Cat/Cow
She woke up early and in a different country, Switzerland, perhaps, or the north Italian lakes. She’d never seen those places but had read novels in which characters retreat to mountain sanatoriums to recover from doomed love affairs or a hard war. The bright, gaudy turquoise of the sky gave a clarity to water that yesterday had seemed leaden and sinister, an ocean on a distant planet. Now it sparkled and you might row a boat, perhaps even swim in it, not now but soon. Perhaps she ought to stay in the hotel today, live out her sanatorium fantasies.
But she’d spent too long in rooms and the mountains looked inviting too, to the extent that this was possible. The deep aches had subsided, and she felt as if she could sprint up them, so by way of warm-up, she opened her laptop and balanced it on the bed for online yoga. The crush she’d developed on her instructor was probably the most significant relationship of the last two years. Marnie had been cynical at first, but the instructor was so perky and upbeat, so encouraging and sincere, that she’d succumbed and now laughed along with her goofy jokes and wondered how she’d smell, of lemongrass and orchids, toothpaste, a light, zinc-free deodorant. It had taken a while to overcome her nerves, but now they talked quite comfortably, both laughing at the more demanding holds.
‘You’re joking!’ said Marnie, to the screen.
‘You can do it! Three more breaths!’
‘I can’t!’
‘Two, one. Okay, let’s meet in down-dog.’
‘Okay, meet you there!’ There was definitely something going on yet it could never work. The yoga instructor lived in a world of floor-to-ceiling windows, expensive rugs, beeswax candles the size of a cake tin and she’d be secretly horrified by Marnie’s moth-eaten Ikea rug, the Tupperware cheese tubs she used as yoga bricks, the unwashed polka-dot leggings, holed in the gusset, frayed to translucence across the buttocks. ‘Breathe the love in,’ she said, but at times the instructor’s serenity could seem like aloofness, as if she didn’t know of Marnie’s existence, something that was literally true.
No, she wasn’t feeling it today. Too hungry, too stiff, too distracted, too excited, she abandoned the session. Would she feel lop-sided all day, wobbling like a pub table? Never mind. She packed and limped downstairs, ate a sanatorium breakfast, rearranged her taxi then waited in Reception, the doors open to the blazing morning, bleaching the outside, like an overexposed photograph.
Michael, when he appeared, looked hung-over and puffy, smiling with a wince. ‘Morning!’ she said, and they gave each other a small hug. (This is new, she thought, a development, the small hug, though she noted, too, that he hunched forward slightly so as not to press against her breasts, as if leaning over a fireplace.) He insisted on paying for dinner, returning the tie to the receptionist, thank you, goodbye, we’ll come again, and they stepped out into the glare. In the village, the tourists were getting ready to join the queue to climb Helvellyn but she felt as if they were the true pioneers, crossing the river, then following a clear path that climbed but not dramatically, no more than the ramp at a supermarket. They walked and talked, so at ease that when they finally remembered to look back the valley seemed like an expensive wooden toy, painted blocks on green felt around a cellophane lake. How had they made it so high without noticing?
Now they began to notice, the path steepening, the sun blazing unobstructed. She’d not been abroad, not felt the sun on her skin like this for years and it was bliss but exhausting too. By mid-morning, they were rationing water, which felt melodramatic but exciting, and then another landmark as Michael sat on a boulder, took off his boots and started to unzip his trousers at the knee.
‘I feel like I’m seeing things no woman should see.’
‘Is it too provocative?’
‘It’s like those tearaway trousers that strippers wear and yet not like that at all.’
‘Ta-da!’ He stood in his long shorts.
‘Hot pants!’
‘Is it too much?’
‘What happened to that guy in long trousers?’
‘Oh, he’s gone.’ On they climbed, Marnie stealing glances at his shins, no, his calves, calves at the back. The singular of ‘calves’, was it ‘calf’ or ‘calve’? Either way, they distracted her on the climb to Angle Tarn, where she and Michael rested. The lake was beautiful, a series of bays and peninsulas, even a pair of cartoon islands, and she knew there would be a reason why it looked like this rather than a simple circle but didn’t ask in case he told her. Instead, they lay near the shore, silent, eyes closed, heads cricked against rucksacks to face the sun. Another landmark, she thought, this ease in silence, and it occurred to her how far they’d travelled in just three days. This kind of concentrated company was not without its perils, and she was still unsure what this was,a question that had cost her some sleep and was as unfamiliar to her as the sun on her face. For the moment it was pleasant to lie still and silent, watching the lightshow on her eyelids.
‘My head hurts,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t drink alone.’
‘Me neither. During lockdown it was a real problem. Little treat at six-oh-three on a Tuesday. All those treats.’
‘Oh, me too. In the house, going insane. When I was with Nat, it made sense, eating together, watching a movie, but getting pissed on your own …’
‘Chatting to the radio, bumping into furniture. People talk about mystery bruises, but it was either the coffee-table or the chest of drawers, so where’s the mystery?’
‘Do you worry about it?’
‘Drinking alone? I did. But I do everything alone so …’
‘And you don’t mind?’
‘The drinking? When it got out of hand, I stopped. Most Tuesdays I’m sober.’
‘Very sensible.’
‘You should see me alone on a Friday night.’
‘If I saw you,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t be alone.’ She kept her eyes closed.
They fell into silence, the light burning orange on her eyelids, the heat becoming sinister and radioactive. ‘I’m going back with a tan,’ she said, ‘or burns.’ Time passed, the sun like a hot hand pressing down on her face, sweat beading on her chest and forehead. She drifted into sleep, until a sudden skittering of stones startled her.
‘Hm?’ she mumbled. ‘Are we leaving?’
‘Stay asleep,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going for a swim.’
Now she was awake.