Sunday: 9
That evening, Naia’s former parents got into a scrap. It wasn’t a row as such; more a few rounds of tetchy backbiting. It all started with Ivan grumbling yet again about the three-and-a-half-year-old Saab in the garage. Ivan was fond of that car. It was the first he’d ever owned, apart from the forty-year-old Daimler inherited from his father.
‘Yes, we know it’s waterlogged,’ Alex said through her teeth. ‘We know it will take an eternity to dry out. We know that even after an eternity it may never work properly again. We know, we know, we know. You don’t have to keep saying it.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ Ivan said. ‘It’s not your car.’
‘Oh? I thought it was the family car.’
‘It is, but I drive it most of the time. Used to drive it, that is, before – ’
‘Ivan, will you shut up about the sodding car?’ Alex said.
‘You don’t understand,’ he wailed plaintively.
‘Don’t understand? How could I fail to understand when I keep hearing the same thing, hour after hour? We all have problems. I can’t get to the village without dressing like a deep sea diver, I can’t work because the College is closed, it’s a constant battle to keep the water from dribbling under the doors. But you don’t hear me droning on and on about it all the time.’
‘What are you doing now then?’ Ivan said.
‘Responding!’ she snapped.
This would have been an ideal time for Ivan to shut up before tempers got really frayed, but the truth was he was bored without the shop to go to, customers to chat to, stock to seek out and haggle over. Bored and therefore restless. Restless, therefore short-tempered. Short-tempered, therefore combative. So they went on, the pair of them, sniping and snarling, criticizing one another – with some justification and with none – spinning the whole thing out far beyond its natural span as a mere spat, until Ivan noticed that Alaric had turned the TV down and was observing all this with a huge grin.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You two.’
‘We’re not funny.’
‘Are from where I’m sitting.’
‘Your mother started it,’ Ivan said.
‘Me?’ Alex said. ‘You were going on about your car. All I did was tell you to give it a rest.’
‘How can I give it a rest? It was a nice car. Now it’s junk.’
‘There you go again.’
‘I’m just stating a fact.’
‘Well kindly consider it stated and change the subject. Better still say nothing. I’m sick of the sound of your voice.’
‘Oh, charming.’
‘Well.’
‘I mean, what a thing to say.’
‘You can’t stop, can you?’ Alex said.
‘I will if you will.’
‘I have stopped. Just don’t mention the rotten car again.’
‘Rotten’s the word for it now.’
‘And once again.’
And on they went, and on and on, neither of them quite able to put an end to it, concede defeat. Alaric shook his head as though watching two children squabbling. It was so normal. Normal and everyday. Perfect.
Later, he stood at his bedroom window overlooking the south garden. It was growing dark, but he’d not turned the light on and could make out the Family Tree without straining. Once, long before his time, the grand old oak had been just one tree among several in that part of the garden. Now it rose solitarily from the water, its nearest neighbor a bank of rhododendrons and camellias. He hadn’t thought about the tree much lately, but there was something about it that compelled him to look at it now, and almost at once a reason appeared in the figure that dropped down from it. A small silent splash and the figure was standing in the water. Alaric leant closer to the glass. A stranger climbing out of a tree in your garden would have been startling enough, worrying enough, but…
His mouth dried. The visitor wading toward the house was close enough to recognize now. It was him. Himself.
The Alaric in the garden paused, glanced up, saw that he was being watched, and leaned forward to try and make out the face at the window. When he saw who it was, he jumped as though struck, stumbled, cast about him with something like alarm, and vanished.
MONDAY
Monday: 1
Withern Rise had become a great tri-roofed ark adrift in a tideless ocean dotted with islands composed of bushes and trees and hints of distant buildings. In his eleven years Aldous had seen his world transformed by snow, rimmed with frost, made unreal by the moon; but never had he seen it like this. He was particularly taken with the view from his room of the forest of floating willows, the osier beds.
Once, when he was little, Grandpa Eldon had persuaded the osier cutters to take him out with them. He’d admired these men since he first saw them from a distance: lean, standing heroes with cigarettes or pipes in their mouths, guiding their shallow boats through waterways far too narrow for ordinary boatmen to navigate with ease. There had been four boats the day the men agreed to take him out. He was in the third of them. He’d been told to sit, and hold on, but the men did not sit. Nor did they often duck. Propelling their boats with poles, they bent and swayed and wove to avoid the countless flailing willow strings. The water had a slightly stagnant smell, but to Aldous it was part of the adventure. And what an adventure! He had watched in awe as Mr. Welborne, in whose boat he travelled, caught bundle after bundle of withies in an extended hook, jerked them down for cutting with a sickle, and deftly trimmed them with a knife before casting them to the floor of the boat.
Since that exhilarating day, he had never ceased to believe that if he was allowed to grow to manhood he too would become an osier cutter. He imagined himself, standing tall in a boat of his own, sleeves rolled up past the elbow, red scratches and weals on his forearms, cap on head, cigarette slotted into the corner of his mouth. There he would be, driving a pole into the mud, as certain of his routes, assured in his skill, as the men he’d gone out with that day when he was young. If Maman could be persuaded to let him take the boat out today he might row into the forest and pretend as he advanced through the countless criss-crossing channels that he was already one of those great men. He prayed, silently, as she herself had taught him, that his father would manage to convince her.
Monday: 2
With the French doors of the Long Room well sealed, the floodwater kept resolutely at bay, Naia couldn’t resist lying on the floor, below water level, and peering beyond the glass. There wasn’t much to see, but it was an experience. Another solitary experience. Be nice to share things sometimes. Generally, though, she was more comfortable alone in this false reality. She didn’t have to watch what she said when no one was listening. She knew that she must eventually find a way to feel at home here, but as yet she could not imagine how she would ever accept this world, which accepted her so totally.
She was still lying on the floor when the doorbell clanged. Feeling caught out in a childish act, she jumped to her feet. But then she thought: the doorbell? Apart from the postman in his company waders, who could possibly have slushed all the way to their front door, which couldn’t be opened anyway? The bell rang again. Ivan was in town and Kate was vacuuming upstairs, so it was up to her. She went out to the hall; looked through the window beside the door. A very familiar figure stood in the porch, in half a shiny black wetsuit (the bottom half). Robert Faulkner. Her almost-boyfriend in her true reality, virtual stranger here. She’d found that out very early on, when she’d put in a tentative call to his mobile. Same number, but the voice at the other end when she announced herself was puzzled rather than warm or pleased, clearly wondering why she was ringing him. Just one more loss to get used to.
She raised the sash. ‘Yes?’
He stepped sideways in the water to stand before her. Naia’s heart jumped. It was the closest she’d been to this version of him. Perhaps there could be something between them here too, in time. A relationship with an alternative Robert Faulkner might h
elp her adjust to other things.
‘You want eggs?’ he said.
No special light in his eye as he looked at her. Where the other Robert couldn’t keep his hands off her, this one was indifferent.
‘Eggs?’
He indicated the high-wheeled cart he was pushing round the village. ‘Fresh today. Gathered ’em meself.’ His father had a smallholding, where he grew vegetables and reared a few dozen chickens.
‘Did you have to dive for them?’ she asked.
‘Sorry?’
Bit slow. Serious type. Her own Robert, her lost Robert, for all his potential as a visual artist of some sort, wouldn’t have gained many fans on the stand-up circuit. Ditto, this one.
‘Joke,’ she said. ‘How’s the art?’
He frowned. ‘Okay,’ he said slowly, with a What’s it to you? air.
‘I heard you were going to college in September.’
He relaxed a little. She’d touched on something close to his heart.
‘Yeh. Can’t wait.’
‘Well… hope it works out for you.’
‘Ta.’
After which there was little to say that was not to do with eggs. Naia went along the hall and called up to Kate – several times, loudly, to make herself heard above the roar of the old vac. When she finally got a reply she returned to the window with the news.
‘Sorry. Don’t need any.’
‘Okay.’ All the same to him.
She watched him push the cart away, against the resistance of the water. She might have tried harder, but there’d been no spark. Not from him. None at all.
She closed the window.
Monday: 3
F
ather had done it! Convinced Maman to let him take the boat out – alone! How he’d managed it Aldous had no idea, nor did he ask; it was sufficient that he was allowed. But there was a condition. His mother insisted on being able to see him whenever she looked out, and from wherever, which meant that he must not go beyond the boundaries of the property. This was a disappointment for Aldous, but there were a great many things to row around, between and under, and it was some way to any of the boundary walls. His father offered to carry him to the boat. They went downstairs, and two steps from the water that filled the hall sat to pull their boots on. Then A.E. raised his son to his shoulders and carried him to the back door. The door was closed, in spite of the water being as high inside as out, but closing doors after you was a habit Marie would allow no one to break, flood or no flood.
Aldous was no lightweight these days, but his father managed to get him to the rowing boat lashed to a hook beside the back porch. He placed him gently in the boat and ruffled his hair. A.E. loved all four of his children, but Aldous was the one to whom he felt closest. He’d felt this since the minute the boy came into the world, when he stared at his father with large, thunder-blue eyes that seemed to say, ‘Hullo, it’s me!’ His eye color had shifted toward a mild blue-green as he grew older, but the bond between them had never changed. If absolutely forced to, A.E. could imagine being without his wife or his other children, even the girls, who delighted him, but life without Aldous was unthinkable. He was at least as concerned for the lad’s safety as Marie, but he understood, where she did not, a growing boy’s need of independence. He suppressed the cry of ‘Mind how you go!’ that rose to his lips, and merely waved as his beaming son set off.
An able oarsman, Aldous rounded the corner of the house with half a dozen confident dips. His mother leant out of a window as he passed below. ‘You be careful now!’ He laughed happily and rowed across the kitchen garden to the cemetery wall, and along the line of the wall to the side gate where, knowing he was still observed from the house, he turned the boat around and followed the northern wall to the river: another point beyond which he was forbidden to go. He paused above the invisible bank, gazing longingly at the willows opposite, then, with some regret, swung around to continue his authorized voyage through the grounds.
Monday: 4
Alaric had got up late and taken his time over breakfast. He knew what he must do, but he wasn’t looking forward to it. By eleven, having run out of excuses, he could put it off no longer. Before going, he stood in the doorway of the River Room watching Alex work on a rag rug for her garden studio when it became usable again. It was the sort of thing Liney might have made, except that in Alex’s hands it was not a scrappy hotchpotch of ill-assorted colors. Dear old Liney. He wondered what she was doing now.
Alex glanced up. ‘Loose end?’
He shrugged. ‘Just watching.’
‘So watch from a sitting position. Talk to me.’
‘I’m on my way out.’
‘You’d never know it. Where to?’
‘Just paddling around.’
‘By yourself?’
‘Yeh.’
‘You spend too much time alone these days, Alaric.’
‘How much is too much?’ he said.
‘No idea. Something my mum used to say to me. God on a stick, I’m turning into my mother!’
‘Hope I don’t,’ he said, and left with her chuckle in his ears.
Monday: 5
Shortly after eleven, in spite of her misgivings, Naia attempted the Coneygeare, inching slowly through the water hoping she wouldn’t come a cropper. Every now and then she stumbled in a gully or over some unseen object, but always managed, just, not to career headlong – until she skidded on something slimy and lost her balance, sitting down with a small but undignified splash. Fortunately, the land rose a little at this point, so the water was shallower than elsewhere, but still, it was deep enough to soak her to the waist. Struggling to her feet, she found Grandpa Rayner’s waders half full of water, while her jeans and pants clung unpleasantly. Cursing her stupidity for trying to cross the Coneygeare while being so certain that she’d never make it, she turned and headed, with exceptional care and raised elbows, for Withern Rise.
‘Nai! Nai!’
A summons from behind. Nafisa Causa and Selma Jakes, across the water, waving like demented marionettes. She returned the greeting but did not turn back. Better to seem stand-offish than endure chafing from prolonged contact with wet underwear. And what did it matter, really, if these false friends were offended? They looked and acted and spoke like people she had known, but they were not those people. Surrounded by clones who harked back to events and conversations in which she had not participated, it was all she could do to get through the days, to say nothing of the nights.
Monday: 6
In shorts and uncool sandals once again, Alaric started across the south garden. Nearing the Family Tree he made sure not to touch any part of it, even the raised roots below water level. The tree wasn’t safe, he’d learnt that before, but he had to approach it, at least approach it, because last night another Alaric had dropped down from its branches, apparently realized he was in the wrong reality, and simply vanished. Simply? How? And where had he gone? Back where he belonged, or somewhere else?
It occurred to him that the visitor might have been the Alaric whose room he’d strayed into the night in February that he’d been trying to get home from Naia’s. But suppose he wasn’t. Suppose he was just one of several. That there was one other him was disconcerting. That there might be a number was both horrifying and fascinating. He considered the tree. If it was the engine of all this, the facilitator, what did you have to do to get it to work?
Monday: 7
Reaching the main gate, Naia started along the drive (which, she thought without humor, should be renamed ‘the wade’). About to pass a gap in the shrubbery to her left, she plunged through instead, careless of what she trampled in her impatience to reach the house and dry clothes. The shortcut took her into the south garden. She was passing beneath the Family Tree when she heard a rustling overhead, followed by a tiny self-pitying mew. Moving closer to the trunk, she saw a small white shape peering down at her, wide-eyed and shivering.
‘You daft mog. What are you doing up there?’
<
br /> The tree was some distance from the nearest dry land, which meant the cat must have swum here. Few domestic cats enjoy water, but this one didn’t seem to know that. Three times in the past two days she’d seen this bold little creature splashing around the garden, and rescued him. Today she hadn’t seen him, hadn’t been there to haul him back, and he’d made it all this way, and up the tree. Astonishing.
Emboldened by her presence, the cat began a timorous descent by a complicated route. When he paused as if in need of further encouragement Naia raised her arms, hands open. The small animal responded by edging a little lower, very cautiously, but again reached a point beyond which he felt unable to continue. Naia considered. The cat was beyond her reach. To get to him she would have to climb up to the bough he’d made it down to. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed a tree. Hadn’t expected to ever have to climb one again. Hardly ladylike. But...
‘Alaric,’ she said to the cat. ‘I want you to know that there is no one – no one else in the world – that I would do this for. I hope you appreciate that.’
The Realities of Aldous U Page 18