The Night of the Flood

by Zoe Somerville

  ‘No, I should think not. No man should hang around his mother for too long. Seen a bit of the world now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not really, sir. Just Yorkshire and Scotland.’

  Mr Frost snorted loudly and a few specks of wine and food sprayed Arthur. ‘Same thing. Like a bloody foreign country up there, what?’

  Arthur laughed politely. ‘But I’d like to. See the world I mean. I thought…’ He hesitated. He didn’t want to divulge his plans to Mr Frost, but he needed to say something. Verity was watching him closely from under her eyelashes, a possible hint of pink in her cheeks.

  ‘Army,’ said Mr Frost.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Army. Or the Air Force. I heard you were with the RAF in service? Fine way to see the world. They need good men.’

  ‘Keep the Empire going, eh, Father?’ said Peter.

  Arthur and Peter exchanged the smallest of smiles. This was a favourite hobby-horse of Mr Frost’s.

  ‘Whole new world we’re in now of course,’ continued the old man. ‘Atomic warfare. Need to keep up with the damned Yanks and the Reds. Good men needed more than ever.’ Arthur thought of the pictures of the cauliflower-shaped cloud over a faraway sea that the newspapers had printed earlier in the month, and then of the airbase up the road with their planes he suspected were carrying A-bombs. The lad at the pub was just a local boy, whose parents put up one of the servicemen in their village near the base. It was only a rumour. But it felt true, and the whole lot of them just allowing it to happen. His other theory, that they were keeping something else secret from the public, was only just forming in his mind. He’d been watching the planes, keeping a record of the comings and goings. Sometimes they flew at night but it made no sense, unless they had something to hide.

  ‘You don’t need many men to detonate an atom bomb,’ said Arthur, but Mr Frost ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Or finance. Banking. Plenty of your lot in banking. You could do worse.’

  ‘My lot?’ He couldn’t think of anything to say to that; the words caught in his throat. It was funny how people continued to think of him as Jewish whatever his mother’s efforts to blend in. He supposed he looked ‘Jewish’, whatever that meant.

  ‘Father,’ said both his children, and Peter grimaced to Arthur.

  ‘I just meant that they do look after each other,’ said Mr Frost to Arthur’s dismay.

  Verity closed her eyes.

  Arthur coughed. ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure that’s true but I had thought of journalism. I always liked writing and I thought if I could find some stories, get some pieces in the local paper, perhaps…’ Peter opened his mouth to say something but Mr Frost beat him to it.

  ‘Rum lot, journalists. Liars and crooks, most of them.’

  ‘I’m sure old Arthur here wouldn’t be one of those, Father,’ said Peter, eyes wide to Arthur, a pained expression on his face.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Mr Frost said. ‘Still.’

  ‘I think it’s a marvellous idea.’ Verity was smiling at him. He shot back one of gratitude.

  ‘Yes, rather,’ chimed in Peter, ‘you should get a story in the Post about what the Yanks are up to over at Holkham.’

  Arthur thought Verity glanced at Peter then but his friend didn’t notice. If only they all knew.

  ‘What’s that?’ said their father, but Mrs Timms came bustling out to tell them that the American had arrived.

  ‘Ah, we can ask him ourselves. Get him kitted out, will you? We can’t wait all day.’

  The old men puffed on their pipes while he and Peter went back into the house. Verity disappeared. In the hall outside the boot room, they found her greeting Jack. She started when she saw them come in, and moved back a few inches.

  ‘Sorry I’m late! You’re lucky I’m here at all. I’ve been up all night.’ There wasn’t a trace of tiredness in Jack’s lean face and he looked as alert as ever.

  ‘Where exactly have you been, then?’ Arthur blurted out.

  Jack raised his pale, ginger eyebrows and gazed coolly at Arthur. He sensed Verity flinch next to him but Jack shrugged and smirked at her. ‘Nowhere nearly as interesting as you’re imagining, Art, I can assure you.’

  ‘How do you know what I’m imagining, Mister Hillbilly Yankee?’ His tone of jollity was strained. He wanted to wipe the satisfied smile off Jack’s face. It stuck but the American’s eyes widened and stared.

  ‘I think it’s fairly obvious you’ve got a bee in your bonnet about the base.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me, Jack.’

  ‘Nor you, me, Art.’

  Arthur’s fists clenched and he felt the veins in his neck strain. No one moved.

  ‘Chaps, we need to get on with the shoot,’ said Peter, hopping from one foot to the next.

  ‘Well, I sure am ready to shoot some birds,’ said Jack in a hokey American accent.

  The moment had passed but Arthur was left impotent, head reeling, his blood still pumping fast. What was Jack? A redneck rancher or a Yankee? He was determined to ask the boy from the local pub about Jack directly. Get some dirt on him.

  Trudging through the courtyard behind the other two, Arthur noted that Jack was wearing his golfing clothes again. This would go down badly with the old man with any luck. But frustratingly, Peter’s father put it down to his foreignness and thought it amusing.

  ‘The birds’ll see you coming,’ he guffawed and the rest of them laughed heartily along with him. ‘Go on then, you youngsters, let’s see what you can do. Guns aloft, remember. And aim for the cocks, not the hens. And keep quiet.’

  They spread out across the fields, fanning out away from the farm until they came to their allotted pegs. The mizzle had evaporated and now a weak autumnal sun warmed Arthur’s face. It was lonely shooting. You couldn’t speak to anyone, apart from the odd shout, though sometimes it was a relief to be removed from the unspoken separation he felt from all of them. Along the line of guns, he could see Jack down by the pines, his red hair garish in the sun, and further away near the marsh, the long figure of Peter, alert like a bloodhound. In the middle, an old squire on his land, was the tall, imposing figure of Mr Frost. Arthur couldn’t tell if the state of the farm’s finances weighed him down, but certainly the farmer looked as commanding as he always had. Mr Frost never let them forget he’d seen service in the first war, and in the recent war he’d been on the Home Guard, a platoon commander shooting at birds. Skitmore had disappeared, along with a few other farm workers, to beat out the partridge and now they were all waiting.

  As Arthur looked along the line, Jack raised his hand, a kind of salute. He was thinking about how to respond, when there was a flap, a beating of wings and a flurry of grey in the sky, then a crack, crack, and the first birds fell, spiralling from the sky.

  When Skitmore’s whistle blew for the end of the first drive, Arthur had bagged six partridge. Not impressive, but at least he’d made a start. They swapped positions for the second drive, and moved down, further away from the farm, towards the most distant fields of barley and wheat. He was close to a line of beech trees, whose leaves were just beginning to yellow. He held his gun raised, waiting for the flutter of a bird to break the emptiness of the sky. But the wind had picked up and clouds were skimming across it, catching the light from the low sun, and the combination of the wind in the trees and the fluttering flashes of light was deceptive. It tricked the mind into thinking there was a bird where there wasn’t. Repeatedly, he heard the pop of a gun and nothing fell. Clearly someone was either a bad shot or the light was playing tricks on them too. Ahead of him he saw a flicker of orange. Jack. He raised his gun and squinted along the sight line. The barrel of the gun was level with the back of Jack’s head. His middle finger squeezed on the trigger. He heard his own breath. It would be so easy to shoot. Bang. A burst of red. Jack would be gone in a firework of colour. He was dizzy with the thought of it. No one would know. It would be an accident. Unfortunate. Tragic. His finger tingled. Then once,
twice, three bundles of feathers flew up and he jerked his gun up and the trigger was pulled. An explosion in his ears and he fell, head spinning, into the scrub of the undergrowth. Another bang rang out, this time above him.

  ‘Halt!’

  On the ground, his head was still ringing with a high-pitched whine. The leaves of the beech trees were black silhouettes above him, swaying; the light pulsed, voices shouted. Then above him, a ruddy face. Skitmore.

  ‘What you doin’, boy? Shooting off yer gun like that? Coulda hurt someone.’ He peered closer. ‘You aright?’

  He sat up and squinted at the peering, round face of the gamekeeper. ‘What happened? The gun—’

  ‘Only that your gun went off, almost had me head off. Oughta be more careful.’ But his voice was kind. ‘Don’t reckon the other lot have noticed, mind. You get back t’the house now; reckon you done enough.’

  Skitmore was covering for him and Arthur knew he should be grateful. The man clearly thought he had no idea what he was doing, even though Arthur had been shooting many times before. He thanked Skitmore, trying to take the roughness out of his voice, and started to walk back to the farm, a circuitous route by the beech wood and round to the west, quietly so as to avoid the beaters. As he left the wood, he looked back and saw the distinctive orange of Jack’s hair. Even from the distance across the field, he knew Jack was looking straight at him.

  *

  ‘What on earth happened to you today?’ Peter sat opposite him, his second or third sherry in his hand.

  Arthur’s food congealed, uneaten, in front of him. He swallowed the sherry and his thoughts swirled like the liquid and couldn’t settle. ‘Skitmore thought my gun went off. Something wrong with it.’

  ‘Really? Skitmore knows his stuff. You should get him to look at it.’

  He wanted to say to Peter, I wished him dead. Had he wanted that? All he could remember was the tremble of his finger on the trigger of the gun and the desire coursing through him to obliterate the American. But would he have done it? And had he even shot the gun?

  Whatever had happened, the strength of his sudden rage was disturbing. He didn’t understand the exact source of it. Perhaps if he said it out loud, the thick grey clouds of doubt would dissipate and disappear. He wished that he could at least confide in Peter, to tell him his suspicions, his disparate thoughts, coagulating into a sense that the RAF and the US Air Force were keeping things hidden at Holkham. But he’d already tried to tell him and got nowhere, so kept quiet. Peter would just think Arthur was envious of the men at the base, the men who had purpose, unlike him. He, like Peter, had missed his chance. Too young in the war and nothing real happening now, just this fake war with Russia. In stark contrast to Jack’s experience, he’d not seen active service, had even managed to miss getting posted to Malaya or Kenya or Korea. Even Cyprus would have been better than the miserable RAF stations he’d spent his service holed up in. And now here he was, stuck in a seaside town with a sick mother. The world was spinning on without him. He needed to make a grab for it.

  ‘Jack said we should go for a chaps’ day out to Norwich soon. What do you reckon?’ Peter was saying.

  Arthur’s head spun.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Peter looked crestfallen at Arthur’s distrustful tone. ‘Does there have to be a reason?’

  Arthur sneered. He knew with Jack there was always a motive. And probably a sleazy one.

  At the other end of the table, Verity was sitting next to Jack. She seemed entirely absorbed, her head bent, listening. Arthur found his eyes caught by the picture: the dark head next to the red. As he watched, Jack looked up and smiled at him and Arthur was sure it was a smile of complicity as if they shared a secret. He took a draught of sherry and closed his eyes, imagining the gun going off and shattering the American into a thousand tiny pieces of pink flesh.

  2.

  The minute she got into the interview room, Verity knew it was doomed. The room was panelled and dark, not unlike her father’s study, and the don was short – shorter than her – but he had the same distant air of disapproval that her father had. She tried to answer his questions on the great sweep of Modern History: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Great Reform Bill. But he gazed at her from under his white eyebrows and his eyelids began to flicker, and finally close. Was he listening? She cared about history – at least, she remembered caring. The dates, all the years and years, the actions and the inactions and the consequences. The millions of dead, piling up, all the names and all the places and the names of the places. The long-dead men and the long-dead ideas lay one on top of the other in a higgledy pile in her head. The sense of order from which she had once taken comfort no longer seemed to be working. And she knew that all the hours over the hot summer when she had been drawing in her sketchbook were hours when the dates and the great men had receded and lost their power over her. She didn’t yet know what would take their place.

  She stopped talking.

  The clock in the don’s study ticked on. The don breathed through his nose. Behind him, the mullioned window framed a quadrangle. The leaves on the trees were yellowing and falling, and across the quad strode two students, their black gowns streaming out behind them. They were turned to each other, laughing silently with gaping mouths.

  From somewhere came the sound of coughing. The clock ticked. In the window, the students had gone, and in their wake, yellow leaves fluttered in the wind.

  A door slammed and the don’s eyes flickered open.

  ‘Yes, yes, that will do, Miss…?’ And he looked down at the sheet on the table in front of him, to remind himself of her name.

  In the train carriage, she looked out of the rain-spattered window and tried to squeeze the tears back in. A stout woman opposite her in an enormous hat offered her a handkerchief, but Verity took out her own and pushed herself closer to the window. The train passed two horses grazing in a field next to the sidings. When she got home, she would take Gyps out and ride and ride. She’d put her face into his mane, feel his unquestioning love for her. She would ride and not come back. This was nonsense of course, but the feeling of something bursting inside her was real.

  Out of the window, her eye caught movement. One of the horses was chasing the train, his tail flying out behind him, the other following.

  She thought of Jack speeding ahead of her on his bike the first time she saw him after the Midsummer party. It had been late July, after the town carnival. The holiday season was in full swing and she was avoiding the woods.

  Sick of mooning about the house, she’d been at the end of Leafy Lane, approaching the corner of Dogger Lane and the Pilchard pub. She was putting her cardigan around her shoulders when she saw Jack. He was standing side on to her, leaning against the wall of the pub, smoking, wearing a brown leather US Air Force jacket. He was an arresting sight, incongruous in his American clothes next to the old terraced houses. He was scratching the side of his nose and twitching it as if it irritated him. There was the terrible motorcycle, the cause of the destruction. How could he bear to get back on that thing after the accident? Instead of acting quickly and ducking back up the lane to hide, her feet stuck to the ground. What would he look like now? She remembered the bloodied face on the rain-slick driveway and, with grim curiosity, steeled herself to be repulsed. Would he look like one of those soldiers returned from the war with their faces half torn away, the kind one turned away from, too late? And as she was thinking this, her legs moved and brought her within two feet of him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, turning to her with a wide grin, before she had a chance to say anything. ‘I thought I might see you.’ Across his nose and cheek, a purplish, jagged line had ripped his once unblemished flesh. Although it must have faded it was still so striking, so incredibly stark against his pale skin, she recoiled, and the smile that had responded automatically to his boyish grin stuck fast on her face like a mask.

  ‘Look like the elephant man, don’t I?’

  ‘O
h. No. It’s not that bad.’ She looked away in embarrassment but her eyes were drawn back to him. It should have been unsightly, repellent even, but, perversely, it had the opposite effect. The scarred and torn skin was bizarrely mesmerising. It seemed to highlight the strange ugly-beauty of his face. And he wasn’t ashamed either. He was like a tomcat, a pale ginger tom, rakish and battle-scarred, almost proud of his scrapes.

  Confused, she said, ‘What are you doing here?’ She had meant to sound discouraging but she could feel the telltale heat on her cheeks.

  ‘I have half a day’s release from the base and was just taking her out for a spin.’ He remained in an unconcerned pose, leaning against the motorcycle.

  ‘I see,’ she said. Now was the moment to leave, but she didn’t move. She felt dizzy.

  ‘Do you want a smoke?’

  She took one without thinking and then had to stand and allow him to light it for her and then smoke it. All the time, she was acutely aware of his presence near to her, breathing in the distinct musky smell of his cologne and the petrol from the engine.

  In the end, she gave in, as if it was inevitable. She slung her leg over the leather seat in an attempt at nonchalance. But as they sped along the Holkham Road, she clung on in terror. The wind rushed past her face and as long as he kept straight she could almost enjoy the sensation of movement. There was nothing but the sound of the engine in her ears. But then he swung the bike and she felt she was about to be flung off into the marsh.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted into his back, the smell of the leather in her nostrils, but he didn’t seem to hear.

  Finally he did stop. He swerved to the side of a field and cut the engine. She wobbled and fell off the bike, landing with a thump on the verge.

  ‘You nearly killed me!’ she shouted, trying to stand up with shaking legs. It came back to her what Arthur had said at the Midsummer party about Jack trying to kill him.

  But he was smiling down at her. He held a hand out and she took it automatically. They stood at the edge of the road facing each other. Behind them, the marsh was a haze of violet from sea aster and sea lavender. She glared at him. ‘Sorry,’ he said, but his eyes were bright and glittering. She couldn’t stop looking at the scarred face.