The Still Point. Amy Sackville

the surface:

       Warm, to wear a suit, won’t you be too… too hot for eggs. I don’t want that cloy. Back of the throat. Yellow yolk yellowyolkyellow. I’ll just have toast.

      When she hears the door slam — it has to be slammed to properly close — she stands and wanders to the kitchen counter. It is only a few steps but Julia can incorporate a wander into any journey when the mood takes her. She boils the kettle for more tea, puts a slice of bread in the toaster. While she’s waiting for the toast she peers into the pan again, now cold and grimed with greyish albumen, and briefly enjoys the word albumen, and decides to wash it up later. She spreads her toast thickly, with real butter, and then with real plum jam that she’s still amazed she made herself, and thinks that indolence will make the perfect housewife of her yet.

      The night before: Simon, impatient, driving a little too fast. The roads between their home and the Watsons’ — it’s catching — have no lines down the centre as there is room for only one car comfortably. In the rear-view mirror his eyes are shadowed, glancing at the dark behind and the empty back seat, the cat’s eyes as they flare and stretch out to dimness, the same, the same, the same in soporific rhythm all down the road. Julia in the morning, over her slice of toast and second mug of tea, lulled by the wet rumble of the washing machine, is remembering:

      Slash of bright before the sound, light is faster than sound; travelling too fast. Out of black, smack against the glass. Sound without a word for it, not bang or crunch, Simon shouting, ‘Fuck’ half asleep himself (she smiles) otherwise he wouldn’t swear, not while I was there, maybe when I’m not too I don’t know I’m not there. Thud two thuds off the bonnet. Please not the pheasant fact, don’t say it don’t or I’ll hate you…

      ‘Pheasant. Sorry, darling.’

       Don’t say it

      ‘Whoever’s behind us can pick it up for dinner.’

       Don’t

      ‘If someone finds it, they can pick it up. It’s illegal to pick up a pheasant you’ve hit yourself, you know. There’s a law, to stop people trying to hit them on purpose.’

      She thinks of saying: ‘Hunting with cars,’ but doesn’t because it’s not very funny and it’s what she said last time, or ‘Yum, roadkill,’ but she’s sure she’s used that at least twice.

      Simon likes to impart this information upon passing any poor corpse in the road — not just pheasants, but foxes, pigeons, even moles if he spots them, however smeared, mangled or crushed, however sad and tiny. But this is, in fact, the first time their own car has hit a pheasant or any other bright streak in the night, and when it really happened, she so much wanted him to not say it. She can’t think of anything to say in response, can’t bring herself to respond, and realizes when minutes have passed that it’s too late to say anything at all, and says anyway, ‘Maybe it isn’t…’ but can’t manage the word ‘dead’ and then notices that she feels sick, is trembling. Hearing again the crack of the beak against the glass, imagining she caught for an instant its frightened black eye before the impact. A terrible empty hollow where moments before she felt well fed and full. He almost but doesn’t say, ‘If not, it soon will be.’ She opens the window and faces away from him, eyes dry and wide; he looks across and sees her pale face quite without colour, quite bloodless. He begins to reach for her, finds that his hand, too, is unsteady, and returns it to the wheel. She shakes, all the way home, in a small way she hopes he won’t notice. He doesn’t speak as he opens the door, as he turns to take her coat from her he doesn’t speak. And she hands him her coat and bursts into rare tears, and he folds his arms around her then, and she remembers how tall he is, remembers the place for her head beside his breastbone, which has been there ten years, was there always, waiting for her, and he still doesn’t speak, but places his mouth against her hair gently. He knows how close she is always to mourning and wishes he could make this count for all of it. But she is grateful to him, for his silence; she could not begin to find words for grief.

      When he gets into bed ten minutes later, he finds her limbs cold and still trembling a little… and there it is again, that little ellipsis, and we’ve caught up with ourselves. On a Wednesday, of all nights of the week, and almost midnight, is his last thought before sleeping. But he is glad that she is warm now, and had need of him.

       The garden

      It is ten o’clock, or thereabouts — Julia is in the garden, and has left her watch indoors. Two and a half hours have passed since Simon’s departure on the dot of half-past seven. After the toast, Julia realized that the dull pressure at the back of her head and the mild disgust of the egg pan were only red-wine remnants, now staining the creases of her brain brown. She took a painkiller and went back to bed, until woken an hour later by a pheasant falling out of the night and smack into her eyes. The bedroom was bright and harmless, but hot; she had left the blind open.

      The shower helped to rinse away dreams and headache alike, cool water on a blank mind. Best not to try to plan the day, or to think that the day should be planned. She closed her eyes and tilted up her face and imagined rain, heavy warm summer rain upon her eyelids like the time that… When?

       Running down the street in shorts in a hot city on holiday, not caring, Rome, it was Rome. Brown dust, deep pink evening and the bold red burst of tomatoes for dinner, and eating an artichoke, pulling it to pieces and sucking the pulp, and my sister laughing at polipo meaning octopus which I’d also never eaten, but when I chewed it I couldn’t get the word out of my mouth, pulpy between the teeth until I had to spit it out. The rain, yes, the rain was in Rome. The man was Italian. The first man that watched me, dark eyes he had, he was short I suppose, his hair shining and my bra showing through the shirt I wore clinging, water running down my face and my thighs, and he watched me and for the first time I thought, I like that man watching me, caught in this torrent.

      In the shower two hours before this, while Julia poached his eggs, Simon planned his day with care. He went over appointments and projects in process. He made a mental note to remind his personal assistant to rearrange a meeting next Thursday, and to book him a table for lunch. He thought about the menu and decided to have steak. He had a taste for simple, good red meat; the Watsons last night served some elaborate, spiny little birds that he couldn’t bring himself to pick up and eat with his fingers. He turned his face up to the water and splashed off this prickle of irritation. He would start the morning with a fresh look at a set of plans that had been troubling him, and a fresh cup of black coffee; he would find Joanne making one when he arrived and she’d offer, as she did every morning. It was a routine. He would sharpen his pencils and begin.

      As he shaved, a trickle of music interrupted the order of his mind, unbidden. He was a boy, fluff appearing in patches quite dark already on his chin, sitting down all awkward skinny and long at the piano and playing out, hesitant, a few first bars of the concerto that woke them this morning. Wondering and hoping that he might one day perfect them. And splashing his clean face, grown handsome perhaps, grown older, he thought, Where are wonder and hope? Not in so many words; he is not a man to despair; it is a cloud that passes. Moments later he couldn’t recall what he was thinking, which annoyed him; he caught back at the notes as they faded, remembered Rachmaninov and thought he should find the CD for Julia before he left. He is not without kindness. But by the time he’d sat down to his eggs, the tune had again eluded him, and he forgot.

      Now it is ten o’clock, or thereabouts. There is work to be done but no reason to forgo the sun — Julia’s research, such as it is, can be conducted just as well in the garden. To this end, she’s brought out a blanket to lie on and a book, which she isn’t reading; instead, she is stroking the sun-warmed fur of a purring tabby named Tess. She has pegged the washing out on the line, so that the sheets billow fresh white at the edge of her vision like the sails of a ship; she is afloat in the summer morning. She has an appointment in the afternoon, but there are hours to pass before she has to make