The Water Cure(49)

‘That was the last time,’ he tells me. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Lia,’ he says. His head sinks lower in his hands, then snaps up. He looks at me straight. ‘We can’t keep doing this. I told you as much before.’

I decide to say the three words anyway, in case they change his mind. I say them very quietly.

He turns around, looks to the house then turns back to me. ‘I thought you’d be impervious to that sort of thing,’ he says despairingly. ‘I thought you might not be like the rest of them.’ There is something else in his voice too. It takes me a few seconds to understand that it is disgust.

‘God,’ he says, throwing his oar into the bottom of the boat. ‘I’m grieving, Lia. I’m trying extremely hard to hold it together. Can you give me that, at least? Can you understand not to put anything on me?’ His voice is too loud. ‘What are you expecting?’

To be transformed, nothing more. To know that it is worth it, somewhere in my body, what I have put us through.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But I love you.’

He flinches when the words come out of my mouth, and I know that’s at least partly why I keep saying them.

‘I can’t do this now. Not today,’ he says. ‘Not ever, if I’m honest. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

But I do understand. ‘You’re cruel,’ I tell him. ‘You’re so cruel.’

‘I don’t deny it,’ he says. ‘Can you allow it, though? After what I’ve been through? You have no idea.’

My eyes water. I stare at his face, his lips drawn back in a half-grimace, and try hard to hate him.

‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘I should be the one crying.’ Then he is, after all, the back of his hand at his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Lia,’ he says. ‘I’m not a good man. Not even at the best of times.’

‘Why did you do it in the first place?’ I ask him.

‘Why does anyone,’ he tells me, not a question. The salt rises off the ocean around us, and I realize that I have heard enough.

‘We have to go back,’ I say, wiping my eyes with the hem of my dress. He turns his wet face away from me. We do not say another word. It is an opportunity, having his back to me, but I don’t do anything with it. I cannot hurt him, despite the great pain in my chest, as though I have swallowed air.

At the jetty, we separate without a word. I permit myself a final look at the long shape of him disappearing up the shore, into the house.

I walk down the beach, crying so hard that the horizon doubles, overrunning when it comes to the sky. My pain compels me to fall, but I ignore it. I reach the rock pools, inspect each one in turn to distract myself. Anemones and clams grow vast and ponderous. On the smooth strip of basalt exposed by the tide, going out now, I walk as far as I dare.

On the return, I see something sticking up from the sand, petrified wood or old-world junk. A flag of colour. I go closer, scuffing the sand off with my foot at first, and then kneeling to move it with my hands. Broken planks and fibreglass reveal themselves, painted white and red, the vicious edge of a motor. The sand has drifted deep around them, or they have been there for a long time, or someone must have buried them, I realize, as I pull out more fragments.

I scoop some of the sand back over, stand up. You don’t have to think about this right now, I tell myself. And isn’t it good, my capability to show kindness to myself finally at this time of need? I walk away without looking back. Later, I will think about it. Not now.

I go to the ballroom and sit there at the piano, pressing note after note, for some time.

Stop being so self-indulgent, I hiss inwardly, when I notice water falling to the keys. I have gutted enough hearts to know they are just orbs of jelly, that even the fish have them.

And then, I’ll sell my soul to you if you can strike his black heart down dead, I reason half-heartedly with the sea. I’ll be yours for ever if you can just drown him.

But if he was dead he would never be able to reconsider, to tell me he loved me really, so I take it back with alarm. Sorry.

It’s just that I am done with love. But there is nowhere else to go.

There are footsteps and I hope they are Llew coming to find me, to tell me that he has made a mistake. I stand up to find it is only Grace.

‘Lia,’ she says, lifting her hands. They are covered in dirt. I blink and look again, the late-afternoon sun through the windows dazzling me. It is blood. It covers the front of her white gown, a deep stain against her chest. She is hurt, I think, taking a step towards her. She is dying. She says my name again, lowering her hands, and I take another step, and then another.





It’s an old story and I’m so tired of telling it – the oldest story in the world and yet I can’t put it down, I can’t stop it from dragging on my body, so don’t make me tell it again. The story doesn’t end or even begin with me. You can imagine. You can tell it to yourself.





III




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SISTERS





Grace


I think about the falling woman often. I was on the beach when it happened, so I saw it, although from a distance. How one minute she was in the window. She waved to me, or maybe she was just touching her face, brushing her hair away. All I know for certain is that I did wave back. And then she fell from the window’s ledge. There were two other women on the beach with me, and they ran towards her, screaming, even though the scream therapy was on the way out for us. You had decided it was making things worse, not better. We did not want things to be worse.