Reasons She Goes to the Woods (3 page)

There are some people sitting in front of Pearl and her mother, having a snack. Pearl leans over the back of their seat. As she is usually sick on any bus journey, the only thing her mother will give her is a mint, and her mother especially doesn’t like it when Pearl looks at the other passengers too much. I don’t know why you can’t just look out of the window like everybody else, she says, manhandling Pearl into a suitable sitting position. But these people are opening bags of salted nuts, and nibbling pastries. Pearl twists out of her mother’s grip, climbs down off her seat and edges around so that she’s standing next to the woman, watching as another damp parcel is unwrapped. Pearl sees there are little sandwiches inside. She wonders what sort. She likes ham, or lemon curd, or sometimes, golden syrup in her sandwiches. She takes a good look; they are grated cheese. That’s her favourite. Her eyes follow every movement as the woman and her friend lift the food to their mouths. They chew like robots. Eventually, there is only one delicious square left, and Pearl announces that she really loves cheese sandwiches. She pushes against the woman’s thigh as she says it, and holds out her hand. But no one takes any notice of Pearl. The woman packs the last sandwich away, takes an apple and crunches it. Specks of spit fly out of her mouth. Pearl’s mother takes hold of her arm and says, before you start you can stop, or else, but Pearl is not ready. First, in a firm voice, she tells the people that she hates them. And as her mother pulls her arm Pearl adds that she hopes they both choke.

Pearl stands on the bank and looks across to a beach-like area the cows have trampled as they come to drink. Hazy clouds of greenery are reflected in the water. It feels like an island over there, with its alder trees and yellow lilies, the canal curving around, but she knows it isn’t. She lies down on the fringe of the canal and dabbles in the slow water. Just out of reach Pearl can see, resting on the bottom, masses of cloudy, dotted frogspawn. She lowers her chin onto her folded arms and concentrates on it. Each tiny, opaque, black-centred globe is like an eye, and all the eyes are looking her way. Every year she collects buckets of spawn and takes it home to the garden. She can never resist feeling the jelly, combing it again and again. She thinks about her buckets and nets, her plan to take frogspawn home. Even though she enjoys arranging shiny weeds in amongst it, and little sparkly stones, she sees now it’s not a good idea. Her beautiful spawn always changes and dies. After a while, she decides to catch tiddlers instead. Pearl enjoys wading, and jumps a little each time a plant twines around her ankles. But still the buckets remain empty. It feels better, somehow, to leave the quiet spawn and flickering fish alone, here in the cool, barely moving water. Pearl sits on the bank and tries to pick a bunch of kingcups. Their stretchy stems squeak and colour her hands, but she cannot pull them out. Pearl rests in the gnat-rich air, feeling the grass tickling her legs, then gathers all her things. She has decided nothing is leaving the canal today.

It’s the summer holidays. Pearl has been thinking how all the long, sunny days rest closely up against each other like leaves in a huge book about dust, heat, melting pavements. Today she is going to rip out a page and see what happens. She tries to imagine the winter, and yearns for gloves and steady, slashing rain, even stew. There is a new girl in the street and Pearl has to find some things out. The girl’s called Honey. That’s not a proper name, Pearl says, when they meet for the first time under the hedge; it’s something you put on bread. She sits astride Honey’s stomach, pins her arms down and leans over. I’ll do something bad if you don’t do what I tell you to do, she says. Honey’s eyes are hazel, and her lashes are thick and auburn. Open up, Pearl tells her, and points to Honey’s lips. Wider, Pearl shouts, wide, wide, wide! Honey has strong, square teeth, and her lips stretch as if she is laughing. Pearl gathers spit with her tongue and allows it to fall in a series of slow bubbles into Honey’s mouth. Now swallow, she tells her, or else. Then she lets her up. Can I do you now? Honey asks. Nope, Pearl says. They kneel and face each other. Honey starts to play with the worm casts all around them. Okay, she murmurs, and squeezes a blob of mud in her palms. Pearl watches as she fashions the mud into a little shape. Hold out your hand, she tells Pearl. She has made a mud dog. Pearl studies Honey’s perfect pink cheeks and extraordinary lashes. This could work out, she thinks, cradling the brown mini-creature in her hands.

Pearl switches off as she pushes the shopping trolley past the cooked ham and cheese counters. With her mother walking beside her holding on, she begins to imagine what it would be like to stay in the supermarket after closing time. She’d build a tent of cereal boxes and find matches and magazines to make a fire. Then she’d cook sausages and, for afters, eat chocolate with nuts inside. Pearl glances at her mother, who’s in her slippers, nightdress billowing out from her half-undone coat. Pearl thinks the filmy pink fabric looks rude in the shop. As her mother picks up a bag of sugar, Pearl can hear her talking in an undertone, asking the sugar questions. In her tent Pearl would light candles and lie down amongst a pile of cushions. She pictures the glow from inside lighting up the tall canyon of tins she’s below. Pearl lets go of the trolley and slinks off as her mother cradles the sugar and sings to it; the little song fades as Pearl turns in to another aisle. All the shoppers silently walk around, turning their heads from side to side, and Pearl is invisible. She could also climb up the shelves and stand on the top, she thinks, maybe even jump from one stack to another, all alone in the dark of the huge, crammed warehouse. Soon she hears screams. Nothing can stop them, Pearl knows. She weaves through the crowd and sees first a pink slipper yawning on the tiles, and then her mother struggling with a person in uniform. She’s screaming because he wants to take her sugar-baby from her. Pearl stands mutely until someone asks if this is her mother. Then she backs away, shaking her
head.

The kids in the next street have been making an obstacle course in a thick hedge that grows all along the top of a bank. Pearl watches, perched on her bike, until the two boys in charge come over. You’re Pearl, aren’t you? one asks. The boys are holding interesting garden implements. She circles round them silently while they whisper together. You can join, if you like, the boy waving a pair of shears says. Pearl runs through the suitable stuff in her father’s shed. Maybe I will, she calls over her shoulder as she rides off. Now, every day in the summer holidays, she’s hard at it, and her part of the hedge run is going well. She’s constructing a ramp you can pelt up and jump off into a soft pit of grass. Today she’s stripping hazel boughs with her penknife when someone shouts that her brother’s in a fight. Pearl folds her knife, and lays the branches in a heap. Where? she asks, and rides off, standing on the bike pedals. At the playground she parks and has a look. Pearl sort of knows the boy who is punching her brother. Quietly she walks up behind him as he stoops over The Blob and leaps onto his back, hooking her legs around his waist. He whirls and staggers, trying to grab her, while she pulls his head back by the hair and yanks until a wet, tufty clump of scalp comes away in her fist. The boy collapses backwards, on top of her. Want some more? she shouts, as he scrambles up, grunting, and runs away. She gives her brother a long look while putting the clump in her shorts pocket. Then she rides back to the ramp and hazels, her hair flowing behind her like a small silken
flag.

Pearl and her brother are banished to the carpetless back bedroom. A rickety playpen sits in the middle of the room, full of boxes and broken lampshades. Pearl can see they would make a really good den but she can’t be bothered. Their mother has said Pearl is in trouble; one more thing and she won’t be responsible. Now Pearl is thinking about how The Blob’s stupid face deserves a slap. She must make something happen anyway. He’s pushing a toy car around, making a private brumming noise as he drives it over the swirls in the carpet. These bits are the roads, he tells Pearl. Who cares about the stupid roads? Pearl says. Her brother gives her a wary look. In
fact, who cares about you at all? she asks him, putting her face up close. No one in this house. I
heard Mother say she prayed you’d be run over
by a lorry
.
Her brother starts to grizzle, and Pearl snatches his car, throwing it against the wall. Now what you going to do? she shrieks. The Blob runs down to the kitchen, wailing. Pearl sits on the floor and waits, her fingers quiet, for what will happen next. After a few moments, her mother runs heavily up the stairs and appears in the doorway. And here we go
,
Pearl thinks, watching her mother shout. Pearl doesn’t listen; she studies her mother’s scarlet face and spitting mouth, the way she clenches her hands and glares. Best of all, the veins in her mother’s neck start to bulge like shuddering blue worms. What have you got to say for yourself, you horrible little thing? her mother yells. Pearl lowers her eyes, soft hands in her lap, but it’s hard, keeping a straight
face.

Pearl and Fee gaze from the open bedroom window; the field has vanished, trees thrash and the sky above the jerking branches is ominous. They try to stretch their bare arms out into the storm. A soft roar fills the warm room, but the rain doesn’t touch them. Pearl throws some of her best things as far as she can out into the downpour. She wants to go stream-wading, and shuts her eyes to watch herself struggling through the saturated ferns, feeling with wet fingers the little raised buttons on the fern fronds’ undersides. She knows the clear brown water of the stream will be mixing with transparent snakes of rain. She longs to feel her wellies slap against her legs. It’s too dry in this place, she tells Fee. Inside my nose itches. No, Fee says, bouncing on the bed, please let’s stay here. It’s cosy and safe. Then she lands awkwardly and falls down between the bed and the wall. Pearl sighs, looking at the treetops. I know what we can play, Fee says, her voice muffled, Upside Down! There are two beds in Pearl’s room. Fee has The Blob’s. Each girl lies on her back across one and drops her head over the side so she is looking at the other the wrong way up; where a forehead should be, there is a mouth; instead of a chin, two spidery eyes. They laugh in the thrumming room. Pearl thinks Fee’s mouth looks like a dark hole; the uneven row of teeth decorating the edges is the best thing ever. Then Fee stretches out to stroke Pearl’s cheek. I expect you’ve forgotten all about the stream now, my love, she says, smiling. Pearl sits up and shakes herself. No, she answers. I absolutely have
not.

There’s a boy in Pearl’s class who’s broken his arm. Pearl watches as he uses the plaster cast for all sorts of useful jobs. And he tells everybody he can’t really go in the bath, because he has to keep the plaster dry. The children all laugh when he slides a ruler inside to scratch, and flock around him, waiting their turn to write a funny message on the white plaster. But Pearl keeps her distance. Still, the thought of the cast fascinates her. By the time she and Fee walk home through the park, Pearl is silent, thinking about the way his four fingers curl themselves from the hard shell, and how his thumb pokes out at a different angle to how you would have imagined. She shakes her head when Fee wants to go on the swings. At the tea table she refuses to eat, but only after everyone has finished can Pearl go out through the front door, across the field and down the bank. Without stopping she jumps over the stream and shoulders her way through the undergrowth until she’s at the foot of her favourite tree. She squats in a fork of exposed root, listening to the evening birds and insects, not thinking of anything. Finally she starts to climb. This tree has limbs that rise like steps all around its lower trunk, and Pearl moves up quickly. She feels light and full of air, her legs strong. Soon it gets more difficult, and she’s hot, hauling herself up, holding the gnarly wood, her knees trembling. Still she climbs until she’s through the leaves and clinging to the tree’s topmost, whippy branches. Faintly, she can hear her father calling her in to bed. I’m coming, Daddy! she yells, and jumps.

Pearl is back in her own room. Now, after the ambulance, the hospital, all the fuss and shouting, she feels different; as thin and hard as a pin, maybe, or flat and cold like a paving stone. Not like a living girl any more. Her father stands at the foot of the bed concentrating, his hand jangling the keys in his pocket, while her mother, stroking the cast on Pearl’s leg, perches so close that her perfume spreads all over the bed. Pearl watches, perfectly still and hardly breathing. Up and down goes her mother’s white hand with its wedding ring, up and down. One perfect, yellow curl sits stiffly on her forehead. It’s horrible, so Pearl closes her eyes. Inside, she is shivering with a desire to scream at her mother to get out! get out! The feeling is so powerful she must be giving off scorching rays. But no. Still stroking the plaster, finally her mother starts to speak. I know all about you, Pearl, she says. I was a little girl once. I had a sister, and a mother and father. Pearl hears the tears in her mother’s voice and opens her eyes a fraction. On she goes, about how she cares for Pearl. Unlike her voice, her eyes are hard and shining, as if they’re stretching out of their sockets, and her lips are pursed. She says how upset she was when Pearl fell from the tree. Then she pecks Pearl on the forehead, mouth bunched so tight it’s like a painful flick, and leaves. The things her mother said press Pearl into the mattress. Now, see? her father says, relaxing his brows as he sits for a moment beside her. Can’t you tell how much your mother loves you? He looks so sweet, Pearl makes a huge effort to smile and pat his
hand.