by Kate Hamer
I’m about to change my mind, make some excuse, but already she’s pulled on her green jacket with the flowery lining that she shows off by folding back the cuffs. I push my glass away and follow her out.
*
I let us into the house and we walk through the silence of it straight out into the back garden. Instantly I feel I’ve talked it up too much and now I’m seeing it through her eyes: on the small side, ringed with neglect. The efforts I’ve made here are neither picturesque nor beautiful. Instead, they look like the work of a daft old woman who makes knotty craftwork that nobody wants for charity sales. It stinks of loneliness. The small rose garden I started a couple of years ago was planted in the wrong place and now the scrubby roses there have been stunted by the shade. The giant clay female head that I thought would transform the space into something mystical and Eastern I failed to see the deficiencies in. The modelling seems grotesque now; the thick nose, the undefined eyes, the lips stuck on like an afterthought.
‘I haven’t been out here for ages,’ I lie, going back on what I’d told her in the bar.
She puts her hand over mine. ‘It’s lovely, Orla,’ she says, not taking her eyes off me. ‘It’s really lovely.’
Then the best of it seems to burst into life and the passion flower flopping over the wall and its sweet scent is swirled by the breeze circling around us like a fizzing sparkle of magic-wand trail in a cartoon. It turns the moment rosy. I lean forward and kiss her full on the lips.
Beneath my own mouth hers stays rigid. She doesn’t move away, yet neither does she respond. I can feel the hard boniness of her teeth behind her lips and realise she must be gritting them, waiting for me to stop. Yet still she doesn’t move away so I try again, try to push the tip of my tongue between her lips. We stay like that for about a minute, with me waiting for some kind of sign, a response, just something. When finally it doesn’t come I stand back.
Her face is composed, not quite happy enough to look pleased, but all the same I detect a quiet satisfaction there. I see then that it’s something she expected to happen, wanted to happen as well. There’s something bovine about her now, a kind of calmness, and I realise in an instant that this is something that she needed to do and was now out of the way. She’d been planning too, and this, her first girl kiss, was the starting pistol to the rest of her life and other far, far better kisses, and that’s all she was expecting it to be.
I have a sudden longing for Phoebe’s spiky weirdness so strong it nearly tilts me over. If she were here she’d be roaming around, picking at things, unable to stay still. She’d say something like, Let’s rampage, let’s go outside, at least, and look at people in the street and pretend we know them, let’s … No, no, no. I will not think of her. I will not.
I shove my hands into my pockets. ‘It’s cold. Let’s go inside,’ I say abruptly.
She shrugs. ‘OK.’
I feel the almost chemical sting of tears behind each eyeball. All I want to do is get rid of her now. Curl myself up in a ball somewhere warm and attempt to heal over the day.
She follows behind as I head towards the back door. I notice a peel of paint coming loose by the cast-iron latch as I push and my eyes adjust to the darkness inside, all the time knowing something’s wrong, something’s amiss, before my vision adjusts and the lumpy shape of my mother sharpens into focus.
As soon as I see her I can tell Mum has watched it all from the kitchen window, past the taps silhouetted against the light. Her jaw is stuck to one side as if she’s biting the cheek inside and her eyes are blinky, darting to look at Eleanor over my shoulder. Her distorted face contrasts with the hard bell of blow-dried hair that frames it. A teapot with the lid off stands next to the kettle that plumes steam. I can see her moving to the window to pass the few minutes it took for the kettle to boil. I can see her hand going to her mouth.
‘I’ll be going,’ says Eleanor behind me. She’s assessed the situation quicker than I would have given her credit for.
When the front door clicks shut I turn to Mum and cross my arms. ‘You’re very early.’
‘Really.’ She puts her fingers to her eyelids and flutters them there. ‘Really, Orla …’
‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’ I can’t help but feel the opposite to that, though, seeing her neck mottled red from distress.
‘You won’t be able to have children. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Don’t say that.’ I feel a fury building inside. ‘Not everyone has to be like you and Dad. That’s not the only way it works.’
‘Oh, you think you know the way the world works, at seventeen – you know it all, don’t you?’ Her fear has turned her arch, superior, and my fury tightens up another notch. ‘But let me tell you, missy, you don’t. Families aren’t built that way.’
‘Shut up. Stop talking about what you don’t know about. I can have children.’ I’m shouting now.
‘Really, Orla, don’t raise your voice to me.’ She’s going blinky again. She wants to make ridiculous pronouncements without them being questioned. She stands and smooths out the sheeny fabric of her full skirt. In the run-up to Dad returning she starts dressing all feminine again, like she’s in training for something.
‘Fucking look at you.’ I’m spitty and shouting now. ‘Your ridiculous clothes, all your make-up larded on. You don’t need all that to have children, it’s just not true. You don’t even have a job. It’s pathetic. What the hell do you think you know about the world?’
‘Orla, stop this now. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes I do, and I can have children. I’ve got a bloody womb same as anyone else.’ I’m yelling at the top of my voice now. ‘I can have hundreds of children if I want to.’ There’s a pining ache in the pit of my stomach where one might grow. ‘I can have a child. You know what? I’m going to have a child. I’ll have a baby and fuck you all.’
‘That’s enough. How dare you speak to me like that.’ She turns back to the kettle. ‘Your father is back before too long, thank God.’
‘You’re so fucking weak. How am I supposed to learn anything from you?’ I start crying big snotty tears. I have to get away from her so I run up the stairs but my bedroom appals me. The frigid lace hanging at the window and the walls the revolting vulnerable pink of newborn mice, their skins so thin the blood shows through. I want to wreck, to wreak, to tear it all to bits. I grab a diamanté necklace dangling from my mirror. I’d hated it the moment I found it in my hands and had inexplicably gone up to the counter and bought it. I’d been thirteen. I guess it had corresponded with some vision I’d been manufacturing then, to the point of buying things I actively disliked. It comes apart surprisingly easily in my hands, crumpling as I dismember the segments and fling them across the room. Then I lower myself unsteadily on the pastel-covered bed. The breeze rocks the lace at the window and outside the sun dips down. It pierces into the room and it seems like every single bit of broken necklace winks at me, like some alien creature or an insect that can replicate itself from any tiny piece that is ripped off its body.
I think about facing my mother. It’s not even that she’s caught me kissing another girl that bothers me, or that we’ve fallen out; it’s that I know – without a shadow of a doubt – that the real reason I never could have confided in her is that every time she looks at me from now on she’ll be thinking, My daughter likes vaginas. My daughter wants to touch a vagina. How awful, and it’ll make Orla end up a barren old fool and it’ll mean no grandchildren for me to dandle on my knee.
I sit on the edge of the bed with the bits of necklace glinting around me. There’s nothing to lose now. I feel like I’ve reached the very shore of desperation, that it no longer matters what I do or say, so I reach for my phone. When Phoebe answers, her cracked voice sends a vibration through me.
I push my mouth close to the phone. ‘Listen, Phoebe. I know how much you’ve been hating me and this is the last time I’ll try and communicate. I mean really, if you want to tell
me to fuck off you can, and I’ll leave you alone, I promise, but I have to tell you how really, truly sorry I am. It was stupid and childish pushing you into the river like that and I don’t know why I did it or what comes next, but what I do know is that I’m feeling really fucking desperate right now.’ I stop, a sob blocking my throat. ‘Really, really desperate.’
‘Orla.’
‘What?’ The word squeezes out painfully.
She’s silent for a minute and my heart beats so hard I can feel the throb of it in my neck.
‘Orla. I have something wonderful to tell you about.’
9
Phoebe
No fog or filthy air. Just a June day so ripe it looks ready to burst out of itself. The sky turned into a flag by the crossed aeroplane trails against the blue. The early morning rain sucked dry from the trees still hanging in the air. This is my witch’s prediction, I tell them, that we won’t be missed.
Yes. It’s as easy as that for three girls to vanish into the day, as if they’d been borne away on a breath of wind, not a hair left behind and with just a pocketful of walnuts filched from the bowl on the sideboard for sustenance. Take a right turn instead of a left. Cross the road instead of staying on the same old side. Slip through the wooden fence threaded through with grass and you’re nearly gone. Over hill, over dale to where seeds pepper the air, then fall in a soft slurry onto the surface of the moving river.
Then the Spinney. Squeeze through the gap underneath the wall and we’re there.
‘This is true magic,’ I say. I place the squares of blotting paper around the wishing bowl. ‘It absolutely is.’
How perfect, I think, because the little pyramid printed on each one turns the wishing bowl into a three-cornered star.
‘Now, who’s first?’
Grace picks up the paper on her fingertip and puts it on her tongue and only a second later her mouth is closed. She’s eager because she’s had enough of her world as it is. She’s craving for escape too, it’s as clear as day. Orla takes longer. She sits there cross-legged with the paper on her outstretched tongue for ages before she flicks it back into her mouth.
Me, I slip mine into the breast pocket of my blouse.
It was a last-minute decision. I want to see what they look like. I want to see if there are any changes on the outside. I’m curious not just for its own sake, but also for other purposes. I need to know what she might be able to read on my face. If my hands twitch, telling tales all on their own. If I smack my lips repeatedly with my tongue without realising. If, as legend has it, my pupils turn to pinpricks.
There’s quiet for a moment.
‘I can’t feel anything,’ says Orla finally. I have the idea she was on the point of pretending to feel the effects, then gave up.
‘It takes longer than that,’ I say. ‘You have to try and kind of float into it. Let’s all lie back and look up at the trees.’
‘Isn’t it true you’ll see something awful if it’s a bad trip? Something from your life?’ Orla asks.
‘Don’t say that,’ I blurt out. ‘I don’t want to see anything about that awful murder on Walcot Street I made happen.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Grace cocks her chin at me.
‘That man that was splattered down the wall.’
‘Phoebe, why on earth do you think you made it happen?’ asks Orla curiously.
I shake my head. I hadn’t wanted to get onto this subject. ‘I just did, OK.’
I don’t tell them about the nights I’ve lain awake, sick and trembling, thinking about it and what I did. Worrying that it might happen again.
‘Phoebe, that’s insane,’ says Orla. ‘You can’t possibly believe that.’
I shrug. ‘Not really,’ I lie. ‘Come on, let’s lie down and concentrate.’
‘I worry about you sometimes,’ says Orla as she flops down.
We lie three in a row. We could be lying like this, capped with headstones one day, I think. Though admittedly the chances of us all being buried together, side by side, are slim, for who knows where we will all end up and where life will scatter us. All I can hope is that it’s a very long way from here and from her. That is my heartfelt wish.
I hear Grace stir beside me and she slowly stands up, for all the world like she’s getting up out of her tomb and seeing a world she thought she’d never lay eyes on again.
She looks around her. ‘Christ,’ she says, ‘Christ alive.’
I bite my fingers in excitement and try to sneak a look at her face but she’s staring in the other direction. She puts her fingers lightly to the base of her spine and kneads there. ‘Christ alive,’ she says again, swivelling her head to look upwards at the trees.
I have to practically stop myself choking on my fingers.
Orla lifts her head. ‘What? I’m still getting nothing.’ She sounds like a whiny child.
‘You have to wait and not be watching for it,’ I say. ‘Let’s do something to take our minds off it. How about doing the wishing bowl like we did when we were kids?’
‘We could ask for what we want in our futures, like our hopes,’ says Orla.
‘Predictions,’ I say, correcting her. I wipe sweaty fingers down the front of my white blouse. They leave dirty marks there like I’m leaking my own mud.
There’s a moment’s silence then we seem to move as one, crab-like, to the wishing bowl, and I realise doing this has been in our minds, humming away in the background, as soon as we set out for here. It’s covered all over with ivy, the stems like centipedes on hundreds of fine, hairy suckers. I tear off the ivy, and its suckers protest against their murder with a quiet ripping sound.
‘What now?’ I’m panting with the heat and the effort.
‘We need to decide what we want.’ Grace is moving her fingers to her face a lot – up to her eyes, as if she’s checking they’re still there.
‘Yes,’ I breathe out in a hiss.
Orla looks embarrassed. I know she’s thinking about our last conversation about the wishing bowl and how she nearly drowned me afterwards, so I take her hand to show her it’s all over.
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘You go first.’
‘I know what it is that I want,’ she says. ‘It’s never, ever to be like my pathetic mother.’ She crosses her arms and looks like she’s about to cry.
I take a walnut out of my pocket and smash it with a stone on the rock. ‘I thought you and your mum were best of friends, like sisters. I thought you did everything together.’ I root around for the sweet knobbly nuggets among the bits of shell.
‘She’s a bitch.’ Orla tosses her head. ‘She’s a lame bitch that’s never even had a proper job.’
This is interesting. Orla and her mother have always been as thick as thieves. It’s another reason why I hate staying there. I always feel like they’re going to have a good old analysis of me after I’ve gone, tucked up on the sofa together with their hands dipping into the biscuit tin. I can almost feel their knives digging in on the walk home as they dissect me like downmarket versions of pussy-cat face.
I pleat my fingers together. ‘You know what, they’re all bitches. It’s because they’ve outgrown their usefulness and they know it. They try and pretend they haven’t by organising everything so they can feel the world would fall apart if they weren’t there. But it won’t. It’ll go on just the same whether they exist or not.’ I stick my chin out. ‘Our mothers are completely irrelevant. I want to go before I get like that.’
‘Go where?’ Orla has a sweat moustache.
‘To die, of course.’
Grace’s smile is loopy, lopsided. ‘I don’t. I’m going to live to a ripe old age. I’m going to be an old, old lady with a hat.’ She stretches out her arms towards the trees.
That makes me think again. Grace always seems wise, like she has an animal instinct I just don’t possess. I know I sounded convinced when I said I wanted to die before I’m old but I wonder if that’s true. I think about Bertha. She doesn’t meddle or o
rganise. She just goes about as herself and that’s enough. It almost makes me long not to look the way I look but to be as ugly as she is. It would make life so easy to look like that.
‘You need a better prediction than that.’ I go back to Orla. I’m not going to let her get away with it, not doing this properly and just moaning. ‘Come on.’ I snap my fingers under her nose over and over in case she’s drifting away.
‘Stop it.’ She pushes my hand away. She gathers herself and I swear she seems to grow about a foot like she’s left the ground. She cradles her stomach. ‘All right. What I want, what I want is proper love. Love so strong it can turn the day into night, then back again.’ Her fingers knead her stomach, then she wraps her arms around her own shoulders and holds herself. I can see she believes this is real now. That she can make things happen. ‘What I want is love so strong it’s like a blade that can cut me open. Love that could burn me to death. I’d sell my soul to the devil for it. I want another life to totally entwine with mine. To have somebody who is mine and mine alone.’
We stare at her, stunned, for a moment and she shrinks back down into herself.
‘Well, it’s not me.’ The words are out of my mouth before I can help it. I examine her face to see what impact they’ve made but she looks closed off, like she might not even have heard.
I need to do something. Even though she was talking about love, she sounded so desperate it’s like she’s brought an evil presence down among us. I can feel its taint in the air. We need to banish it before it takes over our whole day.
I have an idea. A smile goes creeping all across my face. ‘We should do it again.’
‘What?’ Orla wipes the moustache away with her fingers.
‘You remember, what we talked about before, about pissing into the bowl.’
‘What?’
‘You know. You did it when you were nine.’