The Water Cure(25)

The second we reach my room I insist Sky gets into the tub, sitting down with her and spraying the water over our skin and hair as hard as I can wrench the tap. Sky turns away from me as I rinse her long hair and rub a palmful of suds into it. When we are clean enough she curls herself at the bottom of my bed, asleep almost immediately. The ceiling above us is high and open, the air stale. I watch her for a while as the sky outside starts to lighten once more and the halo of water from her wet hair spreads outwards, revealing the tracery of the mattress underneath.





One day I looked at my husband and I thought, Would you knock them down? Would you stand up with your arms raised if they came for me? Coming for me was a thing I considered often, though the ‘they’ was hazy, it changed all the time. Once I had thought this bad thought, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought it when he was asleep and I was awake. No, I realized one day. He would lie down and let them.





Mother opens my door without knocking in the early morning, her face ruinous with exhaustion. She meets my eyes, silently motions for me to join her in the corridor. Her hand comes out to touch my face, just for a second. I can see myself in her, the bird-like plane of her cheekbones. ‘How much do you love your sister?’ she asks, and when I outstretch my hands wide to indicate this much, she nods. She leans into my ear and asks me, quietly, to do something for her.

First I splash my face with cold water in the bathroom’s grey light.

‘Why was it a boy?’ I ask her, made brave by her request.

She says that it wasn’t. No ambiguity. And so that is it.

I carry the baby close to me, through our home and out on to the beach, afraid to unwrap the bloodstained cloth. Despite my frantic washing I can sense that there is still blood on me too – I can smell it, I can feel it – and I am afraid that one day there will be a stain we can’t get out, and that will be it for us, the marking of the end. I am afraid somewhere in myself of the sweat belonging to Llew that I let dry on me, toxic dirt I have not washed off me yet, and I realize that this is the first time I’ve thought of him in hours.

Please let me live a clean and blameless life. Please let nothing touch me again, except for him, for without him I will surely die, is the prayer I say as I carry the baby away from our home for ever.

It is important to concentrate on anything but the coldness at the heart of the blankets, hardly bigger than the glass paperweight I salvaged from an empty room once.

I place the wrapped-up baby at the bottom of the boat. It isn’t hot yet, there is crisp dawn fog where the horizon meets the sea, but I row hard. Normally I would be afraid, but there is no room for that now. My body still aches from last night. I know that disaster can take place despite everything, that there are no guarantees. The sweat drips into my eyes so that the light refracts, and for a second the world explodes around me, and I welcome it. I go as close to the line of buoys as I dare, the water utterly still, and I cradle the baby one last time.

‘I’m giving him back to you,’ I tell the sea. There is no answer as I lower my arms into the water up to the elbow. The small parcel falls down through the water. Burial at sea. The only honourable option.

Halfway back to shore I judge it safe to stop for a second, and there I draw in the oars and cry harder than I have ever cried before. Harder than after the first razor-shell cut, than the time I fractured my ankle in a fall, than the time I fell asleep in the sun for hours and sunburn burst my skin open and Mother poured salt water over it to stop infection taking hold in my body. I press my hands to my eyes and make a noise that scares me, curl myself up to make the grief more manageable. Our home looms from the shore, and for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time in my life, I do not want to return. But I think about the rest of my family, waiting for me. I think about Llew; maybe he is waiting too. And so I do return.

After lunch, Grace is recovered enough to come down to the lounge, my hand hovering at her elbow as we walk the corridors together. Afternoon light unspools around our feet. The men are there too, the three of them slumped in chairs. They have discarded glasses half full of water on the side tables that must carry traces of their saliva and sweat, shoes kicked off where they sit, shoes and clothes that belonged to King.

‘How are you feeling?’ James asks, sombre. He gets up and puts a hand out to Grace, who takes it eventually. He places his other hand on top of hers. ‘We were so sorry to hear the news.’

‘I’m feeling bad,’ Grace tells him. She will not play along.

‘Well,’ James says. ‘That’s natural.’

I stand next to the window, open it wider. Grace brings over a chessboard and we set it up on a table where we can feel the breeze. Gwil watches us, his eyes quick and alert, as if expecting us to make some violent movement. For a second I do want to throw the chessboard on to the floor, a hard laugh threatening to come up through my throat. Llew sits there, sensing something, and reaches out a hand to his son. ‘Come here, Gwil,’ he says. ‘You’re in the way.’ He pulls him into a quick, one-armed embrace, then lets him go.

‘We made coffee,’ James says. ‘Have some.’

I pour a cup for the two of us to share from the cooling cafetière, sugaring it thickly. Grace drinks without complaint. James stares out at the sea, while Llew pulls up a chair to our chess game so he can watch. Gwil joins him but loses interest quickly, gets down on his hands and knees behind the sofa.