The Water Children

by Anne Berry

  On Monday morning he returns to work. Naomi seems a bit brighter, and assures him that she is feeling much improved. He tunnels down into the welcome fug of the market. To Enrico’s inquiries as to the whereabouts of Naomi, he manages some bright chatter about a stomach bug. Throughout the morning he takes money, gives change, and trots out superlatives about swinging London to round-eyed customers. And all the while Sean’s eyes are pinned on him, until, choosing a lull in trade, he finally speaks up.

  ‘I’m sorry that you got involved in all of this. It’s unfortunate, you know.’ When he makes no reply, Sean touches his arm diffidently. Owen is polishing one of the bags, buffing the black leather until it shines like liquorice. He shakes the hand off and carries on rubbing.

  ‘It’s one of those things. Forget it,’ he mutters.

  ‘You probably feel I behaved very badly. I know it must look that way.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, really. Let’s not talk about it, eh?’

  ‘It is not as clear cut as you might think,’ Sean says. Owen takes a breath, is going to say more and then changes his mind. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He is reluctant to meet Sean’s eyes.

  ‘Oh, c’mon now, Owen. What are you thinking?’ Gingerly, Sean fingers his rash. It appears to be spreading, and Owen can see that a cluster of minute yellow blisters have formed there.

  ‘I don’t know . . . only that perhaps you should have been there.’

  ‘Christ, I don’t even know if it was mine,’ Sean mutters under his breath.

  ‘Does that really matter?’ And suddenly Owen is angry. This was his mess and he should have cleared it up. ‘If I hadn’t gone with her she would have been all alone. That’s pretty awful.’ He lets the bag drop and wrings out the duster as if it is a wet flannel. Then the glitz of the stalls diverts his gaze.

  ‘You’re right. But I’ll make it up to her. And I’m sure she’ll forget about it in no time.’

  At this, Owen nods grudgingly. The entire episode has filled him with distaste and unease. He doesn’t want to be any part of it. But he cannot simply abandon Naomi, at least not immediately. When it has all calmed down, he thinks he will probably move on. He is here to escape tragedy, not greet it. He grew up in its shadow, and now he wants to emerge, to tackle a comic role that skims the surface of life. For the remainder of the day he is grateful that they hardly converse at all. Trade picks up and is brisk. The constant stream of customers robs them of the opportunity for any more confidences. Arriving at the flat, he lets himself in. Calling out her name, he feels like an actor in the opening scene of an Alan Ayckbourn play.

  ‘Naomi? Naomi? I’m home. Where are you?’

  A malevolent hush surges back at him, devoid of humorous undertones. The only noise he can detect is the rasping of the taps. No more than a minute, that’s how long it takes to check the shoebox space, the empty lounge, to register the unoccupied chair by the window, to view the bedrooms with their vacant beds, unclothed and slovenly as louche women. Then he is outside the bathroom’s closed door, unaccountably afraid, his voice querulous.

  ‘Na . . . Naomi?’

  The stillness is oppressive. He snatches a breath, depresses the handle and pushes. The door swings wide. He expels air on a long, horrified sigh. It is a scene of carnage. Naomi wears nothing more than bikini pants, black lace, and looks inappropriately sexy. She lies in a foetal position on the tiled floor. Her arms, elbows bent, are level with her head. Blood is smeared everywhere. It stains her pale body, streaks her blonde hair and oozes from her slashed wrists. Even her cheeks are rouged with it.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he gasps, dropping to his knees, taking hold of her shoulders. Her eyes are closed. He thinks she is dead. Don’t leave me, Owen. That’s what she said. But like Sarah, he left her, failed her. And now she is dead too? ‘Naomi! Naomi!’ He is shaking her frantically. Her eyelids twitch for a second before opening. Her lashes are wet; her tears are crimson. And her striking eyes stare vacantly beyond the gleam of a razor blade, held loosely between her fingertips. ‘Oh, Christ! Please, no! Naomi, what have you done to yourself ?’

  Panic seizes him and he acts instinctively, grabbing up towels, slipping the blade from her hand, using it to shred them, then lashing the strips round her bleeding wrists. He races to her bedroom, yanks the blanket off the bed, charges back with it. She does not resist as he lifts her to her feet, bundles her up, carries her through to the lounge and lays her down on the settee. But when his hand reaches for the ’phone to call an ambulance, hers whips out to stay it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks. Owen looks at her in frank amazement, at her impossibly bright eyes peering out at him from a face sponged with blood.

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance. What do you think I’m doing?’

  ‘No.’ The hand, tacky with fast-drying blood, grabs his. Her grip is surprisingly strong.

  ‘What do you mean, no? You could have died. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’ When she shakes her head, Owen erupts. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ He tugs free, and still holding the receiver, starts dialling. But again she prevents him, bringing her closed fist down on the cradle and disconnecting the line.

  ‘I am not going to die,’ she announces calmly. ‘Don’t be so irrational. You must compose yourself, Owen.’ The reproach makes him mistrust his own senses. She has just tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists, and yet here she is, telling him to moderate his behaviour. He flings down the receiver and it hits the wooden floorboards with a clatter.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, this is insanity! You need to go to hospital,’ he shouts, his arms spiralling about him in vexation.

  ‘If I go to a hospital, do you know what will happen?’ she says coolly.

  ‘They’ll stop the bleeding and make sure you’re okay,’ he fires back.

  ‘I’m fine now. Listen to me, Owen. If I go to hospital they will want me to see someone, a psychiatrist probably. They will think I am not well and—’

  ‘Well, you aren’t,’ he mumbles, his mouth as unwieldy as wet clay. An image of his mother flashes into his mind, of the plate crashing down over his father’s bent head, of the blood that slowly soaked into his tea-towel turban.

  ‘No, Owen. They will think I am not well in here,’ she retorts. She taps her head with a bloodied index finger. ‘And they’ll try to fix me, to lock me up. I couldn’t stand that.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he rejoins tersely, ‘but you have to see a doctor.’ She sighs with exasperation. ‘I mean it. I’m not arguing about this.’

  For a moment she considers, then acquiesces with an ungracious shrug. ‘Very well. But a private doctor and they must come here.’ He agrees quickly. At least he will have peace of mind knowing that she has been examined by a physician. After this has been decided he washes off as much of the blood as he can, careful to keep her bandaged wrists dry. While she is tucked up in bed, he succeeds in tracking down a private doctor who is prepared to make a house call. He mops the bathroom floor as he waits.

  Doctor Laidlaw is a man of imposing stature, a Scot with a neatly trimmed, battleship-grey moustache and beard. He appears unruffled when he emerges from her bedroom. He follows Owen through to the lounge, the expression on his face phlegmatic.

  ‘Your . . . um—’

  ‘Flatmate,’ Owen chips in.

  ‘Ah yes, well, your flatmate should be fine,’ he tells him in his practised bedside manner. ‘I’ve bandaged up her wrists. The main thing is to keep them dry for a few days.’

  Owen rams his hands deep into his trouser pockets. A feeling of unreality has persisted ever since his grim homecoming earlier this evening. ‘But won’t they need stitching or something?’ he asks, astonished, unable to believe such a potentially serious injury can be dealt with so simply.

  ‘Goodness, no! The cuts weren’t really very deep and they were nowhere near the main arteries. I think it was more a cry for help than anything else. They’ll heal well enough on their own.’ He exudes an aroma of
tobacco and spicy male cologne, and there is a kind of permanence in his solid stature which reassures Owen more than any platitudes can do. ‘She’s a wee bit depressed after the termination,’ he goes on. ‘A common reaction. These things take a while to get over.’ He shoots him a shrewd look, and it strikes Owen with something of a shock that he probably assumes the baby was his. ‘It’s just a question of time. I’ve left some spare bandages, but I should think a sticking plaster will do well enough in a day or two.’

  Chapter 11

  Naomi has dragging pains in her belly. She sits in the spoon-back armchair unconscious of the passing hours. Some days are eked out for a year. On others, Owen leaves for the market, and in a blink he is back. He fusses, asks questions, makes her eat and drink. He doesn’t realize what she is concealing, though. Fantastic colours, mixed up in the palette deep inside her, are seeping through her flesh, dyeing her skin. Blues, purples, greys, yellows, greens and . . . black, chimney-sweep black. Oh, she is saturated in black. No one notices except The Blind Ones. And they won’t tell, not ever. No reason to.

  Miss Elstob was precise with her punches, only landing them where the light didn’t shine. When she arrived at Fulwood Cottage Homes, Naomi was five. By the time she ran away she was fifteen. In the reception room they stole her clothes and gave her new ones, so that she looked like everyone else. And they stole her name too. Father Peter bent down and peered into her strange eyes.

  ‘And she said unto them, “Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.”’ He put his hands on her head and twirled strands of her silky black hair between his thick fingers, as he spoke these words. Then, ‘I christen you, Mara,’ he said. ‘This is your new home. And Mara is your new name.’ She wanted to tell him that she didn’t like the name, that she preferred Naomi. They said she had nits. But she knew that already. She liked to pop them between her finger-tips. They took her to the assembly hall and chopped off all her hair. Then they rubbed something that smelled oily and fiery into it. There were lots of stone houses that all looked identical, and a patch of grass, with more stone houses the other side of it. They brought her to one, cottage number 3, full of children. They told her she would be sharing a bedroom with five other girls. There was another bedroom full of boys, and a room where the house mother, Miss Elstob, slept. She was just like the old woman who lived in a shoe, and who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

  When she wet the bed, the Mother made her wrap the sodden sheet about her, then shoved her in a corner, shoved her so hard that her head banged against the wall. The others came and jeered, and held their noses, and pulled ugly faces. They sent her to lots of different schools. She hadn’t been to school before. She didn’t like it there either. They called her one of them fresh air kids, and spat at her in the playground. The teachers smacked her with rulers, and reading and sums were so difficult that her brain fizzed. She had to travel to and fro on buses, and they gave her tokens to pay for the tickets. All day her tummy rumbled, and sometimes in the night as well, because it was continuously empty. They made her do sewing and knitting. She pricked her fingers so often that they bled into the material, and she kept dropping stitches, and pulling the tension of the wool too tight. Miss clipped her round the ears for that, and chided her for being so clumsy. Then she made her stand on a chair. She was still there long after The Blind Ones had gone to bed. Eventually she became so tired that she fell off, and only then was she permitted to crawl upstairs to sleep.

  She had to attend chapel too. Father Peter was there and he made her skin creep. He had a shaggy beard and moustache, so you couldn’t see his face properly, and his nose was large and red and sore looking. The things she liked were the snow, when it was deep and smooth and it made everything clean. And sledging down the steep pasture next to Blackbrook Road. She liked playing on the slide and the swing. And when she was flying high up in the air, she could see all across the Mayfield Valley. She liked picking blackberries from the hedgerows, and bilberries on the moors, and eating them until her stomach ached, and her lips and tongue turned dark purple. She liked it when the bus drivers overtook each other on the Redmires Road, and all the children screamed with excitement. And she liked seeing the films in the big hall, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Keystone Kops, and sitting round the Yorkshire range, listening to music on the radio, singing along. She liked taking her token to buy sweets from the stores, as a Friday treat. Sometimes she was sent to the office to collect ice cream for pudding. When she spooned it into her mouth it felt so good, the cold creamy sweetness, that she tingled all over.

  But there were more of the things she hated, much more. She hated cleaning the dirt off the wet shoes when they got back from school, and polishing them until she could see her face in them, and making all the beds that she’d stripped in the mornings. She hated scrubbing the floors with red carbolic soap, until her hands stung. She hated how her head throbbed when Miss Elstob whacked it too hard, and she hated the baby coming and being put in a cot beside her bed. It squeaked like chalk on a blackboard and then began to cry, and when she put her finger to Baby’s mouth and shushed it, it only yelled louder. She hated having her ears and neck inspected, and the smack she got if they were grubby. She hated her legs being chapped with the cold, and having chilblains on her hands and feet. She hated when she was struck with the broom handle, and she hated being locked in the coal cupboard, so that it felt like she was nailed in a coffin and would die there.

  What she learnt was that you can hate something so terribly that it put a fire in your chest, and made you want to pull your toes and fingers back into your body. And at the very same time you could love it, love it so that your heart became a giant’s heart and you kept floating up in the air, having to concentrate to keep yourself on the ground. The hate was what she felt when Father Peter’s face loomed up in her dreams, and he peeled her from her bunk bed. He took her off to the small room at the far end of the hut, and then peeled more layers off her. And it was as though he wanted to eat her up, poking himself into her, and sucking his fingers ravenously. And the love was what she felt when she stumbled onto the beach, and the sea sighed at the sight of her, and stretched out its salty arms to pull her in. Marske-By-The-Sea, the wooden huts, slipping out of her body and watching what Father Peter was doing to her from the ceiling, the need to wash, the dew-damp grass, the steep cliff path, the sea, the astringent sea.

  Mara is sitting on her hands now, plumped on a chair in the kitchen. Can’t talk. Mustn’t talk. If she talks, Miss says she’ll cut out her tongue. ‘Snip, snap,’ she says, making her hands into scissors, opening and closing her lumpy fingers. And Mara knows she’s not lying. The big sewing scissors are in the drawer, sharp and ready. So she sits on her fingers, and her hands feel all numb. The Blind Ones do the same. Listening to the radio, squashing their fingers under their bottoms.

  Miss is smoking, huffing and puffing and coughing and hacking. Mara pretends that her own lips are pasted together. ’Cos that way she can keep the words tied up. The evenings are slow-slow time, sat there on her hands. But she doesn’t want to go to bed. When Miss Elstob turns the light off, that’s when the baby starts up her caterwauling, howling and yowling, so that she can’t stand to listen, so that she has to stick her fingers in her ears. But still the screaming comes, like pins, hundreds of red-hot pins pushed in her pincushion eardrums, pop, pop, pop. The Blind Ones pull the sheets over their heads and shrink, until they are far away, out of earshot. She can’t do that. She’s tried. But the baby’s noise slides in, no matter what.

  She told The Blind Ones. But they only laughed at her. ‘Don’t be daft, Mara,’ they said. ‘The baby’s dead. Don’t you remember? They came and took it to the sick bay. It had a fever.’ And then they said, ‘You shouldn’t have put it in the cold bath. Miss said that’s what did it, what’s gone and killed her. The cot’s empty, see.’ And they showed her the cot with the stained mattress and the dents in it, said it wa
s proof, and that she was a loony. ‘The baby don’t make no noise now, ’cos it’s dead.’ And some of them followed her about and whispered that she was a murderer, with her funny eyes and her heavy blink. They did it for weeks.

  And then one day the black tide rolled up from her toes, and she wheeled about and ran after them. She caught one of them. And by then the blackness was gushing out of her, so that she couldn’t stop punching and slapping and kicking, like Miss did to her. And they all came and gathered round. The superintendent hemmed and hawed, and Miss Elstob screeched and hopped about like a chicken, and the children whooped and jeered. And their faces stretched, and their mouths fell open. But she carried on. She couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. So they had to pull her off. Even then she fought the air, pounding at it. And they dragged her by her collar and hurled her in the cupboard again. Only this time it wasn’t hot, it was cold, and the coal was like black ice. Her fingers were numb when she wrote the name they had given her, the same as when she sat on them. She got a big splinter under her nail, but she didn’t feel it, so she left it there till they let her out.

  After that The Blind Ones were frightened of her. They mumbled and jerked their heads in her direction. But if she stared them down, they soon scurried off. Miss Elstob pulled her lips off her stained brown teeth, and told her that she was a very bad girl. She said that her real mother had lived in Sheffield, that she’d sold sex for money, and had come to a bad end. She said that was why Mara had been brought here, to Fulwood Cottage Homes, ’cos her mother was dead and she didn’t have a father.