Authors: Ava Bloomfield
The next
morning, I woke shaking. The sun was so low and bright that it flooded my room
in gold, sending a liquid sheen over the dresser, the floor and bed. None of it
helped, or uplifted me. None of it assured me that I was out of the dark. I was
still quivering, gulping; waking up from the worst nightmare I’d had in years.
I was
sailing in a boat with Peter, with my leg all healed and his heart still
beating. We’d let our little rowing boat drift out farther than we’d ever dared
before, and the Mevagissey quay was a glowing half–circle in the distance. His
blue–green eyes appeared almost black, as dark as the inky water surrounding
us. He was shrouded in darkness, his back against the moon, with his springy
hair fanned out around his head.
My heart
was fluttering, no, pounding, to see Peter alive. Yet I couldn’t move, not one
finger or toe, even though I wasn’t crippled. I was perfect. He was perfect. I
opened my mouth and began speaking, but nothing came out. The darkness muffled
the words. The boat continued to sway, the sounds of the water lapping its
sides the only sounds to be heard at all, and all the while Peter’s stony eyes
remained unblinking upon me.
Without
warning, the boat began to tip. Peter remained stiff as a stuffed doll, and so
did I for all the muted screaming that came from my mouth. The boat tipped and
tipped, and the water flooded in like molten tar, and I could do nothing as our
heads were plunged into the sea. It was so cold it swallowed my mind whole and
sent my eardrums roaring, bursting, doing all the screaming I couldn’t do.
I was
tugged down into the depths, every inch of me hard as stone, while Peter’s
silhouette circled above me, getting smaller, like a bat flitting across the
moon.
It had seemed
to take hours and hours to wake up again, as if I’d been sinking in the
darkness of the ocean, stuck in a timeless limbo, long after the event. I
looked at the watch on my nightstand and saw it was only seven in the morning.
I must have been drowning in that ocean all night.
I’d never
understood the point of dreams. I’d read somewhere that dreams were our
subconscious, alerting us to our inner most feelings. What did mine mean? That
I felt like I was drowning? That I felt I couldn’t speak?
I relaxed
against my pillow and thought about it. I considered that perhaps it was more
about the fact that I couldn’t reach Peter ever again, no matter how hard I
screamed.
Dad rapped on
my door and made me jump so hard that a splitting pain went through my knee,
making me double up, my face creasing in agony. He must have heard me yelping,
because he came rushing in without my permission.
‘Did you get
up too fast, love? Ellen?’ His thin grey hair was fanned out behind his shoulders
and he was still wearing his tattered pyjama bottoms, no shirt. His wiry body
caved in at the chest, where a floss of grey hair filled it up.
I bared my
teeth and waited for the pain to subside into a dull throb. When my mind
cleared Dad was hanging over me, leaning all over the bed, his fingertips
clawing the mattress.
‘For God’s
sake I’m fine.’ I shoved him by the shoulder to get him off my bed, off my
things. ‘Give me room.’
‘Sorry El’. I
didn’t want to leave you in pain.’ He stepped back and hovered by the window,
the sun glowing against his sagging shoulders.
I massaged my
bare leg, sensing his eyes on me. I plucked the sheet up and covered myself,
mindful of him watching. ‘It happens all the time,’ I said. ‘I’m fine now. Go
downstairs.’
‘I’m all right
just standing here aren’t I?’
‘I want to
have a bath and wake myself up. A hot bath usually helps with it. Dad, please,’
I said. ‘Just leave me alone.’
He continued
hovering, making my blood boil. I wanted him
out.
Why did he always
insist on hanging around me, just waiting for me to want his help?
He nodded
toward my leg under its sheet, my hand still massaging the pain out of it.
‘Won’t that knee be too sore to walk on, love? I could carry you into the
bathroom. Or I could go and get your chair and wheel you.’
‘I can wheel
myself,’ I said, glaring at him. It was no use, I couldn’t argue. Stumbling out
the room and down the hall with my stick would take it out of me before I’d
even woken myself up properly, and I wanted to explore my old haunts today. I
decided I might as well grin and bear it. When it came to my dad, it was always
a case of grin and bear it.
‘Fine,’ I
said. ‘Get the chair.’
Dad struggled
with me in the doorway to the bathroom because the wheels were too wide for the
old door. At home I could just about fit, but not here. ‘We’ll leave the chair
here, flower, and you can use your stick to get to the bath. How about that?
Can you manage that?’
‘Yes,’ I said
tiredly. At home we had a walk–in bath that I could soak in without hassle. It
even had a seat. I looked at the old olive green bathtub and realised that once
I was inside it, I might not be able to get myself out. Not if my leg didn’t
behave.
‘I’ll leave
the chair here and get in the bath the way you told me. But you have to stay downstairs
while I’m in here. I don’t want you hanging around while the door’s open.’ I
warned him, crooking my head to see him above me, still clutching the handles
of my chair.
‘Of course,’
he said, a nervous smile on his face. ‘Of course I’ll be downstairs. I’ll be
right downstairs in case you need me.’ He didn’t move, still giving me that odd
smile, as if this conversation was even natural.
‘Is there
anything else, Dad?’ I smoothed down the front of my nightie, looking again at
the deep green tub. There wasn’t a shower. It’d take me forever to get clean.
‘I
only...well, I thought I should tell you that your new counsellor called, love.
Don’t look like that. I’m sorry. We’ve still got to do these things.’ His
breath tickled the top of my head, but for once that wasn’t what made me
shiver. I had thought I might escape my counselling when we came to Cornwall
for the summer, but apparently not.
‘Can’t they
give me three months off?’ I pinched the bridge of my nose, remembering the
endless talks about Peter, and talks about how I felt about my disability, and
how I felt about the accident, and whether I still smelled blood around water
the way I did when it first happened.
Endless talks
about nothing. Mindless chatter about things that couldn’t be changed, to a
woman with a day–time TV degree in counselling. They offered those courses
everywhere; even in the backs of my magazines. You could cut them out and stick
them to the fridge like a character from
Bridget Jones’ Diary.
‘I’m afraid
not, love,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘They aren’t so bad, those talks, are
they? I mean you just talk about how you feel, how your knee is doing—’
‘About Peter.’
I interrupted. I felt Dad’s hands shaking on the handles.
‘Yes, about
Peter too,’ he said, a peculiar, forced uplift in his tone of voice. ‘Just
those things. Just normal things.’
‘What’s normal
about any of it? What’s normal about
this
?’ I snapped, slapping my
thighs because I had nothing else to hit. A pain shot through my knee, making
me wince.
Dad said
nothing. He silently fetched my stick from my room and leaned it against the
door, where I could struggle my way to the bath like an old woman.
‘She’s coming
at three o’clock,’ he said from behind me. ‘Try and be nice to her. She’s only
doing her job.’
‘I know that,’
I said. ‘And I’ll just have to do my job like usual, won’t I? Lying. That’s all
I ever do with these people. Make up lies for
you
.’
I felt
immediately awful, especially when I looked ‘round and saw dad’s face go pale.
He pointed a finger at me, the tip trembling. He looked so pitiful standing
there, with his skinny abdomen and wiry hair on his shoulders.
‘You can be
very cruel,’ he said, stabbing the air with his finger. He let his hand drop to
his side. ‘It isn’t just for me.’
He turned and
went downstairs before I could say anything more, leaving me alone with the
tub. There was nothing I could say to that anyway. He was right.
Pretty soon he
would be going out to work at the campsite and I could go out, though he hated
me doing anything by myself. I’d decided a long time ago that I didn’t care
what he wanted, not unless it had some advantage for me.
A little give,
a little take. That was our system. That was how we’d functioned since mum
upped and left us. It was the way of the world, or our world, at least. We
weren’t like most families.
I took my
stick and gingerly helped myself up, holding the door handle for support. I
bared my teeth against the pain. Had he left me to do this alone as punishment
for hurting his feelings, I wondered? Or was he beginning to realise that I was
growing up, and didn’t need him anymore?
I hopped one
step with my stick, felt a slight pulse in my knee, and then I took another.
Once I was close enough to sit on the edge of the ugly green tub, it seemed
simple enough.
I turned the
taps on full blast and was grateful not to find brown sludge bubbling up
through the plughole. The house was rented out all the time so despite being
old it was in good nick, unlike dad, who was like a crumbling relic of his own
and only got worse year in, year out.
Once it was
full I dipped my hand in to check the temperature. Perfect. I leaned over to
make sure the hall was empty and, with dad definitely absent, I tugged off my
nightie and slipped into the velvety warm water. My knee was instantly caressed
and loosened by the steamy hot bath, and so relieving I got goose pimples all
over.
The soft
splashes I made echoed around the tiny bathroom, and I could see my reflection
in a tilted mirror above the sink. My chin length dirty–blonde hair darkened
the wet tips, and my usual pallid complexion looked rosier from the heat.
Everything always seemed so much better in the bath.
Ever since I’d
had the operation to re–attach my half–severed leg from my accident, no pill
had ever worked better for pain relief than a bath did.
I’d always
wondered if it was something to do with water. I’d read in
Mind, Body and
Spirit
magazine that lost souls make links with the living that way, so
that they could connect with them after they’d died. Peter had died in water,
after all. I liked the thought of him enveloping me, his essence seeping
through my skin.
I let my mind
drift off, thinking about spiritualism and astrology and all that psychic stuff
I’d read about in
Mind, Body and Spiri
t, when suddenly the room dimmed,
as if a lamp had been turned down. I sat up and peered up at the little window,
wondering how the early morning sun could disappear so fast behind the cloud.
As I did so my shoulders prickled from the cold, and soon my whole body was
aquiver.
The room got
even darker. With my stomach knotting, I glanced past my wheelchair into the
hallway beyond, almost wishing my dad had been there after all. Something
didn’t feel right. It took me just a few moments to realise why, when I brought
my arms up out of the water and found they were slick and white and twitching
as two dead eels, instead of rosy like they were before.
The water, hot
just moments ago, had turned down as fast as the sun had disappeared. It was
stone cold. And it was getting colder.
Soon my flesh prickled
from the lowering temperature. I breathed heavily in a panic, scrabbling around
with my slippery hands for my stick.
‘Dad?’ I
called out, the cold creeping up my neck now. My legs were turning numb by the
second, and the water was so still and sharp that I was sure I must’ve gone
mad.
I grabbed thin
air and couldn’t feel the stick anywhere, but as I twisted my body to get a
better look, pain seared through me, making me reel back so fast my head hit
the rim of the tub and nearly went under.
‘Dad!’ I
cried. I gripped the sides of the bath and listened hard for the sounds of him
on the stairs and heard nothing.
The room was
getting darker still. I blinked furiously, lifting my toes from the water and
staring hard to see if I could pick them out. They were too much in shadow now.
The whole
room
was cloaked in shadow. I kicked my good leg and made a
splash, then splashed more with my arms, just to check I was even still awake
and this wasn’t another nightmare.
No sooner did
I begin splashing than the water, still and calm, began to drain away. I
watched it with my mouth agape, seeing it get lower and lower beneath my knees,
my thighs, and finally my ankles, leaving me shivering in an empty tub.
I pulled
myself forward and looked between my knees to see where the water was escaping
to, but it was too dark. It had to be the overspill hole, and yet the water
kept on going until there was nothing left. I hugged my shoulders and bit my
lip, trying to suppress the panic. It was dark, and cold. I was trapped.
Then I began
screaming.
There was a
thundering noise as dad came up the stairs, before blindly crashing into the
wheelchair.
‘What’s the
matter?’ he said, shoving it out of the way to get to me. I was crying and
shaking so hard I didn’t even think of covering my nudity. I just needed to get
out of that cold dark tub. Sitting in it made me think of Peter, alone in his
coffin in the damp earth. I couldn’t handle it.
He grabbed one
of the newly unpacked towels and fanned it open, scooping me out of the tub the
way you might scoop up a pile of laundry. I felt nothing as the towel
surrounded me, still numbed by the cold, cold water. Dad shook me. ‘Hey. What
happened, eh? What happened?’