After Me Comes the Flood (19 page)

Then the young man was slipping in their hands, his forearms grazed by the cannonball, wet and cold as one born underwater. Walker, his back bruised by the concrete of the reservoir wall, clambered over the barrier and shouted to Eve as if she were at the other end of the garden, and not at his side trying to cover his shoulders with a soaking shirt: ‘Run – you’re fastest – call for help: tell them we tried…’

Clare went slowly to her brother, moving her head from side to side as though disbelief might make the whole evening a lie. The boy lay on the bank with his arms above his head. Blood ran from a shallow cut on his forehead and mingled with the rain so that a pale stain began to spread over his breast. She picked up Walker’s shirt from where he’d dropped it in the mud, and began to dab at the cut, saying, ‘He’ll be cold, won’t he? He’ll be cold. He mustn’t get cold because it always goes to his chest.’

Elijah started as though he’d remembered something – ‘Oh yes, a blanket, that’s it’ – and ran down the slope towards the house. Hester had fallen forward on to all fours, her head hanging low until her forehead pressed into the mud, the blue beetles scattered over the verge. Now and then she dabbled in the wet grass as though she were trying to reach him, but the rain dragged at the heavy folds of her dress and weighed her down.

John knelt beside the boy. Remembering a long-ago lesson in a school hall, he tilted his head, cradling it gently between his hands, and was surprised to find himself murmuring, ‘I’m sorry – oh, I’m so sorry.’ As the heavy head tipped back, dirty water spilled from between his lips. John leant forward and tried to fit his mouth over the boy’s, but the rain made his skin slick and most of the breath he gave was lost. Walker knelt beside John, and finding Alex’s heart with his hands released his weight onto the boy’s white chest, counting under his breath. Clare counted with him, dabbing at her brother’s blue-lipped face: ‘One… two… three… four… One… two… three… four… we’ve got you now, John’s got you and everything’s going to be fine…’

Then there was a new kind of lightning, fitful and blue at the end of the garden, and as the rain began to recede John lifted his head from the boy’s and saw it wasn’t the storm but an ambulance, and Eve running with her long skirts raised, two men running behind.

Much later John sat on the edge of his bed in his own shirt, the collar an unaccustomed pressure on his throat, the buttons too tight at the wrist. The tower light had gone out and a mild sun was rising, but now and then he shivered with a sudden chill. The borrowed clothes were wet, and he hung them out to dry, putting the glass eye back in its pocket –
Sorry, sorry
– and patting it twice. He opened bags and boxes and returned the other man’s treasures – the little severed limbs, the stolen books – running his thumb over the labels with their familiar name. The painted Puritan wouldn’t meet his eye; the child’s desk had diminished overnight; the chair could never have taken his weight. Taking the notebook from its drawer, he turned to where the account ended and pressed a hand to the empty page. It seemed so long ago, that hesitant knocking on his bedroom door, that the pages ought really to have crumbled in his fingers. He put the book beside him on the bed and listened: downstairs in the kitchen a kettle screamed on the hob.

They’d taken Alex away so swiftly it had been hard to believe, standing there in the slackening rain, that he’d ever been there at all. Untroubled men in bright coats had carried him on a stretcher wrapped in sheets of silver they said would make him warm. They had wanted to take Hester too – ‘She should have something to calm her,’ they’d said to John, as if the decision were his. But she’d refused, clinging to Elijah (and had he always been so broad and so tall?), shaking her head, pale mud staining her dress, watching Alex go. As the men picked their way across the lawn they stumbled and an arm with a little shadow on the skin slipped from under the covers, swinging from the side of the stretcher. Clare had cried out: ‘Should I go with him? I should go, shouldn’t I…’ but remained at John’s side.

‘I’ll go.’ Walker had stepped forward, tugging at the blanket they’d draped across his shoulders. ‘Go indoors, all of you. You can’t do anything now, it’s too late.’ He stooped to kiss Eve once on her forehead, and followed them down to the waiting ambulance, plucking at a packet of soaked cigarettes and shredding the useless tobacco between his fingers.

John never knew how long Hester stayed up there, Elijah standing with her as the rain receded to the west. Together he and Eve had taken Clare back to the house, both touching her anxiously on the hair or shoulder, murmuring, ‘Walker is with him – he won’t be cold now.’ John only looked back once, to see Hester in the mud and Elijah on his knees beside her.

At the garden’s end the walls of the house were already drying in the early wind, and the sky had begun to prepare for dawn. The two women went upstairs, their arms entwined so tightly he couldn’t make out whose hand steadied them on the banister, and whose reached up to smooth Clare’s drying hair.

John had passed the remains of the night pacing back and forth, seeing the upturned face in the rain: had Walker pressed his heart back into beating? Had it been a breath he felt as he’d stooped over him, or was it just the wind?

He took up the notebook again to write a final phrase, but found his pen was dry. Then he stood, making a gesture of farewell at the Puritan and the distant tower, and went out, closing the door behind him. Alone in the hall downstairs he heard Hester weeping, and voices falling silent as they exhausted their store of comfort. For a long while he waited, turning his face to the wall and resting his forehead against the peeling paper, rolling the notebook between his hands – he had every right to join them, and none at all.
So this is also loneliness
, he thought, and felt the painful drawing in his stomach set up again. He was ashamed to find it was Eve who most clearly entered his mind, not Clare crying for her brother, or Hester rehearsing her gestures of guilt and grief. He opened up his arms as if he’d seen her there, and when a door was opened and she appeared before him in her green dress he felt no surprise – anyone would have been willed there by so much longing. He looked once at the fine white lines of her face, drawn finer and whiter overnight, and then down at the notebook in his hands.

‘It doesn’t matter now, but I’ve been lying to you,’ he said. It seemed very important that he should tell the truth. ‘I shouldn’t ever have been here. It was all a terrible mistake.’

‘I know.’ She said it gravely, with kindness, which hurt far more than anger might. ‘I wondered, that first night – Elijah had said he was hardly more than a boy – but I never thought it mattered: I was glad to have you here.’ She touched the bruise on her wrist, and in the kitchen they heard the preacher almost singing. John thought:
He’s probably praying
, and took Eve’s wrist between his hands. The skin felt chilled, as though her bones were cold – he stroked her with slow and clumsy movements, trying to pass on the warmth he felt for her, but it made her wince, and he let her hand slip from his.

‘If only we’d all told the truth, right from the start,’ said John.

‘No-one ever has the courage, not really. And besides, who’d believe it?’

‘I did my best,’ he said. ‘And I tried to understand. But I’ve been so tired and my head ached, and I’ve been so confused.’ He tried to make a gesture that covered it all – the desire and confusion she’d provoked, and the gratitude that once she’d wanted his company.

She said, ‘So have I – so have we all,’ and plunging forward kissed his cheek. When she moved away her mouth was wet; she drew in her lip to suck at his tear; she remained so close he could see the blood beating at her throat. His heart began a hopeless brief ascent, and he stooped over her to draw her within his shadow; then she straightened, lifting her chin as though walking into a high wind, and went back to the kitchen.

Through the open door John saw Hester kneeling, her head resting on the table as she traced the place where the name
EADWACER
had been cut into the wood. Beside her Elijah distractedly sang the old song John had recognised, clutching a mug that gave off clouds of steam. Clare had fallen asleep at the table, and her face was calm. John, remembering the weight of her head on the pillow beside his, would have liked to wake her, but the door swung shut and he was left alone.

Outside, the sun illuminated the clouds that massed in the vaulted sky, and kindled the drops of rain still clinging to the grass. Walker was coming up the path, his footsteps sounding loudly on the gravel, his grey head bowed. When he saw John waiting, he paused to finish his cigarette, and the pall of smoke blew upward. Then they stood side by side in the shadow of the pillars and watched a jay spread out its wings to dry.

‘He’s safe from all that now, at least,’ he said, turning the packet of cigarettes over and over in his hands.

‘There’s that, I suppose…’

Then, with a quick impulsive touch on John’s shoulder, the other man said, ‘I don’t think you could have done anything different, you know – I don’t think any of us could.’

John nodded, and gestured towards the cool deep recess of the forest. ‘I’m going home,’ he said, discovering that he couldn’t remember what home looked like, or what might be waiting for him there.

‘Perhaps that’s best,’ said Walker, turning wearily to the heavy door behind them. John looked again at the knocker, with the man’s hand raised above the iron plate, and thought:
If I’d known what was coming, I’d’ve wanted it to stone me until I went back the way I’d come
.

‘Come with me, if you like,’ said John, on an impulse born of sudden pity. ‘Why don’t you let me take you home?’ Walker looked for a while out towards the forest fringes, as though he saw there a freedom he no longer sought. Then he shrugged, and passed a long-fingered hand across his face. The gunmetal eyes had lost their edge: he looked younger, but weary, like a man come without honour to a battle’s end.

‘I can’t,’ he said, and from somewhere behind them they heard the familiar steady progression of chords played on the piano. ‘I’ve tried before, you see,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think the tide has turned and I’m glad, forgetting that it always comes in again. And besides – wherever I go, there she’ll be.’ He smiled with startling frankness, as though he’d seen in John an equal and companion. ‘You’ll see.’ He put a hand on John’s shoulder and left it there a while, as if there was something else he would have liked to say, then drawing a deep uneven breath went inside. The door closed, and the iron hand knocked its stone twice against the plate.

From somewhere beyond the forest a pillar of smoke was rising. It furled against itself and began to dissipate, then thickened into a plume blowing east. As John watched, pressing a hand to the pain that had set up in his stomach, it resolved into a flock of starlings that scattered and dipped below the horizon.

One by one he said their names aloud as though to leave them there, and went down the gravel path towards the dripping green-lit canopy ahead. The ringing of a single note on the piano receded behind him, then from somewhere in the forest came the sound of small wings beating and the single-minded flock burst up toward the sun. The black plume on the white sky was a line of print, and John went on walking, trying to make it out.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Andrew Motion, without whose wisdom I could not have written this book; and to Hannah Westland and Jenny Hewson, for their priceless advice and their belief in me when I had none. Thank you to Robert Hampson, for making me think.

My love and gratitude to my parents, who made me heir to their love of the greatest of all books. To my darling sisters, my second Dad and my friends, all of whom put up with a great deal from me with more kindness and patience than I deserve: thank you. Particular love to Michelle, Ian, Anna M and Jon, whose friendships have inspired and sustained me so long; and to Stephen, who makes me want to do everything better.

I am grateful to Gladstone’s Library for enriching my life, and to the Society of Authors for their generosity. Finally, I am grateful to Emily Berry for her clear gaze and to everyone at Serpent’s Tail whose hard work brought this story to the page.