Tirzah and the Prince of Crows Read online

  Praise for Reasons She Goes to the Woods

  Longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Encore Award

  ‘Pearl is a marvellously contradictory creation, showing the cruelty in children as well as their neediness, their capacity for love and friendship... Davies’ novel reads almost like a prose poem.’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘A sexy, contrary book…also a story concerned with morality. The most sustained and challenging aspect of the narrative is its insistence about what a little girl is like.’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Exquisite…to be marvelled at.’

  Guardian

  ‘A spiky echo of Angela Carter, with whom Ms Davies at her best stands fair comparison… The language is fresh, the imagery striking…and Pearl herself is a rampant, compelling, fully-realised, wild-eyed, teary creation.’

  The Scotsman

  ‘Outstanding… Davies is a poet, and this is a poet’s novel in the very best sense – every word is pin-sharp and perfectly in its place.’

  The Times

  ‘Best for highbrow sun lounging…told with a gothic, sensual style that Angela Carter would be proud of.’

  Grazia

  ‘Raw, lyrical, sad, this haunting story packs a deceivingly strong punch.’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘Dark, beautifully descriptive and rather haunting.’

  Grazia Daily

  ‘A poetic and strange novel, full of flair.’

  Emerald Street

  ‘A rounded, complex portrait of growing-up that has an atmosphere all of its own.’

  We Love This Book

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DEBORAH KAY DAVIES was born in South Wales and began writing as a mature student at Cardiff University, where she earned a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing and taught Creative Writing.

  Her first book was a collection of poems, Things You Think I Don’t Know (Parthian, 2006).This was followed by a collection of short stories, Grace,Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful (Parthian, 2008), which won the 2009 Wales Book of the Year award. After publication of her debut novel, True Things About Me (Canongate, 2010), the BBC TV Culture Show named Deborah as one of the twelve best new British novelists. Published in the US by Faber in 2011, Lionel Shriver chose the novel as her personal Book of the Year in the Wall Street Journal.

  Deborah Kay Davies’ second novel, Reasons She Goes to the Woods (Oneworld, 2014), was longlisted for the 2014 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2015 Encore Award. In her review for the Guardian, Eimear McBride described the novel as ‘exquisite…to be marvelled at’.

  Deborah lives in Cardiff with her husband, the poet Norman Schwenk.

  TIRZAH AND THE PRINCE OF CROWS

  For Norman,

  my indispensable, beloved captain and crew.

  I Am a Worm, and No Man

  (Psalm 22:6)

  Behold, I see the Lord descending as a dove, Pastor says. The gathering of brothers and sisters in the vestry turn their palms up and make encouraging noises. Tirzah is peering at the fanlight above the curtained double doors, her eyes the merest slits. Come, we beseech You, Heavenly Father, Pastor goes on, enfold us in Your wings, transport us to the heights. Sometimes, Tirzah sends herself up to the ledge just under the narrow, grubby window. That’s as far as I want to go when I’m in the prayer meeting, thank you, she thinks. It’s a nice way of passing the time. Up she goes now, like a spider on a strand of silk, and settles to survey the room. From this angle, some people’s hair looks sparse. And that’s not only the men; Mrs Stanley’s scalp has a broad, straggly seam, the pink flesh breaking through. It’s surprising, because at floor level, she has rows of dry, mousy curls crowding her forehead. Vain, she is, thinks Tirzah, watching as she tweaks her fringe. And going bald, poor dab.

  Apart from Pastor, who is still doggedly coaxing the Holy Spirit as if it were a nervous budgie, her parents look by far the most holy. Tirzah’s mother is smiling tremulously, perched on the edge of her chair, ready to run into the arms of Jesus, should He beckon. Her father is wrestling with something as usual. Although he is quite still, there is a sense of contained movement about him, evidence of a struggle only she can detect. Amen, Lord, he says, at intervals, mechanically. Verily, whispers her mother. Come, oh precious Jesus. We are waiting. Tirzah watches as her mother raises her arms towards the buzzing strip light. Fill us to overflowing, Lord, she calls, and everyone steps up the intensity. Tirzah’s armpits prickle at the way her mother’s voice throbs for Jesus, and immediately she is back in the circle.

  None of the women shows even the smallest glimpse of a knee, and some not even an ankle; the flesh is fallen and the portal for sin. If you give it an inch, Tirzah knows, it will spill out and go rampaging over everything like bindweed in a rose garden. Tirzah’s legs are covered with thick black tights. She can feel the rash of woolly bobbles meshing on the insides of her thighs. Across the semicircle, her cousin Biddy is resting on her mother’s shoulder. Tirzah has a proper look: Biddy is actually really asleep. Her mouth is relaxed, each outward breath puffing her lips so that it seems as if she is blowing kisses to the room. Biddy has new shoes, with the most lush little heels and buckles. It’s just not fair. Tirzah’s mother insists she wear boy’s lace-ups. We do not follow the world, you silly, shallow child, she always says. We are in the world, but not of the world. Never forget it. And don’t talk to me about Biddy, that girl is spoilt to death. Her mother’s antique shoes are maroon leather affairs with fringed tongues on the fronts and stubby stacked heels. In them, her ankles still manage to look like delicate branches from a rare type of tree.

  It doesn’t matter how much Tirzah explains about the other girls in school, and the tidy two-tone shoes they wear, her mother is unmovable on the subject of suitable footwear for growing feet. These will last you; boy’s shoes are sturdier, she states, with little variation, twice-yearly in the shop. And I’ll get my money’s worth. Then she goes on about all the daft fashions around. You’ll thank me one day, madam, she’s always saying, when everyone is hobbling out for their old age pension with snaggly tootsies and bunions. All Tirzah can see are her ugly, indestructible boy-shoes, and how fist-like her own woolly ankles look. Some of the sixth form girls are even wearing platforms to school, though they are banned. And meanwhile she has to stomp about in sponge-soled, wipe-clean lace-ups. The idea she is still growing makes her want to weep; the girls in class say she has feet like Olive Oyl already.

  She gazes around again. Most of the brethren keep their knees together, as is only polite. All that equipment, Tirzah thinks, straining to see the bulgy crotch of Pastor as he rocks his lean buttocks into a more comfortable position and starts to sing in his nasal voice: I tried the empty cisterns, Lord, but, ah! the waters failed. Everyone joins in, swooping up and down over the tune. Tirzah automatically hums the contralto, wondering what a cistern actually is. But, more importantly, what does it look like down there, behind those zips? Hideous, she doesn’t doubt. Coiled up, but ready to unleash itself, like that bothersome bindweed maybe, and smother all the sisters, herself included. Dada’s legs are always spread apart, though, his boots rooted to the spot. Thank goodness his trousers are so roomy you can’t see any bulges or odd shapes under his zip. Otherwise she would swoon regularly at the sight. The hymn continues, and Tirzah ups the volume: E’en as I stooped to drink they fled, and mocked me as I wailed. The moment it’s finished her mother starts to pray, already gasping between each word, her hat brim rising like a hungry mouth from its hat-pin pivot at the back of her head, her eyes rolling up under quivering lids.

  Tirzah counts slowly, and
gets to three hundred and twenty-seven before her mother finishes; there are often dips in her flow of praise, but always a quick acceleration before the end, so Tirzah doesn’t have to pay too much attention to her counting. She inhales deeply, aware of her mother subsiding, and realises someone has broken wind. How rude, she thinks. And extremely unchristian. The Son of God never broke wind, she’s sure. Suddenly she wants to get out. It’s disgusting, having to breathe the air from inside someone’s behind. Doesn’t matter how holy they are. She diverts herself by trying to guess who did it. Some people you just know would not. Mrs Edwards, though. She’s looking more restless than usual. And she has covered her nose with an embroidered hankie, shifting around in the too-small chair.

  Thinking about Mrs Edwards’ soft bottom inside her pants, and the way her fart must have silently curled out from the gusset, Tirzah starts to heave. Immediately her mother’s eyes fly open, and she stares at Tirzah. I’m poorly, Tirzah mouths, and startles herself by making the most guttural kind of burping sound. She smacks a hand over her mouth and runs towards the curtained doors. After a fight with the long paisley drapes, she’s out, the doors banging shut behind her. Lovely, lovely open air, she thinks, at once feeling more herself. Even though her chin is wet and her hands are sticky, it’s only spit. Thank the Lord, she thinks. Being ill in prayer meeting would have been so awkward. She clears a final putty-like wodge from around her tonsils. Ych-y-fi, she says aloud, bending to examine the tiny, glistening mound on the pathway. Human beings are revolting.

  She straightens and shakily inhales the cleansing, night-shrouded air. There is another, purer world out here. The graveyard sweeps downhill, the shale path glowing in the dark like the Path to Glory. Amongst the headstones, yew trees mass in black clouds, their secret, slow-beating hearts crouched deep inside. She imagines unloosing from her body again and fluttering up through the top of her own head like a newly born moth. Leaving behind the stuffy, holy room, the dust-rough curtains and threadbare carpet, she can feel the weight of the moisture-laden air on her millions of wing scales. On she flies until she reaches the graveyard wall. The stones give off a sharp smell, and as she lands, the lichen opens its thousands of tiny blossoms and they explode, sending out spurts of perfumed powder. Tirzah makes believe she has settled in a gap between two stones, and listens to the twig-like scratches of small brown birds hopping on the wall above her. She hears the squelch of fungi spreading along the base of the wall.

  This is the kind of God I would like to have, she thinks, surprising herself. Someone who could lie quietly between these stones with me. It is soothing to merge into everything, here in the wet, forsaken graveyard with its lumpy grass and cross-hatching of buried bones. The sky pressing against the mountain’s edge is both dark and pinkly glowing, punctuated by a solitary crow that looks like a stab wound in its tender flank. She waits, absorbing the violet’s talc-scented breath as it runs around the grave margins, and the sheen on the ridged burdock leaves, and thinks if she is still enough, and small enough, maybe she will learn something important. She can see the spotted, luminous throats of the cuckoo-pint with their columns of berries left over from winter, bright as tiny headlamps. Just as she begins to understand, she is yanked back into her damp dress, somehow still clutching her Bible, still slumped against the chapel wall.

  Like a radio being switched off, the shutting doors silence a hymn abruptly. Then Osian is kneeling beside her. You poor little dab, he says, trying to hold her hands. Are you feeling iffy? Tirzah is suddenly tired. Come on, you, he says, heaving her into his arms and standing her upright. No one will know we’re together. I slipped out when they were all going at it hammer and tongs. They’ll be yonks. Tirzah looks at Osian. He is taller than her now, even though they are the same age. The wing of his black hair falls forward over one eye. She strokes her dress into some sort of order, and wonders how he always knows what to do. They’ve made you a matter for prayer again, Osian says, his head on one side. Am I in for it? Tirzah asks. Your mother says that even though you appear devout to the world, you have an ungovernable heart, he replies. Those were her exact words. An ungovernable heart? Tirzah asks. That’s you, Osian says as he grabs her hand and pulls her towards the path. Now let’s go to my house.

  Whosoever Shall Smite Thee on Thy Right Cheek

  (Matthew 5:39)

  Osian wants to put Tirzah’s dress to soak in a bowl of water, but she shakes her head. Are you being funny? she says seriously. They’re only grass stains. I’ll just give them a wipe down for now. He runs a cloth under the hot tap and wrings it out. Can I go to the loo? she asks. He hands her the warm cloth. Upstairs on the landing she tries a few rooms, taking in the lino-clad floors and looming chests of drawers in each; she’s never been up here before. In the bathroom, she wipes her face and squeezes out a worm of toothpaste on to her finger, rubbing it all over her teeth. She uses the cloth to wipe her dress. Then she drinks some water. Back in the kitchen, Osian is making a cup of tea. No hot chocolate, of course, he says. Speaking in his father’s voice, he booms: Mortify the flesh, wicked boy! Be its master, not its slave! He shrugs, but even with his back to her she can tell he’s grinning. From the kitchen table, encased in her damp dress, she gazes at him. What if there was no Osian? Since ever she can remember he’s been there, her playmate and buffer in chapel, so it’s hard to imagine. But now she sees that he’s changed somehow: his voice is huskier, his mouth mysterious. She is surprised to notice his shoulders are bulkier and his waist slimmer than she remembers. Only his rain-straight, swaying black hair is like it always was. When did this happen?

  The kettle starts to shriek, and Osian aims steaming water into the pot, swishes it around, then puts two heaped spoonfuls of sugar in her mug. She watches as he unerringly pours the tea from a height. There you are, your majesty, he says, placing it before her in his own indefinable way. Get that down you – it’s thirsty work, being a matter for prayer. He leans against the dresser, hands in his pockets, head to one side, as if waiting for an answer. The boiler pilot light in the corner burps into life, its tiny blue flame like a Pentecostal tongue. Thank you, Osian, Tirzah says over the rim of her mug. Suddenly there are things she wants to ask him, but the words have all scattered like beads from a broken necklace. With the old Osian she would have found it easy to talk. They were comfortable together. Am I like this because of my ungovernable heart? she wonders. Osian is watching her, his eyes crinkling. Aren’t you having anything? she asks, looking down into her mug.

  When Osian has poured a cup for himself, they sit and drink. The kitchen is dim, with a lingering smell of fried onions. Tirzah wonders what his mother’s been cooking. Do you think I’m a bad person? she asks finally, putting her empty mug down. I mean, you know me: am I bad? Osian is serious. Very, he says. You are a lost soul. You must be, running out of the midweek meeting. Tirzah sends up a silent prayer. Don’t joke, Osian, she says. This is serious. I’m always trying to be good. Osian laughs again. He thinks for a few seconds. There are more important things than being good, he says, nodding firmly. But, Osian, how can there be? And what about the way we are all guilty worms? Tirzah asks. It’s hopeless. I was thinking all sorts of sinful thoughts at the meeting. About bums and bulges, things like that, she adds silently. Osian laughs, laying his forehead down on the table. Honestly! she says, tapping his head. Really, tell me what you think. All I know, he tells her, lifting his head, is that the poor old worms aren’t guilty. How can they be? God made them. Besides, all they do is eat earth. And if they’re not, neither are you. There, that’s settled. He stands up. Come on, we’ve just about got time. I want to show you something.

  In the attic, Osian flicks the light switch. A clear bulb hangs from a dusty cord, its glow grudging. Tirzah sees, laid out on a low table, a whole network of railways, junctions and platforms. Little cows stand on green fabric, tiny people wait for trains. Fuzzy trees dot the boundaries. It’s lovely, she says, kneeling down. All aboard, Osian calls, and the train starts to whizz
around the tracks. Tirzah is looking at a kidney-shaped blob of blue paint with two minuscule ducks in the middle. Oh, bless him, she thinks. The thought of Osian carefully painting the pool and placing his miniature birds just so makes her heart swell like a note played on the organ. I’ve been waiting to get it just right before I showed you, he says, towering over his made-up country. Been saving all my chore money. Tirzah wants to be that girl on the platform carrying a basket, always ready to go off on a journey. Osian says: I painted her to look like you. Do you like her? Tirzah nods. The girl has scarlet lips and a copper comma of a ponytail. Where is she off to? she wonders. The train comes to a halt, but the girl is rooted to the spot, still looking down the track. What’s the use of being someone who is stuck in one place, always waiting to get on a train that can only go round in circles?

  Osian comes to kneel beside her, and together they contemplate the railway. She can feel his warmth against her. I’m glad you like it, he says, leaning his shoulder in. It’s very nice, Osian. It must have taken you ages, she says, turning to him. He is silently brooding over his creation, and she studies his nose, his long, half-closed lashes. For the first time she senses her ribs moving as she breathes, and the way her body sits inside her drying dress. Osian, she says, putting her hand on his arm. He turns, and before she can say another word, presses his lips on hers. Tirzah has never kissed anyone this way before. His lips are firm, and his saliva tastes faintly of onions when he pushes the tip of his tongue in. She turns her mouth away and looks sideways at him. Osian’s eyes are wide and amused. The train still whirs round, the auburn-haired girl still waits with her basket. I love you, Osian says. And I love you, Tirzah answers. You and Biddy are my best friends. No, he whispers, smiling. I really love you. Tirzah shakes her head. I have to go, she says, making a move to get up; Osian is strange to her. Ah, don’t tell me this makes you feel like a guilty worm? he says, his hand pressing on her thigh, preventing her from moving. Yes and no, she answers. I’m not sure.