Reasons She Goes to the Woods (5 page)

There are lots of different reasons why Pearl wants to stay in her bedroom for ever. She likes to close the curtains and turn her bedside lamp on. In the pink glow she often presses her back to the radiator until she can’t bear the heat a single second more. Or she’ll lie on the floor under the bed, very still, waiting until the room settles and forgets she’s there. Today she’s exploring her cupboard, finding old things she’d lost or spoilt. There’s a box on a high shelf, and as she pulls it down, flowery dresses and sun hats she half remembers tumble out in a series of soft sighs. Looking at the tangled heap of clothes makes her slump on the floor and think of nothing. After a while she realises her skeleton girl is propped against the bedroom door. It’s difficult to know how her girl feels; she always smiles, come what may. Grabbing her twiggy little hands Pearl stands her upright. Then she begins to force her into a dress. It’s tricky and noisy, but she keeps going. When all the buttons are done and the flounces are airy, she stands back. The skeleton girl looks like a collection of snapped branches with rags caught on them. Well, what a pretty girl you are, Pearl says in a made-up voice, looking at the dress with its smocking and frilly white collar. And doesn’t this colour look sweet on you? Mmmm? Everyone will simply love you in this. The dress has yellow rosebuds and trailing green stems all over it. She scrabbles amongst the things on the floor for a hat. Dresses always looked stupid on me, she says, plonking a sunhat on her girl’s smooth, bleached head, but I can see they make you very happy.

Pearl has made a racing car out of the push-along wheelbarrow, some boxes and a bike wheel. It’s a sunny afternoon, and she and The Blob have been sent out to play in the back garden. No one, absolutely no one, is allowed in this house, their mother says. What if I’m thirsty? Pearl asks, arms folded. What if I need the toilet? Pearl’s mother hands her a plastic container filled with water. Share, she says, and wee under the hedge if you have to. Then she shuts the back door on them. Pearl settles in the cockpit of her car and pretends to drive. Her brother is digging with his little red spade. Carefully, he’s filling a blue bucket with dry earth. That bucket’s mine, Pearl thinks, and is about to jump out of her car to smack him for using her things when she notices that he’s missing the bucket entirely and emptying his heaped spade over the side. He is so intent on digging that he doesn’t notice. A far-off dog barks and Pearl sits, watching her brother in his sun hat as he digs away, singing to himself. She sees his bare, suntanned feet in his sandals, his dirty, rucked-up-at-the-back striped T-shirt and something happens to her eyes, something dark and hard shifts inside her chest. She feels it melting into something altogether different. She blinks and straightens her back. Come here! she calls sternly, and her brother jumps up immediately, looks around for his squashy tiger and runs to the front of the racing car. Want to come for a spin? she asks. As he clambers in behind her she passes him the water bottle. Hold on! she shouts. Ready? Then we’re
off!

Honey and Fee are peeping through the stage curtains at the audience. Rehearsals have taken weeks, and tonight they do the play. What’s so interesting? Pearl calls. The two girls gaze at her. She is dressed in the most amazing costume. Pearl, you look beautiful, Fee says, and runs to hold her hand. Aren’t you scared? Honey asks. You have the most lines. Pearl is calm and silent. Don’t you want to see your mum and dad? Fee asks. Come on, take a look. But Pearl shakes her head. Your mother is the most lovely of all the mothers, Honey tells her. She doesn’t look like a mother at all, really. Or your father like a dad, Fee adds. Then a teacher calls and they run off. Pearl, in all her finery, walks to the curtains and puts an eye to the gap. She finds Honey’s mother in the crowd; she has a soft shape. Segments of pink scalp show through Honey’s father’s hair. A few rows back, Fee’s mum sits alone. She is pale and freckled, like Fee. Pearl watches as she opens a little case and puts her glasses on to study the programme. Pearl can almost imagine climbing onto her lap. It’s true, she thinks. They all look cosy. Pearl knows exactly where her own parents are. It’s as if a spotlight picks them out. There is her mother, in a red dress and red lips. Her blonde hair is glossy and waved. Pearl can see a glowing blob at each of her earlobes. They are her earrings. As Pearl watches she raises a white, scarlet-tipped hand to her hair. Beside her, Pearl’s father sits, his dark suit absorbing light, his black hair crisp. Pearl moves back from the curtain. She’s glad her mother and father don’t look like anybody else’s parents.

As Pearl walks through the empty village halfway up the mountain she gets a feeling someone is watching, so she twirls, scanning the windows and empty doorways of the cottages. Oi you! she calls, hands on hips. The silence is split by the coughing of startled sheep. Two crows stop jabbing their beaks at a bunch of purple thistle heads and look at her. The mountain’s herby breath kisses her cheeks and cools her eyelids. From the scrubby square on the mountain’s shoulder she can see down the valley, and there is her house, smaller than a fingernail. It’s hard to imagine her mother banging about inside those tiny rooms, looking for Pearl. For a moment she tries to picture her little box of a room, with her bunny under the pillow and her cupboard full of secrets. On she goes, up past the forestry, past the smooth, gleaming reservoir, and on to the place where a huge cliff face swells from the ferns and whinberry bushes. She starts to climb, her legs and arms scratched by sharp plants. An enormous silence presses Pearl to the cliff. When she heaves herself onto the wide ledge that spreads out nearly at the top, she is surprised to see the skeleton girl. Have you been watching me? Pearl asks her. Then she sees the skeleton girl is holding up a sheep’s skull, and working the jaws so that they bang open and shut. The long, bleached-out head is so heavy it wobbles in the skeleton girl’s grey little claws. Pearl can’t help laughing, it’s so nice; the two smiling skulls, and the hollow clap of jaws ricocheting around the mountainside.

Pearl and her granny are sitting in easy chairs opposite each other. On a small table are plates of toast and mugs of tea. In front of them, the fire has eaten the heart out of each rounded black-and-red coal in the grate, but still the fire is piled up, keeping its shape. Hungry flame-tongues slip through the dark slits where each coal rests against another. Pearl has been staring into the fire, watching as tiny glowing cities appear and fade, appear and fade. She rests her chin on her drawn-up knees and feels the wires that tightly hold her in place give a little, so she can move more easily and be calm. I see the fire-cities, she says. I see turrets and towers, stairways and doorways, lots of little dark windows. Mmmm, her gran says sleepily. Yes, those wonderful cities. Pearl can’t take her eyes off the fire. She’s imagining herself down there as a semi-molten person, changing colour and shape constantly; maybe a knight, or an orange horse, the size of a grain of rice, with a burning mane. Or, even better, a sleek, ash-scaled dragon, draped over the city’s rooftops, scaring everybody. She rubs her eyes and looks at her grandmother. She has a question. Well, my Pearlywhirl, her gran asks. Out with it. Pearl already knows the answer, but she wants to hear the words. So, Grannywan, she says, stretching her arms slowly above her head, her cheeks pink, her big eyes glowing with red embers, was Mother like me when she was a child? Her grandmother considers. No. You and your mother are not alike in any way, she says finally.

Pearl is stretched out on the settee, doing nothing. It’s a thin, shivery kind of springtime, and outside the daffodils in the sloping lawn bob their heads above clumps of juddering leaves. This is exactly the kind of evening Pearl can’t stand. It will be light for hours, and the way the birds in the garden call to one another makes Pearl think they hate it too. Her mother leans forwards in the chair opposite, sewing, straining to see her work in the grudging light. The Blob is building a fortress with wooden blocks. Every time he gets a wall how he likes it, Pearl knocks it down with her foot. Then he builds it again. Why don’t you move your stupid wall away from me? she asks. You are so shtoopid, I almost feel sorry for you. Then she knocks it down again. Each time the bricks fall, their mother flinches. Pearl goes on talking to her brother and he listens, busy with his bricks. If you were a bit cleverer, she says, you’d have a fortress finished by now. But you wouldn’t be The Blob if you did that, would you? He unhurriedly gathers his bricks and starts again. Pearl begins to sing a variation on her two-note song; shtoo-pid, shmoo-pid, shloo-pid, shkloo-pid. She can see her brother beginning to smile, so she sings a little louder, over and over. Then she stops singing mid-word and watches her mother slowly stand up, holding a short black zip in one hand and a needle and thread in the other. As her mother walks through the half-built bricks towards Pearl, she waves the zip and says, Ha! I’ve finally thought of a way to shut you up. Then she stumbles over a brick. Just you try singing then, Pearl, she
says.

Pearl cries in the woods. At last she starts to hiccup and look around. Tender, wonky caterpillars are swaying from invisible threads. The sun is jabbing through the foliage like knitting needles, pointing out beautiful things. Bursts of golden light dart and pool in amongst the leaves. Her eyes are sore and swollen. Everything has a pink tinge. It’s weird, and the woods start to look wrong, so she throws her voice up to the trees’ heads. There’s no reply as she walks back along the winding path, hiccuping quietly, and goes home. The houses in the street feel empty, and Pearl wonders where the neighbours could have gone. On the step she is reluctant to open the front door. Outside feels so airy. There are people somewhere doing normal things; shopping, walking their dogs, talking to each other. She turns the handle and there, drenched in a haze of bleach and polish, is her mother, on her knees, scrubbing the tiles, humming to herself. She breaks off to look at Pearl, then gets back to her work. She doesn’t notice Pearl has been crying. In her bedroom Pearl looks in the mirror. The face reflected is like someone else’s face; shiny, dark lips, drawn-down at the corners and a gruesomely running nose. But her eyes are the worst; the whites and irises are scarlet and the pupils tiny. It’s terrifying, the way she looks. Pearl cries again, while the face in the mirror contorts, dripping uncontrollably. Pearl stares into her own eyes and thinks someone else is peering out through them. Her real self has leaked away. Now all that is left is this stranger, almost as unhappy as she
is.

Pearl’s parents are engrossed in themselves, dressing up in special clothes to go out. Her mother’s blonde hair is done in soft bubbles. At her dressing-table mirror she applies lipstick while Pearl stretches on the huge bed. When her mother’s lips are red she looks like a cruel woman in a book. Her neck and shoulders gradually drain of colour. Bubbles, white skin and the slash of scarlet; that’s all there is. Pearl lies on her side and breathes quickly at the way her mother looks. Her dress is like a luminous skin, her shape all unfamiliar curves. Really, though, her father is the best; a tall, slender pillar of fluid black. His nose and mouth ready to go out somewhere Pearl doesn’t know about. His dark hair burnished, his eyes blank and gleaming. The smell of his skin is sharp and grown-up. She wraps her arms around his legs and he laughs. I can’t take you or your brother with me, he says, you would be bored, and tweaks her nose. Pearl knows that is not true. She has to struggle with her mouth, to keep it straight, when she leaves them to go to the babysitter’s house. The TV is on, and she sips the Coke and eats a handful of the nuts laid out for her. There is a man reading the newspaper as Pearl perches on the edge of the settee. She is feeling strange because of the unfamiliar food. After some time the man peers over the top of the big, floppy pages. Where’s your mother? he says. Pearl can’t say exactly where. He bulges his eyes and rolls them round. She’s gone off with a black man, he whispers, laughing silently at Pearl. Turning back to the TV she says, I know that, stupid.

When Pearl arrives at her grandmother’s house, she makes straight for the dim front room. She loves the squat, wheezy clock on the mantelpiece, the horsehair settee, the sugary smell of ripening pears and the locked glass cabinet. Inside is a figurine; a girl with red cheeks and a black pleated skirt that lifts to show frilly knickers. Her plaid scarf flies backwards as she skims across a sheet of ice. Pearl smiles at the three-inch skating girl, whose teeth smile back. She stands quietly until her mother calls her from the kitchen. Pearl and her grandmother make jam tarts while her mother sits and drinks tea. It’s tricky work, but Pearl enjoys it. She spoons a blob of scarlet jam into each tender pastry case, thinking about the girl with her smiley mouth and fascinating pants. Soon the tarts are put into the oven to bake and through the kitchen weaves a delicious, hot smell. Stand back, her granny says, as she gets the trays out. While the kettle boils and the table is laid, Pearl picks up a tart and rests her bottom lip on the scalding jam. Tears run from her eyes as she counts, then she screams. Two fat, translucent blisters are swelling on her lip. The women bump into each other to find ice and wet cloths, but neither one can stop her crying. Find out what she wants, Pearl’s mother says, picking her up with difficulty and handing her over to her granny. Pearl points to the cabinet and the skating girl. You shall have it, my pet, her granny promises, you shall have it straight away. Pearl stretches out her hands, shuddering spasmodically, and waits for the cabinet to be opened.