The House of Tides

by Hannah Richell

  The woman made a big fuss of her. She measured her and then brought four bras back into the cubicle. She had Cassie try them all on and sent her on her way just twenty minutes later with her first virgin-white 32A cup, a simple cotton number with a tiny purple bow in the center. “She’d be very proud of you, she would,” the lady told her on her way out of the shop.

  Cassie looked at her in confusion.

  “Your mum, my love, she’d be so proud, you all grown up…a proper woman!” And she’d winked down at Cassie and made her blush with shame.

  Cassie thought about it on the way home. The clerk was wrong. Her mother wasn’t proud of her. She hadn’t even noticed Cassie was growing into a woman. Her mum may as well be dead, for all the attention she gave her these days. Cassie sat simmering quietly as she rode the bus home on her own, cursing her mother, her unborn sibling, and the new bra straps digging uncomfortably into her shoulders.

  She was still angry at the world that evening, and the sight of Dora seated at the kitchen table, her head bent intently over the misshapen blanket she was trying to knit for the baby, was too much. She straddled the chair next to Dora and waited for her sister to look up obligingly from the tangle of yellow wool in her lap.

  “You do realize,” she said, “that things are going to be very different when this baby arrives, don’t you, Dora?”

  Dora looked startled. She had been mid-count, her tongue still caught between her lips in concentration. “Dropped one! What was that, Cassie?”

  “I said things are going to be different when the baby arrives.”

  “Different how?”

  “Babies need a lot of attention, and Mum and Dad…they’ll be tired and distracted.”

  Dora nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  Cassie continued. “It will be their favorite, you know, the baby of the family. It will get the most attention. You won’t be the youngest anymore. You and I, we can’t compete with that, can we?”

  Dora thought for a moment. “I didn’t think it was a competition. Surely Mum and Dad will just love us all the same? Anyway, they seem happy again, don’t they? I like it.” Dora lifted the needles to regard her progress, and Cassie noted several large holes in the long and strangely triangular-shaped fabric. The blanket was going to be a disaster but Dora just gave it a tug here and there and returned to clicking her needles together in a slow and steady rhythm.

  Cassie shook her head. “Oh, Dora, you’re so naive. Believe that if you want, if it makes you feel better, but deep down you know I’m right. Everything’s about to change.” She just couldn’t stop herself. She felt a hot spite raging within and she needed to release it, to share it. “So you’d better brace yourself. It’s you and me now, Dora,” she continued. “It’s you and me against the world. You know that, right?”

  Dora seemed to consider her sister’s words for a moment before she nodded. “I s’pose so.”

  Cassie was chastened slightly by the sight of Dora’s glum face; she tried again in a softer voice. “You and I…we’ve got to stick together, haven’t we? It’s what sisters do.”

  Dora nodded again, but it seemed she didn’t want to continue the conversation. She dropped her head and continued with her slow and steady knit-one-purl-one rhythm until Cassie got bored and retreated from the room.

  A few nights later Cassie woke from sleep to a hot, damp feeling between her legs. She flicked on her bedside lamp and looked down to see a bloody stain blossoming on the pale cotton of her nightie. She sighed.

  Her period: It had finally started.

  They’d talked about it in sex ed at school, Mrs. Nelson battling on regardless, ignoring the girls’ sniggers and embarrassed jokes, explaining to them that it would be worth keeping a small supply of towels or tampons handy for such a momentous occasion: their “initiation into womanhood.” Since that class Cassie had been meaning to broach the issue with her mother but she had never found the right moment. She regretted it now.

  Cassie hauled herself out of bed and padded silently down the landing to the bathroom. As she reached the doorway she heard a strange, strangled cry. She’d investigate just as soon as she’d sorted herself out.

  First she pulled the nightdress over her head and washed herself with a damp flannel. In the bathroom cabinet she found an old packet of sanitary towels belonging to her mother. They looked enormous, far bigger than the ones the teacher had shown them in class. She pulled off the strip from the back of the pad and settled the giant wedge into an old pair of knickers. It felt stiff and fat between her legs, not at all comfortable. Still, it would do for now. Grabbing a pair of flannel pajamas from the airing cupboard, Cassie pulled them on hurriedly and then set about furiously scrubbing the livid red stain from her nightdress. Out damn spot! She was suddenly reminded of the line from Macbeth. The mark had transformed from livid red to a tea-brown tinge, but it was still there. She stuffed the nightie, sodden and crumpled, to the back of the airing cupboard before switching off the light and heading back into the hallway.

  It was still dark, but a sliver of light escaped from underneath her parents’ bedroom door. Again, a cat-like wail broke the eerie silence. Cassie walked toward the door, uncertain if she really wanted to go any farther, but unable to turn back. As she got closer, she noticed the door was slightly ajar. The mewling grew louder, and then stopped. She heard her parents talking in soft, low voices. She paused at the entrance to the room, took a breath, and then gently pushed the door open. Her eyes widened as she saw the scene before her.

  Helen and Richard sat together on the bed, propped up on pillows. The sheets and duvet lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of the bed. Her father looked disheveled, as though he hadn’t yet been to sleep, his arm slung protectively around Helen’s shoulders as they both gazed in rapture at a small bundle nestled in her arms. Another piercing cry broke the quiet and Helen shifted the bundle of blankets in her arms and unbuttoned the front of her nightdress with her free hand. Then a small, pink head appeared and seemed to settle peacefully at Helen’s breast. “He’s hungry,” she heard her mother say.

  Cassie bristled with discomfort. She felt as though she were intruding on a private moment, something sacred that she wasn’t a part of, and started to back out of the room, willing her presence to go unnoticed but something had given her away because suddenly Richard’s head swung up in surprise. “Cassie!” he exclaimed, startled to see her standing at their bedroom door. “Come in. Come and meet your brother.”

  Cassie padded reluctantly across the carpet, leaning in to peer politely at the swaddled infant. He was pink and puffy with bow lips and eyes scrunched shut. His face looked swollen and his nose squashed, as if he’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring. She could see a map of blue veins pumping blood under his papery skin, and a smattering of blond down on the top of his head, the exact same color as her father’s. The baby was oblivious to anything but the breast he was latched to and Cassie was suddenly reminded of the newborn Labrador puppies they had gone to see in Farmer Plummer’s barn last summer, disappointingly slimy and translucent, wriggling blindly at their mother’s swollen teats.

  “What do you think?” Richard asked. “Isn’t he adorable?”

  “Mmm…,” Cassie agreed. “I thought you were going to have him at the hospital?” she addressed Helen, accusingly.

  “Well, that was the plan, but it seems this little guy had other ideas. You should have seen your father, Cass, all in a tizzy, until the midwife at the end of the phone took him in hand and explained what he had to do. It was just as well because this baby was in a hurry.”

  “To be honest I didn’t really do that much. Your mother and brother did all the hard work.”

  There was a loud creak of the door and they all looked up.

  “What’s going on?” Dora yawned. “Why is everyone awake?”

  “Come and meet your new baby brother,” Richard urged, beckoning Dora into the family circle.

  “He’s here? Already? Why didn’t anyone wake me?”r />
  “Come on, poppet, come and meet him,” Richard urged.

  She didn’t need any further encouragement. Dora launched herself at the double bed, landing on the mattress with a thud.

  “Careful!” warned Helen, clutching the bundle protectively to her chest.

  Cassie saw Dora bite her lip and glance across at her. Cassie rewarded her sister with a knowing look, one that said See, I told you so.

  Dora’s cheeks flared red and she dropped her gaze hurriedly before sidling apologetically up to her father’s side of the bed. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Panda,” Richard smoothed, putting an arm around her. “Just go gently. He’s only tiny.”

  Dora nodded and poked at the baby in Helen’s arms. “What’s he called?”

  Cassie and Dora shared another quick look. First Cassandra. Then Pandora. They were both keen to know what trials from Greek mythology Helen would inflict on this new Tide child.

  “He’s Alfred, isn’t he, Richard?”

  Richard looked up at Helen with a start. “I thought you had your heart set on Hector?”

  “No.” Helen shook her head. “Look at him. He’s an Alfred if ever I saw one.”

  “Alfie!” exclaimed Dora. “Like Granddad?”

  “Yes.” Richard smiled, his voice thick with emotion. “Like Granddad.”

  “Baby Alfie,” repeated Dora with satisfaction. “It suits him.”

  “Yes,” said Helen. “Yes it does.”

  Just then little Alfie gurgled and gave a small cry.

  “He’s so cute,” Dora exclaimed. “Look at his tiny fingernails.”

  As Helen, Richard, and Dora all cooed over baby Alfie’s ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes, Cassie retreated quietly from the cozy family scene, slipping unnoticed from the room. No, nothing good ever came from an accident; she could feel it deep in her bones.

  Chapter 7

  Dora

  Present Day

  Dora runs down the oak-paneled hallway and bursts through the front door into the blinding afternoon sunshine. She doesn’t know where she is going; all she knows is that she has to escape the house and, somehow, banish the image replaying over and over in her mind of Helen’s face—tight and pale—turning away from her and the news of her pregnancy. At that moment Dora can’t stand to be under the same roof as her mother.

  She’s oblivious to her surroundings as she half runs, half walks down through the garden and across the fruit orchard before joining up with the muddy walking track heading out toward the cliffs. The ground is boggy after weeks of spring rain, and she concentrates on jumping the puddles littered along the way. Her impractical ballet flats squelch and splash as she goes and cold water is already seeping around her feet, edging up the hem of her jeans, but she doesn’t care. She marches on, head down, stewing on the events that have just unfolded in the conservatory.

  Helen’s reaction has shocked Dora to the core. It was never going to be an easy conversation, but Dora realizes now that she had dared to hope for a little more from her mother—some expression of joy or support amid the obvious grief and distress. Instead it feels as though Helen has pulled yet another shutter down between them. There is an insurmountable divide that they just cannot seem to bridge.

  What has happened to the mother she remembers from her childhood? The one who would slip into her bed at night and hold her close as a midnight thunderstorm raged outside? Or cover her with pink calamine lotion when she itched with chicken pox? The woman who sewed name tags into her school uniforms, packed her lunches, tucked her in at night, bathed her grazed knees, kissed her feverish brow, and wiped away her tears? That mother seems wholly unrelated to the ice-cold woman sitting up at Clifftops.

  Suddenly the path ends, the hawthorn hedgerows on either side of the trail peter out, and Dora finds herself standing on the cliffs overlooking Lyme Bay. She realizes she has unconsciously returned to the well-trodden walking tracks of her childhood. To the left lies the beach. To the right stands an old weather-beaten church. Directly ahead lies the placid, shimmering sea. She watches the sunlight dance across its surface, a sheet of silver rippling in the breeze. Slowly her heart begins to calm in her rib cage. Fine gauze cloud is building high up in the sky but it is still warm and Dora knows it will be light out for a few more hours yet. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thinks, and with a grim smile she turns right and heads for the church.

  It is exactly as she remembers it, a humble, whitewashed building with arched stained-glass windows and a roughly hewn wooden cross hanging over the doorway. It is surrounded by a crumbling stone wall, and dotted all around are the markers of a hundred or more graves, the headstones seeming to push up through the ground like the wild spring flowers that surround them. Dora hesitates for just a moment before entering through the wooden gate.

  For a minute or two she wanders among the graves, trailing her hands across the warm stone, reading the names and the dates of the deceased. Some of the graves are overgrown, their headstones nothing more than ruins, the words once so carefully engraved onto the stone now weathered and worn until illegible, but others are well maintained, with carefully placed bunches of flowers indicating the human grief and loss that live on. Many are sailors, souls lost over the years to the raging sea. As Dora slowly makes her way toward her grandparents’ resting place, she wishes she had thought to bring flowers.

  She stands in almost the same spot as she had fifteen years ago, when she watched Alfred and Daphne’s wooden coffins being lowered into the earth. The memory of that day is strangely hazy, but standing there, she is reminded of the feeling of her father’s cold hand clutching at her own mittened one. His grip had been bone crushing, like that of a drowning man. Afterward they had all returned to Clifftops and Dora had sat shivering on the front doorstep watching a steady stream of creaking, elderly people arrive from the village. Her cheeks were soon bruised from their sympathetic pinches and the fridge fit to bursting with the casseroles and cakes they brought with them, and after a while she’d decided Cassie had the right idea. She’d left the serious business of adult grief behind, and wandered upstairs to find her sister.

  “Cassie?” She’d rattled the door handle to her sister’s room.

  “What?” had come the muffled reply.

  “Can I come in?”

  She’d heard a sigh, followed by the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor. Dora tried the handle again and the door had flown open. Cassie was resettling herself on the bed, a bottle of nail polish in her hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  Dora knew it was best not to say anything. When Cassie got into one of her moods it didn’t take much to tip the balance; sometimes even the most innocuous of comments could see her ejected from the inner sanctum of her sister’s room. So she’d sat quietly, watching from a careful distance as Cassie artfully applied a thick layer of black nail varnish to each of her toenails. Their mum was going to go mental.

  “Cass?” she’d tried eventually.

  “Uh-huh?” She didn’t bother to look up.

  “What do you think it feels like when you’re dead?”

  Cassie turned to regard Dora with her cool blue-eyed gaze, her hand halted halfway between the bottle and her toes. She seemed to consider the question for a moment. “I think dead probably feels okay. You know, peaceful…calm.” She paused. “Like when you’re in a warm bath, just floating, floating and you’ve got nothing in your head.”

  “So it doesn’t hurt?”

  “No, you don’t feel anything when you’re dead. Everything just stops.”

  Dora remembered she’d felt a little better. She’d watched as Cassie had leaned over and removed the twists of toilet paper from between her toes before testing her nails with a finger. Seemingly satisfied, she’d turned to Dora. “I’m bored. Are you coming?”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. I can’t stand all these old people everywhere. It’s so depr
essing.”

  Dora hadn’t needed to be asked twice. She’d followed her sister down the stairs, grabbed their winter coats and shoes, and run out into the back garden. They’d tripped across the lawn and down to the stream below the orchard, silently watching as their little makeshift boats, fashioned from sticks and leaves, slipped away toward the ocean.

  Dora winces at the sudden onslaught of memories and although the sun still holds a glimmer of warmth, she shivers and wraps her arms tightly around her body. Was that when things had started to come undone? Like a tiny hole in a tightly woven cloth, was it the move to Dorset that had tugged loose the first thread and begun to unravel the fabric of their family?

  Dora looks down again at her grandparents’ graves. She kneels on the ground and begins to clear the weeds that have sprung up around their headstones, ignoring the damp earth seeping through the knees of her jeans. As she works, her ear tunes in to the ebb and flow of the waves crashing onto the cliffs below. The sound is strangely soothing, like the rise and fall of her breathing—in and out, forward and backward, ceaseless in its rhythm.

  She works until she has pulled every weed from the mounds of earth covering her grandparents’ coffins, then stands and looks out toward the horizon. The sun is paling in the sky, sinking slowly toward the earth. Dora knows she must return to the house. It is too late to drive back to London now. She’ll have to stay the night.

  She picks herself up, still unable to even glance at the newer, cleaner headstone standing next to her grandparents’, and turning her back on the church she makes her way through the gate and out toward the muddy path that will take her home.

  Chapter 8

  Helen

  Eleven Years Earlier

  It was the usual morning of chaos. No matter that it was the last day of term, there they were, racing around the house like lunatics, trying to get out the door on time. Helen felt like pulling her hair out.