Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  ‘What if you get halfway and run out of breath?’

  ‘Don’t be pathetic.’

  Mark stood and laughed and said, ‘You wally,’ as Seb dived into the water and disappeared under the barges.

  ‘What a brain-dead moron,’ Mark said as we waited for Seb to reappear on the other side. I wanted him to shut up. I wanted to hold my breath until Seb came back, to check it was possible. To check Seb would live.

  It was ages before he reappeared, shaking his head to get the water out of his ears. Then he placed his hands on the edge of the boat and was up and in it before you could blink.

  ‘Go on, your turn,’ Seb said, and Mark, who wasn’t as brave as Seb, made some excuse about needing to get back. We watched him swim to the shore. Then Seb made me lie on top of him.

  ‘Take off your dress,’ he said. I smacked his face.

  ‘Ooof!’ he said, moving it aside, laughing. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Only if you take your underpants off.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  He slid off his pants and I peeled off my dress. I was still too undeveloped to wear a bra, so I lay with my bare chest pressed against his and we seemed to mould into one another, our bodies slotting perfectly together. We were like pieces of a 3D jigsaw, needing each other’s bodies to make a complete, flawless whole. That’s the feeling I remember most clearly now as I walk the same route as I walked that day along the alley towards the house. Our bodies, warm from the sun, slightly sticky from the effluent in the river, smelling of mud, locked together.

  I loved Seb, that doesn’t need saying. I thought he was the most beautiful creature that ever walked upon the earth. That day on the barge, I looked down into his face and wondered how anyone could have been created so perfectly. He had long almond-shaped blue eyes and lips that seemed permanently red and swollen as if he’d been eating strawberry ice lollies. His mouth turned down at the edges as if he thought everyone was too dim for him, as if he was waiting for the world to catch up with him. I could feel his sharp hip bones press into the dips just beneath my own, his skin warm and ridged where he slotted into the gaps between my ribs, my chest, that was only just beginning to soften, yield to his.

  ‘Lie under me,’ he said after a while, so we rolled over. I had a vague idea that perhaps I should make him stop. I wriggled beneath him, trying to push him off. But what I remember now is the feel of the warm wood of the barge floor banging against my back as he held me, the sound of his breath in my ear.

  I arrive back at the River House, tense with anxiety. What if Jez has already woken? Left before I could say goodbye properly? I should never have left him alone.

  I clutch Mother’s Flurazepam in my pocket, rub the foil blisters with my thumb. Bound up the stairs to the first floor then on up the steep steps to the landing outside the music room. Light comes in from the narrow windows around the top of the walls. I turn the door handle, and push it open, hardly daring to hope.

  He’s there. Still drowsy. But his eyes are open.

  I go straight to him. Sit on the bed.

  ‘You passed out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last night. Had a few too many glasses of wine.’

  I look down at him. A prince emerging from a hundred years’ sleep. He tries to lift his head, frowns, then gives up.

  ‘It’s OK. You’re at the River House. Do you remember now?’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘You’re not to worry. We all drink too much sometimes, believe me. It happens to the best of us.’

  ‘What’s the time? I’m getting the ten thirty to Paris.’

  ‘Oh, it’s way past ten thirty! But there are plenty of other trains. We can let people know, all in due course.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  He lifts himself up on one elbow, his eyes screwed up against the light.

  ‘You need to rehydrate. Here.’

  I take the glass from the bedside table and hold it to his lips, watching them moisten as he takes a sip. A bead of water clings to one of the specks of boyish stubble on his upper lip. It glistens silver for a second before he licks it off.

  ‘Jesus. What the fuck did we drink last night?’

  His voice is still not mature even though it’s well past breaking stage. It’s got that boyish ring to it. He shuts his eyes and puts his head back down on the pillow.

  ‘You’ll feel better later. I’ll bring you bagels and coffee in half an hour or so. You can take a shower. In there.’ I nod towards the en suite. ‘How do you have your coffee?’

  He looks up again, his face crumpled, but his skin still so fine, like rippled silk. Full lips. Mick Jagger lips. Singer’s lips. One day, I can see, he’ll have those lines between nose and lip that rock singers have. Seb would have had them.

  ‘Strong. Not too much milk. Two sugars.’

  It’s lovely to stand and look but I don’t want to alarm him.

  ‘I’ll go and make some breakfast.’

  ‘I forgot to text Alicia. Or phone my mum,’ he says as I reach the door. I’m glad he says this as it reminds me that his mobile is in the pocket of his leather jacket, which he’s left on the back of a kitchen chair.

  ‘All in good time,’ I tell him. ‘You need to recover first.’ I pull the door behind me and stand for a few seconds until I hear him go into the shower room, the water start to swish.

  In the kitchen I don’t think. I fish the mobile from his pocket and step into the courtyard, go through the door in the wall and across the path to the river. Luckily the tide’s coming in and there’s no beach left, just liver-coloured water slopping against the wall. I lean on it, gazing out at the barges thrashed together and bumping gently, as a group of tourists goes past behind me. I wait for them to disappear, then let the mobile drop into the depths.

  When I go back to Jez’s room with the coffee and bagels, he’s standing in his jeans but no shirt, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. There’s a scent of the lemongrass soap I keep in the shower room. He looks out from under the towel at the breakfast tray. I’ve got coffee in the Italian espresso thing I use for people who appreciate coffee, toast made with organic bread, bagels, and my marmalade in a dish.

  ‘Sit down. You need to eat,’ I tell him. He slumps back on the bed. His shoulders are broad but the bones are still delicate. He’s got a lot of filling out to do. Where his stomach is bent, a tiny shallow line runs across it.

  He puts two halves of bagel together and takes a huge bite. Leans back against the pillows and slurps at the coffee, then finishes the bagel in another couple of mouthfuls. It’s warm in the room with the sun coming in from the high windows in the book-lined walls. Pleasant. Better than pleasant. Luxurious. He’s fallen on his feet with me.

  ‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ I say. ‘I’m not doing anything today. You’re welcome to stay. You can play the guitar, chill out, and I can book you a ticket on the Eurostar later. But of course it’s up to you.’

  He looks up at me, weighing his options.

  ‘I do feel a bit rough to travel but aren’t I in your way?’

  I smile. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Alicia’ll be mad at me for standing her up yesterday. And I’d better let Mum know where I am. I said I’d be back today.’

  ‘What a considerate boy you are!’ I say.

  I am indeed surprised. I used to have to beg Kit at this age to let me know where she was and she never did. If I tried to phone her, her mobile was always switched off or out of battery. When I complained that she could have contacted me she’d say she had no credit.

  ‘I’ll go and get my phone,’ he says.

  It’s too late to stop him, and I don’t want to frighten him. I have no choice but to watch him leave the music room and head downstairs. I’m taking a massive risk in order to win his trust. There’s nothing to prevent him walking right out of my house and away from me forever. I tell myself to treat it as a kind of test so I can be certain where I stand with him. I need to know he wants
to be here, as much as I want him to stay.

  Those few minutes are torture. I can barely move. I’m aware of every sound downstairs as he searches for his phone. I’ll know if he goes for the kitchen door, leaves without saying goodbye. I’ll shoot down there, ask him to help me shift some furniture in here before he goes, and being such a conscientious boy he’ll be unable to refuse. I cannot lose him.

  I lean on the door, immobilized as another memory looms into focus. Another departure. We were in a garage. There was the smell of petrol, oil and adult sweat. Someone tossed a suitcase into the boot. Seb’s face is crystal clear, he might as well be with me now. A smirk upon his lips. A look I knew so well, disdain for authority, veiled with smug charm.

  ‘Time to go. Get in the car, Seb.’

  He laughed at my rage as he climbed into the passenger seat. Then he looked up at me, his shrug telling me he wouldn’t go if he didn’t have to.

  ‘Don’t then, Seb.’ I said. ‘Don’t go. Don’t let them make you.’

  The thunk of car doors. I grabbed the handle, but it was already locked and Seb was fastening his seat belt. And when he next looked up I could see he was already changing, already resigned, and even, though I couldn’t bear to admit it, a little excited about what lay ahead.

  ‘No Seb! Don’t give in!’

  ‘My God, calm her down will you. She’s going to hurt herself or someone else. Hold onto her. We need to go.’

  I knew my kicking and screaming wouldn’t work, but I’d run out of other options. An arm gripped mine, hauled me away from the car. Then the engine started and they reversed fast out of the garage. Seb didn’t look at me. He stared ahead into his future as if he’d forgotten me the minute the car lurched forward.

  It wasn’t just his leaving I couldn’t bear, it was the terrible sense that if only I’d behaved differently, not displayed my desperation, if only I’d got it right, this would not be happening.

  When at last I hear footsteps on the bare floorboards of the staircase, I feel a warm tide of relief and gratitude sweep through me. Jez is coming back of his own accord. I move into the room. Notice the key on the inside of the door. Slip it into my pocket.

  I start to tidy a little, check that there’s enough soap in the bathroom, a clean towel, loo roll. There are some Bic disposable razors left here years ago by a guest, and I place them on the shelf so he’ll know he’s welcome to use them. He comes into the room, sits on the bed and I can barely stop myself from putting my arms around him, thanking him for not leaving me.

  ‘It’s not there,’ he says. ‘It’s weird, I’m sure I had it yesterday. I hope it hasn’t been nicked.’

  ‘Do you want to use mine?’

  ‘I haven’t got Alicia’s number, it was on my phone,’ he says, as I knew he would. ‘But I could phone my mum if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Who might have Alicia’s number?’

  ‘I suppose Barney might.’

  ‘Well, look. I’ll give Helen a ring. She can get in touch with everyone. Your mother, too.’

  ‘Cool,’ he says. He smiles at me and his teeth flash white and his eyes are the sweet brown of chestnuts.

  ‘Like I said last night, you can try out this equipment if you feel like it. There’s a recording thing there, and three guitars to play. Have a go on the twelve-string one.’

  ‘A twelve-string. I’ve just started playing one!’

  ‘There’s an amp you can use with the electric guitar.’

  I wave my hand in an arc to indicate the range of wonderful musical equipment at his disposal. Greg spent years stocking the music room, nurturing his failed ambition to become a guitarist whilst climbing higher and higher up the medical profession until he had plenty of money for the latest musical gadget but no time to play. He even soundproofed the room, at my request. Jez, as a young, talented guitarist, could not have asked for a better place to stay.

  ‘And, if you want, I could phone a couple of the contacts I mentioned. See if they can get you some kind of a recording deal.’

  ‘Blimey. Wait till Barney and Theo hear about this!’

  I smile. Jez needs me, just as Seb did, though he never admitted it.

  ‘When d’you think they’ll be around?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘These contacts of yours. What are they? Managers?’

  ‘The first one I have in mind is an opera singer. But he knows everyone in showbiz. Including a few band managers. Leave it with me.’

  ‘Sick.’ He grins. ‘Where’s your hubby by the way?’

  ‘Greg? He’s away at the moment. Work.’

  ‘He must be a good musician.’

  ‘Ah well. That’s another story. He doesn’t get to play much these days.’

  ‘So no one uses this stuff? It’s just sitting here?’

  ‘There’s Kit, too, of course. But she’s at uni now.’

  ‘Kit, yeah. She was in Theo’s year before we moved to Paris.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  There’s a moment’s silence in which he gets up, moves over to the amp, fiddles with one of the knobs. Then he turns.

  ‘So, you’re here all by yourself?’

  I hesitate before replying.

  ‘Just at the moment. I don’t like going away from here. Though Greg often asks me to accompany him.’

  ‘Blimey,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave this place either. It’s bloody amazing, this room.’ He goes over to the windows. ‘You can see everything from here. Better than the London Eye! Canary Wharf, Docklands. The O2. It’s so cool.’

  He says it as if I might never have looked myself. As if I need him to point these things out for me. I find this endearing. I stack the breakfast things on the tray. He’s flicking through Greg’s vinyl collection, as I stand up to leave.

  ‘Sonia,’ he says as I reach the door, and I turn to look at him. ‘Thanks,’ he says. We smile at each other.

  I go out. Stand for a few seconds staring at the door before making up my mind. Then I pull it shut and turn the key in the lock before I start down the stairs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Saturday night

  Sonia

  One disadvantage of the River House, one that Kit complained bitterly about when we first came back, is that there is no garden. The courtyard between the kitchen door and the wall on the alley side is paved and too small to warrant such a name. I’ve grown a few things in pots out there, but fight a losing battle against the lack of light. My mother nurtured her climbers, in the beds she made from discarded bricks. Many of those bricks are now broken by frost into jagged pieces. In addition to the wisteria, her Virginia creeper and a Hydrangea petiolaris compete with threat of takeover by a persistent dark-leaved ivy. In fact, the whole house suffers for most of the day from a lack of light, with the exception of the music room where the high windows are permanently illuminated by the sky.

  We never use the door at the front of the house that faces the street. It is blocked these days anyway by Greg’s desk and his old computer. Instead, we come and go through the door in the wall that opens onto the alley on the riverside.

  When we moved back to the River House, Kit took the big bedroom at the front, overlooking the street, while Greg and I shared the slightly smaller one at the back that does catch the light from the river in the mornings. This was my room when I was a child. There’s another bedroom but we don’t use that. One more flight of stairs and you come to the music room. My parents wanted a whole loft conversion but the low pitch of the roof did not allow it. The attic space, whose entrance is in my bedroom, is so low you cannot enter it. So they built the odd square tower with its high windows that give a bird’s-eye view of the river, if you stand up on a chair, across to the Isle of Dogs and what is now Canary Wharf. The new room had to be wedged onto one side of the roof, a funny overhang from the outside. Extra windows were put in that let light into the stairwell, which otherwise would be pitch dark. It means I’m able, from the landing, to look in and see Jez without h
im seeing me.

  I watch him. I’m overcome by the way he moves. He noticed the door was locked some time ago. Banged on it. Rattled it. Shouted for me. I was tempted to go to him straight away, to calm him. The last thing I want is to frighten him.

  After a while he gives up shouting and walks round the room picking things up, looking for something with which to undo the lock. He finds a hair grip and I watch him inexpertly pushing it into the keyhole. His efforts are heartbreakingly pointless.

  When he’s given up on this, he goes over to the wall, holds onto the ledge of one of the high windows and pulls himself up with his powerful arms. I love to watch the way his biceps flex as he does this. The way his T-shirt rides up, revealing the golden dips at the base of his spine. He sees that escape through those narrow slits is impossible. They are also locked shut.

  He returns to the door, bangs, calls my name. It’s painful to resist now, but I’m afraid that if I enter without being fully prepared, he might make a run for it. That I’ll lose him.

  He sits for a while on the bed, his head in his hands. Then he picks up the guitar – Greg’s acoustic, the one he bought while we were on holiday in Spain. The year of the grand silence; the year we almost split up. But I don’t want to think about that now. Jez has started to play. This time he plays with a kind of manic ferocity. I can see him strum frantically and slap the body of the guitar. I cannot, of course, hear the music very well because of Greg’s soundproofing, but I do not need to hear every note to appreciate the nuances of the slow bits and the fast, the loud and the soft, the percussive and the melodic. I’m not even really listening to that; I’m watching the concentration on his face, the intensity, the feeling. It’s as if he inhabits another dimension entirely. He’s talented but he’s also connected. To something bigger, something other. I’m going to love watching him play the guitar, his head bent over the polished body of the instrument, the feeling passing from his soul to his body and his fingers and coming out in those notes. He holds the guitar the way he will hold women, with such tenderness and rhythm, with an instinctive sense of give and take, of knowing when to hold back and when to give all he’s got. The only person I know who ever had this instinct before was Seb.