1969. The very first of the women from Trewarnen, the great mother, comes to the pool. After each birth she comes, tramping across the moors with a new thing in her arms, wanting blessed water to fix each soul.
There She sits, some six miles away, trapped beyond a hedge.
The great mother trusts in the power of the pool. Alone in the world, there was no one to stop her believing such things. Each child had been born a mouse, mewling and sheathed in vernix.
Her youngest had been born in the farmhouse: straight onto the flagstones of the kitchen floor. The white flakes had covered all but the newborn’s eyes, which refused to open. She came to Dozmary in the arms of her mother, still slippery, greasy, like a blind kitten.
The eels, near-blind themselves, nipped at Bucca Widn’s feet. They had no young, so they had no death, no age.
Unaware of what lay beneath, the people still came to the pool, year on year, generation after generation. They took to the pool for their births and their deaths, in their famines and feasts. They came in their fear.
Later that same night, we slept together for the last time. We had been watching a movie, not quite touching in my single bed, when she whispered in my ear that she was absolutely starving and there was no way she’d make it through the night without a piece of toast.
When I came back to the room, Claud ignored the toast I offered and grabbed me, pulling me towards the bed. I stumbled slightly, rolling my shoulder as she yanked me down. Her grasp too tight around my wrist. She smiled at me, raising an eyebrow when I lost my footing. Her grip burnt against my skin. Her urgency registered in the pit of my stomach. I held my breath until she kissed me, exhaling as she grabbed my face. I would not embarrass myself by smiling. I still had the plate of toast in one hand, which I was trying to keep balanced as we kissed, not wanting butter and crumbs to ruin the moment.
When she finally noticed, she laughed and took the plate from me, setting it at the foot of the bed. ‘You’re so weird,’ she said, and I glowed under the fondness of her words.
My T-shirt and joggers came off easily, but Claud was still fully dressed, in jeans that she couldn’t take off lying down. She stood up and I knelt in front of her, naked, and started to undo them for her. My fingers fumbled on the zip. What had been fun moments before suddenly felt off. It should’ve been reverential. But something about the pose – me hunched, crouched on my heels, clawing at her jeans, my body pale and pimpled – made me feel like a woodlouse trying to scramble up a wall. I was the bug, and she turned then, became ballast, cold, marbled.
When was the last time our relationship had felt equal? Or fluid? When had she moved with me, rather than against me? I shook the thought away. There was only so much more of her I could have before I left, and who knew what would happen then. Maybe she wouldn’t let me back in. I needed to enjoy her for what she was.
I bit my tongue, but then she grabbed hold of my head, forced my face into the pit of her stomach, so I kissed her there instead. The zip of her jeans caught on her underwear, and it seemed like a sign that this was the time, so I started to peel her pants off too, ready to finally touch her again – but then Claud was laughing and shaking her head, and she moved me back onto the bed, her hand strong against my shoulder.
She was on top of me, jeans off, but her underwear pulled back up, and I was lying naked, and I still hadn’t touched her, not really. I knew the men she slept with were allowed to touch her, knew that it was just me, my hands and my mouth, that Claud didn’t want in that way. The thought of it made my mouth taste like bile and I wanted to jump off the bed, to wedge myself into the space between the wardrobe and the door to ride it out, but instead I tried to focus as Claud pushed my legs apart and bit my hip.
Claud wouldn’t let me touch her, but she wanted to touch me. And that was OK. At least, it was just about enough. I didn’t know if I minded, but I knew I liked the way Claud’s long blonde hair spilled over onto my stomach when she went down on me. It reminded me of being at the beach. Claud was the sea, and I was buried in the sand.
In the morning, she was no longer the sea, instead she was nothing more than a curved shoulder and a jutting spine in my bed, sleeping on her side. I contemplated rolling closer, dropping a kiss on her shoulder blade and an arm around her waist, like I would’ve in the past. But it wasn’t the past, so I didn’t.
I left her in my bed without waking her or saying goodbye. I didn’t shower, I just pulled off my T-shirt and pressed it against my skin, trying to soak up the heat that was radiating off me. I looked at the top in my hands, straightened it out, and realised it wasn’t mine. It belonged to Chris: the four pillars of Black Flag stamped on the front. I held it to my nose and sniffed, wanting to be sure, the way we did with our school jumpers after P.E. There it was, the warm smell of Chris woven into the cotton, mixed with my sweat. But that wasn’t all. I pushed my face further into the T-shirt and breathed in again. Layered there, a newer scent – soil. I crumpled up the top and quickly pushed it to the bottom of my bag.
Outside, Chris was parked at the end of the driveway, far enough from the house that only the trees noticed his arrival. I took off with my bags before my mother and aunt were awake, drinking a full carton of orange juice on my way out to try and fight the tiredness that would leach out the little joy I had left.
He was sat with the window of his Fiat down, smoking a fag with one hand, gripping the gear stick with the other. I’d barely sat down when he started to gun it up the road, away from the house.
‘What the hell?’ I asked, shoving an empty Fanta bottle off the seat so I could do my belt up.
‘What? I’m getting you outta here, just like you asked.’
‘You’re taking me to the train station, Chris. It’s not a fucking getaway.’ I unwound the window so I could smoke the fag I’d rolled earlier that morning, when I sat on the front step waiting for the day to get light. It was only once I’d lit up that I realised Chris wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t doing much at all, apart from sweating and gripping the steering wheel tightly. ‘What?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘Why are you being so dramatic?’
‘Are you serious, Merryn?’
‘Why are you being arsey? I got like, no sleep last night, my head’s pounding. Can we just go to the station?’
‘And then what? When are you coming back?’
‘Soon enough. For Christmas, probably.’ I stuck my head out the window. We were on the dual carriageway now, off the moors technically, but still cutting right through them. Four lanes of traffic splintered through rolling hills. Like a chasm in the pastoral landscape, it always felt wrong, this road. The wind and fumes pressed against my cheeks as I held my face out towards the road – something about it helped clear my head, but I could still hear Chris, droning on in the car.
‘Do you even hear yourself? Merryn?’
I let go of my cigarette then, impossible to smoke with that much wind resistance, and watched it for the split-second that it was still in sight, soaring through the air before it disappeared with all the other forgotten crap people throw out of their cars. We used to count the things we saw at the side of this road, me and Chris, when he’d pick me up for college. A badger, a trainer, a pheasant, a strip of tyre, a sideways campervan, once, a dog that ran off before we could catch it.
I turned around so I was fully in the car and looked at him. ‘What are you on about?’
‘I don’t get it.’ He looked at me then, cut me off before I could speak, ‘No, truly Merryn. I don’t get it. How are you acting so relaxed after last night?’
I thought back to the text I’d sent him the evening before – Can you take me to the station tomorrow please? As early as possible, you’re a lifesaver – I hadn’t told him anything about Claud being round.
He laughed then. Not in a pleasant way. It sounded like fear. ‘Am I your aunt? The phone call, Mer. It was insane.’
‘I didn’t call you.’ I knew I didn’t call him. I spent the night with Claud, then I lay in bed next to her and watched her sleep. I knew that because I wouldn’t let myself do anything else. I just stayed awake.
‘I came to Trewarnen.’
‘No.’ He didn’t. I would’ve remembered. And even if I didn’t, Claud would’ve said something about it this morning. But she was still asleep when I left. She didn’t have a chance to tell me anything.
‘I pulled up and you were out in your garden, it was insane.’
‘This isn’t funny, Chris. I had a bad enough night as it was without you taking the piss—’
He talks over me then, ‘You were in the garden, and you were pulling up the dirt with your hands, just scratching and scratching.’
‘Stop it.’
‘I had no idea what you were doing. It’s like you were feral, clawing at the ground, and I kept saying your name and you weren’t responding. I was in bed when you called. I missed it, so I rang you back. You sounded like shit. On the phone, you just kept saying that it was crushing you, and you had to go back. You said you were in the house, but that you had to leave so I asked you to wait for me. You kept saying you had to go back, but I don’t know where. It took me fifteen minutes to get to yours after you called, and when I arrived you were already outside.’
Each time he opened his mouth, he spoke quicker, and his words came over me in a slurry. I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t remember speaking to him on the phone, couldn’t remember being out of bed. I looked down at my hands, dead in my lap, as Chris carried on speaking. I’d been scared of myself, he was saying, scared of myself and Claud. In my lap, my hands, my nails short, ragged, black underneath, black around my cuticles. I brought a finger to my mouth, pressed it against my teeth. Was it new? The dirt? Had I truly been on my hands and knees when Chris came? Or were my hands always like this?
‘You were just in your pants, and your feet were covered in mud, and it was really cold, Mer, so I hope you don’t mind, but once you calmed down – you went all quiet and kinda still – I put my T-shirt on you. It wasn’t super clean, but you didn’t have anything else on and I didn’t know what else to do.’
I looked at him. His face was flushed, his hands white on the steering wheel, ten to two, his eyes staring straight ahead. He was embarrassed. Ashamed.
‘I was naked?’
‘Um, yeah.’ He clears his throat. ‘A bit. You can keep the T-shirt by the way. It’s one of my favourites, but you can keep it.’
We drove in silence until Chris took the right turn into the train station, cutting across the traffic without even slowing. I searched myself for words. I felt in each back pocket, reached up my sleeves, checked behind my ears. I bit the bruise inside each cheek. There was only one thing I could find to say, and it didn’t seem like enough. It didn’t seem right. But I said it anyway, because my train was coming, and I was so close to being free. ‘A nightmare. I must’ve been having a nightmare.’