark ones, laquered Japanese ones. None of them had anything in them. I wanted all the empty space I had hidden in pretty enclosures. And there were so many candlesticks. Of course I had to get matching candles to go with them.
One time I realised I hadn’t seen one of my best friends for a long time. We’d known each other for years, slept together a few times. I thought about it and decided I hadn’t seen him since I bought this monster bronze coffee table with a verdegris effect. I hadn’t missed him, either.
I was in a big pileup on the motorway in the fog. You couldn’t see the bonnet of your own car in front of you and we were all tanking along at fifty. There were three dozen cars and trucks went into each other. The cars at the front caught fire but I was close to the back and I stayed in my seat, hands on the wheel, watching the lights flashing at me on the dashboard with that ticking sound they make, listening to the screams and shouts from the fires up ahead. I turned the volume control on the radio to try to make them quieter. A man with a bare chest knocked at my window. He was covered in blood and oil and dirt and he was carrying a handful of cotton strips he’d torn from his shirt to make bandages. He asked if I was OK. He was going to be my husband.
He drove me home later in my car. I asked him to. I liked him. I could see he liked me. He told me he was in sales. I didn’t say much. I was in shock because my car was damaged and when it happened I realised that since I’d bought it, I hadn’t once gone clubbing, and it didn’t hurt.
I loved him. I loved him much too much. I loved him like dying of cancer. He didn’t feel the same. He was a good man and he loved me like a favourite dog. I mean he was really fond of dogs. But he never had one while we were together. For him it would have been like polygamy.
He was a collector, he was an enthusiast, he hoarded facts and gadgets. He collected Marvel comics, Motown records and Laurel and Hardy films on video. He had to have them all. Carpentry was another thing. He got very good at that though he never made anything we needed. He kept adding extensions to the bird table. He called it the bird table of Babel. One day, he said, the god of birds would get angry with his work and destroy it.
There was this time I tried to sit down with him and explain the way things were. I told him about how I’d replaced one of my best friends with a coffee table and swapped going out clubbing for a car. I told him how all the nice things we had in the kitchen, the copper pans and the sky blue crockery, how they were taking up space where other things used to be, a walk, a date, a sky. And he said he knew what I meant, you change as you get older, your possessions get a hold on you, and you need to own more things to be satisfied. And I said well that wasn’t exactly what I was meaning, I meant that love and owning things and having a good time were all spaced out along the same spectrum and you couldn’t take it all in at once so you tuned in to different parts and right now I was just tuned in to him. He was like a radio station that played one song and all I wanted to do was listen to it over and over again.
And he said I know what you mean.
And I said Do you?
And he said Yes, even though it’s irritating for other people and they can’t stand it, all you want is the same thing over and over again. I’ve got all the Laurel & Hardy films on video but the only one I watch is Sons of the Desert.
And I said So what’s the point of having all the others.
And he said It’s the complete set.
And I said But you don’t need the others if you only watch one.
And he said I like having the collection. I like having it there. It makes me feel complete.
And I said So you don’t know what I mean.
I came back from the restaurant without a job after I tore up the menus and started asking the customers why they ate so much when they weren’t hungry. I began taking things to charity shops. First the candles,
