by Kirsty Logan
‘It’s a story, Mara. It’s about women as other. Men’s fear of giving away power.’
But Mara wasn’t listening. ‘She always left,’ she said. ‘That’s the end of the story. She’ll always leave.’
Sleekit
IT TOOK A long time for Pearl to tell Mara the whole truth about how she learned to breathe underwater. She told part of it when they lay in bed sleepless at 7 a.m., fingertips puckered and ears muzzy with water after an all-night Vegas show; part of it during a night flight between Amsterdam and Tokyo; part of it in a Toronto emergency room at midnight after Mara had cut her mouth on a poorly installed breathing tube, Pearl speaking because Mara couldn’t, laying sentence upon sentence without pausing to try to distract Mara from worrying about damage to her teeth, to stop her from saying ‘another scar for the collection’, because she’d only just managed to stop her from thinking constantly about her other scars.
Pearl did all her storytelling at night, when they were supposed to be sleeping. Stolen hours, half-dream time. Pearl didn’t notice this, not consciously – and yet she never told her story in the everyday parts of life, and never all at once. It came out in fits and starts: an ending one day, a beginning the next.
‘Here it is,’ Pearl would have said, if she’d told it all together. ‘Here’s how I learned to breathe.
‘I lost my family one by one. My grandparents before I was born. My parents together in an accident. My sister and uncles to disease – a lung thing, hereditary. It doesn’t matter how, really. I just lost them. Stupid phrase, that. As if I’d put them down somewhere and forgotten to pick them up, and if I only looked hard enough then I’d find them again. If something is lost then it can be found, or it’s not lost at all. So I’ll say – my family were gone. Are gone.
‘I came back to the island because there was nowhere else. It’s an old house and it’s been with us forever, even though we never lived there together. It’s just a place to visit. My family is from all over – bits from Romania, New Zealand, South Africa. Some from pieces of land that have changed names a dozen times. I think of those lands sometimes: the eastern sun, village squares, white crosses, a heavy snow lying full of stones, people with my blood speaking in a language that’s as foreign to me as it would be to any foreigner. Some of them might be there still, for all I know. I was never told which of us stayed.
‘When I lost the last of them, I came back to the island. The house was the only thing I’d been left with. A house, and a body, and a name that was no good for the person I had become. I crept onto the island and I was silent, invisible. No one knew I was there, and no one would know if I wasn’t there. When I was a child, sadness was the islands – rocky, yes, but small and containable, easy to leave. Now sadness was the sea. So in I went. I knew the water was cold, but to me it felt warm. No, that’s not right – it felt like nothing.
‘I swam. Small strokes at first because my muscles were numb and my limbs were shaking, but bigger strokes as I swam further. It was night, I think, that midnight summer gloaming where it never really gets dark. I swam out past where the seaweed tangled around me, until my legs kicked free. I swam past the breakers. I swam out among the pulsing purple jellyfish, their bodies making the water gelatinous. If they stung me, I didn’t feel it. I turned to look back and I could barely see land. But I kept going. I swam until my whole body shook, until I saw black spots throbbing in time with my blood. I swam out so far that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back.
‘And then I stopped. I turned my face to the sky and let the sea hold me. The water covered my ears. Above me the sky was empty, and below me the sea was silent. I rolled my body into a ball so that I would sink quickly. Life is heavy, and it’s hard work to stay afloat. Drowning is easier than breathing. So I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, and I gave myself up.
‘The next thing I knew I was on the beach, dripping wet and shaking, coughing up lungfuls of salt water. It was morning, the sun creeping silver across the sky. Seagulls shrieked in my ear. I managed to walk back to the house and light the fire, and I wrapped myself in all the blankets I could find and I sat there until I knew I was alive.’
‘Oh, my mermaid,’ said Mara in that sleepless Vegas bed, on that night flight over snowy mountains, through a mouthful of bloodied gauze. ‘My mermaid, my mystery, my selkie.’ She punctuated her words with kisses. ‘My creature from the sea. I always knew you were from another world.’
‘No,’ said Pearl. ‘No, listen. That’s not what I’m telling you. The other world didn’t want me.’
But she spoke in murmurs, and Mara wasn’t listening, and they were both half in a dream, and perhaps she didn’t really want Mara to hear anyway. Perhaps she wanted Mara to say she was a mermaid, just for a moment, even though she knew it wasn’t real.
Mauchit
THE NEXT MORNING, Mara was up with the dawn and straight into the attic. She was starting from the top and working her way down, making a census of the house – seeing what would need to be cleared out and what could be left for the new owners.
Had the house always been this damp? When Mara stared at the ceilings, they seemed to sag. The plaster on the walls was clammy. She imagined underground gullies whispering beneath the floor, the sea around and under the house, seeping in. On the outer walls, rain had eaten away the mortar between the bricks. However hard Signe worked to pull the house one way, the island was pulling harder in the other direction. How could they ever expect people to stay here? All this damp would be no good for the ghosts. The guests.
Mara emerged in the afternoon, filthy and grumpy, to find Pearl hanging sheets in the garden. Summer was in full bloom, and it made Mara’s skin itch. The buzz of hidden insects, the sun in her eyes. The white dandelions looked odd, too perfectly round like tiny snowballs, and she realised they were wrapped in spiderwebs.
‘Let’s go to the sea,’ said Mara. ‘I feel like my lungs are more dust than air. Take me into the water and help me breathe.’
‘Not right now,’ said Pearl. ‘I have to finish this. The more we can get done, the quicker we can leave.’
‘Okay. I’ll help, and then we’ll be done faster.’
‘Are you kidding? Keep your grubby hands away from these sheets. I’ve spent all morning washing them – the bloody machine is broken so I had to wash them in a bath. Which, by the way, only pumps out salt water, so I had to haul fresh water in buckets from the outside tap. Who’d have thought I’d end up back here, like a housewife from a hundred years ago?’
‘Why are you doing it then?’ asked Mara. ‘You were the one who said women shouldn’t have to do all the housework. You said it should be equal.’
‘And what men am I washing the fucking sheets for, Mara? Is the patriarchy hiding in the bushes? I’m doing this for you. For Signe.’
‘So just stop. It doesn’t matter to you anyway.’
‘It does matter. It’s important that Signe likes me. I want her to accept me and to accept our life together. I had a plan, do you remember? The negotiation with your family. It was going to take time, but then you – then we didn’t stay. If Signe wants me to hang sheets, I’ll hang sheets. If she wants me to cook dinner, I’ll cook. If she wants me to put on a dress and marry you in a church, then I’ll do that too. It’s not about men and women and what we’re supposed to do. I’ll do whatever I have to do make her see that we’re serious.’
Mara wandered away from the harbour of flapping sheets, over to the orchard. Which, actually, was a bit of a grand term for it now. It was barely set apart from the copse of taller trees; they’d encroached over the years, spreading their branches over the fruit trees so they were always in the shade. The drystone wall was now just dry stones, and Mara didn’t have to climb over it so much as step among the wreckage. She kicked at a rotting pear. When she was a child, they spent every summer eating from these trees. Now the fruit all went to the wasps and the worms, mouldering sweetly in the dirt.
‘We’re leaving the island,’ sa
id Pearl, ‘but you’re not leaving your family. You never leave them, not really.’
‘What would you know about family?’
Pearl let go of the sheet she was holding and stared at Mara, but Mara didn’t notice. Even here in the shade it was too bright for her; she felt she was constantly scrunching up her eyes, constantly trying to focus on something the sun was blurring, constantly causing a headache to thud inside her skull. And the smell of the rotting fruit caught in the back of her throat, and she felt insects walking on the soft skin at the crook of her elbow. When Pearl finally spoke there was a catch in her voice, but Mara didn’t notice that either.
‘Someday we’ll look back,’ said Pearl. ‘Someday this will be something we made it through.’
Mara rolled a pear under her foot, letting its curve press against her arch. ‘You don’t understand the island,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand why anyone would want to stay.’ She pressed her foot harder on the pear, feeling its flesh give and begin to split. ‘You rescued me from all of this.’
‘Are you joking? I can’t tell with you any more.’ Pearl bent, lifted, pegged up another sheet.
‘You swooped in,’ said Mara, her voice soft, half dreaming. ‘You swept me up onto the back of your horse and you rescued me. But maybe you were the one I needed to be rescued from.’
‘I didn’t rescue you, Mara. You weren’t in a burning building.’
Above them, the sky spread blue, the sun a blurred white fire. Whenever Mara moved she could feel the hot tight skin on her shoulders, on her chest, the redness where the sun had licked her.
‘A person,’ said Pearl, ‘can’t save another person. That’s not how it works.’
‘But it did,’ said Mara. ‘It did work. And now –’
A white butterfly landed on Mara’s wrist. She couldn’t help letting out a laugh. This tiny, perfect thing glowing white as dawn against her grubby arm. Its legs wavered, reaching. It took off and Mara followed its stuttering progress through the air, back towards Pearl. The butterfly landed on the sheet, right by Pearl’s hand. Mara couldn’t stop staring at it. Its wings thin as a breath. If Pearl just kept her hand still – if she didn’t move or speak, then the butterfly would stay. Pearl let go of the line and reached down into the basket for the next damp sheet. The butterfly flickered away. Mara snatched out for it, her hand closing on nothing, her knuckles grazing the sheet.
‘Seriously, Mara?’ Pearl raised her eyes to the sky among the flapping sheets.
‘Did you see it? It was so beautiful. It was like a painting, I wanted to show you.’
‘All I can see is that bloody great smear you just left on the sheet.’
Mara looked at the space where the butterfly wasn’t. There, on the clean sheet, was a greyish smut of knuckleprints.
‘Now I’ll have to wash it again,’ said Pearl. ‘Do you have any idea how much of a fucking faff it was to get it clean in the first place?’
Without thinking, Mara reached out to wipe it off, and succeeded only in adding more filth.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean – I’m sorry. Let me do it. I’ll wash it for you.’
‘Just go away.’ Pearl reached for the pegs and let the dirty sheet fall to the grass. ‘I said, go!’
Without waiting for Mara to go anywhere, Pearl scooped up the dirty sheet and carried it inside.
Mara turned away from the sun and rubbed her aching eyes. In those early months, she had watched Pearl do everything. She watched Pearl stir sugar into her coffee. She watched Pearl squint up her mouth as she decided what to order in restaurants. She watched Pearl tip back her head and laugh at someone’s joke. She watched Pearl read a novel and worry with her teeth at a sharp something caught in the pad of her thumb.
She had tried to remember everything, so that she could keep it when it was gone. She would lie back in bed, a book spread across her thighs, and pretend she wasn’t watching Pearl pluck her eyebrows. The way she’d set each plucked hair down onto an unfolded tissue, all lined up like tiny fenceposts, before scrunching up the tissue and flushing it down the toilet. Every time she watched Pearl reach for the tweezers she thought: savour this, savour this. It can’t last forever. But the thing was, no one can be a mermaid all the time. Eventually, the show ends, the performers go backstage, the costumes are discarded. In daylight, everyone gets blackheads. Everyone wakes up grumpy. Everyone has to pay their taxes and keep receipts in chronological order to send to the accountant. Everyone is just like everyone else.
And that was not what Pearl had promised her. Pearl had promised …
She had said …
Mara kicked out at a rotten pear, sending it smacking into the remains of the drystone wall. It exploded in the still summer air, its scent choking-strong, sweet as childhood. Pearl had promised nothing. She had taken from Mara the only home she’d ever known – and she’d given nothing in return.
Fouetté
FOR THE FIRST five years of Signe’s dancing career, she played dead girls. Juliet, who stabs herself after finding her poisoned Romeo. La Bayadère bitten by a snake. Giselle, who dies of a broken heart.
Dancing Giselle almost broke her. It’s a story based on fragility, both physical and emotional, and the dancer must look and act the part. She must become Giselle, a peasant girl with a weak heart and a passion for dancing. Giselle becomes engaged to a Duke disguised as a peasant, but the Duke is a faithless lover, already betrothed to another woman. In her grief, Giselle’s heart fails, and she is summoned from her grave by ghost-women who want her to help them dance the faithless Duke to death. The ghost of Giselle dances with him until the morning, when the ghost-women must depart and the Duke is saved. The ballet ends with Giselle slowly disappearing into the dawn, leaving the Duke alone and heartbroken. The dancer, to become Giselle, must become a ghost. Fragile, ethereal – almost transparent. Mostly consumed by that other world, barely able to cling to this one. Years later, Signe was glad that Peter had not fallen in love with her when she was Giselle.
Signe needed two pairs of shoes every night because they wore away so fast. On the first day of rehearsals, Signe’s feet were a size 5½. After a few weeks they were down to a size 5, and by opening night the arch of her foot was so pronounced that her shoes were a size 4½. She taped her toes before every show, but it wasn’t enough. The skin on the knuckles of her toes was all sliced off, and she danced too often for it to heal. Most nights she bled right through her pointe shoes.
But Peter did not know her then, hollow and bleeding, transformed and transparent as Giselle. He fell in love with her at the dizzying height of her career, when she danced her greatest role as prima ballerina, when every night she was two women at once: the dual character of Odette and Odile, the good woman and the bad woman in Swan Lake.
Auditioning for Swan Lake started a whole new stage in Signe’s life. No longer a dead girl, she became a bird. Leda and the Swan, The Wild Swans, The Firebird, The Dying Swan. Every costume she wore was feathered. She moulted a trail of white across the stage every night. There were constantly pieces of swan-down tickling the roof of her mouth. But always, no matter which bird-woman she pretended to be – always, she went back to Swan Lake.
Perhaps you already know the story of Swan Lake, but even if you don’t it doesn’t matter: what matters is that the role is so difficult because it includes the acrobatic feat of thirty-two fast, whipping turns on one leg, known as fouettés. During a fouetté, the dancer whips herself around on the same standing leg, using the force of her other leg to propel her around, the whole thing done on the tip of one toe. Just so you know, if you’re ever watching this feat being performed, it’s proper to start applauding after twelve fouettés. A dancer needs strong calves and thighs, as well as good spotting – meaning she must focus on one fixed point, whip her head around and return to that point, so she doesn’t get dizzy. But the most important and most difficult part of the fouetté is for the dancer to keep that standing leg on the exact same point
as she completes those thirty-two whipping turns. The real difficulty – the real skill – is in staying still.
Stour
‘WHY IS THE table,’ asked Signe, ‘set for three?’
‘Islay’s at her bridge-protest group,’ replied Mara. ‘Seems daft to me as it’s almost finished, but she seems to think it’s important. Symbolic. I don’t know. She said she’d be out late and we shouldn’t wait. They’re making posters or something. She called it a peaceful protest. Are they seriously called the Landlubbers?’
‘But it’s dinnertime!’ Signe paused halfway through pulling out her chair. ‘Islay knows that. We always have dinner at this time.’
Mara shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Mum. I’m just passing on a message.’
‘Fine, fine. But that’s still not enough.’
‘If it’s not enough, take it up with Islay. She’s a pain when she gets back from these meetings anyway, always trying to convince us to join. I’ll be glad if she’s distracted.’
‘I mean,’ said Signe, ‘that’s still not enough place settings.’
Mara looked from Signe to Pearl and back again. A spiky, heavy feeling was growing in her belly.
Signe sighed. ‘There are more than three people in this house, Mara.’
‘Mum,’ said Mara. In the silence, the island held its breath.
‘No,’ said Signe. ‘No, I know.’
‘I’ll just get a corkscrew,’ said Pearl. ‘For the wine. I think I left it in …’ And out she went, though she hadn’t left anything anywhere.
‘Mum,’ said Mara, ‘it’s okay.’
Signe pulled out her chair and sat down, placing her hands on the table on either side of her plate as if steadying herself. Her wrists were as beautiful and as frail as flower stems. ‘I just got confused for a moment, Mara. There’s so much coming and going in this house, so many people in and out all day. I can’t keep track of everyone.’