Dark Waters

by Mary-Jane Riley

  ‘But he’s not some ninety-year-old. He’s only in his sixties.’ Her voice shook. ‘And I’m so frightened.’ These last words came out in a whisper.

  Alex swallowed hard. ‘I know, Mum. I’ll help you.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got enough to do, what with your job and looking after Gus.’

  ‘Gus is old enough to look after himself, on the whole.’ Where was he?

  ‘He’s a good lad, your Gus,’ said her mother before taking a sip of the tea. ‘You’ve done a good job there; and I’ve never told you this, but I’m really proud of the way you’ve coped all these years. Really proud.’ She put her cup down and rubbed her face as if trying to wake herself up. ‘Now, Alex,’ her voice was stronger, ‘you didn’t come here to dish out tea and sympathy, did you?’

  ‘No, not really. I actually want to talk to Dad.’

  ‘Join the queue.’

  They both smiled at her mother’s grim humour.

  ‘Was it about something in particular?’ Her mother looked at her over the rim of her mug.

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He was at Cambridge in the mid-seventies, wasn’t he?’

  Her mother blinked slowly. ‘He was, but it wasn’t an easy time for him. He doesn’t like talking about it. It’s what I was saying earlier, he wanted a quiet life. A good life. He said Cambridge was not going to give him that.’

  There was something her mother wasn’t saying.

  ‘I didn’t think you were that interested in family history?’ her mother continued. ‘Too much harping on about the past, you used to say.’

  Alex put her hands around her mug. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t that interested before. I think it’s probably only as you get older you realize what you don’t know about your family and what you’d like to know. Find your roots if you like. Perhaps it’s when it dawns on you no one lives forever and one day we won’t be able to hear their stories however much we want to.’ She frowned. ‘And part of me thinks that it’s almost too late to know more about Dad. I mean, he’s always been that, just Dad. But he is more than that, isn’t he? More than just Dad, just a dad?’ She knew then that she thought exactly that. Although she had come to see her parents for a particular reason, and a reason to do with the deaths on the Broads, she knew that she was feeling the gradual loss of her father and the regret that she never really knew him as a person and now probably never would.

  ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ Her mother looked at her shrewdly.

  Alex nodded. ‘I’m doing a background feature on a couple of people who were found dead on the Broads.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  ‘No.’ Of course, her mum would be too busy with her dad to see any reports on television, and they’d stopped having a newspaper when Sasha’s children first disappeared. ‘They were found on their boat. It’s thought they killed themselves.’

  Her mother put her hand to her throat. ‘How awful.’

  ‘I know.’ Alex grimaced. ‘They were in their sixties too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It seems they knew each other. In fact, they were at university together.’ She paused. ‘Cambridge. Their names were Derek Daley and Roger Fleet.’

  Her mother got up and poured what was left of her tea down the sink.

  ‘I wondered …’ Alex went on. God, this was hard. ‘I wondered if Dad would have known them?’

  ‘Why should he have done?’ The question came quickly, defensively. Her mother began to wash her mug.

  ‘Because he would have been at Cambridge at about the same time as them.’

  ‘So what? It doesn’t necessarily mean they would have been friends.’ She took up the scrubbing of the saucepan. ‘It’s a big place, Cambridge. Colleges and all that. You didn’t meet everybody. And your dad was only there for a year.’

  ‘Which college was he in?’

  ‘Why does it matter?’ Still her mother had her back to her.

  ‘Mum, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Alex frowned. It was, she thought, a perfectly ordinary question to ask. After all, she knew very little about her father’s time at university; it was something he never talked about and she had learned never to ask about. ‘The men who died were in St Francis’s College.’

  Her mother’s back stiffened, and her hands were stilled.

  ‘That was Dad’s college, wasn’t it?’ she asked, with a flash of intuition.

  ‘Yes, yes it was. But it doesn’t necessarily mean he knew those men.’

  Alex pressed on. ‘But he might have done. Has he ever mentioned the names to you? Roger Fleet and Derek Daley?’

  ‘Derek Daley?’ Her father’s voice came from the doorway. ‘Why are you talking about Derek?’

  Alex jumped up and led her father to a chair. He shuffled rather than walked. His jumper was on back to front.

  ‘You knew Derek Daley, Dad?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did.’

  ‘And what about a man called Roger Fleet?’

  Her father nodded. ‘Roger. Yes. He was a gentle soul. Wasn’t cut out for …’

  ‘For what, Dad?’

  Her father looked guarded. ‘Nothing. Why are you talking about them?’

  ‘I’ve got some bad news, Dad. About Derek Daley and Roger Fleet.’

  Her mother was looking at her, her face pale, grim. ‘No, Alex. Not now. He won’t understand.’

  ‘Mum—’

  Her father peered at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked irritably.

  ‘I’m Alex,’ she said. ‘Your daughter. Alex.’

  He waved his hand. ‘I know that. How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay, Dad.’

  He smiled, and she saw her father of old behind his eyes. ‘Why were you talking about Derek?’

  ‘You were at university with them, weren’t you, Dad? At Cambridge?’

  ‘Cambridge?’ He looked at her mother. ‘I don’t like talking about Cambridge.’ He flexed the fingers on both hands. In. Out. In. Out. ‘I was ill. I had to leave.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ said Alex, stroking his arm soothingly. ‘I’m sorry. What about—?’

  ‘Alex,’ said her mother, warningly.

  ‘It’s important, Mum, really. What about Derek and Roger? How well did you know them?’

  Her father’s face suddenly cleared, and his hands stilled. ‘Derek and Roger. I haven’t heard those names in a while. I wonder how they are?’ He turned to his wife. ‘Do you know how they are?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So you knew them?’ asked Alex, eagerly.

  Her father frowned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Derek Daley and Roger Fleet.’

  ‘Derek and Roger. I haven’t heard those names in a while. I wonder how they are? Who are you?’

  Alex sighed.

  Her father frowned, his face cleared, then he hauled himself out of the chair. ‘Wait a minute.’

  He shuffled over to the sideboard, bringing out an envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, tearing it open and shaking out the contents. ‘Cambridge. I hated it.’

  Photographs lay jumbled on the table. Alex picked up the top one. It showed a group of people she had never seen before, posing, arms around one another.

  ‘Alex,’ her mother said, voice sharp. ‘I don’t think your father would really want you to look through these.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said, rifling through the photos, knowing she probably had limited time. Cheesecloth shirts. Girls with scrubbed faces. Boys with long hair. CND tee shirts. Everybody smoking. Two girls sitting on a bed, raising their drinks. A boy – man – with curtains of hair sitting on top of a statue in a well-tended garden, waving a glass. At one of the colleges, she presumed. More photographs of young people with varying lengths of hair, baggy jeans and tee shirts. Someone strumming a guitar. Seven or eight people around a table in a restaurant, cheering. What if she found one of Derek Daley or Roger Fleet? What would that prove? Nothing. Just that her f
ather knew one of them because he had been studying at the same college.

  ‘I used to like taking photos.’

  Alex looked up at her father. ‘I know you did, Dad,’ she said. ‘I remember all those times we had to pose for hours while you got the perfect background for the perfect shot. Do you remember that?’

  Her father frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

  She smiled gently. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She carried on looking through the photos.

  Then, there. She held her breath. A young Willem Major, cocky smile as though he owned the world, hands in his pockets, staring at the camera. Staring at her. ‘You knew Willem Major as well?’ She asked the question casually.

  ‘As well as what?’

  ‘As well as Derek and Roger?’

  ‘Derek and Roger. Whatever happened to them? Hmm? Whatever happened to them? I haven’t heard those names in so long. And Willem.’ A tear dripped down his cheek. ‘Well I never.’ All at once he smiled; it was like a watery shaft of sunshine after the rain, the tears forgotten. ‘And Jen? What about her?’

  Jen. Alex got the picture she had taken at Margaret Winwood’s house up on her phone. The four students captured in a moment of time. Forever young.

  ‘Dad? Is this Jen?’ She pointed to the girl.

  Her father nodded. ‘She was – I liked … I …’ He fell silent.

  ‘There,’ her mother said, briskly gathering up the old photographs before Alex could look at any more. ‘That’s enough. Put that away. You’re upsetting your father.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘What ever happened to them all?’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘No. Alex does not know what happened to them, do you, Alex?’

  She looked at the stern, implacable face of her mother, and the wobbling cheeks of her father and wondered what the agenda was. She let go of her breath. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Her mother bowed her head. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Who are you?’ Her father asked.

  ‘I’m Alex. Your daughter.’ Sudden tears threatened. For God’s sake, stop it, she told herself.

  ‘I’m tired, Alex. Can I go up to bed please?’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ said her mother, grabbing his elbow.

  Alex kissed her father’s stubbly cheek. ‘Bye, Dad.’

  ‘Bye, love,’ he said, his eyes clear. He grasped her hand. ‘That photograph?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I thought they were my friends.’

  22

  Alex loved sitting on the shoreline near her home in Sole Bay. She loved listening to the endless tug of the sea on the beach, smelling the salt in the air, watching the tankers far out on the horizon, the sailing boats closer to shore, the windsurfers that skimmed effortlessly across the waves. She liked to imagine the people on those far-off tankers – mostly men, she presumed though not necessarily – working to transfer oil from one hulking ship to the next. She liked to imagine what sort of lives they had – girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands. Children, perhaps, who didn’t see their daddies for weeks at a time, but who would write to them, sending pictures carefully coloured in with wax crayons. Actually, she thought, as she scooped up a handful of sand and pebbles, they more likely drew pictures on their iPads and sent their daddies emails. Or Skyped them. Or didn’t miss them at all. She let the sand drain through her fingers. But the very fact of people getting on with their lives, busying themselves, made her feel safe. She liked the normality of it. It was the nearest she came to feeling really happy.

  That was not quite true. She had felt happy for those few short weeks with Malone. He had – what was the word? She looked up into the sky, at the few fluffy clouds that drifted along like dancers. Completed her. That was it. She had found someone who completed her.

  Then he’d fucked off.

  What was so wrong with her that would have made him leave her like that?

  She scooped up another handful of sand and pebbles. Stop it, she told herself firmly. It is done with. And there’s nothing so unattractive as self-pity. What’s more, she wasn’t likely to hear any more about him as Heath seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. She had tried to ring him, text him, left messages for him. Nothing. Not a thing. What was that all about? She had spoken to one his colleagues at the business unit who said they hadn’t seen him and maybe he was off sick, but that didn’t explain why he wasn’t getting in touch with her.

  Should she be worried about him? She took her phone out of her bag and dialled his number for what felt like the fiftieth time. Voicemail. She left another curt message. ‘Call me.’ Soon his voicemail box would be full, unless he was listening to the messages and ignoring them before deleting them.

  She thought about Derek Daley and Roger Fleet, wondered about their last hours on the boat. Did they lie down in their beds and wait for the drugs and the fumes to do their thing? Or had they chatted for a while, caught up on their lives? She gave a hollow laugh. If you know you’re about to die you’re not going to engage in idle chit-chat, are you? How are you? What have you been doing with yourself? Family all well? Feeling sleepy yet? It was hardly likely. So what had made them go meekly to their deaths?

  She looked at the phone and the photograph that seemed to be in the middle of this mess. So Fleet and Daley were dead. Willem Major had gone to ground after that fatal, horrible fire. What about the woman in the picture? What had her father called her? Jen, that was it. And who had taken the photograph? Who was behind the camera? Was it possible that whatever had happened in Cambridge all those years ago had some bearing on what was happening today? And if so, why had it taken nearly forty years to happen?

  This had become personal. These people had been friends of her father’s, and she had learned more about her mum and dad in the last twenty-four hours than she had ever known before.

  She needed to find this Jen woman; perhaps she would have some answers. Though how easy that was going to be with just a first name she wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t ask Honey to help.

  Reluctantly she stood up, brushing the sand off the back of her jeans. She wasn’t going to find anyone or get any further forward by sitting on her backside on the beach, however therapeutic that was. Perhaps it was time to visit Cambridge, see the college where her father spent time as a student. It was only some forty years ago – maybe there would be someone there who would remember them?

  Cambridge was a beautiful city, with ancient colleges at its heart, their grounds rolling down to the winding River Cam, and leafy green meadows that encircled the city. The spring light gave the old stone a mellow hue, thought Alex as she walked along St Francis’s Road towards her father’s old college, dodging cyclists along the way. Now she had a dim memory of her mum pointing it out to her many years ago when they had a rare family day trip to the city, but neither she nor Sasha had been remotely interested – too wrapped up in themselves and their teenage spots and tantrums. And she didn’t want to think about the last time she was here, a few short months ago with Malone.

  There it was, one of the entrances to the college. A large archway made of red brick the colour of blood, topped by a magnificent oriel window. The wicket door, a small door that could be opened separately from the large gates, was ajar. A noticeboard at the entrance told Alex that a tour of the college had just begun. If she could find it she could join its tail and then maybe peel off to do some exploring of her own. Perfect. She slipped through the gate and into the courtyard and was in luck. Ahead of her were a group of people clustered around a stocky, short-haired and capable-looking woman with an umbrella.

  ‘… in the First Court …’ the woman was saying. ‘St Francis’s College was founded in 1347 and is one of a small number founded by a woman.’

  There was a murmur of approval from the group, who appeared to hail from all corners of the world.

  Alex looked around. It was magnificent. The hurly-burly of the city seemed miles away, there was a tranquility in the
air. Even the smell was different. Clean, freshly mown grass. There were large stone urns overflowing with early summer flowers. A shingle pathway went all the way round the courtyard, and cobblestones were laid at intervals next to the buildings.

  ‘If you look over there,’ the guide pointed to her left, ‘you will see the original chapel that has a magnificent plaster ceiling. To your right is New Court, where first year undergraduates live. If you look carefully, you can see entrances to staircases marked with the letters of the alphabet—’

  Which staircase had been her father’s? She tried to imagine how he must have felt, coming to a place as grand as this when he was still a teenager. How intimidating it must have been. How he must have wondered whether he would fit in.

  ‘The Master’s Lodge is behind you. As I’m sure you know, the Master is the head of the college here in Cambridge, a sort of Chief Executive, if you like.’ She gave a brief smile. ‘Across the way you can see the dining hall, a fine example of—’

  Alex tuned out. Much as she was enjoying learning about the college, she wasn’t here for the guided tour.

  She walked confidently across the quad and through another archway. If she looked as though she was supposed to be doing what she was doing, then no one would question her.

  No one did.

  She found herself in another well-manicured area – like a private garden, she thought. There was a magnificent fountain in the centre of the lawn, with angelic cherubs spouting water. Privet hedges and topiary trees did, indeed, suggest she was in a private area – perhaps it was the Master’s garden? She spied yet another stone archway and hurried on through.

  ‘Can I help you, miss?’ A portly man in his late sixties was in the inner courtyard. He was wearing a smart coat and carrying several bunches of keys. The porter, she guessed. She hurried towards him, her best smile on her face.

  ‘Are you the porter here, at St Francis’s?’

  ‘I am,’ he said gravely. ‘May I ask what you’re doing in the Inner Court? And I saw you come out of the Master’s garden. The tours don’t generally take in that area. It’s not done.’