The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch Page A

the ringing would ever stop; for us, time after had ceased to exist, all the time in the world had shrivelled up into this ringing, none of us thought that in a quarter of an hour it would be ten o’clock, there could be no ten o’clock, time would be no more in a quarter of an hour, only this ringing, after which there’d be nothing, that much was certain. My mother walked to the living-room door with this swaying, wobbling movement, but didn’t go in; she stopped at the door and held on to the frame, but the telephone didn’t do her the favour of stopping. She peered into the room from the door. We couldn’t see what Mum could see, or whether she’d closed her eyes; all we saw was her back in the door frame, which she held on to for a time; I’m sure the time was no longer than a second, but it was a long time, too; I felt nothing except time, which was no longer laid out before us, but had shrivelled up into this ringing of the telephone. Then my mother turned round and looked at us, not with her eyes agog as before, but calmly and thoughtfully, and then said, very clearly, on the other hand; the telephone went on ringing and my mother came back; all of a sudden she was walking fairly upright again, with just the odd sway. When she reached the table she repeated, on the other hand, louder and with determination, glaring in sheer disgust at the mussels in their bowl. She took the bowl, which had sat in front of us all evening with those vile mussels; she went into the kitchen with the mussels, and all we could hear were the shells rattling, we couldn’t hear the telephone, only the shells rattling as my mother emptied the mussels into the dustbin, then she came back in and said to my brother, would you mind taking the rubbish out?

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