Reasons She Goes to the Woods (10 page)

Pearl and her father had planned a walk through the beech woods, along the steep old lane and onto the mountain. Pearl wakes up thinking about the wood with its moving pools of bright, soft grass, its tawny sunlight and the small stands of hazel weighed down with new, furry-skinned, crushable nut clumps. She puts her walking clothes on and takes the stairs two at a time. In the kitchen her parents stand holding coffee cups. She looks from one to the other and sees that she won’t be going out with her father today. I need her at home, that’s all, her mother says as she leaves the room. Her father sips his coffee. Really, it’s okay, Daddy, Pearl tells him, I understand. My good girl, he says. Then he puts his coat on and goes out alone. All through the long morning Pearl’s throat burns, and it’s as if wasps are buzzing around her. After lunch, Pearl has to keep her mother company while she knits. Perched on the settee, she listens to the tap-tap of the needles and looks down at her walking shoes. Then she starts to examine the huge, open lilies on the coffee table. Eventually her mother looks at them too, dropping her busy hands into her lap. What? she says, as Pearl leans forwards, transfixed by the flowers. What can you see? Pearl points silently, and turns her head slowly to look at her mother. Can’t you see them? she asks. Can’t you see them, Mother? Pearl’s mother falls to her knees and puts her hands to her trembling lips. Itty-bitty snakes, Mother, Pearl says. Green snakelets, all weaving out of the mouths of the lilies. Can’t you see them? And she points again. No, her mother whispers, hardly daring to look. Where, Pearl? Where?

Honey and Pearl share a table in Art class. This is serious, the teacher shouts from the front. This is your final exam. Focus, please. Pearl doesn’t hear. She is working out how she can draw what she wants to draw without giving anything away. It’s a game to her, and almost second nature. Big floppy knickers, says Honey, staring at her own huge sheet of paper. Unlike you, most inscrutable one, I don’t have any secrets. I know, says Pearl, looking at Honey, but not looking. Poor you. Just make something up. You know: focus. Who the heck cares, anyway? Honey doesn’t answer, though she knows Pearl cares very much about something. She might as well save her breath; Pearl never listens to anyone, ever. Quiet! the teacher shouts. You have three hours. Pearl holds her pencil loosely. She feels a warm current rushing from her heart, up through her throat and then, with a final spurt, flaring out from her two eyes. Her hair sparks with electricity. The three hours whiz by in a holy silence while Pearl creates her drawing. Here is the ink-black hair, here the strong, pliant neck. A naked back, perfect legs. Inhuman eyes; blank and brown. The page is hardly big enough for the unspeakable things she draws, as she smells a perfume sharply green. Then a humming sound fills her ears and she comes back to herself. Pearl! her teacher is calling, and shaking her shoulders. Whatever’s the matter? Pearl asks, confused. I’ve finished, that’s all, she says, and smiles as she puts down her pencil. There is silence in the classroom as everyone crowds near the table and examines Pearl’s completely blank sheet.

Now Pearl is older, it’s hard to go on waiting for her plans to work out. There are times when she would like to shake her head and be free; if her silvery hair were a mane and she had hooves like a pony, she believes she could escape. Poor Pearl, she thinks, listening to the beat of her galloping hooves. All these weeks and months, all these buzzing little schemes to outrun. Time streaks ahead and blocks her path. But today is not one of those days. Today is like a glowing box that Pearl balances on the top shelf of her heart. At any moment the box might open, like a magical eyelid, and out would fly the wonderful things Pearl knows will happen if she tries hard enough. So she quivers, holding Will’s hand as they walk along the abandoned canal path. It’s late afternoon and over the mountains the sun moves in and out of a bank of churning cloud. Each time a finger of light breaks through, it touches the flanks of the mountain tenderly, illuminating secret folds and humps, and Pearl and Will point, shouting, there! there! to each other. They decide to walk up through a wheat field to the top. Pearl feels her way, hardly disturbing the shaggy stalks, unaware of Will’s small voice calling, and soon she is alone, suspended in the shimmering field’s hot, yeasty breath. Standing in the waist-high golden wheat, Pearl is aware of the smallest movement above her heart. Like a column of smoke, her hair lifts and lowers, her grey eyes take in the unquiet sky and the mountains blooming with sunbeams, and she knows that, eventually, everything will be all right.

Pearl’s mother has been in bed for days. At least, she would be, if she didn’t keep escaping. Pearl and her brother camp out in the garden shed. Pearl makes quick trips into the kitchen and steals food. Nobody notices. If Pearl peers in through the lounge window, she sees her father surrounded by strange people all talking at the same time. Poor Daddy, she says to her brother, as they share a tin of cold rice pudding. What will he do? Her brother doesn’t know. They’ve got blankets and books in the shed. The smell of creosote and wood shavings makes it homely. Several times search parties are sent out to find their mother. She likes to throw her wedding ring in the river, or walk barefoot through the stores in town, searching for clocks. Often the children watch as she lurches like a broken kite around the garden, her nightdress half off, ripping flowers and slinging their torn heads over her shoulders. Pearl pulls her brother under the work-table when their mother is in the garden, and sings to him until she’s recaptured. One evening they’re washing in a plastic bowl Pearl’s found, when they notice all the lights are on in the house. They hear shouting, and watch from the shed window as the back door is flung open and their mother twirls out into the dark, something long and thin glinting in her hand. She makes straight for the shed. Get down! Pearl whispers to her brother. Outside the slatted wooden walls Pearl can hear her mother’s breathing and the sound of something metallic being dragged across the door. My Pearl! her mother calls. Are you in there? Come out! Pearl shields her brother, waiting for her father to come and save
them.

Pearl has decided to stay at home instead of going to Granny’s. She cleans the empty house. It’s four o’clock now, so she bathes and washes her hair. Wrapped in a towel, she walks into her parents’ bedroom and sits at the dressing table. It’s years since she looked at all her mother’s messy things. Pearl picks up a brush and examines it. Then she squirts herself with perfume. When she inhales she feels, for a second, as if her mother is standing behind her. It’s always evening in this room, and the bed seems to float like a ghost ship in the gloom. Pearl walks to her father’s side of the bed and pulls back the covers. She lifts the pillow, and without disturbing the neat folds, bends until her face is pressed into his pyjamas. Then she puts things back. In her mother’s wardrobe the dresses wait, but after looking she leaves. Soon she’s dressed and downstairs. It feels normal in the kitchen and Pearl stops thinking about the room above. When she hears her father’s key in the door she calls, Are you hungry, Daddy? Sit down, and I’ll take your shoes off. Her father rubs his forehead. The shadows under his eyes make her heart feel like an old, screwed-up paper bag. She sits on the floor and unties his laces while he strokes her damp hair. Then she jumps to her feet and takes two jacket potatoes out of the oven. She prepares one for him. Butter, Daddy? she asks quietly. And cheese too? You like cheese. Then she does her own. But he isn’t eating, so she puts down her cutlery. Are you very tired of things as they are, Daddy? she asks him, and her heart expands like a scarlet paper flower when he looks at her and
nods.

Pearl walks along the chemist shop aisles, humming the two-note song designed to drown out her mother’s voice. Pearl can see the woman behind the pharmacy counter listening as her mother goes on and on, and the queue forming, and all she can do is drift around, pretending to be a normal customer, and wait. She stops in front of the make-up stand. These little vials and bottles and tubes. Pearl wonders about them. She picks up a tiny container of green, sparkly powder. Why would you put this on your eyelids? she thinks. Sniffing and squeezing, daubing improbable shades on the backs of her hands, she hums all the time. When she’s squirted and smeared all that’s available, she sees the pharmacy lady holding her mother’s elbow and guiding her out of the shop, so she follows. Keeping her mother in sight, she puts a hand in the pocket of her jacket and feels the small pot she’s taken. Her mother stops and waits for her. Pearl! she shouts, stamping her foot. Hands out! Shoulders back! Pearl looks beyond her mother, at the neat hedges either side of the road. For the rest of the way home her mother talks and Pearl hums loudly. She spends the remainder of the day in her bedroom. When it’s nearly time to eat, she gets the pot out of her jacket pocket and unscrews the lid. She rubs her finger in the pink cream and applies it to her cheeks. Suddenly, her reflected eyes are more vivid, her lips defined and her skin looks creamy and plush. At the table she sees her mother’s narrow-eyed look. Hello, Daddy, she says, and her smile broadens when he finally notices her and says, Pearl, go and wash that off. There’s no need to gild a
lily.

In the cinema, Pearl and Will snog. This film is stupid, Will says. We’re a million times more interesting than that boring pair, don’t you think? Pearl opens Will’s trousers and clasps his penis in her hand. It seems to have a life all its own as it firms itself, pushing her fist open a little. She has her other arm draping his shoulders, and she looks at him as he rests his head against her neck. His closed lashes lie quietly, and the flickering lights from the screen gather in his sockets and run in and out of his half-open mouth. Pearl bends to kiss his face and waits for him to gasp and judder. Then she gives him a tissue. Sweet, sweet Will, she thinks, when he plants a kiss on her cold cheek. They struggle into their coats. Outside it’s dark and still raining. As they walk to the bus stop the sky seems to lower itself over them, the clouds shouldering each other for space. Pearl holds Will’s hand and looks at the undersides of the clouds. They’re damaged-looking; pulpy, and the rain falling from them is dark, like juice. Everything appears stained and broken. The buildings seem abandoned. To Pearl, even the shop fronts look blank and boarded up. Will is telling her about a plan he has for the two of them, how it’ll be fun. A car goes by, but Pearl can’t see any driver inside. Stop, she says, as the rain goes on falling in the wet street. Now seems as good a time as any, she thinks, and in a few words tells Will they’re finished. Is there someone else you love more than me? he asks, crying. Pearl looks tenderly at him. Yes, there is, she says, and wipes his tears with her hands.

Pearl has been out of action for days. That’s how she feels; like some seized-up, broken-down machine, good only to be thrown in the skip. When she thinks about Will, and the wet street, the lowering, swollen sky and how she ran away from his tearful question, something repeatedly clangs in her head like a swinging door deep inside a spooky house. She stays in her room, refusing to go to school. On the third day her mother comes in, leaning over to shout stuff about pulling herself together, and Pearl hits her with a book, telling her, flatly, to go to hell. Her mother’s mouth opens and closes a few times
–
it’s quite funny really, Pearl thinks
–
then she slaps Pearl so hard across the side of her head that she is almost knocked off the bed. Carefully righting herself, a comma of blood slipping from the corner of her closed mouth, she stares at her mother. Now look what you’ve done, she says, deliberately dribbling blood onto her chin. What do you imagine Daddy will say about this? The slap has been useful, Pearl realises. It’s wedged that bonkers swinging door shut, and now she can start to think. The blow has woken her up, warmed her blood, set it flowing again. Her mother is still standing beside the bed, so Pearl tells her to drop dead. But Pearl, her mother says, don’t speak to me that way. I won’t allow it. She’s gulping for air, and her hands are tightly twisted together. Say you’re sorry, dear, she asks in a small voice. The imprint of the book has made a comic, tick-shape on her forehead. Come now, I know you don’t mean it, she says, as Pearl begins to laugh bloodily.

Pearl has been sent away. Alone, she trails about her granny’s garden. Everything is dead. Even the beautiful dahlia heads look like soggy bunches of decaying hair now. There’s a droning in her ears; she’s scared of herself, and what will happen. It’s as if her toes are on the very last, crumbling edge of something and she must make an impossible leap, or fall and disappear. Her granny is calling; it’s time to eat. The kitchen table’s set and the fire crackles and shifts. Pearl looks at the foamy, primrose-yellow omelette on her plate. I can’t, she says. So her grandmother makes her a mug of hot chocolate. It’s so delicious she drinks it all. Then they sit on the settee, and Pearl rests her head in her granny’s soft lap. She thinks about Will, his dissolving smile in the rainy street and her mother always crying, or shouting, or talking to herself, until she begins to writhe secretly inside. And then she moves her thoughts away. Instead she closes her eyes and remembers her father, and their long ago, snowy walk. She pictures the lighted windows and the globes of teeming snowflakes like dandelion clocks surrounding the street lamps. Over and over she recalls the sound of her father’s laugh when the woman asked, and is this your wife? Soon she feels herself uncoil. What are you thinking about, Pearl? her granny asks, seeing her smile. She rests her cool hand on Pearl’s forehead. But no, she adds after a few moments, looking at Pearl’s gleaming eyelids and closed, pink mouth. I think it’s best you keep those thoughts to yourself
–
whatever they
are.