Reasons She Goes to the Woods (14 page)

There’s a knock at the front door and The Blob calls for Pearl to come down. She’s been shut in her cupboard trying to read by the light of her dying torch. She blinks as she gets to the door; her eyes feel as if the pupils are wide open, and she can’t make out for a moment who’s standing there. It’s me, Will says. I need to talk to you. Pearl narrows her eyes, trying to bring him into focus. He waits for her to speak. Eventually she says, well? Out with it. Will tells her he’s come about her attack on Honey. Pearl looks blank. What made you do it? Will asks. It was cruel. Pearl holds up her hand, half smiling. What are you talking about? she asks. Will folds his arms, his face serious. This is not funny, Pearl, he says. The least you can do is apologise to Honey. Pearl is puzzled. Will looks like a person she might have seen somewhere, maybe in a magazine, someone vaguely familiar. She almost says, do I know you? but realises it would sound too weird. Behind Will, at the gate, stands a person. Pearl, Will says. Look at her. Look at who? Pearl asks. At Honey, Will says loudly, and he points to the figure at the gate. Pearl can see a girl with two black eyes and a cut face. I don’t see what this has to do with me, she tells Will, starting to close the door. Will jams his foot in the gap, and attempts to hold Pearl’s hand. Is there someone you can talk to? he asks. I think you need help. Pearl swings the door open so that he staggers towards her. Go, she says, pushing him away. I have never needed any help from anyone. Then she watches Will walk back to Honey before quietly closing the
door.

Pearl begins to believe there is nowhere she can safely go. The house is cold, its surfaces unreflecting, the cushions lumpy. The mirrors give back only misty versions of people. Her room is like a cell. She can feel damp air playing on her face when she lies in bed. When she wakes her hair is kinky. The contents of her cupboard and wardrobe are strewn like so much rubbish all over the floor. She detects a funny smell, and spends hours searching for its cause. Finally she gets a big screwdriver from the shed and prises off the skirting boards. Then a steady, chill breeze blows in at ankle height, and the smell of slugs and earwigs intensifies. She finds it almost impossible to walk through the woods now. Her legs look the same, but she feels so weak she can barely force them to carry her. In amongst the trees she stumbles, her stupid, dragging feet easily caught in brambles and clumps of grass. She is distressed to realise she might even fall, here in the woods, of all places. So she decides to pack her rucksack and walk around the streets all day. Further and further she walks, until she is in unknown neighbourhoods. One day she finds herself outside Nita’s house, and knocks on the door. Ken answers. Can I come in? she asks. The familiar smell she likes creeps over Pearl, lessening the stiffness in her shoulders. Nita is out, Ken says. He sits opposite her and rubs his knees. I’ll wait, she answers, giving him a level look. You won’t be needing your stick, Ken, will you? she says, sighing deeply as she lays herself out on the settee. Before he can answer, she’s fallen asleep.

Pearl is curled up in her cupboard again. Even with a pillow over her head she can hear The Blob sobbing. Apart from that, there is silence upstairs. She can sense her father pacing the lounge below; moving to the window, then away again. La-la, la-la, she sings under her breath. Easing herself out of the cupboard, she slips across the landing and walks into her mother’s room. Who is it? her mother asks, trying to sit up. Pearl perches next to her. Not long now, Pearl says, leaning in. I don’t understand, her mother says, pulling back. Pearl shrugs theatrically. She watches her mother begin to fidget. Gotta problem? she asks politely. Go away, Pearl, you are a bad girl, her mother shouts. But Pearl doesn’t respond. Soon her mother is keening, and her father runs upstairs, pushing past Pearl with his arms outstretched. I don’t like that person in my room, she mumbles into his neck. Get rid of her. Nonsense, her father says, you don’t really mean that, and drags Pearl forwards. There is a series of knocks at the front door, and Pearl and her mother are alone again. Well, I s’pose this really is ta-ta, Pearl says, curtsying with an imaginary skirt. Her mother climbs unsteadily out of bed and goes to stand facing into the corner, her nightdress caught between her buttocks. When the male nurses come to lead her out, she points with a stiff arm at Pearl and states clearly, make no mistake, that one is to blame for all of this. Then she starts to fight, holding onto the doorframe. Struggling on the landing, her father looks back at Pearl. I want to know what your mother means, he
says.

In her nightdress, Pearl’s mother lashes out at the two men who are trying to support her down the stairs. Pearl has moved, sinuous as an eel, between the group on the landing, and now watches her mother’s descent from below. She sees, in brutal flashes, her mother’s maroon, tufted slit and white thighs each time she kicks, hears the smacking sounds her bare feet make as they hit the stairway walls. The group on the stairs collapses. Her mother, now prone, slips from the nurses’ grip and shrieks as she slides down, landing like a sack of stones on the tiled floor. Pearl moves back, out of her mother’s reach. The Blob is standing in the kitchen doorway, and Pearl bumps into him. He is trembling, so she takes hold of his hand. Be calm, she whispers. Things will be fine soon. But he begins to cry. I hate you, he shouts, struggling to get past. Mummy! he gasps, as he drops to his knees and tries to stroke his mother’s small, restless feet. Mummy, don’t go! Pearl grabs the back of his collar. Get up! she shouts, pulling. Leave it! But her brother shrugs her off, clumsily arranging his mother’s nightdress. Everything around Pearl slowly begins to spin and melt; the red-faced men in their white coats, her father, sitting on the stairs, the wet chin and blue eyes of the woman on the floor, her distraught brother, they are bleeding into each other and revolving silently. Pearl feels herself being dragged in as they pick up speed. It’s ridiculous, she thinks, spinning helplessly. None of this matters. But try as she might, she cannot get free of the mess in the
hall.

Not you! You stay where you are! her father shouted at Pearl over his shoulder. The group surrounding her mother somehow got down the path and gathered around the waiting ambulance. He was holding up his wife’s blonde head as if it were a precious bowl. The Blob climbed in, still crying, still managing to keep hold of his mother’s nightdress. Then, after a final struggle with the jerking body, they were gone. Pearl stands alone, fixed in the open doorway, like the girl in a painting of a lonely girl in a doorway. Not one window blinks in the deserted street. The parked cars look abandoned, each garden gate guards a path, each garden hedge seems enormous. The quiet minutes tick on, but soon Pearl feels a cold breeze blowing her out of the house, down the path and on, across the field. For once, she doesn’t want to leave, and manages to turn and look back. There is the half-open front door, the spotless, red porch floor, the tiles and bricks, all shrinking, pulling back fast. Or, thinks Pearl, fighting against the force of the buffeting air, am I running away? Am I getting bigger and bigger? How will I ever force myself back in? Her father’s voice shouting Not you! strikes her face again and again until her mind blanks. On the breeze she recognises her brother’s sobs. Suddenly, far away in the tiny house she sees the door swinging shut. Pearl knows she must get inside before it slams. She zigzags across the field, the wind ripping at the roots of her hair, and like a diver, launches herself over the gate, up the path and in through the door’s final, grudging sliver of space.

Pearl falls deeply asleep on the bottom step and, when she wakes, thinks how wonderful the stairwell used to be. She remembers playing with her brother halfway up. The fun they had. Then she sees the worn soles of her mother’s slippers face down on separate steps. The empty, scuffed walls tower around Pearl, and seem to reverberate with the sounds of slapping flesh. The house is hanging back, unsure, shutting her out, and Pearl knows she has to get busy. In the kitchen she flicks the kettle’s switch. While it boils she stiffly climbs the stairs and enters her parents’ room. Immediately she strips the rumpled bed. Picking up items that belong on the dressing table, she begins to sing; la-la, la-la, la-la, on and on, two notes, just the same as always. She opens the window, sitting to watch the curtains billow out and back before she remakes the bed, leaving the coverlet to lap the floor. Finally, she opens both wardrobe doors and looks at her mother’s clothes. She pulls out an iridescent black dress, the full skirt bumpy with embroidered scarlet stars, and drops it over her head. It’s a special dress, the perfumed collar low. Pearl sees her reflection. The dress looks like a stiff frame, or a dark cage enclosing her small body. She searches for a belt and pulls it tight. Then, slipping both feet into her mother’s high-heeled, narrow mules, she gathers her gleaming hair into a pleat, winding her curl for a moment around her finger. A sound makes her turn quickly. In the gloom she sees her father silhouetted in the doorway. What do you think you’re doing? he asks quietly.

Pearl is so happy she leaps onto her parents’ bed. Everything is happening in slow motion. Her pounding feet ruck up the heavy coverlet, creating little soft mounds and ridges on its surface. With each jump her hair loosens until it flies upwards, opening like a scroll. An unstoppable, shimmering snake of words writhes from her mouth and undulates towards her father, but she can’t see his face. Her eyes can only make out the glow surrounding him. You and me, Daddy! she screams. Inside her head beautiful pictures burst and fade and her heart ignites, flaring like a Catherine wheel. When she’s finished telling him her plans and can’t bounce any more, she floats down onto the crumpled milk-white bed cover. The silky black fabric of her mother’s dress sighs as it deflates. It feels clingy and wet against her bare legs. Gradually she comes to herself and sees the wardrobe doors still standing open, the curtains billowing and there, in the doorway, her father’s solid, unmoving shape. She opens her arms and beckons with her fingers. Please come and cuddle with me, she coaxes. As if electrified, her father leaps towards the bed and grabs Pearl by the shoulders. He yanks her towards him, and she finally sees his face. Get this thing off, he grunts, and rips the dress across the neck, forcing it down over her shoulders to where the belt holds it together at Pearl’s waist. Her arms are pinned painfully to her sides. She is staring into her father’s eyes as he drops her to the floor. Then he leaves the room and slams the door. Pearl calls to him from where she lies drumming her feet. But Daddy, she cries, don’t
go!

Pearl heard howling on her way to the woods. Almost, she expected to see wolves loping by her side. She’d leapt the swollen stream and watched as the trees shifted to lock her out. For the first time in her life there was not the smallest space for her to slip through. She’d listened to the slithery sound of the undergrowth tangling itself shoulder high. Deep in the woods, all the birds were mute, frozen on each lovely branch. Now Pearl is hungry and cold; her legs are glass stems. She looks at her fingers. They shoot out like crooked twigs, stretched almost to snapping point. She’s asleep on top of the mountain in amongst the whinberries and harebells and beads of sheep poo, dreaming that she’s lying on a mountain, in the rain. Above her, razor-sharp stars slice through the clouds. Down in the valley, a town twinkles. Through the hundreds of lighted windows she can see families gathered together. Each mother is Pearl’s mother, each father is Pearl’s. And there is her brother, in every house, over and over. But the fourth figure, wearing her clothes, with her colourless cowl of hair, has a face like a dirty smudge and is fading fast. Pearl runs on fragile legs from house to house, her whip-like fingers sieving air, trying to bang the doors and windows, her eyes blinded, her mouth a demented hole. But not one of the mothers or fathers or brothers looks up. They smile at each other, and warm themselves at identical, purring fires. Oh Daddy! Pearl wails. It’s me, your daughter! And simultaneously, all across the town, fathers in firelit rooms get up and shut the curtains.

Many thanks to Ros Porter and everyone at Oneworld for their flexibility and flair. Thanks also to Jenny Parrott and Charlotte Van Wijk, and likewise to my brilliant, calm and supportive agent Cathryn Summerhayes.

Thanks yet again to my straight-talking, generous and all-round gorgeous writing group, Edgeworks: Ruth Smith, Andrew Smith, Norman Schwenk, Jane Blank and Claire Syder.

Also, to my friends and family, a resounding thank
you.

And most of all, I am beyond grateful to my husband Norman Schwenk for his loving good sense, unswerving faith and serious braininess.