by Kate Hamer
Orla comes back with the drinks and drops the few coins left over next to my hand. I must’ve done something to upset her. She most often offers to pay.
‘It’s great to hang out.’ My voice sounds desperate even to myself. ‘Have a bit of fun. We could get hold of something.’ I crease my eyes at her. ‘That might brighten up the evening.’
It doesn’t work. ‘I’m guessing that would mean seeing your friend Paul again.’ She puts her hands in her pockets. ‘No way.’
‘All right, all right.’ She’s got the upper hand somehow. I’m not sure how this has happened. ‘It’s fine.’ I lift my glass up and choke back a couple of mouthfuls. ‘Let’s just enjoy this. We can think of something else that’s fun, I’m sure.’ I stop; she’s scowling at the window that is frosted on the bottom half and on the top half thick with the mist outside. Looking at it makes me feel like there’s a hand against my face.
‘What is it, Orla?’ I ask. ‘You’re being really funny with me.’
She purses her lips. ‘If you don’t remember, I’m not going to tell you.’
I could scream. This is the last thing I need. ‘Look, you know how much you mean to me. Just tell me and I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
When I look up I nearly fall off my stool she’s staring so hard. ‘“Not me,” you said. That day at the wishing bowl when I made my wish about love, you said, “Not me.”’
I genuinely don’t remember this.
‘And I tried not to think about it because I was in such a state, but honestly I can’t get it out of my head now.’
‘Orla, darling, we were all off our faces that day.’ I’ll say anything to stop her being cold. I can’t bear it. ‘You probably misheard. You mean such a very, very great deal to me. I can’t imagine ever saying anything like that.’
I see her face soften a little and again I’m amazed at what people will tell themselves. That black is white. That night is day.
‘Let’s do something magic,’ I say, draining down some more cider.
‘Like what?’ I can see that she’s a bit excited despite herself.
‘Give it another half an hour and I’ll tell you.’
*
Of course I don’t know what I meant by ‘something fun’. I haven’t got a clue. She follows me out of the pub while I rack my brains for ideas. Back in the square the mist makes everything just about impossible to pick out.
‘Have you thought what to do yet?’ I hear her voice close to my ear.
I think with panic about returning home. The two of them – her and The Beloved – curled together like a single complicated shellfish on the sofa, and the bright ceiling light blazing down so there’s nowhere to hide. The least worst option would be staying with Orla but I don’t want that either, not yet anyway, not while I have this energy fritzing my insides. I feel something move across my cheek and take in a mouthful of warm steam. My mind jitters for a moment, seeking to identify the taste of it. Hot, with an edge of an egg boiling in a pan.
‘I know,’ I say. I’m almost too excited to speak now. My throat seems to have narrowed to the size of a drinking straw. ‘Look, the place is all closed up for the night. Let’s get into the baths.’
She pauses. ‘Break in? What’s the point? What would we do if we could?’
I move closer and she becomes a little more defined through the mist, her eyes blinking rapidly at me.
‘You’re not listening to me. I said, let’s “get in” the Roman Baths. I mean get in the water.’
‘Are you serious?’ She looks really alarmed now.
‘Of course I am.’
‘How deep is it?’
I haven’t thought of that. How would I know? The sulphurous water is always deep green, like the sea – some algae that grows in there apparently.
‘About waist-deep.’
I see the moon of her face look up, assessing the wall with the balustrade on top, and I have a rush of triumph. The statues beyond have almost disappeared altogether in the mist now.
‘It’s easy,’ I whisper, although it’s so quiet I’m guessing the square is empty. ‘I noticed scaffolding poking up on the other side the other day. They’re doing some restoration work. If I can get on your shoulders, I can get over this wall and help you scramble up. Or vice versa. Then we can climb down to the baths on the scaffolding.’
‘I don’t know. What about cameras?’
I wave my hand in front of her face. ‘See that?’
‘Just.’
‘Well, that was about a foot away from your face. Any cameras will be miles off. Oh please. Please, it’ll be such a laugh. It’ll be amazing.’
I’m seized with the longing to immerse myself in the waters I’ve been glimpsing my whole life. The biggest main bath is open to the sky so as the sun strikes on the shifting deep green surface of it, it’s so bright it cuts into the back of your eye. Or, when it rains the drops sink in great globules, hissing and spitting into the heat of the steaming water. The hot gushing waters that feed the bath come from such a deep and secret place, anything could be down there, and the steam that rises from its surface is like messages sent from the ancient gods that reside not in the sky, like the new ones, but right inside the middle of the earth. The wishing bowl is part of it somehow, I feel sure of that, connected by a web of water and magic, the urge to make offerings and utter incantations, to throw in coins and curses. I feel it all far down in the pit of my stomach.
I have to get in. Now I’ve thought of it I’ll do anything to make it happen.
‘I don’t think I’ll even need to get on your shoulders. Put your arms around my waist. If you hoist me up I think I can make it, then I can pull you after.’
She encircles me with her arms, heaves and launches me upwards. I grab onto the top of the stone balustrade and clamber up.
‘I can’t believe it.’ Her voice is hot and excited from below. ‘I think we’re going to manage it. Now me.’
She takes her coat off and slings it upwards. I grab onto it and drop it on the terrace, then lean over to her. ‘Come on. It’s best if you do it in one go without thinking too much.’ I grab onto her arms and pull so hard I think they’re going to come out of their sockets as she scrambles, finally teetering on her stomach for a moment like a seesaw, as if she could go either way, before slithering down to the ground on my side.
‘Keep down, Orla. If this weather starts clearing, people will see us from the square. We’ll have to crawl round to the scaffolding on our stomachs.’
‘My coat’s going to get dirty,’ she mutters.
‘Fuck your coat,’ I say over my shoulder as I crawl along the rough stone terrace.
When we get to the top of the scaffolding I hear a sharp intake of breath. ‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I can do this. That looks terrifying.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say, though I have to admit, if not out loud, that it looks a lot more perilous than I imagined. Even with the mist to soften everything, the scaffolding sheers away right down so the front legs of it almost look like they’re disappearing in the glinting water. A waft of sulphurous steam hits our faces and Orla starts coughing.
‘Look, I’m going down first. I think the only way we can do it is by sort of swinging ourselves round at the bottom to avoid the water. You have to be confident with it.’ Because I can tell she’s going to protest and start changing her mind, I jump onto the wooden platform of the scaffolding and start climbing down. It seems the strangest thing when the name carved into stone, VESPA SIANVS, that you would normally see from below is right in front of my face. At the bottom I manage to swing round using the steel pole to avoid getting my feet wet. But when it comes to Orla’s turn and I coax her down for what seems like forever, she nearly slips and manages to get one leg of her jeans soaked through right up to the knee.
‘I knew that would happen,’ she says. Her voice sounds tiny and afraid in the dark, and I know I’m going to have to bolster her again before she starts crying or tryi
ng to climb out or something.
‘You’ve done really, really well.’ I bite on my lips, hoping she won’t detect my false nannying tone. I’m shivering with excitement with the water lapping and steaming right next to me and Bath lying so close, oblivious, right the other side of the wall. There’s the sound of a car engine and it seems so near we both move towards each other, Orla’s eyes as huge as a cartoon animal’s now.
‘I’ll go in first? Test the waters.’ I chuckle at my little joke.
‘What?’ She grabs onto my arm. ‘You’re not really going to get in there,’ she whispers.
‘Of course.’ I shake off her hand. ‘That’s what we’ve come for, isn’t it?’
I look out across the water and I can see the shining mass of it. I reconstruct it in my mind. I know from school trips that the open rectangular main pool is surrounded by pillars and there are steps in between that lead to the water’s edge. There are alcoves all the way round too, where rich Romans were taken to have oils rubbed into their skins and where they were scraped at with flat knives so the dirt was removed from deep inside their pores. When you come here you’re not even supposed to put your hand in the waters, though it’s so tempting – they’re so luscious-looking I don’t know how everyone resists. To my right I can just hear the hot waters hurrying through the ancient channel towards the Great Bath. We had it all pointed out to us as kids. ‘Don’t go near the edge,’ we were warned.
I shuck off my coat and hook my T-shirt over my head, chucking them on the wet paving stones. I’m so excited now I’m fumbling at my jeans, my fingers slipping on the buttons in my eagerness.
I sit on the side, the stone warm and wet under my thighs and buttocks. The water is dark oil in this light. It sloshes slightly, turning over itself like there’s something alive just under the surface. I plunge my legs in and the warmth floods through them like an energy – and how it happens, I’m not sure, but it’s like the pool has the ability to suck. Perhaps it’s just the side that is wet and slick but somehow the rest of me slithers in too, in one long continuous motion. My hair shoots upwards and I feel the sharp tug at the roots. I open my eyes in panic and underneath is warm and black. I take a choking mouthful and taste the bitter sulphur.
I’m drowning, I think. I’m drowning, I’m drowning.
The gods have taken hold of me for trespassing on their territory and they’re shaking me to bits. They want to kill me for it. A thick black oblivion pushes through me like a dark snake and I fall further and further.
There’s a flash of something in my brain, and clear and present I see ancient Rome whirling past me rather than my own life. Rome, and all her energies and what she’s left behind. The toga pins and statues. Her rising triumphal arches. Her bubbling springs and pipes. The flash of a red cloak disappearing round a corner. The shining arc of a single spear held up to the sky.
Minerva, I think, because the tiny spark in my brain has reminded me that it’s her temple, that she is the goddess of the thermal spring feeding this place and all the coins and curses and wishes are directed to her. The beautiful Roman goddess Minerva, not some ugly old men gods.
Then my foot touches the bottom, hard, slips against something with a strange texture and somehow that propels me up again and I spiral up and burst out, spraying spit and water.
I choke out water as I thrash. The mist is thinning and the crescent moon swings above and its reflection shatters in the water. I know as soon as I break the surface something profound has taken place. I feel utterly changed as if radiation has passed through me and altered all my cells and the way I’ll be forever and even what will happen. Somehow, I begin to find my swimming stroke, and the water seems to help me do that. Minerva saved me.
I can make out Orla now, standing on the edge, wide-eyed, her hands in her pockets. The ancient columns behind frame her.
‘I thought you said it wasn’t deep,’ she says accusingly.
‘Orla,’ I whisper urgently. ‘Something happened in here, something extraordinary.’
‘I’m not getting in there. I must’ve been mental to agree to this – it’s dangerous.’
‘Really, Orla, there’s something here, in the water. You have to try it. It’s so powerful.’
‘Have you finally lost it?’
I lift heavy wet hair off my forehead and push it back. ‘What? No, look, you’ve got to get in and feel it.’
‘It’s dangerous, and quite honestly I think we could get into terrible trouble for this. I want to go home.’
‘Is that all you can worry about? Getting into trouble?’
I’m angry with her now. I’ve brought her to this wonderful place and all she can do is moan and be as cautious as a little old lady afraid of slipping and cracking her little old body. Her refusing feels unlucky too – like the goddess will be offended because we’ve disrespected her by Orla not submitting to the waters.
‘Please,’ I say.
‘No.’ She sounds like she’s going to cry. ‘I don’t think we’ve thought about this properly. We haven’t even planned how to get out. Perhaps we should’ve done that first.’
‘What, like do a flipping health and safety assessment first and have every detail organised like this is a school trip? Perhaps we could go to the gift shop at the end. You’re such a coward, Orla.’
I roll over and start swimming away from her, the feeling of the water warm and delicious under the soles of my feet, and let the choking feeling dispel. Then I remember how I want to keep her onside so I swim back.
‘All I’m saying is that it seems a shame to go through all this and at least not see what it feels like. Come on.’ I flip onto my back. My toes rise up in rows of white nobbles from the water. ‘It’s lovely.’ I swim over to her and the moonlight strikes on the tears flowing down her cheeks.
‘I really want to go home now. Come and stay with me and we’ll curl up with some tea and—’
My anger – Minerva’s anger – flares up again. ‘I’ve organised this lovely treat for you and all you can do is blub. It’s pathetic. I suppose we’ll just have to go then if you’re going to get all hysterical.’
I dry off with my coat as best I can and dress myself, the fabrics feeling like they might almost tear my tender boiled skin. We start climbing up again, Orla first so I can see her bum wobbling about above me under her short coat.
‘I know what I felt at the bottom,’ I shout up.
‘Sssshh, keep your voice down.’
I switch to a loud whisper. ‘It was lead. I remember now. They have to drain this sometimes and I remember reading about it in the paper and seeing photographs. It’s completely lined with lead like a big lead water-filled box. It’s what they lined Princess Diana’s coffin with.’
She stops and looks down. ‘What?’
‘Don’t you remember? All those men, the pall bearers, they could barely carry it because it was so heavy.’
She doesn’t answer, just keeps clanging her way to the top where she waits for me and we slither back over the wall into the square. Back in the real world I retain the power of the place. I feel every cell of my body lit up and I know for certain I’ve been boiled inside the very cauldron of the earth.
*
Orla asks me to stay with her and I say I will but that I need to do something first. Of course, she wants to know what it is, but I say I can’t tell her and in a way that’s true because I don’t know myself yet; I simply know I’m not ready to go and be suffocated in her bedroom. Once she’s left I walk the streets. My hair is still wet and sulphurous. My body feels clean, every pore sucked of its dead skin and dirt. Underneath my clothes, my bra and knickers are still damp. I don’t care. The shivering makes me feel alive. I long for something as extraordinary now outside of the waters.
Somehow I feel female and not female all at once. Like the waters have taken all the worst of it and left the best and most powerful bits. When The Beloved is home the smell of women in the house is enough to practically choke you. Wh
en The Beloved and her are menstruating, which they do at the same time, the bathroom stinks of the iron of blood so strong you can almost taste it. The Beloved once told me that her periods are like torture, the pain is so intense. That she produces clots that look like chopped liver. It was before mine had started and she was trying to frighten me, but it’s true all the same: I’ve heard her talking to her about it. I don’t know why men fancy us really. We’re disgusting. I suppose they don’t really know about all the gore.
The steaming waters I’ve just bathed in have stripped me of all that, though. I feel clean and hard and capable of forging destinies, as if the spear I imagined really is in my hand with its point thrust forward. I walk the streets fast but feel I’m never going to tire. The night-time gardens stir beside me. They smell of earth and roses. The croaking of a frog comes as loud and pure as the playing of a harp string. This city is so small. Nature surrounds it, seeping into its rivers and front gardens. I stop, and the sound fills me with a joy that pushes into every little bit of me.
I begin walking again, fast. I know exactly where I’m going now. I’m going to where Mr Jonasson lives in his little brick house on the hill with his wife and two children. If one of my wishes at the bowl has been derailed for the time being, there’s always the other one. Minerva has shown me that it’s all possible. Anything is possible now.
12
Grace
‘Mum, it’s Gracie,’ I whisper. There’s no response.
I put my hand to my mouth to stifle the emerging scream. My bowels turn to jelly. Slowly my legs buckle and I sink to the floor. A pool of blood swims before my eyes.