by Lily Hammond
She sighed, then sighed again, closing her eyes, feeling the smooth silk of Clemency’s skin under her cheek. She smoothed a hand down the long slow curve of Clemency’s body and sighed again.
‘I hope that’s a sigh of contentment,’ Clemency said, her voice a low murmur against the breeze that soughed and sighed too in the trees outside the window, sounding like waves upon the shore, a high tide, water sifting sand.
Eliza lifted her head and smiled at Clemency, then tucked her head back down and spread her hand in a starfish over Clemency’s chest, pressing down briefly, happy in ways she didn’t know how to express.
‘That’s good then,’ Clemency said, and subsided back into the gentle silence that cocooned them. She’d never made love so wordlessly before, without using her voice even to cry out in pleasure or climax. But it had been a revelation, she thought. How much emphasis there was on sound, on words, on noise. Take that away, and everything else became pronounced. Their lovemaking had been intense, dreamlike, and she knew, it wasn’t just because it was their first time, but because she’d been concentrating not on saying things, saying the right things, the things a woman usually expected to say and hear in bed with another, but on the sensations between Eliza and herself. The way Eliza moved, responded, Clemency had had to determine them through touch, feeling, forging a connection without words.
She looked up at the ceiling, her limbs heavy, drowsy with lingering pleasure. It had been a powerful experience indeed, to make love soundlessly to a woman.
Eliza was a pleasant, heavy weight in her arms, and she lay there, enjoying the touch of Eliza’s hand, how it traced, lazily, the dips and curves of her body.
She touched Eliza’s hand with hers, looking down at the pale skin, the thin fingers – an artist’s fingers, she thought. Not, she thought, made for working in a laundry, getting rubbed red and raw. She lifted Eliza’s hand to her mouth and kissed each finger in turn.
It was a terrible shame that Eliza was going away soon, Clemency thought, and squeezed the hand tightly, not wanting to let her go, and a gloom settled over her suddenly, pushing away the good feelings she’d had moments ago. Now, when she gazed towards the window, holding Eliza’s warm hand in hers, she saw not the perfect dove-grey of the day, but the gathered clouds, the darkness of the afternoon like a cloak, suffocating them. If she wanted to get some good photographs of Eliza, she’d have to get a move-on about it.
Eliza felt the shift in Clemency, in the tensing of the shoulder under her head, in the tight grip of the fingers around her own, and in the atmosphere too, she thought, as though the air in the room was a living thing, and it drew closer, darker.
She lifted her head and looked at Clemency, eyebrows knotted into a frown, a question in her eyes. What’s wrong? she asked. What is it?
Clemency gazed at her for a moment, breathed deeply of the shadows in the room and gave her own sigh, turning her mouth up into a smile.
‘I really do want to take some photographs of you,’ she said, and brought the fingers to her lips again to kiss. ‘I know it’s terrible of me, to lie here in the bed with you, so close, and after such a wonderful time, and to be thinking of that, but with you going soon, I would like to make sure we get around to it – as pleasant and cosy as this is right here. I don’t want you to leave Dunedin without posing for me.’
Eliza struggled briefly against the blankets they’d drawn up over their cooling skin and sat up. She frowned down at Clemency and shook her head. She spread her hands wide in confusion. Leave? She knew she was in a town called Dunedin, but she didn’t know why she would be leaving it.
Clemency looked at her. ‘When you go to Greymouth,’ she said, and felt an icy premonition that Eliza’s face bore out a moment later. ‘You don’t know yet, do you?’ She closed her eyes in sudden sharp despair and cursed herself and her stupid mouth. She should have stayed silent. Silence between them had said so many more pleasant things.
The skin on Eliza’s arms prickled, and a whistling gust of air huffed in under the windowpane and came shivering over her. She rubbed at her arms, staring down at Clemency. She shook her head, over and over. What was Greymouth?
What was Greymouth? She wanted to scream it at Clemency and shook her head more violently, the hairs on her arms standing up, her nipples puckering, but this time from cold, not arousal. She scrambled to her knees, leaning over Clemency, and clasped Clemency’s wrists in her hands. What was Greymouth?
The word meant nothing to her. She ran Clemency’s sentences back through her mind, heedless of the wind blowing across her back now, making her kidneys ache with the sudden cold.
When you go to Greymouth, Clemency had said. But Eliza didn’t know she was going anywhere. Why would she go anywhere? She had just got here. It had not been that long since she had got off the boat, motherless, alone, not knowing where she was.
She knew where she was now – she was here with Clemency, and she wanted to be here. And she liked living with Ruth, and Maxine, and the other ladies, although she would rather just stay here with Clemency, if that were a choice.
But she didn’t want to go somewhere else. Not to somewhere called Greymouth. It sounded a long way away. It sounded like somewhere she didn’t want to go.
She let go of Clemency’s wrists and clambered awkwardly from the bed, her whole body shivering now, the wetness between her thighs cold and sticky. She looked around for her clothes, saw them scattered all over the room, and scurried naked to pick them up, draw them back on. She wanted to cover herself, to put on her clothes. She didn’t like this Greymouth word. It made her feel unsafe, defenceless. She fumbled with the buttons on her blue dress, and then put her coat on over it. The smell of salt in the old wool didn’t make her think of mermaids this time. It made her remember cold green waves, and her mother’s white shroud being drawn down into the deep belly of their depths.
Clemency watched Eliza leap from the bed and hurry to find her clothes, dress herself. She watched her button her fusty old coat and stand there in the dimness, hair in tangles but still glowing like a secret fire in the dark room, and for a long beat of time, she didn’t know what to do, looking at the pale face staring back at her, waiting for her to do something.
But what? Clemency licked her lips, got to her knees in the bed, the covers falling away from her so that the cool chill of the breeze nipped at her skin and she shivered.
‘I thought you knew,’ she said, hopelessness and frustration warring in her. Damn Ruth for not saying she hadn’t told Eliza. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Eliza simply stood there, as though frozen, only her eyes moving as they stared at Eliza, the pale eyelids, almost translucent, veined in blue, blinking their incomprehension, their betrayal at Clemency.
Clemency climbed from the bed and walked over to Eliza, her feet bare on the thick rug. She lifted Eliza’s hands and unknotted the fingers, gripping each hand in her own. She dipped her head to look down into Eliza’s eyes, seeing the shadows, new formed under them, dark smudges in skin whitened by shock.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry – I thought Ruth had told you already.’ Clemency’s mouth was dry, and her voice rasped in her own ears.
Eliza stared at her, slowly shook her head. Ruth hadn’t told her anything – except that it was all right to lie with a woman if you loved them.
And she loved Clemency. She knew it then and there. Her body had felt it first, that day in the sun, seeing Clemency sitting under Maxine’s tree, seeing the recognition in her eyes when she’d looked at Eliza; her body had fizzed, sizzled with an excitement she hadn’t been able to name.
And now she could name it. Her body had known, and her heart, with its skipping, tripping beating, and Ruth hadn’t told her anything about a thing called Greymouth. Ruth had told her about love, and she had explained everything important.
She’d not mentioned Greymouth. How did that fit into love?
Clemency attempted to rub some warmth into Eliza’s hands.
They were chilled, as though shock had withdrawn all heat from Eliza’s body.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, trying to get some response from Eliza, but Eliza just stood there, stony, pale, almost unresponsive. Clemency gasped, shook her own head.
‘Look,’ she said, making Eliza move, leading her to a chair upholstered in blue that squatted comfortably in a corner of her bedroom, beside a small table. She swept a crepe dress from it and planted Eliza in it instead.
‘Stay here, okay?’ she said. ‘You’ve had a shock – I’m going to fetch some hot, sweet tea, and then I’ll explain everything.’ Clemency stood back and stared at Eliza. ‘All right?’ she asked.
But for several moments, Eliza just looked at her; then there was the slightest nod of her head.
Clemency nodded back. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back.’ She looked around, snagged her dressing gown from the carved knob of the bed end and pulled it on, tying the sash tightly around her waist. She left the room bare foot, not wanting to take the time to search for slippers or any other clothes at all.
Downstairs, she hesitated with her hand on the staircase bannister, listening for voices. She hoped with all her heart that both Riley and Dot would be occupied elsewhere in the house than the kitchen but feared it would be a hope doomed to be dashed. So she swallowed down her misgivings and walked to the back of the house and opened the door to the large kitchen.
Riley lifted her head first and looked at her, standing on the threshold, feet and legs bare, nothing but a robe covering her nudity. Even if Riley had not already put together a good idea of what was going on in the bedroom above them, the picture was obvious now. Clemency’s hesitation, her state of undress, her tousled hair – all spoke of one thing and one thing only to Riley’s mind. She glanced over at Dot, but Dot, if she’d put one and one together and come up with two, at least had the decency to drop her eyes and carry on with her task as though the mistress of the house coming half-naked and fresh from bed and love-making was a normal occurrence. Riley liked her the better for it, which was good, because she’d had some concern over Dot’s gossipy ways.
Now, wiping her hands on her apron, Riley met Clemency’s eyes and realised that something must be happening, for her to appear this way in the kitchen.
‘Do you need something, Clemency?’ she asked, pitching her voice low, concerned.
Clemency bit at her bottom lip. ‘Yes, please Riley. A pot of tea.’ She didn’t look at Dot, swallowed instead, then puffed out a breath of air, remembered that this was her house and that she might do as she pleased in it and stood straighter. ‘I’ll make it myself. Please just carry on.’
Riley nodded. ‘Kettle’s warm.’ Then she looked back down at the shopping list she was working on, and licked the pencil led, added tealeaves to the list in a hand that shook slightly.
Chapter Thirty
Eliza sat in the chair, her coat collar itchy and heavy around her neck where it rubbed against the bare skin. The fabric of her bloomers was damp against her inner thighs and she squirmed a little, feeling the tug of her muscles, tired – pleasantly tired – from the activities of the afternoon. She rubbed her own hands together, and the circulation slowly returned. Inside her head, the words stopped swirling around and around with flapping bird wings and settled instead, and she breathed in, her mind clearing from the shock.
She looked around, coming awake to where she was, and touched a hand to the small table beside her. It had an intricate pattern of wood shapes inlaid in it and she looked at it in surprise and interest for a moment, not having had much of an idea that such things existed. The surface was smooth, almost like fabric, she thought, and she bent to pick up Clemency’s dress, and ran the material through her hands. It was a mossy, beautiful green and Eliza imagined Clemency wearing it, how fine it would look on her, on her long and graceful body. She wanted to give it to Clemency to put on so that she could see it.
She got up and looked down at the chair, tracing the outline of the pattern in the heavy damask. She blinked at the way the colour almost seemed to glow in the shadowed corner. Everything, in fact, looked beautiful, when she straightened and looked at it, and she sighed.
The bedcovers were pulled back, rumpled from where she and Clemency had both scrambled from the bed, from where they had lain together, pushing the blankets away so that they might see and touch the silk of each other’s skin instead.
It was beautiful too, and the eiderdown was also blue, a rich gleaming pattern that twitched her lips into appreciation. She wondered if there was a special word for that shade of blue, then shrugged. It was good enough, she decided, to have noticed it.
For the first time, she looked properly around the room, taking it all in, seeing everything. The lights were electric, she discovered, when she pulled a cord that dangled from the ceiling, and bulbs lit up inside glass shades as if by magic. This time the smile was more than a twitch. She pulled the cord again and the room dimmed, but was, she decided, no less beautiful. She shook her head over it and wished there was a way she could show Clemency how much she liked everything she saw.
Did Clemency stand here in this beautiful blue and gold bedroom and look around at everything too? Did she see the way the breeze made the curtains stir, and that the light sifted in onto the bed in a way that made it look as though streams of gold dust danced in it?
Eliza thought Clemency probably did, and the thought made her go to the door that led not to the hallway outside, but to the adjoining room. She put her hand to the knob, and it was cool to her touch, and she noticed that too before pushing it open and stepping through into Clemency’s studio.
You had to notice things, Eliza decided, if you were a photographer. She wandered through the space, looking at the lights, at the shelves heavy with several different cameras on them. She touched a finger gingerly to them, and the wood and metal seemed to speak back to her of what they were.
Devices that showed people the things you saw. That was what they were. Eliza nodded and thought of the light and dust and rumpled bedclothes in Clemency’s room. Would the camera show that? she wondered. And she remembered the curve of Clemency’s hip when they were naked together. Would it show that too? If she could use it, would it show people the things she herself saw? Would she find a way to speak through the pictures?
She opened the door into the next room and looked in. It was very dark, and she wondered what it was for. It was also very small; perhaps, she thought, peering into the corners, the size of the room she’d had back at home with her mother.
But her bedroom back then hadn’t had rows of photographs pegged to lines that crisscrossed one side of the room, and Eliza, unable to contain her curiosity, moved forward, straining to see what they were. She looked around for a cord for a light bulb, found one and tugged it on. The room lit up in a dark red glow and she lifted her eyebrows in surprise, lifting her hands to her face and seeing her skin crimson in the dimness.
But the line of photographs reclaimed her attention and she stepped forward to examine them, nipping at her bottom lip in concentration.
They were studies of people, she saw, and her heart sank a little. She had hoped they would be pictures of the rooms in the house, like she’d just imagined.
But her heart sank only a very little, and in a moment, she was absorbed in the images, standing with her hands tucked behind her back, too warm in her winter coat now but not paying that any attention as she looked from one line of photographs to the next. The people were almost all men, and she guessed they were fishermen, their chins stubbled, the skin around their eyes lined from staring into the wind. She nodded her head as she looked. The sailors on the boat she’d come over on all had the same look, and the same arms thick with muscles.
These men were working on docks, the boats stark in the sunshine behind them. Eliza could almost feel the sun, looking at the photographs. She could almost hear the men shouting instructions at each other, the gulls screeching and screaming as they fo
ught over the steaming piles of fish heads. She nodded. Yes, she said in her head, answering her own question. You would be able to see the dust and the light, and the blue of the eiderdown, even though none of the photographs had any colour in them.
She breathed slowly in, turning from the rows of photographs, Clemency’s work, and leaving the room.
There wouldn’t be any Greymouth, she decided, looking at the cameras, standing in the middle of the room. She wouldn’t be going to the Greymouth. It was a horrible, gaping word, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
What she wanted was here, in this room, in the other rooms, right here in this house.
She wanted the cameras, the devices that showed so well what you could see, what you thought about, what you saw that was important. She wanted those. She wanted to take pictures of the curtains and the dust and the blue eiderdown, and the way the sheets were all twisted from their lovemaking.
And she wanted Clemency too.
She wanted it all, with a strength and simplicity that took her breath away.
Chapter Thirty-One
Clemency glanced across at Eliza in the passenger’s seat. The rain had stopped, the clouds thinning so that the light in the motor car was clearer, lighter.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked, unable to stop herself from repeating the question. When she’d gone back into the bedroom with the tea things, Eliza had been sitting in the blue chair, still with her coat on, but more composed, colour back in her cheeks, where before they had been alarmingly white.
Eliza glanced at her now, reached out and patted her leg and nodded. She smiled. Not widely, but it was a smile.
‘We can see each other again soon, if you like,’ Clemency fumbled on, not liking this odd calmness of Eliza’s and trying not to wish the girl could speak. She pressed her lips together at the thought. She must not wish Eliza could speak, she told herself. Eliza was to be accepted as she was, wholly, completely. She glanced at Eliza again, watched her for a moment as she stared out the window at the muddy green-brown water of the harbour, churned up as it had been by the rain, and wondered what exactly was the nature of Eliza’s speech defect? Had she ever seen a doctor about it?