Crushed

by Kate Hamer

  ‘Jesus, Phoebe.’

  ‘Go on, you go. Go on, I just want to be on my own now.’ I screw my eyes shut in the effort not to cry, and all the lumps and bumps and roots of the earth dig into my back. Eventually I hear some scuffling and when I open my eyes he’s gone. I roll over, then sit up. It looks yawningly empty in the place where he was standing. A band of fury tightens around my middle. So he ran away from me as if I’m nothing. Perhaps I’m a pinprick to people outside the cage of our house as well as on the inside.

  I stand up. There’s an ache between my legs and at the top of my thighs. I flex my knee up and down so I can feel it more strongly, testing out the pull of it. I seek the knowledge that something has been kindled in me, something changed, but for now that’s all there seems to be, the ache and the gap where he was beneath the trees.

  I spot the wishing bowl. It’s like a dead star with its magic used up and gone. I lean over and, using my hands as shovels, begin ladling out the mud and flinging it into the river along with Grace’s pine cone, which plops into the water and sinks. My fingers dig deeper into the muck and unearth other treasures we put there: a Haribo fried egg and a pair of red lips, dirt clinging to the sticky gap of them. I scrape diligently until the hole is clean, expectant, yawning out for some new magic to take place. The emptiness of it looks like it could suck in anything.

  27

  Phoebe

  I go to the one I always go to when I am reduced to nothingness and fear. The one who is coloured pink and white. Who is plump and serious-faced. Who always welcomes me with open arms and loves me whatever I do. Orla loves me unequivocally. She never, ever runs away from me.

  I felt like I was drowning at home. There was no respite, and nowhere to go with her being there the whole time and never even leaving to go to her part-time job. The house was getting filled up with steaming hot waters and they were closing over my head and gushing up my nose. When I think of Lucas I have a twist of hatred in my guts because for a tiny moment he made me feel whole. Now, because of him and the way he couldn’t wait to run off and the texts he never answers, I am more smashed apart than ever. Little pieces of me are hidden around the house. In my dreams I go looking for them. I want to put them all back together but I can never find them all, and the ones I do discover – in corners, behind sofas, in the bin – have grown into odd shapes that won’t fit together.

  She is almost completely well again. She seems better than ever, in fact. Three weeks in bed, then time spent with her feet up have made her the picture of health. She plans trips and excursions for herself; the soonest is to Edinburgh, where Dad’s chambers is holding a ball in a cathedral-like hotel. She’s excited by this, sees herself at home in Edinburgh, in her rightful place, with its grand scale and its serious culture. She leafs through catalogues of dresses. ‘What do you think?’ she asks, and remembering my midnight blue dress I pick the ugliest, the ones sprouting crenulations on the sleeves and with sea-slug skirts. The ones that would make her look like a gargoyle. She stops asking me after a while and decides to make it herself. I touch the swathes of midnight blue silk that fan out over the sewing machine, the table, the floor, and weep. My tears make brief crystal buttons on the silk, then melt into it.

  I meet Orla in our halfway slanted park and she links arms with me and we don’t even have to talk. The relief I feel is medicinal, the edge of pain accompanying it: the touch of gauze upon a wound; antiseptic cream on a cut. Her shoulder-length dull brown hair is coiled on top of her head in a bun. She wears a plain white shirt tucked into grey wool trousers. She looks older, heavier, more responsible, like a teacher or an office worker, since I last saw her. There’s two mauve smudges under her eyes like she hasn’t been sleeping well, but they actually serve to set the hazel colour off and make her more striking than before and lift up her ordinariness. She takes my arm and I lean on it like I’m a little old lady as we walk into town.

  ‘Look, there’s those sick faces,’ I whisper to her and we pass the ancient wall grimed with soot. The faces gurn out at the traffic from the blackened stones. I rub at my eyes because just thinking about the man being slimed and scraped across the wall still makes it feel that blood is running down inside of them, colouring everything on the outside.

  ‘Ignore them,’ she says so briskly it makes me snuggle into her side even more closely. ‘They’re not even old. They’re something hippies stuck up there in the 1970s. My dad told me. He remembers them being put up when he was a kid.’

  ‘Really?’ I look at them again and see how this is true. They don’t have the closed-off medieval faces that are as impenetrable as carp gliding under water. They have jokey bubble cheeks. There’s one with glasses.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Let’s do something organised today. Something stupid and touristy. Let’s do a proper tour of the Baths again.’

  I acquiesce by resting my head on her shoulder briefly. I need to start treating Orla better. She loves me so much.

  ‘Let’s go on holiday together first,’ I say, stopping outside the travel agent’s, playing an old game of ours.

  ‘All right.’ And we go inside and scoop up brochures with suns wheeling across the covers.

  ‘How about Corsica?’ I ask, opening the pages onto an expanse of blue sea.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says, closing her eyes as if she could really put herself there. ‘That sounds lovely.’

  I put that brochure back and pick up another one and study the cover. ‘Or maybe Crete?’

  We gather up shiny brochures until we catch the attention of the woman behind the desk and when she makes her move, toddling across to us in her high heels and her tight blue uniform, we shove all the brochures into our bags and escape, giggling. In the old days we’d pore over them, deciding where to go in our fantasies and luxuriating in the details of hotels with whirlpools and all-you-can-eat buffets.

  At the top of Milsom Street we pause to look in shop windows. I pick out a coat that would suit her and she chooses a pair of boots for me – another old game of ours.

  I stop dead in the middle of the pavement. ‘Oh no.’

  She turns. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s them again. I can’t believe it.’ I’m stiff with panic.

  ‘Who?’

  I nod in the direction of Lucas on the other side of the road. This time they’re all there, his wife and the baby in the pushchair and a girl toddler with petal-shaped party skirts and angel wings dripping off her.

  ‘Why do I keep seeing them?’ I hiss. ‘What’s making it happen?’ I back into a doorway of a shop selling lamps and silk flowers, and candles as thick as an arm.

  ‘What do you mean? Nothing’s making it happen.’

  ‘Then why do I keep seeing them?’

  ‘It’s Saturday. Everyone goes shopping on Saturday. Bath has got, like, three streets – it would be surprising not to bump into someone you know.’ She comes closer. ‘Christ, you look terrible.’

  ‘I feel it. I feel sick.’ Over her shoulder I see them threading away from us down the street, him pushing and his wife holding the girl’s hand. His wife’s wearing a yellow sou’wester that reminds me of the child from Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Her face hardens. ‘You did it, you went and saw him again, didn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t. I really am going to be sick if you carry on.’ I put my hand up to my mouth to catch it in case it comes.

  ‘Honestly, you’re so stupid.’ She’s turned white. Jealousy is eating her brain. I can see it in the way her eyes deaden to me as it devours the cells behind them. ‘How could you do such a thing? He’s married, for God’s sake. He’s a teacher.’

  ‘I know. It was a stupid thing. Don’t be angry with me, Orla. I’m relying on you. Please be nice to me. I can’t stand it if you aren’t.’

  She shoves her hands in her pockets and stares at me with her mouth open.

  ‘Please. It was just a stupid mistake that I won’t make again.’

  ‘What happened?’

&nbs
p; We have to stand aside for two women who want to get into the shop. They give us looks because we’re in the way; the usual middle-aged-women looks that say teenage girls shouldn’t be getting in anyone’s way, that they should part like the Red Sea in front of the overwhelming force of their regal age and authority.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing happened. We just kissed a bit. I thought it’d be fun but it wasn’t. It was quite gross, actually. I never want to see him again.’

  I look at her and my heart turns over. She looks utterly cold. ‘Really, you once said I was childish but I think it’s you that’s such a child, Phoebe.’

  ‘Don’t say that. We’re having fun again, aren’t we? I absolutely promise from the bottom of my heart I won’t do it again. Don’t look at me that way. You know I’m oversensitive to things like that.’

  She doesn’t reply for a long time and I practically can’t breathe. ‘Does it ever occur to you that I might have troubles of my own?’ she says finally.

  I shake my head. It really hasn’t. I grab her arm. ‘Come on, us girls need to stick together, don’t we?’ And I mean it, I really do at that moment. Girls mean more to each other than anyone. All those conversations whispered into sticky night air. Huddled together under one blanket and watching the dawn, camping in Orla’s garden. I want more than anything now for Orla to melt and for us to be carefree again, in the old way, our hair in streamers behind us, arms linked and both putting our foot forward at the same time.

  ‘What troubles do you mean?’ I ask, burning with curiosity now.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing I want to talk about. Come on, let’s get this tour over with.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you everything, you know,’ she flashes at me. ‘You don’t.’ Then she sees how hurt I am by that and she takes my arm. ‘Never mind. Let’s get in there.’

  In the Roman Baths most people are oblivious. They wear headphones that tell them in a dozen different languages what they’re looking at. We don’t need that. It’s part of our normal landscape, seeing monuments that were built for ancient gods and devils, though we don’t even know what they looked like, what rituals or foods were eaten in their presence, what sacrifices were made for them and what demands they enacted. I’ve heard a theory that the stone circles at Avebury would have been covered in the chalk that lies just under the surface all over this area, that the ground was scratched at to expose it and covered all the stones too so it looked like a space ship, and I can imagine that. Sometimes I get the feeling the old spirits haven’t gone away at all; it’s just that we can’t name or give shape to them. They love that, being unknowable. It means they can move faster around the world.

  In the Great Bath the sun sparking off the water cuts into my eyes. In daylight the water has the green lusciousness of the inside of a grape. Luminous green. The reflection of fast-moving clouds fans out across the golden pillars. The sound of footsteps and voices hollow out with the acoustics. We walk on the ancient uneven tiles on the covered terrace, then emerge into the open air by the brink of the Great Bath. I remember my swim and the arc of stars swinging above, the sulphur sting of the water on my tongue, and Orla, a hunched figure like one of the minor harmless spirits still hanging about here who has been forgotten and neglected and spends an eternity feeling forlorn.

  ‘That was so funny, wasn’t it? Swimming here. Look at all these people. They don’t have a clue.’

  ‘It scared the shit out of me.’ There’s tears in her eyes.

  I’ve upset her now, but I want to make it better and I think about saying something that might mollify her, but the sky darkens and there’s a gust of wind across the water and a sharp rainfall; great drops fall from the sky through the open ceiling and I watch, transfixed, from under the shelter of the terrace. It’s so beautiful, the sight of stormy raindrops as they plummet, hissing as they hit the steaming green water and are then swallowed up. There’s a rumble of thunder and the sudden electricity makes me practically shiver in ecstasy, but when I turn round, Orla has gone.

  I’m alone with the blank-eyed tourists listening to their commentaries and I’m plunged into a dreadful, dreadful panic now the plaster of Orla’s company has been torn off. An unnamed paranoia grips me. Something dreadful will happen, I’m sure of it. I start thinking what it may be, the dreadful thing that will occur, and then something happens that’s never happened before. The myriad different dooms cluster together like frogspawn, and I know I would only need to look inside each pod to find the black spot of that particular fear with all its own individualities and nuances huddling inside, and the power of them all bubbling together is so overwhelming I want to tip myself head first into the waters. Minerva seems to have deserted me and I wonder if she’s still in the little urban woodland opposite Lucas’s house; if she got stuck there. I turn and nearly trip on the lead-lined sluice that feeds the bath with the hot waters and I stumble into the darkness of the museum, looking for Orla’s reassuring plump figure.

  The atmosphere is much more moist inside because there’s nowhere for the coiling steam from the boiling waters to evaporate. These are all the things I remember from before, from being led around, breathing in the fetid heat, pushing and shoving, on school trips, plastic mac tickling behind my bare knees and my lunch in a backpack. I stumble past the covered circular bath, the water as green as the sea, where Romans finished their bathing regime with a freezing plunge into its waters. Past the glass cabinets of jewellery, of coins and necklaces and totems, the masks used by priests; and then it’s the beautiful gilded face of Sulis Minerva herself – the half-Celtic, half-Roman goddess, cracked apart from her body at some point but the head found and mounted so she can look out on us all.

  I whizz by the glass cabinets containing the figures of the three mother goddesses that were made before the Romans even came here. Then there’s the lead curse tablets retrieved from the sacred spring with lists of suspects of a crime scratched on their surface. ‘But where is God?’ I remember one little boy asking nervously, a product of our church primary school. ‘He hasn’t been invented yet,’ I told him.

  Where is Orla? Where is she? A terrible thought occurs, that she has left, abandoned me here and is this minute striding home, muttering to herself under her breath about how stupid I am, what a liar. I can see it, I can see her leaving, and I stand still and close my eyes and wave after wave of panic washes through me.

  When I open them again there’s Orla.

  The coil of her little mouse-brown bun from behind is the best sight in the world; it’s so cute I give in to trembly laughter, a wide crazy smile that I wipe off with my own hand. She’s standing, leaning on the bars that protect people from falling into the open sluice running through the room. Right in front of her is a stone arch in the wall that, deep within, houses the opening – the gushing source of the spring. The stone inside is bright red, glistening with the ever-spouting boiling water. Its hard surfaces appear folded they are so worn over centuries. I stand next to her, close, and reach out for her hand to hold. I lower my head as if in supplication to her. Her hand, which at first is unresponsive, begins to twitch and curl around mine. I put my head on her shoulder and we stand staring into the crimson-hot depths of the bubbling chasm.

  28

  Grace

  When Daniel comes out shopping with us, everything is different. We take turns pushing the wheelchair. We giggle over displays of oranges in the supermarket, picking out the most plump and juicy-looking. He wraps his arm around me and kisses the side of my neck in front of everyone. ‘Stop it, you lovebirds,’ Mum says, looking down to hide her grin. I told Daniel everything, about the fall, about what happened and why I was the way I was. ‘Christ, Grace,’ he said, but he hugged me all the same and then we were back the way we were before.

  We stop in a café and park Mum up and go together to load our tray with coffees and Danish pastries. I can’t remember feeling like this. I have been so worn, frayed to nothing almost. When we return, Daniel
holding the tray up high and gripping the sides with his strong hands, somehow Mum has managed to get herself out of the wheelchair and onto the proper café chair. She loves surprising us like this and sits smiling her head off as if she’s just done a magic trick.

  Sometimes he stays over. Rosa and Averill almost burst with curiosity on their visit when he surprises them by emerging from my room and leaving the flat in a blur of blue jeans and dark hair. They’re disappointed they don’t have a chance to pounce and only manage to sit with their mouths open while he whirls past them.

  He cooks for me and I put on a little weight and he teases me about it. ‘Surely it’s not true,’ he says in bed one night. ‘I can feel a hip. And what’s this?’ He cups my buttock.

  ‘It’s my big fat arse.’ I giggle as he squeezes away.

  Soon he will have to go away for a training course but I’m trying not to think about that. It will only be for a fortnight and I console myself by washing the oil out of his overalls myself and ironing them neatly.

  He laughs when I take the ironed pile down to his flat. ‘They’ll tease me for being the posh boy with pressed overalls,’ he says, but I don’t care. I want to do it, to press every wrinkle away and make neat grey walls with the perfectly folded clothes in the same way he loves to cook for me. We are careful. He doesn’t stay every night, just at the weekend. I don’t want my life with Mum completely taken over by our coupledom. He doesn’t want the neighbours telling the authorities that his flat appears to be empty and unoccupied. It’s hard enough keeping the myth going of his mother still living there with her sparse visits, even though she makes the most of it when she does come, announcing her presence by clattering her high heels up and down the stairs and ringing on neighbours’ doors to ask for a cup of sugar.

  I’ve tried to forget about that terrible time after Mum fell, that morning when I fled from his flat and holed myself up in ours, not answering the door even, and spent the next fortnight saving Mum’s life. Those dark days seem an age ago now. Daniel has never pressed me for more details about it either. I sense he has seen enough in his life to know to tread carefully when he has to, even though he too is just still in his teens. He’s worked since he was fourteen, in backstreet garages at weekends or days bunked off school. He tells me he could never miss a day now, even if he was really ill. He saves everything he can to start his own business one day, he tells me. He understands my responsibilities in a way that many boys his age normally wouldn’t, the ones at school who talk of college places and their football practice on Saturdays. The ones whose mums and dads bankroll their futures studying at distant universities and their present entertainments by buying them tickets to weekend festivals where they will take drugs and slosh around in mud. And the parents will close their minds to all that and tell themselves this is a phase that has to be gone through, that their offspring must have their fun.