The Flood

by Maggie Gee

  Elroy got in about half an hour later, having dropped off his passenger near the Towers. She had asked him in: he had almost accepted.

  May woke, in unease that turned rapidly to terror, for no reason, as she lay there alone. Somewhere, loud music was fading away. Whatever had alarmed her was already over, but fear, for May, was so real, so visceral.

  When she was a girl, fear was always there. Her father had terrorized her mother. Then Alfred, for all his good qualities, would get into rages with her and the kids. She had always told herself it didn’t matter, he was a good man and she knew he loved her. His job was stressful, he meant no harm … But sometimes they’d been afraid for their lives.

  Her conscious mind had forgotten it all, but now, in the night, as she lay there sweating (since Alfred was gone, she used too many blankets), her body remembered it, alive with adrenalin, her breath speeding up, her heart racing. Lying in the dark, she raged at him. It’s cowardly to hit a woman …

  She thought of Shirley. He’d been bad to Shirley. She supposed in some funny way he’d been jealous, of both Shirley’s husbands, both of them black men.

  But May really liked them. She thought they were handsome. And neither of them had ever hit Shirley. They were tall, and smiling, and kept their hair. In fact, she thought they were funciable. She put out her tongue, in the dark, at Alfred.

  The fear ebbed away. May fell asleep.

  Elroy opened his front door as quietly as he could, slipped off his soaked shoes on the doormat, went and brushed his teeth and showered away the smoke on his hair. Tiptoeing past the boys’ bedroom, he glimpsed Franklin asleep, bedclothes thrown off in the familiar tangle, kneeling up, head down, pyjama bottoms off, mumbling something passionate his father couldn’t hear. Bendy Rabbit lay on Winston’s head like a hat. ‘I love you, boys,’ Elroy whispered.

  Shirley was sleeping flat on her back, her creamy skin lightly pearled with sweat, one heavy arm outside the bedclothes, her blonde hair darkened, sticking to her forehead. She was snoring lightly, like a swarm of bees. She was utterly open to him, like this, looking like the woman he had fallen in love with so completely ten years ago, in the innocent past, before anything happened, his brother’s death, Shirley’s unfaithfulness, her brother Dirk’s conviction for murder, all the broken things that had piled up between them. He knelt beside her on the floor in the dark, and he wanted to make some reparation, he was going to say something, say it all, whatever it took to dissolve the hurt, he was going to pray, as he once used to, before life stamped upon his prayers; but then she moaned, and her eyes opened, and looked at him as if she saw what he was, saw where he’d been, saw him as guilty, and the smile she gave him was lost and blank. ‘What time is it?’ she asked, not expecting an answer, and then, turning over, turning away, her face blind now, her eyes closing, ‘It’s too late, Elroy Go to sleep.’

  Davey expected the house to be empty. His top-floor tenants, Chloe and Olivia, biologists from the Institute, were at a conference on cloning, and Delorice only stayed over at weekends, because her job, in publishing, was right in the centre. The street-light outside had been broken for weeks; the council had its work cut out dealing with the water. Davey felt in his coat pocket for his torch, to help him get his key in the lock. He jumped like a nervous horse when there was a sudden violent clatter by the dustbins. Burglars, he thought, so now it’s my turn, and swung round ready to defend himself or die. It was the moment every city-dweller waited for, and Davey, who had never hit anyone, Davey, who was the mildest of people, even when he was a boy at school, began breathing fast, electric with adrenalin, but all he could hear was the smallest of movements, someone shuffling, panting, lurking somewhere, waiting for him, crouching in the dark, terrifying, just out of sight.

  Then he dropped his keys, his torch swung wildly, his foot crunched over some broken biscuits – no, not so soft, a pile of small bones –

  Suddenly the master was there before him, magnificent, original, every hair clear in the arcing beam, a red fox, quivering, poised to confront him, black shining eyes, sharp highwayman’s nose. He could smell it too, he realized, suddenly, feeling a visceral excitement. Near enough for us to smell each other.

  He held his torch steady. In that instant, they were linked.

  The man and the animal crouched in the moment.

  Six

  It was a Tuesday in March; rather early for the Gardens. But Lottie was having a stressful morning. Lottie had had a very stressful month. The whole city, of course, was in disarray, but the populace, surely, could adjust to all that. The Tower-dwellers did keep making a fuss, but life had definitely been worse for her.

  Her house had five floors, some rarely used. After the burglary, she’d checked most places – the burglar seemed to have taken little things, jewellery, money, objets d’art, and the randomness suggested he was thick as two planks, as well as psycho, and dangerous – but she hadn’t gone into the mezzanine, the blue rooms which had once been Davey’s. It was Faith who had discovered something missing, weeks later. There was a square of darker blue on the mezzanine wall.

  ‘Didn’t there use to be a picture there, Mrs Segall? Quite old, a bit messy, not a very big one, I don’t suppose you like it or you wouldn’t have put it there. But something’s definitely gone.’

  There was a stunned silence, and then: ‘What do you mean?’ Lottie screamed at full volume, looking suddenly larger, her green eyes bulging. There was only one painting in the mezzanine. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ Faith said nervously. In fifteen years with Lottie, she had lost her temper twice, and Faith didn’t like to remember it.

  ‘It’s only my fucking Bonnard,’ Lottie said, quite quietly, but immensely threatening. ‘Just a fucking major masterpiece, that’s all. Oh just my Bonnard. Well thanks for telling me.’

  ‘I didn’t steal it,’ Faith grunted, cowed. She occasionally removed things she felt they didn’t value – Lola obviously had far too much, more than was good for a child of that age, beautiful objects she crumpled or messed or left to get dusty on the floor, and Kilda could obviously sometimes use them, then everyone was happy, and no harm done – but she certainly wouldn’t steal a painting. That was real stealing. That meant the police. She would like to, yes, but she wouldn’t dare. In any case, screwing up her brains, she remembered the painting as queer and blurry, with a naked couple who looked all the wrong shape. She couldn’t understand why Lottie chose it.

  (In fact, the painting had a history. A former flame of Lottie’s, an art dealer called Hugo, had given her the Bonnard when she was in her twenties. After she dropped him, Hugo tended to regretful visits, staring at the Bonnard with heavy, pensive meaning. In the end Lottie put it in the mezzanine. She did still love it, it wasn’t that, there was something miraculous about the light, jewelling the squared floor of the bedroom, and the flat, cat-like planes of the woman’s body, the liquid blues, yellows, violets – and it was unusual in Bonnard’s œuvre to find two naked figures, not one. Still, the painting always made her think of sex with Hugo, and now she was with Harold, it didn’t seem right. In any case, sex with Harold was better.)

  Now the painting was gone, Lottie longed for it. Hers, hers; how dare they take it away? The prospect of an insurance pay-out of several millions was swiftly removed when the police found the door had been left unlocked, though Lola and Gracie fiercely denied it, so of course the policy wouldn’t pay a cent.

  Then this week the whole thing shifted into farce when the police investigation managed to establish that Bonnard’s ‘Bedroom: Sunny Afternoon’ was in a continental museum, and had been there for twenty-seven years, so Lottie’s Bonnard was a high-class fake.

  ‘Why aren’t you pleased?’ asked Harold. ‘At least this way the burglar is shafted.’

  ‘But I was shafted for twenty-five years! That slimewad Hugo shafted me!’ As she said it, Lottie noticed the double meaning, but didn’t point it out to Harold, wh
o could be sensitive about her past.

  ‘I don’t see why, if you really liked it.’

  ‘Because I loved something – not real,’ Lottie said. ‘A copy of something can’t be real. I like real things. You know, special things. Done by just one person, just for me. It’s like the difference between theatre and cinema. I’d always choose theatre. Wouldn’t everybody?’

  ‘You’re, you know, over-privileged, Mum,’ her daughter informed her, dipping through the kitchen, scooping up a kiwi smoothie from the fridge, spilling chocolate brownie on the floor. ‘Some people in the world haven’t got the choice. In Africa I’m sure it’s just DVDs.’

  Lottie was not yet resigned to this newly thoughtful, political daughter. ‘Try locking doors when you go out, and don’t be smart, Lola.’

  Today Lola had decided not to go to school.

  ‘It’s just another capitalist institution,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen through it, Mum. You can’t make me.’

  Her mother was next door, in the kitchen with Faith, and Lola could hear Faith hissing instructions. ‘She’s done this before, you know, Mrs Segall. When you’ve been at college, she sometimes bunks off, and gets under my feet, and begs me not to tell you. I mean, you have given me authority, haven’t you?’ (Lottie had encouraged Faith to be her enforcer, but recently Lola had gone a bit bonkers. Given a free hand, Faith could have sorted it: Kilda could still be slapped into submission.) ‘Lola tried to bribe me, would you believe?’ (Faith didn’t mention that she sometimes succeeded.) ‘You don’t want to let her get like my Kilda. She’s bunked off non-stop ever since she started her periods. And look at Kilda. Does she get off her arse? No, she thinks she’s a fortune-teller. It’s not exactly a career, is it? Though she claims people say that she’s good at it –’

  Lola interrupted, forgetting about school, forgetting what a cheek Faith had, yelling cheerfully through into the kitchen, ‘Did you say Kilda was a fortune-teller? That’s so cool, being a fortune-teller. Does she, like, you know, do it for money? Would she, like, do it free for me and Gracie?’

  Lottie came through and stared hard at her daughter. When the chips were down, she was still the mother. Heavier, older, richer, stronger. ‘Lola, dear, you get an allowance. But you’re going to lose it if you don’t go to school. Education is a commitment, you know, that’s what they’re always saying at college.’

  Lola stared back at her, pebble-eyed, mocking. ‘I don’t have to go. You can’t drag me there. I’m sixteen now. I can do what I like. You told Ms Johnson I shouldn’t work too hard.’

  One of the awful things about children was that they expected you to be consistent. Lottie considered the options, briefly. Would she win if she physically pushed her out of the door? Everything subtly changed once kids grew taller than you, though Lottie had an extra stone of muscle. Still if she failed, all was lost. Instead, Lottie tried an adoring smile. It came quite naturally; she did adore Lola. ‘If you leave right now I’ll get Daddy to drive you and I’ll put some chocolate cake in your lunch-box.’

  ‘Oh cool,’ said Lola, forgetting her politics. ‘And will you give me money for being good?’

  Faith watched the bribe being given in silence. The sum was more than her morning’s wages.

  Harold did as he was asked, as usual, but came back home in an awkward mood. Faith had gone off to the supermarket. Lottie was just getting ready to go out; she had an Art History class at eleven. She’d vowed she would not be late again.

  She was tempted to tell the class all about the Bonnard. So far she’d kept quiet about that kind of thing. For some reason she’d felt it might make the wrong impression if she mentioned her Ingres, when they were studying him. Some of the students were really quite scruffy. One of them was black, so probably poor. But all of them would surely sympathize about the Bonnard.

  Harold interrupted her train of thought. ‘I’m just a chauffeur to you, Lottie.’ His high, handsome forehead was furrowed. She always enjoyed looking at his face, but he really wasn’t looking his best this morning, having pulled on a jumper over his pyjamas in order to get Lola to school on time.

  ‘Did you mind taking her, darling? Sorry.’ Lottie continued doing her mascara.

  ‘You never ask me about my work. I always ask you about your classes.’

  Lottie stopped in her tracks, and stared at him. Harold almost never talked like that.

  ‘Are you feeling sad, Harold? Sorry. How is the book? Did you have a bad day yesterday?’

  ‘You don’t believe in my book, do you?’

  ‘You did have a bad day. You’re not all right.’ Lottie came over and stroked his back, and pressed her cheek against his neck.

  ‘Well something happened yesterday. Something I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Did the computer go wrong again? Oh dear. I keep offering to buy you a new one.’

  ‘No–’

  ‘The printer, then. Darling, let’s go shopping. We’ll get some more paper at the same time.’ She knew how Harold liked his paper. Whatever it took to keep him happy.

  There was a pause. He seemed to have a sore throat. ‘The thing is, Lottie, I finished it.’

  ‘Of course, Harold, that’s why we need some more.’

  ‘No, Lottie, please, I finished my book!’

  Lottie sat there, winded. This was earth-shattering. No wonder Harold seemed so upset. Almost as long as they’d been married, he’d been writing it. She simply didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Never mind, darling, you can start another one,’ she tried, tentatively.

  It wasn’t the right answer.

  ‘You don’t believe I will publish it. I’m a joke to you. I’m a joke to Lola. You’d be better off without me, wouldn’t you, Lottie?’

  They made love vigorously on the carpet. Afterwards both of them felt a lot better, and they fled upstairs, clutching their clothes and giggling, hearing Faith come back, one floor below.

  ‘I think I might take some days off, for once,’ Harold said, experimentally. ‘I suppose you’re very busy, Lottie. Of course you are, with your degree.’

  Lottie realized at once that he’d been feeling jealous. Perhaps she had neglected him recently. ‘Darling, I’m never too busy for you. Well sometimes I am, admittedly. Shall we go to a gallery? The zoo? The Gardens?’

  Forgetting her commitment to education, Lola’s mother bunked off for the day.

  Shirley woke up feeling leaden. March was her least favourite month; the year was already less young and hopeful. One or other twin always seemed to be ill, so she rarely got them both to nursery. And the world felt frightening, at the moment. The war was unpredictable. Not that war ever ended, of course, but sometimes it blazed up, horribly alive. Great movements of men and weapons had started. Pop-eyed Mr Bliss was always on telly, telling the people that peace meant war. When you had children, war meant fear.

  Shirley had been praying and reading the Bible, but these days she did it on her own. After his brother Winston had been murdered, Elroy had suffered a crisis of faith. Once it had linked them; they had gone to church together, often twice in one day, on Sundays. Now Elroy only went one week in four as a way of pacifying his mother, Sophie. Mostly Shirley went alone with Sophie and the boys, feeling wistful, just one more single-parent family.

  And she was worried that Elroy was having an affair. What did he do when he was out so late?

  And her little garden, which she loved and cared for, had been impossible to walk in for weeks.

  She lay in bed, thinking about her snowdrops. They must have rotted. She would have to start again. All through February, she had kept hoping. She saw them vanishing, her hopes for this year, the small bells of white, so exquisite in close-up with their little clapper and frill of pale green and tiny gold stamens like matches burning, drowned stars now in the sludge of darkness.

  The year rolled onwards, bringing only chaos. Dirty bombs might be dropped on the city. Elroy would leave her; he would take the boys. She would fail her studies and
never become a teacher.

  She lay there listening for the sound of the rain, only slowly registering that she heard nothing. (Yet part of her that was deeply tired longed for the kindness of a black wall of water, so she could go under and sleep for ever.)

  Just at that moment, Elroy came in. ‘Brought you a cup of tea,’ he said, sitting on the bed, rubbing her shoulder. ‘Guess what, it’s a beautiful morning.’

  The morning stopped, and became beautiful.

  He opened the curtains, and let the light in, and they lay there together on the big new bed which had long ago replaced the one from her first marriage, looking out at the sun on the cherry trees. Pink petals broke from the black elbows of the branches. Her cherries, up to their knees in water, were still exhaling great clouds of pale blossom.

  ‘You’d think their roots would have rotted,’ Shirley said to him, laying her head against his shoulder. She suddenly thought about her dead father; he was a park keeper; how he loved spring. She wished he could somehow see her blossom. Perhaps he could, perhaps he was there.

  ‘It’s all right, Shirley. Everything’s all right,’ Elroy kept repeating, and kissing her hands, pressing her warm palm against his full lips.

  The boys were in the sitting-room, watching television. Cautiously, tenderly, with infinite excitement, looking deep into each other’s eyes, Elroy and Shirley made love.

  Seven

  Harold and Lottie walked to the subway station hand in hand, chattering like birds. At first Harold tried to talk about his book, but Lottie said, ‘It’s a beautiful day, don’t feel you have to talk about it darling. I absolutely know your book’s wonderful. You don’t have to prove a thing to me … And if not, your next one certainly will be.’

  After that, Harold shut up about the book. He was used to Lottie. He didn’t much mind. He had put six copies of the finished book into the post to publishers yesterday: he’d wanted to impress her with his drive and ambition, but after twenty years, it was too much to hope for. Instead, as so often, they talked about Lola. The Giant Baby, as they called her.