After Purple (10 page)

There were only two bowls left. I tipped them into each other and forced the clammy liquid down my throat. A full, fat, bulging, burning feeling was surging through my limbs. I felt more important now, more substantial. I was weighted down, running over.

“Right,” I said. “Now for the aubergines.”

I carried them in, in triumph. They looked dramatic, almost evil, with their rich purple gravy spitting and frothing in the baking tin. I smiled around the table. It felt good to be the hostess, for a change. I was coping single-handed. Leo himself couldn't have done better. I served the aubergines, gave everybody two, finished each plate with a slice of lemon and a parsley sprig. (Janet wasn't the only one who could manage garnishes.)

“Bon appetit!”
I said.

I jabbed my knife through the fat black belly of my aubergine. Caesarean section. The placenta gushed out. I tried to staunch the wound with salt and mustard, but it was bleeding freely. I stuffed a forkful in my mouth and swallowed Janet's baby.

“I've got a job,” I said to the philatelist. “A new one. Personal assistant to an OBE in Mayfair.”

It made me angry, the way he didn't answer. I fixed my total concentration on my plate. I wanted to shut out everything but the sensations in my mouth — the flabby little mushroom stalks which tasted like the fingers of suede gloves; the shingly grains of under-cooked rice which gritted and scuffed against my throat; the smooth, oily skins of the aubergines with their fleshy velvet undersides, which stroked across my tongue; the fiery explosion as I crunched on a peppercorn.

I had cleared my own plate now and started on the philatelist's. Slowly, I bit into his huge misshapen aubergine. I could feel the stuffing oozing out of it, squashing against the back part of my throat. I crammed the rest of it whole into my mouth, pressing my hands against my stomach. I wanted to feel every morsel swelling up, slipping down. I was only a belly now, a mouth. Food was pumping round my body instead of blood. I felt warm, almost radiant. Little drops of perspiration were trickling down my body, underneath my clothes. The veins in my hands had swollen and were standing out, fat and mauve, like worms.

I moved round one more place. Now I didn't care if they were silent. My chewing had become a sort of conversation, a steady soothing rhythm of its own, which blocked out everything. I leaned across and speared the lemon slice from the untouched plate beside me. I needed it to counteract the grease. The aubergines were cooling now, little white flakes of fat clinging to their rumps, like dandruff, the stuffing congealing into a soggy mass. I'd mixed the rice with mushrooms which had turned it a dirty greyish colour, as if I'd been cooking with ink-stained hands. I sniffed my fingers. They smelt fatty, rancid, rank. The smell had got right inside them, pushed its way underneath my dress, settled on my hair and skin like sweat. The whole room stank of grease and spice and onions. All the subtle Leo-ish smells of precious books and musty manuscripts had been drowned in gravy, avalanched in rice. The entire house was a great black empty hole which someone was stuffing with heavy, soggy mince, packing it in, pressing it down, until there was no more room for even a mushroom stalk. I could feel my belly swelling up, up, up, in a sort of instant pregnancy. First month, cells divide; second month, morning sickness, often troublesome. I had evening sickness. I lurched into the borzoi breeder's seat. He, too, had left his food.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “They're not as good as Leo's, I admit. But I used his recipe.”

No answer. No one spoke at all, except the telephone. I began to count its howls while I went on eating. It helped me overcome my nausea. My ninth aubergine coincided with its twelfth bad-mannered scream. I pushed the plate away. Sickness in pregnancy can be very undermining — a bloated, distended feeling, loss of appetite, a retching sensation in the throat. I paused a moment, took a sip of wine.

“I believe you're interested in modern physics,” I belched to the literary agent. It seemed only fair to take an interest in her, now that I'd nabbed her food. Unfortunately, I'd got it wrong. It was the photographer who had studied Heisenberg.

“More salt?” I stuttered. Safer, really, to stick to my hostess role. “No, don't get up. I'll get it.” I smiled across at the actress. I think we could have hit it off, us both being out of work. She'd have called it “resting”, though, and I had never felt less rested. All the aubergines I'd swallowed were squatting in my belly like fat black babies, kicking me in the ribs, taking me over, sharing my lungs, my heartbeat. Multiple pregnancy. A clutch of smooth, rounded little foetuses, spawning in my stomach, squeezing against all my vital organs. I longed to lie down, excuse myself, creep away to my divan. But we were only halfway through the meal. There was still the salad, the dessert. I couldn't just surrender in the middle of a dinner party.

I dragged the salad into the centre of the table. I'd piled it into a huge china bowl, the sort the Victorians used for washing themselves, with a matching flower-sprigged ewer. The ewer held the vinaigrette. I slopped the dressing on to the lettuce leaves. My hands were very unsteady. Pregnancy unsettles all the nerves. The leaves turned wet and slimy, cucumber slices floated, waterlogged, tomatoes gaped and drowned. I felt too ill to pass it round. I used my hands as salad-servers, plunging them into the bowl up to the wrists and coating them with oil. It felt as if I were trying to grab a slippery, new-born baby. I crammed a fistful of lettuce in my mouth and forced it down.

“No, please don't talk,” I said to the philatelist. “I don't feel well.”

I knew I had to finish it. Salad is very expensive, out of season. It was too much effort to chew, so I just shoved in bits and pieces whole and swallowed them, choked on cucumbers, squashed my lips against tomato seeds. Salad oil was dribbling down my chin, trickling into the spaces between my buttons. I fumbled my hands up beneath my dress and unhooked my bra. My breasts almost whimpered with relief. I held them a moment, felt them warm, full, and throbbing through my hands. They were almost as large as Janet's now, ready to suckle, bursting not with milk, but with vinaigrette. My whole body was swelling and distended. I had almost reached full term.

There was still a puddle of dressing in the bottom of the bowl. I could see the china flowers shining through it, as I tipped it up and emptied it down my throat. You always swallow oil before a baby. My mother had told me that. It acts as a lubricant, a laxative, eases the foetus out into a slippery world. I closed my eyes. The purple shawl was banging against my eyelids, the purple feathers swaying in my brain.

“Be quiet,” I begged. No one had said a word. My whole body was crammed and stuffed with food. I could feel it rising up to my neck, passing all the little notches like water in a measuring jug, slopping over through the waste-pipe of my lips. I went on chewing tiny morsels of bread. There were still little gaps and crannies to be filled, pin-holes in my wrists, chinks between my toes, small, forgotten spaces which would hold a quarter of a mouthful. Food was so muddled up with nausea, I could hardly tell them apart now. I pushed back my chair. We hadn't had the damsons yet, but Leo always liked a pause between the courses.

“Excuse me a moment,” I murmured, as I struggled to my feet, lurched outside to the bathroom and voided everything I could. I dragged off the pantie-girdle and kicked it in a corner, rolled down my stockings, took off my pants. Pregnant women should never wear things tight. I still looked reasonable. The purple dress had soaked up all the oil stains, so that they hardly showed. My face was flushed, but that could have been the make-up. All my little buttons were still demurely fastened. I hadn't disgraced myself. I was dry between the legs.

I returned to the dinner table.

“Dessert?” I asked. I could see my face distorted in the window and the dish of damsons wavering and shaking in the glass. The bowl was so heavy, I wanted to lie down with it on Mr Leatherstone's rest-bed and have him swaddle and support me.

“It's damson mousse,” I told them. I'd sprinkled nuts on top, so they couldn't see it was curdled. The damsons came from Otto's mother's garden. Leo doesn't have a garden or a mother any longer. Both his parents and Janet's baby (and what was left of Lucian) must be somewhere in the same shadowy place.

I spooned the damson mixture into eight sundae dishes and lined them up in front of me. I wasn't well enough to go moving round the table any more. I started with the actress's. She was the only one whose name I even knew. The mousse tasted very cold and clean. It had been chilling in the fridge all afternoon. Almost a relief to feel it melt and shiver down my throat, flushing out the aubergines, cutting down the grease.

The second one was harder. There was simply no more room. The mousse was lying just on top of my throat, waiting to spring out at me. Slowly, I stood up and shook myself, like Karma. Some of the mousse subsided. I picked up my spoon and started on the third. I wished they'd make conversation. Distract me from the obscene and vulgar things happening in my gut. Leo often played the piano after dinner. We hadn't finished yet, but I felt we needed music all the same. I unlocked the cupboard where I'd bunged the radio and tuned in to Radio Three. Like a miracle, they were playing one of Leo's pieces, very fast and pouncy with lots of swirls and flurries. It didn't help the damsons. I would have preferred something slow and merciful and soothing. But at least I felt a little safer with Leo there beside me, pounding and swaying on the keys.

I made a start on damsons number four. The sharp, tangy flavour of the fruit had somehow disappeared. All I could taste was onions now, and cream. Little piles of damson stones were beginning to hem me in.

“Tinker, tailor, soldier …” I began. It was impossible. Too many stones. I could see them piling up and up beside me, until I was buried in them, toppled by them. Damson stones reaching as high as the mulberry tree outside.

“Rich man, poor man …”

I fixed my gaze on the middle point in the wall between the windows. One of Leo's oils was hanging there, and the exact midspot coincided with the right buttock of a blue male nude. I kept my eye on this and my ear on the prancing line of the piano. That way, I retained some vestige of control. Damsons number six slipped slowly, slowly down. The odd piece of damson skin had eluded the mixer and tangled with my tongue.

“Beggarman, thief.”

The nude male buttock was swinging gently up and down, up and … I paused for a moment to allow the kitchen to stop spinning, then took another spoonful. The mixture was warmer now and heavier. I held a stone like a boulder in my mouth, then slowly spat it out, along with a slimy shred of skin. I stirred the mixture round and round the dish. That way I lost some up the sides.

“It was a marvellous year for fruit,” I murmured. “Otto's mother bottles them herself.”

I belched again. The piano drowned it tactfully, by starting on a crescendo.

“Doesn't he play
beautifully
?” I remarked to the photographer. Mousse number eight had finally disappeared. I staggered out with the tray of empty dishes, the pile of ragged stones. It was difficult to walk. I wondered who was feeding Adrian. Janet wouldn't have had time to leave him his Ryvita. Perhaps he was sitting by her bed, nibbling on her grapes. Grapes! I hadn't even washed them. They were still oozing in their paper bag, fat and black, with a dusty purple bloom across them. I broke off a cluster and crammed them in my mouth. The pips crunched against my tongue like tiny half-formed bones. Leo was struggling with a phrase on the piano, tearing it to pieces, turning it inside out.

I felt the whole second movement churning and heaving in my stomach, notes squashing against my gut, like grapes. “I'm sorry,” I spluttered. “You'll have to excuse me. Leo will look after you.”

I dashed towards the bathroom, both hands cupped across my mouth. I slammed the door, and my whole fancy, curdled, purple dinner frothed and cascaded into the toilet bowl.

I was still lying on the cold white bathroom floor when Leo returned. I'd no idea what time it was. It was still purple outside the windows, purple in my stomach. One cheek felt cold against the tiles, the other burned and flushed. I could see Leo's soft suede boots inching across the floor towards my nose. They stopped. If I'd put out my tongue, I could have touched them with it, but I felt too tired.

Leo scooped me off the tiles. I lay in his arms like a pile of dirty dishes. It was strange to feel him gentle. He laid me in his bed, underneath the dragons, and undid all my little buttons. He untied my hair and combed it with his fingers, washed my face with a sponge. I thought he wanted sex, and tried to move myself against him, but my body wasn't there. Only a gigantic throbbing head and a gaping hole somewhere lower down.

He undressed me like a baby. I felt terribly ashamed. My body smelt of sweat and salad oil, and there was vomit on my dress. I wished he'd rage and shout. At least I'd feel secure, then.

“I was sick,” I said. “I'm sorry.” It was still difficult to speak. All the words were sticky with damson mousse. Leo held the sponge against my lips. I couldn't bear his kindness. I didn't know how to deal with it, what to say, how to move my limbs. I was like a virgin, unable to respond. I think I feared it would unravel him, lose him all his power.

“Look,” I said. “There's no need to …”

“Hush,” he murmured, and laid his cool, sallow hands against my head. It was so beautiful, I could feel tears pricking against my eyelids. I wanted to break his hands off and kept them there, so that if he had to go away again, at least I would have part of him.

“Who was at your dinner?” I asked. I knew I had to talk to him, be worthy of him, stop him disappearing.

“Libby, Sian, Rowena …”