by Doreen Finn
‘It’s not a few late nights. It’s much more than that, and you know it. I’m right about this.’
Some honeyed words from Chris. Then another smash.
‘Don’t do this! She lives upstairs. She’s got a child.’ Judith’s voice reached a new pitch, swooping at the end. I remembered I could have been a chef . The anger poured into her words, the unrestrained ire. ‘You’re ruining everything, again!’
‘Judy, Judy, ever the martyr.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Just the truth. You’re happy to sit around all day, keeping house, minding Beth. You like to pretend nothing has ever happened, nothing’s ever gone wrong, and then when something out of the ordinary happens, boom! Apocalypse.’
Judith’s voice was barely audible. Fury leaked over every word. ‘You are despicable, Chris. Despicable. There’s no other word for you.’
Chris and Judith argued on, back and forth, their words a rolling buzz, punctuated by a hand slammed on a hard surface, a plate, maybe, thrown at the wall. Voices from another world, behind a fluttering voile curtain, they drew us into their adult orbit and we didn’t know what to do. It felt wrong to be eavesdropping, felt like breaking some code of behaviour that bound us.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Daniel whispered, even though Chris and Judith couldn’t possibly have heard us. ‘We can finish the game later.’
Mrs Sullivan called over the wall. ‘Daniel? Are you there?’
‘Yes, Mummy. We’re just playing Monopoly.’
‘Did I hear shouting?’
I answered, more ready than Daniel with lies. ‘Just the radio!’
‘Well, dinner’s ready. We’re eating early today because Mary has to be up for the first train in the morning.’
Obediently, Daniel turned to leave. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We can swim again.’
Later that evening, Gemma and I were having our dinner. Omelettes again. It was too warm for a proper dinner. We were just finishing when there was a knock at the open kitchen door.
Judith.
‘Can I have a quick word, Gemma? It won’t take long.’ She looked at me. ‘Megan, honey, would you mind giving us a few minutes, please?’
I retreated to the dining room, but even from there I could still hear Judith. She sounded measured, steady. Controlled.
‘Gemma, I’m sorry that I have to say this to you, but I need you to leave my husband alone. He’s not worth ruining your life over, and he’s the father of my child. I don’t want any more drama and I don’t want to upset your mother or your daughter, but if I have to I will. Stay away from him.’
Gemma was still sitting at the table when I ventured back to the kitchen. She was staring at something on the wall. She turned to me as I entered, altering her features into a semblance of a smile. ‘There you are! Will we have dessert?’
38
The street lights were orange capsules and they hummed in the hush of night. The light at the canal bridge wasn’t working properly and it flickered, emitting a crackle of electricity each time it tried to right itself. The locks had been opened earlier, and below where we leaned on the metal handrail, the water plunged, black and gushing, into the narrow channel where the barges passed through.
Stan’s barge had moved further along the canal, towards the bridge at Portobello. The water was shallower there, Daniel said. Sarah told me that when she was a child there were many more barges than there were now. She said we were lucky to have been able to get onto Stan’s boat, because so few of them travelled the canals any more. The concrete bollards for mooring boats were vague heaps carved in the darkness, the ghosts of ancient ropes tied around them.
We were night swimming. Daniel and I had wanted to use the pool, but Beth and Stevie won out, and we had gone to the canal. It wasn’t worth fighting over. Beth and I had reached a truce of sorts, borne more out of the proximity of our shared living spaces than any real desire to be friends again. Her words had angered me deeply, her insults of my mother unforgivable. It struck me that she hadn’t insulted her father in the same way, something I noted when she’d approached me, stealthy as a cat, earlier that day.
‘Friends?’ Her hand held out to me in reconciliation. Two plaited bracelets looped her wrist, blue and yellow. They were new.
I had turned away. I didn’t know how to be friends with someone who hated my mother.
She touched my shoulder, forced me to turn to her again. ‘Seriously, Megan, this is crazy. I live here. We can’t not talk.’
‘You called my mother a whore.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I was angry.’ She fiddled with the bracelets. ‘We all say things we don’t mean when we’re angry.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, I do. And most people do too. They’re just words, Megan. I didn’t mean any of it.’
‘But you said it like you meant it. And you didn’t say anything horrible about Chris.’
‘But there aren’t any words like that for men.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘It’s just the way it is.’
I hesitated. It wasn’t good enough for me, but Beth was right. We lived too close to each other to be fighting. It made everything uncomfortable, and on top of that I had to hide it all because how could I explain the roots of our disagreement? Where would I even begin to unravel it all if my mother asked me?
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I took Beth’s proffered hand. She squeezed mine, smiled.
I wasn’t convinced, but there seemed to be no other option. For now. This wasn’t going to be forgotten. I would take it out later, examine it again, think it through.
A spurt of light as Stevie lit a cigarette. He dragged on it deeply, before passing it to Beth. I heard him trying not to cough. Beth’s nonchalance with the cigarette was impressive. She held it between her fingers, elegant in her insouciance.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s swim.’
‘We should have brought a radio,’ Stevie said, taking the cigarette from Beth as we walked over to the lock.
‘Why?’ asked Daniel.
‘Because, stupid, we could listen to it,’ Stevie said, rolling his eyes. ‘What else would you do with a radio? Eat it?’
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘Yes, you are. Actually, I think I’m going to get one of those I’m With Stupid T-shirts and wear it every time I’m with you.’ Stevie laughed, but I saw how his eyes flickered towards Beth, his anxiousness to impress her.
‘Leave him alone!’
My own voice surprised me, magnified as it was by the empty silence of the night. ‘Stop being such a bully.’
Stevie pulled on the cigarette again. ‘Fuck off, Megan.’
I pushed him. ‘Why don’t you?’ We glared at each other.
Beth stood in front of us. ‘Guys, guys. Stop it. Do you want to fall in there?’
We clambered onto the lock. The water was black at our feet. Behind us, where Beth pointed, the canal gushed at its most dangerous point, where it refilled after the lock was closed. The wooden lock was painted black and the paint peeled in places. Someone had written with a compass or something else equally sharp, Johnno loves Babo. It was old now, the letters uneven and jagged. I sat down beside the letters, took my sandals off and kicked at the dark canal water.
‘Who are they?’ Daniel asked me as he ran his fingers over the lettering.
I shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘We could write our names here,’ he said.
I pulled away. ‘What, write Daniel loves Megan ?’
He laughed. ‘Dan loves Meg.’
We both laughed.
‘What are you two giggling at?’ Stevie asked, standing apart from us.
‘Come on, let’s just swim.’ Beth pulled off her T-shirt and her shorts, kicked her flip-flops off and threw everything onto the bank. ‘It’s such a waste of time to fight.’ She eased herself down beside us.
‘Tell your b
oyfriend that,’ I said. ‘He’s always starting it.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ Beth whispered. ‘He’s just my friend. You’re my friend too, right?’
I didn’t answer.
She flicked the still-lit cigarette end into the canal. It sparked in the air.
‘Hey, don’t do that!’ Daniel said, catching Beth’s arm. ‘The ducks will eat it and it could kill them.’
‘Sorry, Dan,’ she said, shrugging.
‘You shouldn’t ever throw things into water. It’s so bad for the fish and the ducks.’
I had seen a lot more than a cigarette butt in the canal. Before the clean-out last Easter, there had been a shopping trolley, traffic cones, two bicycles and huge amounts of other rubbish, slimy and pondweed-darkened, clogging the waterways with their sheer volume.
A splash diverted us. Stevie was in the water. He stood up immediately, clutching his foot. ‘Ow, ow!’
Beth slid gracefully in, swam over to him. ‘What’s wrong?’
Stevie dropped his foot quickly. ‘Nothing. Just stood on a rock. It’s a bit shallow.’
‘Are you guys coming in?’ Beth floated on her back, her hair drifting around her shoulders. She tipped her head back, brought her feet up in front of her. She reminded me of a mermaid.
‘Do you want to get in?’ I asked Daniel.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Me neither.’ Despite the warmth of the night, being by the dark canal had lost its appeal. I decided in that moment that this was it. No more night swimming down here. Life at night at the canal was nowhere near as appealing as it was in the swimming pool. From now on, it was the pool or nothing. I loved its clean water, the privacy the overgrowth afforded. It felt like being in another world entirely, a quiet world far from prying eyes. The canal was too open, too exposed. Anyone could see us.
‘Do you want to go to the pool instead?’ Daniel asked.
‘Yes! I was just thinking the same thing.’
‘What about those two?’
‘Leave them. We can go on our own.’
‘When do you want to go?’
‘Now?’
‘Okay. But let’s give it a few minutes first, and then we can just say we’re leaving.’
From the water, Stevie taunted us. We ignored him.
‘He isn’t always like that,’ Daniel said.
‘Isn’t he?’
‘No. He’s much worse when you’re around, and definitely worse when Beth’s with us.’
‘Why?’
‘Mummy says he’s jealous because I have you next door.’ Daniel rubbed at a spot on the wood. ‘He’s actually much nicer to me when we’re at home.’
I doubted it. Stevie had always been like this as far as I could tell: loud, demanding, selfish. Everything Daniel was not.
‘The other day, as we were leaving Mass – ’
I cut across him. ‘Do you like Mass?’
He stared at me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, do you actually like going to Mass?’
Daniel scratched with his thumbnail at an ancient piece of chewing gum that was stuck to the peeling, flaking wood. ‘I don’t mind it.’
I thought of the times I’d been to Mass – twice with Daniel’s family, a few times with Hannah. The enormous church, the radiators that rattled in winter and never provided any kind of heat. The priest’s voice magnified by the microphone that hissed and crackled whenever he leaned in too closely. The babies crying, the children fidgeting, the dip and swoop of murmured, communal prayer. Sometimes, I wanted to go, to be a part of the herd that thronged the path to the church on Sunday mornings, on holy days. Other days, I was glad we didn’t go.
‘You can come with us if you like. Any time. Mummy’d be so happy to bring you.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I’d be allowed.’
Daniel gave up picking at the gum and leaned back against the wooden lock. ‘Do you believe in God?’
In school, we learned all about God. His endlessness. His never beginning in the first place. His capacity to love all his children, even those who sin. ‘Maybe.’
He looked panicked. ‘But you have to! It’s not just about going to Mass, Megan. It’s about your soul.’
My soul didn’t worry me too much. God had many more souls to preoccupy Himself with. Mine was doing just fine. There were so many dead souls, so many dying ones to keep God busy for a very long time. ‘I thought you weren’t going to be a priest.’
‘I’m not! It’s just so Mummy doesn’t have to suffer. She’s already worried enough about Stevie going to hell for being bold. I can’t add to that.’
I nudged my best friend. ‘I’m only messing.’ His profile, outlined by the inadequate light of the streetlamp, was softened by his smile.
‘Hey, did Gemma hear you leaving?’
‘No, I was quiet.’
I thought of the scene behind the mottled glass bathroom walls the first night we swam in the pool, the wobbly flicker of candles, the heavy scent of lavender. The whispers.
I wanted my mother to be happy. I wanted her to have someone to take care of her, someone she could be with without having to lower her voice, without having to sneak around and meet under the safety of darkness. I liked Chris, but Gemma couldn’t have him, not properly. Even if he was free, he’d always be Beth’s father and Beth had to come first. Sarah always said that. The child comes first.
Beth floated, a siren of the night. Her wet skin gleamed, her hair the colour of marble. ‘Come on, Dan! Get in the water. You too, Megan.’
‘Daniel’s afraid, aren’t you?’ Stevie teased.
Anger tripped over itself inside me. ‘Shut up, Stevie! Leave him alone. He never does anything to you, but you’re always horrible to him.’
Stevie laughed, that low mocking sound I’d come to hate. ‘Fuck off, Megan. Stop fighting his battles for him.’
Daniel leaned forward. ‘I can fight my own battles, Stevie.’
‘Then why is your girlfriend always standing up for you?’
I turned to Beth. ‘See? This is what he’s like.’
Beth was treading water. ‘Come on, stop fighting. You’re ruining everything.’
My face burned. ‘I’m not ruining anything. You just don’t want to stand up to Stevie.’
Her voice quieted to a hush of whispers. ‘Why can’t you leave him alone?’
I was only nine, but I could see even then that Beth was one of those girls who would always stand up for a boy. She would forsake her friends, be unreliable and flaky, if a boy was in the picture. Daniel touched my arm. The stillness of the night swelled around us. To the left the moon had reappeared, a barely there fragment of silver in the indigo sky.
Daniel got to his feet. ‘Come on.’
I stood up too. ‘We’re going home,’ I called out to Beth.
She stopped whispering to Stevie. ‘Oh come on, Megan! Stay. This is fun.’
‘No, we’re leaving. See you later.’
The swimming pool was waiting for us and I couldn’t wait to slide into the night-cooled water. In the pool, we had cover and shadow. We had space and silence and no one ever heard us. We could swim, dive, jump, whatever we wanted to do. Here, we were exposed, our skin rusted by the streetlights, too far from home for comfort.
Daniel put one foot in front of the other on the narrow lock. On one side, Beth and Stevie outdid each other in their efforts to impress. On the other side, far beneath us, the water surged. The old black paint under our soles was flaking, the wood in need of replacing. Later, that was the detail that stuck most firmly with me. The flaking paint. The old wood. Johnno and Babo and their long departed love.
Daniel slipped. It was that simple. It happens to everyone, almost every day. We slip. We lose our balance. We wobble. It’s something that barely registers, most of the time. He reached out to steady himself but grabbed air instead of wood. He swung his eyes briefly towards me, his face blurred with fear. Arms windmilling, he fell backwards.
I saw myself reach for him, but of course it was too late. His scream rang out in the tar-coloured night. It lingered in the dark air long after he hit the rushing black water and vanished.
A terrible darkness closed over my head and for a moment I couldn’t see. I screamed for Daniel, the sound of my voice swelling like thunder. It alerted Beth and Stevie, who were suddenly beside me, pulling at me. Beth’s hands on my face, forcing me to look her in the eye, most likely to tell her what had happened. Stevie, having already guessed, tried to climb over the lock and get down to where his little brother had disappeared. The whole time, all I heard was my own voice, shrill.
Beth mouthed soundless words, and her gestures to Stevie seemed ponderous and slow as Stevie tried to clamber down to find Daniel. I watched his fingers scrabble against the wood, paler than my arm, freckled at the knuckles, and much bigger than I would have thought. More like a man’s hand than a thirteen-year-old boy’s.
And where was Daniel?
I couldn’t see him anywhere. Black poppies bloomed in front of my eyes, and I thought I was going to pass out. But then Beth screamed, her finger pointing, and the world suddenly burst into sound again.
Daniel had surfaced, some feet downriver from where he had fallen. I saw the back of his T-shirt, the white stripes vivid in the blackness. I called his name, relief flooding me. I told him it was all right, that we’d get help. I told him Stevie was coming to get him, even though Stevie’s efforts had stalled and he stood helplessly, shouting at his brother. I told him anything at all, anything just to keep him from going under again, just to keep him conscious. I saw that recently, on television, where a person kept telling someone who’d been shot that help was coming. It had kept the person alive.
Except Daniel didn’t respond. He just stayed there, his face in the water, his body twisted at an awkward angle. He didn’t move, but I kept on calling, telling him to hold on. Help was coming. He’d be fine. Help was on its way.
The arms around my waist were unfamiliar, the voices not instantly recognisable. Stan. Stan and Barbara. No glasses of orange this time. They pulled me to my feet, then led me off the lock. Stan tried to get down to Daniel but he couldn’t. He told Barbara to go back to the barge and get a rope. She did, then stood out on the road, hoping to flag down a passing car, but it was too late and no cars drove by.