The Ophelia Girls

by Jane Healey

  He loops his arm back around her, gathers her in close. They enter a small room covered with dust sheets and Maeve watches as he takes preliminary photos, checking the light with his handheld light detector.

  ‘Stand by the window a sec?’ he asks.

  She peels off her cardigan. ‘Looking at you or with my back to you?’ It feels so natural now to be photographed by him, she can’t believe she was once so nervous and unsure.

  ‘Look over your shoulder at me, yes, like that. You look forlorn and wonderful,’ he murmurs as the shutter clicks in quick succession. He comes up behind her, putting his hands either side of hers on the dusty windowsill. The view outside is dusty too and the air is hot. He kisses the top of her head and presses closer. The muscles deep inside her abdomen spasm as he slides a hand over her waist.

  ‘Here?’ she asks as he kisses her neck.

  ‘Hmm, you’re right, we need somewhere more picturesque. C’mon.’

  He grabs her by the hand and leads her out of the room, quickly along the corridor and then up a poky spiral staircase. They emerge into a carpeted hallway with dark low beams. He tugs her onwards, and they hurry past a dated bathroom and a bedroom wallpapered with a football pattern and an odd vestibule, and then he pushes open a double set of doors to bring them into a master bedroom. The room has rich pink and gold wallpaper, a four-poster bed, and a bay window looking out over the gardens. It also has a stained carpet, the detritus of the owner’s life sprawled over it and the other dusty surfaces – dressing table, faded bench at the bottom of the bed – and clothes bulging out of the walnut wardrobe with a door off its hinges, a dying houseplant that litters the windowsill with its dry petals, used cups and glasses, a bin overflowing with tissues, and a chewed-up dog toy that Stuart kicks to the side of the room.

  ‘Rich people are the worst slobs,’ he says, shoving a dressing gown and a tray with a chipped mug off the bed.

  The covers are crisp broderie anglaise at least, Maeve thinks, twisting her dress between her fingers.

  He pushes open one of the windows with a creak.

  ‘Someone will see that open.’

  ‘We better be quick then,’ he says, coming to stand before her, taking her hips in his hands. He nudges her backwards until her legs hit the bed and she falls back on it. He’s blocking the sunlight so that she’s in shadow and can’t quite see his face. ‘All right?’ he asks.

  She nods. He squats down and she lifts a hand to shield her eyes. His hands are on her ankles. He tugs her forward and her dress rucks up. She stares at the dark folds of the bed canopy, flexing her other hand in the sheet. His fingers slide up her thighs as her legs dangle over the end.

  ‘Can I?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, feeling dizzy, feeling a squirm of horrified arousal when he helps her wriggle out of her underwear and she realizes she’s already wet. She knows that teenage boys are the ones who are supposed to be obsessed with sex, but since Stuart arrived she thinks about it all the time, her body always thrumming, liquid.

  He widens her thighs, curls his hands round them to grip. She hopes she looks all right there, that she doesn’t look weird. She tries to shift her hips but he’s caught her tightly, and somehow she likes that best of all. Fuck.

  His mouth on her there, his tongue, the muscle of it obscene. His hot breath, the bones of his face hard against her pubic bone, pressing her downwards, his whole body between her thighs. She’s making embarrassing noises, whimpers that increase every time she hears him grunt and every time she thinks of what they must look like; she caught and splayed on someone else’s bed with the window and the door open, he with his hand in his shorts, the jerk of his shoulder rubbing against her leg as she throws an arm across her face.

  Later, sitting on the grass outside the house eating a sandwich from the coolbag her mother gifted them, she watches hazily as Stuart directs two of the groundskeepers who are standing in front of their ramshackle shed with the silhouette of the main house behind them. In the blast of the heatwave, she feels daring, giddy, a buzz in her stomach each time Stuart glances back at her. She could feel ashamed, she could let herself tumble into an anxious slide, but, she thinks, justifying herself to an imaginary authority figure – a therapist, a doctor with a kind, pitying face – how could she feel ashamed when Stuart had made all the decisions, when he was the one who pushed her down on the bed, who took control?

  The light has lengthened now, it’s late afternoon, but it hasn’t got any cooler. Inside, after Stuart took pictures of the maid in her cramped cupboard, carrying in two lamps to light it properly, he had taken pictures of the foreign cook and her help in the narrow kitchen while Maeve sat against the wall outside.

  Maeve imagines accompanying him on all his shoots, driving across the country, trawling through stately home after stately home, poking into their back rooms, having picnics in the gardens. How is this a real job? she thinks, leaning back in the grass and tipping her face to the blazing sun. And how is she going to go back to normal once Stuart goes in a couple of weeks’ time and she’s left alone with her family?

  ‘Did you not bring your own sunglasses?’ Stuart asks her after putting his camera and bags in the car, sprawling next to her on the grass with his sandwich. ‘Here.’ He gives her his, and she holds them against her nose to stop them sliding down. ‘You look fetching. The prettiest assistant I’ve ever had.’

  ‘I can’t believe we did that in their bedroom,’ she whispers, giving up the sunglasses and holding her warm water bottle against her cheek. ‘If someone had walked in . . .’

  He snaps open the Coke he’s pilfered from the kitchens. ‘They would have thought me a brute,’ he raises an eyebrow over the can, ‘torn me off you to defend your honour.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they tell people? Wouldn’t it ruin your project?’

  ‘You’d be worth it,’ he says, with an earnest shrug.

  To inspire such devotion feels like walking across a very tall path, terrifying and thrilling and something Maeve will never be able to capture again once she’s on solid ground.

  ‘You said there was a swimming pool here, right?’ she asks, brushing the crumbs off her dress and standing up.

  ‘I did.’ He squints uncertainly.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve created a monster.’

  ‘I was promised a swimming pool – those were the terms of the offer,’ she says tartly.

  ‘Spoken like the granddaughter of a lawyer.’

  They make their way through the gardens, asking one of the gardeners for directions and then following the slight tang of chlorine past a walled garden and through a pathway lined with fir trees, the dark pines incongruous on a heatwave day.

  The pool is surrounded on three sides by brick walls with the fourth open to the view of the picturesque fields beyond. The pool cover has been rolled back already, the water a perfect still mirror reflecting the blue sky. Looking at it, Maeve can imagine the soft tickle of the lip of the water on her skin, the surface breaking and then reforming seamlessly as she slips underneath.

  ‘Did you even bring a swimming costume?’ Stuart asks as she kicks off her flip-flops.

  ‘Nope.’ The flagstones are burning hot under her feet, the air dry, her head throbbing with the heat of the day. She stares at him as she peels the straps of her dress down and then shimmies it around her waist, pushes it all the way to her feet.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  His approval has a tremor of apprehension that thrills her. She saunters over to the edge of the pool in her underwear, glancing back to check that he’s watching her, and then she dives in.

  She twists her body under the water, kicks to swim deep, the bubbles from her mouth stroking down her sides, streaming past her legs. Her chest is burning by the time she skims over the shallow floor of the far side and pops up with a heaving gasp, grasping onto the edge.

  ‘You’re a natural in the water,’ he calls out.

  ‘I used to go swimming for my reh
ab.’

  Her mum used to take her to the local leisure centre in London, its water soupy with chlorine, churned up by flashy male swimmers or rocked by the careful strokes of groups of elderly female friends straining their necks to keep their hair above the water. Ruth would watch from the spectator seats while Maeve did laps, wearing thick goggles that steamed up and left her blind and knocking into other bodies, flinching and grimacing at the wet slap of flesh, at the stray hairs that tickled her legs, the chewed-up floats that bobbed against the corners. Ruth couldn’t swim well, or she hated the feeling of being in the water, some combination of the two that meant she would only ever dip her feet in when they were on holiday, no matter how much her children cajoled her, and stubbornly took poolside showers to cool down from the heat instead.

  ‘You should come in too,’ Maeve says, and turns onto her back, swimming towards the deeper end as the sunlight melts in silvery contours around her body. Stuart follows her on dry land.

  ‘I’d have to come in naked, and I think being found like that might be pushing it.’ He checks behind him again. ‘You should probably get out soon,’ he says, ‘before someone really does find us.’

  She shakes her head and ducks under the water, letting her air out in gusts of bubbles, sinking further to the floor until she sits on it. Looking up at the surface makes her dizzy, the sway and flicker of it like being in the sea. She pictures Stuart peering uncertainly into the depths, getting more worried the longer she is under the water. She feels the pressure in her throat, a squeeze in her head, and then she kicks upwards and bursts out.

  Stuart is crouched at the edge, his sunglasses on the top of his head. ‘Are you done?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says and dives deep again, spiralling her body in the water, kicking out wide, scything through the water. She breaks the surface just to gasp in another breath and then swims deep again, cheeks hurting from smiling. If she refused to leave, would he jump in and drag her out?

  ‘Maeve,’ he says again when she pops up close to him, ‘c’mon now, I really don’t think you’d like to be caught like this.’

  She wouldn’t, but the gardens are so big and the day is so hot – who’s going to bother coming all this way? She bobs in the water, hiding her smile.

  Her joints, her muscles, are starting to burn now so she grasps for the edge, but she misses it and then sinks further under in a disorientating rush of water. She reaches up for it again and her feet scrabble uselessly against the side.

  Two tight bands clamp around her forearms and then she is being lifted up out of the water, spluttering with shocked laughter as Stuart rocks back on his heels and steadies her to stand, her fingers gripped tight in his t-shirt.

  ‘All right?’ he asks, pushing her hair from her face. ‘This is becoming a habit. You, drowning. Me, saving you.’

  ‘I could dive in again,’ she says, jolting her body.

  He grabs her. ‘Don’t you dare. You’re all slippery, it’s like I’ve caught a mermaid. A mermaid with see-through underwear,’ he notes, hand skimming down her chest before he lets her go.

  ‘You know the mermaid story, the original one, was darker?’ Maeve says as he picks up her dress for her. She lifts her arms for him to help her on with it. The version of her from a few weeks ago, the girl who used to get changed in a cocoon of towels, would die at flashing her chest for the long few moments it takes him to tug the dress down. ‘She dies at the end, no happy Disney ending for her.’

  ‘I think I might have heard that before, but my memory is like a sieve.’

  She twists the water out of her hair and it splatters over their feet. ‘When you get older, do you forget more? Like, is there a finite limit to the mind’s memory?’

  ‘Maybe? For me, it’s my youth I remember most now, vividly, in tiny detail. And certain moments abroad, but sometimes the rest of it’s a blur.’

  ‘So your memory’s getting worse with age, you mean?’

  ‘Are you calling me old?’ he asks, as he guides her towards the gate. ‘Are you worried I won’t remember this? You, Maeve? Because I can tell you right now that I’m going to remember everything.’

  She stops him in the fir tree passage. ‘You say that like there’s going to be an end, like this is temporary.’

  ‘You’ll grow up, you’ll meet someone your age.’

  ‘I don’t want someone my age. I want you.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘I’m not going to change my mind.’

  ‘I’d like to think you won’t, but I’m just trying to prepare myself.’ He strokes his thumb on her cheek, kisses her before she can reply.

  On the way back through the house they run into the woman with her clipboard.

  ‘What time should I come tomorrow to photograph the family?’ Stuart asks.

  ‘Any time after nine.’

  ‘Excellent, I’ll see you then.’

  It’s dark in the hall, but as they leave the doors and are hit with the full light of the sun, Maeve wonders if the woman can see the damp patches she left on Stuart’s t-shirt, the wet twist of her clutching hands.

  The car is scorching hot; the seats make her yelp as she slides inside.

  ‘So, home now?’ he asks.

  She rests her shins against the burning dashboard, her head on her knees. The air that blasts out of the vents is warm and stale, but she’d rather stay here in the car, rather cramp her limbs inside it, than go back home.

  ‘Or . . . shall we stop off somewhere on the way?’ He turns the car round in the circular drive. ‘A pub maybe? Sit in the garden there and have a drink? You can blame me if we’re late, I’ll tell your parents I lost track of time or got lost.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘As my lady commands.’

  She pushes the tape into the stereo and the whine of an electric guitar, the throb of a drum machine, fills the car underneath the noise of the road and the wind whipping through the open window where her elbow rests. At a stoplight he reaches back to retrieve his camera, takes a quick picture of her and then drops the heavy camera into her lap. She thinks about scenes from films, of what couples do in cars, and wonders if he’ll dare her to get undressed again. It’s enough to think of it, to watch him and listen to his music, and to imagine the road will keep unfurling in front of them.

  He doesn’t introduce her to anyone at the pub as his daughter, just stands at the bar with an arm around her and orders a gin and tonic for her and a beer for him, leading her out of the back door with a hand low on her hip.

  ‘If you keep looking at me like that,’ he murmurs close to her ear as the dark of the garden, lit only by weak strings of lights, envelops them, ‘I’m going to get arrested for public indecency.’

  ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ she asks when they take their seats side by side at a picnic table, turning her legs to rest on his lap.

  ‘Maybe,’ he says, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Can I try?’ She holds out her hand.

  ‘Nope,’ he says, blowing his smoke away from her.

  She sips at the fizz of her drink and smiles. See, Mum, she thinks of saying, he looks after me, he’s not that bad of an influence.

  Her parents would be horrified if they knew what he had done, what she had agreed to, and that horror might be thrilling in a reckless kind of way, a so-there sticking up of her fingers, but only for a moment; then everything would implode.

  But why should it? She’s legal, they know him, he’s their friend. She’ll be at university anyway next year, and she’s always hearing about students having affairs with their teachers.

  He’s curling locks of her hair around his fingers, dropping his hand to stroke down her back, to brush his knuckle down her arm. If he goes, all these little tendernesses of his go with him and she’ll be all alone again.

  ‘What happens at the end of the summer?’ She stops his hand and he turns his wrist and laces their fingers together, the cramped fit of his knuckles painful. ‘Tell me
?’

  ‘At the end of the summer – in about two weeks’ time – I’ll go back to London, and you’ll go back to school.’

  He sounds resigned and she feels a tickle at the back of her throat, her voice gets thick. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Maeve.’

  ‘I won’t survive without you, I know I won’t. I can’t bear staying with my parents.’

  He kisses the top of her head, and she feels the press of his chin against her crown as he says, ‘Maybe you could come live with me.’

  ‘My parents would kill me, and you.’

  ‘Well, it’s your choice ultimately – you’re seventeen, aren’t you, they can’t drag you back. If you want to, you can.’

  ‘You don’t really want me to though,’ she says, ‘not really.’ Her heart is beating very fast.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘It would be a mess, there would be drama and gossip, my parents would hate you.’

  ‘You’d be worth it.’

  ‘Did you fall out with them?’ she asks, tracing his knuckles where his hands are in her lap, curled around the hem of her dress. ‘Is that why you never visited or called?’

  ‘If I had visited and you had grown up with me as an uncle, I’m not sure this would have happened, do you?’

  ‘You didn’t answer the question.’

  ‘We outgrew each other,’ he says, his beer glass knocking gently against her head as he drinks.

  She’s sitting in his lap now, enveloped, safe.

  ‘Groups of three never last long. There’s always one person on the outside. They had each other and what did I have?’

  ‘What about the girl, the one who left you?’

  ‘Oh . . . that was before university. But don’t worry, I had lots of girlfriends afterwards, I haven’t been a monk,’ he says, tickling at her side.

  ‘Any redheads?’

  ‘Mmm, nope. Just you.’

  Just her, she likes that. ‘I feel like I should ask you questions about what my parents were like before they had me—’

  ‘For blackmail?’

  ‘No!’ she says with a laugh. ‘Why? Do you know something bad?’ she asks, twisting round and peering at his face in the dark.