by Rosie Thomas
The Jaguar roared and plunged forward. Helen felt the bite of acceleration pressing her back against the seat and the firm warmth of Tom’s shoulder.
A corner, too fast, traffic lights, red, behind them now, another two or three dizzying turns and then a narrower road that bumped towards the black square of the deserted punt station.
Tom helped her out of the car. He was talking across her to Oliver, laughing, apparently unthinking. She pulled the heavy cloak around her to hide her shivers.
Over the dew-wet grass that soaked her thin slippers, they came to the river’s edge. The water was utterly black and still. A line of punts swayed almost imperceptibly from their moorings. Oliver vaulted into the nearest one and the ripples suddenly spread outwards, lapping under the boards of the landing stage. Tom materialised out of the dark with a pole and an armful of cushions.
‘You do the work,’ he ordered Oliver and passed the tall pole across the water.
She stepped unwillingly down into the punt. Tom slid into the narrow seat beside her and settled her cloak around her ankles. The boat rocked sharply as Oliver stood up on the flat stern behind them. Then the long shell swung ponderously in the water and pointed downstream. Helen heard the swish of the pole as it slid down through Oliver’s hands, the plop of it in the water and then the slight jolt as the tip found the river bed. Oliver put his weight to it to send the clumsy boat skimming over the water. He bent to the rhythm, savagely pushing the blunt prow through the water, twisting the pole free from the greedy mud bottom and hauling it up hand over hand in a shower of cold droplets, ready for the next thrust. They began to travel smoothly, faster, with Oliver as intent as if they were racing for their lives.
Tom’s hand found hers under the cloak, and Helen leaned her head back against his shoulder. She smelt the waterproof reek of the rexine cushions, varnish, and the deep, mud and weed-green smell of the river itself. Away on either side of her the banks and boles of the trees were shrouded in a low white mist. The moon had disappeared and the sky was very black, the darkest hour of the night before the summer dawn.
Tom’s hand was stroking hers, gently, and his mouth was close to her cheek. She closed her eyes against the eerie night and the loud slap of the water and listened to Tom’s calm, even breathing. She matched her own to it and her anxiety began to melt away. They were isolated together in a cocoon of water and darkness, warm under their blanket of black velvet. Slow currents began to stir inside her. She turned her head to meet Tom’s mouth. His light kiss touched the corner of her lips and then her tongue, and she felt the warmth of him beside her.
Across the grass came the din of the Ball at full swing. The music was plangent, distorted by the damp air. It might have been drifting from another world. Oliver was whistling through his teeth like a demonic gondolier. Once Helen looked backwards and saw the familiar shape of his head with the hair sweat-flattened against it. He smiled at her.
Helen was suddenly gripped by panicky disorientation. They seemed to have been surging on for hours, and she had no idea where they were. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a white notice on the bankside. It was gone into the dark behind them, but the jolt of it brought her upright. It was the water authority warning sign. She remembered the red lettering, seen a hundred times before at the point where punts made a slow U-turn in the Cherwell.
Danger. No punts past this point
Up ahead of them the Cherwell joined the fast-running Thames just upstream from Follies Island.
‘For Christ’s sake, Oliver. Where are you going?’
Tom was almost on his feet but the boat rocked violently and he sank back again. The banks slid away on either side of them. Rushed on by the water as the tributary ran into the river, they were out in the mainstream.
‘Tired of pissing about up there. Let’s do some real boating.’
Oliver’s face was stretched into a wide, exhilarated smile. They couldn’t see it, but his eyes had come alive with reckless light.
‘The bank. Steer into the bank,’ Tom shouted at him.
Ahead Helen glimpsed the square outline of Follies House sitting on its little island, the three arches of the bridge carrying their ribbon of orange light across the river, and the curl of white water licking around the piers.
Tom’s arms were steadying her.
‘Keep still,’ he hissed. ‘Lie flat. Calm water past the bridge.’
The white water hurtled towards them, and the bridge.
‘Oliver.’
It towered unbelievably high above them.
‘Oliver,’ Tom was yelling. ‘Steer left.’
The central pier was coming straight at them. The noise of the water was deafening. The prow swung sharply and missed the mossed stone by inches. Helen saw water sliding over the varnished wood and lapping down towards her. The punt swung giddily under the arch. Almost before it happened she heard the splintering crash as the stern smashed against the stone. There was a crack and a sound that might almost have been a cry.
The rushing water swallowed it up. The stern suddenly bobbed upwards.
Helen looked back. No-one.
‘Oliver,’ she screamed.
He was gone.
Fourteen
Desperately Helen struggled to climb backwards.
Tom’s hand held on to her with a grip like iron as icy water foamed over the sides of the boat and soaked them. The force of the smash sent the punt juddering sideways. Within a second they rammed into the bank beyond the bridge. Instantly Tom flung himself forward and caught at the rough grass.
‘Climb out,’ he shouted. ‘Move.’
Helen felt a useless scream rising in her throat as she scrambled over him to the towpath. As soon as he saw her safe, Tom pushed the punt away and struck out for the bridge.
Beneath it the water was black and white, empty.
She heard another splash and saw a head bobbing in the fast water, swimming like a dog. Blond hair plastered to the skull. Unmistakably shaped.
Relief surged inside her.
‘Tom,’ she screamed. ‘Over there. Swimming.’
She ran along the path and into the booming space under the bridge. Gravel bit into her feet through her thin shoes and her dress clung around her ankles in hobbling folds. The swimmer was circling, dipping constantly under the threatening white foam.
What’s the matter with him? Why doesn’t he make for the bank?
The questions pounded in her head. Tom was fighting towards him through the ripping current.
Then Helen saw.
Not Oliver at all. It was Gerry.
Oliver was still down there, under all that rush of water.
Oh God. Please. The words wrenched themselves out of her. Gerry’s head went down again. Then she saw something else, a flash of white and a dark length like a dead log. Two heads.
Please, God. Inching towards the island. Too slowly. Hardly moving, and Tom still too many feet away. Both heads gone again. She plunged frantically to the water’s edge.
‘Stay there.’ Tom shouting at her. Impotence choked her. She was too weak a swimmer to hope to reach them.
There, Gerry’s head again. And miraculously Tom’s beside him. A weight between them, dragging them down. The terrible gap between them and the island closing, so slowly.
Get help. Decision galvanised Helen. She ran up on to the bridge where the road mocked her with its emptiness. There was no-one at all, no-one to shout to. She turned and scrambled down the steps to Follies, down to the tip of the island. Tom’s head splashed out of the blackness with Gerry beside him, gasping and choking with his eyes shut. Helen flung herself down and stretched out her arms. With a groaning heave, Tom shoved Gerry towards her and she groped for him, then caught at his icy wrists. For a moment he hung there and the water almost snatched him away again. Helen’s arms were burning in their sockets before he kicked feebly and then found the strength to roll and scramble up on to the bank. Once he was clear he staggered and collapsed behind her. B
ut she had no thought for him now. Tom was fighting in the water with the black, unmoving weight of Oliver in his arms.
Again she leaned over the mud and swirling water.
‘Hold him. Just hold him,’ he gasped at her.
Sodden velvet and slippery satin in her fingers now. This one was motionless and unbearably heavy. The water pulled greedily at him but she hung on, her eyes shut, ready to be torn in half before she would let go.
Tom pulled himself up beside her, coughing the water up out of his lungs. Together, the pain stabbing in their chests, they dragged the arms, the shoulders, then the long back out of the water. The feet came, unwillingly, as they hauled him out on to the grass. His head rolled back and Helen glimpsed the terrifying whiteness of his face.
Behind them Gerry raised himself on all fours and coughed. River water gushed out of his mouth. Tom didn’t even spare him a glance. He was thumping at Oliver’s chest with the heel of one hand pressed over the other. He wrenched the white face to one side.
‘Ambulance,’ he hurled at her, and then with a gulp of air he pressed his mouth down on Oliver’s.
Helen was already running. Up the weed-fringed path to the heavy door with its studding of bolt heads. Mercifully it swung open. The splash of her wet clothes across the pitch-black hall and the corridor to Rose’s kitchen. No time for lights. Remembering where, then reaching out and feeling the cold shape of the payphone in front of her. Her numbed fingers reached for the right slot and she dialled.
‘Emergency. Which service, please?’
Helen gabbled her message and then ran again. The tableau at the tip of the island was almost unchanged. Gerry was sitting with his head in his hands, tears of shock running down his face.
Tom was kneeling, the only sound the sharp gasp of indrawn breath as he sucked in and then blew precious air into Oliver’s motionless chest. Once, only once, he glanced up desperately towards the bridge.
‘They’re coming,’ Helen said. Her face sagged as she spoke. She had seen the dark contusion at Oliver’s temple where his head had struck the stone pier of the bridge.
The seconds dragged into minutes, an infinity of time. Helen knelt on the wet grass with her fists clenched, not daring to move. Gerry smeared the tears from his face and crouched wordlessly beside her. The only sound in the world was Tom blowing into the white lips beneath his.
At last they heard the speeding ambulance and saw the blue light flash on the bridge above them.
‘Thank God,’ Tom said, not looking up from his task.
Helen scrambled to the steps to guide them and they came running, two homely men in blue uniforms with a black bag between them.
A dim hope fluttered inside her.
‘Stand aside, please.’ One of the men put his hand on Tom’s shoulder as he got painfully to his feet. The three of them stood huddled to one side as the rescuers bent to their work.
But as soon as she saw that their attempts to bring Oliver back were grim ritual, Helen knew that it was no use. They seemed so cruelly rough with him, but still he made no flicker of response.
At last, very slowly, one of the ambulance men stood up. He had a round baby face, with spectacles glinting under his peaked cap.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
The lights in Follies House flicked suddenly on and the door swung open. Rose came stumbling across the grass. She was in her nightdress and her bulk wobbled shapelessly beneath it. Her mouth was open to scream but no sound came out. Instead she fell into a heap beside Oliver and started to stroke his face, pushing the matted wet hair back from his temples like a child’s.
‘Come back,’ she begged him in a high, thin voice. ‘Oh please, come back. I will look after you. You know I will.’ The scream came now, and one of the ambulance men helped her away.
‘Will somebody take her back indoors?’ he asked.
Helen put her arms around the cushiony shoulders and led her away. As she went she saw that Gerry was standing stiffly over Oliver, looking down into his face as if he wanted to apologise for something. At last Tom seemed to notice him.
‘You can only just swim yourself, can’t you?’ Gerry nodded numbly. ‘You’re a very brave man,’ Tom said. His voice was breaking and he turned sharply away. He walked like an old man down to the tip of the island and stood staring away into the horrible water. Helen went on up the path with Rose. Fear began to well up through the immediate shock and grief. Tom would take the responsibility for tonight upon himself, and he would take it hard.
Helen forced her own feelings out of her head and set about tending to Rose. The fat woman was utterly distraught. She was babbling through the tears that pulsed out of her screwed-up eyes. ‘I loved him. I let him have anything, oh, everything that he wanted just to keep him coming here once in a while. You think that’s impossible, an old woman like me, loving a boy like that? But I did. I loved him like a lover. My lovely Oliver.’
Helen couldn’t bear to listen. ‘We all loved him,’ she said gently. It’s true, she thought. For his reckless, doomed charm, we all loved him in our different ways.
Mechanically she groped about in Rose’s witches’ kitchen, making sweet tea and searching for something that would act as a sedative. At last, leaving Rose whimpering in her rocking chair, she went back into the hall.
They had brought Oliver in on a stretcher. The police were there now, burly men flashing silver buttons and chains and talking about statements. Tom was waiting tensely with Gerry beside him. Helen bled for the pain in his dark eyes. A young doctor, his face bleared with sleep, was folding a blanket back over what was no longer Oliver, but simply a cold, sad body. Helen saw how still it lay under the bright scarlet blanket. She looked away, up past the exquisite Jacobean panelling and the fat carved balusters of the gallery to the dim heights above them.
It was just here, she remembered, that she had first spoken to him. So long ago, now.
There was the sound of running footsteps outside and sharp, anxious voices. It was the others, coming back from the Ball. She had a sudden picture of the scene up on the bridge, the white police Rover with the orange and red flashes and the ambulance behind it, doors open, the blue light still revolving futilely on the roof. The grim appendages of every accident and tragedy. How many times had she averted her gaze from the same scene? And seen it too clearly once before, when they came for her father. How must it look now to Darcy and the others, coming back laughing, in search of her probably, and seeing that waiting for them?
Darcy. A cold shaft pierced her. Again, how could she, she had forgotten him. Her thoughts had been all for Tom.
The front door opened and beyond it she saw that the dawn had broken. The sky was gunmetal grey.
Her friends crowded in together, fear in their faces. Darcy’s eyes found hers at once and the horror in them melted away. Then he saw her pallor and the muddy, soaking wreck of her dress.
‘Helen. What’s happened? Are you all right?’
Over her shoulder he saw the stretcher and the long red outline, and the faces of the police, the ambulance men and the doctor.
‘It’s Oliver, isn’t it?’ He looked around at them all. ‘Isn’t it?’ he repeated. ‘Please tell me what has happened.’
Behind him Chloe’s hand went to her mouth. Pansy reached out to Scot Scotney and he held on to her, eyes narrowed in his tough face.
It was Helen who told him, in broken sentences ragged with her first sobs. Darcy listening with his head bowed but his hands were on her arms, comforting her. At the end he looked up, across to Gerry and then to Tom.
‘You went in after him?’ he asked. Their soaked clothes and uncontrollable shivering even under draped blankets answered him. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
The doctor, younger than Darcy, shifted on his feet. ‘He struck his head on the bridge as he overbalanced. His lungs filled with water at once. Death would have been within seconds. No-one could have done anything.’
Helen saw Tom shuddering. Except pr
event him from going on the river at all. She heard the words in his head as clearly as if he had spoken them. Her muscles bunched to run to him, but then she saw Darcy’s hands, inanimate, still on her arms. She froze and Tom sat down, alone, at the foot of the stairs.
Darcy was talking. His voice was very gentle, but he had discarded his old, diffident self as inappropriate for this ugly dawn. He was their authority now. He thanked the ambulance men gravely and then turned to the police.
‘Yes. I am his brother.’
‘Your name, sir?’
‘John Mortimore,’ he answered, and Helen looked at him as if he was a stranger. ‘Viscount Darcy.’
‘Thank you, sir. Um, my lord.’
The statements, pitifully brief, took only a few moments to collect. Tom and Helen gave theirs. Gerry, by the merest coincidence, had been outside smoking a last cigarette and had seen them coming over. He had nothing else to add.
It was all over. The police bent to the poles of the stretcher.
‘Do you have to take him away?’ Darcy asked.
‘I am afraid so, my lord.’
‘Will you let me have two minutes with him?’ His voice never wavered.
They crowded clumsily away into Rose’s kitchen. Rose was still hunched in her chair, and she looked up through swollen eyes at the averted faces of the police. Chloe was crying, black smudges of mascara under her eyes, but Pansy’s white face was dry and hard. She simply twisted a shred of handkerchief between her fingers, to and fro, like a snake.
Tom was there too, across the room, but Helen couldn’t look at him. An awful realisation was coming to her.
Darcy came back.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Take him now, if you’re ready, officer.’
They went out and between them they lifted the poles of the stretcher. The awkward procession bumped out into the grey light. From the hallway the women heard them slipping and sliding on the narrow stone steps, and the little grunts of effort as they carried Oliver’s body away. Then the ambulance doors slammed on him, and he was gone.