The Water Cure

by Sophie Mackintosh

  ‘You frightened him,’ Llew tells us. He rounds on us. ‘You made him do it. What did you say to him?’

  ‘Nothing,’ says Grace, very calmly. ‘He must have just wanted to go home.’

  It is mainly the truth and yet it still makes me heartsick.

  Llew marches us to Grace’s room. He produces the spare bunch of keys that once lay behind the reception desk.

  ‘In there,’ he says. No sooner have we stepped in than he closes the door, locks it. Grace doesn’t hurl herself against it this time.

  We get into the bed, and with our arms around each other we cry. When we feel too dehydrated, I am the one who gets up, fills a dusty glass with water from the bathroom and passes it around. In between the periods of weeping we listen out for the men. Grace lays out her life-guarding knife on the bedside table. ‘Just in case,’ she tells us. But nobody comes for us, nobody unlocks the door. We cannot hear the noises of the men with the blankets over our heads. Without the blankets they are very quiet, quiet enough for us to ignore, to pretend it is a trick of the wind.

  When Sky has fallen asleep, Grace turns to me. Her feet are freezing against my shins. ‘You’re always warm,’ she tells me. ‘Even now.’ The insinuation of change. I want to tell her, It’s still me. Soon the pillow between us is wet.

  ‘We’re going to die,’ she says in my ear.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ I tell her, but it hangs above us, it has a ring of certainty. We are silent for a while.

  ‘The baby was a boy, wasn’t it?’ she says, not a question but a statement. I breathe in, breathe out. I don’t need to tell her yes.

  ‘Maybe men can’t survive here,’ she says. ‘Maybe that’s how we are truly protected.’ A note of hope in her voice. I close my eyes.

  ‘Grace,’ I say. ‘Grace. Do you think Mother is dead?’

  She doesn’t answer immediately.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t.’ She turns over to face me. ‘Not after everything she’s done.’

  ‘Where do you think she is?’ I ask.

  ‘I think she’s lost,’ Grace says. ‘I think passing the border weakened her. I think she’s out on the sea. Hurt, maybe. But still coming for us.’

  Sky wakes up. ‘Mother,’ she weeps. ‘Mother.’

  Shush, we tell her, shush. We shift around so that she moves into the middle, between me and Grace. We stroke her hair.

  ‘She is still coming back,’ Grace says. ‘She will be here tomorrow. She will sail back over the sea, and the men will leave. They will go, and we will never see them again.’

  We wrap our arms around her. Soon she falls back into exhausted sleep.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I ask Grace very quietly, once I feel Sky’s breathing slow.

  ‘We wait,’ Grace tells me. ‘For as long as it takes.’

  Sky stays in the bed as Grace and I take it in turns to listen at the door, to shove at it with the force of our bodies. I try to pick the lock with a hairpin and do not succeed. I open every window in the room, in the bathroom, to hear what we can. The air, the reminder that the world still exists, is a shock.

  Around midday, we hear the men speaking and moving past our room. We freeze, we make no noise, but their footsteps pass without interruption. From the window we watch as they carry Gwil’s body across the beach underneath us, wrapped in a sheet. The shape of him dips and rises. Both men look terrible, even from a distance. James almost trips, but Llew is steady, a shovel strapped to his back. They move out of sight.

  ‘They’re taking him to the forest,’ Grace says.

  I have had dreams before of women lying underneath the dirt and leaves, but not for a long time. The speculation of my treacherous mind.

  A long time afterwards, the noise stops and the men return the way they came, grim and streaked with dirt. They must have rubbed their grimy hands into their eyes, down their cheeks.

  The end is coming. We feel it like electricity, like the start of a migraine. When I part the curtains I am amazed not to see the water full of limbs. It is just the sea, as usual. A little rougher, perhaps. In Grace’s bathroom I hit my elbow into the tiled wall, watch an inky bruise come up in the mirror.

  I say a prayer for Sky, with her small and pliable movements, the way she came into the world and fitted so easily around us. I say a prayer for her collection of rocks and small animal bones, for the spray of her laugh, for her tan lines, for the dead sheaves of her cut hair, wherever she left it.

  I say a prayer for Mother, for her hoarse voice and hands which never stopped moving, for her scented oils and eyeliner and insomnia, the menthol lozenges she held in her mouth like a bad word.

  I say a prayer for King, wherever he is now. A prayer for his sincerity, a prayer for the holes in his T-shirts and the strange food he served up on the nights when it was his turn to prepare dinner, combinations designed to make us grow strong and healthful, tomatoes smeared with honey and oil, too much oil, they swam in it.

  I say a prayer for the damaged women, for their thinning hair and cracked lips and offerings, for their rare arms around me during group prayer, for their distended stomachs filled with water and their wet clothes clinging to their bodies and their pain, their incomprehensible pain, which is now mine too.

  A prayer for the baby, which would have been one of us; a prayer for its life, the small space of it that never got to happen. The prayer for the baby is just I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry. I pinch the bridge of my nose. My eyes in the mirror are red.

  And I say a prayer for Grace, for her cold body and cold hands and cold heart, for her success where I have always failed, for the dirt behind her ears, for her hair filling my hands when I plait it, for her brutal honesty, for the animal smell of her body, for her distance. I say a prayer while wondering how I could ever have thought that we were two parts of the same person, knowing I would do anything to go back there, to be there with her again, our hands clasped tight, held under the water by our father, and the light ribboning around us. I could have died there with her face close to mine and her pursed mouth and it would have been all right, it would have been a small mercy, but our father always brought us back to the surface, lifted us up into the sunlight and hot air as we coughed the water from our mouths.

  Sometime during the long, sweltering afternoon there is a knock on Grace’s door, then the sound of it being unlocked. We all look at each other.

  ‘Hello,’ says Llew when I answer it. He is grey-faced but calm, wearing a clean shirt of King’s. He peers behind me, into the room.

  ‘Come downstairs,’ he says. ‘We made food.’ It could be a trap, but our stomachs complain with hunger. We follow him.

  ‘We buried Gwil in the forest,’ says James as we eat pancakes made with just flour and water. Our dry mouths sip at too-weak coffee. ‘We wanted to do it as soon as possible.’ His voice catches. ‘We wanted to do it alone.’

  My sisters and I say nothing. The men do not talk about why they locked us in the room; they do not say anything further about Gwil’s death being our fault.

  We file out after the meal, but Llew catches me by the arm just before I leave.

  ‘Stay,’ he says. ‘Come for a walk with me.’

  It isn’t a question. I look to my sisters, and they nod.

  We walk along the shore, just where the water hits the sand. Llew kicks at the ground. His face is sharp. I check reflexively for the dorsal fins of sharks, for more ghosts, but the sea is clear.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask. He laughs.

  ‘How do you think?’ he replies. ‘Not good, Lia. Not good.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ he tells me. ‘You don’t know how to talk to people. You don’t know the things you’re supposed to say in these situations. You would say, for example, I’m sorry for your loss.’ There is an edge to his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I repeat.

  Llew swerves towards the jetty and walks out to where the rowing boat is moored. I l
ook at it doubtfully.

  ‘Let’s go out on the boat. It’s a beautiful day,’ he says.

  ‘It’s not safe,’ I say.

  ‘It is,’ he tells me, and somehow I find myself climbing in, my shoes darkening with the water already in its gut, and I am reminded that I will do anything he wants.

  I let Llew row. The boat doesn’t start taking on water at once, but I know it will not be long. The air is close. There is a sharp noise somewhere far above, or in my eardrums, I can’t tell, and the sea is too flat. I hold on to the side of the boat until I can’t feel my fingertips.

  ‘What are you so scared of?’ Llew asks. ‘I can’t fucking relax when you’re like this.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ I tell him.

  ‘I can tell you are. You’re so tense. What is it?’ he asks. He hits the water with his oar, voice louder. ‘What is it?’

  I can see, too late, the knife in his belt. The rope at the bottom of the boat, snaking around his feet, wet now. My breath comes in shallow bursts, and I know I am dying without him even having to touch me.

  Llew stares at me. ‘You’re having a panic attack,’ he says, with something approaching wonder.

  ‘I’m dying,’ I tell him.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ll be fine.’ He reaches out and holds my hand, presses his fingers to the base of my palm and I flinch, but all he does is count my pulse aloud until my breathing goes back to normal.

  ‘We’ll stop here,’ he says, laying the oars down.

  I will never come further than this from my home, I will never be a person who crosses the border. I will never leave my sisters again. Bargain, or realization, or both. There is dank water around my feet, a tidemark of dirt. And I say a prayer for myself, finally. Prayer for days under the sun. Prayer for sea anemones and perfectly shaped stones and cold water against my hands, and the feeling of being very clean, and movement, explosive movement, the birds wheeling up from the trees, the slates of the roof hot under my skin.

  When I look up, Llew is staring at me. It seems incredible that I ever thought his eyes kind. My body has been playing tricks on me all along.

  ‘I need us to go back,’ I say.

  ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to go back yet,’ he says. He is still looking at me. ‘Are we too close to the house?’ he asks. ‘Will we be seen?’

  We are too close, but I shake my head. He reaches out to me. I unbutton his shirt.

  Partway through he pauses, takes hold of the rope, and I know that this is it. Even with my well-trained lungs there is no way I will last more than two minutes in that water with my hands tied, but a great calm comes over me. What I think right at the moment when he ties the knot around my wrists: It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. A life for a life. I have always been ready to give mine for my sisters.

  ‘Trust me,’ he says. ‘You’ll like it.’

  I let the grieving man do what he wants. Squeeze my eyes tight shut against the sun, red light fruiting behind my eyelids, and wait. Joy’s echo returning, somewhere, my heart leaping in my chest, because he must still love me really.

  Sudden memory of lying down on the recliner in the first days after Mother’s disappearance. I am tired; I am looking for my sisters but something about the sun has struck me down. I sleep for a short while in an angular piece of shade. Llew wakes me up by sitting on the end of the recliner and taking hold of my ankle. He is very tender with it. Easy touch, unthinking, then he leaves. I keep that foot so still that I develop pins and needles. Another pathological reaction.

  Once he has loosened the rope he dresses quickly and sits back away from me, puts his head in his hands. There is silence for several moments. I debate whether to say the three words I have been carefully considering, whether it will change things.

  ‘That was the last time,’ he tells me. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Lia,’ he says. His head sinks lower in his hands, then snaps up. He looks at me straight. ‘We can’t keep doing this. I told you as much before.’

  I decide to say the three words anyway, in case they change his mind. I say them very quietly.

  He turns around, looks to the house then turns back to me. ‘I thought you’d be impervious to that sort of thing,’ he says despairingly. ‘I thought you might not be like the rest of them.’ There is something else in his voice too. It takes me a few seconds to understand that it is disgust.

  ‘God,’ he says, throwing his oar into the bottom of the boat. ‘I’m grieving, Lia. I’m trying extremely hard to hold it together. Can you give me that, at least? Can you understand not to put anything on me?’ His voice is too loud. ‘What are you expecting?’

  To be transformed, nothing more. To know that it is worth it, somewhere in my body, what I have put us through.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But I love you.’

  He flinches when the words come out of my mouth, and I know that’s at least partly why I keep saying them.

  ‘I can’t do this now. Not today,’ he says. ‘Not ever, if I’m honest. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

  But I do understand. ‘You’re cruel,’ I tell him. ‘You’re so cruel.’

  ‘I don’t deny it,’ he says. ‘Can you allow it, though? After what I’ve been through? You have no idea.’

  My eyes water. I stare at his face, his lips drawn back in a half-grimace, and try hard to hate him.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘I should be the one crying.’ Then he is, after all, the back of his hand at his eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lia,’ he says. ‘I’m not a good man. Not even at the best of times.’

  ‘Why did you do it in the first place?’ I ask him.

  ‘Why does anyone,’ he tells me, not a question. The salt rises off the ocean around us, and I realize that I have heard enough.

  ‘We have to go back,’ I say, wiping my eyes with the hem of my dress. He turns his wet face away from me. We do not say another word. It is an opportunity, having his back to me, but I don’t do anything with it. I cannot hurt him, despite the great pain in my chest, as though I have swallowed air.

  At the jetty, we separate without a word. I permit myself a final look at the long shape of him disappearing up the shore, into the house.

  I walk down the beach, crying so hard that the horizon doubles, overrunning when it comes to the sky. My pain compels me to fall, but I ignore it. I reach the rock pools, inspect each one in turn to distract myself. Anemones and clams grow vast and ponderous. On the smooth strip of basalt exposed by the tide, going out now, I walk as far as I dare.

  On the return, I see something sticking up from the sand, petrified wood or old-world junk. A flag of colour. I go closer, scuffing the sand off with my foot at first, and then kneeling to move it with my hands. Broken planks and fibreglass reveal themselves, painted white and red, the vicious edge of a motor. The sand has drifted deep around them, or they have been there for a long time, or someone must have buried them, I realize, as I pull out more fragments.

  I scoop some of the sand back over, stand up. You don’t have to think about this right now, I tell myself. And isn’t it good, my capability to show kindness to myself finally at this time of need? I walk away without looking back. Later, I will think about it. Not now.

  I go to the ballroom and sit there at the piano, pressing note after note, for some time.

  Stop being so self-indulgent, I hiss inwardly, when I notice water falling to the keys. I have gutted enough hearts to know they are just orbs of jelly, that even the fish have them.

  And then, I’ll sell my soul to you if you can strike his black heart down dead, I reason half-heartedly with the sea. I’ll be yours for ever if you can just drown him.

  But if he was dead he would never be able to reconsider, to tell me he loved me really, so I take it back with alarm. Sorry.

  It’s just that I am done with love. But there is nowhere else to go.

  There are footsteps and I hope they
are Llew coming to find me, to tell me that he has made a mistake. I stand up to find it is only Grace.

  ‘Lia,’ she says, lifting her hands. They are covered in dirt. I blink and look again, the late-afternoon sun through the windows dazzling me. It is blood. It covers the front of her white gown, a deep stain against her chest. She is hurt, I think, taking a step towards her. She is dying. She says my name again, lowering her hands, and I take another step, and then another.

  It’s an old story and I’m so tired of telling it – the oldest story in the world and yet I can’t put it down, I can’t stop it from dragging on my body, so don’t make me tell it again. The story doesn’t end or even begin with me. You can imagine. You can tell it to yourself.

  III

  * * *

  SISTERS

  Grace

  I think about the falling woman often. I was on the beach when it happened, so I saw it, although from a distance. How one minute she was in the window. She waved to me, or maybe she was just touching her face, brushing her hair away. All I know for certain is that I did wave back. And then she fell from the window’s ledge. There were two other women on the beach with me, and they ran towards her, screaming, even though the scream therapy was on the way out for us. You had decided it was making things worse, not better. We did not want things to be worse.

  It was the motion of the falling rather than the trauma of the event that drew me back to the memory. My body was in what felt like perpetual motion in those days. A loop of garden and beach and pool, my hands flexing, standing up to stretch. I could not stay still. Yet that particular gesture, the beauty of it. To fall and then to stop.