by Emma Chapman
There is a sharp smell of fish. I watch Hector spoon the food out into a bowl. He ladles some of it onto a spoon, and lifts it towards my mouth.
‘I can do it, Hector,’ I say, trying to sit up again, but he fills my mouth with food so I can’t speak any more. He continues to feed me until the bowl is empty.
‘Now, I don’t mind taking care of you,’ he says. ‘But I think we should go and see someone next week when you’re feeling up to it. It looks like your pills have stopped working, and we might need to try something new.’
‘Hector, I’m fine—’
He holds his hand up.
‘Marta, we both know that isn’t true. You need to get some help. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
I stare at him.
‘Kylan’s really worried about you,’ he says.
‘I think I might just be remembering things,’ I say, ‘from when I first came to live with you. I don’t think I need any more medication.’
‘I don’t understand why you want to remember those things, Marta,’ he says, putting his hand on the crown of my head. ‘You weren’t yourself back then.’
‘I think I need to.’
‘It’s much better if you just take your pills,’ he says. ‘We’ll find you some new ones that work better. You’ve got past all that.’
‘Maybe I haven’t,’ I say. ‘Maybe that’s why I need to remember.’
I still can’t sit up properly, so I can’t look him in the eye. He squeezes my hand.
‘I’m your husband, Marta,’ he says. ‘I know what’s best for you. It can’t do you any good to put yourself through all this. It’s not rational. We’ll go and see Thomas again. See if he can’t prescribe something new.’
And then it flashes before my eyes: shivering in the draughty waiting room, Hector’s hand over mine. The man from the pub with the beery breath, leaning over me. The doctor. The rumble of Hector’s voice. I found her, Thomas. She hasn’t been eating. Thomas nods. She hasn’t spoken, but she cries in her sleep about her parents. The doctor’s hands are cold.
I can tell he is never going to understand, so I nod.
‘Good girl,’ he says. ‘Now get some rest.’
‘Are you going to stay here?’ I ask.
‘I might pop out and see Mother later,’ he says. ‘But you don’t need to come. Stay here, where it’s safe.’ He strokes my cheek. ‘I hope you feel better soon, darling.’ He bends down, kisses me on the forehead, and then leaves the room.
18
I lie awake, listening for him in the house. I don’t want to be in bed: I want to get up, to walk around the house and think. The stories Hector has told me about what happened before we got married don’t quite feel right. Now that the darker side of things has shown itself, it’s not easy to forget.
Eventually, after what feels like hours, I hear the front door slam. Going to the window, I watch Hector, in his big coat and gloves: putting on the snow chains, de-icing the windscreen. He looks up at the house and I duck down behind the curtain. I listen to the engine start up, peering out again, watching the grey car move slowly down the lane and out of sight.
I go straight to Hector’s study, lifting paper after paper on his desk. I read all the postcards on the notice board, and then I start on the drawers. Stationery supplies, folders, paperclips: nothing is amiss. Examining the bookshelf, the books are boring, with titles I don’t understand, and when I pull them down the pages inside are written in symbols, utterly incomprehensible.
Then I see it, on the second shelf: How To Be a Good Wife. I pull it down, and flick through the pages, but it is all familiar: crude drawings and photos of grinning women doing domestic tasks, and the accompanying tips. There is nothing here I haven’t seen a million times before.
I sink back into the desk chair. Perhaps Hector is right. Perhaps the girl is only in my imagination, a part of the old me that I am better off forgetting. I have a good life here, with a loving husband and son, and there are lots of things to look forward to. There is the wedding, and watching Kylan’s life unfold. Grandchildren. Perhaps we could even move closer to the city.
When I look up, I see her feet, clad in ballet shoes, the ribbons trailing across the floor. Pink legs, tights, muscular thighs, and her leotard. She has her hands on her hips, her hair scraped into a bun. Her face is made up, and she wears black eyeliner underneath her wide grey eyes. She reaches out for my hand. I take it and pull myself to my feet.
On unsteady legs, I follow her along the corridor, down the stairs, through the hallway. She opens the front door and steps out, pulling me after her. It is cold; the valley is still and white. She lets go of my hand, kneels down next to the huge slab of stone that is the porch step, and begins to push at it, motioning for me to help her. We push and push until it begins to move. That sound: of stone on stone, of the earth shifting. I feel my teeth clench, my muscles ache. I let out a noise of frustration, but it’s moving now, out of the way. I keep pushing. A dark space emerges, as long as the porch step and just wide enough to fit through. I peer into a low crawl space, running underneath the house, about a metre high. The daylight reveals the ends of two poles, like broomsticks, jammed horizontally into the space that must run underneath the hole. I pull and the edge of a ladder emerges.
I sit up and look at her. She nods. Getting up, I go back into the house and get the torch we keep under the kitchen sink, for emergencies. When I return to the hole, she is gone.
I look around me at the long empty stretch of our driveway. The sky spreads out above me, and I can hear the sounds of birdsong nearby. The sun shines: it is a crisp cold day full of air that feels brand new. The lane is empty, the valley deserted. No one can see me here.
Lowering myself into the space, there is a narrow earthy area, only about a metre across, in which I can just crouch. As my eyes adjust to the light, I make it out: a metal door in a metal frame dug into the earth at my feet. I push on the door, expecting it to be locked, but it opens a fraction. All is dark below. Pushing again, the metal jarring, it moves a bit further, then more, until it is fully open.
I clap my hand over my mouth: the smell coming from the hole is strong and I can’t bear it. Mildew, mould and something else, some sad smell that makes my toes curl.
Shining the torch, I make out a small room, two metres square, two metres deep. The narrow beam of white light flashes over the shadowed frame of an old bed, not big enough, with a thin mattress. There is a duvet cover, bunched into a pile. A table, grimy with dust after all these years, blotches rising from the surface. A toilet with no lid, its dark mouth disappearing into the shadows. There is a sponge in the sink in the corner, a nub of soap. The yellow clock with its grinning black face is on the wall, long stopped, the hands marking ten minutes past three.
I move the light back to the bed and see her sitting there, on the pillow, with her back against the concrete wall and her legs crossed. She holds a fan of cards in her hands, jiggling her legs, and reaches forward to pick up a card from the pile.
He is sitting opposite her with his back to me. His hair is brown. I watch him reach his hand forward and pick up a card, his nails long for a man.
‘Gin rummy,’ he says.
She tuts. ‘I only need one more card.’
He lays out his cards into two piles on the duvet cover. ‘Sorry,’ he says. He scoops them up.
She keeps her cards in her hand.
He reaches for them.
She moves them out of the way. ‘Are you going now?’ she says.
‘In a minute.’
‘We haven’t played chess yet,’ she says.
‘We’ll have to play another day.’
He tries to hand the cards to her, but she won’t take them so he puts them on the duvet. ‘I’ll try and come back soon,’ he says, still sitting.
He watches as she picks up the cards and starts to lay them out.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he says.
She looks up.
> He pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to her.
I watch the colour drain from her face, her mouth drop open.
‘Where did you get this picture?’ she says, her voice breathy, thick, like fog.
‘The newspaper,’ he says.
I watch her run the tip of her finger over the small square of paper, murmur something inaudible under her breath. She looks up at him.
‘How did you know that they are my—’
‘I’m afraid they’re dead,’ he says, speaking over her.
Her face changes, wiped blank. Her eyes turn black.
‘There was a car accident.’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But it’s true. I thought you should know.’
She still stares. He stands up and I can see the top of his head. Quickly, she folds the picture up and slides it under the mattress.
He props the ladder into place.
‘I’ll try and come back soon,’ he says.
He puts one foot on the bottom rung, and I switch off the torch and sink further into the crawl space. When he reaches the top, he pauses, as if he has heard something. He turns and looks right at me, his clear blue eyes all I can make out in the darkness. I look back at him, but his eyes register nothing.
It’s Hector, as I knew it would be. It has been Hector all along.
I lean forward, ready to push him back into the darkness, to pull the heavy door shut and lock him down there, but when I switch on the torch again, they are gone. The bed is empty, the duvet a messy pile again, the smell still overwhelming. Quickly, I lift the ladder back into place, and holding my breath, climb down into the room. I reach down to the bed frame, feeling under the mattress. The edge of the newspaper cutting meets my fingers. I lift it out, clambering back up the ladder. Slamming the door down, I climb out of the crawl space. I blink in the sunshine, try to dust some of the dirt off the front of my nightgown.
In the kitchen, I lean over the sink. A mess of hot brown emerges from my mouth; my stomach burns. I stare at the smear in the glancing silver of the sink bowl: it begins to swim before my eyes. My heart is thumping hard, sending shooting pains through my chest. I clutch the edge of the kitchen surface. I can’t breathe: my breaths trip over each other, coming faster, each one shallower than the last. Finding my way to a kitchen chair, I sit down and put my head in my hands. I can feel the blood in my temples. I try to count the beats, but they slip past me, faster and faster.
I open the piece of folded paper in my hand. It’s small and square, cut from the newspaper, nothing but a picture with text on the back from some other story. A man and a woman stand under a tree in a garden. The man has a slight smile at the corner of his mouth, and in a rush, I feel his hand on my shoulder, the smell of leather and Paco Rabanne, so strong I almost cry out. The woman has long dark-blonde hair, almost down to her slight waist, and I feel it brushing against my cheek as she leans down to give me a kiss goodnight. In between them stands a girl with blonde hair, squinting into the sunlight. It is her. It is me.
I need to get out of here. Telling myself I will look at it again later, I climb the stairs two at a time. In our bedroom, I pull off my nightgown and dress in jeans and a black polo neck. I don’t bother with underwear. Slipping the piece of newspaper into my pocket, I reach into the bottom of our shared wardrobe and pull out the old green overnight bag. I throw things in, as much as I can, until it is full. I raid the bathroom: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, towel. Taking my jewellery out of the top drawer of my dresser, I collect my make-up and a picture of Kylan that lives there. I pull at the zip, willing it to close.
Downstairs, I stop in the hallway, trying to think clearly if there is anything else I need. Looking down at my shaking hands, I see my wedding ring, glinting against the strap of the bag. I pull it off and drop it onto the kitchen table.
As I walk back through the hallway, I see the huge cabinet on the wall, crammed with the frozen faces of my dolls. I walk to the doors, open them, and pull out my favourite doll: the one with the white blonde hair and grey eyes. Peeling off her pink dress, I hold her naked body in the palms of my hands. Turning her over, I slam her into the wall next to the cabinet, over and over, as hard as I can. I hear a crack. I keep going. Then I put her back into the cabinet.
Opening the front door, the large stone doorstep is where I left it, exposing a dark opening. There is no time to lose. I lean forward and push the stone back into place, sweat breaking across my forehead, tears springing into my eyes in frustration. When it looks like it always has, I get up and go to the other car.
I throw the bag into the boot and open the driver’s door. I hear a vehicle approaching. Through the windscreen, I can see the tight line of Hector’s mouth, his eyes concentrating on the road ahead. He raises his hand in a wave.
I stay where I am.
He pulls into the drive, pauses for a moment and rolls down the window, blocking my way.
‘On your way out?’ he says.
‘I need to get a few things from town.’ I feel my voice tremble.
‘Are you feeling better?’ he says.
I smile. ‘Much,’ I say.
His brow wrinkles. ‘Are you sure you’re OK to go out?’
I nod. ‘Can you make me an appointment to see a doctor next week?’
Hector’s eyebrows rise.
‘I think you’re right,’ I say. ‘We need to put this all behind us.’
He smiles. ‘How long will you be?’
‘An hour, two at the most.’
‘If you wait a minute, I’ll come,’ he says.
I look at my watch. It is almost one o’clock. ‘I want to catch the market before they pack up,’ I say. ‘I won’t be long.’
My heart shudders in my chest.
‘I’ll see you later.’
He rolls the window back up, pulls forward into the drive. Pulling out onto the road, I turn left, away from town, pressing my foot down on the accelerator.
19
I drive fast, passing the pale blue farmhouse, the yard scattered with junk and scrap metal, the sign advertising eggs that nobody ever sees. The red buildings lie low in the valley; the machinery waits.
Speeding through a tunnel of green-and-white trees, I check the rear-view mirror repeatedly. The road behind me is empty. Turning left, I begin the zigzagged incline, traversing the mountain, making my way out of the valley. It slopes upwards, disappearing into dark carved rock tunnels and then re-emerging into the white world. To my left, I can see the patches of snow clinging to the land below; the vast stretch of water glimmers through the morning haze. I imagine my little car tumbling down the side of the mountain and into the water, filling slowly but surely, sinking below the surface.
At the top, the next valley is laid out before me. The sharp, rocky crags; the new fjord, a silvered mass like the belly of a fish. I have never seen this side of the mountains, and I feel a thrill run through me like an uncoiling ribbon.
There are hikers here, their tight, strong bodies wrapped in walking clothes: scarves and hats and gloves. My eye is drawn to a man and a girl, hand in hand. The man is tall and thin with sandy blond hair, and the girl’s white blonde hair is plaited. He smiles as I drive past, and I feel an ache of familiarity. When I glance in the rear-view mirror, they have disappeared.
As I look for them, the smell of boiled sweets and wet canvas fills the car. I hear music, too-loud rock. I feel a sweet wrapper beneath my fingers, the wetness of his mouth as I drop it in. His golden hair shining in the orange evening sun; stubby fingernails tapping the steering wheel along with the music. The sound of the wind flapping against the tent, green morning light through the material. Then it’s gone again, and I am alone, driving down a steep road, moving faster and faster. I put my foot on the brake, straightening the steering wheel. When the road flattens out, I come to a passing place and pull the car over.
I slip the scrap of new
spaper out of my pocket and hold it up to the light. It is a black-and-white photograph, grainy, soft and malleable in my hands.
We are standing in front of the wide dark spruce tree which grows in the garden. Its shadow falls behind us, heightening the brightness of the sun which reflects our skin.
My father stands proud under the lower branches of the tree. His sandy hair falls neatly down the centre of his head. I see a flash then, of the evening light in his hair, and I know it was him in the car with me.
My mother stands next to him, smiling widely at the camera, her arm around my father’s waist. Her dark blonde hair falls over her shoulders and she wears a summer dress I remember with red cherries on the front, her feet bare. She looks impossibly young.
I stand in front of my parents, wearing a dress with puffy sleeves and flowers across the bottom. My hair is pulled back, and the sunlight wipes out everything except for a mouth and two dim black holes for eyes. I remember the itch of the dress at my neck: how hot it was, standing in the sun.
Looking up, I find myself at the side of the road. I know I don’t have long. Once Hector sees the empty wardrobe, my wedding ring on the kitchen table, I’m sure he will be right behind me, driving fast. I run my fingers over the different faces, breathing them in. Remembering.
* * *
I drive through villages and towns. Even out here, there are road signs that point the way towards the city and I follow them. The sun shines from the roofs of the wooden houses along the roadside. After a while each conglomeration of village necessities, village shop, pub, the older magnificence of the hotels, starts to blend together into one long unchanging stretch of green. I pass glassy fjords that reflect the huge sky: my head soars. I have always known it was a long way.
I have broken the rules. You are not to go further than here. It is not safe. I hear Hector’s voice, filling the car, and then I am in the passenger seat, bundled in a heap of blankets. The sound of the engine, musty and loud: the rattle of warm air through the vents. Outside the window, the greens moved too fast, the mountains loomed too large, and I shut my eyes, resting my head against his shoulder. Through his chest, I heard the rumbling of his voice as he pointed out the town hall, the post office, the hotels. At the school, he stopped the car.
