Milk

THE NEXT MORNING I do not go to work. I lie there and think about ringing old friends, if I have any left. It appears that I do not. So I go in to the station instead. Besides I have to shoot the last date of all, though Stephen is not the only one who has disappeared.

The LoveWagon calls me in and she says what she always says. She says it was a brilliant show. She says it was a disaster. I cannot disagree. There is nothing wrong with this woman after all.

She laughs. At what? All the time her fingers are delicately poised between her lip and her nose, like a smoker sniffing out the nicotine, like a gambler smelling lost or future coins. It makes me wonder where her hand has been.

I remember the first time I met her. She was at a viewing machine, reversing a tape repeatedly against a wall. I stepped up behind her and frightened her half to death.

‘Oh my heart!’ she said and laughed.

So who knows what the joke is? She was working on a programme about battered wives. Now she works with love and mudwrestling. Sometimes she tries to make a connection. It doesn’t bother me. Connections don’t matter when you hit air.

I go home and talk to my father. Because my father always knew the proper way to name things, which is quietly. He kept facts like sweets in his pocket that he could pull out, surprised that there was still one left.

Last night I dreamed that Stephen was dead, but I know that he is not. I know that he is out there somewhere, floating on the airwaves, taking his time.

This morning I went for a swim. I swim every morning in the sea, in the sun and in the rain and I say to God that this is my prayer for our child, whoever it is, whoever it might turn out to be. I swim on my back and look at the sky, which reminds me of the sky when I was a child, the sky when I asked my father ‘Why is the sky blue?’ realising as I said it that it wasn’t really blue at all. And my father gave an answer as mixed as the weather.

Marcus came to visit. He drove all this way because he is worried about me being pregnant and on my own in the country. We talked about Frank who is back with his wife. We talked about the movies we are going to make, but he stopped when he saw that I meant it. So we talked about old times instead and had a laugh.

I sleep again and dream of the sea. Stephen makes love to me in my dream and the calm overflowing as he touches a place that I had forgotten, will swell until it drowns me.

* *

I know that this is when he will fall in love with me. Cycling along a bog road with the brown of the bog and the blue of the sky and the groceries on the carrier. Cycling along between the sky and the bog, when the map grows under you, up and down, a long time up or a freewheel down, where the wind is part of the map, is soaked into the line between land and sky, is pulling it apart. The wind is the skin of it. Cycling along, and the map feels loose, not tight, with short miles or long miles, while the landscape changes or stays the same. This is the day that he falls in love with me.

The box of milk on my back carrier is punctured by the mudguard wire and milk starts to drip from the bike on to the road. The milk is very white. The milk on the road is whiter than milk is in a glass. The milk is as white as milk sluiced into a yard, spoilt milk filling gaps between the stones. It drips beside the wheel that is leaving it behind, along the short miles and the long. When I turn around I will see it on the road. I will see the trail of milk all the way up the hill and I will see Stephen at the top of the hill with the clouds behind him, looking at the milk or looking at me and he will be in love with me.

Because nothing died when we made love. Apparently that is what it is like for a woman. For a woman, nothing has to die. This makes sense. As much sense as milk staining the road between Furnace and Lettermaghera.