Not a hope, he says, We can go to the centre, ask if anyone’s missing.
And then to the pub, just to make sure?
Too right. Even if it’s only bottled. I’m gagging.
Aaron turns away and immediately back again, grabs the boot and shines his torch over it.
Hang on a minute, he says, We need to look further downstream.
William drives like his father: fast, confident, music too loud in the cabin. Nat had made him a compilation CD and he plays it now, feeling the rush of adrenalin he always gets when he thinks of her. A CD is a step forward; it means she cares enough about him to share her tastes. She has thought through the music carefully. He recognizes a Seth Lakeman song, and Coldplay, but doesn’t know the next three bands and has to keep glancing at the track listing after that. He stops paying attention midway through; the CD case, nestled with his mobile phone on the passenger seat, is hard to read in the dark. And anyway, he’s never been one for that kind of obsession. Perhaps when all this business with his father is over, when he’s cured or better or something less histrionic, he’ll bring her down to Berkshire.
Meet the family, he says out loud, grinning, Mad and very, very bad.
It’s not often the roads are so empty, and he tries to enjoy the feeling of space it gives him, like being in a car advertisement, almost. Except his car isn’t shinily manoeuvring along a winding road to the sea. His car is covered in grime and muck from the lanes, negotiating the blocked-off and sealed-off and impassable byroads that will, he hopes, eventually lead him to Boxford. He’s going to visit Thomas, renew their acquaintance. Put an end to the mischief.
Kenneth knows now that his mind is not the dodgems or the ghost train; certainly no fun house. It is the hall of mirrors. There is before and after, and squeezed in between them is the actual moment itself, distorted by time, by what he knows now, what he didn’t know then. And what he chose to ignore. Rusty was pregnant. He couldn’t prove it wasn’t his, of course, because she was clever. So, here’s the next reflection: how did he know it wasn’t his?
She’d called him up to the nursery to deliver her news, opening the door and smiling at him in an odd, peculiar way, like a child trying to please. She said something about the room coming into its own again, but he wasn’t really paying attention because they’d been here before; once, twice, and she had been so bitterly disappointed. And for a while after each failure she’d go quiet, and he’d think she was happy, or at least coming to terms with it, and then she’d begin again, the same arguments, the same fanatical cast in her eyes. One child would never be enough for her. She simply longed for a baby. And William needed a playmate, someone to draw him out. She never asked Kenneth what he might need. Then she’d had a stillbirth, and they both agreed there would be no more attempts.
Had they both agreed? He holds up another memory for scrutiny, squirming at the deformed shape of it: he had said, There’ll be no more; it’s ruining your health. That’s my final word.
Afterwards, he’d taken every precaution – or thought he had – so the news was a shock. That was how he knew it wasn’t his, then? The idiocy, the stupidity of him. And of course, the baby wasn’t to be. Third recollection: Rusty in the middle of the bed, pillows stacked high around her, and the sheet pulled up to her chin. Like a disembodied head, floating in an Arctic sea. She had a look on her face, and once Kenneth had seen it the first time, he would never fail to notice it again: a kind of smirking contempt. He was trying to apologize, to share her sorrow, even though he didn’t quite feel it in the same way.
Come on, Kenneth, he says to himself, What was it you really felt?
And Keith Jarrett plays out a rhythm of not-quite-repetition, and the answer comes in the spaces between the sounds: relief. Huge, sparkling relief. He’d already made plans for his love affair with Grace.
Grace. He’d kept it secret for a good six months: four of planning, when only he knew what he was about to do; two of snaring, although he preferred, in those cunning, deceitful days, to think of it as romancing. Now he knows the name of it, and is full of shame. Grace wasn’t one of the more beautiful ones. But she was happy and free, and freedom is a kind of beauty in itself. When he’d had enough of a particular dalliance – when it became a problem – he’d enlist Rusty, confess all (not quite all) and she would deal with it. If the girl worked for the estate, she’d be promoted. If she was a friend of a friend, she’d be welcomed by Rusty with a full and overpowering benevolence. Rusty was so clever.
Kenneth wanders into the hall and opens the front door. His leg is aching from the big toe to the calf. The sole of his foot is throbbing. He continues out towards the rhododendrons, the bushes fused into a block of saturated shadow, and stares at them. The earth underfoot yields to his weight; his feet sink into the cold and wet. It feels good. There’s a noise in the distance, some sort of siren, like atonal singing. A million years ago, it seems, a woman sang to him.
The journey from Boxford to Earl House is hazardous, and William has to take it more carefully. The motorway has been closed off, with diversion signs taking him in the wrong direction. He feels, although he can’t know, not in this glossy darkness, as if he’s circling the estate without getting any closer; as though he’s stuck on an unending loop. Twice he’s had to take a detour, found a river where a road should be, has had to double back on himself, and the scenery looks exactly the same; closed-in hedges and the tarmac like Vaseline; no houses lit, no people, nothing. At Westbrooke he climbs the hill, and as he rounds the bend, sees an unearthly sight; a caravan of horses crossing the horizon. One follows behind the other, nose to tail in a line, like a paper cut-out. Then no one and nothing again for another mile or two, except the sodden trees, and the road ahead, empty and straight. The CD has played through and returns to the start, the frenzied violin on the opening track making him press his foot harder on the accelerator. Really, he wants to rip up the tarmac, soar through space: he wants to fly, like the car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Like the ones in Blade Runner. At this rate, it’ll take ages to get to his father’s house. That meddling old bugger, with his interfering ways. He thinks again about Thomas’s watery eye through the crack in the door. Yes, someone had called. Someone was asking, is what he’d said, but Thomas swore he’d said nothing. Really, he’d said nothing. Swore it on his dog’s life. And then – extraordinary – that pitiful cry. I’m an old man. As if age ever made a difference. William licks his lips, tasting salt and iron; the flavour, faintly shocking, of his own blood.
He dips his hand into his inside pocket and takes a stick of gum, unwrapping it and folding it into his mouth before he tries his phone again, reaching across the console and fumbling about on the seat to find it. Still no signal. When he glances back up at the road he slows down, to be sure of what he’s seeing. It looks like a fallen branch but as he nears it he thinks it’s a figure, a scarecrow, maybe, wrenched from a field by the weather and thrown onto the fence. AsWilliam flicks his main beam on, the scarecrow lifts its head and looks at him. The eyes are fawn-like, lit up, blazing green.
She sees the car beam as a torchlight. It reaches up high as it crests the hill and then she doesn’t see it, only the shape of the dog, low, fast, racing down towards her with the moon behind it, and she moves into the shadow of the trees.
thirty-six
William arrives to find Kenneth sitting in the hall at the bottom of the staircase, a damp wind blowing through the house. He can tell at once that his father’s had trouble; an abandoned pair of mud-crusted trainers on the doorstep, bloody footprints in a wandering pattern across the flagstones. Kenneth is bent double, trying to unravel a length of bandage. Without speaking, William kneels in front of him and takes hold of his foot, lifting it, looking at the bent toes and greenish toenails, the mud and gravel embedded in the skin. Gently, he sweeps his fingers over the sole until the ragged gash is revealed.
It hurts a bit, his father says.
I bet it does. It’s pretty deep.
Couldn’t find any more plasters. How did you manage to get here?
With great difficulty, says William, The roads are – well, they’re not roads any more. I asked Ali to call. We were worried about you.
She called, says Kenneth. He pushes William’s hand away, but his son persists, and they battle for a few seconds over the foot, Kenneth pulling his knee to his chest, his son tugging on the ankle, until Kenneth gives up the fight and leans back against the banister. William scrutinizes the wound, angling his father’s foot to the light.
It’ll need cleaning, he says. Stay here and I’ll fetch some antiseptic. You’ll have some, won’t you? Bathroom?
Freya keeps it in the kitchen – under the sink.
Stay here. Don’t move. Hold that foot up.
Kenneth stares at William’s retreating figure, at his confident, brisk walk and at the sheer grown-up manliness of him, and is amazed. When did that happen? When did the awkward, sly boy become this person?
I’m sorry, he yells, I shouldn’t have left you all alone. It was wrong.
William heads off along the corridor. He doesn’t know what gremlin idea has crept into his father’s mind this time, and now, when he would really like a drink and a moment to himself, he doesn’t want to hear it. There’s Dettol under the sink, a plastic bottle lying on its side among an assortment of old jam jars and rags and a box of tired-looking fish food. Everything feels sticky and unclean. He pours a capful of the antiseptic into a bowl and adds warm water, trying to still the trembling in his hands, trying to concentrate only on the milky liquid and the ticking sound of the house. It’s the most bizarre night. The horses on the hill, and the roads awash, and that thing leaning on the fence; his father, like a lunatic, and that real lunatic Thomas. Behind him, Kenneth half-hops across the floor and lowers himself onto a stool next to the sink.
Is your phone working? asks William, My mobile’s dead.
The phones are down, says Kenneth.
But you said Ali called?
She called in person, says Kenneth, And I sent her away again. Don’t want her to be stuck here if it gets worse.
Don’t want to be stuck with her, more like, says William, and Kenneth gives him a broad grin. He puts out his hand and catches his son by the arm. He would like to say it again, how sorry he is, but William interrupts.
It’s worse in the valley. Up here’s not so bad. And it said on the traffic news they’re reopening the motorway. Crisis over.
Not in my cellar, says Kenneth, That’s how I got my war wound.
William ducks back down and replaces the bottle. He has an urge to pull the jars out and wash them, run a cloth over the shelves and throw the fish food in the bin. There’s a smell in the air, cutting through the antiseptic, of rotting vegetation, rank water. He’s only half listening to his father, some nonsense about how his mind is a prison and he is the prisoner. When he emerges again, Kenneth is looking at him: he has asked him a question.
What’s that, say again?
I said, when I left for Bahrain, were you sad?
William decides he will have that drink, goes to the stash of bottles on the counter and picks one at random.
How about some wine? I won’t be going anywhere tonight. I suppose I can stay?
Of course you can, son, says Kenneth, But what did you feel, at the time?
It’s so long ago, I can hardly remember.
Well, try, insists his father.
William would like to tell him how he was much more concerned about his mother. Not concerned: devastated. How he’d heard them, the doctor, and the nurse they’d hired, and the river man – the river man, again – talking about her nerves. How she was on the edge, how she so badly wanted another child. And he says,
It changed everything. Of course it did. But at least it meant I was more like the rest of them.
The rest of who?
The boys at school. Everyone divided their time, Dad, between one parent or the other. Or I should say, between one nanny or the other.
Ah, says Kenneth, swirling his foot in the bowl of water, So it wasn’t a ruse?
What wasn’t?
That business with the child. You hadn’t concocted some story with the water bailiff to make me come back?
It’s a bit of a stretch, William says, Even for me.
You really found her?
William studies the label on the bottle. He knows he should be able to read it, but he can’t make the letters form words. He did find her, every day: found her running naked along the riverbank, a clown’s smile of dirt around her mouth; holding the hand of the man in the market place while he sold his drugs to the older boys; with her mother, the woman topless and shining like an oyster; sitting alone in the long grass, talking to herself, flexing her fingers to the sky. He would like to say, Yes, I found her. She needed us. Instead, he says,
I found her all right – showing the bottle to his father – How about a glass of this?
They remain in the kitchen, Kenneth with his foot in the bowl of water, William leaning against the fridge, both back in the same time and both remembering that same time differently.
Did you get my message, asks Kenneth, About the plumber? Can’t find his number anywhere.
William nods. He won’t let on about the other calls. To distract him, he begins to tell his father about the journey down, and then another thought occurs.
What were you doing out there anyway? he says, nodding to the hallway.
Kenneth puts his head back and shows his teeth in a grimace.
Don’t go saying I’m potty, he warns.
I won’t, says his son.
I thought I heard singing.
You’re potty, says William.
I’ll drink to that, says Kenneth, and they both raise their glasses in salute.
Maggie sits between the two men. She has to keep wiping her nose; it’s dripping wet, and her eyes are sore and gritty. The dreamcatcher box is on her lap; the wood feels slimy, cold, and water seeps from the underside, soaking her knees. Sam clicks open the glove compartment and fishes about amongst the assorted debris before he finds what he’s looking for; an old patterned tea towel, folded into a triangle.
For emergencies, he says, smiling as he hands it to her, Plus, it’s the only thing that’s dry.
She takes it from him. It smells faintly of petrol but she wipes her nose and her eyes anyway. The view through the window of the truck is smeared by the wipers and the weather; she can’t tell whether she’s able to focus or not. There’s not much space in the cabin, and despite herself, her leg is pressed close against Aaron’s thigh; she can feel the heat of his body against the wet of her jeans, and another kind of heat, an anger, thrilling through him. It’s in the way he drives, the way he doesn’t speak. Even though they’d caught up with her on the edge of a field, Sam is proud: his first proper rescue, he calls it. He talks animatedly, so fast and excited that Maggie tunes out now and then; it’s all about the weather, the havoc; how they discovered a fox in a bathroom, and a pair of kittens on a high shelf in the kitchen of another house, as if they’d been put there for safety. So still, he thought they were china ornaments. How the water cut off this farm or roared into that house, sneaked up through the skirting boards, fell through the roof. The roads like rivers. That madman in the Mazda. All she wants to do now is sleep. The warmth of the cabin makes her drowsy; the proximity of the two bodies pressed on either side of her makes her skin prickle: perhaps she is creating her own humid air.
We tried to tell him, anyway, he finishes. Silence resumes for a moment, and then Aaron leans forward to turn up the radio.
Sorry, she says, What did you try?
We told him, there’s only one road up from Snelsmore and he ain’t on it.
Where was he going? she asks.
The Earl place.
thirty-seven
She leaves Aaron sleeping, movi
ng swiftly past his living room, where he has spent the last two nights, and lets herself out of the house. She gets to the main road at the end of the Gatehouse before turning back. It isn’t fair. Not right to disappear like that.
After they’d picked her up, Sam wanted to take her to the centre with the rest of the evacuees and get her checked over by the nurse, but Aaron overruled him. He was going to keep an eye on her, he said, she’d caused enough trouble. And he did just that; didn’t ask her any questions, but watched her carefully, attentively, in a manner that suggested she wasn’t to be trusted. The following morning, when Maggie asked if it might be possible for them to go back to Field Cottage to pick up some more clothes, he snapped at her,
We’re not here at your beck and call. The village is flooded, you’ll have noticed. People have lost everything. People have drowned. You could have drowned.
It was only then she remembered his father, and how he’d died. Even though she should have been thinking of Aaron and of all he did to help her, Maggie’s mind chased in a straight line back to Kenneth, standing in his den, peering into the fish tank. The water gives up her dead, he’d said, when he’d told her about finding Baggs. He was right. People are lost and people are found. Aaron’s father hadn’t been saved, but he had been found. Everyone must be found, even her. But she hadn’t been found by William, she’d been lost by him. He’d made her vanish. What remained, said Kenneth, they’d found what remained of Baggs. She turned it over and over in her mind; the losing of her, and then the discovering of her, as if she were a object, a buried thing unearthed. And what remained of her. She’d been living her whole life with the remains. Until today. Not dead yet.
She rehearses her speech, so when Aaron answers the door, barely awake, and squints at her in the shimmering morning light, the words tumble out of her mouth.
The Song House Page 21