Underwater Breathing

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  “Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m not. Well, not really.” Her hand on his cheek was delicious. He would let it stay there. This much must be allowed. “I’ve waited my whole life to fall in love and now it’s happened and it’s you, and now there won’t ever be anyone else, not ever. This is it for me.” He heard the pitiful whine of his voice and was appalled. “Forget I said that. Oh, Ella, what are we going to do?” She was in his arms again, and he was helpless against his own desires. Had anyone else in the world ever felt like this? And once they’d found how good it felt, how did they ever do anything else? The sand dune came up to meet them, folding around them just as they folded around each other. He could taste her tears mingling with his own. He wouldn’t think. He would not think. They would have this one night.

  When he woke the next morning to the first thin fingers of sunlight and the terrible cold that had settled deep in his bones, he thought that second time was perhaps more unforgivable than that first frantic tumble into each other’s arms. This time he knew what he was doing, knew exactly how good and how terrible it would feel. Knew he was the older one and he was supposed to be responsible. Did it anyway. Let her do it too, let her take charge, taking what she wanted, giving himself up to her as completely as he could. Didn’t stop himself. Didn’t stop her. Sitting in the sand, while Ella crept shivering behind a tuft of grass to relieve herself, he felt the full weight of his own sin and thought it might crush him. If he had any sort of courage, he’d walk into the sea. But then how could he punish himself for something that had felt so good, not just for him, but for both of them? How could it be wrong when –

  He reached again for his clothes. His thoughts went round and round in his head like a train on a too-small circuit, through the tunnel and out again, round deadman’s curve (I should kill myself I’m not fit to live), then into the valley with its artificial grass and artificial trees that looked so real you were almost fooled for a moment (but it felt so good so right we could run away somewhere and no one would ever know), and back to the tunnel (we can forget it and never mention it again no one will ever find out). Soon the train would come off the rails and he’d be nothing more than a bunch of fried circuitry. He could hear a strange gulping noise, but he was so lost in his own head that it took him a minute to realise it was Ella being sick.

  She was naked, crouched over on all fours, her mouth wide open, a cat with a hairball. He knelt beside her and stroked her back, gathering her hair into a long ponytail.

  “I’m all right,” she gasped, between retches. “Don’t look, I know it’s disgusting, I’ll be fine in a minute.”

  Even on her knees and vomiting, sweaty and pale and smelling of stomach acid, he still loved her more than anyone else in the world. Was that a sign that what he felt for her was real and pure? At last the spasms stopped, and she sat back on her knees, trying to get her breath back.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, without any idea how he could make this happen. “I know, I know. But it will be. We’ll do something. We’ll find a way.” He stroked her back, made himself stop. “Put some clothes on, you’re going to freeze.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “No you’re not. Don’t be ridiculous. You need to get your clothes back on.”

  She’d been the same when she was little; her response to the cold was to shrink down into herself in a kind of torpor, refusing any unprompted move to get herself warm. This was the terrible thing, the inescapable truth that would keep looming up like a shark’s mouth from the bottom of the ocean, ready to swallow them both. He could still remember. He could still see. He would never be able to forget.

  Her clothes were crammed into the top of her bag. Had he done that, or had she? As she pulled out the crumpled disorder of her jeans, she also set loose a handful of papers that he had to pounce on before they escaped.

  “It’s Mum’s book,” Ella said. “I thought if I brought it down here to read I might think of something useful. I know that’s silly.”

  “No, it’s not. Maybe you’re right. I’ll have a look. You get dressed and I’ll start.”

  The first time he saw it, he hadn’t even wanted to touch it. Now it was here in his hands, and he was glad of this chance to escape, to sit and do something relatively normal with Ella, or at least (since reading the unpublished manuscript of a novel written by his mother, which might or might not provide the clue to their childhoods) to do something that could set them temporarily free from the ebb and suck and demanding pull of desire. He tried not to see the perfect looping cursive and focus on the words. Why had she written it by hand? I’ve been thinking lately about becoming someone else.

  At first it was just a way to avoid looking at Ella and thinking about what they had done, but gradually he found himself drawn in by the sheer strangeness of the manuscript. Was this his mother’s life, tamed by ink and made haunting by her imagination? Or was it entirely fiction? How could he, or Ella, or anyone at all, ever get a grip on such a slippery story? It was hard to say if it was brilliant or awful. He turned another page.

  We met in a pub. Such an ordinary way to meet the love of your life and the nemesis who will haunt you until you die. A lovely pub with lovely grub, and within two hours we were grubbing away in the back seat of his car, which should have been disgusting and horrible but was in fact delicious. He seemed delicious too, so simple and so sweet. Perhaps it was the crème brûlée he ate before I took him by the hand and told him I thought we should go somewhere quieter. When he first put it inside me he looked at me as if he was afraid, and I thought perhaps I might swallow him whole and he would have to live there for always, like the mariners who lived in the stomachs of whales. Or maybe that was what he wanted, to climb right up inside me and fill me up like a

  He turned the page hastily, and risked a glance at Ella. She had lit a cigarette, and was watching him as he read. Reading is a way to escape into a different world. He told his students that at the start of every year. But had any of them ever tried to escape something so strange and terrible?

  When I first told him about the baby, I was afraid he would be angry, because the baby would take up room inside my body where he liked to be and inside my heart, where he liked to be. There had been just him and me, and now there would be one more. I was afraid he would be angry, but I wasn’t afraid enough. His whole face changed in front of me and I saw inside of him and he was filled with black stuff like treacle, and all the treacle poured out of his mouth and spilled out onto the floor and he was yelling, yelling, yelling that I shouldn’t have been so stupid and what was I thinking and we had promised each other that it would be only us, only us and nobody else. I was so frightened. Partly because I thought he might kill me, but also because I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to get the treacle stuff out of the carpet. So I went upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom and climbed out of the window and ran away.

  And I thought he might let me go, but of course he didn’t, because he loved me. And I loved him. And now there was a baby.

  Was this an episode earlier in the woman’s life, or later? Was her pregnancy the cause of their first break-up? Or had it happened during one of their many reunions? Each time he thought he had a grip on the story, it slipped away from him again. Each episode flowed into the next with no clear sense of place or time. The heroine and her stalker moved in and out of each other’s lives, coming together, then parting, then meeting again. At times she seemed unclear even what the man looked like; he could change shape or perhaps even bodies. Was this an attempt at magic realism? Or was it simply her way of saying that the man was able to hide his true nature beneath a veneer of charm?

  “Here,” said Ella, and held out a crushed sandwich.

  “You brought food?”

  “I was going to leave,” she said. “I wanted to see this place one more time first.”

  “I’m so glad you didn’t.”

  “Are you?”

  They sat in silence and ate, watching
the sea. They were both eager for the sun, but within a few minutes of rising it was already beginning to dim. The piled grey spear of a storm front crept across the sky, as if some elemental or other force had been made angry by what he and Ella had done last night. The belief that the weather could take on human emotions and moods was known as pathetic fallacy. As a student, he’d found this briefly hilarious.

  “We need to get home,” he said. “Look at the weather. It’s going to rain soon.”

  “Okay.” Her face quivered. “Would it be all right if you drove me into town and dropped me at the station?”

  “Of course I’m not going to drop you at the bloody station. Where would you even go?”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “Yes you can. Of course you can.”

  “But we’re criminals now,” she said to herself, as if she was trying out the idea. “We could go to jail for it, couldn’t we?”

  “No one will ever know.”

  “I think they will.”

  Perhaps she was right. Perhaps what they had done was written all over their faces. He could smell her on his skin when he moved. If anyone came near them, would they know what they’d been doing? Or would it seem too unnatural and outlandish to even imagine? He reached for her hand, stopped, then took it anyway. The hell with the world. No one was here to see them. She came to him willingly, and he pulled her close, wanting to keep her warm. Was what they had done so terrible? Who had they hurt? Who had they stolen from? And if they were both sick and miserable with guilt (he remembered Ella, naked, retching on the sand, remembered the convulsions of her muscles when he put his hand on her back), was that because what they’d done was wrong? Or was it because they’d been taught to think it was?

  He didn’t dare hold her any longer, and the rain would be here soon. He crumpled up the foil and stuffed it into the top of her rucksack. He might be a criminal but he wasn’t going to pollute this place with litter.

  “Jacob.” Ella pointed towards the track. “Look.”

  “Oh shit.”

  He watched the remorseless march of the small sturdy figure coming down the track towards them. The last thing they needed now was the company of others, let alone this woman. Nonetheless, they stood side by side, waiting for her to arrive. She was like a wise woman in a fairy-tale and there was no point trying to escape, because she knew them both to the bone and there was no hiding anything from her.

  “This storm is going to be a bad one,” Mrs Armitage said to them, no greeting, no introduction or fancy-meeting-you-here or you’re up early or funny old place to spend the night. She glanced at their clasped hands, nodded, and then looked away again. “I went to your house to warn you, but you weren’t there. You should probably spend today somewhere inland.”

  “Dad,” said Jacob, in horror.

  “He’s safe. I woke him up, although that was a lot harder than it ought to have been. How many did you give him this time, Jacob? Four? Five?”

  “Four.” He forced himself to meet her gaze. “But how did you – where did you – I mean, where is – is he at your house, or –”

  “My house will fall before yours will,” she said, calm and unemotional as always. “But I think this storm might take both of them. Listen to the wind.”

  They could hear it rising now, a high fading whistle that brought an intermittent terrible pressure, as if someone was leaning against them and then letting go, trying to push them into the sand and then to trick them into falling under their own counter-pressure.

  “I borrowed your car,” Mrs Armitage added. “I bundled him into the passenger seat and drove him into town and got him a room in a hotel and ordered him some room service and locked him in. It’s not ideal but it’s the best I could do at the time. You can pay me for the room later. And let’s hope he doesn’t try to wander.”

  “I didn’t know you could drive,” said Jacob.

  “I can do a lot of things that I choose not to do. I suppose I could have stayed with him, but I thought I ought to come and find you two.”

  “But how – I mean –” The presumption of her actions was so vast, the favour she had done for him so huge, he couldn’t begin to speak of it. “How did you know we’d be here?”

  “You’re neither of you as mysterious as you like to think.” She looked again at their hands. “So what are you going to do about all of this?”

  “I – well, I suppose if the house falls – do you really think it will, though? Well, anyway, if it does, then we’ll have to –”

  “I don’t mean about the house, you fool.”

  He could pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about, could tell her she was a strange and filthy-minded old woman who was seeing things that weren’t there. But what would be the point? They both knew she was right. Probably she’d seen it before they had. Perhaps that was why she had looked at them both so strangely, that morning when they’d gone to visit her. He held tight to Ella’s hand, kept his head up and held her gaze.

  “You think you’re monsters,” said Mrs Armitage, quite unexpectedly. “But that’s not true.” She looked at Ella. “And you think you’re going to find your mother. That’s probably not true either. What on earth made you think you could?”

  “I read her book,” said Ella.

  “What book? That book she was writing all those years ago?”

  “Yes, I think so. She finished it. Sort of. I found it in her room. And I read it and I think it’s about her, it’s like a clue to what happened to her.”

  “Your mother wrote a novel about a woman being stalked by a strange man and you think it’s a clue?”

  “You’ve read it too?” Ella looked baffled.

  “An early version. A long time ago.”

  With a soft sighing swoosh, the rain began to shiver down. Far out over the sea, a jab of lightning earthed itself into the water. Jacob counted the beats until the faint rumble of thunder arrived. Ten miles away.

  “You need to make a decision,” said Mrs Armitage. “You can both stay here if you want, and see how long you last in the rain with no food and no shelter. Or you can go back home and wait to see if this is the storm that brings your house down. Or you can come with me.”

  “To your house?”

  “No, of course not to my house. I told you time and time again, my house will fall before yours does. But I can take you somewhere we’ll all be a lot better off.” She pulled her hood over her close-cropped hair. “I have your car parked at the top of the track. Take a minute to decide, if you want. I’ll wait a few minutes, but don’t be too long.”

  They watched as Mrs Armitage stumped off through the rain.

  “She knows,” said Ella.

  “But she’ll never, ever tell.”

  “Does she think we’re disgusting?”

  “No. Actually I don’t think she does.”

  “Do you think we’re disgusting?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” he said, because it was the truth.

  Hand in hand, they stood and watched the sky do battle with the water. Out beyond the black wet streaks of seaweed, the waves were growing higher.

  “We’d better go,” said Ella at last. “She’ll be waiting.” She laughed. “I was telling myself we don’t have to do what she says. But we do really, don’t we? She was like that when I was little too. She’d tell me to do things, like to wash my hands before I sat down at the table, or to hang the garden tools up on the right hooks in the shed. She never let me make a mess or leave things in the wrong place. The funny thing was I quite liked it. It was nice having someone in charge.”

  He knew what she meant. Mrs Armitage had always told him what to do, too. I don’t care how tired you are, make sure you do your assignment before you go to bed. Take three painkillers and you’ll be fine. Make a schedule for all your bills; I use a notebook, but I suppose a spreadsheet’s fine too. Apply for this job. He’d thought he was an independent adult, but in fact she was directing him the whole time. Why w
ould she do that? Was it out of some strange need for control? Or was it a mysterious act of love?

  Chapter Nineteen

  2008

  Standing in the inadequate shelter of shallow eaves and a leaking gutter, rain slapping at her face and body as it tried to drive past her and get into the house through the open sliding doors, Mrs Armitage thought that the storm tonight was full of greed.

  In her life, she’d known several people (in her opinion, several idiots) who claimed to love the sound of the north-easterly storms tearing in like Vikings across the wild waters. It’s so exciting, they declared, their eyes starry and unfocused, like people (like idiots) who had recently fallen in love. I love lying in bed and listening to it. Or standing by the window to watch. So much power –

  Of course, what they loved was not the storm’s power but their own immunity to it. The people who loved a North-East sea-storm had never lived close enough to the water’s edge to know how dangerous it could be. And by the time you realised that the sea had no mind and no mercy, that it would grab whatever it could take and drag it under and come back for more and more and even more, until you had nothing left to give, it would be far too late to save yourself. She presumed many of the people (the idiots) she knew had fallen in love with the wrong partners for a very similar reason.

  “I miss you,” she said out loud, surprising herself. She hadn’t known until she said the words that her dead husband was tugging at her thoughts, but she could feel him there now, as if he’d crept into the room behind her and out onto the patio and was about to put his fingers against her throat and plant a kiss on the base of her neck. It had been so long now that she found it hard to remember his face without looking at his photograph, but sometimes her skin could still surprise her with its ingrained memory of his presence.

  A woman who was losing a grip on reality might turn around to see if he was there, perhaps reach inside for the light-switch to send him away again. But she was not a woman losing her grip on her reality, so she continued to stand just outside, letting the rain soak her clothes and assault her skin, listening and waiting for what she knew must surely come soon: the rush and tremor that would announce the fall of another chunk of the shrinking patch of dry land she’d once believed belonged to her. She was glad her husband wasn’t here to see. He’d believed the cottage would outlast them both. He’d also believed he and she would still be living here when they were old. If she chose, adding him to her list of idiots would be more than justified, but her loyalty was the last gift she could offer him.