Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

While reading “Salt Slow,” I instantly noticed many similarities between the story and Julia Armfield’s other work, “Smack.” It seems as though this collection of her stories have a recurring theme of ocean life or the ocean in general; however, there were more noticeable similarities between “Salt Slow” and “Smack.” At the start of the two stories, they both describe an ocean organism, washed up and decaying. They describe the ocean, what time of day it is, and the bodies of the creatures.

The jellyfish come with the morning – a great beaching, bodies black on sand. The oceans empties, a thousand dead and dying invertebrates, jungled tentacles and fine, fragile membranes blanketing the shore two miles in each direction. They are translucent, almost spectral, as though the sea as exorcised its ghosts. Drowned in air, they break apart and bleed their interiors. A saturation, leeching down into the earth. (129)

They find the lobsters in white water. Bobbing belly-up, claws thrown out, like a strewing of tulips. That they float is unsurprising. The salt is heavy here – dead sea, its bodies buoyant. In the thin morning, the lobster shells gleam a slick vermilion, spreading southward like a bleeding on the tide. (169)

Upon further reading, there were more similarities between the two stories, but they were handled different between the characters. For instance, in “Smack” the male character that initiated the conversation about the group of jellyfish can be described as dominance due to him stating false information, passing it off as true. His female co-worker corrects him and tension between the two characters are noted. In “Salt Slow,” the male character merely asks the female character for the answer, rather than just assume and state the information as correct. The tension is not present during the little exchange during this story.

And in local news, a shoal of jellyfish has been causing consternation for tourists at one of the more popular pleasure beaches. Certainly not what you’d expect coming up for a long weekend, is it, Cathy? – Actually, Tim I think you’ll find a group of jellyfish is called a ‘smack.’ (130)

What’s the name for a group of lobsters? he asks now, dumping an armload at her feet. You know, like a school or a smack. His sleeves are soaking to the elbows, fingertips already splitting from the salt. She tells him it’s a risk and he laughs his usual brief laugh, takes up his apple knife, and slits a lobster from tail to sternum. (171)

Another recurring theme, or aspect that repeats throughout “Salt Slow” is the passage of time and importance of weekdays. At first, the days of the week were not significant, the female protagonist merely just describes the days as they pass; categorizing the days depending on the description or what characteristics the days contained.

They label their days as they find them, names to correspond with the poem his mother used to recite to new parents on the obsterics ward – Monday’s child fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace. Days of hard squalls and difficult rowing they call Saturdays, days of sunnier aspect they designate Mondays. Thursdays occur only when the horizon seems so distant as to be impossible. There are very few Sundays. (170)

As the story prolongs and we journey throughout her pregnancy with her, we see the importance of the days link with her overwhelming emotions of loss, abandonment, and pain. In the beginning, the passage of time seems less important in comparison to the chores that needed to be done or survival on the open water.

The numbering of days has been gradually sacrificed to more pressing concerns; the counting up of cans and bottles, the maintenance of nets, the catching and drying out of fish and strange crustaceans. Time, in its clearest sense, has been abandoned somewhere in the long sleeps and the hourless drifting. (169)

Towards the end, we see the shift that makes the importance of which day of the week it was, or described to be, more prominent. With the loss of her second child, or what we thought was the loss after her partner “killed” it, the creature (her child) returns. She remembers the pain and significance of both pregnancies, which she loses both.

Somewhere low in her hips, an ache is spreading, though it is only the ghost of a pain, a shade of something already passed. She remembers it was a Tuesday on land when her first child bled out of her, though by the time the second came on the water, she was no longer very certain of time. I’m glad you came back, she wants to say, whatever day it is. (190)

Her mother gives her the impression that with love, comes pain, therefore the protagonist believes that she is in love when the pain of her love is persistent throughout the relationship. She expresses her fear of abandonment in the beginning of their relationship.

Fall in love with someone who makes you ache, her mother had always told her. When I fell in love with your father my appendix exploded. I think it was the stress. (177)

When they had first fallen in love, she had kissed him with an intensity which imagined him already halfway out the door. A grasping period – nights spent holding him overlong and too tightly, the ravenous dig of her fingers into skin. Over time, this sense of frenzy had eased as she had gradually grown more confident in his staying power. It had still been easier to sleep with one hand at his wrist, but the depth of her panic had subsided a little. Most mornings, it had been possible to wake up without immediately reaching for him across the center of the bed. (187)

In her time of need, the miscarriage of her first pregnancy that neither of them had wanted, she had been alone that morning.

Ultimately, of course, she had only been pregnant a grand total of three months and seven days, the first time around. Even so, the memory of that morning had persisted will beyond the bleeding. A very slender sort of betrayal, the deliberate absence from a room. (188)

One other note to mention, when her partner informs his mother, a midwife, about the pregnancy, she automatically assumes that the protagonist was reckless and did it purposely, blaming her for the miscarriage. It seems as though, the one person that could help them with the situation, blames her for the miscarriage, instead of help her in her time of loss and stress.

His mother was a midwife and had asked him loudly on the phone whether she had drunk a lot of alcohol or taken too many baths, done something foolish or intentional to cause this catastrophic wringing out. You tell me she knew she was pregnant, that you both knew. You have to appreciate what that makes me think. He had scrabbled to mute the speakerphone and later had suggested the trip as a way to distract them both. (178)