by Lucy Wood
Pepper traced the stars on the duvet. ‘Do you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ her mother told her. ‘I do.’
Pepper thought about it. ‘I like Shep and Tristan the same.’ She propped herself up to look at her mother better. ‘He looks younger than you,’ she said. Thought about when her mother’s knees cracked, and the tiny grey hairs behind her ear.
‘Do you think so?’
Pepper nodded. ‘He doesn’t have lines like this,’ she said. She put her finger on the creases around her mother’s eyes.
‘Maybe he hasn’t laughed as much as me,’ her mother said.
Pepper patted her mother’s hand. The dry knuckles and the scalds and the bitten skin. She patted and patted.
In the morning they got out buckets and mops and soapy water. The bubbles had rainbows in them. The disinfectant burned up Pepper’s nose. ‘This better not happen again,’ she said.
‘It might,’ her mother told her. She wiped the wall by the front door.
Pepper crouched down and scrubbed at the floor. Remembered something that Petey had told her. ‘Judy and Robbie’s animals,’ she said. ‘Why do they have them there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cows and stuff.’ She dunked her sponge in the hot water. ‘I stroked them.’
Her mother stopped wiping. ‘You know why,’ she said. ‘It’s a farm. They milk some of them and they sell others for food.’
Pepper nodded and slowly lifted the sponge out. Wrung it out so that bubbles and grit dripped back in. Vowed then and there that she would never eat meat again. Another surprise for her mother.
She scrubbed for a few minutes, then she put the sponge down and went into the study. The windows were wide open and the wind was blowing in. The bare floor was dark and gritty. They kept finding pins and clips and bits of jewellery in between the boards. There were coins and a gold ring, like treasure. All the boxes were stacked on the shelves out of the way. Pepper went over to the box with her name on it. Patted the dusty jackdaw as she went past. She could hear the river, high and drumming. She found her camera, leaned out of the window and took a picture of the wide puddle outside. Then went back out into the hall and took one of her mother scrubbing the bit of floor Pepper was meant to be doing, her hair tied with a scarf. A flash of Captain’s tail. Shep drinking the horrible water pooled by the front door.
She put on her boots and coat. ‘Come and see the river,’ she said to her mother.
‘I better finish this,’ her mother said. Shep came over and sniffed her hand and she moved it away.
Tristan came out of the kitchen and pounded Shep’s back. ‘Don’t take it personally buddy,’ he said. He ran his hands down the hinges on the door.
Her mother reached out and touched Shep’s ear with the back of her hand. ‘There,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ Pepper said. ‘I want to show you.’ She shoved her mother’s coat at her and told her to put it on.
The ground was like a bog. Sucking at their boots. Mud and water clagging on their heels. Her mother stopped and looked back at the house and said something about the tiles.
‘Come on,’ Pepper said. The grass was yellow and crushed. There was a tideline of wet leaves pushed halfway up the field. She looked around for the old woman but couldn’t see her anywhere. ‘Petey says it’s going to snow some more,’ she said.
Her mother stopped again and bent down to adjust her laces. ‘I hope not,’ she said.
The grass got wetter and wetter and then there was the river, heaving past their feet. Wide and deep and brown, with thick swells moving through it. A magnificent booming sound, like a metal drum rolling around in a gale. Most of the rocks were covered, just a few grey tops jutting out, and the bank had crumbled, whole chunks fallen away like the river had grabbed handfuls of it.
‘Look at all that stuff,’ Pepper shouted. There was a tree stuck under the bridge. And a road sign, and a tractor tyre, and what looked like a front door – the handle still hanging on it. Torrents and creases; the water overlapping itself, crumpling under its own weight. And the floodwater had scoured the ground, exposing all the trees’ roots underneath. ‘Look at it,’ she said.
‘I am,’ her mother said.
Pepper looked at the trees in front of her and then at the next field over. There were still shallow pools of water spreading over the grass. And there was something standing in the middle, something grey and hunched. She closed her eyes, then looked again. It was still there, standing very upright and not moving. Pepper didn’t move. The heron was big and grey, almost purple in places. It had a bright white neck and a black bit of punky hair at the top. It looked like it was wrapped in a tatty cloak. And its yellow eye was staring down at the water. She reached for the camera but the heron looked over and shuffled its feathers. Then it hunched forward and glared right at her. A bolt of joy passed through her.
‘Frank,’ she said. ‘Frank, Frank.’
‘What did you say?’ her mother asked.
‘It’s what the heron says,’ Pepper told her.
‘Yes,’ her mother said quietly. ‘I think I knew that.’
The heron swivelled its head and then it shifted, flexed its shoulders and took off downriver, crying out as it went. Wings wide, legs dangling, almost skimming the top of the water.
‘It won’t have gone far,’ her mother said. She walked through the grass the same way that the heron had gone. ‘They don’t usually fly far when they get disturbed. There’s a wider bit further down here they sometimes go.’ She started walking along the bank.
‘How do you know?’ Pepper said. But further down, exactly where her mother said, there was the heron. Hunched over at the edge of the bank, staring down at the fast-moving water. ‘What’s it doing?’ she whispered.
‘Hunting,’ her mother said. ‘Looking for fish.’
They crouched down in the wet grass and watched. Pepper took the camera out of the case. She adjusted the focus very carefully. The heron stepped through the water, moving further along the bank. She started to roll up her trousers. ‘I need to get closer,’ she said. There was a wide shingly beach below the bank and her mother held Pepper’s arm and lowered her down.
The wet stones glinted dark grey and orange, like rusty pipes. They crunched as she stepped forward. Water swirled among the pebbles. The first icy shock as it crept into her boots. She squatted down and lifted the camera.
The heron was looking at her again. She held the camera steady. Thin mist clung to the edges of the bank. She heard her mother jump softly down onto the beach. She glanced back and saw her standing on varnished stones, watching.
She turned back to the heron. It was standing so still; she had enough time to get it exactly right if she just waited, if she just waited a bit more. She adjusted the focus again and looked. The heron moved to one side. She followed it with the camera, waiting, waiting. The heron stopped moving and hunched forward. It stood so still. She had it in focus but she waited a moment longer, it was important to get the clearest shot, to capture exactly how it was, right now, with the wet stones and the crushed grass and the mist. She made one more small adjustment, held the camera steady, noticed the orange beak and an orange leaf floating past, and then she clicked the shutter, and just at that moment the heron took off again. Maybe she had caught it, or maybe she had clicked too late and there would be a wing, a foot, glimpsed in the corner of the frame as the heron glided out of sight, streaming out beyond the picture like a kite. But she could try again and again and again and . . .
Chapter 37
Here she was again, back by the river. Freezing water rushing under her feet. Stones flipping like drop-scones; purple and green and mackerel-coloured. Fragments of smashed terracotta, stirred-up silt, peaks and creases and wrinkles. The bank worn down to pale roots, tangled inside like the workings of a body.
More beautiful than she remembered. Ada watched Pepper crouch down, almost kneel, in the water and aim the camera at the heron. Her mouth t
witching with concentration. Keeping herself very still, but not rigid, not fraught; a calmness in the way she held the camera and waited. The water pushed past, restless and glinting. Soaking through the seams of Ada’s boots, making her toes prickle. She had forgotten, or maybe never noticed, the sound the river made when it lapped at the shallow edges, how the drizzly mist clung to the surface like static on fabric. And all the shifting colours. She’d thought of it as dull and monotonous, the same old river from one moment to the next. But it changed second by second: now a clump of feathers tumbling down, now a plank of wood, now the water riled up around a snapped sapling.
Ada watched the heron – solitary, hunched, staring fixedly at Pepper. It was standing very still, just its eyes flicking between Pepper and the water. Pepper’s finger hovered over the button.
‘Take it,’ Ada whispered. The heron was shuffling its feet, an agitated twitch in its feathers. Pepper raised the camera, pointed it, and clicked. At the same moment, the heron took off, clattering up out of the water, soaring away with its legs dangling. Its croaking calls merging with the sounds of the river: with the water glugging around the rocks, the deeper thrumming like boots thumping across a floor, or doors opening and closing. And the rhythmic click of stone against stone, like a clock ticking. And the saffron glints like jewellery scattered across a desk. The low rumbling sounds, as if someone in the distance was coughing and clearing their throat.
Pepper turned and started to wade back over to Ada, her trousers soaking, holding the camera carefully so that it didn’t get wet. She kept talking about getting a TV, so they could watch cartoons, and the news, and those cowboy films where everyone walks off into a sunset. Ada glanced back at the house, just glimpsed the dripping roof, the battered chimney. Thought of Tristan waiting for them in the kitchen. The mouldy floors and warped doors, the grass in front churned with mud. No sunset there, but a February fog, woolly and glorious.
She looked downriver at the old bridge. The water was moving in wide, choppy waves, making its way past all the branches and bits of fence that had banked up. Further down, on the other side of the bridge, there was a deep pool. When the river was calm, the water there slowed down and turned very clear. Tiny fish darted through it and insects skimmed over the surface. It was the place her mother used to go to swim. She would slip out early in the mornings, before Ada woke up, and come back with soaking hair and goosebumps all over her arms. And one morning, Ada had got up and followed her.
It had been early spring, the first hints of pale shoots, a solitary bumble-bee working its way around the trees. The sky grey and still. She could see herself now, hiding behind that tree, leaning against the rough bark and chewing the ends of her hair. There she was: the same age as Pepper, just a bit taller, digging into the bark with her fingers and watching her mother wade into the water – her pale legs and arms, skin soft and slightly slack, turquoise veins, a black swimming costume. Ribbed lines around her ankles from where her socks had dug in. Her mother’s hair was longer back then, a rich auburn tinge to it, and it curled in the damp around the nape of her neck. The wind lifted it softly. She waded into the water step by step, and the water was so clear, Ada could see her feet moulding themselves around the stones. Step by step, her eyes fixed on the water. Freckles flung over her shoulders like salt. The river lapping around her knees, then her thighs, and she crouched down in the water and let out a quiet gasp at the cold.
Ada had stopped picking at the tree. She leaned forward, watching. Her mother spread her arms out and then she pushed herself forward through the water. She hardly made a sound. Leaves and seeds floated slowly. A small ripple circled out, growing wider, the circles doubling then tripling, then washing up against the bank below Ada’s feet. Her mother’s skin looked green and yellow, her arms pale and wavering. Like a strange underwater flower blooming.
And then she’d ducked under. One moment she was there and the next moment there was just a wide circle of ripples moving slowly outwards.
Ada stayed very still and watched the water. What thoughts had passed through her mind, exactly? There she was, behind the tree, chewing her hair instead of her nails, wearing her favourite glittery jelly shoes. Her skin smooth and cold: no scars, no dents, no scalds. But what had she been thinking? She couldn’t remember. All she remembered was the sound of the wind through the trees, how she had turned over a loose stone with her foot, waiting, watching the ripples spreading out and out . . .
Chapter 38
And out she went. Spreading and dissolving in the water, stretching into peaks and humps, creased, folded, scouring stones and bending sticks.
Out she went. Rushing and drumming, the house receding in her mind. Which filled instead with currents and eddies and melted snow. With silt and icy stones. She split and dispersed, shedding thoughts of watches and pins, of lenses and boots and chimneys; roiling over rocks then scattering in refractions of bright light.
Down through the woods, past roots and mushy leaves. Snatching at the trees’ cast-offs – their branches and twigs and wintry paraphernalia. Past boulders swathed in moss like winter coats, past networks of tunnels deep in the bank, past pools and brand-new, snowy waterfalls. Then there was something croaking above her and a heron flew over, wings spread and feet dangling, and for a moment they drifted side by side and then the heron was away, calling out frank, frank, and Pearl listened and thought: what a lovely sound, and she made it echo off the corner of a stone.
Past oak and beech and hazel that thinned, becoming gorse, bilberry, dry-stone walls. Down a set of jangling rapids and out onto the lower slopes of the moor, the riverbed stripped to bare granite. A few seams of quartz and mica. Browny-yellow seepage of bog and iron; the sudden taste of sheep dip and peat. And what was that tang? Ammonia? A walker just taken a piss in a stream.
And out she went. Washing off the edge of the moor and through something dark and prickly: a pine plantation. No light straining through, a resiny smell, needles stitching together into floating sheets. Split cones and sap, shadows darting, and then there was the wide grey sky and the trees opened out onto fields. The river surged and flooded over the bank and beached among the mud and grass. Horses raised their hooves and flicked their tails and shucked flies off their backs.
Part wallowing in shallow floodwater, part rushing past farms and barns and warehouses, past storage containers and supermarkets. Through the edge of town and siphoned into the middle, hemmed in by brick walls. Slower, glassier and more viscous, a nice change really, the soupy stillness. And a new kind of flotsam: an oily rainbow, crisp packets, algae, socks, plastic bags like collapsed moons. A bright cufflink that floated in circles. Tins sunk under the surface, which she scrubbed clean and then left behind. A sort of pent-up pressure, everything moving forward very slowly, stagnating, impatient shoving from the back. Then faster, and a great roaring sound ahead and just at that moment, a yellow bowl bobbing in the water and Pearl circled it, just managed to send over a gentle ripple, and then the bowl had gone and she was pouring downwards, an overwhelming plunging sensation because Christ, it was a weir, the unforgiving cement and then the steep drop on the other side.
Halfway to the sea and the first bite of saltiness. The wind turning the surface choppy and cold, and everything widening. No more ferns at the edges but, instead, seaweed, and the banks softening to marsh. Mud and water mixing into squelchy clay. Mile after mile of mudflats and claggy sand. Purple stones, dead green crabs on their backs with their legs in the air. The ribs of a boat. A bleached buoy. A thousand insects scavenging. Birds scattered all around, little brown ones on the mud, something with a curved bill probing. Their names . . . she let them sink into the mud, where feet and beaks sifted through, searching for whatever was lurking underneath. The sand and the mud sucking. Clumps of barnacles and inky mussels, flat white shells as big as saucers. The sea smashing its crockery. Pearl sunk into sticky mud, made runnels in the sand. She rolled her own name around on her tongue, where it mixed with salty water,
turning opaque and gleaming. And then she dropped it.
Out she went. The river colliding with the sea. Fresh and salt water knuckling against each other, pushing the river into pleats. The river forced backwards and down by the tide, bending under the surface like a muscle under skin. And for a moment, the river was suspended, stuck between push and pull, and she remembered the first time she had seen it. She had expected a small thing: a ditch, a brook, muddy and oozing. But there it was: a silver slice, teeming and roaring. A messy cacophony of a river, all grunt and galumph and glinty rapids; wood and chemicals and blood and bits of stone. The sound of it all around, the smell of it all around, entangling everything.
A button dipped and floated on the waves. Where had it come from? She saw it through a haze of salt and blurry light. Maybe she would follow it, cling to the ingrained pattern and go out further and further. Maybe she would work herself into the clay and transform into something unrecognisable. Or maybe she would sweep into a rockpool and be sifted through by fat anemones. Or maybe the clouds would break, and the sun would lift her from the surface and carry her inland, back over the farms and the fields and the woods. And when it rained she would be back at the beginning, where the river was just a trickle in the middle of the moor. Conjuring itself drop by drop.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agent Elizabeth Sheinkman and my editor Helen Garnons-Williams for their encouragement, advice and enthusiasm. Thank you to everyone at Bloomsbury. Thank you to Jon McGregor for all the support he has given my writing; Ellie Roberts for the excellent and thorough notes on how to butcher a deer; Emma Bird for her memories of back boilers; Guy Bower for reading an early version; and Mum for patiently reading all my drafts. Thank you to Ben for everything.
A Note on the Author