Homing Read Free Page A

and through a tiny crack at the base of the wall. So: lowlife ants from the wrong side, smuggling out the loot. Again she wondered: how long? For ants and birds and grassroots to level this wall again, speck by speck, to break open the path that had been blocked?
    But she didn’t really want the wall broken down. What she wanted was for it to draw open and enclose her husband, their house, their life – put them on the right side, within this charmed perimeter of sugar and gin and shade.
    She drank steadily, watching the ants come and go. Her glass emptied, and was filled. The evening light dimmed, while high above, the windows of the hotel started to shine – the angle oblique, the light more forgiving than it was at home. Small globes flickered on in the shrubbery, and the wall was bathed in dapples of rose and amber. Between the lights, the dusk seemed to soften and expand, becoming capacious. Patio doors opened and walls dissolved, making space for music, trays of cocktails, waiters, guests – such guests! Their clothes were precious and their scent was rare. Women leant at elegant angles, calves taut above high heels. Men shouted with laughter, gloriously assured. Half a dozen languages licked at Nona’s ears. More red-coated servers danced from the shadows, carrying ice buckets and bottle after bottle of champagne.
    Nona did not speak to anyone. She was content at her table, letting the crowd wash around her. She tickled her lip with the silver bubbles in her constantly refreshed glass; she smiled at the dark-eyed waiters. She kept half an eye on the wall, but in all the flow and movement it stayed where it was; it didn’t crumble or sway. Nona and the wall were still.
    Ah, but it must’ve been the drink. Later she would barely remember leaving the party, finding her way inside, the walk along the hushed corridor. But she would retain the feel of everything: the textures of wallpaper, wood and carpet. (Had she stumbled?) All so rich and inviting, so lush to the touch. Was there a young man by her side, red-coated, bright-eyed, holding her arm? Perhaps. Certainly she felt accompanied, but it might’ve been the scented air of the place that was so solicitous, that took her weight and guided her hand to the proper door handle, that pressed it down.
    The night was a dream of surfaces, sheathing her, pressing her down: luxurious friction.
    Nona did not usually sleep naked, or on her stomach, but that was how she awoke. She was in a cool, dark place. She discerned the firmness of an unfamiliar mattress, and then – out of one eye – the grey field of a curtained window. With some popping of vertebrae, she broke the bed’s hold, rolled onto her back, wedged herself up against the pillows and took stock. The room was bleary and ruffled. Against the habits of a lifetime, her clothes were strewn on the floor. And something else. There were small but troubling shapes in the dimness beyond the foot of the bed. A breeze belled the curtain and something pushed through with a rustle.
    She took a moment to let the scene develop. The curtains sucked back out against the open window, as if the air in the room were plumping up, and more grey light infused.
    Hunched figures were arranged on the sill, on the desk, on top of the standing lamp. Six, seven of them. A fidgeting crowd of small, dour spectators. At the foot of the bed, one shook out its wings impatiently, stepped side to side and ejected a splatter of white onto the duvet. In their small eyes, their sideways but steady observation, she saw a husband’s chastisement.
    Her head hurt. Nona leant over to the bedside table, poured herself a glass of water and drank deeply. The pigeons cooed and shuffled, turning their heads this way and that to follow her movements. She’d never thought of birds’ faces as expressive – or even as faces; more as carved heads set with bead eyes – but these ones certainly looked attentive. Expectant, in fact.
    More water. Next to the jug