Reasons She Goes to the Woods (12 page)

Pearl walks to town, down the long, swooping road bordered with weeds that in summer will have moving clumps of ladybirds hanging from their branches. Over the bridge she goes, past the nursery school, its play yard twitching with tiny figures, and down into the underpass. Her pocket is heavy with coins. Not for one minute was she tempted to buy even a stick of gum with her lunch money. For one hour every school day, while the sun gleamed above her, or rain fell, she rested in the secret place she’d found and thought of nothing. Each morning, there was her lunch money, on the table in the hall. And now she has enough. It’s quiet and almost empty in the store. Assistants admire themselves in mirrors, but Pearl doesn’t look at them as she travels up the escalator and walks into the swimwear section. Soon, she’s on her way home again, the store bag pushed inside her jacket. There’s the evening meal to get through. Her mother serves them food that looks as if it came from a joke shop. Pearl looks at the shiny, garish mounds of vegetables. Seriously? she says to her mother, holding up a charred chop. Can’t I have bread and cheese? Something real? She swerves neatly when her mother leans across to slap her face. Nothing for you then, her mother shouts, covering the plates with thick gravy. Her brother rhythmically kicks the table leg as he eats, but Pearl does nothing. All she can think of is getting to her bedroom and closing the door. It’s almost too perfect; there, on her bed, is the tiny black bikini with silver eyelets and laces. Just waiting to be put
on.

In a scramble of knickers is a heap of assorted bones. Pearl closes her drawer and hums to keep her spirits up. Then later, she spots a finger bone poking out of the mouth of her trainer. She remembers, long ago, how it felt when she first saw the skeleton girl point at her from inside the school hall curtains. Now, tidying up, she smiles, thinking about how her skeleton girl was always around; splashing in the stream, hanging from a door hook, nodding yes, yes, from the undergrowth, tinkling and clattering, willing to play whenever she was needed. Settling into bed she finds, like a question mark, a collarbone under the pillow, so she goes downstairs. In the kitchen sink the cold tap drips into the blind eye of an empty pot as Pearl takes an apple and walks out into the moon-haunted garden. Now she’s older, her skeleton girl rarely appears in one piece, and that’s understandable. It’s hard to imagine those years when they spent so much time together. Then suddenly, Pearl recalls a lovely hour when they sat smiling on a high ledge somewhere, listening to the hollow bang of sheep’s jaws bouncing across the dark forestry. The fir tree by the back door exhales a melancholy breath as Pearl brushes past, linking then and now. On the garden path she can just make out a trail of white fragments. They are the skeleton girl’s teeth, leading her, so she follows. At the end of the path is a cherry tree, knobbly with buds, each twig sheathed in moonlight. Through her tears, Pearl sees, at the end of one branch, her dear girl’s bony little hand, waving goodbye for
good.

Some nights, Pearl hears sounds she doesn’t like. When she was little, she’d stuff her bunny right up between her legs and squeeze him rhythmically until a shimmer flooded first her belly, then her chest and she couldn’t hear the sounds she didn’t like any more. When she was older, Pearl forced a pillow over her head and whispered to herself, it’s okay, it’s nothing, it’s okay, it’s nothing, until she fell asleep again. Tonight, Pearl is lying in bed, her eyes stretched to the dark. Something has woken her. In her head a familiar feeling begins to develop, and to stop it Pearl gets up to look outside. It’s a summer night. She opens the window wide and climbs onto the inside sill. Even behind the curtain, leaning out to sniff the faint, steady breath of the quiet woods, Pearl can still hear. Enough, she says quietly, and jumps down. The lace curtains at the landing window throw ragged grey patterns onto her face as she stands outside the door to her parents’ room. This is where the sounds come from. Pearl feels as if her heart will shatter. The sighs and grunts she hears are like the noises a huge lie would make. But this can’t be right, she thinks, and opens the door so violently that it bangs a chair. She sees, without looking, the squirming bed, and her mother’s naked leg thrown out from under the covers. Her father’s strong back is facing her, skewed to one side. Daddy! Be quiet! she shouts. Then, somehow, she’s back in her own room, and the sounds have stopped. It’s okay, it’s nothing, she tells herself, as she falls asleep, it’s absolutely nothing. It’s
okay.

Finally the day comes when her mother and brother will both be out. At breakfast it’s touch and go, so Pearl thinks about nothing. What will you two do this fine day? her mother asks. Her father reads the paper. Stuff, Pearl says, watching the sunlight wink on her knife. What sort of stuff? her mother asks, her head to one side like some huge bird. Dunno, Pearl answers, sipping juice. This is the crucial moment, so she acts bored. What about you? Her mother pokes a finger into the newspaper’s centre crease so it collapses. She’s trying to sound chirpy, but Pearl knows what’s going on. Oh, her father says, folding the paper. Gardening, I think. And will you help, madam? her mother asks. Nope, Pearl answers. It’s almost midday before the house is empty. Pearl stands in the bathroom listening to her father’s spade clink against stones. Opening the window she watches as he wipes his forehead. Sit on the bench, Daddy, she calls. I’ll bring you a drink. He wears shorts and his legs are surprising. She glimpses his navel when he lifts the spade onto his shoulder. Sounds good, he says and walks into the shade of the apple trees. Quickly Pearl changes and gets the drinks. She carries the tray into the dappled cover of the trees. Her father is lying on the bench, his boots and shirt beside him. Daddy! Do you like my bikini? she calls, and waits. Her father sits up and looks at Pearl’s small, full breasts held neatly in the black cups, her perfect brown legs, her tender, flat stomach. Well? she says, swishing her hair, still holding the tray. Wow, her father mouths, his hands open on his knees.

Today, some of the old gang are going to the beach. Will has a car now and they intend to cram themselves in with all their stuff. Pearl doesn’t speak on the long journey; this is the first time she can remember going to the coast. At last they park and walk through the dunes. The shifting bosoms of sand, the white birds like air-blown, musical blossoms, the sound of the invisible sea, all held inside the huge, upturned bowl of the sky, send Pearl into a kind of rapt absence. Then they’re on the beach. Miles of cream-and-blue loveliness stretch out before Pearl, and her throat bubbles with a feeling she can scarcely hold. Honey gets into her new bikini quickly, but Pearl still wears her old costume. They decide to eat first, and quickly lay out a picnic, but Pearl isn’t hungry. Instead she wants to walk on the rocks and explore the pools with their fringes of purplish grass. Everything seems to squirt, or shrink, or liquefy when she touches it, unlike anything she’s ever seen or felt before. The smell of the wrack, the tough capsules of seaweed that burst with a wet plop, the plant ropes covered in orange warts and especially the transparent, darting pool life, Pearl looks at them all. Suddenly, she stands up and feels a flash behind her eyes; the vast, lemony sky and the heaving disk of the sea all blend into one inexpressible, sparkling new idea of the world. With closed eyes she searches for her dim and rustling woods, the bright stream, her swaying ferns, for her mother’s red face in the steamy kitchen and for a moment, it’s a struggle to remember.

Pearl carries inside her now the yelling gulls and wheat-coloured dunes pierced by tough bristles of marram grass. More than anything else, there are miles of wind-scooped beach stretching out, waiting for her to run over them any time she wants. When Will stops the car for something to eat, Pearl realises she is ravenous. The windows mist with a vinegary fug as everyone eats fish and chips and swigs Coke, and they all laugh at Pearl’s concentration on her food. Her lips shine as she smiles, waggling a drooping chip. I love the beach, Honey says with her mouth full. It rocks. And they all laugh again. Soon it’s quiet and only Pearl and Will stay awake. When she gets home eventually and climbs out of the car, Pearl feels loose-limbed, and her hair is so stiff it looks powdered. The idea of going into any of those tiny rooms is almost impossible, but she forces herself to step inside. It’s quiet, yet Pearl can sense they are all waiting for her. In the lounge her brother crouches on the carpet. He looks mutely at her. Sitting either side of the empty fireplace are her parents. Her mother is tensed, ready to leap from her chair. Pearl looks at her father, but he is studying his locked hands. For a moment they all look like strangers. Is something wrong, Daddy? she asks. You could say that, madam, her mother answers in an oddly deep voice, waving the two pieces of the black bikini between fingers and thumbs as if they were filthy rags. What have you got to say about this disgusting thing? And don’t speak to your father, she adds, a vibration in her voice. He is very disappointed in
you.

Pearl gathers up the bikini fragments strewn on the carpet and stuffs them in her pocket. Jacketless, she leaves the house, head down, oblivious to the evening, or to where she’s going. Her shoes darken at the tips as she crosses a field and a wet wind blows her hair across her face, then changes direction, whipping it all out behind her like a signpost. She reruns in her head the huge, black-handled scissors, her mother chopping haphazardly at the bikini. I’m doing this for your own good! she’d shouted, pulling the delicate laces from their eyelets and snipping them into finger-length sections, unaware she was cutting her own dress at the same time. No one is interested in you, Pearl! she’d said. No one! As Pearl watched, she’d felt herself shrinking to the size of a gnat. She could clearly see her brother trying to grab the bikini, and hear her father shout as he struggled to get control of the scissors. She zoomed closer as they tussled. It looked as if her father would not be strong enough to wrest open her mother’s fists. Pearl could feel herself buzzing, circling, invisible to all of them. Then she landed, back in her old self, and the room was empty, everything just the same, but for an overturned chair and the litter of black scraps on the floor. Now, on the side of the grey-toned mountain, Pearl stops walking and empties her pockets. In brilliant colour she sees her house: the apple trees in the garden, the tray with two glasses, the sunlight sparking along the blades of grass, her father on the bench, silently mouthing WOW, and realises that the bikini’s not important any
more.

Pearl wakes up to a commotion. It’s like the shifting clamour of a huge, angry crowd. But how come? she thinks. I’m alone in my room. She checks outside. Through her window the dark street is familiarly empty. In the house beyond her bedroom door the furniture sleeps, rugs sprawl out on floors and she can just imagine the fridge’s lonely night-time buzz. The noise must be inside her head. It’s a startling thought. She lies down and tries to work it out. Even with her eyes tightly shut she can tell that the room is shifting to another colour. And that she is not alone. The clatter in her head is gone. In its place is a whispering sound, as if millions of tiny palms were softly clapping. She opens her eyes. Her room is full of saplings whose bright trunks are festooned with silky tatters. They all incline towards her. The nearest lean over her bed on three sides and dangle their stippled, minutely jointed branches onto the covers. The semi-dark is like the clearing in a tall forest; sharp with green smells and the serious perfume of dripping moss. The trees are swaying. It seems to Pearl that they are saying, ressstt, as they dangle their serrated, heart-shaped leaves across her forehead and cheeks. Everything is goooood. Pearl falls asleep again, lulled by the birches’ woody music. When she wakes in the morning, she stretches. There on the covers is a withered, broken twig. Suddenly she remembers the night, and an unwelcome new thought bashes her smartly across the head. Maybe the trees were giving her a warning? But, Pearl wonders, whatever could it
be?

Mr Wilks, the form teacher, is explaining to Pearl about the importance of her exams. You’re very bright, he says, wiping the board. Have you thought much about your future? Pearl’s perched on a desk, her forthright eyes on him. She could laugh, she thinks, at such a question. Why are you smiling? Mr Wilks asks. Pearl sits quietly, her hair illuminating the drab room, and contemplates all the rooms just like this one, all the lessons she’s sat through, all the workbooks and tests, all the ticks and crosses. I’m just thinking about school, she says. And is it funny? her teacher asks. In a way, Pearl says, slipping off the desk neatly. On the way home Pearl walks through the park, swinging her bag. She balances on the kerb and feels the huge chestnut trees looming over her. The evening light is making every surface look soft and frayed, as if instead of wood, say, or metal, it were covered in worn-out fabric. School is hilarious, she thinks, but it’s also sad. Everybody is working so hard, and for what? She feels sorry for the teachers. Soon, school will be over for ever. In the end, all the children there will scatter. It’s as if her real life can’t begin until a few things are in place, and leaving school is one of them. When she gets home, her father is already in. She tells him about Mr Wilks and he looks serious. Do you care about exams, Daddy? she asks. Honestly, why do I need qualifications for what I’m going to do? Her father takes hold of her hands. And what might that be, my good girl? he asks, smiling. Pearl is intensely surprised. But Daddy, she says, don’t you know
yet?