I cannot see Cara’s expression, but her voice is rough. ‘I’m still bleeding.’
‘I know,’ I tell her, ‘I can smell it.’ I let out a sigh; it blows back her coppery curls, tickling her, so she laughs under her breath and leans forward, her spine curled. Hair falls round her face, obscuring it. Her legs spread wider, for balance, and as I strain to focus my eyes I can see a drop of blood blossom between them. I remember the risk, but right now I want to be so close that anything carried in her veins will be carried in mine too. I am so tempted; I suspect that if I did, she wouldn’t have the heart to stop me. The drop glints in her curls like a hidden ruby. I breathe in loudly so she can hear me smell her. Ginger and mackerel and chocolate cake and the ring of metal, that’s what she smells like. I laugh out loud because she smells so damn good. I want to arch my neck and take the drop between my lips like nectar. I want to find her out with the tip of my tongue, going straight to where, though she might expect it, the sensation will startle her most. The reliable surprise of the body saying, oh, that, oh yes that indeed, please that, I had forgotten quite how sweet that was. She will hurl her head back, and only my arms will anchor her to the bed. The delicate folds will spread wide as I shut my eyes and burrow into the red; they will keep my whole face warm. I want to take Cara into my mouth so that no danger can find her, no monster can terrorize her, where there is no lack or draught or hollow, nothing but heat and pressure and the safety of knowing every drop of you is wanted.
And because she knows right well that I want all that, the wanting is enough. I contract inside with a slow shudder. I hover below her, murmuring breath into her as if I am praying. At last Cara growls like a big cat and leans back to sit on my chest. She rubs herself up and down, skidding and slipping, her wrists in my fists, her growl rising. The breath is almost knocked out of my lungs as she grinds on my ribs, daubs me like a furious painter, marks me for her own.
Keeping time with my own memory, I came to meet myself.
In the blessed lull that always followed, I brought my fingers to my mouth and tasted – my body no danger to itself – the mixture of blood and excitement, iron and silver. I wiped my fingers on the edge of the sheet; laundry tomorrow. I could see their stain in the arc of light as a car went by.
My other hand closed over the boat resting in the hollow of my throat. It was no ocean-crossing caravel tonight, but a mutinous hulk riding low in the waves, its great wheel spinning unattended, its long ropes twitching like scars. Still, I held on.
How many months and years did I have to bleed on my own now? How many spoonfuls of blood could the body lose before the river of it would sweep me up to Cara, before I felt her mouth on me again?
I shut my eyes tight, heaved on to my side and composed myself for sleep. I was throbbing; it shook the bed. I was more alive than I could bear.
SATURDAY
I woke in the night, to find myself flat on my back, limbs stretched to the four corners of the bed like Leonardo’s diagram. I was stiff but I didn’t move. I was taking up the whole bed. Hard to breathe, spreadeagled on this raft, bucking on the waves of memories. I lay there until everything calmed and the morning started coming in under the blind. My cramps were gone. I was wrapped round, anaesthetized by light.
The clock said five to eight. I rolled up the blind; the yellow light was raw silk puckered in the tree-tops. Kate’s plane would be taxiing on to the runway now. As it took off, with the low sun behind it, it would cast a plane-shaped shadow on the nearby fields, a shadow which would shrink and slow and fade as the plane rose. Her eye would let slip the tiny arrow of darkness for a minute, then finally lose it in the dark blue of a winding road.
It’s not every day you get the chance to win £20,000 but today’s the day, Miss O’Grady! I tore the prize draw leaflet in quarters and poured milk on a small bowl of oatmeal. The cat stretched hugely, his claws scraping the wicker chair, and jumped on to the table. Grace, I thought, do you need me? Does it have to be me who feeds you and scratches you behind the ears?
He looks at me dubiously.
Ah, go on, Grace, you do sort of like me, I can tell.
I put a little lump of milky oatmeal on the table; he bent to sniff it, then jumped down on to the lino. Need, no, that was not it. I suspected that anyone would serve his purposes. But the fact was that he was still here.
I peered down at his clawmarks on my chest. They were healing up already, so miraculous were the regenerative powers of skin. Of course, it never really healed the old, it just grew more to fill the gaps. I tried to remember how many months they said it took for the entire surface of the body to renew itself. When would I have shed the skin that touched Cara, that Cara touched? When would I have wriggled away like a snake and become something new?
Having worked my way through half the bowl – not bad at all – I emptied and washed it. The light was sharp in the kitchen window; I could see blue sky stretched over the sycamore tree. A walk would be the best thing for my body, which was starting to cramp again. When I stepped out the front door, I caught the whiff of autumn for the first time.
Halfway up the road, a sudden cacophony at my feet made me leap sideways on to the grass verge. That little bastard of a Jack Russell, I could hear him panting in triumph at the bottom of his garden door. I found a fallen branch in the long grass, and, stepping quietly up, shoved it under the door. A yelp of shock came from the other side. I dragged the branch from side to side twice, then left it there, as a warning.
It must have been earlier than I thought, because the woods were empty. There were red berries coming on a bush near the entrance, but fuchsia still hung their scented fingertips nearby. I cupped one in my hand. Around the long stamen clustered five or six shorter ones, dusted in pollen; I brushed them against my lips. I nipped the flower off where it met the stem. When I put my tongue to the cut it only tasted like plants usually do. Cara taught me to do this: ‘Taste the nectar,’ she’d exclaim. I’d lick the fuchsia, say ‘Mmm,’ and meet her smile. I didn’t want to disappoint her. Whether or not that counted as a lie depended on what level of satisfaction was implied by ‘Mmm’. Besides, maybe I wasn’t missing anything; maybe that thin plant taste was all nectar was.
The sky was absolutely clear over the tree-tops as I made my way upwards. My steel comb was in my coat pocket but I hardly felt the need of it today.
I knew a girl at school who liked to go hitchhiking in the summers. She had made her way round Ireland with no trouble, because everywhere she went she carried a bag of apples. If she accepted a lift from a man, she sat in the front seat, exchanged a few pleasantries, and then took out her knife and began peeling one of her apples. She would make that apple last the length of the journey, slicing it into transparent crescents against her thumb, peeling off the skin and eating it separately, tangy between her teeth. None of the drivers ever laid a hand on her. Now, I’m not sure how good she would have been with that small knife if she’d had to defend herself – worse than useless, I suspect – but on a symbolic level she had them cowed from the start.
All the women I knew carried some kind of blade, though they were not all metal, or even visible. Whether something had happened to them, or whether they had only anticipated it, it kept them awake the occasional night. I found it interesting that some who had only imagined the man in the woods were more haunted by him than some who had looked him in the eye. Not that women often actually put words to such things, not in this country anyway, but if you listened carefully you could hear the gaps in the conversation.
Such fear was very far away now. The air was clear. I walked on, tracing figure eights around the trees. If I shut my eyes for a second and concentrated hard, I could feel Cara’s cold hand in mine.
We are up in the woods once, whiling away our teens. Cara has just been on an expensive drama course – we suspect her father is trying to make sure she doesn’t pine for her mother and sister – and can remember nothing but the trust exercises. She is fascinated by the ide
a of putting yourself in someone else’s hands. ‘But that happens every time we go to bed,’ I point out.
‘Yes,’ she answers, ‘but we have to do exercises as well.’
She blindfolds me with my school tie. The nylon is heavy, chafing my cheek-bones. I can open my eyes slightly but the lashes scrunch against the material, so I close them again. When the tie begins to slip, I reach up and knot it so tightly that I see stars behind my eyelids.
At first Cara leads me along, that’s easy. I hold on to the frayed cuff of her red jumper, and step only where she has stepped. Then we try it with her behind, pushing me on; that is scary but still safe. Finally she makes me try it with no hands. Her voice directs me away from the woods into the big field, with only the occasional ‘right a bit’ to interrupt the calm. She tells me that there are no trees for a hundred yards in every direction. I have no reason not to believe her.
‘Go where you like,’ says Cara now. ‘I’ll only say something if there’s an obstacle.’ I walk on, but I can feel my shoulders hunching to protect me and my face furrowing into a helmet. ‘Run,’ she calls.
‘I’ll go out of earshot.’
‘No you won’t, I’ll keep up with you,’ she promises.
I begin to jog, but my bones are frightened stiff. I hear an occasional laugh to one side, behind me, in front; I change direction to follow it. Then there is no voice, no birdcall, nothing but the sound of the wind picking up. I try to loose myself like a kite and run right into the wind. I run as fast as I can for a couple of seconds then am brought up short, convinced there is a wall just in front of me. I can almost feel the rough bricks against my nose. I throw up my hands and can feel nothing, but I know the wall is there.
I hear Cara’s feet thumping to my side. I try to explain about the wall. ‘There isn’t any wall,’ she says. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
I can still feel the wall but I don’t take off the tie. I trot on cautiously. Hesitation removes the balance from my run, and so when my foot hits an awkward hummock it does not have enough speed to carry it over, but turns, and throws me on to damp grass.
I sit up, dizzy, and wrench off the bandage. Cara is stuttering with apology. Do I still trust her, will I try it again?
‘Later,’ I say.
As soon as I got back to the big house, I hit a rush of energy. I corrected my class’s mediocre Maths homework, then put Grace into a frenzy by moving the feather duster like a bird for him to chase. I went into all three bedrooms to fetch the sheets. Kate had left hers in a neat pile. In the bin was a broken comb, some papers torn in half, and an apple core. On the wall over the bed I noticed a sticking plaster. Was it covering a rip in the wallpaper? I pulled it back to see, but the only rip in the paper was the one I had just made.
In my room I stripped off all the bedding, then put Cara’s crumpled knickers back under the pillow. I carried the sheets downstairs and pushed them into the washing machine, then went into Mr. Wall’s room because the door was slightly open. He was still in bed, curled up with the blanket over his head. When he heard me he leaped, like a rock splitting. His pale face turned towards me, eyes shut against the light. I had never seen him unshaven before.
‘Are you all right?’
His voice came out in a whisper. ‘Fine. Had one of my headaches last night, I’m just sleeping it off.’
‘Not another migraine?’
‘Just at the front of the head. The worst of it’s over now.’
‘They say if stress builds up it can –’
‘Cheese,’ he interrupted, ‘I was unwise enough to have Wensleydale with the port last night.’
‘Chocolate does that to my mother,’ I said after a second.
Mr. Wall nodded, then lifted his hand to his head as if holding it together.
I softened my voice. ‘I’ll be going shopping later; was there anything particular you wanted?’
‘No. Whatever you like.’ One eye opened. ‘Perhaps you could pick up the paper? I don’t quite feel up to it.’
‘Sure.’
As I poured the liquid into the plastic ball for the washing machine, I was troubled by a vision of Mr. Wall after I moved out. He might ‘feel up to’ less and less, start living off dry toast, sit watching a blank TV screen and finally be found three weeks dead by the electricity meterman. Then I turned on the washing machine and told myself to stop being ridiculous; the man was just taking a morning off.
While I was feeling so extraordinarily capable, I emptied Cara’s luggage on to her bed. The small plastic bag from the hospital included her passport and ID cards. I put each in an envelope addressed to its issuer – an easy enough task, since none of the horrible inch-wide photos looked a bit like her – and sealed them up.
The car started first time. I found myself humming along to the radio as I turned the corner; how bizarre. Maybe this was the day I would lose my mind.
The local supermarket was clogged with matrons in cashmere cardigans hesitating over smoked salmon. I walked round the five aisles as fast as possible, throwing into the basket whatever took my fancy. I dropped in a tin of tuna, then put it back on the shelf, because it was Cara who liked tuna.
When I got home, the plastic bags of groceries sagged on the counter. I stood still, and heard one of the bags whistle under its breath then settle down. There wasn’t enough room in the fridge for all I had bought; I had to tug out a white box which turned out to contain a chocolate gâteau. It was nice of Kate to remember; she had done her best, really. I cut myself a narrow slice; it tasted of nothing in particular, but I finished it anyway. There was no room in the fridge, so I left the rest of the gâteau in the larder in case Mr. Wall wanted any.
As I was putting the spaghetti away, I found the last two tins of Cara’s tuna, and put them into the box the video came in. Then I noticed the half-empty jar of capers, and added that. After a complete editing of the shelves, the box was jammed with everything from pimento olives to coarse-cut marmalade. I could decide what to do with it later.
Under a Sunday supplement from last week I found this morning’s post. An invitation to a teacher-training college reunion, an offer of cheap window-cleaning, and a postcard of a black cat basking on a whitewashed wall. Oddly enough it took me a second or two to recognize the tiny handwriting.
My Fountain Pen, how’s it go? Hope you two are taking care of each other and not pining more than is strictly necessary.
This is a good island I’m on. Oranges that fill the fist, and more sunlight than a girl knows what to do with. Keep having profound thoughts then forgetting what they were. Slept last night on warm black gritty sand, here is some. Below the words was the mark of some tape or sticking plaster that had fallen off; one grain of black still adhered to the cardboard.
Yesterday I found an old nunnery built over a ravine. It’s run by goats now, one black and one white. Never been anywhere so beautiful. I wanted to jump out into the blue but don’t worry I didn’t. We’re going to the beach bonfire now, I have to go. The wimmminyn send their love. My legs are getting so strong now (though no tan only freckled knees) are you proud of me? Do you miss me? See you sooner.
The smell of beeswax came into the room before Mr. Wall did. He smiled at me, and started on the cabinet with his soft cloth. When he had moved on to the arms of the big chair, I said, ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’
‘What, these old things?’ He stared down. ‘I’ve always thought so.’ Halfway down the back of the chair, he murmured, ‘My wife used to stumble into them and swear. Under her breath, so the children wouldn’t pick up bad language.’
I let out a chuckle.
‘If she’d ever actually asked me to move them, I expect I would have.’ His jaw looked immovable.
‘How long was it before…’ I got embarrassed halfway, and ended gruffly, ‘You know, it went wrong. Between the two of you. If you don’t mind my asking.’
Mr. Wall put down his cloth and rested his knuckles on his hips. ‘Do you know, Pen, I’m not sure it was e
ver right.’
‘Yeah, but when –’
‘Well, I remember by the time we went to the Outer Hebrides for our fifth anniversary, we were no longer charmed by the contrasts between us.’
I waited for more. Was Winnie irked by the way he used to fold his socks over the chair? Did her rudeness to waitresses jar his nerves? Then I realized that he was of a more tactful generation than mine, and unlikely to offer any details. ‘So did you stay together for the children?’
‘No,’ he said pleasantly, ‘we hadn’t had them at that point.’
‘So why on earth –’
‘One did.’ He blinked up at me. ‘That’s what one did, in those days.’
‘Oh.’ On impulse, as I looked down at the scrawled card in my fingers, I asked him, ‘Have you read this?’
‘It was addressed to you,’ said Mr. Wall with a hint of rebuke.
‘But didn’t you recognize the writing?’
‘Oh yes.’
I wouldn’t believe it from anybody else, but I was sure he hadn’t read past the first words. Not that it mattered, because Cara hadn’t said anything indiscreet. I handed the postcard over. While Mr. Wall read it – slowly, as if memorizing the sentences – I busied myself with washing a few dishes. When he spoke I had to turn the taps off to hear him.
‘She seems to be having quite a nice time,’ he repeated.
I stared at him, then looked down at the postcard as he handed it back. My fingers were wet, they smeared the ink at the side. I put the card down on the counter and dried my hands on the stiff tea-towel hanging over the radiator.