Authors: Lucy Wood
She lay there for a long time. Water ran off her and pooled on the bank. After a while she knelt up and blinked away silt. The river pulled at her legs and her feet. ‘Get off,’ she said. She shook her foot. ‘Bugger off for a minute.’ The river roared and jostled at her but she kicked at it and stood up, her wet bones buckling. She lurched and water sloshed in her ears. Told herself to get a grip and took a step through the grass. It was difficult, her legs heavy and bowing but she moved slowly away from the river. The wet ground made it easier: the wet ground and the wet grass and the damp air – everything drenched with water. Water brimmed up from the ground to meet her and mist clung to her sleeves and hair. She saw each droplet, like tiny stitches in a blanket.
And up ahead, through the mist, she saw the house. Still ugly, still looking like it was about to collapse. But it wouldn’t collapse – battered by wind, flooded, cracked; always mended. There were the seams of repaired plaster, the nailed-down tiles, the patched-up corrugated roof. The wood reinforced with brick. Guttering lashed on with wire. A tough place, like a ship leaning out. She took a step closer. It was so wet, so dark, so isolated – how had she ended up here? She moved closer. A light came on in the upstairs window. The curtain moved. The river roared; there was no getting away from it. Impossible to shake off. She could feel it pulling at her, the cold working its way in. Sometimes, on a freezing night you could hear the creaking echo of the glacier it used to be. Cracking its bones. The river reminding itself.
But she tried to shake it off; she tried to make her way towards the house. It was easier to move in the mist, as if she were extra drops of water; the air and water curdling. Actually, it was easier to crouch down, where the mist was thicker. She got down on her knees and crawled, feet and hems dragging, hips shuddering. There were the front steps and the door above them. But the mist thinned a few metres away from the house. She tried to crawl just a bit further . . . she could almost reach out and touch the steps.
There was the light again. Pearl looked up, thought she saw a blurred shape moving past the window. The curtain moved. She strained to see but her eyes were murky and useless. Something moved, a hand pressed against the glass. The mist crept around Pearl’s knees. Then the light clicked off and the house was dark again.
Pearl lingered at the edge of the house, trying to remember. Why here? Why by herself? It wasn’t what she expected. What she needed to do was to go back over it – it was important to try and work her way back to the beginning. Dredge something up. Her thoughts were foggy, they kept scudding away over stones, but she remembered a few things. What it had been like, near the end. Stuck in the house on her own. That was it: she had been stuck in the house for God knows how long and it had been boring, it really had, what with her staying in bed all hours, and sitting still for hours, her hands on her knees as if she was old.
And it had happened suddenly, as far as she could tell. One moment chopping up wood for the fire, and the next, struggling to do it, struggling to lift the axe. The routine of it slipping along with her hands: how to work the vents, how to sweep the ashes, how to strike the match against the box.
She wouldn’t let anybody in the house. She slept in the chair in the kitchen, nothing but her old brown coat to keep her warm. A rattly little snore in one nostril. ‘Now for one thing,’ she would sometimes say to herself. And: ‘I suppose I should be getting on with it.’ But she would just stay sitting there, staring at the wall. Maybe she would listen to a mouse skittering. Sometimes a breeze would come in and scatter bits of paper and envelopes, and, startled, she would turn and watch them flap down onto the floor. It would remind her of something, and she would get up and wander around the room, looking for something. ‘That isn’t it,’ she would say. She would fumble through piles of papers, open the kettle and peer in. She would reach up and feel along the top of a cupboard and then in her hand there would be ropes of dust and a twenty-pound note. She would smooth the money out carefully and then roll it up and put it inside a mug. Yes, that was it; she would put it inside a mug and then later she’d take it out again and hide it under the telephone. Or do something ridiculous like put a newspaper in the fridge, guarding it jealously from no one.
She could picture herself now, those last few months. Wandering around the house as if she were lost, tapping on walls, moving a book from place to place, picking up a watch and staring at it as if there was something she should be doing with it. Sometimes going to bed in the morning and getting up in the middle of the night; eating bread in the dark, sleeping through a whole day. Calling out names . . . although whose, she couldn’t quite recall. Sitting still as a rock in the chair but her mind surging. An image, a word, a sentence sometimes rising to the surface out of the din, sharp as a watch pin. ‘There you go then,’ she would say. ‘There you go.’ Over and over.
Not acting like herself at all. Her mind a tangle. No idea what she had been thinking. It was almost impossible to recognise herself, like seeing her face through a murky mirror.
She needed to go back further than that. What she needed was to try and cast her mind back further. But the ground slurped at her feet and the river roared and tugged. The air stank of rain and bonfires, the mist thinned, rainwater ran down towards the river. She slipped and raked her fingers against the wall. The mist lifted. Her thoughts sloshed and dripped and tangled and the river dragged at her; back over the grass, back over the mud and the stones.
She had tried to put on a chair as a jacket. The memory jumped out at her like a slap in the face. There she was: struggling in the kitchen to put a chair on, convinced it was a jacket. One arm under each side. The rungs digging in. Her back arched over. She could hardly bear thinking about it. Putting on a chair. She had always been a fool, she knew that. But a chair. Pearl shook her head. She could almost laugh about it now. Looking back she could almost laugh about the whole thing.
This was the day’s routine. Up in the raw early morning to get the fire going. A few fading embers from the night before that needed coaxing with kindling. Now Ada knew how to work the vents, how to pile up soft and hard wood so that it would stay burning all day. The house warming up grudgingly, the radiators popping, the water tank clunking like old lungs.
Then: strip wallpaper, rub down splintering paint, scoop filler into cracks. Pull up desiccated carpets and scrape horrific gunk from between bathroom tiles. There were the coffee stains on the armchairs – ring after ring, like planets. There was the table with the shorter leg, which her mother had sawn off so it would fit through the door. There was the satin lamp, found for sale outside someone’s house and reeking of cigarettes whenever it heated up. Halfway through a job she would remember the stack of paperwork: bills, legal forms like battlements to fight through. ‘Huh?’ she would say. ‘Whose declaration of
what
?’ Put down her pen and go and empty the brimming saucepan in the hall. Sit at the kitchen table again and see one of her mother’s shoes under a cupboard, a spider clinging on with delicate legs. The power would flicker and she would go outside and mess around with the fuse box. She would start filling bags with empty jars and then see a door hanging off its hinges.
She made marmalade cake and soup with carrots and ginger; trying to replace the smell of damp with cooking smells. But still: damp shoes, damp clothes, the dank smell of river. The leak in the hall splitting the ceiling like the crust of a loaf. She found a silty smudge, like a handprint, on the outside of the kitchen window and a small pile of stones on the front steps.
The table was strewn with paperwork and half-empty cups. Ada got up and stretched and rubbed her neck. ‘Pepper?’ she called.
It was a midweek afternoon. The wind blustered and brought squally rain. A dirty bonfire smell and, in the distance, clouds bulging yellow and purple.
She went out into the hall and saw that the door of the study was ajar. Pepper was kneeling on the floor. There was a camera in front of her and a book open with some kind of diagram. Her mouth puckered up, finger tracing the drawing. When she looked up and saw Ada, she shut the book and pushed the camera under the desk. Then went over to the curtains and wrapped herself up in them.
Ada picked the camera up and put it away. ‘I told you not to touch these,’ she said. Pepper lost interest in things quickly: games and books broken, ripped, left outside in the rain. Which was why school was such a struggle. Teachers phoning to say Pepper couldn’t concentrate, that she had pushed or bitten. Making enemies instead of friends. Pepper fuming and red-faced, refusing to speak. And finally a letter saying that it would be beneficial, mutually beneficial, for her to have some time out, while the school tried to find a more suitable arrangement.
‘I didn’t break it.’ Pepper’s voice muffled with curtain.
‘I know. But stay out of this room, OK?’ Ada never used to come in here. Instead, she would linger by the door, peering in to watch her mother mending jewellery or studying a bird book. She could remember every little thing: the orange light coming through the scratchy curtains, the metallic tang of solder, the stuffed jackdaw on the desk. Shelves crammed with books, cameras, lenses, binoculars. Her mother out for hours looking for birds. Ada dragged along, crouching in freezing grass to watch a nest in the riverbank. Or wait silently for kingfishers. Or watch while her mother pushed through hedges looking for blue eggs. But more often, she was left alone in the house. Time and time again her mother pulling on her boots, her jacket, regardless of rain or sun, and disappearing down to the river, or striding across the edge of the moor. Coming back with a camera full of pictures but not much to say. Her moods as stark and unfathomable as craters on the moon. Although once she had taken up the jackdaw and waltzed with it around the room.
‘I saw someone out there,’ Pepper said. She wiped her nose on the curtain.
‘Don’t do that, you varmint,’ Ada said. But she leaned closer to the window and looked out herself, because twice she’d had the feeling that there was someone outside, watching the house. Never anything more than rain-soaked windows though, and being unused to a house so remote.
She touched the stuffed bird, stroking it with her finger. A few dusty feathers fell off its chest. It was her mother’s place. It always had been. Her river, her trees, her birds. Ada glanced at the wooden box. It was where she’d want to be.
At the shop a few days later; a basket full of tins and cereal, the least-burnt bread. There was Judy coming towards her.
‘I was talking to Robbie,’ Judy said. She put her basket down between her feet. ‘He thought we should invite you over. For dinner.’
Ada looked in the fridge for butter. Couldn’t mistake Judy’s reluctant tone and felt the same herself. Imagined an evening of stilted conversation and felt a pang for their old selves, crouched down comparing scabs and belly buttons. ‘What day did you have in mind?’ she said.
‘I don’t know, sometime next week maybe, or the week after that,’ Judy said.
Someone called over to her from the counter: ‘I must show you the new mullions at some point Judy.’
‘Definitely keep me posted on that,’ Judy called back.
‘I could ring you about it, closer to the time,’ Ada said.
‘We don’t have to decide anything now,’ Judy said. She waved to someone who had just come in.
Ada held the cold block of butter. ‘What’s a mullion?’
Judy raised her eyebrow in a perfect arch, suddenly looked thirteen again. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said. She picked up her basket. ‘Is the wood OK? I told Tristan to bring you properly seasoned stuff. He should have done it for a good price.’
‘He’s gentle, isn’t he,’ Ada said. ‘Generous I mean.’ She studied the butter carefully. ‘Fair. He was very fair. With the wood.’ Thinking of his bright hair, the way he had picked up an old swallows’ nest in both hands and moved it carefully out of the way of their feet.
Saturday morning and rain washing over the windows. The gutter overflowing in heavy splashes.
Ada came downstairs slowly. There was a sprinkling of plaster on the bottom step. She looked closer, saw faint scratches in the wall and brown marks on the carpet, almost too small to notice. They were dry and gave off a rusty smell. Two sharp pains squeezed out of her chest, like notes out of an accordion. She got a wet sponge and scrubbed. The bottom of the stairs . . . she looked up at how steep they were, how slippery the wood was. The handrail was too high and loose. But her mother could stride over the precarious stepping stones in the river, pitying anyone who turned back. Ada scrubbed harder but the marks wouldn’t come out.
The phone rang. She couldn’t place the sound for a moment. Followed it until she found the phone on the floor further down the hall.
‘Ada? It’s Val, from the pub.’ Her voice was scratchy and forceful, like an old record. ‘I didn’t think you were going to answer for a minute.’
‘Blood,’ Ada said. She looked at the sponge. ‘I was trying to get blood out of the carpet.’
‘That’s simple m’dear. Have you got a bar of soap? Ordinary soap that you use in the bath. Scrub that into it, leave it for a while then rinse it off. Better than all the fancy chemicals they sell. I used it to get the squid ink off all the sheets and towels in the guest room. Came off in seconds, that did.’