The Water Cure(57)

Lia and I move closer to each other. I want our bodies to be doubled so we can strike him down. His own body moves a step closer to us, then another, and his hands on the gun are practised, steady, and in that steadiness I can see the appeal of him for the first time, I cannot blame Lia entirely for what she has done.

Refrain of the man, universal: This is not my fault!

See also: I absolve myself of responsibility.

And: I never said that. You can’t take the actions of my body as words.

It is Sky who saves us. It will always be a woman who saves us, we know that now. The protections of men are only ever flimsy and self-serving. She followed us after all and she sees what Llew is going to do and she lifts the vase high over her head. We do not see her until he has crumpled.

The images are like flashes of light. The shift. His face slackening, the thud of the vase where it falls to the floor and cracks, but does not shatter. It is good to see him on the ground where he belongs. We breathe, recover ourselves. We do not think about what almost happened. Sky finds twine in the kitchen and we tie him up, ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist. He remains unconscious as we drag him out of the house and down to the shore. Sand catches in his clothes, his hair. There is something rising in us, and I am glad. I want to stop for a moment and let it wash over me.

The protocol in this instance is the life-guarding that we have been taught. A subservience, a kindness. An acknowledgement that during times of violence, it is always worse for the women.

‘If men come to you, show yourself some mercy,’ you said. ‘Don’t stick around and wait for them to put you out of your misery.’

But now here is Llew, powerless on the sand. Our parents have revealed themselves as fallible already. I am loath, when we have come so far, to draw a knife across my own throat.

A new kind of life-guarding, then, a ritual that we own. Neutralization of his body, its power. A reclaiming of our shores. Suddenly things become very clear to me.

His eyes open and he fixes them upon me, but though I return his stare I do not address him.

Instead I half-turn to Lia, keeping my gaze on the man at my feet. ‘Fetch the salt.’

The most surprising thing love taught me was that I wouldn’t do anything differently, despite it all. I would not have said no to you. I would not have turned away early mornings of light, the smell of ozone and rain through the window. I would not have given away the days, alone, of me and the baby. Kicks against my lungs and liver. The baby said Stay alive more compellingly than anything I have ever known.

Sudden love, when gifted to a habitually unloved person, can induce nausea. It can become a thing you would claw and debase yourself for. It is necessary to wean yourself on to it, small portions. I doubt very much Lia has been doing so.

I stare at Llew, writhing against the sand, as we wait. I hope he can read my thoughts. They say: Llew, I knew someone like you. I know you think we are nothing. I know you come from a world where we would already be dead. I know you are a man who wants to kill women, because that is every man, even the ones who claim to love us. But your body will not save you here. You are no longer in your territory. This belongs to us. It always will.

We sisters have always been cruel in our own way, but I believe our cruelty is allowable. It kept us alive, it helps us to put things right. It has been helpful to look at it as a margin of error, morality-wise.

We throw the salt upon him, handful upon handful, and he makes little reaction, blinking under our actions. It stills him; he is baffled. Then we move in and we start to kick at him. It feels good to hurt him finally, his solid and implacable body. But it is not long before I hand the gun to my sister.

‘You’re the one who has to do it,’ I tell Lia.

She takes the weapon and looks at it with trepidation. Llew watches her, breathing fast.

‘You’ll be one of us again,’ I tell her. It is a low blow, and it is the truth.

The last act of love I will demand from her. I know that if she cannot do this, she is lost to us for ever.

Llew’s final crime was unforgivable, and I wonder if he felt that in himself. I am being charitable here by assuming that killing would change him. I am imagining him opening his eyes afterwards and seeing us as if for the first time.

Maybe it was guilt that distanced him. Waves of it waking him in the early morning, the remembrance of the thing he had done.

I imagine our home becoming too real to him. No longer a holiday from his life. No longer pool and shore and salt and my sister, suntanned and uncomplicated in afternoon rooms. Just a house falling apart. No paradise. The ceilings stained with water. Dust gathering on shelves, in corners. Three women moving around it, lost, where once there had been four. Having done that was not power. It was not fun. It had never been fun.

Lia is trembling. She stares at him and her eyes are very large, as if there might be something else she can see in him if she looks close enough. It is hard to stay away from the things that could be the end of who you are, I know.

It comes back to me now. The first time we saw the men. The three of them on the sand, opening up the world. Dirt imprinted on their skin. Strangeness after strangeness. Squinting towards the light, towards our faces. Could it have gone any other way? No, I think, watching them together on the sand. How he cringes from her, there. One way only. Us or them.

We feel our mother’s absence in ourselves, there on the beach. Suddenly the violence of her loss is pathological. It throws our own disposability into relief. Llew’s hands around her throat are also your hands. They are the hands of every man.