by V. H. Leslie
‘I know what Dr Porter has in the basement.’
Though it piqued Evelyn’s interest, she wasn’t going to show it. ‘I’m sure that whatever it is, it’s fundamental to his research.’
‘Evelyn!’ Blanche said, dejected. ‘Whatever is wrong with you?’
She could understand why Blanche was hurt. Evelyn had been a good audience until now. She’d listened to all of Blanche’s gossip on the other patients. She knew all about their romantic histories, their thwarted love matches, the information they divulged to one another when they were relaxed and open from too many steam baths. However, it was the other things she somehow knew, things that Evelyn couldn’t imagine her fellow patients readily disclosing. For instance, Mrs Bartholomew was at Wakewater because of a prolapsed uterus, Mrs Wilmot was being treated for bareness, and Mrs Goddard was recovering from a hysterectomy. Evelyn had been right about Wakewater’s clientele. The women all came from the same pool. Evelyn and her hysteria fitted right in; Wakewater was a centre for women’s ‘complaints’.
If that wasn’t evidence enough, Blanche had said she’d seen Dr Porter’s obstetric and gynaecological instruments. They were concealed in a cabinet in his office. Evelyn hadn’t questioned how she’d come to know this; she didn’t want to encourage Blanche’s gossip-mongering habit. But it was clear that Blanche had an insatiable curiosity. Evelyn could imagine her snooping around when the opportunity presented itself. At least it meant that Evelyn understood more about Dr Porter and which branch of medicine he belonged to.
‘I’m sorry,’ Evelyn managed, ‘I haven’t been myself.’
‘That’s why you are here,’ Blanche replied earnestly, taking her hand, ‘to return to yourself, to mend. And I believe I know what it is that you are really recovering from.’
Evelyn shifted under her gaze. She had tolerated Dr Porter’s diagnosis, the treatments he’d devised to cure her, and she wasn’t going to subject herself to further speculation.
‘I know you think I’m a terrible gossip,’ Blanche continued, ‘sharing all these secrets with you. I can’t keep secrets, I feel them bubbling up inside of me. But there’s one thing I’ve never told you, I’ve never told a soul at Wakewater, besides the doctor,’ she smiled releasing Evelyn’s hand. Then she looked into the distance, toward the river.
‘I lost a child. Almost a year ago now.’ She began to smooth the fabric of her skirts. ‘It was a horrific birth. The baby was already dead when they pulled her from me. It was a little girl, you see. A sickly, tiny thing. She wouldn’t have lived long had she survived the birth.’
Blanche reached for the crab apple she’d been toying with earlier. She rolled it in her hands before placing it in her lap.
‘Sometimes, I almost fancy I hear her crying. Which is ridiculous. My poor girl never had the breath to cry. She was born blue and silent. But sometimes, when I’m lying in the bath on doctor’s orders, my head just below the surface, I swear I can hear wailing in the water. They say it’s a mother’s intuition to know the cry of your own child. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I know without any doubt that it’s my little girl calling me through the water.’
Evelyn looked at Blanche for what felt like a long time. Then she reached over and laid her hand against her stomach. Neptune’s Girdle swaddled her waist, water encircling the place where her baby had died. It seemed so unfair, that women had been tasked with the weight of childbearing, cursed with this organ, which seemed to bring only pain to the bearer. Why would anyone choose such a burden?
‘I think the sufferers of grief can recognise one another clearly enough,’ Blanche continued. ‘Perhaps it’s having so much time here to think, to loll about in baths and steam rooms, letting our misery float to the surface. But I think that you’ve felt something in the water too.’
Evelyn stood and faced the river. There it swept by, grey and sombre, constant, primordial. Evelyn wasn’t ready to share her secrets, but she wanted to give Blanche something in return. She held out her hands and lifted Blanche to her feet. And as the apple fell from her skirts, Evelyn pulled Blanche toward her and kissed her softly on the mouth.
13
Kirsten
Kirsten ran a bath. It had been an eventful day and she felt exhausted. Outside it was raining hard and the patter against the windowpane seemed to provide an almost pleasing accompaniment to the water streaming from the taps. The weather had turned much colder. The forecasters were predicting ground frost. If it was severe enough the river, or at least patches of it, could ice over. Had it been a few days ago, Kirsten would have looked forward to this change, of adding it to her mental repository of the river and its shifting nature. But Manon’s words had perplexed her, with all that talk of drowned girls and the water being stirred up. Though she barely understood what she meant, she couldn’t help but look at the river in a different way. Perhaps there was something unnatural about it. She could feel her enchantment with it gradually ebbing away and in its place was something else, something like distrust.
Kirsten heard a purr and felt a wet lapping against her ankle. Sahara weaved herself between Kirsten’s legs before sauntering off toward the radiator.
She didn’t know why she listened to Manon. The paramedics had given her a shot; it was more likely the morphine talking. That, combined with the fact Manon had been living too long on her own at Wakewater, allowing her anxieties and delusions to get the better of her. With only her historical obsessions – her pictures of drowned prostitutes and a cat for company, was it any wonder she said some of the things she did? But now Manon had been taken away, having passed on her apprehension of the river, and now Kirsten was the sole resident of Wakewater.
But she wasn’t alone.
Beside the river stood a woman with long dark hair. Kirsten hadn’t seen her approach, the driving rain having made visibility difficult, but she could make her out now, vaguely, in the fading light. It looked like the same woman she’d seen that first night at Wakewater, the one she had told Manon about. But the woman stood at a different spot along the river. Closer to the house. And she wasn’t looking towards the river as she had been before, but was staring up at Wakewater, towards the light that shone from Kirsten’s window.
It was a public path, Kirsten told herself. It could be anyone out for an evening stroll. But there was something curious about the woman stood so motionless beside the water. The bank, and the briars that grew there in such abundance, obscured the lower part of her body, and Kirsten was struck again with the notion that the woman wasn’t standing beside the river at all, but was standing in the water.
Though she knew the woman would be able to see her – the light of her apartment a beacon in the dusk – she continued to stare. She didn’t want to break eye contact with this strange woman. She had the curious feeling that if she did, the woman would dissolve into nothingness, that she would be spirited into the water. She realised how ludicrous she sounded, how like Manon, but she couldn’t shake the uncanny feeling that while she maintained sight of her, the woman belonged to the corporeal world. She was as real as the river.
From across the room, she heard a hiss, and turning unwillingly from her view of the woman, saw Sahara stretched tall, her fur standing on end. Her scant body was facing the bathroom and slowly backing away from the water that pooled out into the hallway.
Kirsten rushed toward the bathroom, slowing down as quickly to negotiate the wet floor. Was this how Manon fell? How long had she been watching the strange woman by the river for the bathwater to overflow? She walked cautiously across the tiles and leant across to turn off the taps. She watched the water spiralling downwards as she pulled the plug, thinking of Wakewater’s many curiosities. After the ambulance had taken Manon away, she’d hardly given any thought to the leak that had driven her up to Manon’s flat in the first place. She’d been preoccupied fussing over Sahara. When she remembered and had gone to confront the damage, s
he saw that the water had miraculously stopped again. Climbing onto the bed, she’d run her hands over the seemingly dry ceiling. There was not the tiniest trace of water.
And wasn’t it odd that Manon had fallen in the first place? It wasn’t as if she was a delicate old lady; she was dextrous enough not to unsettle her maze of books and paperwork. And she always seemed to take such precautions regarding water: leaving her outdoor clothes and shoes outside her front door, her raincoats and umbrellas – anything that had so much as touched the river. Then there was the fact that she’d so recently acquired a cat, with their innate fear of water. And the sticks she habitually picked from the riverbank, as if arming herself before she wound her way down towards the water. Ready for battle.
What was it that she had said – push them down.
Who was it that needed to be pushed down? Who was Manon afraid off? Kirsten thought of the figure beside the river and watched as the water in the tub drained away. She didn’t need to go back to the window to see if the woman was there because she knew that for now, she was below the water.
14
Evelyn
There was a knock at the door. Evelyn sank deeper into the bed sheets. It was surely too early to begin her treatment. The room was pitch black. Mary must have made a mistake, she’d have to take her wet sheets elsewhere. The knocking persisted and Evelyn found herself sitting upright. Why couldn’t she be left alone? She understood how Melusine felt. All she wanted was to sink away from the world, to lie back and uncoil her monstrous tail. But the world wouldn’t let her be, there was always someone trying to get in.
‘Evelyn,’ she heard outside the door.
It wasn’t Mary’s voice. Evelyn thought of the woman she’d seen in the cooling room and beside the river, with her wet dark hair. Was she at her door now, begging to be let in?
‘Evelyn,’ the voice repeated, ‘it’s Blanche.’
Evelyn stumbled from her bed and made her way across the room. As she opened the door she saw Blanche illuminated by the candle she held in her palm, dressed similarly to Evelyn in a white nightgown.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Blanche replied, making her way into the room and closing the door. She set the candle down on the bedside table and climbed into Evelyn’s bed. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, snuggling into the warm sheets.
Evelyn stared at her.
‘Well, get in,’ Blanche said. ‘I won’t stay long.’
Evelyn hesitated. What if someone had seen Blanche sneak into her room? What was she thinking, placing them both at the risk of impropriety? Then Evelyn remembered what Blanche had told her about her lost daughter. Perhaps the child’s cries were keeping her awake.
She got into bed beside her. In the candlelight she could see Blanche smiling, though her eyes seemed solemn.
‘I’m not frightened,’ she began, ‘it’s just I’ve been thinking about a few things.’
‘Oh?’
‘I told you about Mrs Wilmot complaining about the bathwater?’
Evelyn nodded; there had been some problem with the piping, Dr Porter had told them; the water that filled her bath had been brown and slimy, as if the Thames had gushed from Wakewater’s taps unrefined.
‘Yesterday I saw Mrs Wilmot in the solarium. What I didn’t realise was that she had got into the bath, filthy as it was. She swears that the water was crystal clear when she stepped into it.’
Evelyn pulled the sheets about her more tightly.
‘Dr Porter said that she must have been seeing things and he gave her a sedative.’ Mrs Wilmot didn’t seem to be the imaginative type. It was unlikely she would have made something like that up.
‘And then I remembered what Mrs Everett told me when I first arrived,’ she continued. ‘That sometimes when she was laying in warm bath water, all of the sudden the water would turn shockingly cold, as if a great deal of ice had just been heaped into the tub. She would jump out of it for fear of catching her death.’
Evelyn watched Blanche’s expression carefully. There was excitement there, mingled with the fear.
‘I thought she was an eccentric sort and I didn’t think anything of it, until today.’ Blanche paused for a moment. Evelyn touched her arm gently.
‘Go on?’
‘I saw Mrs Goddard at breakfast and she was telling the most curious story. Dr Porter had prescribed her a blanket packing and she let Mary wrap her up in thick sheets from head to toe, before Mary placed the spirit lamp underneath her chair. She perspired a great deal and felt good for it, her negative fluids all purged away. While this was going on, she chatted to Mary, who was sitting on the other side of the room. But when the heat became too unbearable and she pulled the sheet down from her face, you won’t believe, there was no one in the room. When Mary returned, she said that she had left almost as soon as Mrs Goddard was settled, on some errand or other.’
Evelyn shivered but not from the cold. Blanche moved closer in the bed, bringing her warmth with her.
‘So who had she been talking to?’
Evelyn didn’t know what to say. She thought of the figure with the wet hair. Even though she hadn’t seen her since the cooling room incident, she was never far from her thoughts. Sometimes she fancied that if she stared at the water long enough, the woman would materialise before her. Sometimes she wondered if she was following her around, just out of sight, concealed in the shadows, leaving wet footprints in her wake.
She was sick of shadows. Here was Blanche in her bed, as real as could be. Wide-eyed and trembling. She remembered kissing her beneath the apple trees.
‘I saw someone I couldn’t possibly have seen,’ Evelyn began, ‘down by the river and in the cooling room.’
‘Someone you lost?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was her name?’ Evelyn looked at Blanche with surprise. Was it that apparent that she could only love women?
‘Milly. But I called her Melusine.’
‘Melusine,’ Blanche repeated. ‘How did she die?’
‘She jumped in the river and drowned.’
15
Kirsten
Kirsten walked beside the river. She was determined not to let the last few days spoil Wakewater for her. She tried not to think too much about what Manon had said before she’d been taken away in the ambulance. She wanted to enjoy the river for what it was. She walked past the spot where she had glimpsed the strange woman the night before. She considered picking up a large stick as Manon had advised. Perhaps she needed it. Push them down. Push them back down.
Kirsten dismissed it from her mind. There was no one about. It was just her and the river. It was still very cold, the sky like dull steel. Occasionally the sun burst through the grey haze and brightened the river. Then Kirsten could see the troughs and peaks, the shimmer across the surface. Though she didn’t really want to, she cut away from the path and made her way down the bank. She needed to look into the water, to convince herself that there was nothing to fear in its depths.
The ground was muddier than before and she edged her way carefully through the bramble bushes and low bracken to the waterfront. She squatted down, watching as the water lapped against the bank. Was it stirred up, as Manon had said, full of oestrogen, feminising the water? Kirsten had read about the increase in oestrogen levels in the water supply, caused by the extra hormones women excrete in their urine when on the contraceptive pill. She placed her hand in the water and waved it back and forth. If this was the case, was it a permissible consequence for women gaining control of their fertility? That the water should pay?
Kirsten had spent her entire adult life on one variety of contraceptive pill or another. There was something freeing and at the same time constraining about dispensing with the responsibility of thinking about having children. Kirsten wouldn’t have had it any other way; she was grateful to live in a time when
women had such choices. But becoming pregnant wasn’t down to nature’s plan alone anymore; it was dependent on human will and the cessation of hormones the female body had come to expect. Sometimes she wondered how many children she and Lewis would have conceived in their ten-year relationship if it wasn’t for that little sugar-coated pill. Had they been meant to make a child together?
She’d missed a pill here and there over the years. When they started to have problems she’d become quite slack in taking it, blaming it on stress. She hadn’t worried about it especially, assuming that their relationship was secure enough to deal with any eventuality. Perhaps part of her had wanted to become pregnant, but she was too afraid to take that next step, to make the decision to wean herself off birth control entirely. These accidents were as close as it could get to ever being natural. But it wasn’t meant to be and Kirsten, watching the water now, was painfully aware of her age, of her chances of conceiving should she meet someone new. She wondered if she had let her only shot at motherhood slip away.
She moved away from the water and towards the west wing. But she wasn’t ready to go back inside. She made her way through the gate Manon had shown her, into the courtyard and across the front of the house into Wakewater’s vast grounds. She was the sole resident and part of her wanted to walk away from it all, from the house and the river, towards the trees and the distant hills.
She hadn’t ventured far from the house, and doing so now she saw what an immense section of land Wakewater commanded. But no matter how far inland she seemed to go, the rise of the land meant that the river was nearly always within view. She could appreciate now how pivotal it was to Wakewater’s existence, how close the building had been built to the river. Hadn’t those Victorian architects worried about subsidence or flooding? Compared with the other buildings on the waterfront, which Kirsten could see in the distance, Wakewater was strikingly near to the water, as if it were taunting the river, defying its authority.