Slip of a Fish

by Amy Arnold

  Kate slept. That summer. Always sleeping. Amatory sleep. Almost pernicious. I watched her, I listened, I dreamt up more adjectives but none that would do so I threw them away, was left with her sleeping. In her skin, warm. I was left with her sleeping.

  ‘I dreamt of you,’ she said. At the beginning. Around the time she put her hand in my granola pot. I searched for a word that meant only existing in dreams. There wasn’t one. I wanted to stop searching for words, even at the beginning I did.

  And now it’s dark again. It comes around.

  These days he sleeps with his hands between his legs.

  ‘Do you like a bit of cock?’ Kate said.

  She said she did. Liked to be fucked from behind, she said. She said you can’t beat a big, fat cock filling you up from behind.

  The little beck was running down our hill and when the worst of the rain had stopped I put on my wellies and went out. I took sticks, two sticks and walked to the top of our hill. I took one for Charlie. And anyway.

  The stream dried up. For a while, in its place, twigs, leaves, a trail of earth.

  ‘Do you?’ Kate said. She was asking whether I liked being fucked from behind.

  ‘Well? Ash?’

  And now it’s dark again and the wind’s back. It runs up our hill, it groans, groans. Low places, and rattles loose. Almost anyone would think of launching themselves from the top of our hill on a night like tonight.

  Almost everyone. Would think of stretching their arms out to hollow bones and skin-sprouting feathers, they’d forget they shouldn’t, that nobody does, and they would, fledgling-test their wings and courage in the moment it takes to know they can then up with them and.

  She asked if I wanted a small part of her. ‘Yes,’ I said. Yes.

  And here.

  Where the little beck cut around my ankles. And now the wind. The wind’s up. Right up. Taking my balance. But even balance, you can’t own.

  This wind.

  Could carry a voice clean away and she wouldn’t have the sense, never did have the sense to stand where I could hear her.

  Upwind. Upwind.

  Call now and I’ll hear you, I’ll get you. Hook my arm through yours the way you hooked your arm through mine on Cotters Hill that time, that summer. I’ll say. You remember. I’ll say.

  I’d say.

  The wind’s OK. The wind’s OK. It won’t blow you away. We’d be safe in the rhyme of it and our arms would be linked like a chain ready for traction. Not upwind, you are. Moving away from me at forty knots, and carried off in the whip of it, the way your mum was carried off, but looking for you in the dark. The number of places a person like you could be.

  This morning I watched a leaf fall the length of the skylight. This is how autumn comes, leaf by leaf.

  I’m staying in bed until another one comes.

  Kate. Kate was in with us, over us. I jerked back.

  ‘What now?’ Abbott said. She was straddling us, her thighs were pale, were mottled, like she’d said. Didn’t stop her from bearing down on us. He didn’t look up, he’d never looked up. Always. Saves himself from grief. Over and over he saved himself, didn’t see, wouldn’t look up into her sticky mouth.

  ‘Lick me,’ she said. ‘Lick right here.’

  I opened my mouth. I put out my tongue.

  All this. I swallow. All this.

  I’m not getting up, but waiting for the second leaf to fall, the next leaf. Every season creeps like this, until the day people say things like all of a sudden.

  Everyone says it.

  Kate crept down on us.

  Didn’t creep up. Couldn’t be like everyone else.

  Old age, this weight, look, they say. It creeps right up. Joan says. Every year at Christmas she says. Every year she looks surprised.

  Kate crept down on us, in our bed I mean. She must have crept down, because all of a sudden, there it was, the wet mouth between her mottled thighs. Wasn’t clear, no, viscous, too thick to be anything else. Abbott didn’t look up. Instead, fumbled. Found himself, he wasn’t sleeping, he wasn’t looking up, lying with his hand stuck, all three of us stuck.

  Did the first leaf fall? Of course, it fell the length of the skylight, I watched it, I saw it fall, I saw it making its way, feather-like leaf like all things light. It’ll be on the pavement right now, lying five-fingered, waiting for someone to notice, but you’re not supposed to notice creeping.

  Can you call me? A.

  Ash, give me a call. A.

  He doesn’t come. Although I waited.

  I had a nagging doubt about that leaf. I wasn’t sure, but going back over it I know it fell the length of the skylight. I was sitting up in bed and saw it fall towards the pavement. Saw it fall like all things old and light. Fall eventually. Wind or no wind.

  ‘This is Abbott’s phone. Please leave a message.’

  Please leave.

  Leave, leaves, leaf.

  Grieve, grieves, grief.

  Leaving, grieving, left, grieved, greft. Grieved hangs on far too long, don’t you agree? Aggrieved. They won’t stop coming once they’ve started, words, leaves, all of a sudden, all of a.

  Please grieve.

  Please leave a message.

  I won’t. Won’t leave words anywhere these days. I spat them out over the bridge and into the beck that ran through Nott’s Wood. So many times. I spat them when Papa spat. He thumped his palm between my shoulder blades so I could hoik them out. Far too many, coming, spewing, felt better once they were out, got used to it, losing things. Papa said, we’ll get used to it, but. Spit and words are like birds.

  They keep coming up, coming back.

  And Abbott wants them. I won’t leave them.

  I won’t leave words. Turn the phone over. Turn it off.

  Call me, she’d say, and I didn’t. Didn’t like to think of her phone vibrating in her bag whilst she was breathing ujjayi. Whilst she was with the ocean’s swell. Couldn’t bear to think of it.

  ‘I won’t call,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you like me then?’ she said.

  ‘You like me, don’t you?’ you said. You turned on your side, so you were facing away. I mention this because I knew.

  When you woke the only thing that had changed was the hour.

  It couldn’t end.

  It couldn’t end.

  It couldn’t. Tender like a girl, tender like a boy, and quiet.

  All along I’d been all the things you’d said, and still.

  You took a breath, a foreboding breath, but your hair was falling around your face, the way it usually fell.

  And once I saw your hair, I thought I must have been wrong about the breath, about how a breath could be foreboding, I thought you’d tuck it behind your ears the way you usually tucked it, and things would go on, things would go back. You didn’t tuck it, but left it, grazing your cheek, left it so it moved against your jaw every time your mouth opened. You started to explain, that’s what you said, you were explaining, and you weren’t being anything like you usually were, you were talking, explaining and your hair was grazing your cheek and all your words, strung together the way Joan’s words are strung together, and you were talking although you were nothing like you’d ever been and it was hard to understand when the words were coming and you were looking at me, and when you finished, when you’d finally finished, you took another breath. Looked lighter. Looked at me, perhaps to the side. That’s where you were looking, but still, there was something in your face, something I hadn’t seen before.

  Relief, perhaps.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ you said. ‘Does that make sense?’

  I should get out to that leaf.

  The second one might have fallen by now.

  Something happened at dinner this evening. Charlie, Nelson lying on her feet, put her fork down and looked at me.

  Said. ‘Ash, if you go to the baths tonight, you might be lucky, you might see the geese flying in.’

  She picked up her fork again, bent down, rubbed Nelso
n’s head.

  I’d been thinking so much about you. About that breath, the foreboding breath, about your face, the expression on your face, I hadn’t thought. Needed Charlie to say, the geese. Ash. Soon the geese will be flying in.

  ‌

  I went under.

  I couldn’t hear you. I couldn’t see anything but the bubbles I was breathing and the shapes the rain made on the surface of the water. I wanted you to have them, the shapes, but you wouldn’t come in. Said water wasn’t your thing. Didn’t like the way your thighs looked. They’re mottled, you said, and afterwards you said you’d seen black. Black, right up against the surface, you said.

  I went under, blew bubbles. Perhaps you thought I was drowning, perhaps you thought I would never come up.

  But.

  It’s hardly possible to drown here at the baths, hardly possible with these lifeguards, always two of them, one on the tall chair, the other one circuiting. One sits, the other circles, it’s always the same type of going round.

  Once, I heard one of the circling ones say that you can’t be too blasé.

  He passed under the tall chair. Said. If it’s never happened here it can still happen.

  I was in shorts, only in shorts. I stood on the rock, gripping it with my bare feet. I waved to you, brushed the silt at my shins. I wasn’t thinking of the boys. The ones Charlie thought she heard. I wasn’t thinking.

  ‘Come on in,’ I said from out on the rock.

  The rain was coming down, but I stood there shouting. You wouldn’t come, so I climbed down, stood down in the water. It was deep, it was all the rain, it was so deep it licked up around my neck.

  ‘Kate,’ I said, then I went under.

  I anchored myself. I stayed under as long as I could, and what were you thinking over there on the bank, watching my bubbles rise up through the black.

  ‘Tell me what you’re doing?’ you said when I came up.

  I laughed. I loved it.

  I loved the look on your face, the look of concern, the way you had to ask, couldn’t not. I went under again. I went right down, held on, waited.

  I’ll tell Charlie. The new lifeguard’s a girl, that’s what I’ll say. All those boys, all this time, and now, a girl, a circling girl.

  ‘Do you want something between your legs, Ash? A cock or something?’ That’s what you said, although I don’t know when.

  Now look, the girl, the new lifeguard, she’s coming over, walking over, walking towards the shallow end.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ she says, the girl says.

  She’s got a streak of red in her hair to match her shorts.

  ‘Hey,’ she says, and crouches down, her legs open, my head, my face, my goggles, right there, and what does she want with her legs open like that? You only had to look at someone to know what they wanted. You said.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘You. Shutting in five minutes. OK?’

  ‘Come on in,’ I said, whatever was I thinking? I was asking the same thing over and over, shouting out to you again and again.

  Another length or two. Five minutes until my time’s run out. The underwater pull is the most powerful part of the stroke. I’ve always had it short, yes. My mama would’ve approved. Cutting off my locks, my locks.

  I gripped the rock with my bare feet. There was slime on my shins too.

  ‘Come on in,’ I said. I think that’s all I wanted. None of it mattered, you know. The black, your thighs, or whatever it was that stopped you. I wanted to know why you couldn’t lose yourself with me.

  I didn’t want anything between my legs. Although what did I say when you asked? I wasn’t a boy either, you knew that already. I’d been in, been under and when I came out, after I’d dragged myself up the bank you pulled down my shorts. You took me by surprise, you strode up to me and pulled them down, right down around my ankles, then stepped back. I’d only just got out. You took me by surprise, acting like that, but there I was in front of you, shoulders slack, hair dripping, those shorts around my ankles. That’s how I was, and you were fully dressed, the lace on the ends of your sleeves damp and stretched. Your summer hat, your bag. Mascara and disappointment around your eyes. All these things. You knew I wasn’t a boy, it wasn’t the point, it never had been.

  And then what? The sun came out for the first time.

  You looked up. The skin on your neck was too loose, as if you’d spent your whole life looking, following the sun from east to west, and never stopping.

  ‘Come on in,’ I said again. I had to say something. I was naked, the sun was all over me, calling me out. A girl, yes, although what did we expect, there on the bank that runs down into the lake. We shouldn’t have been there. We shouldn’t ever have come, but there we were and what was I supposed to think when you pulled off your top and threw it down, and all that lace, that prettiness, was lying in the mud. I mean, you were always so.

  ‘It might not be clean,’ I said. Later you said you thought I’d been joking.

  You thought, at last, I’d got it.

  Why doesn’t he sleep? He always sleeps. He turns on his side. He lets out breaths that sound almost like Ujjayi, but aren’t. He doesn’t know what the Ujjayi breath is. He turns. He breathes, in and out, in, without the sound of the ocean. That’s the point of it, the ocean, the swell, that’s the point. You said I should try if I wanted to feel calmer. I didn’t try. I couldn’t. I liked listening to you, I liked the way the world came together.

  Now. Abbott can’t sleep, he turns on his side, he turns on his back, and it’s almost like Ujjayi, the way he breathes, although he doesn’t sound like waves, not really. He doesn’t sound like waves and neither did you, although I must have said you did.

  I’ll tell you now, I got used to you.

  You were standing on the bank when I went under. Black was coming up from the bottom, you told me later you’d seen it right up against the surface. You wouldn’t come in. Come on in, I’d said from the rock, but you wouldn’t come, and did you know that ash branches always point towards the sky?

  He’s lying on his back. Not struggling now, not turning. Nobody ever mistook turn for tern. You didn’t ask about my collection, you brushed me off, you were blasé, said everybody collects something. My pebbles, see, you said, and pointed to a pair of wicker baskets on your bedroom windowsill. You promised me you loved beaches, although I never saw you swim.

  He’s sleeping. Everyone sleeps in the end.

  I’ve never seen him creep. Joan saw me the other day. She hid behind the curtains so she could watch me make my way around the walls of the living room. She hasn’t come out yet. Can you believe someone would hide for so long? But she’s always been tenacious, that woman. That’s what he says, Abbott, although I don’t know why. Tenacious old bat, he calls her.

  You’d been creeping too, the night before, you came creeping down. And Joan. She saw. Seesaw between my legs, that’s what I want. You asked. You knew all along the thing about being a boy was a game. You were on one end, I was on the other, up and down we went and I was the one who ended up creeping. The house martins had gone by one o’clock and the sky was cerulean. It was so clean, you know the way things are when something’s missing.

  You went down. That’s what you called it. Going down, you said. She saw. The next day she leant over the fence. The magnolia was hanging over her, its fleshy heads like mouths. Gamine, she said, and it was a good word. She saw. The magnolia heads fell, their fat heads gorged on daylight. We heard the soft flesh of them hit the ground from our side of the fence. Charlie and I.

  You went down and I came. That’s what you said. You came, you said. Vulnerable can have three syllables or four, depending on who’s saying it.

  I could come outside if that’s what you want, if that’s what you’re asking. Yes, now he’s sleeping. I could leave him. But you didn’t want that, you said at the beginning you didn’t want that. You flicked the hair away from your face and said we shouldn’t go doing anything stupid like leaving.

  I’ll
come. If you want. If you’re asking. Tell me first, if you saw me on the log. I climbed right up onto it and waved, and there you were, your mouth open. Your huge mouth. What do you think to that?

  To leaf, a verb too.

  To grief, Papa wrote. Did I tell you all this after I came? I meant to. No, you wanted to know what I liked about you. You looked so pleased with yourself, you wanted to know. Tell me, you said, you were asking for adjectives, pressing me for them. That’s what they were, those magnolia heads, turgid.

  You said I should come out. It isn’t the same as come, you said. You hooked your hair around your ear and looked at me as if I’d never considered how a preposition transforms a verb.

  And now what? I’ll come if you want. I almost always did what you wanted.

  I’ll come. There isn’t any point in lying here with you going on. Tell me first if you saw me creeping. Kate? Kate?

  No, you never did what I asked. You never seemed to hear that well.

  I’ll come. Although I’m tired, and it isn’t as warm as it was, but you must know that already, wherever you hide yourself. I guess you saw me creeping. Yes, you probably caught me creeping although now all I want is to curl up. Strange how things come around, with curling up I mean. I’m talking about Charlie, the way she was curled up those first days. She uncurled so slowly we didn’t notice it happening, we only noticed she had. All of a sudden. She’d uncurled, she’d uncurled and become Charlie. I called for Abbott. Look, look, I said. I can’t think why I was so surprised.

  It’s cold, yes, but before I come out. Please, whilst I’ve got you here, I want to tell you.

  It was hot, so hot. Charlie had been crying and I didn’t know, didn’t really think. But let’s go back, yes, I’d been swimming out, I’d swum quite far out. I turned and came back as soon as I heard her, started swimming back towards the bank. I swam until my feet touched the bottom and then I waded. I was a long time wading, pushing the water back with my thighs. I could tell by then she was crying, yes, and I was trying to get back, I was wading through the water. I didn’t know. I didn’t think. Not before we lay down. Yes, we lay down and Nelson was sleeping, I could tell he was, I looked over and his big head hadn’t moved.