Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  ‘No, we’re not,’ says Mick.

  ‘But that text . . . and where was she last Friday? She won’t tell anyone. But that’s the day he disappeared!’

  This is my chance. I swallow.

  ‘She told me she’d been going through a kind of crisis of confidence lately,’ I say. ‘Said it’s why she’s been drinking so much. Not feeling good enough.’

  ‘That’s exactly what the police are worried about!’ Maria says. ‘It is, Mick! She’s been behaving very oddly. Thinks people are talking about her, criticizing her at work.’

  ‘And you and I have agreed that one does look for someone to blame in these circumstances,’ says Mick. ‘We want an answer. People grasp at straws when they don’t have anything to go by. That’s what the police are doing. And now you.’

  ‘Oh!’ Maria cries. I see that she’s volatile, her emotions seem to change by the minute. ‘Please try and see it from my point of view! How can you imagine I want to suspect my own sister? It’s more painful for me than anyone. But when you add it all up, Helen’s always tried to compete with me. Jez’s interview was at the same place as Barney’s and she knew Jez would get in. She’s so jealous, so competitive. And with the drinking, not always rational. I know how hard it is for you. But you have to face it, Mick.’

  ‘I know, and you know, she’s got nothing to do with Jez’s disappearance.’

  ‘There’s a kind of sibling rivalry that’s always gone on between us,’ Maria says to me as if I couldn’t have worked that out for myself. ‘It goes back a long way. You’d have to know the background. It’s not unreasonable to wonder whether having Jez to stay brought it all up again. The police may have a point. Ghastly though it is to think about.’

  ‘We’ve hardly been behaving perfectly ourselves,’ says Mick glaring at her.

  ‘No one can be expected to behave perfectly when put under this kind of strain,’ Maria persists.

  I’m aware of time passing, that I’ve left Jez alone in the music room for longer than I like to. I need to finish what I came to do after all.

  ‘All I can say, and I don’t know if it’s relevant, is that she asked me to lie about being at the Turkish baths with her that Friday.’

  ‘She asked you to lie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she wasn’t at the baths. Did she tell you where she really was?’

  I shrug. Helen would not want me to reveal that she was in a pub. So I don’t.

  ‘Oh God,’ says Mick. ‘This gets worse.’

  The look he gives me is so forlorn I want to reassure him. But they need an explanation for Jez. And Helen is the perfect suspect. Only I can offer them the closure they so badly crave.

  ‘She was obsessed with the fact Jez’s ability on the twelve-string guitar would have given him an unfair edge over Barney for the music school,’ I say, warming to my task now. ‘Kept mentioning it. As if she couldn’t get it off her mind. She said Jez would have ruined Barney’s future. As if she was justifying something.’

  I feel Maria’s eyes on me.

  ‘That’s very odd,’ she says. ‘Helen didn’t know about the twelve string. It was our secret trump card. For his interview. I made Jez promise me he’d keep it secret.’

  My mind whirrs. I’ve said too much.

  ‘Barney might have told her,’ suggests Mick.

  ‘No way,’ says Maria standing up, keeping her eyes on me. ‘There’s no way he would have let anyone, but especially Barney and Helen, know his plans on that score.’

  ‘Well I’m afraid it’s what she said.’

  She stares at me. ‘Did she tell you he’d actually started to learn it? When did Helen mention this?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘No, really. I need to know.’

  I stare at her, speechless, willing myself to come up with something, anything. I try my best to conjure a voice to get me out of this. But I seem unable to form a word.

  Then Maria speaks again. ‘Jez was going to borrow the Tim Buckley album from you that very day, wasn’t he? Forgive me for asking, Sonia, but why did you come here today?’

  ‘She’s concerned about Helen,’ says Mick.

  ‘Look.’ I find my voice at last. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure Helen will turn up. I must go. Like I said to Mick, let me know if I can help.’

  Back at the River House I go straight up to see Jez. Sit on his bed. Stand up again and pace the room. I pick up the twelve-string guitar.

  ‘You do play it, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve only just begun to learn.’

  ‘It was a secret? Helen didn’t know?’

  ‘Ah. No. Mum didn’t want me to tell her. I promised her I wouldn’t, Sonia. What’s going on? Are you going to let me out? I’m better now. I could go.’

  I go to the book-lined wall, stand on the footstool, look out of one of the high windows. Boats leave furrows on the water down below. A pale wooden sailing boat, its mainsail keening against the wind, races across the river and I see Seb, one hand on the tiller, standing at the stern, perfectly balanced in spite of the rocking of the boat, leaning forward to sort the jib sheet. His red T-shirt and amber life jacket blend with the sail that points to a crimson streak in the sky above us, and I am speechless as I watch him. Three shades of red merging and reflecting back up from the water. Seb’s capable arms, the river doing its best to defeat him. But it never could, I thought, it never would.

  ‘Sonia?

  ‘You love the view, too, don’t you? You wanted to stay when you first saw it. Tell me you did.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Sonia. Listen. You can open the door and let me go and I won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I needed time to myself. Please stop. It’s alright.’

  I do not want his sympathy. I didn’t plan to do this and I’m angry with myself for it.

  I’m not weeping for Helen or any noble reason. I’m weeping because I can feel him slipping away from me. The rope sliding between my fingers, my arms growing weak. I’m holding on, but to all the wrong things.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Wednesday

  Sonia

  The doorbell rings. I consider ignoring it, but the fear of who it might be compels me to check. I peer out of the living-room window. No one. I wash my face, go out across the courtyard, and push the door in the wall open an inch.

  ‘We’ve been trying to phone but there was no answer. We wondered if your phone was out of order. And we’ve no mobile contact for you.’ It’s one of the wardens from my mother’s retirement home. She’s started to speak before I’ve had a chance to say I’m busy. She’s ticking me off, huffing through her puffed-up face, her fierce little eyes narrowed in accusation.

  ‘Your mother’s had a stroke. She’s alive, she’s alright. You’re not to panic. But she’s been admitted to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich and we think you should go to her.’

  I stare at the warden. A small tight mouth. Only just big enough to squeeze words through. ‘Alive . . . alright . . . not to panic.’

  Helen is not alive. Nothing’s alright. Of course I’m panicking.

  The nausea that has swept over me recedes and is followed by an eerie numbness. For a few seconds I’m afraid I’m going to confess. Say I cannot possibly visit my mother because I’ve just killed someone.

  ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.’

  ‘You said she was OK?’

  ‘She’s talking. It was a mild one. But all the same . . .’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Go, will you. Go! The warden doesn’t move. She stands panting, her face highly coloured, as if the strain of walking the few yards down the alley has almost finished her off.

  ‘’Scuse me, love.’ It’s the postman. He hands me a package, smiles, holds out his gizmo with its special pencil. I sign and he goes off whistling. It’s an ordinary day out there. The warden hasn’t moved.

  ‘Thank you for letting me know. I’ll check my phone lines.’ I shut the door in her face.

  �
�You should go as soon as you can.’ She wheezes through it. ‘You’ll never forgive yourself if you were to miss her. You don’t know with strokes.’

  I take the package indoors, place it on the kitchen table and watch from the kitchen window as she hobbles away down the alley.

  I’ll carry on as I would have done before. I’m going to the hospital to visit my mother. I’ll buy flowers on the way. Thank a porter in the lobby as he opens a door for me. I’ll exchange pleasantries with the staff at the nurses’ station. Smile at the other women on the ward. And they will smile back. I’ll even have a conversation with the nice young doctor about my mother’s prognosis, and thank her profusely for her time. But I will still have killed Helen.

  My mother’s ward is lined with white-haired old people. I think I’ve found her several times, then realize that the face doesn’t fit. When my eyes do alight upon her I’m overcome by childish relief. My mummy. She may just be another old person as far as the nurses are concerned. One more husk of a woman whose essence has long since drained away. But for me, she’s so much more, as if the layers of her that went before this version are still visible through the translucent outer skin. There she is, dressed in a sixties shift dress wheeling the Silver Cross pram along the river path. Bending over me in my bed late at night smelling of gin and Chanel. Then, her hair in a seventies perm, making marmalade in the kitchen, the mordant aroma of Seville oranges permeating the air. Later, versions of her in a suit, marching off to her job at the private school. When did she stop loving me?

  I want her to take me in her arms, rock me, tell me everything’s alright. Be a proper mother. Now I’ve almost lost her for ever, I want more of her than she was ever able to give me.

  I lean over her, stricken by a mix of fury and pity. How dare age do this to a person? She opens an eye. Takes a while to focus. Then she speaks through one side of her mouth. Her speech is slurred. For some reason she’s obsessed with having some old school reports that are stashed away in the River House somewhere.

  ‘I took the wrong case. The Revelation. When I moved from the River House. I won a . . . oh, you know. In fifth year, I need to read the report. It says such nice things.’

  ‘Mother, I’m not sure I can find that now. You don’t need it. You should relax.’

  I look helplessly up at the nurse who’s filling her water jug.

  ‘It’ll give your mum a sense of security if you play along with her. Find the things she wants, help her feel at home,’ the nurse advises.

  So, off I go again. Sonia the grown-up, caring for her sick mother. Doing as she’s told by the warden and the nurse. A good daughter. When I’m done, I remind myself, when I’ve performed my duties, I can return to Jez.

  I take the ladder from the courtyard, carry it up to my bedroom and stand it up against the trap door in the ceiling.

  It’s impossible to get into the tiny loft space. All I can do is poke my arm through the hole and feel about in the dark with my hand. I grasp at the air. There’s the gentle tickle of cobwebs on my wrist. A sprinkling of dust as my knuckle bumps the roof. At last, my fingers curl round a chunky leather handle. I drag the suitcase out, balance it at the top of the ladder and slide it down.

  The case gives off a familiar whiff of beeswax as I open it – the smell of the River House as it was in my mother’s day. The stuff she’s kept! Theatre programmes, recipe books, bank statements, postcards. A birthday card made by Kit when she was little. I stand for a moment and examine this. It’s been stored in an envelope addressed to my mother at the River House, along with a plastic necklace of pop-together beads arranged in a repeating pattern: pink, orange, blue, pink, orange, blue. A child’s depiction of a girl in a triangular pink dress wearing a similar necklace. It transports me back to Norfolk, to Kit coming out of nursery, holding another creation in her hand. My automatic words of praise. How I’d sit with her when we got home and pencil words on her pictures for her to trace over.

  Dear Granny, I miss you. I love you, Kit xx

  I tried to win my mother’s love through Kit. I don’t know whether she was moved by her granddaughter’s affections. If she was, she never revealed as much to me. Yet now I find that after all, she kept the cards, the letters. She cherished my daughter’s overtures even if she rejected mine. This knowledge produces a tiny flicker of warmth, of hope maybe, far off and deep within me.

  As I riffle through, looking for the report my mother requested, I find a bundle of envelopes addressed to me, Sonia, in that small neat handwriting that was so familiar to me. I experience the flutter of excitement I got back in the days when a letter from Seb would appear for me in the niche in the wall along the alley.

  My stomach flips, as excitement turns to realization. Someone – my mother? – must have found our hiding place, and stashed some of his letters away before I could read them. I freeze. They’ve been opened with a paper knife, the slit along the top of the envelopes cleaner than any I’d have made in my impatience to tear them open. The letters are in order, with the latest, dated 5th February on the top of the pile. I pull apart the sides of the envelope, my hands shaking. A frail piece of paper, yellow with age slides out.

  I read the words.

  I look again at the date, then hurry across the landing to the spare room.

  I pull the shoebox off the shelf, the one in which I keep Seb’s things. I find the letter I read the day I came to get the mouth organ for Jez. It’s postmarked 1st February. I’d always thought it was the last letter Seb had ever written to me. Now I’m learning there was another later one that I never got. I open this first letter and read again.

  I’ll cycle to the Isle of Dogs. You have to be there. Bring Tamasa!

  He said to bring Tamasa and so I’d brought Tamasa. I always did as Seb told me. I craved his admiration, of course. And I wanted to prove my affinity with the river. But if I’d got this letter, this real last letter, dated 5th February, everything would have been different. I was enslaved to Seb. I would have done anything to maintain his respect. But I never got it and so I had taken the raft.

  I read them both, all over again. And when I’ve finished, it’s as if all the jumbled images that have come back to me since Jez arrived, pop together in the right order, like Kit’s carefully constructed string of beads.

  The evening I went to fetch Seb comes back to me, all of it, even the parts I haven’t been able to think about since, roaring in like the tide.

  Once I reached the other side the weather had changed. The wind had got up and the clouds had closed in. It was impossible to get near the pilings to moor. The waves were relentless, lifting Tamasa and smashing her against the walls. Rain swept across the river into my face and hammered on the landing stage. At last I managed to throw the painter around a post and haul Tamasa in. Then to get up on the wooden platform. The heavy clouds meant it had grown dark more rapidly than usual. I’d never known the river so noisy, the crash of waves and the creaking of chains and the squeal of the whole wooden structure I was now standing on. Seb was shouting at me, but I could not hear his words. I remember dimly that he looked angry, not pleased to see me as I’d expected. He shouted again and I caught the words, ‘No time to lose.’ I held the wet rope while Seb jumped down onto Tamasa and stood there for a minute, trying to regain his balance. That was when the biggest wave rolled in, roaring, a sound so deafening we could no longer hear each other’s voices. It was quickly followed by another, and others sluiced into these so they collided, lifting Tamasa up and flipping her over like a paper boat. I held onto the rope with all my might though it was wet and slimy and chafed against my palms. The raft emerged from the water but Seb was already in the river.

  ‘Seb!’ I shouted.

  My hair lashed around my face in the wind and stuck to it so I couldn’t see. I couldn’t take my hands off the rope to sweep it out of my eyes. When I did manage to flick it away Seb had become an indistinct shape in the gloom, the pale oval of his face appearing then disappearing under the water,
clinging with one arm to Tamasa, to her pathetic buoyancy bag. I pulled at the rope again, trying to haul Tamasa back to shore but the waves pulled back against me, so we were caught in a dreadful tug of war that I knew, as my arms weakened, I was going to lose.

  ‘Help!’ His words only just reached me through the clamour of water and wind and rain, ‘Don’t let go, Sonia. Hold on! For God’s sake, hold on.’

  And, as he retreated from me, towards a tangle of chains and ropes beneath the next row of pilings, I gripped tighter to the rope and I pulled with all my might.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Wednesday

  Sonia

  ‘I’ve brought your things.’

  ‘Pass that . . .’ My mother waggles a limp finger at a hand mirror on her bedside locker.

  One thing my mother will never be too old or ill for is her vanity. I’ll have to take care of this because there’s no one else to do it. Nurses don’t have time for hands-on care these days. It’ll fall upon me to wash her hair, clip her nails, brush her teeth. A peculiar intimacy when we’ve barely touched each other in our lives before. She plucks pathetically at a long white hair growing from her chin and frowns. I reach for her tweezers. I wonder whether I should not bother her with the letter after all. Let the past remain buried in the old grey box file, as we have always tacitly agreed to bury everything to do with Seb.

  I powder her nose and apply the rouge she has worn for the last twenty-five years. She nods when I hold up the mirror. I pour her a glass of water.

  I place the package of school reports on my mother’s hospital bed next to the other things I’ve gathered: her clean underwear, a spare nightie, her favourite night cream. She looks up at me through one fading blue eye. Is it my imagination, or has she deteriorated even since my last visit?

  She may not have long. I make a decision.

  ‘Mother. Look at this.’

  I let her examine the letter for several minutes.

  ‘See who this is from?’