Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey Read Free Book Online Page A

a secret from the street. I would be in my dressing gown in my studio, music blaring, working on a drawing I was planning to give her after the birth – charcoal, like the ones she’d originally admired at my exhibition. She used to wander around the kitchen with just a sarong tied around her waist and faint traces of lemon pulp and sometimes a stray pip sticking to her breasts. Our fridge was stocked with champagne and each time I opened the rattling door it felt like a mini-celebration just from the sight of the gold foil and green glass; this was in case her milk didn’t come quickly enough after the birth – she said a few sips of champagne would get it flowing.
    Now she is lying on the grass between the gravel, lifting each leg slowly in the air and holding it in the stretch. She looks like just another stone sculpture planted in the surrounding garden – conventional shapes: cupids, half-naked women, tentative sprites. The rigidity of the sculptures reminds me of a boy I saw on the beach when I was young enough not yet to have chosen a profession. He was on his hands and knees in the sand, sculpting life-sized sand creatures – buffalo, crocodiles, lions, giant tortoises – his only tool an old detergent bottle filled with sea water. He sprayed the sand and then used his hands to mould animals so realistic they scared me; it was as if they had bones and muscles and sinews and were waiting for the sun to set so that they could stand and stretch and begin to hunt. He had no pictures with him; the animals were entirely in his mind’s eye. I sat and watched him until the light was gone and I could no longer see, further down the beach, obedient swimmers swarming in a thick triangle between the flags. Choosing to be an artist never seemed like a risky thing to do; in fact, it seemed to be a guarantee against risk.
    A soft voice with fishy breath speaks into my left ear: ‘The child is getting impatient. It wants to greet the world, meet its father. She’s looking well, no?’
    I turn to look at the Commander. He is picking his teeth with a twig, working away at something caught in the gum next to his incisor. He keeps his eyes fixed on my wife. She is still on her back in the grass, leg pulled towards her in a stretch, and I wish she would stand up, get out of that ridiculous position.
    ‘Quite a catch,’ he says. ‘Don’t know what she saw in him.’
    ‘In me?’
    ‘Yes, in you.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    He laughs. Then he calls out my wife’s name and she looks up, suspicious. ‘Darling, we have your husband here to see you. Can you bear to look at him?’
    The Commander pulls me from behind the pillar like a schoolroom dunce. I stand at the railing awkwardly, not knowing what to do with my hands. She looks up at me patiently, with forbearance. Putting up with me. Is that what she’s doing?
    ‘Hello,’ she says, her voice raised so that it will reach me. ‘How are you?’
    How am I? My God, how am I?
    ‘Fine.’ I put my hands on the railings. ‘And you?’
    ‘OK.’ She puts one hand on her hip.
    ‘And the baby…?’ I ask.
    She puts her other hand on her stomach. ‘Alive and kicking.’ She glances at the Commander as she says this.
    I look at him too. He is smiling down at her like a priest from a pulpit. I suddenly feel desperate to connect with her, to know if she forgives me, to hear her say she loves me, and for this I will even risk humiliation. Her face is as smooth and impenetrable as an egg. This deliberate obtuseness used to bring me pleasure, when I could still take for granted that she would be sleeping beside me each night, and could guess at her emotions as if it were a game. Now her shield is unbearable and I would do anything to crack it and see through to her heart.
    ‘Do you hate me?’ I say to her, my voice quavering. ‘Do you hate me for what I’ve done?’
    ‘You forget it was my father who got you the job,’ she says drily.
    The Commander laughs.
    ‘I love you,’ I say