Water For Drowning

by Cluley, Ray

  “You know, Eric Clapton – or just Eric, if you’re Tommy – he once said the blues were easy to play but difficult to feel.” I looked at Genna to see if she was following.

  “A white boy making his excuses,” she said, and I laughed. I mean, she was exactly right. But it wasn’t my point.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I mean, Hench, Vince, Tommy; they can play it, and they sing the lines okay, but they don’t feel it properly. They don’t get it.”

  “I do.”

  She did. She even managed to explain ‘Rye-Catcher’ and I realised I did know what I was doing when I didn’t get swept up in all the bullshit. Genna made it make sense.

  “But who’s Crossfire Girl?”

  “Hmm?”

  I was drifting off by then, lulled to near-sleep by her voice.

  “Crossfire Girl. The one ‘caught in the middle and loving it’, who’s she?”

  “I dunno. Nobody.” I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. Before she could ask anything else I said, “You know, I read up on mermaids.”

  “Yeah, you said. Was that because of me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I read about them peeling their skin off and–”

  “That’s selkies.” She stirred, raised herself to look at me. “They’re not the same thing.”

  “Oh. Okay. Anyway, I’m beginning to feel a bit like that with all this stuff about my songs.”

  I was joking, but it was true, too.

  Genna laughed sleepily and settled back into me. “Okay. Yeah, sorry. I’ll stop analysing you.” She kissed my shoulder. “Anyway, it’s me who needs analysing. I’m the one who’s mental.”

  “Everybody wants to be something else,” I said. “Look at me. How are you any different to me or the band, pretending we’ll make it big one day?”

  She rose up again, this time to kiss me on the mouth. To look into my eyes. “You’ll make it,” she said. “You’ll be okay.”

  Somehow I’d made it all about me again when I should have been talking about her. I should have been helping Genna.

  She lay down again, nuzzled in close, and put her hand between my legs. Not to do anything, just to hold me. “You taste salty,” she said. “It’s nice.”

  Maybe she meant the kiss, maybe she meant earlier, I dunno. We were falling asleep by then anyway.

  “We should go to that aquarium,” I murmured. “The one in Brighton.”

  “Mmm.”

  We fell asleep entwined together and in the night, when we stirred to separate, I didn’t even try to grab her tits or her ass or anything. We just held hands and went back to sleep.

  SOME PEOPLE SAY drowning is the most peaceful way to die. That it’s like falling asleep. I’m not so sure about that. Imagine that first breath you take, how it must feel to have water rushing into a space where air used to go. Imagine how heavy it must make your lungs. How cold it is, cold from the inside out.

  Apparently your body won’t let you do it until you’re close to unconsciousness. You hold your breath right up until you’re physically unable to hold it anymore. By that point I reckon your body and brain is thinking, fuck it, we’ll die if we don’t breathe something, and then gives water a try. It gets dark, too, apparently. The lack of oxygen makes everything dim. Not that I imagine there’s an awful lot to see underwater anyway. A curious fish, maybe. Unless Genna was right about the dead haunting the cold water. Maybe they watch it happen before taking you with them in the ebbing tide.

  Some people can’t drown. There’s this thing that happens in the throat like an automatic switch or something, closes it off, stops the water coming in. They still die, they suffocate, but it’s purely from a lack of oxygen, not because their lungs have filled up with water.

  They both sound pretty fucking horrible to me.

  WE TRIED THE dead man’s lungs thing. I filled an old Coke bottle with water, stirred a shit load of salt in there, and added a bit of red colouring because I’d read that the struggle to breathe when you’re drowning bursts blood vessels or something. Then I remembered her hip flask, changed my mind and tipped it. She’d know it wasn’t seawater. So I went to the beach and bottled the real thing, adding the colour again. It was a bit pink, but it would do. It was probably wrong, feeding into her delusion or whatever I was doing, but I didn’t want to fuck her just to stop this mermaid nonsense. I wanted to do something for her and, as fucked up as it was, this was the best I could think of.

  She believed me when I told her what it was supposed to be. We were on Ryde Beach. I’d gone to the Isle of Wight instead of band practice because, you know, fuck that lot. They’d given me shit about the bathroom, even when I tried to explain. Plus Genna was trying to fix things with her mother or whatever so it was good to stay close. “Bit soon to be moving in anyway,” she said, and smiled.

  “Yeah.”

  But then, fuck knows why, I gave her my key.

  “You can come over whenever you need to,” I said. “You know. Just to crash or whatever.”

  Genna looked at it but didn’t take it.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “There’s a spare behind the drainpipe I can use.”

  She took the key and smiled and I knew I’d done the right thing. That smile. Jesus, that smile. She put the key in her purse. “It doesn’t freak you out?”

  It did a bit, but then I saw she was pointing at the Coke bottle between us on the sand.

  “I’ve seen you wiping dead fish up your legs,” I said. “This is fine.”

  She laughed. “You should’ve seen the time I tried to sew them together.”

  “What?”

  She took the bottle and twisted off the lid, looked inside. “I was eleven, just started my period.” She inhaled from the bottle like it was fine wine. “Anyway, I thought if I sewed my legs together then the skin would heal over into a tail. I managed both thighs and was struggling with my knees when my foster mother found me.” Genna looked at me. “Lucky, really, considering what I would have sewn up next.” She smiled, but not a real one. “So she found me and grabbed my hand to stop me and that was the only time it actually hurt. Only place I needed stitches was where she tore the fishhook from my skin.”

  “Fishhook?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was sitting cross-legged on the sand but fidgeted to hike up the skirt of her dress. I noticed she was wearing lacy green knickers. She showed me a jagged scar at the side of her kneecap.

  “I was using fishing line and one of Peter’s hooks,” she said. “Not my real dad, but you know. I liked him. He liked me too, I thought.” She shrugged, covering herself up again, and started swilling the bottle in circular motion, stirring a whirlpool of its contents. I wondered if she could tell it was only food colouring. “Anyway,” she said, looking at me. “Let’s see if this works.”

  I had the feeling she meant more than the crap in the Coke bottle.

  “Be careful,” I said, maintaining eye contact. “Too much can make you crazy.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

  She downed it in one.

  “Feel different?”

  She kissed me full on the mouth. I could taste the salt on her lips. Before we could get any more passionate, though, she pulled away and stood up – “Let’s find out!” – and ran away from me towards the sea.

  “Genna!”

  Without even taking off her clothes she splashed into the surf, leaping over what waves there were and laughing like a child. It really wasn’t the weather for it, but when the water was deep enough she arched into a dive and was gone.

  “Genna!”

  I followed as far as the wet sand, dancing back from each wave that slid up the beach, looking out to sea for her to reappear.

  She didn’t.

  “Fuck.”

  I stepped on the heels of my shoes, pulled them off, and was just grabbing for the buttons on my shirt when she came up again. She was ridiculously far out, a much faster swimme
r than I could ever be, faster than I imagined possible outside of the Olympics, and she turned to wave at me. I waved back but she had already dipped back under.

  She was gone for so long that I readied myself to undress again, thinking not waving, drowning, but then she rose up from the shallows nearby, sweeping her wet hair back from her face and emerging from the sea like some gorgeous Bond girl. Only, you know, fully dressed. She was still gorgeous. Her dress clung to her and the straps had fallen down to show a lot more cleavage than intended. With her legs still hidden in the water, and the skirts flowing around her on the surface of the water, it was easy to see her as the mermaid she wanted to be. She was smiling and she was absolutely beautiful. I went to her, not caring about how the sea came in and filled my shoes, soaked my socks, the cuffs of my jeans.

  “It was brilliant!” she called, wading to shore. She looked over her shoulder at all that ocean behind and turned a little to face it, her hair hanging straight down her back. She said something I didn’t hear and then she was facing me again, and smiling, and coming towards me.

  As soon as she was close enough I gathered her into my arms. I had no jacket for her but I held her close and shivering against me. She hadn’t been cold that night at the pier but I didn’t think about that then. I think about it now, though, and I reckon she made a choice that day that really affected her. Let something go. We staggered back up the beach together.

  “I saw them,” she said. “I saw their faces in the water.”

  “Who?”

  “In the cold water,” she said. “You know, the really cold water? I saw them.”

  “You’re freezing,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “No wonder they lure people in. They’re lonely, swimming with just the dead for company.” She looked at me and laughed with delight. “I saw them!”

  “Yeah,” I said. What the hell else was I meant to say? “Yeah. That happens sometimes. I didn’t want to tell you about it in case it didn’t work.” But I had the strangest feeling she was lying. I mean, for my sake or something.

  “It was weird. I couldn’t breathe, though, not yet. I tried, but it still went down like water instead of air.”

  “Maybe it takes time.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I could hold my breath for longer.”

  “See?” I squeezed her hard so she knew I was hugging her as well as holding her. “It’s working.”

  She kissed me again, this time with more passion than simply thanks.

  “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes,” I said. I waggled my eyebrows.

  “I love you, Josh.”

  You might not believe this bit, but right then, behind her, I saw someone else standing in the sea looking our way. The sky was grey, and breezy, and it was beginning to spit with rain, but someone was out there in the water. They were far away, but I could see enough to know they were watching. I wanted to tell Genna but I couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t get any words out. I just opened and closed my mouth, feeling way in over my head with this.

  “Come on, let’s go back to mine,” Genna said. “Mum’s not in today.”

  The woman in the sea – I’m pretty sure it was a woman – waved the same way Genna had when she was out there and then a distant wave rolling in to shore swallowed her up and she was gone.

  WE WENT STRAIGHT to her bedroom but I was left there to wait while she dried herself in the bathroom. I was a little wet myself but nothing major and anyway, I figured it would all be coming off in a minute.

  I looked around her room again. Mermaids here, mermaids there. I found a picture of her and Miss McVeagh and a man I assumed to be Peter. He could only have looked more like a fisherman if he’d been holding a fish to the camera; thick woollen jumper, beard, fishing rod leaning against the pier rail behind him. He had both his arms around Genna from behind, both of them grinning, even Miss McVeagh managing a tight smile.

  I picked up the conch and said, “Hello,” quietly to the shush I heard there. I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll look after her.” Then I felt like an idiot and put it down, which was just as well because Genna came back.

  She was wearing a short dressing gown and rubbing her hair dry in a towel decorated with starfish.

  “I used to feel a lot like that shell,” she said, and I realised she must have seen me putting it down. I hoped she hadn’t heard me speaking into it. Or, considering what I’d said, maybe I hoped she did. I dunno, this was all new to me.

  “Filled with the sea?” I said.

  “Empty. Haunted by a sea that only said ssh, ssh, and slipped away from me.” She laughed. “Wow, melodramatic, huh?”

  “Actually, I thought I might steal it for a song.”

  She tilted her head and sort of half smiled, half looked sad. “Oh Josh,” she said. “I’m so lucky I’ve got you now.”

  “I dunno about that.”

  And right then it was me who was lucky, very lucky, because she came to me and we kissed and her dressing gown fell open and we sat on the bed, lay on the bed, me, Genna, and a redhead mermaid thrusting up over a rock, and after a while of kissing and touching Genna whispered, again, “I love you, Josh.”

  ...you could have sex with her and stop all this mermaid nonsense...

  ...you could break her heart...

  The front door banged closed. “Genna?”

  “No,” I muttered, slumping against Genna. “Please, no.”

  “Genna? Are you home?”

  Genna fumbled back into her dressing gown and tied it shut. “Hang on.”

  I wondered if it would matter, if her mum would just pimp her out like she tried before, but then there was another voice on the stairs, a male voice, “Guess who,” and I didn’t need Genna to tell me.

  “Daddy!”

  She ran into him just as he appeared in the doorway and he swept her into a fierce hug. It wasn’t daddy, not really, it was Peter. Same jumper and everything. And as fierce as the hug was, it didn’t stop him looking past her shoulder at me on the bed. My shirt was unbuttoned more than I’d usually wear it, but it was still on. I picked up the starfish towel as casually as I could and held it in my lap to hide my hard-on, though it was wilting pretty damn quick.

  “This is Josh,” said Genna, bright and perky.

  Peter nodded. I nodded.

  “Your mum and I want to talk to you,” he said to Genna. “Maybe Josh and I can talk next time.”

  Genna looked at me and I shrugged. Peter put his arms around her like in the photo.

  “Actually,” he said, “I can give you a lift to the ferry port.”

  Genna looked between both of us but I said, “Okay, thanks,” before she could say anything.

  You wanna know the first thing he said to me in the car? “You’re making it worse, Josh.” He tried to fix it a bit by saying, “I know you think you’re helping,” and then he ruined it by adding, “but you’re not.”

  Me, I didn’t say anything. Partly I thought he might even be right. Fuck, no, I knew he was right. But it didn’t seem fair.

  “Do you love her, Josh?”

  “I...”

  To be really blunt about it, how the fuck would I know?

  Peter nodded. We were at the ferry port by then anyway. “Safe crossing,” he said. “Water’s a bit choppy.”

  It didn’t look like it to me but I guess he was right because I felt sick the whole way back.

  BY THE TIME I got home I was in a foul mood, frustrated with the world and myself and everything that just seemed to get so complicated all on its fucking own. Luckily the house was empty because I was not ready to deal with anyone else’s shit right then. And I still had no messages. Nothing. She’d probably never open her legs anyway, I thought, because that would mean she had some.

  “Fuck her,” I said, pushing my guitar over like some kid having a tantrum. I collapsed onto the bed. “Fuck her.”

  “Who?”

  Great. The house wasn’t empty.

  “What
are you doing here, Kate?”

  She was wrapped in a towel and held another at her hair, head tilted as she rubbed it dry in the doorway. “Oh, hello Kate, how are you?” she said. “I’ve got to use the shower up here because someone blocked the downstairs bath, didn’t they?”

  “What are you doing here? Where’s Tommy? Where’s everybody else?”

  “Still practising.” She shrugged. “Where’s your mermaid?”

  “Fuck off Kate.”

  “Come on, Josh. Into bed but not in your head, isn’t that the motto? Seriously, what are you doing?”

  I didn’t have a fucking clue. I thought maybe part of it was feeling sorry for her, and for some reason I said that bit out loud.

  “You feel sorry for her? Well that’s romantic.”

  “Fuck off, Kate.”

  “I mean, that’s your Valentine’s card right there.”

  “Fuck off, Kate.”

  She threw her towel at me, the one she’d been using on her hair, “Be nice,” then combed her hair back with her fingers. She’d dyed it red. Same fucking shade and everything. I couldn’t exactly pretend not to notice.

  “Jesus, Kate.”

  I could pretend not to notice how combing it back raised her chest in the towel she was wearing. But apparently I couldn’t pretend very well.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Kate...”

  She held up her hands. “Okay, all right.” She came in and took the other towel back from me. “How do you fuck a mermaid anyway?”

  I stood up quick and pushed her towards the door. Held her waist and walked her backwards out of my room. But she just laughed.

  “I suppose she could give you a blowjob,” she said, stumbling, catching the other towel before it could fall. “Or you could come on her tits or something.” I let her go and grabbed the door to close in her face, fully intending to slam it, but the guitar I’d pushed over was in the way.

  Kate sighed. “All right, okay, I’m going.”

  She dropped both towels.