49

She woke in the night. The rushing of the stream was fairly loud, she’d slid the window up before going to bed. Was that what had woken her? Had the wind turned? She felt bloated, as if she’d eaten half a saucepan of potatoes and a whole plate of parsnips. There were noises from the bathroom. Bradwen was on the toilet. She struggled over onto her side and listened to the stream, imagining water flowing to the sea day after day, seawater evaporating, fresh water being drawn up from the salt, clouds floating to the land, rain falling on the mountain, water feeding the stream. A little later she realised that the boy wasn’t on the toilet. He was probably kneeling in front of it. Retching. She sat up, throwing the covers aside. The bedroom was cold. She didn’t just feel bloated, she felt terrible. So terrible she could hardly drag herself up onto her feet. The landing light was on, the bathroom door wide open. She walked there using the railing for support. Bradwen hadn’t turned on the light in the bathroom itself and he wasn’t kneeling, he was standing bent over and clutching the sides of the toilet bowl. His naked back was like a sick animal’s, hunched but powerful, curved but taut. A gymnast. She had never seen him like this. She laid her right hand on his upper back and, without applying any pressure, moved it back and forth from shoulder to shoulder. ‘There, there,’ she said. She felt a wave forming under her hand, put her left hand on his stomach, imagining it more tanned than usual, the muscles tense, her little finger on the elastic of his underpants. It was as if she were the one who made sure he got rid of what needed to come up. He gagged and spewed, she felt his body relax. Never before had she felt this close to him. At the same time, holding him like this helped her stay upright.

‘To think that your father’s meat would make you this sick,’ she said.

He coughed and spewed again. ‘The meat?’ he said.

‘I didn’t eat any.’

‘Who’s to say it wasn’t your hand?’

She looked at the hand on his shoulder. No, she thought, it was the other one, the left hand that was now on his stomach. An infected hand? The boy stood up and wiped his mouth, shaking her off in the process. He stepped to one side, turned on the tap and began to brush his teeth. The light from the landing wasn’t strong enough to see his face properly in the mirror.

‘Just kidding,’ he said after he’d rinsed his mouth.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

They were standing opposite each other, or more side to side. He took her hand and lifted it to his mouth. ‘Just kidding,’ he said again and kissed it. ‘See you tomorrow.’ He walked out of the bathroom and closed the study door behind him.

She couldn’t see her own face properly in the mirror either. She licked the back of her left hand; it tasted like her. She took a tablet. Later, back in bed, the stream sounded more syrupy and when she imagined the water cycle again it was infinitely bigger, bluer, whiter and wetter. She laid her hands on her belly to have the boy with her, somehow, after all and even thought she could feel his tension radiating into her skin. How easy it would have been for her to let one hand descend a little, laying her other on his chest, pulling him back against her, his head on her shoulder, his throat defenceless, his smell mixed with a sour tang. Give and take, she thought, in the part of the imagined cycle where a cloud was about to rain on the mountain. Him behind me, me behind him. He has to go, but not entirely. ‘There, there’, and ‘ach’, that’s about all there is.

She drifted away on the syrupy flow of the stream, her thoughts stretching out, she was almost asleep. She had just enough time to think how pleasant that was, sleep. How separate from everything else. How free from the things that worry people when they’re not sleeping, the things that scare them, the things that loom before them like a mountain.