by V. H. Leslie
And slowly, Kirsten saw a host of figures begin to emerge from the river. She saw their heads surfacing, their hair long and sleek and wet. Like a colony of seals nodding toward the bank, they regarding Kirsten. There were hundreds of them. These women in the water, existing just below the surface.
Kirsten looked back at Melusine. What did she want from her? There were enough of them, this aquatic army, to march out of the water and drag her back with them. There was no one else at Wakewater. No one would know that she had been taken. Only Manon would suspect, and who would believe her ravings anyway?
She hadn’t brought any kind of weapon, anything she could use to defend herself, and she cursed herself for being so thoughtless. Even Manon had had the foresight to pick up a stick; she could have used it now to force them back. To push them back down.
Kirsten reached into her pockets in the desperate hope there would be something there, even Manon’s torch could have sufficed as a weapon, though she’d have to get very close to swing it. But there was nothing inside, except… her hands clasped the cold metal of the locket Lewis had given her.
Wakewater was a centre for healing. It brought everything to the surface. The noxious fluids, the pain. Was that what the river wanted: her pain, her suffering? It had been fed drowned girls for so long, perhaps it was hungry for more misery and despair. Kirsten fingered the locket. Her own sorrow had been sustained by the river; that’s why she had come to Wakewater, she’d craved the calming waters, the meditative stillness so she could process her pain. But she hadn’t let it go. Not really.
She pulled the chain from her pocket. Melusine bent her head in its direction. Kirsten had thought that she would always keep it, a reminder to herself be cautious, not to give her heart away too easily. To keep it locked tight, like the locket itself. But she saw now that holding on to it was a mistake. It was perhaps better not to keep a part of yourself locked away and guarded from others. It was better to be open.
She thought of the painting she’d seen in Manon’s notebook. Found Drowned. The image of the fallen woman washed up by the river, perhaps driven to the water because of the illegitimate child she carried. Her secret that wouldn’t stay hidden forever. In her hand was a keepsake or a memento, something from her lover, perhaps; a promise of his love, though he had probably deserted her. Perhaps it had been a locket. She hadn’t let go of her pain, it was what she clung to; it would only be taken from her by prising it out of her cold, dead fingers.
Kirsten wanted no part of the same fate. She waved the locket back and forth, and through the pendulum motion she thought she saw Melusine lick her lips. Didn’t various ancient cultures make gifts to the river? Strange offerings to appease their tumultuous nature? Manon had been wrong: it wasn’t about pushing them down at all, it was about placating its hunger.
Kirsten threw the locket into the river and watched as the women sank beneath the surface to retrieve their prize. For now, it would keep the water at bay.
26
Evelyn
Evelyn waited in the basement. She’d been there all morning, hunched beside the immersion tank, thinking things through. She had spent the time scratching Melusine into the metal surface with the scalpel. She wasn’t sure when Dr Porter and Blanche would reappear, ready to resume their watery love-making, but she knew it wouldn’t be long, and when they did, she was ready for them.
She would deal with Dr Porter first. It was a shame in a way; she’d grown fairly fond of him and had almost believed his avidness in the Water Cure. But he was governed by baser instincts, like power and lust. She’d assumed that the ostentation of the solarium and the cooling room were due to Dr Cardew, but now she realised that Dr Porter was the only one who possessed any vision. Wakewater’s simple philosophy didn’t sit well with progress and he wanted to be at the head of something great, like Neptune in the mosaic, holding his trident high, surrounded by a throng of beautiful half-drowned creatures.
As for lust, it seemed to be curse of every man. The Rescue Society would have no fallen women to rescue if men could only control what was between their legs. Evelyn had read in her father’s medical journals that hysterectomies and clitoridectomies were often performed to cure women of the very condition Dr Porter had diagnosed Evelyn with. They were so ready with the scalpel, these medical men, to cut and slice, yet no one had thought that castration was the logical solution to venereal disease.
Evelyn touched the point of the blade and watched the blood beading at the tip of her finger. Men needed to be emasculated. Then there would be no lust, no disease, no need to go probing around inside women with cold steel. And there would be no pregnancy. Women would not be driven into the water by the bastard babes growing inside of them. Weighing them down like rocks on the riverbed.
But what of Blanche? What was Blanche’s crime? She was an adulteress, that was true, but it was her husband she was pledged to, not Evelyn. And she had given her so many hints about her involvement with the doctor. How else could she have known so much about the other patients, about his obstetric equipment, the secret tank he kept hidden in the basement? Blanche couldn’t keep secrets and a part of her had wanted to tell Evelyn about it all, about what was really going on in the depths of Wakewater. Evelyn had let herself be deceived.
She heard footsteps on the stairs and returned to her hiding place in the corner of the room. She watched as they sauntered towards the tank, laughing boldly as they began to embrace, hungrily taking off each other’s clothes. She watched Blanche’s gown fall to the floor and saw her step, white and naked, into the water.
Evelyn knew she’d have to suffer their lovemaking again, but she couldn’t reveal herself too soon, not until they were clinging to one another and dragging each other deeper into the water. Evelyn tried not to listen to Blanche’s cries, the sound of the water crashing against the side of tank and spilling onto the floor.
She would know when the time was right, when they were too immersed in one other to notice anything else. Then she would creep towards the tank and sink into the water without so much as a splash, as Melusine would have done with her serpent tail. She would hurt them the way they had hurt her.
But it wasn’t too late to walk away. She didn’t have to follow this course. She could drop the scalpel and leave Wakewater behind her forever.
Dr Porter began to moan. From her hiding place she could only see his back, but she could see all of Blanche, her body leaning back in the water, lying there as if she was floating beneath Waterloo bridge with the rest of the sinners. She brought her body up, resting her head against Dr Porter’s shoulder, panting feverishly into his ear.
She opened her eyes and they widened as she saw Evelyn.
But she didn’t shrink away or call out, as Evelyn would have imagined. Instead, a smile spread across Blanche’s lips. She wanted to be watched, to be caught. She clawed Dr Porter’s back in delight. All the times she’d begged Evelyn to tell her about her work, about the fallen women Evelyn tried to reform, it was because she was one herself. The lowest kind of woman; one that dressed and acted the part of a lady, but really belonged at the very, very bottom.
Evelyn gripped the scalpel. She would wipe that smile from her lips even if she had to hold her beneath the water to do it. She ran toward the tank and plunged herself into the water in one swift motion. Her skirts billowed upwards and she welcomed the shock of the cold. The water was her element now.
Dr Porter turned at the sound of the splash, but Evelyn was too quick for him. She moved through the water with speed and sliced him across the stomach. One simple motion and the water began to turn red. Blanche screamed – a sound Evelyn imagined would have resembled the wailing of her dead child. Dr Porter staggered back and, clutching his abdomen, reeled towards her. But Evelyn raised the scalpel again and he backed away, falling into the side of the tank and pulling his weakened body out of the water. The exertion cost him: the skin stretched op
en as he hauled himself out, revealing a glimpse of his bloodied insides before he collapsed onto the floor.
‘Help!’ he called. ‘Help!’ Evelyn could hear him stumbling to his feet and then she saw him part-running, part-crawling towards the door. Wet and naked for all to see, trying to hold himself together as blood gushed from the slit Evelyn had made for him.
Blanche began to back away. Her rescuer, her dashing doctor, having abandoned her. She eyed the scalpel and held up her arms.
‘Eve-’ she managed to say before Evelyn grabbed her by the throat, holding her in the same way Milly had done, her fingertips finding the bruises that were already there. Evelyn pushed her beneath the water, forcing her low so she could repent. Water was the only path to redemption, that’s what all those girls believed, as they threw themselves into the river; that despite the murk and the filth, it could wash away their sins. The only cure was by water.
Blanche had stopped trembling, her body inert. Only a few more seconds until she was pure again.
A hand reached into the water. The flesh was pallid, the skin broken. Evelyn looked up and there beside her was Milly. Her Melusine, offering her hand. Despite what the river had done to her – her face was worn, her green dress frayed and torn – she would always be her Milly. She smiled at Evelyn, and Evelyn took her hand.
Blanche resurfaced, spluttering against the side of the tank.
Milly led Evelyn out of the water. Holding hands, they crossed the room to the stairs. Two drenched girls, trailing water behind them. They wound their way up the staircase and along the corridor towards the main part of the house. Evelyn could hear voices in the distance, shouting in alarm, panic-stricken. It would not be long before they found her, before they would tear her away from Milly.
Milly didn’t seem to notice. She walked unhurriedly, guiding Evelyn past the dining room, then the cooling room, with Neptune and his nereids watching them go. Then towards the solarium, with the large windows filled with nothing but the river. Milly opened one of the glass doors and suddenly they were outside, the warm air on their faces, the river just beneath them.
From this height you could see the vastness of the river’s dominion. It coiled and arched its way towards the horizon. All waters eventually merge; they belong to larger bodies of water that seep out from deep within the earth. Primordial and everlasting, inherently female.
Milly helped Evelyn up onto the balcony railing. The river rushed beneath, dark and tumultuous. She could feel the air sweeping upwards, the spray from the water covering her face and neck. Her skirt billowed outwards, the heel of her shoe catching against the railing, which seemed to be the only thing preventing her from falling. That, and Milly. And then Milly was beside her, with the strange agility gifted to spectres. Holding hands, on equal footing, they looked over the precipice.
They would only have this one moment, this one secret moment, before the world was at the door, breaking it down. And then the doctors would be there and the treatments would begin all over again. Different treatments this time, for perhaps Evelyn was sicker than they realised. Sicker than she realised. It was not what Evelyn wanted, to be examined and prodded, denied books and ideas, to float unresponsively through the rest of her life. Besides, she was ready to uncoil her tail so that she could join Melusine in the river, ready to join that elemental sisterhood that existed just below the surface.
It was not so far down and she had Milly at her side. And Milly had done it before, after all. It was just a little fall.
‘Evelyn!’ she heard at her back, from across the solarium. A man’s voice. Dr Cardew. Wanting to stop her, to cure her. ‘Wait—’
But Evelyn let go.
27
Kirsten
Kirsten and Manon walked beside the river. They moved slowly, Manon with the aid of a walking stick. It struck Kirsten as ironic that a walking stick would replace the one she habitually plucked from the bank, to drive the spirits of the river back down below. There was no need for that now. The river appeared sated. The waters were calm.
‘It can’t be a bad way to go,’ Manon said, stopping to regard the river. ‘To belong to that watery world.’
Kirsten nodded. She’d told Manon what she’d seen that night, the hordes of women emerging from the black waters. Not just the one or two Manon had glimpsed in her time as guardian at Wakewater. There was a whole underworld of women out there, floating just below the surface.
Manon clutched her hip, a flash of pain across her face.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, dear.’ She resumed walking. ‘It hurts more the closer I am to the water.’
It was no wonder, Kirsten thought. The water had sought her out. It was in her body now, coursing its way through her veins.
‘I find myself often thinking about something Virginia Woolf said,’ Manon continued, glancing up at the still waters. ‘You know she walked out into the river? Filled her pockets with stones?’
Kirsten nodded again. Manon had told her before how she’d written her suicide notes before making her way to the water. Her actions so methodical, so clear.
‘She said that women need a room of their own, a space to think, to write. In her day that wasn’t so easy to acquire. Freedom for oneself had to be negotiated.’
Kirsten thought of Manon’s flat, the rooms overflowing with her thoughts and ideas. Manon certainly needed a lot more space to house her intellectual life.
‘But lately I can’t help but think that it isn’t enough. A room, no matter how large, will never be big enough. A flat, a house, even a mansion like Wakewater, why, still not enough. We – us women – need something more. We need a larger space. A river, a sea, an ocean. To counter all those years, those centuries, of being so confined. Of being sealed in and locked away.’
She paused and faced the river. Dark shadows crossed the surface as a flock of birds flew overhead.
‘Perhaps we should head back?’ Kirsten said, resting her hand on Manon’s arm.
‘No, no, I want to look into the river one more time. I want to see the faces in the water.’
Kirsten helped her down the bank. Manon’s walking stick struck the boggy ground tentatively before she put any weight on it. Kirsten could understand Manon’s need to look into the water. She understood its strange lure. She’d felt it herself. Many times. It was the river’s curious pull that had brought her to Wakewater in the first place. And it had driven her down to the water’s edge many times since, to deposit her keepsakes and mementos on the bank. There she’d watch the water women crawl out of the river to snatch up her offerings. Though she knew deep down that what she gave them was never quite enough to truly satisfy. The water always craved more.
But there had been some satisfaction for her in this simple act of giving. It felt good to leave her pain at the water’s edge. She felt purged as it was washed away, taken up by those denizens of the deep. And she found her life at Wakewater strangely content, knowing the river depended on her. She was its guardian, until Manon had come back. Perhaps they would share this responsibility together.
Manon edged closer to the water. The ground was slipperier here, though the bracken and brambles provided some stability. Manon should have waited until she was completely healed, her walking stick made progress difficult; it slid about in the mud, struggling to gain purchase. It was hardly surprising that she fell, the stick swept out from under her as she crashed heavily to the ground.
‘Manon!’ Kirsten cried, negotiating the muddy bank in an effort to reach her.
‘I’m fine,’ Manon said with embarrassment. ‘Get me up, get me up.’
It was as Kirsten began to lift her that she noticed the pale hand reach out of the water. The cold, dead fingers coiling around Manon’s ankle.
‘Kirsten!’
But Kirsten couldn’t move. She was used to bringing the river gifts now. Of watching t
he water women claim their prize. They clearly mistook Manon for such a gift.
Manon squirmed against the river’s grasp, her hands searching for her walking stick, which was just out of reach, half in the water. She looked toward Kirsten, imploring her to pick up her stick, ‘Push her back down,’ she hissed, ‘push her back down!’
But Kirsten saw that it would do no good. Manon was already touched by the water. The river had already tried to claim her once
And she watched as a host of women began to emerge from the dark waters. Their hair wet shrouds across their faces.
‘Kirsten?’ Manon called again.
Kirsten was jolted into action. She gripped Manon under the arms and attempted to lift. She tried not to look at the river, at the women rising from the depths. She knew there would be a lot of them, expecting an offering. She didn’t want to deny them, realising as she held Manon how insubstantial her other gifts had been. The locket and her keepsakes were only a foretaste. The river had a deeper hunger; it craved something bigger. Not just a portion of her pain. Something whole.
Kirsten could feel the river pull against her. It wanted Manon. She redoubled her efforts as if participating in some strange tug of war.
You pick up your sisters when they fall. And for a moment, looking out at the women rising, mist-like from the water, Kirsten imagined what their lives would have been like if someone had stopped them from falling. Perhaps in a different world, in a different time, they would have led good, full lives. She’d read in Manon’s notebook that the police had once guarded Waterloo Bridge in an attempt to prevent prostitutes leaping to their deaths. But these women were already fallen in the eyes of society and there was no place else for them to go. The river was their only course, their only way out.
But what a world these women belonged to now, this eternal female underworld. And it was a necessary world, even today. There must always be a space for the desperate and the fallen. Even if that meant the need to sustain it, to feed it from time to time.