by V. H. Leslie
Evelyn sat down among the fallen apples. Perhaps Blanche did genuinely care for her. Otherwise she would have told Dr Porter what had happened and Evelyn would have been flung out of Wakewater for attacking a fellow patient, to be sent someplace much worse. For all that, it pained her that Blanche didn’t believe her story.
She could understand why, she knew how far-fetched it sounded, talking about a woman coming out the water. But Evelyn had listened to all of Blanche’s stories about the strange things that were happening at Wakewater, never doubting that she was haunted by the memory of her dead child. Perhaps, for all Blanche’s talk, she was closed off to anything she couldn’t readily comprehend.
Or perhaps she was frightened.
Evelyn stood. It was clear Blanche wasn’t going to come today. She looked towards the river and there, beside the bank, stood Milly. Evelyn sighed. She didn’t want to look at her but found that she couldn’t quite turn away. Since the incident in Blanche’s bedroom, Evelyn couldn’t stop seeing Milly. She’d see her walking through the solarium, leaning against the balcony railing to look down into the water. She’d see her in the cooling room, sitting beside the fountain, or sometimes at her side as she bathed, running her pale, dead fingers through the water. And when she woke up, there she’d be, standing by the door, caressing the faded green gown. A gown as wet as she was. And she was always here, beside the river, waiting for Evelyn on the riverbank
Evelyn turned away from the water and made her way back to the house. Without Blanche’s company, Wakewater felt like a prison. The only consolation was that at least there was a routine to adhere to. She was pulled through the day by nurses, sat in baths, wrapped in compresses, drenched and watered, chilled and steamed. It felt like she was biding her time, waiting to get back into Blanche’s good graces. Waiting for the water to heal the rift between them.
As she approached the courtyard, she saw Blanche and Dr Porter come out of one of the side entrances. He held out his arm as they negotiated the stairs and Blanche laughed, accepting it. Evelyn was reminded of the first night she had met Blanche. How she had blushed in Dr Cardew’s company, appearing to listen so attentively. She’d flung her head back then in the same coquettish manner. Dr Porter pointed towards the river with his cane, and they set off in its direction, walking side by side. Evelyn could hear Blanche’s laughter echoing off the water.
She waited until they were some distance off before she made her way into the main building. She walked through Wakewater’s labyrinthine corridors, past Mrs Miller clanging pots in the kitchen, winding her way deeper into the house. She fully expected Dr Porter’s office to be locked, but he was a man who trusted his patients, confident in his power over them and over women in general. The gentler sex were too respectful, too timid to go sneaking amongst his things. But Evelyn had already transgressed, at least in the eyes of society. What was opening one more door?
It was a masculine space, designed to convey authority through the mahogany panelling and dark furniture. The walls were filled with books, books that none of Wakewater’s female guests were ever permitted to read. She knew what she was looking for, though she didn’t fully understand the strange impulse that had led her here.
She began to open Dr Porter’s cabinets and drawers. Journals and medical textbooks seemed to pack every shelf and cavity. Her initial cautiousness was replaced by a sudden reckless desire to uncover his secrets. She knew they were in here, Blanche had told her so. Making her way systematically through the room, she hesitated upon opening yet another mahogany door. But there, displayed in a leather case, was what she had come to see.
The cabinet was full of obstetric and gynaecological instruments. They gleamed in the dark interior, like the river when sunlight skimmed its surface. There were a variety of scissors and callipers, forceps in various sizes, some hideously large. Scalpels lay encased in their leather holders alongside a series of sharp objects that resembled crochet hooks. Evelyn reached in towards what seemed to be the largest object in the collection, an eight-pronged cervical dilator. And beside it lay that other instrument of torture, the dreaded speculum.
She held the cold steel in her hand. She wondered if this instrument had seen as much action as the ones she knew were employed so regularly by the police and doctors in the lock hospitals on women suspected of prostitution to ascertain whether they had symptoms of venereal disease. Washed in a solution of potash and oiled before use, one speculum could be used on dozens of women in one day. Some who weren’t prostitutes at all. Most women objected to the examination, though it went ahead regardless, often with force, whilst others were detained in prison until they consented.
Evelyn placed the speculum back down. Dr Porter’s collection did seem more like something a torturer would prize than anything devised in the name of medicine. She imagined they hadn’t seen much action since Dr Porter had become such a devoted practitioner of the Water Cure, and for that she was thankful.
It had been curiosity as much as anything that had driven Evelyn into Dr Porter’s office, but now standing in front of this assemblage of steel, she knew she was meant to take something. Something he wouldn’t miss. It seemed only fair since Dr Porter had stolen Blanche that she should take something back. She ran her fingers over the assortment of metal objects and pulled a scalpel from its leather sheath. Placing it in her pocket, she closed the door.
23
Kirsten
Kirsten dreamt she was on the bank of a river. Beside her was a boat and along the prow was inscribed Melusine. Further along the bank stood the woman with the long dark hair, staring across the water. She was dressed in the green gown, but it didn’t look wet or torn as it had done before. It almost seemed to sparkle in the twilight. She walked towards Kirsten and pointed to the other side of the river.
Kirsten didn’t know what she expected her to do. The woman climbed aboard and sat down at the bow, waiting, staring out at the water once more. Kirsten saw the oars balanced against the sides and realised that she was meant to row her across. She clambered into the vessel and, using one of the oars, pushed them gently off.
The boat bobbed on the surface initially until Kirsten got her stride. Then it cut through the water with speed. Kirsten was glad that her strange companion had decided to face the water. There was something unnatural about her, about her ashen skin and her hair that seemed so dark it had to be wet. The woman pointed into the distance and that was the first time something hit the boat.
They both reeled from the impact. Careful not to drop the oars, Kirsten peered over the edge.
A figure lay face down in the water. It was a woman, entirely naked, her long hair billowing behind her in the current. She swayed with the movement of the water in time with the boat. Kirsten carefully extracted one of the oars, stood and tentatively prodded the body. It sank against the touch, the momentum propelling the body over so that it faced the surface.
Kirsten fell back into the boat.
The woman had been opened up. The incision began just under her breasts, and the skin had been pulled back to reveal a hollow space inside. Like the images of Anatomical Venuses Kirsten had seen in Manon’s flat, all the neat parts inside had been taken out. The woman was completely hollow like the vessel Kirsten was sitting in. Kirsten stood on shaking legs and, looking around, saw that the river was littered with corpses. Hollow, floating women, bereft of what made them biologically female.
The woman with the long dark hair pointed into the distance once again, and Kirsten, numb with shock, resumed her position. She began to row once more, but their progress through the water was impeded by these floating, barren bodies. It was like cutting through a sea filled with ice floes. The corpses crashed against the prow and the small boat rocked wildly. Kirsten tried to avoid them, to push them aside with the oar, but there were too many. The strange women with the long dark hair continued to point into the distance and Kirsten knew that she had to kee
p going forwards, despite the dangers, despite her fears. Another collision set the boat rocking more violently than before and Kirsten felt a strange sense of the inevitable, that the boat would overturn and plunge her into the water.
24
Evelyn
Evelyn woke in cold water. She’d been dreaming about the river and about Milly. In the dream Milly had been dressed in the gown of green taffeta, but it hadn’t been ruined and torn as it was now. It looked as if it had just been made, the fabric shining with an emerald lustre. She looked like a mermaid, with the silk trail fanning out behind her. Milly had told Evelyn that she wanted to sail down the river, and there on the bank appeared a boat, the kind of flat-bottomed ones gentleman would punt along the Thames. Evelyn could not refuse her; she looked so enchanting in her green dress.
Evelyn assisted Milly into the boat and she stepped inside so lady-like, careful that the hem of her gown didn’t touch the water. Evelyn picked up the oars and pushed them off, the action of rowing strangely familiar though she’d never done it before. She was vaguely aware as they inched their way deeper into the river that neither of them could swim. That if they fell overboard they would most certainly drown. But that had not been the worst of it. For in the water floated the most monstrous forms, hundreds of them, their bodies battering against the prow as it cut through the water. Using her oar, Evelyn had prodded one such figure bobbing along the surface, little more than debris on the current. It was a woman. But not a woman. Just the shell of a woman, really, hollowed out, devoid of her sex.
Evelyn sat up in the cold bath, shivering from the memory of the dream more than the temperature of the water. It had been warm before she fell asleep. She was alone in her bedroom, Mary had not returned from whatever errand had called her away. Evelyn reached into the water for the scalpel; it was still there, the metal even colder than the water.
Evelyn looked at her veins, blue like the river, and like the river her blood gushed along a network of tributaries. It would have been easier if the water was still warm. Mary had drawn such a hot bath that when she first stepped in the steam had obscured the green dress hanging by the door. It would have been easier in warm water for the blood to flow. She’d have hardly noticed it. She would have sank into the warmth and let her body drift downwards.
But the water was cold, like the river. And Evelyn had seen what floated along the river. It was better in the bath. In this little vessel, that would carry her toward death. She didn’t want to be at Wakewater anymore, she just wanted to sink beneath the surface. She held the scalpel in front of her, examining the blade. It was designed for precision. Just one little cut.
Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow moved by the door. She thought it was just the dress rustling in the breeze before she saw Milly.
But Milly’s expression looked different than normal, more pained. She didn’t smile as she touched the green dress, or make to walk toward her as she normally did, to run her hand through Evelyn’s bathwater. Instead, she turned on her heels and opened the door.
‘Milly?’
But Milly was gone, the door partially open, the green dress hanging lopsidedly across the entrance.
Evelyn climbed out of the bath, pulling her clothes over her wet body. She hardly cared about drying herself, part of her already belonged to Milly’s watery world. She retrieved the scalpel from the cold water and made her way to the door.
She could feel the cold weight of the green dress as she slipped past it. She looked out in the hallway and there, along the corridor, was a series of wet footprints.
Evelyn stepped through the water that puddled across the threshold, knowing that her watery footprints would now accompany those she was following. Trailing behind them, she made her way down into Wakewater’s passageways, winding deeper into the main building until she passed through yet another door. The hallway behind it was narrower, perhaps indicating that she was in the servants’ quarters, but it stopped suddenly at the summit of a staircase, leading downward to what she presumed would be a basement.
The footprints continued down the stairs. Evelyn made her way down after them, following not just the watery trail but the sound of voices rising up from below. As she reached the bottom, the sound became more audible – a repetitive, deep guttural exhalation – and alongside it, a higher-pitched trembling cry. It was a voice she recognised.
Pushing the door open, she knew what she would see.
There, lying in the water, two naked bodies clung together, moving as one. They were in a pool – a large tank, to be more precise, though the sides were hardly much higher than a bathtub and it was made of metal. She could see only part of Dr Porter, his thigh muscles contracting and relaxing, not unlike the motion of a wave. But she could see all of his companion in front, moving in line with him but against the water that crashed against her breasts and stomach, a faint line of bruises across her throat like a necklace. He pushed against her back, forcing her lower in the water and then he seemed to shudder to a stop. Blanche, seeing that he was relenting, pushed herself back against him, riding the movement of the water until she shivered in a similar way.
The water was silent. Evelyn wanted to sink into the ground but she was rooted to the spot, scared to make a sound that might give her away.
Then Dr Porter stretched and waded toward the side of the tank. Climbing out, water drained from his body, a body covered in coarse dark hair, not at all like the surface of Blanche’s smooth skin. She looked almost dry as she followed him out, her body seemed to repel the water.
‘We’ll resume your treatment tomorrow,’ Dr Porter said, wrapping a towel around Blanche’s shoulders.
She flashed him a smile, a secret teasing smile that Evelyn had thought was reserved just for her.
Evelyn felt numb as she stepped back into the shadows, as if her body had only just registered the impact of the cold water she’d been lying in earlier. She looked one last time at Blanche then retraced the watery footsteps back to the surface.
25
Kirsten
Kirsten sat up in bed. She touched her stomach, half expecting to feel her soft, fleshy insides hollowed-out like the women in her dream. But she was whole. She pulled the covers aside and Manon’s notebook fell to the floor, the images and notes on drowned women scattering across the floorboards. She made her way to the window and pulled open the curtains.
Though it was still dark, Kirsten could see the river, dark and ominous, still in possession of that strange allure. What was it that attracted her? Was it the mysterious denizens it harboured? The ghosts of drowned women, calling her to join their number?
Kirsten moved away from the window towards the kitchen. She needed coffee and the clarity it would give her. But stepping into the hallway she was conscious of walking on water, and looking up saw the walls were running wet.
The walls, the ceiling, the floor all gushed water. It seeped through the plaster, like an open sore that refused to heal, water bubbling up from beneath the floorboards as it had in the cooling room.
‘What do you want?’ Kirsten screamed, falling down onto the soaked floor. It was as if she was enveloped in water that frustratingly never revealed its source. She touched the walls and the water ran down onto her arm. This was not a little water, the product of a faulty pipe somewhere. She could not rationalise it. Until some settlement had been reached, Wakewater would never be watertight.
Kirsten picked herself up off the floor, slung on her cardigan, and made her way towards the door. She could hear Sahara mewing behind her, perhaps trying to prevent her from going, though her efforts stopped at the threshold. She would not cross over into Wakewater’s grounds and Kirsten could understand why. There were too many things here that couldn’t be explained. As she made her way down the stairs, she wondered if she was being foolhardy, venturing out into its domain. But the water was already inside. What choice did she have?
The evening air was cold and Kirsten wrapped her cardigan tighter around her. She had not walked beside the river at nighttime. It was dark there, on the bridleway, away from the glow of streetlamps. But as her eyes became more accustomed, she could see that the river moved as it always did, no more menacingly than in the daytime. Perhaps it was because it always possessed a danger, irrespective of day or night. Kirsten had come to accept its perilous nature, now that she’d learnt so much about its past, about what it concealed within its waters.
She hadn’t expected to see the woman with the long hair. She stood on the bank in the distance. Part of Kirsten had convinced herself that she had hallucinated the woman; that she’d materialised out of the stress of her break up, the anxiety of moving somewhere new. But here she stood, as real as could be. She was dressed in the same green dress, but it was faded now, torn and tattered from being in the water too long and, as Kirsten approached, she saw that the woman had the same worn look in her countenance. Her hair ran wet across her shoulders.
Kirsten continued to move towards her, though all her instincts told her to run the other way. What had she read in Manon’s notebook? That the rusalki lure you to the water, entangling you in their hair to drag you down beneath the surface. She could feel a cold spray from the water reach her skin. But she wasn’t ready to belong to the water yet.
‘Melusine?’ she said when she was in speaking range.
She could see the woman more clearly now, could see that despite her decayed appearance, there was a vitality in her bearing. The water was energising her. She smiled at Kirsten and turning, raised her arm to the water.
