Read by Sarah Feathers
I was impatient for summer to begin but as soon as we arrived at the strange little house near the river I was bored. The days were long and uneven. My limbs ached and my eyelids were heavy. At night I’d hear my parents having sex through the bedroom wall and it made me want to drown myself.
There had been a slip-up. My father had briefly started and ended an affair with a neighbour. I forget now who it was, but the pattern was always the same. A bristle of passion. A gasp of remorse. A plate thrown. A promise it would never happen again. The salve this time was a holiday at a rented house in a sedentary corner of the country.
It was the hottest summer on record. It was always the hottest summer on record.
Every day was the same. I’d wake up late and poach myself in the bath, watching my thighs turn puce. I’d pinch the flesh on my belly and stare at my peculiar body, acquainting myself with its soft mounds and unexpected tufts. I was, I feared, a woman disguised as a girl.
Afternoons were spent on the sofa, heavy curtains closed, sucking ice cubes and listening to wasps thud-thud-thud against the window. Too hot and too stupid to sting. There I conjured my most tragic stories; pirate ships dashed against rocks; maidens swallowed like grapes by emerald dragons; children kidnapped, fried in pots and served on toast with butter and honey. But soon my restlessness soured and begged for something else.
The river at least provided a new setting. Surrounded by trees, it curled in a sibilant ‘s’ leaving a blanket of grass perfect for daydreaming. I lay for hours among the water and the wild, sunlight snagging on branches, leaves murmuring, dress and bones damp. I pretended I was dead and beautiful.
Pink with heat, I imagined the world had flipped upside down. When the water was still it captured the sky on its surface in one shimmering slice. In this upside-down world I was at the edge of something. I knew my future was in the ground, clawing its way through the roots and worm-riddled earth to find me.
***
I sensed his gaze sliding over me before I knew he was there. His presence thrilled the air, making it thicker, solid almost for just a moment before he vanished and the midges resumed their frantic hum.
That was how our communion began. I would lie on the riverbank feeling when he was there and knowing when he was not. I liked being watched. I felt important. I was a chapter in his story. When he eventually emerged from between the elders and phlox, it was without fanfare. He slipped from under the shadows and sat a few feet away from me, elbows resting on his legs, eyes on the mud-washed water.
He was older than I expected. Face freshly lined; hands roped with veins. He wore a wax coat in spite of the heat, from which he pulled a pouch of tobacco. He rolled a cigarette between his coarse fingers and thumbs, which he lit with a starry crackle, inhaled and passed to me. I took the cigarette and breathed in, a hot, bitter swill. We both watched the smoke drift from my lips.
I had seen him before. He had given my parents the keys to the house. We had driven for hours and the exchange was taking too long. I lay on the backseat of the car eating a plum, my thighs slick with sweat from the leather, my fingers sticky. I stretched out my leg and used my big toe to open the window, pushing the button lazily. I could hear snatches of my parents’ conversation with the man in the drive; a checklist of local pubs and hot water tanks. My father’s laugh too loud. I knew when they got in the car they would swap sly observations about him. Too strange. Too sullen. Too rural. I tossed my plum stone out of the window. No one noticed. But as we drove towards the house, I watched the man scoop up the stone, hold it briefly to his lips, as if he might swallow it, before putting it in his pocket and walking away.
I never thought to ask him where he lived. From that day on he was always at the bend in the river and seemed to me, made from water and marsh, with oak for arms and hemlock hair. He smelled of soil and metal and stout and of other smells I hadn’t met before.
He gave me a tortoise carved from soapstone, pressing it to the palm of my hand, its smooth, milky belly cool against my skin. I carried it everywhere with me, sliding it under the cool of my pillow at night. He asked me which flowers on the riverbank were my favourite. He gave me a nest and the skull of a squirrel. He gave me eggshells the colour of fresh bruises. He asked me to tell him a story. He was quiet like a statue. Or like someone had snipped out his tongue. Or like he knew it what it was to keep a secret. He mocked the rat-a-tat-tat of my parents’ chatter, making them sound cartoonish and silly.
I never told them about him. I stored the secret in the cramped dark space behind my sternum and let it glitter inside me. He told me not to tell. He called me human-child. He showed me how to build a fire and how to cup my hands together and blow into them so I could hoot like a bird. He taught me how to hold my breath and spin and spin and spin until my vision was spritzed with little black dots. But if ever there was a murmur of someone nearby; the pad of steps on moss, or a stick slicing through nettles, his eyes would hardboil and he would vanish, scattering into light or shadow.
He never held my hand or steadied me when I stepped over the stile into the meadow. But he made me feel the most naked a person could feel in clothes. My dress, patterned with flowers and sprigs, thin straps cutting across my collarbone became invisible under his gaze. His eyes traversed my flesh - on their own private journey from tangled hair to bare feet, coarse with dirt and scratches. He left me rearranged.
When the heat became too feverish I would wake up early and swim in the river. The morning after my father returned to the city, no doubt to pick up where he left off with the neighbour, I bundled up my towel and crept out of the house. It had rained in the night and the sky was streaked with pale summer clouds. Prising off my plimsolls and shorts I slipped my feet into the water, the mud oozed and sucked at my toes. All summer the river had been blighted by a strange creamy foam which clotted around the knife sharp reeds. I took off my faded t-shirt and threw it on the bank and lingered amongst the murk, breath sticky in my lungs.
I knew that he was there. Holding his tongue. Slipping through the dawn. I watched, invisible, as the trees shimmered and glowed and rose like a stage curtain to reveal their players; first him, then her. My mother. He reached back for her hand and took it in his, guiding her over the roots and into his arms. She looked whole and steady, like she was carved from marble. She whispered something into the pale pink shell of his ear and he laughed, a strange alien sound, I hadn’t heard before. They were as alive as I was.
I pushed myself away from the edge and down into the cold silky water, in search of my upside down world, as deep and as far as my lungs would take me; a water rat, an astronaut floating through the inky skies. When my head broke through the surface, mouth snatching for air, they were gone and the sky, leached of colour, began to rain. I felt tired and mortal. The sight of them together pressed something onto me, something whole and dark and permanent. I wanted to lie face down on the riverbed amongst the silt and stones and marble-eyed fish. The rain turned everything brilliant and full lipped. I stood at the edge of the bank, arms wrapped around my chest, water beading on my gooseflesh and watched as the world snapped back into place.
The rain didn’t stop and mother cut our holiday short. Father had failed to return and so together we packed up the house, leaving the keys on the kitchen table where an ecstatic cloud of flies hovered above the unwiped surfaces. We ran to the car and were soaked through by the time we slammed the doors. We sat for a moment side by side, breath mingling as it turned to steam. Mother reached into her pocket and pulled something out. It was a small stone tortoise the colour of snow and wise as a pearl. She placed it on the dashboard between us, started the engine and drove away.
(c) Emily Tobin, 2020
Comments