The Ophelia Girls

by Jane Healey

  As we ate yoghurt for dessert, freshly made by Joan’s mother, with help from Linda’s father, he announced, someone brought out a record player and the twang and thumping shake of a Rolling Stones record filled the air – or was it Led Zeppelin? Does it really matter who the band was? – and people started to sing and dance in their seats, to get up and dance too.

  Linda leapt up, drunk and laughing, grabbing onto the hands of some of the fathers, making them spin her around until her short dress showed her knickers. I caught Joan looking at her with loathing but she started dancing too, winding her arms through the air, the curl of her body like a snake’s charm meant to catch Geoff who leaned back in his chair and smoked, watching them, watching the whole crowd of us.

  ‘Come up and dance,’ Stuart asked me, tugging me from my chair.

  ‘I’m a bad dancer,’ I said, as he shimmied his shoulders and moved me by my waist. Is Camille watching me? I thought, flipping my sweating curls over my shoulder. Is she watching me and wanting me?

  Stuart trailed a hand down my arm and I plucked it off, held it in mine instead, pushed him out to spin and return as he laughed. I knew that he was as beautiful as a boy could be, narrow-hipped, blue-eyed, curly-haired – yet I felt nothing for him but sisterly fondness.

  We were out of breath. I slumped against the tree, panting as he leaned an arm next to me. ‘Liar,’ he said, ‘you are a good dancer.’

  ‘You just think that because you’re drunk,’ I said, nudging his shoulder so he stumbled.

  I finally looked over at Camille. She was sitting in her seat, one of only a few who still were. She had her glass in both hands and was frowning, her lips so red with wine they looked blue. Look at me, I thought, and she did, her eyes glancing up, her face filling with light.

  ‘Hey,’ Stuart said then, quiet, thoughtful.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You’re not—’ I turned to see him squint in the blue dusk light. ‘You and Camille . . . You’re not a lezza, are you?’

  ‘No! What?’ I rocked forward off the tree as if I had been stabbed from behind. ‘Why would you think that? That’s disgusting.’

  ‘You can talk to me about it. I mean, I promise I wouldn’t tell anyone if you were, if you and Camille—’

  ‘We’re friends, that’s all.’ My heart was in my throat – I don’t think I understood that phrase until then. I felt like I was choking, like my lungs were being squeezed.

  He shrugged and reached into his tight pocket for his cigarettes. ‘But it would be fine if you were. It’s the seventies, everything is fine. Everything is cool.’ He glanced over at the table and I followed his gaze.

  Camille stood up, clutching the table when she swayed. She motioned her head at me and I turned mine away, scraping a hand down the rough tree bark.

  There was no way now that I was going to slip away from the group, that Stuart was going to see me leave. I would not meet her at the river, I couldn’t.

  I drank to stop thinking about it – my shame and the terror of Stuart knowing something about me, of anyone thinking I was like that, perverse, wrong.

  I drank to forget about Camille waiting there for me in the dark next to the velvet river, brimming with a hope that would soon flood away.

  Drinking didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now, and yet in the evenings, in the afternoons, at lunch, I keep reaching for a glass of wine, sherry, gin, for anything else that’s left in my father’s well-stocked cellar. It’s summer anyway and you’re supposed to enjoy a drink in the sun, to have a fridge crowded with bottles of white wine so slick to the touch you have to lift them out carefully in case they slip to the floor and smash; to scrabble for ice cubes across the kitchen countertop once you’ve fought them out of the tray – when you remember to fill the trays again, that is, when the tepid water even gets a chance to freeze in this endless heat.

  When the air is this hot, it feels like you’re breathing in someone else’s breath. It feels – when you’re in bed in an unrestful doze, fighting the urge for another cold shower, kicking down the thin sheet from your itching legs – like someone might be leaning over you, like the whisper of hot breeze from the wide-open windows might be a gust of breath, a disappointed sigh. That you might open your eyes and see her bending over you, that she might steal the very breath from you and leave you choking.

  I wait to hear the whistle of Alex’s snore before I get up, hand sweeping through the dark in front of me as if I am looking for a wall, or a person, something solid to help me from slipping back into my dream that wasn’t a dream because my eyes are dry as sand and my head is spinning.

  Parts of the carpet in the hall feel wet, chilled, but I tell myself it’s only my hot feet being confused by the texture change. Hot can sometimes feel cold, can’t it? And dry, wet.

  I remind myself at the top of the stairs that there is a large mirror opposite, that as I descend I will see a murky figure descend at the same pace as me, move with the same dreamlike motions.

  In the kitchen, though, I find a true ghost from my past, and she doesn’t disappear when I blink; when I screw my eyes tight and then open them, my heart twitching, my stomach heaving. She doesn’t disappear when she makes a noise, and my hand touches her shoulder and comes away wet as she flinches back.

  A girl in a soaked summer dress, dripping water from her hair, from her fingertips onto the floor, a pool around her feet. Her skin shaded blue by the moonlight, by the dark leaching every colour but that.

  It’s Maeve, I tell myself, but turn on the light anyway because I’m also convinced it’s her, Camille, or maybe me, that time has looped, that all of us are still trapped inside this house, that everything is repeating.

  ‘Mum,’ she says, holding up an arm against the light.

  I wince too; my legs wobble as though my last drink was only half an hour ago. ‘What’s going on? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re all wet.’

  ‘I took a shower. It’s too hot.’

  ‘In your dress?’

  ‘Mum, leave me alone.’

  I see her silver footsteps on the flagstones when she leaves.

  Am I asleep? I pinch my arm, hard, then pinch it again.

  Even though I saw her, the minute I turn off the light again, I’m not sure. Why was she wet? Where had she been?

  There are flowers in the sink that she left behind, meadow flowers whose stems are starting to rot. Flowers again. Flowers held in damp fists, woven in hair floating in a river.

  I knock on Maeve’s bedroom door but it’s locked, so I bang on it. Alex wakes up. Maeve finally emerges.

  ‘Mum’s going mad,’ she tells him over my shoulder as I search her face.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ I ask.

  She bats away my hand and pushes me back. ‘You’re scaring me!’ she says.

  ‘What the hell, Ruth?’ Alex tugs me and I go easily with him, my limbs dreamlike and useless. He turns on the hall light to check my own face, my eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I thought something was wrong with her,’ I say, looking at Maeve silhouetted in her doorway with the dark of her room beyond. ‘She was walking around the house in a wet dress. There were flowers in the sink, flowers,’ I stress.

  ‘You’re not making any sense.’ He puts his palm on my head. ‘You’re hot. Are you ill? Is this sunstroke?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say between gritted teeth but I’m not, I can taste tears.

  ‘Have you got a fever? What happened?’ He looks to Maeve as if she did something.

  ‘She’s crazy,’ Maeve says, her voice shaky and young.

  ‘She’s not, she’s just got sunstroke. Sunstroke and too many gin and tonics last night, all right?’ Alex says, his voice calm and reassuring. He’s a better parent than I am, a saner one.

  Back in bed and both of us are awake now, the hot air tight with silence.

  ‘Is this the menopause? Your night sweats and this craziness?’ Alex asks. ‘Is this
what I have to look forward to?’

  ‘It’s just sunstroke.’

  ‘Jesus, Ruth.’ He takes my hand, squeezes it, and I make myself squeeze back. ‘Are you going to be all right for lunch?’

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re spooking Maeve. What would you have done if the twins woke up as well? Get yourself together, Ruth.’

  ‘It’s this heatwave. Why won’t it stop?’ I grimace to hold off my tears.

  ‘I’ll stay home in the morning instead of going on my ride, keep the twins busy while you rest.’

  ‘I’m fine, you hate to miss your rides.’

  ‘Ruth—’

  ‘Look, wake me up in the morning and you’ll see I’m fine. It’s the sun, and a bad dream, and Maeve wandering about the place. Something’s wrong with her.’ I turn towards him, touch his chest.

  ‘Worry about yourself first.’

  ‘Don’t you think something’s wrong with her?’

  ‘You were so strong when she was sick. Don’t fall apart on me now, Ruth, OK?’

  ‘We just need some rain,’ I murmur, licking my dry lips.

  As promised, I am more coherent the next day, back to normal, bright and chipper. I apologize to Alex; I apologize to Maeve, who is rightfully wary and won’t be fobbed off by the chocolates I was saving as a treat for her first day back at school. Everything is fine, it’s just the heat and the heat is something to get through, and once I get through it and get used to this house I’ll be fine. I am in control. If bad memories are triggered here, it’s because I’m letting them be triggered. I am an adult, I am in control.

  After breakfast, the twins and I make potato prints and I water down poster paints so they can print their stars and circles, their misshapen creatures onto paper, pinning them up above the Aga to dry. They help me wash the lettuce for lunch, taking it in turns to twirl around with the salad spinner outside as I stand on the patio with a cooling coffee and watch. For their mid-morning snack, I hull strawberries and scoop out dollops of yoghurt to go on top, licking my tart fingers, washing everything clean in the sink.

  Iza wants to play a game in the garden afterwards, and hide and seek won’t do. Neither will ‘It’ or a treasure hunt or kicking around a ball. How about badminton? I offer, thinking of the old racquets I spotted in the cellar last time I was down there for gin. What’s badminton? they ask and I explain. They wait in the garden while I go to retrieve them, thinking that I probably should have checked there were shuttlecocks first. It might be cooler down there anyway, I think as I open the door, I might get a moment to breathe, a respite from this heat.

  Is it cooler down here? I feel my way down the stairs. It’s darker certainly. The switch is on the far wall, because whoever put the electrics in before my father bought the place was an idiot.

  Darker, cooler. The flagstones of the floor are cooler too. No, not cooler, wetter. I switch on the light. The floor is a slick sheen, a pool an inch thick.

  The cellar is flooded.

  Am I going mad? I ponder, leg shaking as I lean over the Yellow Pages opened on the hall table, one hand balanced on the cool shine of the mirror and the other flipping through the pages.

  How does a house on a hill flood during a heatwave when it hasn’t rained for weeks? How can the earth still hold that much water?

  I can hear the thwap of the damp shuttlecock I gave the twins, and their delight in their new game, as I ring a plumber. Each time I close my eyes, I see it, the stretch of water across the floor, the splash as I walked through it, feel the spray of droplets up my bare legs.

  The first plumber who actually answers says it’s probably a burst pipe, or that there’s a problem with the groundwater and the foundations. Is there a well nearby? he asks. There used to be, I say. He is busy for the next two weeks. Is it safe to leave it that long? He makes a noise; a laugh? A sigh? I mean, will the foundations rot? Is the house in danger? I couldn’t say, he says. Great, I say. Great. And your price? Well, now, that will depend. Of course. An estimate? OK, I reply. Sure, I think. We have that money spare, of course we do. Should we take it out of the roof fund or the pipe fund or the heating fund or the school fund?

  I return to the cellar because I don’t believe my memory; I don’t quite believe I had that call either, that I could be polite and coherent while this house and my mind are both falling apart.

  It’s supposed to be a late lunch; that was how Alex pitched it to the couples on the phone and the family who have children at the twins’ new school, one younger than the twins and one in the same year, a chance for them to make friends before term starts. A late lunch and some gentle games in the garden and maybe some white wine.

  I spill the wine over the recipe, the one I wrote out from one of the weekend supplements a month ago. Perfect for a summer’s lunch, perfect to share, goes well with white wine. I can’t picture the woman, the wife, the mother, who wrote this waterlogged recipe down. The handwriting is mine but I don’t know.

  ‘Everything all right, Ruth?’ Alex asks, opening the fridge.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, tearing the prosciutto. ‘I’m fine.’

  The sound of a car down the drive. ‘They’re early,’ Alex says, with a frown and a double check to the kitchen clock. Alex likes things to be orderly, to make sense. I wish things could make sense.

  I join him at the front door, wipe my hands on the ratty apron that used to belong to Helen, doing my best to appear like a person who will host an excellent late lunch. But I needn’t have worried because it’s not one of the guests, and I feel a prod of relief as the banged-up car comes to a stop.

  ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ I call, finding my voice as Stuart gets out and stretches, looking up at the house.

  He slots his sunglasses over his t-shirt, holding up the wine in his other hand. Pink, rosé, so much better than white. ‘It’s good to be back,’ he says.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Maeve doesn’t hear his car because she’s been in the bathroom, showering for what feels like half an hour, standing in front of the mirror watching individual droplets course down her skin, fingers tracing her collarbone, her neck, thinking of his hands, of her reflection as a photographic image. Forlorn and wonderful, she remembers him saying.

  It’s when she leaves the bathroom, swathed in steam, that she hears his voice downstairs and stops in the hall, clutching her towel.

  In her bedroom her hands shake as she gets dressed. A summer dress, her shortest one to show off the legs he likes, the knees whose bruises have faded to a slight yellow wash if you look closely enough, her toenails painted a peachy pink, an innocent pink. She knows that part of his attraction to her is her innocence; he skates up against it when they’re together, thinks of himself as both corruptor and preserver.

  For a moment when she sees him in the kitchen, she’s disappointed, in a way she can’t quite explain. It’s only that he looks so ordinary, so his age. But then he glances up at her and she feels it, the hum of excitement, connection. The warmth of being looked at, seen.

  The lunch guests have already arrived; they’re milling out on the patio in the back garden in the dry heat.

  ‘Can someone do something with these?’ her mother says, a tightness in her voice as she sets a vase down forcefully next to the flowers one of the guests has brought. ‘Thank God the others brought wine,’ she adds, waving the bottle at Stuart before leaving by the back door again.

  Maeve twists on one foot. ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hi,’ Stuart replies, biting his lip in a giddy smile.

  ‘Can we—’ she begins.

  ‘Are you the photographer?’ one of the wives asks, slipping into the kitchen carrying an almost empty plate.

  ‘Yes,’ Stuart replies, and then looks over the woman’s head at Maeve. ‘What did your mother say I needed to get from upstairs?’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Maeve says, feeling her pulse thrum in her ears. It’s too busy, there’s too many people, and Stuart is
here.

  She climbs the stairs without looking back but she can feel him there, the weight of his body and gaze making her spine feel molten. The noise from the garden recedes to an echo.

  ‘Is your dad out there?’ Stuart whispers. ‘I didn’t check.’

  ‘I think so,’ she says.

  ‘You think so,’ he repeats with a mocking twist, and then his hand meets her waist and she spins around and lets herself be pushed into her bedroom, holding a palm over her mouth to muffle her own gasping laugh.

  ‘I missed you,’ he says, without closing the door.

  She tilts her chin. ‘Did you?’

  The tracks his eyes make up and down her figure, her face, his wistful hunger, makes her feel powerful again. He’s here in front of her, not a distant voice on a phone living a more vibrant life without her.

  ‘I’m sorry we didn’t speak for the last few days. I dropped my phone down the stairs and it shattered. I tried to call the landline with my new number but Ruth answered. You’re not mad at me, are you?’

  How far can she push him, she wonders, staying mute.

  ‘You are, aren’t you. I’ll make it up to you.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming back,’ she says finally, thinking of every unspoken ritual, every spell she made.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ He kisses her cheek, sets his hands on her shoulders.

  His thumbs play with the thin straps of her dress and she glances at the open door behind him. ‘Is this a good idea?’

  ‘No.’

  The curl of his smile and then the taste of tobacco in her mouth, the rasp of his stubble on her chin like dozens of tiny needles and his fingers clutching tight at her waist.