Water (7 page)

her; but her parents said that it was in this wise or not at all, and so she yielded, but with a less

good grace than was usual with her.

It had been tacitly assumed by each family that the extra pair of hands would be put to use, in a

little way to make up for when the pair of hands they were used to having available weren’t there

for a long afternoon and overnight; but because the parents of each child were very cautious with

the parents of the other child, they did not exchange any words about the relative usefulness of

their two children. It would have been very awkward if they had been less cautious, since Jenny

could lay her hand to almost anything, indoors and out, while Robert seemed capable of almost

nothing without so much explanation that it became easier to do it yourself—or so Jenny’s father

said to Jenny’s mother, more than once, in exasperation. Jenny’s parents had begun to try to

teach Robert the running of their farm—much of which should have been familiar to him already

but mysteriously seemed not to be—and tried to believe that all would be well, once the boy was

married and settled.

It was but two weeks before the wedding, and the final frenzy of preparation was beginning. It

was not to be a grand wedding, but it was to be a large one, with many people staying through

the day and into the evening, and much food eaten, and plenty of musicians for plenty of

dancing. Jenny’s parents could not but notice that there was a growing edge to her excitement

that was not ... what they would expect or want in a bride-to-be, and all their previous fears about

Robert rushed upon them again. Her mother tried to talk to her, but she would not listen; and the

odd edge to her excitement grew more pronounced; till at last her mother, desperate, said:

“Child, you know we love you. We will not ask you any more questions that you do not wish to

answer. But if—for any reason—you wish to call the wedding off, for pity’s sake, tell us, and we

will do it for you.”

Jenny rounded on her mother then, in a way she never had, and screamed at her, and said that her

parents were determined to destroy her happiness, that they did not need to tell her again that

they did not like Robert, that of course she wanted the wedding to go as planned, and to leave her

alone!

Her mother, shaken, pulled away from her daughter, turned and left her, and Jenny threw herself

sobbing on her bed.

Jenny’s mother said to her husband, “There is nothing we can do. Something is wrong,

dreadfully wrong, but we must let her bear it herself, for she will accept no help from us.”

They left her alone that day, shut up in her room, and went on about the farm work and the

wedding preparations with heavy hearts.

And Jenny, after several solitary and gloomy hours, crept out of her room and down the stairs,

and to the barns. She saddled her mare, Flora, and led her down a soft path where the mare’s iron

shoes would not ring and give them away, and mounted and rode off. Jenny looked back after

she had run off her first misery with a gallop, and saw that her long-legged wolfhound bitch had

followed her. She scolded her, and Gruoch’s ears drooped, but she peered at her mistress up

under her hairy brows, and clung to Flora’s heels, and showed no sign of going home as ordered.

So they went on together, the three of them.

It was twilight when Jenny reached Robert’s farm, and his family was not expecting her. She

paused at the gate. She knew why she had come, but she did not know what to do about it, and,

knowing she did not know, had put off thinking about it, and now she was here and had to do

something. At last she dismounted, and led Flora through the gate—while Gruoch oiled her way

between the rails—and closed it behind them; and then she tied her mare to the fence and went

on alone, her wolfhound still at her heels. She went down the path towards the farm buildings, as

she usually did, although usually she rode, and at the sound of hoofbeats some member of the

family would come out to meet her, for they were looking out for her. But they were not

expecting her now, and she and her hound made no sound of footsteps.

It was spring, and there was much to do, for it had been cold and wet till late this year, and some

evenings everyone worked on in the fields till dark. She should be home, now, doing the same.

The buildings seemed deserted, and she wandered among them, a little forlornly, feeling that

she’d come on a fool’s errand. It was all very well, what her mother said—what her mother had

offered—but it was not that easy; and as she thought this, her eyes filled up again, and tears ran

down her cheeks. As she took a great, gulping breath, she thought she heard something. She

turned and walked towards the nearest barn. It sounded like someone giggling.

The door was only a little ajar, and it was almost dark inside, for there was not much daylight

left. But there was a hatch door left open at the far end of the barn, high up in the loft, and a little

of the remains of daylight came through it, and fell on a heap of golden straw. Robert was lying

there, with a very pretty girl. The very pretty girl had no clothes on.

Jenny gasped, for she could not help it. She had, slowly, over the six months of her betrothal,

come to understand that Robert did not love her, and this, when she had finally faced it, had

caused her much grief She felt that she had been foolish, and did not know where to turn; it had

not occurred to her that her parents were wise enough even in such things to ask them, for she

knew they loved each other, and had never thought of anyone else from their first courting days.

She had felt, obscurely, that she had failed them somehow by loving a man who did not love her.

Nor had she wanted to call off the wedding even now; not clearly, at least; for she knew she did

still love him; perhaps she was only hoping for miracles; but she thought perhaps that he might

have some ... reassurance for her, that he might have something for her, even if it was not love, if

she asked him. But she did not know how to ask for what she wanted, for what she would accept

in place of love. She did not know what she would accept instead of love because that was what

she did want, and what he had promised her. She had come over here, dumbly, thinking to find

Robert, perhaps, alone; perhaps something would come to her that she could say to him.

She was very young, and very innocent. She had not, at her worst moments, expected anything

like this. She knew what her own warm blood, when his arms were around her and their mouths

met, meant; this was one of the reasons she could not bring herself to call off the wedding.

And so she gasped. Robert heard the sound, soft as it was, and stood up, throwing himself away

from the pretty naked girl, leaping away from her, whirling to put his back to her as if she had

nothing to do with him. He was still dressed, but both his shirt and his breeches were unlaced.

His mouth dropped open; for this moment even his gift of ready, flattering speech had deserted

him; for a moment he forgot he was beautiful. “Darling—” he said at last, or rather, croaked; and

Jenny put her hands over her ears, and turned and fled. He took a step after her, but the

wolfhound paused in the barn door and turned back to him, bristling; and he heard her growl. He

stopped. The wolfhound slid silently through the door, after her mistress, and disappeared.

Jenny blundered among the familiar farm buildings like a hare among hounds; she was weeping,

and felt that she would die at any moment. But she came, as much by accident as anything,

around the corner of the first of the buildings, and looked up to see her grey mare glimmering in

the twilight. Flora was anxious, and stamped her hoofs, swung her quarters back and forth, and

swished her tail. Jenny made towards her, conscious now too of the tall wolfhound at her side,

and she opened the gate in spite of her shaking fingers, untied her mare and led her through, and

carefully closed and latched the gate again as any child raised on a farm knew to do by second

nature. Then she mounted, and Flora leaped into a gallop without any message from Jenny.

Jenny did not mean to take the dangerous way. She thought she might die of sorrow and betrayal,

but there was nothing in her healthy young spirit that could make her wash to kill herself. But in

her trouble the only haven she could think of was the warm safe place she had known all her

short life: her parents, her parents’ farm, the farmhouse with its rosy warm kitchen and her

bedroom with the quilt she and her mother had made themselves. She could not bear not to go

there as quickly as possible; and the angry unfair words she had last spoken to her mother

pressed on her too. She had to take them back. As quickly as possible meant the old road across

the bridge at the head of the haunted harbour; but she had no thought for sea-people, or old

curses, or anything, only that it was a little over an hour home this low way rather than three

hours the high roundabout inland way.

She knew, of course, that the bridge was never used, but everyone from the two towns was

familiar with bits of the old road that led to and away from it; the newer roads that had replaced

it struck off from it. Since its bridge was shunned, it had to be; but the road itself was not fearful.

As the last of the old people, who remembered their parents’ friends’ deaths by drowning,

themselves died peacefully in their beds, the custom of not using the road remained while the

specific details of the proscription on the bridge faded.

Furthermore, she had not seen Gruoch turn Robert back at the barn door. The possibility that he

might try to follow her was more awful than any ancient malediction. So she set Flora’s nose

down the valley.

The mare had already had one journey today, and she was fretted by her mistress’s mood. She

went on as fast as she could, but she was tired. Jenny, who loved her, knew this, even now when

she was half-distracted with her great trouble, and pulled up once they were out of sight of

Robert’s farm, and let the mare breathe. They went on again, but more slowly, and the twilight

was really only the end of dusk, and full night came upon them almost at once. The mare began

to stumble. Jenny dismounted and led her; and discovered that her mare stumbled not only from

weariness, but from the roughness of the road. They were now on the last bit of road to the

bridge, which was never used, and the cobbles had been torn up from sea-storm and land-frost,

and the moon was not bright enough to show their way clearly, because streaming horses’ tails of

cloud dimmed her light.

But a little wind came up, and blew the wisps away, and the moon grew brighter. The

implications of what had happened began to clarify themselves in Jenny’s unhappy mind as well,

but the focus of her worry for the moment was her parents, who would not know what had

become of her, and would be the more anxious about her disappearance after the scene with her

mother. Already she was adjusting to the fact that she no longer had a betrothed; that she would

not be wed in a fortnight’s time. She did not know that her sudden, desperate weariness was

partly on account of that adjustment. She only thought that she had had a long journey, and that

she was very unhappy, and that her parents would be worried about her. She still had not

remembered the sea-people’s curse.

Her wolfhound set foot on the bridge first, and a tiny ripple of wave curled beneath it, like an

echo, and subsided. She was walking at Flora’s shoulder, and it was the mare’s front hoofs that

struck the bridge next, before her own. feet; and she had just time to notice the same ripple of

wave rise and begin to fall before she stepped on the bridge. But as soon as she stood on the

bridge herself, it was no ripple but a wave that rose and fell upon the bridge, drenching her mare

and her hound and herself. When the wave drained away, back into the harbour, there was a man

standing in front of her. He gleamed strangely in the moonlight; there seemed to be something

very odd about his skin. She saw him at once as human, even if the moonlight seemed to sparkle

off him in flakes and facets, for he had the right number of limbs and the right order of features;

and she assumed he was a man because his outline seemed to her more male than female,

broader shoulders than hips, a muscular neck and square jaw beneath the wet hair that fell to his

breast. But while she could not see that he wore any clothing, she could not see that he had any

genitals either. And then as he held his hand up to bar her way, she saw, in the moonlight’s

strange little iridescent ripples, that there were webs between his fingers.

“You may not pass,” he said, and his voice was deep, deeper than any human voice she had

heard; almost she had difficulty understanding the words; it was as if the wind had spoken. Or

like the roar of a big sea-shell held next to the ear. A cousin had brought her family a huge seashell once, as a curiosity, and it lay on the mantelpiece with other useless objects the family was

fond of, the pipe-rack a nephew had made, though Jenny’s father had never smoked; the

grotesquely hideous sampler that some great-great-great-aunt had made in her childhood which

had mysteriously metamorphosed into a family heirloom. Her parents’ sitting-room rose up in