by Elna Holst
When we are done, we gather up Ren’s and Maman’s scant possessions: the quilt, the calendar, the diary, a plethora of household goods Ren has crafted over the years, strings and thongs and rope, earthen pots and pans. Ren ties them up into a bundle and hoists them on to one shoulder, while I carry her satchel on my back, my handbag slung across my front. Chien wags his tail uncertainly. We set off.
The beach seems closer this time. I suspect we have taken another, less circuitous route than the one I embarked on, so many months ago now I have lost count.
The whiteness of the sand is blinding after all this time in the jungle; the waves crashing in make my pulse bound. I thread my stump through Ren’s arm and she stops and crushes me to her, until I gasp for breath. My hair is damp where she presses her face into it. I don’t insist on seeing her tears.
Finally, she lets go in order to turn me around and point to something in the distance, and for a second I think: It’s a ship, a ship! But of course, it’s not. It’s a heap of sticks and stones. Something flapping in the wind. It’s…my bra.
“Bloody hell. I didn’t think that would last.”
Ren smacks her lips. “Mi–randa tie good knot.”
I squint at her suspiciously. “Really?”
“Ren help much little.”
“Hmm.” I edge closer to her. “I bet. Why didn’t you come out, though? Why didn’t you come when I called?”
She dips her head, pulling me along towards the stone hut without a roof.
“Scared. Scared see Dim–randa. Come out sea, come like Maman. But Maman sleep.”
REN WEAVES A new roof so effortlessly, it touches on the preternatural. But then, she must have made hundreds of them, over the years, slowly and laboriously learning and perfecting a skill that so many have invented and reinvented before. I brood over this, as I watch her through my lashes, while I make an effort at housekeeping. I unpack our trinkets and tools, throw out the old palm leaves that made up my original bed and replace them with new ones. How could a six-year-old have survived out here? How can this forty-something being be sitting cross-legged in front of me, all parts present and accounted for, thatching up a new roof for another provisional shelter, against all odds?
When I think about all that could have happened—it makes me heavy, leaden with quixotic grief.
“I wish I could give you your life back again, Ren. It’s just not fair.”
The words are out of my mouth before I have had time to process them, to rephrase them in some way she could grasp. She glances up at me.
“Ren live. Thanks be doctor. Dim-randa brave.”
I shake my head. “I’m not brave. I’m scared shitless. You are the brave one, for agreeing to—to go with me, no matter what.”
She pushes the leaves out of her lap and stands up. I blink in bewilderment.
“Ren come. Go shit.”
She holds her hand out to me, and it’s such a sweet, protective gesture, and yet such a complete misinterpretation of what I’ve been saying, I start shaking, helplessly, with held-back laughter.
Ren’s lips quirk. I put my hand in hers and let her help me up in the sand, and her smile broadens, dimples appearing in her cheeks, and I break down and throw myself around her neck, laughing hysterically.
“I’m sorry, Ren. I’m sorry,” I splutter. “Don’t be scared!”
“Shitless,” she suggests, aping my intonation perfectly, and I nearly have a fit.
She squeezes me to her and pats me, as I laugh and cry, whispering quietly, steadfastly, “Rigoler. Bon, bon. Bon Dimanche.”
THE ROOF HOLDS up. We hold up. After months in the verdant heart of the jungle, I am relieved to be out in the open, by the sea. Notwithstanding her initial qualms, Ren doesn’t mind it much either. No, out of the three of us, Chien is the one who seems the most homesick. As darkness falls, I often catch him sitting with his back turned to us and the never-ending murmur of the rolling waves, whimpering forlornly, his nose pointing in the direction of the forest.
At such times, Ren has a habit of attacking him, and the resulting cheerful rough-and-tumble, dog-woman play has sand flying all over the place. I always watch for a good while, enjoying the display of my lover’s antics, her muscles tightly coiled under her skin, and Chien’s priceless, buffoon-like expressions. I half suspect they like putting on this show for me. It certainly takes all of our minds off anything else than the here and now.
Here and now. I have been coming back to that a lot lately. If it were possible to live—forever, as it were—in the here and now.
The mere thought goes against all my basic cultural programming, makes me feel irresponsible, wicked, wanton somehow. And yet.
“Where did Chien come from?” I ask again on one of these nights, when the two combatants have worked themselves into a sweaty, contented mutual defeat, and I have the honour of having both their heads resting in my lap by the fire, one on each leg. My fingers scratch leisurely behind Chien’s ear, while Ren presses my stump to her cheek, her eyes closed, her face so peaceful it makes my heart clench in my chest like a fist—a happy fist, if there is such a thing. A tender, tempestuously loving fist.
Ren reluctantly opens an eye to peek up at me. She has grown quite used to my inquisitiveness by now. She knows there is no point in pretending she didn’t hear me.
“P’tit Chien,” she offers. “P’tit Chien Maman sleep—Ren Maman sleep. Make friends. Hunt and howl together.”
“But—” I don’t know how to put this. “But Chien can’t be more than ten years old, surely?”
She knows nothing of years. I haven’t really been able to explain the finer points of the concept of time to her. I try again.
“Long time, many rains, Ren alone?”
I bite my tongue. I didn’t mean to make her sad, to put my prodding digits in her wounds, but she just smiles, smiles and looks up at me dreamily.
“Ren has Chien has Dim–randa. Much, much loves.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
WE SWIM IN the sea together. Wary at first, Ren soon relishes the salty buoyancy of the infinite blue, dog-paddling around me as I take less-than elegant breaststrokes with my one and three-quarters arms. Sometimes, out there where the bottom sinks away into murky shadows underneath us, where I lose the sense of whether I am flying or floating, or something in-between, I think of the man, Hav, Ren’s father, his gnawed-at bones resting in the deep. My mind becomes unmoored, vague, wavy. I think how we are all swallowed up, and regurgitated, and finally shattered, scattered by Time.
I think about Grandda and Effie, and how much I miss them, and how there isn’t a ship constructed by man that can bring me to them again.
I think about Maman’s relatives, about Claire and Grand-mère and Grand-père, and how they must have made their peace with their loss, if peace is to be had, years and years ago.
And then, slowly, with effort at first, I begin not to think at all.
“QUOI?” REN HOLDS the clam out to me, looking every bit as nonplussed as when she was faced with the mystery of my severed hand.
I smile. “You’ve had them before. Though you won’t remember, your fever was so high. They’re for eating. I thought we might have them for lunch.”
“Eat?” She looks aghast. “Dim–randa eat pebble?”
I titter and shake my head, picking up my penknife and indicating for her to place the clam on my homemade coconut cutting board. It’s one of the first things I have made for myself that comes close to something of a modern convenience. I am prodigiously proud of it. Timelessly so.
“I’ll open it for you. It’s a delicacy, I promise. I’m sure Maman would approve.”
With a trademark unconvinced expression on her face, Ren puts the offending clam in front of me and watches closely as I find the nearly invisible seam of the two shells and prod it open with my blade. Her mouth forms an unconscious O. I could just kiss her, but I restrain myself, nudging the meat of the mollusc lose and handing it back to her on the half sh
ell, oyster-style.
“Just tip your head back and let it glide into your mouth. Trust me, you’ll love it.”
As she follows my instructions, she keeps her darkening eyes on me, and to reassure her, I pick out another clam from the pile I’ve gathered in the nearby creek and mirror her actions. As the soft, slithery flesh meets my groping tongue, I close my eyes, piloerection tickling my neck, my arms, the tops of my thighs.
“Quoi?” Ren mumbles, and as I open my eyes again I notice her gaze fastened on my nipples, hard and protruding through the thin fabric of my dress.
I blush and Ren cocks her head to the side.
“Dimanche love pebbles, good like mango fruit.”
“It’s just… It reminded me of something.” I avert my eyes, reddening further—though I don’t know why, precisely. I have shared the bare bones of my being with this woman. Why not this?
“Quoi?” she asks again, and for someone who uses her words so sparingly she sure knows how to make the most of them.
“I… It’s not easily explained. I’ll show you later, okay? If you want me to.”
“Okay.” She nods decisively. “Want.”
I smile, despite myself. A flood of carnality gushes through me at the prospect. I nod back, and turn to take care of the rest of the clams.
THAT NIGHT IN her arms, I reach a resounding, soul-wrenching peak, more than a little helped on by the thought of my lips and tongue exploring—of my head held tight as—and Ren—
She strokes me gently, comfortably, her breathing deep and calming as I come to again, serendipitously draped across her on our fresh Sunday bedding.
I don’t know that it’s Sunday. I choose the names of the days of the week haphazardly, to suit my impressions, my mood. It’s a Sunday kind of day in an April kind of month. Ren is the queen of the island, and I am her pageboy, her lady in waiting, her medicus.
How topsy-turvy my life has become. How wonderful.
“I want to eat you out.”
The words jangle out of my mouth, like precious metals, precious coins, and I am all angles and squares, awkward and glowing with desire.
Ren’s eyebrows lift.
“Manger?”
“I won’t actually break your skin,” I soothe, while trembling in her warm, close embrace, not entirely making sense, even to myself. “It’s just an expression, it’s…what we talked about earlier. With the clams?”
“Show.” She inclines her head, indicating that she does indeed remember. “Oui.”
I prop myself up on my elbows and kiss her, running the tip of my tongue along her lips until she parts them with a quiet, infinitely exciting groan.
“That,” I whisper, my mouth still lightly touching hers. “I want to do that—” I push my thigh between hers. “—here.”
“Okay,” she says (her favourite new expression at the moment), patting my bum good-humouredly in acquiescence. “Oui.”
It’s not the passionate approval I had been hoping for, but I realise I’ll have to work for that.
And I do.
I do until I’m fairly soaked with her, until we are both hoarse, shaking and boneless, until I have found and devoured (figuratively speaking) every nook and cranny of her lush cunt, until I can’t tell my tongue from her labial lips, the tip of my nose from the point of her engorged clit, and I’ve lost count of our comings and goings, of our outside and separate existences for this and this and this.
When at last she can take no more, she reaches down and drags me halfway up her convulsing form, crooning and grumbling, lisping desperately, ferociously: “Bon, bon. Bon, Dimanche. Bon.”
I cough and giggle. I’m away with the fairies, to be honest. Completely and utterly checked out of the hotel.
Chapter Twenty-Six
REN IS OFF foraging in the jungle, and I am pacing up and down the beach—aimlessly, simply for the pleasure of feeling the sand beneath my feet, between my toes, for the tranquil, invigorating scents of sea and salt and nothing.
Dr James is keeping half an eye on the horizon, true to form, while I tap a long-forgotten tune against my clavicle.
I am remembering. I am remembering how she got up and dressed herself—Dr Miranda James, GP, I mean—as if she were indeed going to the exhibition centre that day. I remember how she placed her passport and keys and wallet, anything that could easily identify her, in the drawer of her desk at the Hotel Danielle. I remember how she went out in a little fishing boat—a hands-on trip for a small group of tourists, though she got more than one sideways glance on account of her attire—from the port in Sihanoukville. It is odd to see her two—whole and hale—perfectly manicured hands grasping the railing, as the boat bobbed along out to sea. It is odd to feel her intangible distress, her lost sense of direction. It is more than odd to hear the thrum of her pulse, after several hours, as the boat lay surrounded by nothing but water, and all hands on board were occupied by the activity on offer: the drawing of the nets. And she, the terminally unhappy, out of sight in the abandoned end—she—she—
She took the plunge.
The rest she can’t remember. Not even she.
I think about Dani—how radiant she looked in her wedding dress. How it took me by surprise. How off-kilter I felt, how small and lonely and orphaned, for all my self-sufficient doctors-save-lives pride, my expensive habits, my single-in-the-metropolis lifestyle.
And so I came to Cambodia. I went out in a boat.
Out of nowhere, I am running. My heart is drumming all the way out into my fingertips, my breath wheezing, my soles beating and sliding against the loose sand.
There’s a boat. There’s a ship at the edge of my vision, and no mistake; I even imagine (do I?) that I can hear the loud, booming call of its horn slicing through the suddenly abnormally still air. The birds have hidden in the jungle. The fish have grown quiet in the sea. I am gasping with effort, with fear, with the overwhelming need to reach the pour-aller, as we’ve dubbed it—the outlandish edifice I erected all those many, many months ago to draw the attention of any and all seafaring passers-by. The ragged remains of my underwire bra tumble in the wind.
I hit the pole full force, all my weight thrown into it, and it bends—yes—it breaks! Whooping like a chimpanzee, I snatch up the purple lace and leave the rest lying like a pile of conspicuous rubble—hopefully nothing but rubble, as far as any binoculars/spyglasses/telescopic eyes can make out. With my throat constricted, tears I cannot begin to name running down my cheeks, I retreat into the forest, out of sight.
And she’s there. Of course, she’s there. Never too far away or out of earshot—not since the Day of the Snake—two strong, loving arms held out to me, embracing me unquestioningly, as Chien woofs his welcome, welcome home.
After what seems like an eternity, she loosens her hold, wipes at my tears with tender thumbs.
“No go?” she says, and it is more of a statement than a question, really, because she knows. She has always known.
“No,” I reply, and then I speak the way Ren speaks, without reference to time or possession, without a beginning or an end: “I arrive.”
To See a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
—William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’
About the Author
Often quirky, always queer, Elna Holst is an unapologetic genre-bender who writes anything from stories of sapphic lust and love to the odd existentialist horror piece, reads Tolstoy, and plays contract bridge. Find her on Instagram or Goodreads.
Instagram: @elnaholstwrites
Other books by this author
Little x
Candlelight Kisses
“Gretel on Her Own” within Once upon a Rainbow anthology, Volume Three
“The Silent Treatment” within Teacher’s Pet anthology, Volume Two
“Green Love” within Into the Mystic anthology, Volume Two
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