The Water Cure(51)

I do not comment. I fetch him a glass of water for his cracked voice, and when he drains it I walk to the bathroom and fetch him another, meeting my own eyes in the mirror as the water from the tap fills the glass. Keep him talking, I tell myself. Stay away, I tell my sisters, wherever in the house they might be.

‘The world is not what you have been told,’ he says after the second glass. He is reckless now, as if the water has triggered something in him, strengthened his resolve somehow. He speaks as if from a long way away. ‘I mean, the world is very terrible, but you have been told a number of things that are untrue.’

I ask about the women, with their dying lungs and shrinking skin. I saw the proof of them with my own eyes, swept their hair from the ground, burned bloody handkerchiefs. He shrugs.

‘It’s not for me to disregard their pain,’ he says. ‘They are in the minority. There are mysteries everywhere. Sicknesses wherever you go.’

‘But you can’t deny that men are killing women?’ I say.

‘Well, no, I can’t. But it’s not like you think.’

So tell me, I think, impatient.

We would be able to go outside, he tells me: the gauze masks that women sometimes wear are only affectations. All of it is smoke and mirrors, overreaction. We would be able to eat the food without it sticking in our gullets, without it radiating bile through our guts. We would not be poisoned by the world, if that’s what we are worried about. We could be women like any other, taking the usual precautions. Yes, the risk of violence upon us is higher. Even he as a man can’t disregard that! Can’t lie to us about it! But also: we could lounge by poolsides there too. And we could meet others. Other women. Men, too. Maybe fall in love, if we wanted to? He says it like that, as a question, almost hopeful. As if that will be the draw, the sweetening of the deal.

Love was a great educator over the last years, and especially those last months, with you. It taught me first of all that women could be enemies too. Past, present and future. To my own horror I found myself awake late, pacing my room. Had to look away when you kissed Mother, extravagantly, on the cheek at breakfast. My sisters were safe territory, but I still saw them through a vision changed. I saw for the first time that there would be women who took what I wanted, and so I became more protective of myself. I changed alone, spent time in meditation, pushing the gifts you gave to me under the bed, hoarding them so the others would not know.

It also taught me that loss is a thing that builds around you. That what feels like safety is often just absence of current harm, and those two things are not the same.

James is still talking about the life that is open to us. How we could explore vistas of mountain and lake and shore. The countries beyond this limited coast. We could wear shimmering fabrics. Walk in crowds with the evening air hot on our faces, the smell of food and smoke. For the first time James speaks with authority. The world has not been kind to him, I can tell, yet he loves it anyway. It is a man’s place. His survival is implicit, a survival taken for granted.

He is more and more animated. ‘Look, where you are, it is one specific part of the world. There is so much more of it. And not even that far away, either. It would take you a long time to get through the forest. But if you go around the sea, well, it takes no time at all to get out of the bay.’

I have always believed our home to be an island. A healing place, untouched, something skipped over and forgotten. A geographical miracle. But it is mainland, like everywhere else. It is just another part of the coarse, toxic earth. You lied to us about this. And so what else?

The shock is physical, reverberating in my fingers, my arms. But James does not notice it. Instead he stops talking, stands up and goes to the window. He becomes calmer, remembering the world like that. He rests his forehead against the glass.

‘We made contact,’ he says as he looks out towards the sea. ‘We found a way. They’re coming.’

‘And what about us?’ I ask. Already I have been thinking about where we can hide. Where we will wait it out while the men prepare themselves to leave. They can take what they want. The silver cutlery, heavy in the palm. Your notes. They can pull Gwil’s body from the soil. They can raze the house, for all I care.

‘Grace,’ he says, turning around. ‘You and your sisters. We’re taking you too.’ He sits on the floor. ‘King is alive. He is the one who sent us.’ He looks up at me. ‘Everything has been for you, all along.’

But I didn’t ask for any of this, I told myself in the mirror sometimes after the women had all left, and then again after you had disappeared, I have never fucking asked for this. I would hold my breath and think about the time I walked through the forest until the border came upon me, how I stepped over the wire without hesitation. My sisters did not know.

You found me very soon. I didn’t go far. Blundering and ill-equipped, a person who had never tried to escape before. The idea had not occurred to me until then. The pits of my footprints swelling with the dismal autumn rain. Hair plastered to my face, my neck and shoulders bare in my nightgown. I thought you might kill me there. I was an admittance of failure. Something about me was changing, was going to a place you could not follow. Yet you were able to lift me in your arms and you carried me back, though I hit at your face, tried to gouge your eyes out. You put me down at that, and tied my hands.

That was how I learned the true meaning of your old mantra, The love of the family justifies all.