The Drowners (14 page)

After some reflection she decided to take the free
supermarket
bus in to town and see if she could spot Alex at the market. If that didn’t work she’d try Lauren or, as a last resort, one of the other officers. Ada had a deep mistrust of the law and all its minions, including probation officers, and Alex was the first she thought had treated her and her son as people rather than just ‘clients’. An innocent in the ways of the creeping managerial culture, Ada didn’t realize it was exactly this behaviour that was causing Alex so much trouble now. As she stood at the end of the road waiting for the bus to arrive, Ada watched a low-slung lorry heave its way across the rough track to her left. It was just too wide to keep all its wheels on the gravelled surface and kept lurching to one side as it slipped on the surrounding mud. It drew level and the driver stopped, rolling down the window and greeting her cheerfully.

‘Ada, well now, is you wantin’ a lift then?’ he called down.

‘Is that you, Stevie Yeo? What’s you doin’, dragging that big old thing round these parts then?’

Stevie grinned at her and rolled his eyes. ‘Is some girt fool from the ministry,’ he said. ‘You know they’s stopped cutting out on Avalon, since turn of the year? Well, they says is to be all fenced off, see. Now, we says to them, just wait a few months and get some decent withies, make something as looks like it belongs here. But no, they’s got to have they fences up now, so I’m lugging all this ugly old iron around.’ He jerked his thumb towards the back of the truck where several rows of black metal railing sections were tied loosely in place.

‘Is a fool job,’ Stevie continued. ‘All just fixes with a few bolts so any bugger with a spanner could get in anyway. Still, is a couple of weeks’ work and keeps us off that bloody community programme a bit longer. Might even turn in to something more settled, what with all they changes goin’ on around here. Oh, here’s the bus then. You take care now Ada,’ and with a wave he was off again, the lorry slipping and sliding along the side road off towards Avalon Marsh, the ugly square railings rattling and clanging on the back.

Ada stuck out her hand and the bus, only a single-decker this morning she noted, pulled up beside her. Clambering aboard, she nodded to the driver, glancing down the length of the bus at the other passengers. Half a dozen people were scattered around the vehicle, most of them clutching baskets and shopping bags, though one woman was sitting at the back holding on to a wriggling child.

‘Morning Pete. Bit quiet today ’ent it.’

Pete closed the door behind her and pulled out on to the narrow road without bothering to look. There was so little traffic across the Levels that no-one ever bothered to look.

‘Mornin’ Ada. ’Tis no more quiet than for the last few months. Reckon they’ll be taking the bus off soon. We is already running this little thing ’cos they says the big’un’s a waste’.

Ada took a seat several rows back and watched as the empty landscape slipped past, turning slowly from peat and
reeds to the occasional farm or house with a cottage garden. With a grinding of gears and a series of judders Pete
manoeuvred
the bus round a sharp bend, up over a sudden hump in the road and on to the main road. The scenery changed as houses began to fill the fields on each side of the road. The town was growing ever outwards, creeping towards the wilderness that surrounded Ada’s home. The houses stood in small groups, huddled together as if for safety under the wide, cold sky. Most were built from brick, a shocking orange colour against the shiny black of the new tarmac that wove around them in narrow ribbons. Ada glimpsed a large sign promising ‘New, luxury homes for families – easy terms – no deposit’. The arrow at the bottom pointed out into a muddy field where a huge board shouted ‘Join us at the Coppice!’ As there was not a tree in sight on the whole muddy mess, Ada could only assume the name was a coy attempt at fake rural living, probably dreamed up by a team of advertising experts who thought ‘the countryside’ was, indeed, another country. She spotted Pete watching her in the bus’s rear-view mirror.

‘Is all changing now,’ he shouted above the rattle of the engine. ‘Don’t know the place half the time.’

Ignoring the signs stuck up around the driver’s cab, Ada rose and walked over to lean on the ticket counter.

‘I remember working there,’ she said. ‘Was old Wilson’s place. All trees it was, for cider when the factory was still going, out near Westhay.’ She gazed out of the window sadly, swaying in time to the rocking of the bus. ‘Don’t seem right somehow,’ she said finally.

Pete grunted in reply, his attention focused on the run in to town. The road turned abruptly to the left, snaking past a couple of roundabouts and then on to the riverside. The noise of the bus was much louder, reverberating off the grey stone wall that acted as a flood barrier during the twice-yearly equinox tides. Ada retrieved her bag from the seat and stood by the exit, her eyes flicking over the shop fronts as the bus made its way past the High Street, now pedestrian-only, and round to the shopping centre. Lots of buildings closed up, she
noted. A fair number of charity shops too, as well as a
sprinkling
of what she mentally termed ‘fly-by-night merchants’. Anyone who opened up a shop for a few weeks, sold stuff at a big discount and was gone the next month was only worthy of suspicion and avoidance in her opinion. Ada watched her money very carefully and she was not easily parted from it.

After checking the time of the return service, Ada made her way to the Cornhill where the Wednesday market was just getting underway. There was a thin straggle of onlookers mixed in with a few customers interested in buying, but most lots went to the first and only bidder. Standing in the corner, she watched critically, appraising the merchandise before deciding on a decent sized stewing cockerel. Opening the bidding at ‘seven and sixpence’, she was startled to hear a counter offer, so much so she missed her chance to raise the stakes to twelve shillings and lost her supper. Turning away crossly she bumped into Alex who seemed as startled as she was.

‘Ada, hey – hello. How are you?’ said Alex as she smiled at her old acquaintance.

‘I was comin’ to find you,’ said Ada, relieved she did not need to brave the probation office after all. ‘I wanted to talk to you ‘bout something, quiet like.’

Alex’s heart sank. Not a problem with Kevin, she thought. Please don’t let him be in trouble. Kevin was off with the travelling fair and she had pulled strings and renewed contacts with old friends from college to set up a network of places he could report for the remainder of his probation order. Her unofficial arrangement with a series of offices around the country seemed to be holding up but it relied on Kevin behaving himself. One arrest and they were both in deep trouble.

‘Hang on a minute while I pay for this and we’ll go and have a coffee or something,’ she said, and headed for the cash desk. Ada trailed along behind her and scowled as she saw the lot number.

‘Was you bought my cockerel!’ she said. ‘I thought I recognized that voice.’

‘Gosh, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have bid if I’d realized it was you,’ said Alex. ‘I’d only just arrived and I saw her holding it up – I just jumped in.’

‘What you want with a tough old bird like that anyway,’ grumbled Ada.

‘You know they have best, tastiest meat,’ said Alex. ‘They need long, slow cooking but turn in to amazingly good casseroles. And the carcass is great for soup.’

Ada grunted, hiding her surprise at Alex’s knowledge of peasant cookery. Alex watched her face and grinned, guessing her thoughts.

‘I’ve been a poor student a very long time,’ she said. ‘I decided early on I’d better learn to cook unless I was going to live on “Smash” and baked beans.’

They left the Cornhill, walking into the warm sunshine from the chill of the old market hall. Even though it was only late January, it was comfortable as long as they kept out of the shade. Perhaps there would be an early spring, thought Alex and she smiled at the thought. A little way down the High Street was a long-established and venerable café called The Golden Egg and at Alex’s suggestion the two women opened the door and went inside. They were greeted by a rush of steam, the smell of bacon frying and the clatter of china and cutlery. Spotting a table near the counter, Ada
manoeuvred
her ample bulk around tables and diners, coming to rest on one of the wire and plywood chairs. Alex followed her, brushing past a couple of disgruntled youths who had been heading for the same empty table. One of them seemed about to challenge Ada’s right to the last spaces in the café but a closer look at her determined expression caused him to turn away hastily.

‘I’ll have tea,’ said Ada firmly. ‘I don’t like all this frothy stuff they chuck on coffee nowadays.’ Alex wriggled her way to the counter, ordered two teas and edged gingerly back to the table, tea spilling over in to the saucers as she juggled the cups with her broken wrist before finally sitting down.

‘So, how are you managing out on the Levels without Kevin?’ she asked, looking around for something to mop up the table. Ada shrugged, dealing with the problem by lifting her cup off the saucer and pouring the tea back in before rubbing the saucer on the tablecloth.

‘Wasn’t like he was there much last year anyway,’ she said, ignoring Alex’s scandalized look. ‘Got used to being on my own an’ he sends money – he’s a good lad like that. Fer goodness sake!’ Ada reached over and swiftly repeated the trick with Alex’s cup and saucer. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about. There’s something going on. Something nasty, out my way, and I didn’t know who else I could talk to.’

Alex felt a rush of relief, swiftly followed by apprehension. She had been drawn into Ada’s problems before and she still had nightmares about her experiences. Although very fond of Ada, she was not keen on getting involved a second time. Wondering how to wriggle out of whatever was coming her way she took a sip of her tea and immediately regretted it.

‘Ugh,’ she said pulling a face and putting the cup down hastily.

Ada slurped at her drink, sloshing a mouthful round and wrinkling her nose before swallowing.

‘Used to be much worse,’ she said. ‘Least they wash the cups now.’ She sighed and replaced her half empty cup on the saucer before leaning forwards over the table.

‘I was wanting to tell you about they strange sounds and stuff.’ She glanced around the busy café but the buzz of conversation effectively drowned out her voice and made sure they were not overheard. Still, Ada beckoned Alex forward until they were bent over the table, as blatantly conspiratorial as it was possible to be in such a crowded space.

‘There’s a story, see,’ Ada continued. ‘Was told to me by my uncle when I was little an’ scared the life out of us, I can tell you.’ She nodded a couple of times and waited until Alex finally gave in.

‘What story is that Ada?’ she said reluctantly.

‘Out on the Levels, in them big rhynes and canals, there lives these people,’ said Ada. ‘Much of the time they minds their own business, keeps themselves to themselves so to speak. Sometimes though they is bored, or lonely. Then they goes looking, spying on us folk. Sometimes they follows people they see passing by, on the banks and sometimes they creep up on houses and peer through the windows.’

Alex listened nervously, knowing it was only a story meant to frighten children but finding the references to spying through windows chimed with her own obsessions.

‘When they find someone they like, someone they really like now, they wait and they wait and then they take
something
precious.’ Ada’s voice was falling into the cadence of a storyteller and Alex felt herself being drawn into this shadowy world of malevolent and supernatural beings.

‘Don’t matter what it is,’ said Ada, her eyes unfocussed as she related her story. ‘Could be an animal, or a child or maybe just a thing – so long as it’s precious to you. That’s what matters. And then they wait some more whilst you look. You hunt around, calling and liftin’ things, searching for what it is you’ve lost, until finally you give up ’cos it’s gone but the hurt of it never leaves you. It pulls at you, the grievin’ and so one night you’s walking home alone and you see this little light, all twinkling in the distance. So you follow it even if your parents always told you not to go out on the Levels at night because when they took your most precious thing they bewitched you too. And when you reach this light, right there on the river bank, there’s what you lost. What they stole from you. So you goes over and kneels down to take it back and that’s when they grab you, rising up from the water and seizing you and pulling you under. And they have you then. You belong to them.’

There was a moment’s silence between the two women before Ada raised her cup and took another slurp of tea.

‘Reckon you’m right,’ she said pulling a face. ‘Is not up to much, is it.’

Alex blinked at her, still absorbed in the darkness of Ada’s story.

‘Now, I know ’tis a fairy tale, made up to keep kids away from the rivers and such but there’s something going on at night and two people is dead already. I know one was ol’ Mickey Franks, and is a miracle he never fell into the canal before, but there was them rumours I heard about his wallet and the lights and now I’m hearing that there music. Right creeped me out, I can tell you.’

As so often happened with Ada, Alex was struggling to make much sense of the conversation.

‘What music?’ she asked.

‘Why, New Year it was. I seen the lights dancing on the marsh and then it was like a flute or something. All soft and strange, never quite made a tune but it sounded like something I almost knew. I could feel it, tugging at me like it was calling. So I locked the door. ’Ent no Drowners getting me.’ She nodded her head firmly and settled back in the chair making it creak gently in protest.

‘Drowners?’ asked Alex.

‘That’s what they called ’em,’ said Ada. ‘Drowners.’

‘Oh!’ Alex searched for a polite way to suggest the whole thing was perhaps just imagination but Ada leaned forwards again, tapping the table with an impatient finger.