The Bed Book of Short Stories

Bedrock

14 Bedrock Joanne Fedler ‘I’m totally claustrophobic,’ the woman in front of her giggles. ‘No you’re not,’ her husband chides, slapping her on her bottom. The gesture almost jolts Virginia to a standstill, but there are people walking behind her and James the tour guide in his khaki uniform has instructed, ‘keep moving.’ The slap is one of such playful certainty, hinting at a shared history of anniversaries and ablutions, children in there too, no doubt, more than two, though the couple seem to be unaccompanied here in the cave. There must be grandparents somewhere, insisting they baby sit, to give them some ‘much-needed time-out.’ It is common knowledge parents need that. Space. Virginia can’t say if she is claustrophobic herself. She’s never been this far inside a cave before. The little spelunking she did as a child along the coast of the Western Cape was hide-and-seek with bare-footed cousins, in sea-carved rocky alcoves. Nooks and crannies they made into ‘beds’ with towels and pretended they were fugitives. Places the daylight could reach. Not this deep penetration into the guts of the earth. Not this venturing so far from sunlight and oxygen and wind. In an organized group. With a tour-guide nogal. Where is the adventure in this? As soon as the heavy reinforced refrigerator-like door behind them shuts tight with a suctioning clunk, she reaches behind her for Dave’s hand, but he is holding the video camera to his eye, like some ghastly robotic ophthalmic extension. He is moving slowly from side to side to make sure he gets it all. ‘Capturing,’ he calls his documentation of their exploits, which, by the way, he takes very seriously. He has a daunting archive of movie clips – of their scuba-diving, rock-climbing, kayaking, camping. Filming is an extreme sport of its own. He is fastidious and vigilant about downloading the footage as if something might get inadvertently lost if he does not attend to this transfer. He chews away 15 hours on this assignment. Their history of weekends-away eats steadily at his computer memory, whilst all the time a mountain of memories is created. Some nights she finds him replaying them in the den, with a triple whiskey on ice. She can’t bear to watch them. They seem desperate. Utterly pointless. Once upon a time she would have been able to muster compassion for this obsession. Now she just observes it with the kind of pity she might wring forth for an anorexic or a drug addict. From the door, she watches. He looks up at her. ‘See you in the morning,’ she murmurs. He waves at her. ‘Don’t wait up for me.’ He used to say, ‘sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.’ But perhaps that began to sound too childish, too hopeful. Alone in her hollow king-size bed, she dreams of things with wings. Angels maybe. They touch her with their petal-like hands, they flutter around her like butterflies. * * * Hands matter to her more than she’d ever imagined. By her estimation, thalidomide had wreaked a wretched legacy on generations of people, and not just because they could never play tennis or swim. A person’s entire character, like their history, their future, could be told in the hands. Who were you without your hands? She had been standing in line at international departures, boarding for Katmandu. She needed to get away. It had been only six months since she and Patrick had broken up. Dave – she didn’t know his name then – had his back to her, but she could see him holding his boarding pass and passport which he was using as a bookmark in a small paperback, which later she glimpsed was Plato’s Republic. She got stuck on them. His hands. The veins, sinew, the half moons of his cuticles. Okay, she admitted it, she was a phalange junkie. If she saw nothing more on a man, the hands would be enough. She knew things from them. She could see the life in them, ingrained with silt. They were hands at ease in mud, not that they weren’t clean. He was a scrubber. He took care of his nails. But you can’t hide a history of dirt. She found herself imagining him – this stranger in the line in front of her – putting his fingers deep inside her. She blushed at [3.149...