All Rivers Run Free

by Natasha Carthew

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

'Raw, passionate, hallucinatory. Reading All Rivers Run Free was to be lured by an edgy siren voice of fierce womanhood' Rachel Holmes A woman on the edge of the sea finds a girl on the edge of life. Brittle but not yet broken, Ia Pendilly ekes out a fierce life in a caravan on the coast of Cornwall. In years of living with Bran - her embattled, battering cousin and common law husband - she's never yet had her own baby. So when she discovers the waif washed up on the shore, Ia takes the risk and rescues her. And the girl, in turn, will rescue something in Ia - bringing back a memory she's lost, giving her the strength to escape, and leading her on a journey downriver. It will take her into the fringes of a society she's shunned, collapsed around its own isolation. It will take her through a valley ravaged by floods, into a world not too far from reckoning. It will take her in search of her sister, and the dark remembrance of their parting. It will take her, break her, remake her, in the shapes of freedom. Natasha Carthew is a startling new voice from beyond the limits of common urban experience. She tells a tale of marginalisation and motherhood in prose that crashes like waves on rocks; rough, breathless and beautiful.

Release date: April 23, 2019

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 336

Sample

The first time it happened it was the worst of all times; the young woman told herself it was important not to forget this. The first show of red when it wasn’t meant the first moment she glimpsed a chance at happiness, since then it had gotten easier. Familiarity was all; failure a used-to thing another blood-drop in the ocean.

She stood on the furthest stretch of rocks and bent to the surf to place the tiny raft into the water. Floating in the ebb tide the bit of meat didn’t look like much at all, the kerosene-soaked rag made more of it than what it was what was it? Not a baby not life in any recognizable form except it came from life: this was the best she could do. The only part of her she could ever hope to leave the cove, she would set it free with fire and water same as all the other little creatures that had come before; she would help it evade the grip of that prison place.

One strike of match she flicked the flame spot on, a practised shot and she returned to the beach the fire she had lit and sat to watch the thing the solitary star be gone be burnt and washed; it was better this way better than leaving a piece of herself in the cold creek ground.

‘Easy come,’ said Ia. ‘Easily another.’ She didn’t mean this she didn’t know what else to say if she was respectable she would have said something sacred she wasn’t.

When the last wink of light flashed out on the horizon and full dark down she waited for the cove to fill with night its shackles tight around her its weight like bog water until she could no longer breathe; she lay down and searched the sky for stars kicked her boot into the driftwood flames to make her own.

She could hear her heart beat in her ears it split the silence one atom at a time. A little wind the last of tide water the ocean taken away, this the only sound it didn’t count she endured it every day.

‘You come back to me,’ she said. ‘Bring me somethin for the baby; a gift for a gift.’ She sat up and put her hands to the fire; it wasn’t cold not yet but warmth meant small comfort; she caught it and put it into her hoodie pocket took it with her as she walked the short stretch of sand. She reached the cliff-path steps the short climb without light knew the place better than she knew herself; when her feet hit the stony ridge she didn’t stop headed toward home a quiet place without hope it would be the quietest. What else to do but go to bed; in the morning she would forget this night like a dream she would overlook the detail of loss find a place to put it somewhere less lonely, imaginary, gone.

*

The first thing to wash up on the shore next morning was a crate of oranges, just that. Tiny pools of sunlight scattered on the shingle-sand, the rock pools spread golden, happy to be tricked into summer. Ia had watched them come in from the caravan window at the sink; she had been looking at her reflection, the contrasting blonde hair black-eye bruise, she was about to contemplate worse when she saw it. A slick of colour being and then split, the oranges were one thing and then a hundred things; she wondered if the dots connected they would reveal their true meaning. She took her first pill of the day rinsed her mug and wiped the laminate sides like always each morning and kept the spectacle at the corner of her eye for as long as she could bear. This magic thing this secret moment that had drifted into the bay and Ia watching alone she was always alone.

She stretched to open the window to smell the fruit and fill the caravan with sweet notes not the usual sour and stood with the breeze pressed to her cheeks. This was colour no paint no palette could replicate; thrown against the slate grey sea the sand the bastard rocks it was the sun come down heaven fallen upon earth. The sea had listened, a hundred gifts for a gift.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘You remain forever it’s a straight swop this life I can do.’

She put on her coat and buttoned and slipped the leather journal that she was never without into her pocket and she wished for colours not the usual Cornish slate so she could record this phenomenon draw it for her sister Evie a present for when she saw her again. She stamped her wellie boots in the lean-to porch and amongst the pile of soft-maybes she found a hessian sack worthy of collecting fruit.

Outside the morning was coming good, mizzle just and a light wind threatening clouds; Ia knew they would clear on this gift-given day they had to. She went tentatively toward the western headland and stood looked down on the campsite and hoped nobody else had witnessed this apparition but as usual no folk were up the van doors shut the store by the pool still boarded; it was the same every morning. She went on toward the pathway steps and down on to the beach. Morning was her time since early days she had made it so; she cherished the calm the silent amity, thanked it each and every dawn and in return it gifted her with such delicate scent and colour she called it hers it was she alone who noticed.

She bent to the first orange and plucked it from the sand held it against her nose. An early childhood memory making juice she let the thought bathe her and become river. Oranges everywhere and each one picked and placed gently into the sack like precious stones. She found them floating in the rock pools and caught like crabs between the spurs of flint and barnacle, the skin tight the flesh firm she could feel the muscle of the thing between her fingers in her hands each one was a punch.

With the rocks and shingle combed through she sat with the bounty between her legs and wondered where she might store the oranges to keep them from him. Two more days fishing two more days until his return Ia was determined to make the most of this freedom. Do what the fuck take flight let her imagination drift before the customary anchor drop and drag, no more fruit just fish and potatoes occasionally when he bothered to barter at the campsite.

She left the sack beneath the bench and walked the cliff to where the rock stabbed furthest into the ocean, a thin split of land barely wide enough for standing and yet every morning Ia did just this like a lighthouse it was her duty. Beneath her feet the shingle-rock plunged into the water no matter what tide it towered six hundred feet above sea level the closest she would ever get to knowing liberty. She lifted her arms and dared herself to push a little further forward step off, she heard her sister’s voice call out to her a memory made old through remembering too much, she sat back and dug her heels into the turf.

As far as the eye could see a serpent wind raced across the sea coming in to spoil her day. It snapped low to the ground both tail and teeth looking for a way out a way into the caves the hollow trees the spaces that had yet to be claimed. Ia watched it follow the cliff path to her right and stop dead at the bight, saw it slip and crash into the sea be returned to the bay by the rip current; nothing could escape the place, if it had asked she could have told it this. Thirteen years ago she had asked the same question, now the distance between time and memory had fallen wayside, but sometimes it felt like the first year the first day the first fist-fight minute.

Thirteen years unlucky and still Ia did not fit or something about the north coast place did not fit her. When she arrived she had been twelve years of age and all for the show she did her best to please him. She’d learnt to gut and cure fish and clean and pet the caravan into how she supposed it should be and she was happy when she reached sixteen, a new bride. Despite no ceremony no ring she’d learnt to abide had made the van her home and she kept his dream of rebuilding the surrounding ruined cottage into a worthy house give him babies whatever he wanted she would do it. Ia had found her place in things: somebody desired her she was needed. She had told herself she could do this, be a wife a mother be her own woman.

Thirteen years and the caravan he had hoisted into the ruin was still their only home, though by the bind of ivy and bracken it had morphed into the ruin walls and like them it clung to that last remaining dream. And still no babies, no fruit grew from deadwood.

On first arrival Ia had tried to make friends with the women in the neighbouring campsite, through Dad’s blood they were kin all kinds of cousin but no matter she was a blonde-haired, hazel-eyed south-coast girl, they didn’t like her and the men didn’t like her in public, not until her curves came busting did they circle; it wasn’t a bother easy money was all. If Bran had provided the way he was meant she wouldn’t have split for anyone; it was a game of survival Ia had got good at enduring.

Ia Pendilly was not a woman worth bothering she was mostly left alone, a loner not by choice but by the choice of others, a girl gone over, got old before her time. She could still hear their gossip come in on the night wind; they called her names called Branner worse, but back then he had a little kindness, he took her in with nothing to her just a roaming girl his cousin’s kid, bereaved and in need of fixing, he didn’t touch her until fifteen.

Ten years hoping and still no full-term baby to show commitment she supposed it had taken its toll; the travelling doctor said a miracle child was what they should pray for told Branner not to waste his time on this girl go and get another. The two men had laughed and Ia too. She’d never learnt how to be opposing, never had the time the guidance, with Mum and Dad dead and sister Evie gone and the pervading dark no matter how hard she stretched for light, felt for substance, texture in the gloom. She smiled, thinking on a way to be the person she would never be but please God why not? She was twenty-five and backalong folk used to say she was a brave kid, growing up she always sought adventure put fire into Evie’s sensible shoes, ready to run the risk go at things head-on colliding, she had thrown caution to the wind it had returned a storm its damage was everywhere. There was nothing much to Ia’s life except oranges in that moment they were everything to her.

*

‘Close your eyes,’ she told herself. ‘Remember.’ She needed time away not far, a moment home, she found Evie sitting in the garden.

‘What you up to?’ she asked.

‘Mum’s photo album.’ She wriggled across the blanket so Ia could join her.

‘The one that ends with us as babies?’ asked Ia.

Evie nodded and she pushed the open book toward her sister. ‘She was beautiful weren’t she?’

Ia agreed. ‘Got a sparkle in her eyes; where you spose it went?’

Evie thought for a minute. ‘Maybe it went into us.’

‘You reckon?’

‘We got em int we? Mum’s eyes, most of us is Mum.’

‘Where’s the photos of Dad?’

‘Next page, here he is with Mum, teens int they?’

Ia studied the photo and nodded. ‘Can’t wait till we’re teenagers.’

‘Next year,’ said Evie. ‘Tell me what then Ia?’

‘I’m always tellin you.’

‘Tell me again; tell me like it’s a story.’

Ia sighed worked it like a hardship it wasn’t it was her favourite tale.

‘We’ll leave here and go live in a cottage close to the beach,’ she began.

‘Who will?’

‘Me and you and our babies and we’ll have cats and a dog and a hundred hens so we int never short of eggs.’

‘Where close to the beach?’

‘Not on no cliffs that’s for sure, one em low-laid villages that push right into the sea.’ Ia turned on to her back and closed her eyes to continue her story. ‘We’ll have a boat for fishin cus you love the sea and I’ll have a garden for fruit trees; I’ll only grow what we like won’t be one vegetable in our yard.’

Evie closed the photo album and joined Ia in lying facing the clouds. ‘Strawberries and blackberries and raspberries,’ she said. ‘What else?’

‘Oranges,’ said Ia.

‘Don’t be daft, can’t grow oranges in Cornwall.’

‘How we know if we int tried?’

‘The Book of Cornwall’s Countryside don’t say you can grow oranges.’

‘Stuff the book, not everythin’s in the book.’

‘Mum says it is.’

‘Then she’s wrong.’

*

Ia opened her eyes and smiled. She returned to the caravan and lugged the sack to the kitchen tipped its contents on to the floor and put the fruit on to every surface into each corner like lamps they lit up the van gilded the walls happy.

She bent to pick up the one remaining orange and put it to her nose her cheek her lips like a living thing she told it she was sorry for the bite, the slaughter. The slow undressing as she split open the fruit, the sour juice dripping through her fingers as she put it to her mouth; the smell the taste the swallow, revelation.

When she had finished eating she wiped her hands in the tea towel; the tears on her face she left to dry they came from a good place she would wear them today, tomorrow, wear them until his return.

She sat amongst the oranges and held on to their memory like old hands; all through the morning she remained beside the things in her care, they were gems to be guarded, gifts from the deep. She told herself to cherish the moment make a memory she could return to but it wasn’t long before old thinking ways resumed position: nothing was ever enough she was never satisfied, most days he told her this. She wished for more was all. More than nothing at all it wasn’t such a reach, for all the shells and smooth belly stones she wished for better brighter beautiful moments to fill the muted space more than this mist.

Something good was coming something better it was long overdue. Ia knew it was only a matter of time. She left the van, heading toward the scrubland behind the ruin in the hope of finding blackberries one thing sweet; she found the bushes veiled in mould, the drupelets dried gone over before their time, it wasn’t a surprise.

The cove was a beautiful tragic place, its parts made up of every kind of perfect pretty, but it didn’t fool Ia; she knew its worst, had the scars and scratches to prove it.

The scrub was the highest point above the van, it caught an ill wind, the seasons that came in too fast went too slow, the salt air that went nowhere. Recently those fields sprouted more gorse than good crop; Ia knew what once had grown there would grow again have tough stems and weak roots; nothing much got tended on that part of the coast except plot-land the bit of earth each man woman could see, protect, fight for. The northerly hills were punctured with mineshafts; together with the reef of rocks to the south they captured Ia in their gape, a baited trap. There was no escaping the cove she would be absorbed by that sharp silt soil it didn’t matter it was the sea that had her most days.

Out on the water she could see a rowing boat; it looked to be heading toward her. She watched it hang at the reef edge one minute, realize its mistake and about turn and Ia ran from the scrub, past the ruin and down on to the beach in time to see it; she wanted to shout about the oranges, share her beautiful bounty. She stood in the surf and waved, best face. The sight of a boat meant there were other people besides camp folk, she knew other places existed beyond the cove she wasn’t alone just lonely was all, but they never came closer than looking; the rocks meant there was no way into Cold Acre Creek there was no way out either. Occasionally she got lucky, a lone lobsterman feeling sorry might tip his hat throw her a wave, but those times were rare mostly they got busy looked down at their hands, the families were the worst, Ia didn’t blame them, the place was doomed you didn’t have to know it could see it the campsite was to blame.

The campsite gang didn’t trouble that part of the creek; there was no route through the rocks to take a boat nothing on the land but the ruin that housed the caravan and Ia rattling inside, the lonely woman who talked to herself a little down-beat drumming within. If anybody chanced getting close they would hear it she was a time bomb ticking Bran said without her medication she was set to explode; he told her she was lucky not to have been locked away aged twelve he said if it wasn’t for him she would be there now said it was called the funny farm it sounded perfect.

Ia’s only pleasure was the tide; whatever drifted out there beneath the ocean current she deserved, the things that were fated for that rootled cove were meant for her they helped her to forget in time she hoped to remember.

She continued to walk beside the curve of freshly laid seaweed; clods of bladderwrack and kelp tied together with dead man’s lace. She kicked the slop with the heel of her boot and bent to swat the flies found limpet shells and mussels, those clear of tar she pocketed and moved on toward the rocks.

She stepped amongst the pools of water and into each new dint she sunk her hands an unlucky dip she returned to the sand and took a stick to mark and prod the wet shingle remembered the oranges and imagined an exotic ship. All those oranges, it had to be Spain perhaps someplace where the sun still shone, a place Ia Pendilly would never visit but here it was visiting her, a better visitor than any. She wished she had the imagination to take her there.

At the left flank of the bay she headed toward the rock that was her favourite and climbed the five-foot crag to sit. Occasionally from this vantage objects appeared suddenly from beneath the shifting silt, the retracting tide or a keen wind blown revealing the pinnacle of something red, rusted.

High tide spring tide neap tide certain times of the year the waves did their own thing came with the moon’s pull and dug so far into the cove they bagged up the sand and in their alarmed retreat took up the beach left nothing in return but the hulks of metal the winches and the wheels of forgotten industry. Ia didn’t like those tides; she called them bullies they robbed the bay of beauty.

Last winter she had found a bomb the size of a hawthorn bush. All through those worse wet months she spent her days straddling it like it were a good horse; she imagined herself gone in a blaze of glory wished it so until the sand returned rebuilt and reburied.

Nothing but the sea got to leave the creek she knew this, nothing but the wind the waves the seasons’ change and the dead baby-buds; sometimes she thought her senses were about to take leave, one empty shell remaining a little space for her to rattle away the days. She pushed away the bad thoughts and jumped from the rock to resume the forage, found nothing but debris, broken bits, plastic beads rinsed pastel the shade of former glory. Ia couldn’t place them, but she knew they had been around the world so many times no doubt they would go round again.

She left the beach and headed toward the smokehouse to fetch her fishing line, found a crust of dried fish on the floor and together with a purse of hooks carried them across the rocks to the basin of water where sometimes she got lucky. One mackerel perhaps a rainbow trout if she was blessed one fresh fish for frying instead of smoked to carry home before the last flash of afternoon light cut out. Food because she did not have much what remained she made last, she was never far from a frugal day but the oranges had changed that her lucky number come up.

She threaded the hook to the line the fish to the hook cast off with her feet wide her knees bent she told herself she would not move until nig. . .