The Water Cure(14)
We meet them properly for the first time at the dinner table, when they enter the room dressed in clothes that belonged to our father, clothes which are too big for them, even though the grown men are at least a head taller than any of us. We are sitting already when they come in, but we rise to our feet, ceremonial. I touch the square of muslin folded up in my pocket, just in case. The men line up on the opposite end of the table to us, sunburnt and weary. Mother stands at the head.
‘I’m Llew,’ the dark-haired one says. He puts a hand on the shoulder of the boy, next to him. ‘This is Gwil. Say hello.’
Gwil moves his feet, looks at each of our faces quickly, then to the grimy ceiling. ‘Hello,’ he says.
‘I’m James,’ says the older one. ‘Gwil’s uncle. Llew’s brother.’
I am surprised and happy at the idea that blood ties them together; it feels like some kind of familiarity. We say our own names, in order of age.
‘Sit,’ instructs Mother, and we do as we are told.
The men eat quickly, too quickly. I worry they will choke. Llew shucks oysters and slides them on to his plate and on to Gwil’s. There’s something about the smoothness of his movements, his eyes luminous and quick. His arms have a fur on them that disgusts and enchants me at the same time. Grace kicks me under the table sideways when she sees me looking.
Llew teaches us how to pronounce his name, but none of us can do it. I resolve to practise it secretly so I can impress him. Drops of condensation roll down the wine glass that holds my water.
James asks me how old I am, and I shrug. When he turns his attention to Grace and asks how far along she is, Mother takes the opportunity to preach about the superiority of daughters. We shuffle in our chairs.
‘Do you have daughters?’ she asks the men.
No, not yet, they tell her. Maybe one day. She is disappointed. Grace murderously dismembers the tail end of the fish.
We eat in silence for a while. Mother seems to be debating whether or not to say something. In the end, she puts down her fork.
‘Nobody comes here any more,’ she tells them. Her voice is lowered, but we can all still hear her. ‘It’s not like it was before.’ She pauses. ‘So, I don’t know. You need to make your own way from here.’
I think of the damaged women in the boats with their thinning hair, their strange voices and gifts wrapped in brown paper. The translucent skin at their temples, at the backs of their hands.
‘They’ll come,’ Llew tells her as he takes more food. His voice is kind. ‘They’ll find us. We just need to stay here for a few days until they do.’
Mother doesn’t say anything more, just lifts the fork to her mouth. I want to cry at the ease with which they know they will be found.
After dinner, we go about the rituals stealthily. Mother distracts the men with playing cards, fanning them out on the dining table and encouraging them to play. We leave the room through the tall glass doors and watch the shadows of them moving against the wall, arms reaching, the unfamiliar hum of their voices falling away. We pick our way down to the shore with salt cupped between our palms, and we lay it down with the usual care.
It is just before I go to sleep, the sky still light, when I see a strange bird pass overhead. It is not one I’ve ever seen before, and I look up in awe at the stiff wings, its shadowed shape dark against the sky. It’s far away, yet I can hear the drone of its song very faintly through the open sliver of my bathroom window. Grace is in her room and I call for her, I run to her door and knock on it until she follows me. She stands on the toilet seat to get a better angle, but she only catches the last seconds before we can no longer see it. I wonder where it nests, whether it flies endlessly or bobs on the waves, pulling together a raft made of the faltering world’s debris. Grace finds my hand with hers, and we link fingers tightly for a second before she pulls away, as if remembering that we no longer do that.
We have never been permitted to cry because it makes our energies suffocating. Crying lays you low and vulnerable, racks your body. If water is the cure for what ails us, the water that comes from our own faces and hearts is the wrong sort. It has absorbed our pain and is dangerous to let loose. Pathological despair was King’s way of describing an emergency that needed cloth, confinement, our heads held underwater. What constituted an emergency was me and my sisters crying in unison, unable to stop.
I love to cry, though. With King gone, I have forgotten to feel guilty about doing it. There is no one left to notice what I do now. Alone in my room, the windows flung open and the sun lazy against my eyes. Or underwater in the pool, where all water is the same water. Sometimes I imagine the death of my sisters, the image of them standing against the rails on the terrace and paper-crumpling down to the ground, one by one, and then the tears come even when I remind myself that they are still alive. It’s important, the knowledge that things could always be worse. Imagining them gone makes the edges of my love sharper. In those moments I almost understand what they mean to me.
The night the men come, I cry quite a lot without knowing why. My sleep is shallow. Their distant bodies are thumbprints of heat, somewhere lost in the house.
My husband left the village. My brothers left. Everyone else’s husbands, brothers, sons and fathers and uncles and nephews left too. They went in droves. They apologized for leaving. There was danger in them. They hoped that we would understand.