Water Shall Refuse Them

by Lucie McKnight Hardy

  My dad snorted. ‘OK, if you want to know, there is something about her.’ He shrugged. ‘Something that drew me to her. She’s very charming, fascinating, I suppose. But the truth of the matter is that she tried it on with me. She threw herself at me. She was all over me.’

  My mother’s smile fell slightly as if she was made uncertain by this revelation and my dad seemed to gain strength from her weakness.

  ‘You know what? She even tried to get me to screw her on her kitchen table.’

  The smile froze on my mother’s face and then disappeared. I’d managed to remove the orange peel in one go, and I let it fall to the floor.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ my mother said, shaking her head. ‘She’s my friend and she wouldn’t do that.’

  My dad carried on talking as if he hadn’t heard her.

  ‘But I didn’t do anything. I stopped myself. Even when she was throwing herself at me, I stopped myself.’

  ‘No. It’s not true. I don’t believe you.’ She was still shaking her head, tiny brittle movements to and fro.

  ‘And it’s a shame you couldn’t have done the same.’

  My parents looked at each other, my dad’s eyes wide and his mouth downturned. When he spoke, his voice had a finality to it.

  ‘We’ll go home. We’ll go home tomorrow. We’ll just pack the trailer and leave and go back to our lives and try to start again. This was a mistake.’

  ‘We can’t go.’ My mother’s voice was quiet. ‘We can’t go because Petra’s here and I can’t leave her.’

  This was the final straw for my father.

  ‘She’s not here, you stupid woman. She isn’t here and she never has been here. She’s dead.’ My dad was speaking slowly and carefully, and enunciating every word, as if he was talking to a child or an imbecile. ‘She hasn’t come back to tell you that she’s forgiven you. You’ve made that up to make yourself feel better. She’s not here because you drowned her, don’t you remember? You left her in the bath on her own when you went to answer the phone and our little girl—my little girl—drowned.’ As he spoke his voice was getting louder and louder, until he was leaning into her face and shouting.

  ‘It was him, wasn’t it? On the phone? I know. And I know that you know. Did you really think I didn’t realise? All those times, those parents’ evenings, when you’d smile and giggle and act like a bloody teenager. It was embarrassing. I felt ashamed for you. And all those times when I got back from work and you weren’t there, and then Mrs Akhar would come out with Petra, and you’d left her there, with the bloody neighbour, so that you could go off and carry on with him. With him. With Peter-Fucking-McPherson. Jesus Christ, woman. With Nif’s teacher! What were you thinking? Did you really think I didn’t know?’

  My dad had run out of words. He stared at my mother, waiting for her to reply. Her face had turned to marble. She looked about a hundred years old. She stood, looking up at my dad, her mouth open, little jagged breaths coming quick and fast. She looked like the magpie we’d trapped, unable to escape, panic coming off her in waves.

  She turned away from him, as though she couldn’t bear to look at him, or couldn’t bear for him to see her face. My dad carried on speaking quietly, his voice measured and calm and accusing.

  ‘It was him, wasn’t it? Him who phoned that night. The night she drowned. Just tell me, Linda.’

  At first I couldn’t imagine my mother screwing Mr McPherson, but then I remembered her how she was before Petra died, when she was shiny and glossy and all the things she’d stopped being since. Even though I couldn’t have defined it as such back then, there had been a feral side to her, a wantonness that should have made an affair with my teacher unsurprising, a sexuality that had been detected by the boys at the school gates all those months ago. All this time, when I’d tried to remember my dream, maybe I had known that my mother was having it off with Mr McPherson, but I’d blocked it out. I peeled off a segment of the orange and popped it in my mouth.

  I couldn’t see my mother’s face from where I was sitting, but I knew what it would look like. Her eyes would be closed, the eyeballs bouncing against the papery skin of her eyelids. Her thin lips would have made a deep scratch across her face and her cheeks would be hollow and shadowed. In my mouth the orange was sharp, almost bitter, the flesh slightly dry and woolly, as though the juice had been leached from it.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ At first I wasn’t sure that she’d said anything, her voice was so low. I don’t think my dad heard her, because he didn’t respond. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and this time her voice was loud enough to carry through the heavy air. My mother took a step towards him, and reached a hand up, as though she was going to touch his cheek. My dad flinched and pulled away, and there was sadness as well as anger on his face.

  I peeled off another orange segment and sucked on it.

  My mother took hold of my dad’s hand and clutched it. She went down onto her knees in front of him. She had her eyes closed, but her face was turned up towards him. She started muttering.

  ‘Forgive me father, for I have sinned. Forgive me father, for I have sinned. Forgive me father, for I have sinned—’

  My dad pulled his hand from hers with a violence that caused her to fall backwards.

  ‘You stupid woman. You stupid bloody woman!’ There was a new energy in him, something I’d not seen before. He leant down and put his hands on her shoulders, and there was real violence in his eyes. He moved his hands up to her neck and the skin there grew even paler where his fingers applied pressure. She didn’t fight him off, just looked up at him, all the time her eyes closed and her lips moving silently.

  My dad roared, a feral noise, and threw his hands into the air. He stalked over to the bust which sat on the table and ripped off the hessian and plastic wrapping. From where I was sitting I couldn’t see the face, but I was looking forward to seeing my mother’s reaction when she saw that it was now a bust of Janet.

  I put the final piece of orange into my mouth.

  My dad walked back towards my mother, the bust held in front of him, and when he was standing a couple of feet from her I could see it properly. I could see the changes that had been made to it. I could see that it wasn’t Janet anymore, but it wasn’t my mother either.

  It had my mother’s high forehead and swooping eyebrows, but Janet’s shorter, tilted nose and full mouth. The plump cheeks were Janet’s as well, but the chin was my mother’s, sharp and pointed, and the tendons, taut in the neck, also suggested my mother. My dad still hadn’t carved the eyes, and the blank stare made it impossible to tell whose they were. It was a strange amalgamation of the two women.

  My mother now had her hand at the place on her neck where her crucifix used to hang, her fingers plucking away at the hollow in the middle of her collarbone. She was still mumbling to herself, ‘Forgive me father for I have sinned,’ over and over again, and she still had her eyes closed. She didn’t see my father when he rested the bust on his thighs, both hands taking the weight of the top of the head.

  But I could see, in the whiteness of his knuckles, the effort that it took for him to use his thumbs to gouge out the eyes.

  I sniffed my fingers. They smelt of oranges.

  Lorry was asleep on the sofa in the living room when I crept in. He was lying with his arms thrown back over his head, like he used to sleep when he was a baby, and his bottom lip was sticking out. His legs were almost completely healed, the skin on them fresh and shiny and taut, with just a hint of redness here and there to suggest that there was ever anything wrong with them. I lay down next to him and nuzzled into his little body, enjoying his warm biscuit smell and the softness of his skin.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of sleep, listening to Lorry’s soft snores and gentle grunting. When I got up and went to my bedroom the sky outside was getting dark, but it wasn’t just the impending night that brought the darkness. It was a different sort of darkness, a gloom that came from the clouds that were massing
on the horizon, drawing a curtain over the valley.

  Twenty-five.

  Monday 16th August 1976

  I felt the change as soon as I woke up the next morning. I opened my eyes and everything felt different. I couldn’t work it out at first. There was a soreness between my legs that made me think of Mally, but that wasn’t just it. There was something else.

  I got out of bed and the air was heavier. Looking out of the window, I could see that the sky was stained grey. Everything was eerily quiet; not just an impenetrable silence, but a complete absence of sound, a vacuum. No birds singing, no cows or sheep or lawnmowers. Not even a grasshopper. The weather was on the turn and the thought excited me. There was a storm on its way.

  Downstairs, I filled the kettle from one of the bottles and lit the camping stove.

  I could only remember one summer storm, from when I was very little, before Lorry and Petra were born. I must have been about six or seven. My mother and my dad had taken me out for a picnic and we were sitting at the top of a hill, the red and blue checked picnic blanket laid out on the grass. There were sausages on sticks and orange juice and egg sandwiches that smelt like farts. The air was getting heavier, and my mother was complaining that it was giving her a headache.

  The dog had followed us from the car park, and it came over and started sniffing at the food. It was a spaniel, I think, although I didn’t know that then. My dad shooed it away but it always came back again, curling around us, its tail tucked between its legs. It was a scruffy thing, and it didn’t seem to have an owner. It was all on its own.

  It had already stolen a sandwich off the plate, and then it came back for a sausage. I had the cocktail stick half-way to my mouth when, quick as lightning, it leant in, and with its horrible damp mouth, pulled the sausage off the stick in one swift movement.

  I don’t know why I did it, but I grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and held it steady and I jabbed the cocktail stick into its eye. The dog started yelping, and put its chin down on the floor and started pawing at its face. It was funny, seeing it like that, and I remember thinking that it served it right for stealing food. I had a well-developed moral code, even at that age. Then the first drops of rain came and we grabbed everything and bundled it into the picnic basket and ran for shelter.

  I don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t know if I was told off or punished in any way, and I don’t know what happened to the dog, but my dad said later that it was because of the incident at the picnic that we never had pets of our own.

  The kettle boiled and I made a cup of tea.

  Mally had said that we were going to get revenge on Tracy Powell. I didn’t have the relics anymore to give me strength, so instead I’d put the jar with the raven’s skull in the treasure bag. I’d put the wire, coiled up into a circle, in the back pocket of my shorts. I was aware of the strength of it, the tension wound up in that one length of metal, pressing against me through the fabric.

  I drank my tea and let myself out of the front door. I anticipated the squeaking of the gate before I opened it, so I climbed over and onto the patch of gravel next to the Cortina and the pile of broken concrete. I stood in the lane for a moment, in the space between the two cottages, and breathed in the musky air. Still hot and dry but with a definite suggestion of change. The clouds that gathered over the top of the valley had grown heavier, even greyer and more ominous than the night before, and their reflections were suspended in the blank eyes of the chapel windows.

  The gate outside Mally’s house still hung on its hinges and I scraped it open over the grass. I made sure not to touch the circles scratched into the gatepost—the witching circles—and pulled the gate closed behind me. The gravel path sounded brittle under my feet as I made my way to the back of the house, where the vibrant colours of the flowers in Janet’s garden shrieked even louder in the accumulating gloom.

  The top part of the stable door was open and I peered in. Janet was sitting at the kitchen table, her face resting on the heel of one hand, elbow on the Formica. She was sucking on a cigarette, the lines around her mouth scored deep into the beige skin as she took drag after drag. It was as if she was trying to get as much of the smoke into her lungs as she possibly could, and she would suck in three or four times before letting out a long stream of smoke and then start sucking again. The hand holding the cigarette was trembling and the fag-end was glowing red, on-off-on-off like a beacon.

  She looked up as I pulled the door open.

  ‘Alright, love?’ She was wearing a grubby white dressing gown and when she spoke she moved her hand away from her face and the movement caused the fabric to shift slightly. I caught a glimpse of the pale brown swell of a breast. Her voice was croaky and sore. ‘You looking for my boy?’ She leaned back in her chair, the dressing gown coming together again with the pull of the fabric. She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘You’d better watch him. He’s one for the ladies he is. I’ve lost track of the number of girls I’ve had to help out. Keep your legs shut near that one, I’m telling you!’ She chuckled, a deep, throaty sound that set her off coughing.

  I wanted to turn around and leave, but instead I found myself pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, the treasure bag on my lap. I was facing Janet over the scratched tabletop. My dad was right: there was something about her, something mesmerising. Sitting there in her dirty dressing gown with her hair sticking up in tufts and her smeared make-up, she was both repulsive and compelling. There was an aura about her, a fascinating sexuality that was almost tangible. I remembered what my dad had said about her, and I had the absurd thought that maybe he was right: maybe she had bewitched him and my mother after all.

  Behind Janet stood some shelves, each one crammed with little brown bottles, like the one I’d seen her give my mother that had ended up smashed on the kitchen floor. Above our heads, the bunches of drying herbs hung like bats in a cave. She saw me looking.

  ‘My herbs,’ she said. ‘I collect them and dry them out and use them to make my medicines.’ She ground out the cigarette into a tin ashtray.

  ‘Like the ones you give my mother,’ I said. ‘And the poultice for Lorry’s legs.’ Even I could hear the hostility in my voice. She must have heard it too. She shrugged.

  ‘It’s working though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mally told me about you,’ I said. ‘About you being outsiders and all of the people in the village hating you because of your ancestors. Is it true?’

  ‘Mally’s a sensitive boy,’ she said. ‘The people round here think he’s just a good-for-nothing waster, screwing the girls and then dumping them.’ She cackled out a laugh, a brief stuttering sound that stopped abruptly. She picked up a packet of Benson and Hedges from the table and tapped one out with a yellow-stained finger, the nail varnish old and chipped. ‘And he is a bit lazy, to be fair, but for some reason the girls can’t leave him alone. He’s even had that Fat Denise, and the ugly one, Tracy.’

  My cheeks caught fire, and she laughed again.

  ‘Oh, don’t look like that. There’s not much going on round here that I don’t know about. Small place this. Not a lot to do. Kids will make their own amusements.’ She sniffed. ‘Adults too, I reckon.’

  She was looking at me intently now, scrutinising me. She put the fag between her lips and picked up a small silver lighter. My mother’s lighter. The flame licked at the tip of the cigarette. She inhaled, causing the lines between her eyebrows to sink deeper. She kept her eyes on me the whole time.

  ‘Took it, did he?’

  ‘What?’ I looked straight back at her.

  ‘Your virginity. Pop your cherry, did he? That’s his thing, see. He likes to be the first one. He’s a bit of a maverick, my boy. A pioneer. I’ll give him that.’ I could feel the heat edging its way up the back of my neck, making me bolder.

  ‘I know you tried it on with my dad.’

  She blew out the smoke and at the same time waved her hand, clearing the air but dismissing me at the same time.

/>   ‘Oh, that was nothing love,’ she said. ‘That’s nothing to worry about. Just pretend, that was. Just a bit of fun.’

  She rested the cigarette in the ashtray and walked around the table. She stood next to me and when she put a hand on my shoulder it felt cool, even through my t-shirt.

  ‘Just a bit of fun, Nif, my love.’ I looked to the side and saw that her dressing gown had fallen loose again. Her breast was exposed, the nipple standing hard and proud against the soft flesh. I looked away, but I knew she’d seen me looking.

  She took her hand away, but slowly; there was no urgency to her movements. She reached behind her and I heard her pick up the kettle from the worktop, then the glug of water as she filled the kettle from a bottle and the scrape and pop of it being plugged in. A click.

  She walked back around the table and sat down again. She picked up the cigarette and flicked the ash off the end into the ashtray. She rested her elbows on the table, holding the cigarette an inch away from her mouth. The smoke curled up between us.

  ‘Look. I like you Nif. I like your family. I think you’ve been through a lot and I’d like to help you. There’s nothing going on between me and your dad. Not for want of trying on my part, I can tell you, but he’s just not interested. Told me as much himself.’ She smiled, a tired smirk that made the eyeshadow in the corners of her eyes crinkle. ‘Truth is, a woman can get pretty lonely round here.’

  ‘Why do you stay here then? Mally told me no-one here likes you. You’re like us. You’re outsiders. Nobody wants you here. The chapel lot made that clear. Even Tracy Powell thinks you should leave.’

  She took another drag on her cigarette and held it in for a few seconds before blowing it out in one long puff of smoke.

  ‘What else did he tell you?’ She looked at me through the smoke, and for a long moment her features were clouded and hazy.

  ‘He said that the people here, Mr Vaughan and Mr Beynon and all the rest, don’t like people like us—outsiders—because of what your ancestors did. He told me that they came here and brought the plague with them and wiped out half the village and that’s why they don’t like outsiders.’