The Crane Wife (16 page)

‘Your eyes are green,’ George said. ‘When they should be gold.’

The crane looked at him full-on. Its eyes were indeed green, a burning, flaming, sulphurous green. ‘And what do you know of gold?’ it asked, its voice different, wrong.

‘Who are you?’ George demanded, angry, but fear rising in his chest.

‘A question that needs no asking,’ the crane said. Lava erupted from its eyes and poured down in great cataracts towards George.

Who ran. Or tried to. The rocky surface hurtled beneath him at great speed, rushing him away from the tidal waves of molten lava, though in actuality he couldn’t quite seem to move, to make any motion except a sort of lumpy
gesture
at running.

‘Okay,
this
feels like a dream,’ he said.

‘No,’ the volcano said, rising beneath him, putting a fiery fist around George’s neck and lifting him into the air. ‘You were right the first time.’

‘Please,’ George tried to say. ‘Please, stop.’

But the volcano wouldn’t listen, lifting him higher and higher, its face blocking out the stars with smoke and flame. ‘I will not stop,’ the volcano roared. ‘I will
never
stop!’

It reared back and threw George across the sky at impossible speed, rocketing past the melting world, past scalding clouds that used to be lakes and oceans, past the cries of the doomed in their burning cities. George flew fast as a comet, until he could see his target, see the white silkiness of it, see the great muscular motion of its wings furling and unfurling across the impossible expanse.

He hit it, piercing it.

And it destroyed him.

He woke. Not with a cry or a sudden sitting up in bed, heart pounding. Nothing so dramatic. He merely opened his eyes.

They were wet with tears.

‘Kumiko?’ he asked of the solitary darkness of his room, knowing she was at her own home tonight, knowing this was a night where he slept alone.

He asked it again anyway. ‘Kumiko?’

But there was no answer.

‘I want you,’ he said. ‘Oh, how I want you.’

And, being George, he was ashamed of his greed.

A
manda brought it to work with her. Not every day, but often. Which wasn’t even remotely appropriate given the money certain people seemed increasingly willing to spend on them, but also because it was precious to her for deeper reasons, ones she couldn’t properly articulate to herself, much less be able to explain if anyone asked. Which was the risk of bringing it to work. If anyone saw it, they’d
definitely
ask.

So this morning, when she left the flat, she made the firm decision not to bring it. And then, like she had a number of times before, she changed her mind.

It was the usual black tile, like the one she’d seen in her father’s shop, and upon it had been placed segments of white feathers, cut and trimmed and woven to suggest a horizon and a sky, and in that sky, against a bed of shimmering down, a bird in flight. A white bird against a white sky, but definitely separate, definitely
soaring
but somehow, also, still. At rest.

Below the bird, one of her father’s cuttings from the pages of a book, which she (and, to be fair, often he) had always dismissed as ‘aimless natterings’, but here given new power, new context. These words – and words they were, bold ones, earthy ones, sometimes literally, a
fungus
here, an
eggplant
there and just down at the bottom, tucked away so you almost couldn’t see it, a plaintive little
arse
that moved her somehow, every time – these words made a mountain, as solid and present as the eternal earth, anchoring the tile in place, solidifying the stillness of the bird. There was peace here, with hints somehow that it was perhaps ragged, perhaps hard-earned, but peace nonetheless.

She hid it in the top drawer of her desk and, opening the drawer to look at it now, she felt the same as the first time she’d seen it, that she was atop a precipice and about to fall, that though it was dizzying and frightening, there was also a possible liberation in the falling.

Looking at it actually made her short of breath.

Because it also felt like–

Well, it was a stupid word, wasn’t it? Worse, a stupid
notion
, one that clearly hadn’t been intended, though kindness obviously had, but she could never say it out loud, never think on it too long even in the privacy of her own head.

Because it also felt like–

Well, goddammit, it felt like
love
. Like
forgiveness
, somehow, which maybe were the same thing sometimes.

At which point she always told herself that it was just a tile, for God’s sake. She really,
really
wasn’t the kind of person who was Moved By Art. (This was almost embarrassingly true. She had once managed the entire Louvre in an hour, a feat even Henri, through his horror, had been impressed by. ‘We’ve seen the Mona Lisa, we’ve seen the winged victory of Samothrace, and now I just want a crêpe.’ They’d then, for reasons she couldn’t quite remember, moved on to Belgium, where everything was so much crappier than France, not least that the crêpe vendors had been replaced by carts selling waffles. It was like wanting to buy air and being sold peat.) Here, though, now, in her little cubicle, she could see why word was spreading so quickly about the tiles, why the people who saw them reacted so strongly. She could barely stop herself from touching hers, from running her fingers over the top of it, from holding it close and–

‘What is
that
?’

And before she even looked up, she was cursing herself for being stupid enough to bring it anywhere on earth that Rachel might see.

The tile had been a present, unasked-for and unexpected. After getting over her initial shock on that unlikely morning on the park bench – that here was
Kumiko
, in a forlorn, barely green square lined with scraggly bushes and the requisite statue of a forgotten man on a forgotten horse – they’d begun to talk. And
how
they’d talked. Of their shared hatred for cyclists (‘All that self-righteousness,’ Kumiko had said, allowing a frown to make her face even prettier, ‘and then they act like it is your fault when they run the red light and nearly knock you down.’ ‘
And
they smell,’ Amanda had said. ‘Just because you change out of your gear at work doesn’t actually mean you’ve had a
shower
.’ ‘And the fold-up ones,’ Kumiko continued, to Amanda’s increasing delight and astonishment, ‘they put it in your way on a train and it seems as if you are supposed to treat it with the respect of an elderly relative.’ ‘I
know
!’); how they both, contrarily, felt weirdly protective of those charity people with the clipboards who had turned eye contact into such a risk on the High Street (‘They are only trying to do a job,’ Kumiko said. ‘And they’re all so
young
,’ Amanda said, ‘and all probably out-of-work actors.’ ‘It is certainly better than being forced to watch them
act
.’); and Amanda had even ventured her opinion on the Animals In War Memorial. Kumiko, remarkably, hadn’t heard of it, so Amanda explained it to her.

‘Well, that sounds like an incredible waste of money,’ Kumiko said.

Amanda could have cried.

And then, too soon, lunch hour was nearly over. It was time for a ravenous but also somehow satisfied Amanda to go back to the office, and that’s when Kumiko said, ‘I would like to give you something.’

‘Can I eat it?’ Amanda asked, having suffered the loss of both her coffee and her sandwich. She’d declined Kumiko’s offer to share her rice and fish, but she was severely regretting that choice now.

Kumiko smiled. ‘You
could
eat it,’ she said, opening the small suitcase she carried instead of a handbag, ‘but the flossing afterwards might be lengthy.’

And handed Amanda the tile.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Amanda said, stunned. ‘I really mean it, I couldn’t
possibly
.’

‘Do you like it?’ Kumiko said shyly. Amanda was flabbergasted to see that the question was meant sincerely. She looked back down at the tile, at the improbable beauty of it, at its unlikely uplift, at the way she didn’t seem to be looking at it but already dwelling within it. She couldn’t help but try to decline it as a
far
too valuable gift, but her heart, oh, how her heart wanted it, wanted it, wanted it . . .

‘Do I like it?’ Amanda whispered, unable to take her eyes off it now. ‘Do I
like
it?’

She kept looking at it. And looking at it again. And more.

‘It feels like . . .’ she whispered. ‘It feels like . . .’

She looked up to say either ‘love’ or ‘forgiveness’, unsure of which was about to come out of her mouth, and was astonished to see that Kumiko had gone. A small cloth bag, obviously meant for carrying the tile, lay on the bench.

And somewhere, maybe even on the wind, was the permission to keep it.

Further meetings with Kumiko had been strangely difficult to come by.

‘She was just
right here
, Dad,’ Amanda had said in a call to George made as she stood up from the bench (after carefully, but quickly, putting the tile in the bag; it was already getting lingering looks from other bench-sitters). ‘I mean, how is that even possible?’

‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’ His words were a close whisper, over what sounded like a particularly unhappy customer in his shop. ‘But did you like her?’

‘
Like
her? I want to
marry
her!’

George made a sound of relief so boyish, Amanda felt momentarily overwhelmed by a need to somehow hug her father over the phone. ‘What’s going on there? Mehmet misspell someone’s order on purpose again?’

‘Just someone who had put down money for the next tile,’ he said, a bit of strain in his voice. He paused as the door of the shop was slammed so hard Amanda could hear it over the phone. ‘We were supposed to have a new one ready today, but at the last minute Kumiko decided she couldn’t sell it. It didn’t go down too well, as you might imagine.’

‘Does she often do that?’ Amanda asked carefully, holding the bag in front of her, trying to keep it from getting nudged as she weaved through the crowded pavement on her way back to work. ‘Decide not to sell?’

‘Not really,’ George said. ‘Well, never, actually–’

‘Did she think something was wrong with it?’

There was a surprised silence from George. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t actually see it. She just called, said she didn’t think it was for sale, and that was that. I tend to just trust her on these things. She didn’t say anything to you about it, did she?’

‘No, no,’ Amanda murmured. She kept looking at the bag as George talked on, giving monosyllabic but positive responses to his questions about Kumiko, all the while fighting her unexpected reluctance to tell him about the tile she’d been given.

‘It’s all passingly strange,’ she finally said, and ended the call.

Next time
, she thought.
I’ll tell him next time.

But she was wrong.

In the weeks that had followed, not only had Amanda been unable to arrange a further meeting with Kumiko, her father became harder to get hold of, too, even to look after JP. He was either on a brief holiday with Kumiko to the Highlands (of all places) or busy making his cuttings or buying new equipment for the shop. He did finally set a date for the party where he’d properly introduce her to everyone, including some of the art buyers – who’d apparently been applying increasing pressure about meeting her – and it was gratifyingly soon, but Amanda found herself hungry for more, though she was never quite clear on more of
what
.

‘He says he’s nearly made enough to pay off the last bit of his mortgage,’ she told her mother one evening, who sounded personally offended at the news.

‘How is that even possible? Are they
that
good?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, looking at her tile again. ‘Yeah, they really are.’

‘Is it wrong for me to be upset that George is finally out-earning me now that we’re divorced?’

‘It’s been nine years, Ma.’

Clare sighed. ‘Feels so much shorter.’

‘How’s Hank?’

‘Oh, you. I’m not jealous, and I don’t suddenly want him back now that he’s rich. George is nice, but he’s nice all the way through. I need someone who’ll push back or I’ll just turn into a bully, and who wants that? I’m just surprised is all. Surprised but pleased. Yes, pleased.’

‘You sure?’

‘Darling, wouldn’t
you
want to be the person who’d made someone do that well? Wouldn’t that be a nice feeling?’

‘Hank’s loaded.’

‘He was loaded when I met him. I get no credit.’

‘But you’re not jealous.’

‘Stop with the teasing. You say this Kumiko is lovely, and I believe you. I’m happy for him. For
them
. She’s lucky to have him.’

‘And he’s lucky to have her,’ Amanda said firmly.

And wondered for a moment exactly what she meant.

When she was at home, she hung the tile over the television, not for any other reason than that there was a hook there already for an old French movie poster that had been there so long she almost literally no longer saw it. She took it down and hung the tile in its place.

‘What
is
it?’ JP asked the first time, wide-eyed.

She went to answer, but everything suddenly seemed too complicated to explain in terms of animal characters, so she just said, ‘Art.’

‘Okay,’ JP accepted solemnly, and didn’t even launch into the avalanche of questions she had braced herself for. He merely looked at it for a long, quiet moment, and then he said, ‘Can I watch Wriggles in the Jazz Age?’

Amanda stared at him for a confused moment. ‘
Stone
Age.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Yeah, you know how to work the thingy.’

As JP grabbed the array of remotes required to bring up the downloaded Wriggles on the telly, Amanda watched the tile, watched the bird and the mountain, thinking that maybe they were Kumiko and her father and then again, maybe not. She also thought that, though it was hardly bigger than a dinner plate, it was also somehow bigger than the room, bigger than her whole life, and the more she looked, the more it threatened to spill over from its world into hers.