White Bodies(5)
He releases his grip so that she comes up limp and choking, her shoulders heaving. This time he takes her gently in his arms and carries her back to the boat. “You shouldn’t have done that . . . ,” she says, coughing out the words so weakly that I can barely hear, her head resting on his chest, her arm dangling lifelessly at her side.
Felix flops her over the side, into the bottom of the boat. “You’re fine. Now let’s get dressed and have some food.”
I swim to the boat and heave myself up to look inside, to check that she’s okay. Her eyes meet mine and she’s blinking slowly, looking startled and empty. There’s something insect-like in the way she is folded into herself in the corner, something maimed. I’m about to screech with concern but she changes her expression, so swiftly that it’s like a magic trick, and she’s laughing and telling us to get into the boat before we freeze to death.
We take it in turns to use a linen picnic cloth as a towel, and as I watch Tilda drying herself I think I detect that she’s still shaken, but it’s hard to be sure.
Soon we’re huddled in our dry clothes, eating sandwiches, and drinking black coffee from a flask that we pass around. Tilda’s smiling as she says to me, “This is what it’s like being with Felix—amazing! And I’m so pleased you joined us.” Felix says that he too is pleased I came, and he leans across the boat to touch my bare ankle, just for a second. At that moment, everything is sharper, keener, more intense than I’ve ever known. The sky, the trees, the water—even the ham in the sandwiches.
Later, when I’m back home, I open up the dossier and write: Tilda is in love with Felix, and maybe I love him too. As her boyfriend, obviously. He’s so handsome and clever and romantic. My pulse raced when he stripped off all his clothes and he jumped into the river. I was amazed that he would do something so spectacular in front of me. I can’t remember such an exciting day in my life as this. I just wish he hadn’t forced Tilda under the water and held her there so long.
3
1997
It’s the hottest, brightest day I have ever known, and we are running, so fast, hurtling down a steep hill, somewhere in Kent. Beneath us, the grass grows in tufts and mounds, and I’m trying to keep my balance, at the same time looking towards the bottom of the hill, at the grown-ups in the half distance. They are sprawling on a blanket and passing a bottle from hand to hand. Mum is slightly apart from the group, drinking her wine, smoking and adjusting the skirts of the long yellow dress she made the night before.
She looks up to watch our race, shading her eyes with her cigarette hand, and we run faster until we’re tumbling through blue sky into the field, my legs going so fast they’re out of control, making me bump-bump at a million miles an hour, right past the picnickers, whose voices I can suddenly hear. Mum yells, “Come on, Tilda!” because my sister is challenging a girl called Precious for first position, and they are neck and neck, belting for the finish line. Tilda’s blond hair is flipping around and her elbows are jabbing outwards, until she is just about in front, and she shrieks, “I’m the winner! I’m the winner!” For a fraction of a moment my heart is broken, then Mum calls out, “Great job, Callie!” and I’m happy again even though I hear the note of consolation in her voice, because I am going to be last. At the bottom of the hill, the other children collapse into one another and I bump straight past them, accelerating instead of stopping, until I fall headlong into the black prickly bush that separates the picnicking field from the one beyond, the one with cows in it.
Now, the sunny day is gone and I’m on my knees in the bush with my hands pressed into the earth, trying to find a way to stand up, but I can’t because I’m stuck in a mesh of branches that are spiking into my back. I think maybe I can scrunch myself up and inch out backwards, and I shift my hands into a good position so that my right palm presses into something hard and knobbly in the ground. As I grasp it, I hear someone laughing, saying “Look at Callie!” and the others running to the bush to watch me. I’m curious now about the object in my right hand, and am careful to keep hold of it as I scratch myself slowly into the light, rolling backwards until I’m sitting on the grass. I find that I’m holding something pale under dark crumbly soil, which I brush off with the tips of my fingers, tracing along crevices and points. Cradled in my hand, I have the skull of a small animal, and my eyes start to sting.
Precious says, “That’s gross. What is it?” and everyone crowds in to see. Tilda thinks it might be a calf skull, because of the cows in the next field, and Precious points out that I’m crying. “It’s because you came last,” she says. I smear the tears away but don’t really understand. Maybe I’m upset about being last, maybe I’m jealous of my triumphant sister, or maybe I’m thinking of the dead animal. What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that I am remembering our birthday, Tilda’s and mine. We are seven.
Tilda says, “Don’t worry about that thing, come back to the picnic and we can have our cake.” I take her hand but have the skull in my other hand, clamped to my chest. When I give it to Mum she inspects it and wraps it up in a paper napkin saying it might belong to a lamb, and it’s a beautiful discovery that she will put into a painting one day, but first it needs a good wash and if I want I can take it to school for the nature table. I hold my hands out while Mum pours water over them from a plastic bottle, then dries them with her skirt. The other children are standing around, watching, and then everyone is singing “Happy Birthday.” I lie on my back with my head in Mum’s lap, looking upwards at Tilda, who’s standing with her legs apart and her face turned to the sky. She’s singing, even though she’s one of the birthday girls, and the sun shines through her hair, making it glimmer like a halo. At that moment I’m hurting with adoration of her. Then Tilda flops to her knees and I sit up, and side by side we blow out the candles.