Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  I stop. Look up, expecting a response from Jez, and realize that after all I have not voiced any of this, though the thoughts were as lucid as if I’d spoken them.

  I put his meal on the table by his bed. It’s a lovely supper, though the juice is laced with more of my mother’s pills. I don’t feel any compunction about this, I know the drugs will help Jez relax, to sleep.

  ‘Let’s get you better,’ I say quietly. ‘Look, I’m lending you my laptop. What film would you like to watch?’

  When he’s settled, satisfied with the explanation he’s come up with, and drowsy with the pills, I go down to lie on my own bed. Overcome with exhaustion, I listen to the sounds outside.

  There’s the harsh whoop of a police launch bounding east along the river, the drone of a plane coming in to City Airport. The shriek of a car alarm out on the road. How I miss the soft, guttural blasts of the foghorns. You used to hear them on winters’ nights out there, long and low, one answering another, call and response, as if those enormous ships were playing together. The house felt safe when I heard that sound. A haven away from the storms and the ravings of the world down below.

  The thought of the foghorns conjures a memory. I’m not sure, as this scene comes back to me, whether it happened once, or many times. What I do know is the feeling. The sensation of the silk around my wrists and ankles, accompanied by the bass sound of the foghorns on the river, vibrating through the room, through the springs of the old iron bed.

  My mother originally used the music room as a dressing room. It’s why it has its own en suite with a shower and a bidet (very chic in the seventies when it was installed). In those days the room was full of coat racks, hat boxes and scarves, and there was a cupboard full of my mother’s dresses, coats and fur wraps.

  That night, my parents were out. I must have been fourteen. Seb was with me. He and I stood on chairs staring out of the high windows, watching ships, lit up in the dark, move lugubriously upriver towards Tower Bridge. The light was dying, there was a drab mist. Occasionally a foghorn would boom from the river, long, deep and mournful. A fire was alight in the wood burner. At some point I must have annoyed Seb. I don’t remember what I said but I do remember the Chinese burn he gave me, taking my forearm between his hands, twisting the skin until I cried out at the sweetness of the pain. He forced my arm around my back, dragged me to him, and stuck his tongue in my mouth. After a while he pushed me down on to the bed kept in there for rare guests. He told me to take off my clothes. I obeyed him. I always obeyed Seb eventually even if I made a show of protesting before doing so. While I peeled off my jeans and struggled with the buttons of my cheesecloth top, he rummaged about in one of the hat boxes and unearthed a pile of silk scarves.

  ‘All of them,’ he said. ‘Everything off, come on.’

  Taking a wrist in turn he tied my hands above my head to the bedstead. Then he fastened scarves around my ankles and pulled them tight around the frame. I struggled and swore at him and he laughed and said I’d asked for it.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, making for the door.

  ‘It’s cold. You can’t leave me like this.’ At this point I didn’t believe he really would. I was enjoying the game.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Got to go.’

  ‘What’ll I do if they come back? Untie me!’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Seb!’

  He went to the door. Turned back. Grinned.

  ‘Have a good night!’ he said. Then he turned the handle, went out, shut the door behind him. I could hear his feet on the steep wooden stairs that led down to the main floor below. I struggled. Began to panic. Suppose Seb walked out of the house and left me like this all night? What if my parents came in and my mother wanted to shower and change? I tried to hear what he was doing downstairs. There was a sound from the bottom floor – the slam of the door on to the courtyard.

  Footsteps on the stairs. I struggled to sit up. Strained to work out whose they were. When the door opened I braced myself, grappling for words of explanation.

  ‘What are you doing naked on the bed like that?’ Seb asked.

  ‘You git!’ I hissed. ‘You bastard. Let me go.’

  ‘What did you say? I didn’t hear!’

  ‘Seb, it’s not funny any more. I was scared.’

  ‘You want me to let you go?’

  ‘Yes, please, please.’

  He leant over me then and I struggled, writhed, reached up and bit him hard on the neck.

  ‘Ouch. Vicious!’ he said, laughing, pushing my face back with his hand. Then he pushed his jeans down, unleashed my ankles and lay on top of me.

  I turn over. I can’t stop thinking of Jez above me, drugged again and asleep on the old iron bed. I can’t relax. I remember the silk scarves in my wardrobe.

  I get out of bed, pull on my kimono, snatch a bundle of silk and go up to the music room.

  I take the opportunity to examine him properly. I pull back the duvet. He’s half undressed himself, is wearing a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. He must have fallen asleep as he pulled his hoodie off, he’s still got one arm in the sleeve. I watch the way his Adam’s apple moves up and down as he breathes, the rise and fall of his ribcage. His navel is not even sunken, but lies in a perfect shallow dip amongst his stomach muscles, three little cushions between two tiny creases. His boxers hang so loose around his narrow pelvis, legs long and smooth and muscular as a horse’s. I’d like to freeze him the way Seb is frozen at this very age in my memory.

  Instead, I take the first scarf and tie it firmly round his right wrist. Then I wrap it tight around the iron bedpost, the way Seb wrapped mine. I know the exact moves, the exact knots to make him secure. I do the same with his left hand and then his good foot. When he’s fully bound, I lie on the bed next to him, stretch my hand across his pelvis, rest it on his hip bone. I feel the warm skin under my palm.

  He doesn’t stir. I wriggle down the bed, and let myself kiss his stomach. I can’t help it. It’s perfect: the colour, the contours, the texture. His skin is taut, it springs back into place if you pinch it. I taste salt, and something briney, elemental. Even close up it’s flawless. I look carefully at the crystalline surface, examine it to see if I can find a blemish. None. I lap at it, as if it were a bowl of thick hot chocolate, letting myself take advantage of the moment, while he sleeps peacefully, his breath warm and regular above my head.

  The silence is broken by the ridiculous high-pitched ring of the phone downstairs. I feel things slide, go a bit out of focus. See myself as if from above, squatting here over this boy’s body, my hair trailing over his hip bones. Shocked by this image, I leave Jez alone, still tied to the bed.

  The stairway is dark after the subdued light from the moon in his room. I creep down, holding onto the bannister, shivering a little. I stand in the living room and listen. The phone continues to ring. I’m not going to answer it. I’m afraid I’ll betray myself, in my heightened state. The machine clicks on to voicemail. After the beep comes the disembodied voice of a grown woman. The girl I brought into the world sounds like someone I barely know.

  ‘Mum, it’s me. You didn’t answer my text! Are you OK? I’m coming back in a few days. There’s a reading week. I spoke to Dad and he said he’d be back on Thursday night too. He wants to talk about moving. Yessss! At last. Oh, and I’m bringing Harry ’cos he’s knackered. I promised him a weekend on the riverbank! Give us a ring sometime. Byeeee!’

  I stand by the phone for a few minutes after she hangs up, and shiver again.

  It’s always cold in the living room. I’ve not been able to settle in it since we came back here. For that reason I let Kit and her friends have the run of it. I encouraged Kit to bring friends to the River House. I wanted her to be like other children in a way I’d never been. My parents didn’t let me bring friends home, or to go to their houses. Having Kit made me see how islolated my childhood was. I wanted hers to be different.

  So I let Kit have the DVD player in here, a widescreen TV, a lap
top and CD player. We dragged beanbags and cushions down from her room and I let her stick her posters on the walls and even stock the old sideboard with cocktail paraphernalia. Kit and her friends bought retro posters and beer mats from the shop up on Creek Road. They had endless parties and get-togethers in here and I was actively kept out. It suited me. Now that Kit’s gone, the room is not only too cold, but too still. Greg, when he’s here, sits on the sofa in the evenings with the paper, or the TV, before going up to bed, but he agrees it’s always chilly even with the fire lit and the heating on.

  This house has a life of its own. It breathes and fidgets. And it has its particular sounds. The whooof as the heating goes on, the ping ping ping of the pipes when you run a bath, the creak of the roof slates on a windy night. But the living room is silent. I spend most of my time in the kitchen. You could say I live there, but the living room, in spite of its name, is dead space. It’s not that it’s an ugly room. Far from it. Visitors are always quick to comment on its beauty, with the river view at one end, the fireplace, the polished wood floors and large Persian rugs that have been in here for as long as I can remember. I dislike the sideboard but otherwise the furniture is unobtrusive, tasteful. No, it’s not the aesthetics that make me unable to relax in here, it’s something else, a shadow in the corner of my eye that slides aside each time I try to focus on it.

  I look down at the phone, wondering if I should call Kit back now, or if I can leave it until tomorrow. I decide on the latter. I need to think it through before I can say as I would once have done, yes, it’s fine to come, bring Harry, darling. Bring whoever you want.

  I push open the door to my room and go to lie down again. For a few minutes I contemplate climbing up to the music room to take the scarves off so Jez need never know, will not take fright. But each time I decide to move, another wave of exhaustion presses down upon me.

  The next thing I know, dawn is breaking all over again, a restless grey sky through my windows, and I’ve left Jez all night with his hands above his head, tied to the bed in the music room, just as Seb trapped me, my love for him intensifying with every attempt I made to wriggle free of his bonds.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sunday morning

  Helen

  Helen peeled her tongue off the roof of her mouth. Screwed her eyes against the light. Something horrible had happened and she felt ragged. She put a foot out to soothe herself by rubbing it against Mick’s calf, and encountered only empty space. She sat up. Mick was dressed in his jogging things, doing up the laces of his running shoes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she mumbled.

  ‘It’s Jez,’ he said. ‘I haven’t slept a wink.’

  ‘You checked his room?’

  ‘He’s not there.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  Mick said last night that they should call the police right away. He spoke to someone, who had asked several questions. In the end he had put the phone down and reported that the police had told him to phone back in the morning if there was still no word from Jez.

  ‘You say he’s sixteen, he’s been in and out at odd times all week. So it’s not completely out of character,’ the policeman had told him.

  ‘Well, that’s a relief, I suppose,’ Helen had said, but Mick had stood up, left the room and gone to bed without speaking to her again.

  Now Mick ran downstairs. The windows juddered as the front door banged shut. Helen looked at the alarm clock. 6.45! He never got up this early on a Sunday. It was barely light outside. And bloody cold. She contemplated getting up for water, or juice, was overwhelmed by fatigue and nausea. In the end she took advantage of the space he’d left in the bed, rolled onto her front and stretched across the mattress, her arms flung above her head. Ben’s face, suntanned and smiling floated into her mind as she drifted back to sleep.

  It was still only 8 a.m. when Mick came back up, sweating a little, red in the face. He went straight into the en suite shower room. Helen could see him from the bed, peering at himself in the mirror, smoothing back his strawberry-blond hair, looking at his face from different angles, then his stomach, holding it in and patting it. Sensing her gaze, he pushed the door shut and she heard the hiss of the shower. Helen wished he would come back to bed, that they could have the kind of warm, fusty, Sunday morning sex that always helped to assuage a hangover.

  When Mick emerged from the shower he didn’t come to her, but walked over to the window, rubbing his head with the towel. He leant on the radiator, gazing out and tapping his fingers. Helen opened her mouth to ask what was on his mind, but shut it again. She wished they could speak to each other the way they once had done, without thinking, simply voicing any thought that came into their heads. Helen looked at the man she’d lived with for so many years she knew the moles on his back, the fillings in his teeth, and wondered who he really was.

  ‘What time did they say to ring back?’

  ‘Not till ten. At the earliest.’

  ‘I bet he’ll be here by lunchtime if he’s not back in Paris.’

  ‘The police could take us more seriously.’ He spoke through the towel so his voice was muffled. ‘How long before they consider someone missing for Christ’s sake?’

  There was the chink of crockery as Mick unloaded the dishwasher, the thump of cupboard doors opening and closing. Later Helen found the bin full of packets of chocolate biscuits, crisps, even cans of beer.

  He came back up at last with a breakfast tray just as the phone began to ring. He shot across the room to pick it up. Helen could tell by his tone that it was Maria.

  ‘No, no. I know. I couldn’t sleep either. Of course she apologizes but . . . Obviously, of course we both feel responsible, but she simply thinks he’s old enough . . . No, I didn’t mean that . . . Yes, of course. I’ll come. See you later.’

  He put down the phone and looked at Helen with such misery and helplessness that she held her arms out to hug him. He stayed where he was.

  ‘He wasn’t on the night train,’ he said. ‘She’s booked a flight and is arriving this afternoon.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s told Nadim. He’s in the Middle East on some assignment but he’s coming straight to London if we haven’t heard anything by tomorrow.’

  ‘She still blames me. I could tell by what you were saying.’

  ‘It’s not just you, is it? I’m to blame as well. I can’t believe this has happened. We should have kept closer tabs on him.’

  ‘No Mick! She’s mollycoddled him! Our kids would never get into this type of trouble because they’ve been given responsibility from an early age. But Jez! He’s been pushed and overprotected by Maria all his life. If he has got into some sort of trouble she should have a good look at herself before casting aspersions on us.’

  ‘She asked why we didn’t drive him to his last college interview.’

  ‘The one in Greenwich? But Barney went to the same one! We didn’t need to taxi him there, did we? They’ve got legs!’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Mick. ‘We should have kept an eye on him.’

  ‘If anyone gets onto that course it’ll be Jez, not Barney. He’s the talented guitarist and she knows it.’

  ‘Let’s not get sidetracked by your idiotic sibling rivalry,’ Mick said. ‘This is about the boy.’

  At ten o’clock on the dot, Mick picked up the phone in their room and called the police.

  ‘Well?’ Helen asked when he’d put it down again.

  ‘They’re more interested now he’s been gone for another night. Said they’d send someone round to talk to us by the end of the day.’

  Helen sighed and pushed back the bedcovers. ‘I’d better get up,’ she said. ‘Maria will have to sleep in Jez’s room. If he’s back before tonight they’ll just have to bloody well share.’

  After lunch Mick set off to meet Maria at Stansted. Helen caught sight of herself in the mirror and was shocked. The short hair that she dyed light caramel-brown had gone grey at the roots, her eyes were puffy, re
d veins had appeared on her cheeks. How had that happened overnight?

  There was no way she could let Maria see her like this. She nipped out to buy a hair dye at the Tesco Express and sat on the bed while the colour developed, wrapped in a dressing gown. When she’d dried her hair she dressed in a green wool miniskirt, with a cashmere jumper, purple opaque tights and brown suede boots. She felt better.

  She knew it would be another hour at least before Mick and Maria came back. She needed to clear her head. She’d have a walk and a coffee, get some organic bits and pieces to make a nice meal. And she’d buy flowers. It would please the new, health-conscious Mick, and reassure Maria that they looked after themselves and the home they’d invited Jez into.

  ‘You two in this afternoon?’ Helen asked Barney, who was making a cup of tea in the kitchen, half asleep. ‘In case Jez comes in. I want you to phone me immediately if you hear anything.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Barney said, putting an arm around her shoulders. Helen wished he hadn’t, the gesture brought a tear to her eye. It made her realize how alone and afraid she really felt.

  Later, she sat at outside her favourite café in Greenwich Market sipping her cappuccino. It did nothing to shift the hangover and she resolved once again to cut down on the wine. Weak sunlight fell through the corrugated plastic roof, warming her. She wondered whether the plans to renovate the market were being followed up. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of it becoming gentrified. It had become so trendy anyway at the weekends with its craft stalls selling everything from fountains for the garden to velvet corsages, from handmade soap to carved wooden sculptures. But on weekdays when the trivial merchandise fell away as if it had been sieved, only the old Greenwich locals were left chatting and drinking tea and scraping a meagre living from the trades they had always plied. Some of them were here today, too, looking as though they were dressed in clothes they’d dragged from the piles of jumble they sold. Many of them, Helen thought, had probably been here since it started as an antique market, years before, on Sundays in the car park over the road. Their stalls looked more like museum collections, with their shoehorns and military figurines, bowling sets and old leather-booted ice skates, hogs heads and stuffed things in glass boxes. They were part of local history. It would be a shame to lose them.