Antarctica Read Free Page B

showing his palms.
    ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘It really isn’t. I love you, you see. Try to understand.’
    And then he turned and left. She listened to him leave, heard him on the stairs, a zipper closing. The halllight was doused, the door banged, she heard his walk on the pavement, footsteps ebbing.
    Frantic, she tried her best to undo the handcuffs. She did everything to get free. She was a strong woman. She tried to disconnect the headboard, but when she nudged the sheet back, she could see the bed-head, bolted to the frame. For a long time she rattled the bed. She wanted to yell ‘fire!’ – that’s what police told women to yell in emergencies – but she couldn’t chew through the cloth. She managed to get her loose foot on the floor and thumped the carpet. Then she remembered granny, deaf, downstairs. Hours passed before she calmed down to think and listen. Her breathing steadied. She heard the curtain flapping in the next room. He’d left the window open. The duvet had fallen on the floor in all the fuss and she was naked. She couldn’t reach it. Cold was moving in, spilling into the house, filling up the rooms. She shivered. Cold air falls, she thought. Eventually the shivering stopped. Chronic numbness spread through her; she imagined the blood slowing in her veins, her heart shrinking. The cat sprang up and landed on the bed, prowled the mattress. Her dulled rage changed to terror. That too passed. The curtain in the next room slapped the wall faster now: the wind was rising. She thought of him and felt nothing. She thought about her husband and her children. They might never find her. She might never see them again. It didn’t matter. She could see her own breath in the gloom, feel the cold closing over her head. It began todawn on her, a cold, slow sun bleaching the east. Was it her imagination or was that snow falling beyond the window panes? She watched the clock on his bedside table, the red numbers changing. The cat was watching her, his eyes dark as apple seeds. She thought of Antarctica , the snow and ice and the bodies of dead explorers. Then she thought of Hell, and then eternity.

Love in the Tall Grass
    Cordelia wakes on a white-cold afternoon, watches woodsmoke pluming beyond the trembling hedge. She rises, opens the window outward, hears the swoon of matinee music in the road. Winter air teems in on this, the last day of the twentieth century. Cordelia strips naked, pours water from the steel jug, half-fills the basin, wrings out the wash-cloth, soaps her hands, her face. When the pipes burst in late November, she never got the plumber in, broke the ice in the rain-barrel under the shoot and dipped the bucket down. This water is colder than a broken dream. She dries herself and dresses, slowly, in a green dress, fastens the clasp of a platinum locket around her neck. She bends and laces up her flat black shoes, knowing that when this day is over, nothing will ever be the same.
    In the kitchen she lowers a little brown egg into an old saucepan, puts the kettle on, takes out the stainless-steel egg-cup, its tarnished spoon, the stripy mug and plate, and waits until it’s ready. Somewhere somebody is chopping wood. This kettle always sings before it boils. By the open door she sits. She’s slept, now she must eat. She spreads a teacloth across her lap and breaks the shell, salts the egg, spreads butter over bread, pours tea. Withered leaves skid in across the marbled lino. The Burmese believe that wind carrying betel leaves into thebride’s house will bring bad luck and unhappiness to the married couple. So many small, useless facts rattle around like old currency inside Cordelia’s head. The clock on the mantel ticks happily. Not long now, it seems to say. Not long now. When she’s finished, she turns the empty eggshell upside-down, a trick she played in childhood that turned to habit. She takes a handkerchief from her sleeve and wipes her mouth. It is time. She undoes