Nicola Barker - Wide Open

Jim grimaced, then he tried to demonstrate the whistling again. Ronny copied. On his first go he trilled quite sweetly. He couldn’t believe it. He slapped Jim on the shoulder. Jim was disconcerted and began hiccupping.

“Oh no,” he closed his eyes and held his breath.

Ronny gazed at him fixedly. “When did you last see a white horse, Jim?”.

Jim opened his eyes. He hiccupped. “A white what?”

Lily arrived in the kitchen dressed and ready for college but with a pillowcase stuck to her left cheek. Sara was pouring Connie some coffee. “Now what?”

“It won’t come off.”

Lily picked up a piece of toast and ate a corner of it dry.

“Did you cut your cheek?”

“I suppose I must’ve.”

Lily smiled thinly as she chewed, avoiding Connie’s eyes.

Sara went to inspect the pillowcase.

“There’s a lot of blood, but it’s very dry. Does it hurt at all?”

“Itches.”

“Let’s put the case under the tap and wet it. Maybe it’ll ease off more gently that way.”

Sara moved Lily over to the sink and ran the warm tap. Lily was forced to bend over and have her cheek fingered and manipulated. She did not complain, but she stared at Connie’s bare knees and feet with an expression of intense smugness.

Very slowly and gently Sara eased the pillowcase off. The left side of Lily’s face was stained brown with dry blood. Sara used a tissue to wipe it clean but avoided the small, still-moist-looking cut on Lily’s cheek. Then she pulled down the bottom lid of Lily’s eye and peered inside.

“Pale. Maybe you should skip college.”

“Nope.”

Lily took the tissue and slapped it on to her cheek.

“I’m off.”

She strolled out.

Connie inspected her small gold ring. Sara poured some washing liquid on to the pillowcase and began rubbing at it.

Connie drank her coffee and tried to stop herself from yawning. She hadn’t slept well. Her brain had been buzzing. She rubbed her eyes and debated what to do next. What could she do?

“I want to show you something,” Sara had wrung out the pillowcase and was standing by the back door, “outside.”

Connie stood up. She was wearing a short cotton nightdress. “Can I come like this?”

“Uh…here…” Sara took a mackintosh from a hook and tossed it to her, then threw her a pair of large Wellingtons. Connie yanked them both on. They went out and Sara walked over to the washing line with Connie clumping along behind her. Sara pointed.

“I gave this a rinse through before you got up.”

Connie stared at Jim’s towel. It was a grey, breezy day. Quite nippy. She wrapped the mac closer around her. “Well, thank you.”

“No, look,” Sara was smiling. She pointed. “See?”

Connie peered more intently. “Prison issue,” she read, out loud.

Sara hung up the pillowcase. The blood stain was still evident.

“Ruined,” she muttered grimly, and then turned resolutely back towards the house.

When Connie came downstairs again, properly dressed in some old jeans and a grey woollen sweater, she found Sara sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with Luke’s camera. Her hair was unbrushed and she wore no make-up. Her cheeks and chin and nose all had the soft, dull shine of tan-coloured freshly laid eggs.

Connie pulled out a chair. “So will you give it back?”

“The camera? Eventually. I’m trying to work out the timer.”

“Pass it over.” Connie took the camera and inspected it. “Okay…”

She explained how she imagined it would work. Sara listened carefully. Then she took the camera back again.

“I’m going to take some pictures,” she said, “do you want to watch?”

Connie checked the time. It was still early.

♦

I Her cheek was leaking when she found him. On the beach, naturally.

“Ronny.”

He glanced up. “Lily.”

“So…” she looked at the shell piles, “will you be making another uh…” she couldn’t remember the word he’d used previously.

“No,” Ronny continued sorting, “today I’m constructing something for Jim. It’s a new project.”

“Right.” Lily’s voice was plainly laced with a fine jealous thread.

“Jim’s grief,” Ronny said, “I’m making it solid.”

“Jim’s grief? ”

Lily didn’t understand.

“Well, anyway,” she added, almost roughly, “I have something for you.”

She pulled the letter from her school bag. “It has your name on it. When I saw it I just knew that it was yours.”

She offered the letter to Ronny. He put out his left hand and took it. “Thank you.”

He glanced at the handwriting. Horrible, jagged. He stuffed it into his pocket.

“Won’t you read it?”

“What’s it about?”

“Insects, blood and a cave. Somewhere foreign. A bat cave.”

“The bat cave.” Ronny nodded.

“Don’t you want to know how I found it?”

“Yes.”

Ronny clearly did not want to know.

“Connie. The woman I was with yesterday. She had a whole pile of them. I tried to get hold of the rest but she hit me. See?”

Lily showed Ronny her cheek but he was not looking. She put her finger to the moist lip of the cut and felt tiny granules of sand nestling inside it.

“So…” she dawdled and then tightened her resolve, “I suppose I’ve got a bus to catch.”

“Then I hope it’s not a fast one.” Lily frowned, smiled, then took off.

♦

Her half-empty coffee cup. The washing line. The hen coop. A boar. Beetroots under tarpaulin. Her wedding ring. Her toothbrush. A paperback romance she’d been reading. A kitchen scale.

Connie watched mutely as Sara photographed all of these things. Each image took a long while to encapsulate — in the lens, in the black box — before it could be finally recorded.

The banisters, the toilet seat (down), her pillow — still featuring the indentation of her head — her favourite shoes, her hairbrush.

They were in Sara’s bedroom. At long last she broke the silence between them.

“You look tired.”

Connie blinked. “Do I?”

“Yes. Wasn’t your bed comfortable?”

“It was fine. I haven’t been sleeping well. Not since my dad. I got some tablets prescribed for it but I haven’t taken them. I don’t like forcing things.”

“It’s unhealthy not to sleep.”

Connie shrugged.

“Actually…” Sara was concentrating on the camera’s flash mechanism, “would you mind doing something for me?”

Connie nodded. “Anything.”

“Go downstairs, grab a kitchen stool and bring it back up here.”

Connie went and did as she was asked. Sara took the stool and stood it close to the foot of her bed, then placed the camera on top and peered through its lens. She adjusted the stool and looked once more.

“Climb on to the bed, will you?”

Connie climbed on to the bed. Sara stared through the lens at her.

“Right,” she said, “that’s all. You can go now.”

Connie clambered off the bed and tried not to feel pique at being personally excluded from Sara’s burgeoning photographic montage.

“I’m just a shadow,” she thought wryly, yawning, heading downstairs again, feeling the banister smooth and cool and suddenly significant beneath her hand.

♦

“Do you know how it was that I made my money?”

Luke was staring out to sea. He’d wandered down on to the beach to thank Ronny for what he’d believed at the time was saving his life. Now, of course, he knew that Ronny had not saved his life. His life had remained perfectly intact. Ronny had witnessed his pain, that was all.

Even so, he’d fully intended to thank him, but ended up staring out to sea instead and talking about something altogether different.