Green Grass Read Free

Manfred. Jack has vanished.
    â€˜You see, the Möbius strip is in essence a loop. It moves and changes, yet goes nowhere and stays thesame. It is a metaphor for the absurdity of life. Take Samuel Beckett …’
    Manfred, who is writing notes, leaning forward eagerly across the table, nods and scribbles ‘Samuel Beckett’ in his notebook.
    â€˜Take
Godot
, for example.’ Manfred takes
Godot
. Inigo interlaces his fingers and straightens his arms over the table, stretching his palms towards Manfred’s eager nose and face. ‘In
Waiting for Godot
, nothing happens twice. It’s brilliant. Superb.’ Inigo stops, his expression arrested, gaze fixed on Manfred, waiting. Manfred chews his pencil, and looks blank.
    Laura smiles encouragingly at him and kicks Inigo, muttering. ‘Don’t start, please. I don’t think Manfred is a Beckett fan.’
    But Inigo is warming to his theme, and he delves in his pocket to bring out a strip of black rubber which he passes to Manfred. Manfred shrinks back; it looks like something for taking blood pressure, or more likely an implement for kinky sex. He wants none of it.
    Inigo’s eyes are blazing enthusiasm as he changes gear and motors smoothly on with his theories. ‘You see, the Möbius strip has no end and no beginning. Look at it. Look at life. We are born, we wake up each day, we eat, we go to sleep, and at some point we die and are replaced by the nextgeneration. It is futile and wonderful, moving and petrifying.’
    â€˜It’s just one of his strips,’ Laura hisses to Manfred. ‘Do you see? It looks like a link of a chain or a figure of eight, but actually it is a form with one side and one edge. It was invented by a German mathematician, in fact. August Ferdinand Möbius was his name.’
    Manfred watches her run her finger along the whole of the black rubber thing, proving presumably that it has one side. This is lost on him, but he does like leaning towards Laura, breathing in the scent of her hair and her perfume as he looks over her shoulder at the strip.
    â€˜What’s it for?’ he asks.
    â€˜It’s not so much that it’s for anything, it’s a physical manifestation of an idea,’ Laura begins to explain. She loves amassing, reconstituting and doling out information. Some people, including her older brother when they were children, and her own children now, interpret this as control freakery and appalling bossiness, but Laura sees it as a way of keeping some part of her brain alive. There have been times in the thirteen years that she has been a mother, when she has felt her brain beginning to sidle softly out of her head. Without a concerted effort to return it to position, Laura imagines her brain might just bob away to a peachy cloud where it will live in peace forever, wallowing in the luxury of having continuous, uninterrupted thoughts whenever it wants to. She would then be left, lobotomised and dutiful, to meet her family’s needs without ever complaining or thinking for herself. In many ways it would be a huge relief.
    Jack reappears at the table, brushing a casual hand across the light down on his head then leaning over to kiss the crown of Laura’s.
    â€˜I’ve got a taxi waiting outside. I’ll take Manfred back to his hotel and we’ll talk in the morning,’ he says, folding the receipt ostentatiously into smaller and smaller rectangles, just in case anyone missed the fact that he has paid the bill.
    Manfred rises and reluctantly bids Laura farewell. He would like to stay drinking coffee and schnapps and preening his intellect; he thinks it is a bit much of Jack to drag him away as if he is a schoolboy, but it is difficult to argue with someone who presents his own suggestions as a fait accompli.
    Laura and Inigo, left alone at the table, are suddenly and simultaneously overwhelmed with a desire for sleep. He smiles and holds out a hand to