The Water Children

by Anne Berry

  ‘Oh, look at that!’

  He sees the bent heads come up fast. Stepping quietly, he hurries forwards, reaching the altar rail in time to see and hear a man reprimand her. The irate gentleman taps her on the shoulder, places a finger to his lips signifying that she should be quiet, then growls something in Italian.

  Naomi gives an apologetic shake of her head. ‘So sorry, I forgot where I was.’

  Hastily Owen steps in, nods at the scowling man, and pulls her to one side. He bows his head as he retakes his seat. ‘We should go,’ Owen urges, drawing her away. But for the second time that day she gives him the slip, jogging his hand off her arm with a jab of her elbow.

  ‘I want you to look at this first,’ she urges, moderating her tone, now back at the altar rail and leaning forward to peer at something.

  He would far prefer to scurry away, but knowing if he does not relent she may create even more of a disturbance, reluctantly he sidles up to her. With a pointed finger she directs his gaze. He stares with macabre curiosity at a glass coffin lying on a low table a few feet from them. Inside is what looks like the embalmed remains of a body. The skin is brownish-yellow, hugging the ridges and dips of the skull. It is impossible to tell if the figure is male or female. It is swathed in a long, flowing robe, and wearing some sort of religious headdress, like an elaborate egg cosy. Its hands resemble the bony talons of some huge bird. They clutch at a gem-encrusted, silver cross. There are other ornaments scattered about the remains, rings and chains and bracelets, as well as a few bones. They glitter in the conical radiance which issues from an overhead spotlight. Looped through these are garlands of silk flowers, their vivid hues long since bled away to the dusty beiges of dead leaves. The thin lips, like buff piping, are parted to reveal a few grey teeth. The eyes are mercifully closed. But the dark nostrils are stretched so wide they create the illusion that they are flaring open, that the preserved corpse is inhaling the dead air it lies in. He senses Naomi studying him.

  ‘Is it real, do you think?’ she asks in an awed whisper, transfixed by the grotesque spectacle.

  He shudders and nods. ‘Mm, it looks like it.’ He feels suddenly claustrophobic. ‘It’s probably the remains of a saint or a bishop. Come on, Naomi. Let’s go.’

  ‘It is weirdly beautiful, don’t you think?’ She scans his horrified face and smothers a giggle. ‘Oh, Owen, why must you take everything so seriously?’ Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the man in the front pew rising to his feet again, his complexion flushing fig purple. She must have noticed him too, because as he moves towards them she drops to her knees on a hassock at the foot of the altar rail. Dramatically she makes the sign of the cross and raises her hands high in prayer. Owen is speechless, as is the angry Italian, whose mouth drops, then snaps shut. Hands thrown up, he turns and leaves. Owen retreats into the shadows, his own prayer that she will be swift. Finally she rises, pivots slowly, and pauses theatrically for a moment on the altar steps. With astonishment he sees that her eyes are welling up. She gives that idiosyncratic blink of hers, and first one crystal drop, then another, falls on a ruled line down her cheek. As if some sort of miraculous con version has taken place, she drifts dewy-eyed from the church. She genuflects one last time as he waits for her, the great door jammed open with his foot. Outside in the blazing sun once more, Owen strides ahead. He is annoyed and embarrassed. His companion has made an exhibition of herself in a place of worship, a church where decorum and respect, in deference to the locals, should be axiomatic. Naomi catches up with him. She clutches his hand. She embeds her bitten nails in his palm possessively. ‘It was wonderful, wasn’t it?’ When he doesn’t respond she continues. ‘What’s the matter? We’ve had such a lovely day. And you’re upset.’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ he lies.

  They stop at a street café and sit outside. They order beers and sip them slowly in the quiet of the afternoon. On a nearby table a young couple bill and coo like doves. A girder of light slants under the café awning. He notices that Naomi’s foundation has been pasted on too thickly. It has sunk into the map of her face, accentuating the fine lines and creases, like a brass rubbing. Her eyeshadow is that shimmering shade of turquoise that makes a harlot of a sweet-faced girl, and converts a mature woman into a fairground attraction. Her eyeliner has run and her mascara has made spiders’ legs of her lashes. She wears that old-fashioned shade of lipstick, a vivid carmine. It has bled in the heat of the day, fixing the corners of her mouth in a droop, as if she has palsy. He can see the dark roots of her hair advancing on the bleached ends, giving up on the charade. And in a stale waft of nicotine he detects her faint but distinctive scent, the gamey odour of high meat. He looks across at the lovebirds.

  ‘Owen?’ A pause.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are so kind, bringing me here, looking after me. Most men would have walked out. But you stayed.’

  He shrugs. ‘I couldn’t leave you like that.’

  ‘Because you’re decent and good.’ A second pause.

  ‘Naomi, when we get back . . .’ He trails off, his courage failing him. He wants to tell her that his mind is made up, that he is going to move on. A week or two in the market, no more, and he will be gone. Not back home, not permanently anyhow. He’s heading for the open road, where he will have no identity, where he will be able to reinvent himself weekly. He has managed to save a modest amount, sufficient to set him on his way. And when that runs out he will work his passage. ‘Naomi, the thing is that . . . that when we get back . . .’ His stammering speech sticks again.

  ‘Yes? What is it?’ she prompts, amused. ‘Oh nothing,’ he demurs. ‘God, it seems hotter here than it was in London, if that’s possible.’ The rim of her glass is smudged with lipstick. She rests her head on his shoulder. For some obscure reason, it strikes him suddenly that Catherine has the scent of summer rain. The couple opposite them kiss. His eyes linger on the lovers consumed in their embrace, as Naomi snuggles closer.

  At nightfall he asks her what she was praying for. She switches off the lamp, and stands in a spire of moonlight, surveying him, where he lies supine on his bed. She has taken to sleeping in his T-shirts. This one, plain white, swamps her like a nightgown. She looks eerily alien and inhuman, the more so because she is smoking. The floorboards creak as she crosses to the window. It is open and the curtains are tied back. She kneels on the seat, her body corkscrewing back to him. With her every move the lighted tip of her cigarette draws electric orange lines that linger in the air, the way the trail of a sparkler does.

  ‘Owen?’

  ‘Yes?’ He rolls on his side towards her.

  As she sucks on her cigarette the tip flares to crimson, then dulls again. It seems an age till she tunnels out the smoke. ‘Sometimes I think about Catherine, about Catherine and her baby, Bria. I imagine what she looks like, if she’s a blonde or a brunette.’

  ‘She’s a redhead.’ He speaks without thought, an automatic response, regretting his indiscretion immediately. The resulting stillness is voluble.

  Then, her voice suddenly very small, ‘How do you know?’ He cannot see her expression. Subtly lit by the glow of the street-lamp below, her features are in shadow. He curses himself inwardly for his doltishness.

  ‘I met her,’ he tells her lightly.

  ‘When?’ she asks in the same constrained tone. She takes another drag on her cigarette. The smoke is tinted sulphur by the mango-yellow radiance. ‘When did you do that, Owen?’

  He bites down on his bottom lip before replying. ‘Oh, I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago. Sean wanted me to collect something from his house in Hounslow. I was only there a minute or so.’

  She turns away from him and gazes out of the window. ‘You didn’t mention it,’ she says.

  ‘Well, no . . . no. I didn’t think it was important,’ he explains haltingly.

  ‘Was it only that once? Or have you seen her before?’

  ‘Naomi, I said. Just that meeting. That’s all. In fact, you can hardly call
it a meeting. We can’t have exchanged more than a couple of sentences.’ He does not fully understand why, and yet it seems imperative that he lies about this, that he protects Catherine and Bria. Though from what, he cannot say.

  ‘What is she like?’

  ‘Ooh, honestly, I . . . I don’t recall,’ he hedges.

  ‘You recalled the colour of her hair,’ she counters crisply. She stretches out her arm and flicks the ash into the night.

  He pulls the wrinkles from his linen sheet edgily. ‘Only because it was such an unusual colour.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘Naomi, what is this? I went and fetched a package for Sean. I knocked on the door. She opened it, gave me what I’d come for, and I left.’

  ‘You didn’t go in?’ She circles her head, and massages the back of her neck.

  A second’s hesitation and then he answers. ‘No, of course not. Why would I?’

  ‘She didn’t ask you in?’

  He sighs and sits up in bed, his head banging on the headboard. ‘No!’ There is an impatience in his tone, disguising his guilt.

  ‘Is she pretty?’ she repeats.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. She was . . . ordinary,’ he replies, thinking that she was the antithesis to this.

  ‘Ordinary but with red hair,’ comes Naomi’s instant rejoinder. He can hear her breathing the smoke in, pushing it out. It wafts back into the room, tainting the mountain air.

  ‘Look, it’s the only thing I registered about her.’

  ‘Did you see the baby?’

  He is instantly alert. ‘No, why should I have?’

  As she swivels back to him she spins her still-lit cigarette out of the window.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ He is up and beside her in a trice. ‘Forest fires. You don’t want to be responsible for starting one of those.’ Glancing down, a broken whisker of smoke betrays its location on the stone patio to Owen. ‘I’ll go and get it.’ Her hand latches onto his arm, preventing him.

  ‘Why should she get to keep her baby?’ she says coldly. ‘Why should she have it all?’ She pulls him down until he is perched on the seat next to her, her eyes finding his. Hers seem to smoulder with animosity, he thinks.

  ‘Oh, Naomi, you know why.’

  ‘Why?’ she demands, unappeased.

  ‘Because . . . because she is Sean’s wife.’ Her hands grip his upper arms so tightly that it hurts. She cranes her neck. Her rasping voice on his ear feels warped and covetous.

  ‘In the church, Owen, I prayed for my baby, for my dead baby, that God would stop the crying in my head. And I prayed for Sarah, for you and Sarah, your poor drowned sister.’ Her lipstick tongue outlines her open mouth. Owen tenses. If he could he would snatch back his tragedy. Too late, he realizes that it is not safe in her hands.

  ‘You must give yourself time to grieve,’ he says stiltedly.

  She redirects her focus to the mirrored lake. ‘I wonder if that old legend is true? What sort of a woman could shut herself up in her cottage while they flooded the valley? Think of it, Owen, sitting there and watching the level of the water steadily rising. Seeing your things floating on it, sinking in it, and knowing that very soon you were going to join them. It must have been horrible.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about it.’ There is a quaver in Owen’s voice. When next he speaks his cadence is consciously emphatic to rid himself of it. ‘I’m shattered, Naomi. It must be all the fresh air.’ He pulls away from her giving a stage yawn, grabs his jeans from a chair, and yanks them on over his boxer shorts. ‘I’ll dash down and check that your cigarette has gone out. It would be mad to run the risk of a fire.’

  ***

  It is not until the middle of the week that they explore the village, ambling their way up the intersecting paths. They stop by a tap, where icy mountain water runs continuously into a stone trough. Naomi makes a bowl of her hands and bends over to drink. The air screams with heat, and Owen’s throat feels seared to ashes. The sight of her lapping fills him with an acute thirst. As he leans in, she springs back and throws the palmed water into his face. Soon they are shaking with laughter, gulping and splashing all at once. He swallows and splutters, exquisitely aware of the freezing finger sliding down his throat, prodding at his belly. By the time they have slaked their thirst, the legs of his jeans are damp, his T-shirt has a soaked bib, and his arms and face are freckled with round droplets. Her clothes are saturated too, the calico cotton of her drawstring blouse clinging to her body. She drops her head and shakes it, sending spray flying, like a dog drying its coat after a swim.

  They meander higher and higher up the incline. In one of the small fenced gardens an Alsatian barks furiously at them. A short plump woman is taking down washing, a baby tied in a sling at her back. Owen greets her but she snubs him. A little further on and they pass a wizened man sitting on his doorstep, smoking. He raises the cigarette to his lips with shaking leathery fingers, sucking on it, then coughing, before sucking again. He touches the rim of his cap to them as they walk by.

  After a while they come to a tall, rusty, wrought-iron gate. It squeals in protest when they push it open. They step into the tiny square cemetery. It is no more than a patch of wind-crushed grass and a few crosses, leaning tipsily. Naomi investigates a row of family tombs, like a road of exclusive holiday homes, bordering one low stone wall. As with everything else in the village, he has realized that this graveyard overlooks the reservoir. He decides that there can be few more isolated places for the dead to rest than up here, with only the snow-peaked giants for company.

  Night is drawing in now, a grey rag rug unrolling over the peaks and barrelling towards them. Owen can hear the baying of the wind, feel the scissor-snap of its jaws through his damp clothes. Anselmo, Teodora’s husband, hobbles out of the past. He pictures him hunching over to gather up fallen branches, stowing them in the basket strapped to his back, unaware at first that the mountain leviathans are stirring, raining their icy gales over him. Bent on his task, to start with he is not awake to the worsening weather, the drain of light, the blast knifing into him, the snow with its sand bite on his face, the frozen grains clinging tenaciously to his rough, woollen cloak.

  Suddenly realizing the danger he is in, Anselmo starts to hurry down the slopes. But he is not a young man and the frozen ground has become lethal. His heart chatters in his chest. Each painful inhalation scrapes the scant warmth from him. His muscles lock with the effort of the descent. He slips, his load pulling him off balance. He skids down a wall of rock shellacked with ice, twisting to try to brake his descent. He lands badly on a heap of snaggletoothed stones, and feels the matchstick snap of one leg under him. In that same second he knows, he knows he will die out here, alone in this desolate landscape, his body packed with snow. Owen envisages that death, the long hours surrendering inch after inch of his numb flesh, his slack-necked, tortoise face filmed with agony.

  Then Anselmo fades to be replaced by another, his wife, Teodora, sitting cosy by her fireside. The blusher of peppery flames dapples her full cheeks. She is combing her streaming hair, and it gleams like black marble in the flickering light. The shrewish wind screams and nags at her window. She pauses, lifts her head and gazes through the glass pane at the maelstrom outside. She thinks of her decrepit husband now, of his sagging muscles and rumpled flesh, of the unmade bed of his face, of his greying gums and his missing teeth, of his rough whiskers and matted beard, of the wheeze of his dusty, stale breath, of how she sets like plaster as he pokes himself between her hot thighs. When next she casts her eyes deep into the hollow heart of the fire, she is smiling.

  ‘I’m freezing. Let’s go, Naomi,’ he says in a rush.

  But she clambers over the low wall on the far side of the cemetery, sitting herself down in the scrub. ‘Come on, Owen. The view over the lake is spectacular. You must look,’ she beckons with a scoop of her arm. He is crippled with fright, limping to sit beside her. She can feel the quake of him as the lake leers up at them.<
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  ‘It’s funny to think of the village under the water,’ she says. ‘When I walked around it with Lorenzo he showed me shrines . . . evenly spaced, with photographs of all the people who have drowned there. Those faces peering out at you from the grave . . .’ She breaks off and looks closely at him. ‘You really are very scared,’ she ponders. ‘Can you not swim at all?’ He shakes his head. She snakes an arm across his tensed shoulders.

  That night there is a storm. It begins with distant jags of lightning slicing at the black peaks. Each blink torches bolsters of cloud as they bowl towards them. Naomi sits smoking on the window seat in the darkness, impatient for it to arrive. They hear the yawl of the wind plunge to a chesty roar. Then come the cracks of thunder that give a terrier tug to the earth. Curtains of pewter-grey rain sweep in. The trees grow unruly, their dripping branches scourges. Somewhere a bell jangles as the wind flings it. Each lurid flutter sets the lake alight. Twice Owen tells Naomi to close the windows. But she protests, not wanting to miss a single moment of it. He traces the tattered illumination of her face. She is rapt. Only when the rain has saturated the seat cushion, does she reluctantly turn her back on it.

  Their last day. The weather is glorious. The sun polishes everything to a citrus gleam. The sky is a cloudless blue. From the moment she rises, Naomi seems to be in a state of heightened excitement, as if it is her birthday and a party is to be held in her honour. Determined to make the most of it, they drive into the mountains and chance upon a deserted village. Here lizards bask on the sun-kissed rocks, and the song of the cicadas pulses in the shimmering heat. They journey on to a town where the streets are hung with bright banners and coloured lanterns. The church square is filled with dancers and the sultry air swells with music. The women, in flower-print bodices adorned with spider-web collars, trill their tongues. They lift their full skirts to show their flounced petticoats, and twirl and skip and jump. Men in white stockings and shirts and black pantaloons tip their hats and hook their thumbs in their waistcoat pockets. Sure footed, they guide and stamp, lift, catch and spin their breathless partners. A huge man with a handlebar moustache trips his fingers lightly over the buttons of an accordion, deft as a lace-maker juggling her bobbins. And all the while, slick-haired guitarists pluck their strings, roll their lovesick eyes, and croon the songs of their forefathers.