‘Aren’t you going to tell me where you’ve been?’ They lay with the cover over them, smoking his Camels. She hated the throb of doubt in her voice.
‘I can’t tell you and you know it,’ he said.
‘Is that because you were with a beautiful Russian spy?’ She was trying to make a joke of it but failing.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘when I first met you, you told me you were engaged to be married. Seems like I ain’t the one with all the secrets.’
‘I’m not marrying anyone,’ Verity said. She was not a little girl any more, that was clear. And she would not marry her father’s choice, whatever happened.
‘Tell me anyway, I’m interested,’ Jack said. She looked at him askance. He had the old, sly smile on his face. It was hard to know what he was thinking.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ she said, but he continued to smirk at her. ‘All right then. My father arranged it, the boy’s a young farmer.’
‘Rather than an old one.’ Jack blew out a ring of smoke. She quite liked the tone of jealousy in his voice.
The smoke caught the pinkish twilight from the sun setting. From the bed, she could see the light bleeding out over the darkening marsh, catching the creeks in a final shimmer. The silhouettes of the pine trees swayed alarmingly at the far edge of the horizon. If she could get rid of everything apart from this – if she could suspend the moment, catch it, hold it and not ever let it go. If the light did not go out – if the thrashing sea rose and cut them off – they could stay here on an island of their own. But the sky continued to darken and the moment of terror and promise slipped away.
‘Actually, I can’t stand him, he’s a horrible snob and a crashing bore, but he’s very rich and that’s what the farm needs. I’m like a nice parcel of land, you see, something to sell. I’ve put Father off but he told me if I don’t decide what else I’m going to do, it’s a fait accompli. He’s insisting I meet him next week. Some tedious party. What do you care anyway?’ She looked sideways at him to gauge his reaction.
‘I care about anything to do with you.’ He was still regarding her with an intensity that made her feel uncomfortable. ‘If you’re not going to marry this guy, what are you going to do?’ he said after a while.
‘I don’t know any more,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to go to university.’ She couldn’t say more. It was too weighted with endings and decisions and difficulties. It seemed unbelievable that she could ever have thought she would be allowed to do such a thing. And what if, in some miracle, she’d been let in – she had no sense of how she would have lived, existed in an independent way. At the edge of her mind, she sensed that she was letting someone, or some concept of herself, down. Jack carried on smoking, idly caressing the back of her neck. She felt the heaviness of the air as they both waited for one of them to say something.
‘There are other things you could do,’ he drawled, which was true of course, but which one of those things was the right one, she had no idea.
‘Your turn,’ she said, afraid. ‘Tell me what you’re doing at the base. What’s it all for.’
He sat up away from her. ‘You know what we’re doing. Keeping you all safe.’ There was a tone of mockery and distance.
‘But I don’t, that’s the point,’ she persisted. ‘It’s all just rumour and conjecture. You can tell me. I’m not a Russian spy. Where were you today, for example?’
He gave her a long look and she thought he might actually tell her something real. But then in a sudden movement he stubbed out his cigarette and, underneath the blankets, drew his finger up her leg. She tensed. She was tired, would have liked to have slept, but her body responded anyway.
‘Does Art do this to you?’
She jerked her head forward. ‘What?’
He crawled under the covers. ‘What about this?’
‘Don’t Jack, please.’
‘You like it.’
‘Don’t tell me what I like.’
‘I know you,’ he said, and she wanted to slap him for his presumption. She drew back from him but not too far. It was true. He did know something of her that no one else knew.
He kept going and kept asking. ‘Please stop,’ she said, but it was hard to concentrate.
Later, she did sleep and when she woke the room was dark and cold. She was alone in the bed. The kettle on the stove whistled from the kitchen. She got dressed quickly. Her stomach was empty and she felt sick, light-headed.
She was pulling on her coat from the pile on the floor when Jack came in with two mugs of coffee.
‘Where are you going?’
She took the coffee from him, just for the warmth, but it was too hot and burned her tongue. The aftertaste was acrid, metallic. ‘I need to get back, I need to go home. I’m horribly late.’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘let’s just drink this.’
‘No, I need to go now.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, and tied her woollen scarf around her neck. But she wanted to speak, to make him have some kind of emotion. She wanted him to be honest with her, to tell her something she could hold onto. ‘You shouldn’t have said that about Arthur. He’s your friend.’ Her throat felt tight and she was afraid of crying. ‘He’s my friend.’
Jack snorted. ‘He’s no friend.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jack, we’ve known each other since we were children.’ Anger flared. ‘He told me what you’re like. He told me there were other girls.’ Now it was out of her mouth, she was afraid of him telling her, afraid of knowing the truth.
‘He did, did he? And why don’t you ask yourself why he said that to you? You really wanna have this conversation right now? Look at yourself, Verity, before you say anything about me.’ His voice was low, almost a whisper. ‘You’re not so perfect. You with your old-money farmhouse and your history and your funny little English ways. All so very proper but you’ve not been honest with me. You’ve been stringing two guys along this whole time.’
‘He also told me that you’ve been hiding things,’ she said.
He stared at her. She was cold all over, detached from the person saying these things. And somewhere she felt the tingling burn of the truth, out in the cool, fresh air.
‘Oh yeah, and how does he know so much?’ he said, very quietly.
‘I don’t know.’ It sounded pathetic.
He laughed. ‘You even gonna tell me what I’m accused of lying about?’
‘And you’ve never told us who you really are, who your family are, if you’re not from the bloody desert, or a ranch. And what you’re really doing here. Why does it all have to be so bloody cloak and dagger?’ She was flushed and hot.
‘And you’re just gonna take this crap from a Jew? He’s probably a bloody Zionist or a Commie for all we know.’ His eyes were glinting with fire.
‘Don’t be stupid, Jack. You can’t say that. You’re just a bloody liar who doesn’t care about any of us.’
‘A liar. That’s rich. Cloak and dagger? You love all of that—’ He waved his hand around the tiny room. ‘All the subterfuge and hiding. I’m just someone to fuck before you get married to some pompous rich guy and disappear back to your real life. You don’t really care about me.’
She flinched at his words and found her mouth twisting into an ugly sneer. ‘That shows how little you do know about me, then.’ She turned and ran out of the house, careering along the dark lane on the black marsh.
A shout behind her. But she couldn’t turn back and she ran, stumbling and crying, for the road. She heard the rumble of his machine coming up behind, the lights on her back illuminating a strip of road with her long shadow ahead. She turned to the glare.
‘I never lied,’ he said. ‘You all created a version of me that suited you. Ask your brother. You wouldn’t have looked at me twice if you thought I was a nobody from nowheresville. And you’re wrong. I do care. I care about you, Vee, no one else,’ he said. She wanted to believe it so much, to get on the bike and go back
to the old marsh shack and for him to touch her and to do it all over again. She wanted to believe it so much that her body was already there.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, wearily. ‘I don’t believe anything you say.’
‘Screw you then,’ he said. He revved the engine and drove off.
The lights of the bike receded into the distance towards the town as she half ran in a blur of rage and tears, until the rear light became a pinprick and then faded altogether. She ran all the way home, a harsh east wind against her face and it began to rain.
PART 3
HIGH TIDE
Saturday, 31st January 1953
The day of the flood
A vigorous trough of low pressure moving
east across the British Isles
Full moon, spring tide
1.
Funnelling surge 8–10 ft above sea level in the North Sea
They used to kill witches by the incoming of the tide. Muriel’s grandmother loved telling stories of the old days, delighting in the most gruesome of details. The old ladies, for they were usually old, were tied to a post on the ebb tide. Muriel imagined her own grandmother, stringy and sea-tanned, hair like iron filings, when she told her of the women, drowned as the tide came in over them, a crowd watching from the safety of the shore. Did this happen in Wells? she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Oh yes, her grandmother said.
Muriel had always had a fascination with the foreshore. She was like a Victorian mud lark when a child, a cloth bag over her shoulder, hair wild about her face. A relic from another age. There was treasure here when the tide turned, when the storms came and left their bounty on the strand line.
Below the quay, hidden from the fishermen, the drunks and the children, by the old boat where she’d made the bonfire, she sat with the leftover chips Jack had brought her and licked the salt from her fingers. She could still smell his hair oil mingling with the chip fat. Chips and nylons for chaste kisses and posing. It seemed a fair exchange. He’d been distracted today and it made her afraid that the attention and the favours would be coming to an end. She knew him for a charlatan, a honey-voiced liar, but the things he offered were too good to resist. And it had been a laugh, putting herself in different poses for the camera. She had no idea what it was all for but she hadn’t cared. Now, she sensed that change was coming and the change would bring her something new. She just didn’t know what.
Away on the quayside she saw Arthur climb onto his bike and cycle off along Beach Road, a tiny moving figure. She ought to warn him. A storm was coming. She could feel it in the wind, in the greenish colour of the clouds. But he was too far away. She watched him pedal to the end of Beach Road, then she wiped her fingers on her skirt and jumped up. In the grey bowl of sky above the saltmarsh, the terns wheeled as if the wind had sucked them into a whirlpool. She drew her coat tight around her and climbed back onto the quay.
2.
Deepening Atlantic depression moving south-east down to the North Sea
The wind buffeted Arthur as he pedalled. At the quay, boats bobbed up and down. The water in the harbour was flint-grey, the sky heavy. He struggled to keep steady, but it was good to be out of the shop. Mother had been in one of her funny moods again. She’d been to the doctor’s surgery about a pain she referred to vaguely and he hadn’t asked about it, though he knew he should.
As he cycled he mulled over his latest idea for a headline article to take his mind off Verity: Nuclear Armageddon on Our Doorstep. He would use the story to alert readers to the possibility of an accident or retaliation. He’d make them question why our government was allowing the Americans to use us as stooges in their hidden war.
The tide was coming in. Across the wide expanse of sand, the sky was now a strange yellow-grey, weighted with rain, and the sea was already halfway up the breakers. The wind whipped the trees to his left and created white tufts in the sea. The sky and wind seemed to be holding the water back. He turned away from the sea. It would be easier to take the route alongside the caravan park, skirting the edge of the wood. There was no way he could drag his bike along the sand on a day like this.
He cycled along the path, with the pond and the caravan park on one side, the wood on the other, and his heart beat faster than it should have done. Arthur had hardly seen Verity in the last couple of weeks. She’d been helping around the farm, or so she said. This was hard to believe. He suspected she was avoiding him. In fact, he hadn’t seen her since the fox hunt, when all he could remember was her face, cold and closed-off to him in the kitchen before the hunt.
She was already there, her knees drawn up, just a few inches of stocking between her skirt and boots, with the tartan flask beside her on the rug. When he came upon her, he paused with the bike. She was gazing off into the distance, smoking, unaware of him. The sight of her caught his throat.
Then she saw him and started, like a deer. ‘Oh, it’s you. God, you gave me a fright. You were really staring.’
‘What were you thinking about?’
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ She fiddled with the hem of her skirt.
His heart lurched. It was over. He knew it.
‘I’ve not been very good to you,’ she said, and took a drag on the cigarette.
He sat down next to her. No, he thought, but he was too afraid to say anything.
‘I’ve been thinking, that’s all.’ She was going to tell him she was in love with Jack. He realised that since the summer he had been waiting for this, waiting for her to say it. Over. Finished. He should have left Wells when she had said no to coming to London. Why hadn’t he? But he couldn’t let go.
A crow cawed high up at the top of a pine tree. Her breath made white curls in the cold air. He watched a beetle crawl across his shoe.
‘What?’ he said, finally. Get it over with.
‘Just… just that I’m sorry. I was wrong and I’m sorry.’
He tried not to smile and had to bite his lip. It wasn’t over. Light-headed, he pulled her to him and fervently kissed her neck, her jaw, her mouth. Yes. She was his. Yes.
‘Not here. We can’t,’ she murmured, looking up into the trees, but he already had his hand up her skirt. He had waited forever. He couldn’t let it go again. Her hand pushed his away.
‘There’s nowhere else, Ver,’ he said, touching her thigh. She twitched and he smoothed her hair, whispered into it, ‘It’ll be all right. We’re as good as official.’ There was no need to fear any more. She would marry him now – she must.
‘I don’t know, Arty.’
But he did. He laid her down on the rug over the damp ground and kissed her neck and then followed where his fingers went, kissing up her legs, feeling the smooth static of her stockings on his lips.
‘What if someone comes? Oh.’ But he heard her through treacle. The world had shrunk to her body and his.
No one appeared and she stopped talking, just let him touch her. He looked at her below him and noticed the dark shadows across her serious, intent face, from the canopy of the trees above them, swaying in the wind, and he drew her closer to him so he couldn’t see her expression. Her eyes disturbed him and he pulled her into him so that she could not get away or turn into someone else.
Once, she moaned as if in pain and then nothing. She hardly moved, just lay still, frozen, gripping his back and he kept moving in and out, as gently as he could, expunging the memory of the woman in Yorkshire and the slick of guilt that covered him, until he stopped thinking and it was over, done. She was his.
He lay with her curled into him, her mouth in the crook of his neck, her legs twined around his.
‘Are you OK?’ he said, although he was afraid of the answer. Her silence made him scared he’d done something wrong. He’d thought about this moment for so long and in his imagining it had been different, slower, beautiful even. But his nerves had got the better of him.
‘Yes,’ she said, but her head was still buried into his neck and he couldn’t tell if it was true or not.
‘Come on,’ he said, rubbing her back, ‘we’ll catch our death.’ He caught a glimpse of the goosebumped, raw skin on her thigh.
Covered up again, wrapped in their layers, they huddled under the tree. He held her face in his hands. She seemed fragile; she was shivering. Verity was usually so sure of herself, so straight-backed, so queen-like, it was alarming to see her like this, white and pink and trembling like a child.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he said, but he couldn’t look at her.
‘It was just a… shock, that’s all.’
He stroked her hair, at a loss for what to say. It was not how it should have been. What he’d done in Yorkshire had tainted it.
‘I’d better go,’ she said, ‘it’s a filthy day.’ She squeezed his hand and smiled faintly. Her eyelids looked red and sore.
‘Shall I walk you home?’
‘No, no, you go. I’ll be fine.’ She brushed her skirt down, stood up and waited for him to stand. As he straightened himself he realised tears stood in the corners of her eyes.
‘What is it? What have I done?’ He had no idea what to do. A ripple of anger ran through him. With himself and with her, for ruining it. In dismay, he realised he must have hurt her. But what he could do about it now, he didn’t know.
She wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks. ‘Nothing. Nothing. Being stupid, that’s all.’
In relief, he tried to take her face again, to kiss her mouth, the wetness on her cheeks, to kiss away the confusion, but she moved her head and pecked him on the forehead instead.
‘I’ll make it better,’ he said, hardly knowing what he was saying. ‘When we’re together. It’ll be better next time.’ He wanted to make it true, to bring it into being by her acknowledgement that this is what would happen. But instead, she spoke matter-of-factly.
‘It’s fine, Arty, really. Sorry. Got to dash though.’ She squeezed his hand again and walked away from him, but stopped and turned back. ‘Are you – going to the winter dance tonight? It’s at the village hall.’
The Night of the Flood Page 15