The Dark Water

by Helen Moorhouse

  The girl tried to focus her thoughts. Where should she go next, she wondered? The past week had been a blur – leaving the island for the weekly trip to the mainland and not returning. And then the interminable running and then walking along roads she didn’t know, to places she didn’t recognise, gripped with fear at the thought of pursuit. She couldn’t trust anyone enough to take a lift, even though many cars had slowed down for her. And she’d only felt safe on the roads – there was no point in coming this far to fall into a bog or a pothole. But when could she stop? She was filthy, she knew that. She could even smell herself a little, another reason why she distanced herself as far from other people as possible. She was ashamed of her appearance. And of the markings on her face which had calmed from angry red and purple to dirty brown and yellow.

  The few hours’ sleep that she had caught here and there had been of no benefit to her but she had to keep going and she could rest when she was far enough away to be safe. She didn’t know where that was, or when it would be, but she felt compelled to get further and further away. As far away as she could.

  She tried to block out everything that had happened to her. Funnily enough, it wasn’t one of the worst beatings that had finally made her run – if it had been, then she’d never have been fit enough to get this far. It was odd too that her mother hadn’t come with her to the mainland that day – normally the two of them travelled together, but that day she had insisted that the girl go alone. It was almost as if she knew.

  The girl was startled again by the bell ringing over the door of the shop as another customer entered. She jumped in her seat. I must stop doing that, she thought to herself. It was the kind of thing that would get her spotted. She watched from under the protective curtain of hair as a skinny young man entered, about the same age as herself, she reckoned. He was dressed in a brown tweed suit, too heavy for the warm day and a little too big for him. In fact, it looked completely out of place on his young frame, as though it belonged to a much older man. From where she sat, she could clearly see the counter where a middle-aged woman served her customers. She watched as he reached it in a couple of long strides and casually leaned over it, resting on his elbows, the position forcing him to look upwards into the face of the proprietor, who smiled.

  “’Allo, Duchess,” he said with a grin and smiled back.

  At least that’s what the girl thought he had said. She had never heard anyone speak like that before.

  “Good afternoon, Martin,” replied the woman, smiling at him. “How are you this fine day?”

  “I am absolutely wonderful, Mrs Fairlie,” he replied and righted himself, standing up to peruse the counter, examining in close detail the trays of cakes under their domed glass covers.

  “Shame to be indoors on a day like today,” the woman offered, watching him.

  “That is why, Mrs F,” he replied, “I am merely here to purchase, as always, on this day of rest, six of your finest cream buns to take back up to that greedy lot and, while I am on the premises, it would be rude not to ’ave a cup of my usual. And then, when Mrs T is finished visiting ’er uncle I shall be forcibly carryin’ her to my automobile and getting back to that fine lake for a spot of fishing.” He tapped the counter with a flourish.

  Mrs Fairlie smiled again and began to pour a mug of hot, brown liquid from a metal urn behind her.

  “I’m sure Mrs Turnbull will be delighted with that plan, Martin,” she remarked drily. “And an Eccles cake, did you say?”

  It was the young man’s turn to grin. “Go on then.” He pointed at one of the cake trays and tapped the glass dome that covered them. “And box up some custard slices – the usual half a dozen. Teatime treat and all that.”

  “I’ll drop them over to you,” replied Mrs Fairlie, picking up an Eccles cake with a tongs and placing it atop a doily which she had already deftly slid on to a plate with her other hand.

  The girl watched as the young man picked up the cake and mug and turned away from the counter.

  “Martin!” snapped Mrs Fairlie and a broad grin spread across his features.

  He turned back to the counter and placed his spoils back down. “Ah, Mrs F!” he exclaimed. “You’re too clever for me!” He rummaged in his pocket for some change and carefully counted it while the woman held out her hand in expectation.

  “And you do this every time you come in here!” she chided, but with a warmth to her voice, as she took the coin and checked it carefully with one eye, while keeping the other on the skinny young man as he turned again and surveyed the scene before him.

  He took in the family at the window first – the two small girls whose faces were smeared with the ice creams that they were devouring while their parents looked on proudly. He moved his gaze to the couple sitting by the window, a pot of tea between them, untouched, as they held hands across the table and gazed at each other.

  The girl saw the young man grimace and then he looked in her direction and caught her eye. She looked down into her tea as quickly as she could, her fingers again straying to the hair on the left-hand side of her face, pulling it forward and smoothing it down. She prayed that he wouldn’t come her way. There was no reason he should. She didn’t know him and, besides which, she was no one. She’d been told that often enough.

  “Wotcher,” he said as he slid into the seat across from her at the table.

  Her instinct was to look around suddenly, her heart starting to beat faster and faster. Watch what? she wondered. Who was there? What was there to see?

  “Calm down,” he said again. “I’m only saying ’ello while I’m waiting for me friend. Ain’t seen you round ’ere before?”

  The statement was posed as a question, an answer expected. The girl shrank back on her seat, trying to make herself as small as possible, glancing at the other customers to see if they, too, had spotted her. She could barely understand a word he was saying. ‘Round’ came out as ‘rahnd’ and ‘before’ like ‘befoah’. She’d never met anyone who wasn’t from the island or the village where they went to market. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

  “I’m Martin,” he continued – ‘Mah-in’. He thrust a skinny arm across the table at her, long bony fingers extended to shake her hand.

  The girl shrank back further into her seat and didn’t reciprocate. “Please leave me alone,” she said, so quietly that she almost whispered it. It didn’t have the desired affect.

  The skinny boy grew still for a moment, surprised, and then sat back in the chair, perusing her carefully. He said nothing, just sipped his drink and stared.

  The girl squirmed in her seat. Should she say it again, she wondered? Just leave? But she didn’t want everyone looking at her, didn’t want to create a scene. Why had he come over? Why couldn’t he have just left her alone, like everyone else had?

  He responded by suddenly sliding his cup across the table toward her.

  “Do you know what?” he said, abruptly. “I fancy a cup of tea instead all of a sudden.”

  The Eccles cake on the plate was next to skate across.

  The girl watched these unexpected actions with caution.

  “And I’m really full after me Sunday lunch. Why don’t you ’ave this lot? I’d just be greedy if I ate that cake. Didn’t even ask for it,” he lied nonchalantly.

  He looked up as a shadow fell across the table. The girl looked no further than the flower-patterned apron that she could see beside her from the corner of her eye. This was it, she thought. The woman was going to start to ask questions, to ring the police. Her heart began to pound and she rubbed the tips of her fingers across her palms where she could feel the sweat starting to build. She was hit for a moment with the uncomfortable smell of herself, and shifted in her seat, making it more pungent to her own nostrils by doing so. Could everyone else smell that, she wondered, and felt ashamed.

  “Here’s your cakes, Martin,” said the woman, placing a white cardboard box tied up with string on the table.

  The girl c
ould feel both sets of eyes burning into her as she stared helplessly at the steaming drink and the Eccles cake on the plate that the boy had given her.

  “Thanks, Mrs F,” she heard him say as he placed the box on one of the spare chairs. “I was just sayin’ to me mate ’ere that I actually fancy a cuppa tea today for a change. Think you could do the honours, Duchess?” ‘Think’ came out as ‘fink’.

  There was a pause for a moment before Mrs Fairlie agreed to the request. “Not like you to have tea, Martin, but it’s your money,” she said and the light flooded back over the table as she retreated toward the counter.

  The girl looked up at the face in front of her. Why on earth was he doing this, she wondered.

  “Go on, it’ll go cold. Waste not, want not,” he urged, pointing at the hot drink and smiling. He flopped back in the chair and wedged both hands firmly in his suit pockets, tipping the chair back on its two back legs until he was swinging gently back and forth.

  The girl’s hands slowly rose from her lap, where they she had been holding them clenched tight. She glanced up at the counter and saw Mrs Fairlie completely focused on spooning tea into a steaming metal pot, paying her no attention. Her fingers snaked then around the cup, absorbing warmth from the pottery, and she lifted it to her lips, taking a generous mouthful. This was another new experience. It looked like tea but wasn’t. It was at once bitter and sweet, milky and sharp. She pulled it away from herself and looked down into it in surprise.

  The young man laughed across from her and the chair clunked as it landed back on all four legs. “Ain’t you never ’ad a cup of coffee before?” he giggled childishly, and in surprise she looked at him full on, regretting it almost instantly.

  It was always the same when people saw her for the first time. That was why she tended to keep herself to herself, to wear her hat low over her face, to pull her hair across her features in a veil. Her mother had told her that her eye hadn’t always been like that – that when she’d been born, both of them looked in the one direction but as time had gone on, one of them had got stuck somehow. Her father said it was the wind changing that had made it stay that way. That it made her such an ugly little girl that no one would ever want her. That it made her stupid and ungrateful and lazy too. Her brothers liked to say that the fairies had done it. She had begun, lately, to suspect that it had gone that way when she had been hit across the head perhaps, with a fist, or the broom, or whatever was to hand . . .

  At least the boy would make his excuses and go away now, she reckoned. No one wanted to stay and talk to someone whose eyes didn’t look in the one direction.

  It was much to her surprise that his eyes stayed fixed on her face and, for a few seconds longer than she should have, she looked back. At his shock of wild curly hair, unkempt and unruly. At his huge blue eyes with their girlish lashes. At his full lips, pointed nose and chin. A face that looked, she thought, like its owner hadn’t grown into it yet.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said, pointing in the direction of the left-hand side of her face, at her palsied eye, she was sure. “You’re a stunt driver for the movies, ain’t ya? And you’ve ’ad a crash . . .”

  The bruise, she thought suddenly. He’s looking at the bruise. And he’s going to laugh at me, call me clumsy . . . or he’s going to know . . .

  To her surprise, the boy was smiling, showing a full set of teeth. She found unexpectedly that she couldn’t help herself and all of a sudden smiled back. And then he started to giggle and she felt laughter rise within herself too.

  “Car flipped right over, did it? Blimey, you were lucky to escape with your ’ead, I reckon. Do you know Sean Connery?”

  She didn’t. Didn’t even know what he was saying, much less the subject matter. But his smile, his ridiculous chatter, the easy way in which he leaned his elbows on the table and rolled himself a cigarette from tobacco he’d taken from his pocket – she couldn’t stop herself being infected by his good nature. For a few moments, the girl relaxed without being aware of it.

  Afterwards, she realised it was probably the first time in her life she had ever felt at ease with another human being apart from her mother.

  She took another swig of the coffee, smiling still when Mrs Fairlie brought down the mug of tea to Martin and they played their game again where he acted like he wasn’t expected to pay her, and then feigned surprise when she held out her hand. The girl was amazed to see the woman ruffle the thick mop of hair on Martin’s head as she walked away, and even more so when she caught the smile that was meant for her before the lady turned back to her work.

  The girl broke a little off the Eccles cake and nibbled it, laughing again when the boy slid the plate roughly back across the table, toward himself.

  “Give it ’ere,” he said. “I’m not that full after all,” and they shared it between them.

  The girl realised that she was famished – she’d eaten nothing but what she’d managed to forage in fields and farmhouses for the past few days. She’d never tasted anything as sweet as this, however. To her, the coffee and cake was the most glorious meal she‘d ever eaten, and she consumed her half carefully, and in silence, to make it last. She didn’t know after all, when she’d eat again.

  “So, where you stayin’ then?” the boy asked suddenly.

  He wasn’t looking at her – his eyes were fixed on the match that he held to his hastily assembled roll-up cigarette. He pulled deeply on it to ignite the end, and inhaled, looking again at her once he breathed out a great cloud of smoke.

  The girl’s hand froze as she reached for the last of the Eccles cake, and she withdrew it sharply, clamping her fingers together under the table and looking down again. The questions were starting now, of course. He was going to find out, he had to know something . . . or he’d guess and her father would come and find her . . .

  “While you’re in Dubhglas?” he continued, chewing absent-mindedly on another piece of cake, unaware of her discomfort. “Only like I said, I ain’t seen you round before.”

  The girl wasn’t sure how to answer. She twisted her fingers together. She had to get around this and get away before he uncovered anything and told the police.

  “I’m . . . I’m just passing through,” she whispered in response, eyes darting from side to side, checking if anyone else could hear. In case suddenly the door should spring open with a ‘ding’ and there would be her father and her brothers . . .

  The boy continued to eat, and slurp his tea, all the while a thin plume of smoke from his cigarette snaking into the air. “How you doin’ that then?” he quizzed further. “’Ave you actually got a motor?” He stared at her wide-eyed for a second and then rolled his eyes. “Wot am I sayin’, you ain’t old enough to ’ave a motor. Where you off to?”

  The girl squirmed in her seat and didn’t answer.

  This made him stop and regard her carefully again.

  “Nowhere,” she whispered, keeping her head down.

  “Nowhere, is it?” he answered but this time in a low voice of his own. He put down the piece of cake that he had been about to eat, and raised the roll-up in his other hand to his lips. Another pungent cloud of smoke formed as he took a drag and then exhaled slowly, raising middle finger and thumb to his lips to remove a piece of tobacco stuck there. His eyes narrowed against the trail of smoke that came from the cigarette. “Only I ’eard they closed up shop in Nowhere last week and there’s not much ’appenin’ there.”

  There was silence for a moment. He took another drag and this time the smoke puffed out of his mouth in time with the words as he spoke.

  “Where you really off to?”

  He wasn’t going to let this drop, she realised. She could tell by the tone of his voice. The girl thought hard, her brain a blank underneath the pressure of his stare. What should she say?

  “Glasgow,” she blurted suddenly. It was the first place she thought of. She had no idea about Glasgow, of course. No idea where it was, even, or how to get there, or if she was near to it or on the
right route. But she’d said it now and couldn’t take it back.

  There was silence again, a long pause between them. The girl jumped as the door suddenly made its ‘ding’ again and her eyes flicked toward it, sure this time . . .

  It was a lady who had entered. The girl felt the relief flood her body. This was all too much, she thought. She had to get going.

  “Thanks very much for the coffee and –” she began, but he had his head turned toward the doorway and was speaking over her. He hadn’t even heard her in fact.

  “All right, Mrs T?” he said loudly, motioning for the lady to come over to the table.

  The girl sat still, her moment of escape gone, and now there was someone else to deal with. Why hadn’t she left when he sat down, she wondered, silently kicking herself for staying so long.

  “There you are, Martin,” the lady replied in a soft voice.

  She was pretty, thought the girl. In her thirties, maybe, a little thick around the waist, wearing a beautiful cotton summer dress – a coral colour, patterned with small cream flowers, the skirt flaring out from the hips. The girl couldn’t stop staring at it, conscious of her own grey tunic and the old brown blouse underneath. She had patched the seam under the sleeve as best she could, but she was aware of a slight tear that had reappeared, defying her basic needlework. The navy-blue winter coat – her mother’s cast-off – was slung across the chair. It was far too hot outside to wear it, of course, but the nights had been cold enough and she’d been glad of it. How she longed to wear something like that dress! How she’d love to just twirl round in it, just once, to see how it felt.

  “Hello!” said the lady.

  The girl realised she was addressing her. She started to panic again, wished the ground would swallow her. She sat in the seat, helpless.

  “This is my new friend,” she heard Martin say. “She’s going to Glasgow, Mrs T, imagine that!”

  There was a tone to his voice – something forceful and pointed that the girl didn’t recognise. She stared back again at the table, taking in only what she could see at eye level. The lady’s white belt, for example, and some red nail polish – imagine – a plain gold wedding ring and a small gold watch on her left wrist.