The Water Cure(27)
The very next day when we wake, we find our mother gone.
Sky is the one to discover Mother absent from the kitchen, from the garden, from the lounge. She lets out a great wail, calling our names until we run in with our hands up and our minds automatically listing the nearest weapons, the heavy objects, the best way to roll the bone of your knee into a person’s stomach or nose.
Person, not woman. New kinds of defensiveness come to us as we run, words and images swimming up through our minds as though they were there, latent in us all along, waiting for something to call them – the musk of Llew’s armpit, the visible veins of James’s forearm, even Gwil’s flat, pale child’s body walking back and forth through the garden – and here we are with our own new violence, which we do not need and cannot use in this breathless, clenched moment. All we can do is comfort Sky, hold her shaking body so tightly that we cannot feel our own shaking.
We picture Mother in white. We picture her with cloth in her mouth and bundled at her extremities, more than King had needed, much more. We picture her out on the last slip of sea before she moves beyond sight in the pre-dawn, looking back to the house in the mist, her daughters treacherously asleep.
We think it might be a test, not unlike the other acts of endurance we have undergone through our lives, so we walk around the house, calling until our voices are gone. Opening cupboards that have been closed for years, finding nothing but old brooms and the acrid smell of mice. Peering inside the chest freezer and the fridge, both large enough to hold a woman. Hauling open the coal cellar, a small hatched enclosure around the back of the house, though the leftover dust and darkness make us shudder. Nothing.
‘We did see your mother, earlier,’ Llew tells us down by the pool, where we find him doing press-ups by the side of the water. I am thrilled, secretly, to see him move, to catalogue it alongside his other movements. He stops when we are next to him, stands and looks down at us, panting slightly. His hair is sticking up, his eyes tired. ‘She set off before dawn, knocked on our door on the way. She didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘You should have woken us,’ Grace says. ‘She never goes to the mainland. Never. It was always King.’ King, whose body could withstand whatever atmospheric poisons we keep in check here.
‘We didn’t do the breathing exercises,’ Sky says, but Llew just shrugs.
‘I just know that she took the motorboat,’ he tells us.
We go down to the shore and, sure enough, only the rowing boat is left.
‘Why didn’t you go? Or James?’ Grace asks. ‘You would be faster.’
‘You really want us gone, don’t you?’ says Llew, unbothered. ‘Well, I don’t want to leave Gwil yet. He’s still weak. Besides, our people are coming for us, and it’s best for us to stay tight, for now. We agreed it all with her.’
We look at the lone boat where it is moored up, tiny in the distance.
‘Your mother,’ he says, chuckling a little, shaking his head. ‘She’s an admirable woman. I think you’re underestimating her.’
‘So you’re friends now?’ Grace asks, hard-faced. ‘Why would she leave us with you?’
‘She should have told us,’ Sky says, kicking a pebble down the beach, and then another.
Llew throws up his hands. ‘Well,’ he says, glancing at me. ‘You’re the ladies of the house for now. I suppose that means you’re in charge of the rules.’
‘We should carry on as normal,’ Grace says. ‘She could come back at any time.’
Llew gazes out to sea, his hand cupped against the light. ‘You’re grown-ups now,’ he says, turning back to us. ‘Do what you want.’
Back in the dining room we sit at our usual places, taking things in. Sky rearranges the cutlery into geometric patterns. Grace looks out through the window to the empty beach and does not tell Sky to stop.
‘A break from Mother,’ Grace says eventually, and she starts to laugh, because hasn’t this been our undared-for dream, us sisters together? Sky and I join in, hysterical. Once we calm ourselves we eat yesterday’s bread spread with the last honey, a crystal mess at the bottom of the jar. The men come in just as we are finishing and we lift our hands to them. James is gripping Gwil’s shoulders. They are all in a good mood. Llew meets my eye, winks.
I should search further for Mother with my sisters, but the opportunity to be alone with Llew is too good to miss. Some excuse, any excuse. She could arrive home at any time, I tell myself, it is not yet an emergency, and even through my elation I am angry at her for leaving without telling us. Llew is not in the lounge, the swimming pool, the forest. Eventually I find him on the old tennis court, hitting mouldy balls against mesh grown soft with rain and age. He does not jump when I step inside his field of vision, but instead reaches down for a racquet and throws it to me without missing a beat. We play for a short time in the sticky heat, my body feeling heavy, deliberate. Soon he looks at me, then puts his own racquet on the floor. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he says. He rests a hand lightly where my spine meets my neck, the fragile knot of bone.
In my room, the air under the high ceiling charged with dust, he tries to talk to me about why we are here, but when I explain that we are just keeping ourselves safe, in retreat from the danger that extends to the very atmosphere itself, he goes quiet. Stop talking, Lia. I have said too much. Instead we kick off the blankets to the floor, the satin coverlet with the fussy embroidery, shining bumps meant to emulate flowers. We take off our clothes in the afternoon heat.