The Ophelia Girls

by Jane Healey

  ‘It was awful,’ she says, intending to be cool and wry but sounding warbly and pathetic.

  ‘It must be horrible to be back there,’ he says, smoothing a hand down her hair.

  ‘It is, it was. It’s like I’m just a thing,’ she says into the meat of his shoulder, feeling her tears catch in her mouth and bleed into the cotton. ‘The lights and all those tests. And the doctor had cold hands,’ she says, wanting in some perverse way for Stuart to think of her there, being touched by the doctor.

  ‘I bet they tell you you’re brave, that you’re stronger for it, hmm?’ he says, tilting her head back so he can look at her.

  What a mess she must look like. A tearful, wounded girl. But she never promised him she was anything else.

  She clutches his t-shirt tighter. His hand slides behind her head, thumb in the hollow behind her ear.

  ‘Please,’ she says without breaking his gaze, and she loves him more for not needing any other invitation but that, for not making her beg, as he kisses her.

  She’s only had a handful of messy early teenage kisses and she doesn’t remember what to do now, forgets to open her mouth, scrapes his lip with her teeth. The rub of his facial hair is new, the taste of tobacco, but it’s his harsh breath she likes most, feeling it hot on her skin, like some beast, and his hands, his hands on her – cradling her head, wrapping around her back, curving over her hip, tugging her dress up and up as she lifts her arms.

  When it’s being pulled over her head, tangling her hair, she closes her eyes, keeps them closed once it’s discarded, as if to prolong that muffled darkness. But even blinded she knows he’s looking at her, his eyes glancing over her body, and it makes her want to smile.

  She shivers and then he hoists her up into his arms, sideways so her feet dangle over his arm as he carries her to the bed. The coolness of the cotton sheets feels like some wonderful luxury on her skin. She hears him walk away and then the lock of the door, and then his footsteps return.

  She opens her eyes. At the sight of him standing there, his heated gaze on her, his swollen lips, she feels a deep clench inside and makes a sound in her throat.

  He likes that, she can tell. He settles next to her. He’s still in his jeans and t-shirt.

  ‘How long will it be until someone comes looking for you?’ he asks, placing his hand on her stomach which jumps under his touch.

  ‘An hour?’

  ‘Good.’ He strokes his hand down. ‘Can I?’ he asks, as he touches the band of her underwear.

  She looks up at the ceiling, the light streaming in through the windows, as he takes them off, and when he touches her, her eyes snap shut.

  His hand is there, between her legs, fingertips searching, dipping in. His loud breath is hot on the side of her face, the press of the buckle of his jeans, the rough fabric, harsh against her side. Two fingers slide inside as she gasps and winces, writhes. He’s telling her things, saying things. His large hand cupping her, holding her there. Maeve, he says, look at me. She shakes her head. She doesn’t need him to guide her hips, she’s moving by herself now, back bowing as his other hand smooths up her body. Maeve, he says.

  Afterwards, he props himself up on his elbow, one hand with a cigarette and the other idly roaming her body.

  ‘You’re not going to . . .’ she asks, meaning his clothes which he still hasn’t removed. Maybe he’s waiting for her to offer but the thought of doing anything to him seems terrifying.

  ‘No, I prefer it this way.’

  She has no idea what he means, has no framework for this beyond the few times she has furtively searched for slow-loading porn on the family computer. Was it good for you? she wants to ask. Did I do well?

  She’s self-conscious of her body lying here, but not enough to get dressed again just yet. Besides, she’s too busy watching him look at her.

  Doing this here, less than a minute’s walk from her house, when it’s late afternoon and she might hear the sound of her father’s car on the drive, her mother’s call, is reckless. But she doesn’t care. After the morning in hospital, she wants something for herself, to steal an afternoon, at least.

  ‘You know, they used to call that the little death,’ he says. There’s an ironic twist to his mouth, as if he’s mocking himself too.

  She laughs and curls onto her side. ‘Is that why you’re still single? Your morbid bedroom talk?’

  He clutches his chest. ‘She wounds me.’

  ‘Why aren’t you married?’ Surely she has licence now to ask him things like that, to learn more about him. He seems to know so much about her, innately, without her even telling him, and it’s not fair she can’t do the same to him.

  ‘Wives don’t like it when their husbands run off to warzones,’ he says, reaching behind him to stub out the very last of his cigarette.

  I wouldn’t mind it, she imagines joking, but she can’t joke about being his wife, not after they’ve done this for the first time, slept together (does it count as sleeping together? It must, she thinks), that would be embarrassing. Instead, she says, ‘So it wasn’t that some girl broke your heart and you never got over it?’

  ‘Going for the probing questions now, are we?’ he says like she delights him, and taps her nose.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she says, laughing, and grabs his wrist. Her fingers can’t quite meet around it.

  ‘Maybe there was a girl,’ he says, more serious now.

  ‘What happened to her?’ She moves her grip to his palm but he takes his hand back.

  ‘She left me for someone else.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, even though she isn’t. Her mind races with thoughts of this other girl, because that’s who she’s picturing, a girl, with brown hair – with red? – her ghostly competition.

  He sits up, shifts to the edge of the bed. ‘It’s fine, it was a long time ago.’

  She brings her knees up, wraps her arms around them. Has she ruined everything?

  He stands up and turns to face her. ‘Look at you,’ he says, his sadness vanished, ‘you’re a sight for sore eyes, here, like that. Can I take your photo?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Maybe he is grieving for this other girl, but maybe Maeve is good for him as he is good for her, maybe she can be his consolation too.

  ‘How do you want me?’ she asks when he comes back, his camera strap looped around his arm, already adjusting the dials and lens.

  ‘You can stay like that. But pull your hair over the front . . .’ He kneels onto the bed, brings her hair over both shoulders, arranges it to hide the parts of her chest that her knees don’t. ‘I might get into trouble otherwise,’ he murmurs, close and intimate, ‘since you’re not eighteen yet. This is just for my private collection though, don’t worry,’ he says, bringing the camera up to his eye. ‘It’s just for me.’

  She stares into the lens, knowing that his eye isn’t directly behind it, hidden in the domed black circle, but thinking it might be, there, watching her, blinking too fast for her to see.

  ‘Here, I’ll get your dress,’ he says afterwards.

  She lifts her arms again for him to dress her, a mirror of his undressing, but it feels like she’s a different person now, that she’s changed.

  ‘Do I look like I’ve been out for a walk?’ She poses her hands on her hips.

  ‘You look entirely unmolested,’ he says, with a coy smile. He unlocks the door and peers out. ‘All clear,’ he says.

  ‘When can I see you again?’ she asks, with one foot over the threshold.

  ‘You see me all the time.’ He chucks her under her chin.

  She tries to smile.

  ‘Hey, sorry, I was being flippant. You can come see me any time, I’m right here.’ He squeezes her arm. ‘We still need to take more photos anyway.’

  ‘Photos, yeah,’ she drawls.

  ‘Are you mocking my art, Maeve?’

  She turns her mouth down like a clown.

  ‘Hey, maybe you can come with me on one of my shoots,’ he says. �
�If that wouldn’t be too boring for you.’

  ‘No, that would be cool. I’d like to see you work.’

  ‘The next house I’m shooting is nearby. I’ll mention it at dinner, it’s got this famous library and a maze, some connection to a writer, or something.’ He waves his hand. ‘Ask me questions about it, act interested, and I’ll ask if you want to come with me.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. Dinner, she thinks. Sitting around a table with her parents and Stuart. She feels a kind of sick excitement at the thought, a roiling shame.

  Well, you wanted me to grow up, Mother, to stand on my own two feet, she thinks with a hysterical pinch. The hospital this morning and this afternoon with Stuart and then dinner—

  ‘Or not,’ he adds, watching her. ‘Sorry, it’s probably unfair of me to ask you to do that. It’s just that it would be nice for us to have some time away from here, together.’

  His hand slides up from her shoulder to her neck and she feels her body pulse with pleasure, even as her back tenses. They are on the doorstep, outside; one of her parents could come around the corner of the courtyard at any time and see them.

  ‘It would, and it’s fine.’

  ‘I just don’t want to corrupt you, turn you into a liar.’ He squints and his mouth quirks to one side. She remembers her first impression of him, that strange mixture of bashful and sly.

  ‘Oh, I’m well practised at lying.’

  ‘That’s good, because I am too.’ He winks at her and then takes her hand. ‘But not about this – you and I, Maeve – I promise.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sitting in a hospital waiting room gives you plenty of time to think. You tell yourself you’ll use the hours there to read, to do a crossword, even to balance your chequebook – but really what you’ll do is sit there and ruminate on your failings, your guilt, while your body tenses at every noise and name called, flinching at every door that creaks open.

  *

  The day after my life drawing session with Stuart, Joan arrived at my house an hour before breakfast, sweeping into my bedroom and waking me up from a confused panic of a nightmare.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, scratching sleep out of my eyes as I sat up, pulling the sheets around me as if I still needed to protect myself from the onslaught of the dream.

  ‘Just saying hi,’ she replied, falling onto the bed next to me with a groan of the mattress springs. ‘Just wanted to see if you were OK.’

  ‘Of course I am, why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘No reason.’ In the bright light of the morning, her dark hair on my white sheets had an auburn sheen.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. She was lying, but we had learned that if there was something Joan did not want to tell you, you couldn’t hope to prise it from her. ‘Where did you go yesterday? You ran off.’

  ‘I had a headache.’

  ‘You get a lot of those,’ she said and put a warm hand on my forehead.

  I shook her off.

  ‘So it wasn’t that you’d fallen out with Camille?’ she asked, rolling onto her back.

  ‘No, why would you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘She’s just quite intense, isn’t she?’

  ‘How so?’ I said, trying to sound casual.

  ‘It’s just a vibe I get.’

  ‘A vibe.’

  She stretched her arms to the ceiling. ‘I just don’t want anything to mess up our group,’ she said. ‘You know?’ She turned back to me.

  ‘I know. It won’t. I’m sorry if I ran off.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ She got up and sauntered to the door. ‘See you at the river,’ she pointed a peach fingernail, ‘and don’t be late.’

  I heard her run down the stairs and then the noise as she almost collided with someone. With my father. I sat up and fumbled for my dressing gown, hurrying out of my bedroom.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Sinclair,’ I heard her say, ‘just making sure Ruth was up bright and early. You know how lazy she can be,’ she added, grinning delightedly at me when she saw me stagger down the stairs behind them. Joan stuck her tongue out at me behind his back. ‘Good morning!’ she called out as she left.

  ‘A strange girl,’ my father said, with a hand on the banister. ‘Does she want to study art too then?’ He looked wary.

  ‘No. She wants to be a secretary,’ I said.

  ‘It takes all sorts,’ he replied. ‘Did she sleep here last night?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head and wrapped my robe tighter. I wasn’t used to seeing him in the mornings. He had breakfast at 6 a.m. and then went into work in the city.

  ‘I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time with the other girls.’ He didn’t sound approving.

  ‘And with Stuart too,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Will you let me past then?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ I said, stepping back and to the side so he could continue upstairs.

  In the kitchen, Helen was clearing up my father’s breakfast and setting my plate, pouring my cereal ready for me. Seeing her doing this, and not just skipping down the stairs to find the bowl and its cereal miraculously ready for me, made me feel a deep burn of shame, of embarrassment.

  ‘I can do that,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you gave me a start,’ she replied with a hand on her chest. ‘What are you doing up so early then?’

  Helen had been with us since I was ten or so; her husband was older than her and had been wounded in the war – not enough to need her to care for him, but enough that he struggled to find work. They had never had children but I had never asked her why. She wasn’t motherly and she never sat down with me for tea and a natter – but then, why would she? She had no obligation to me beyond the tasks my father paid her to do, beyond clearing up for me, I thought guiltily.

  ‘I just woke up.’

  ‘Will you be needing a packed lunch then?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve been skipping breakfast lately,’ she observed as she scrubbed the pan of bacon grease. It was a comment that came from her need to plan ahead, to make sure that no milk was spoiled or cereal wasted, and yet added to my father’s question about my friendship with Joan, and Joan’s own questions, I felt penned in, surveyed.

  I pictured Stuart yesterday, frozen, his body tensed as I observed every sinew, every twitch.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I insisted, eating my breakfast so fast I dribbled milk down my chin.

  Afterwards, I hurried into my clothes and set off out into the fields, the air bright and thin with the haze of a hot summer’s day, small white clouds like cotton balls. I felt calmer the further I went, the high grass closing behind my steps, the steep slope dropping me from view of the gate near the house.

  The only thing I had with me was the camera; I had forgotten a flask or my plastic sunglasses, my shoes and hat, and I was parched and dusty by the time I arrived at the river. I was the first one there. I watched the swaying willow branches, the trickling water, as I paced along the bank, seeing the marks in the earth from our feet, the tufts of grass we had torn as we clambered out. There was a pigeon cooing in the woods and another bird with a high twisting sound.

  Maybe I could run away and become one of those New Age travellers who went back to nature, I thought, who gave up their worldly trappings and carried all their belongings on their backs, tramping across England and sleeping in hedges and fields, selling carved runes and woven bracelets.

  I peeled off my dress, unhooked my bra, and slid down the bank into the river, gasping at the cold burn of the water, at how the shock of it brought me out of my head and back to my body.

  Swimming naked, seeing the flash of my pale limbs, feeling the resistance of the water around me, the way it stroked and cradled me, the cold rush of it between my thighs as I widened my legs to kick, I thought it was no wonder that it was once frowned upon for women to swim. How dare we find our own pleasures? How dare we know that our bodies could be t
ouched by something other than groping male hands?

  It was strange to be here alone, not to have the others in the water with me or on the bank watching me. I turned my neck, sculled my arms, wondering how long I would need to wait for them, how long I had before I needed to put my dress back on.

  The pigeon had grown silent but I heard something else, the snap of a twig, a rustle in the undergrowth. I ducked my body down, peered into the dizzying mosaic of leaves and dappled shadows on the opposite side of the bank. Could someone watch me without my knowing? Was someone there right now?

  ‘Hello?’ I called, but there was no answer beyond the shush of wind through the trees.

  The water was cold now and I was anxious. I got out of the river, holding an arm across my breasts, hurrying to my dress, my skin mottled and chilled, vulnerable to watching eyes. I tugged it on and then turned round, stared at the other bank with my hands on my hips. I would not be cowed.

  Then there was a crack behind me and I whipped around, panicking, wondering how I should defend myself.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Camille asked as she came into view, her satchel overflowing with fabric.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, but my voice was shaky. ‘I just thought— I thought there was someone watching me from the other bank. I was swimming and I heard a sound in the woods.’

  There was another rustle then, decidedly animal-like, and a pigeon squawked as it flew up and then cooed. It was a bright day, I told myself, not the kind of day for horrors and for people lurking.

  ‘You’re here early,’ she observed.

  ‘Joan woke me up.’

  ‘Joan?’

  She stepped out of a patch of shadow. ‘Hey, what happened to you?’ I asked. I could see her face properly now and the bruise on her jaw, the graze on her chin. ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’

  ‘I fell down the stairs.’

  ‘You fell down the stairs?’ I raised a hand towards the wound, touched the edge of it lightly, and she winced. My hands were cold from the water.