‘Plan?’
‘Well, they’re not going to open the door and let all the water in just because we ring the bell, are they?’
‘There are windows.’
‘Oh, right, so we knock on a window and someone answers. Then what? We say we’re family from a couple of other dimensions and shake hands all round?’
‘No, we just get into some sort of general conversation and see what – ’
‘May I help you?’
They looked up: a man, leaning out of a first-floor window.
Naia took a breath. ‘Time to wing it,’ she muttered.
‘Jesus,’ said Alaric.
Wednesday: 4
Some way beyond the town bridge, Larissa turned the boat toward the bank and lodged it in a small harbor of bulrushes. There, taking a pair of secateurs from a leather satchel, she cut a dozen rushes, which she placed almost reverently on the floor of the boat.
The bank on the Great Parr side of the bridge was a little higher than most of the land hereabouts, so they might have got out and walked on dry land for a change: the first time in days. Aldous and Mimi exchanged longing glances, but as their aunt made no move to do any such thing, neither of them dared suggest it. Just as the children began to wonder what they would do next, she produced a small muslin bag which, opened out, revealed several dozen bright green gooseberries.
‘Salvaged these last week, just before the flooding,’ Larissa said. ‘Been ripening after a fashion on my window sill ever since.’ She bit one in half with her front teeth and savored it while wincing. ‘Ooh, I do love early goosegogs,’ she said, ‘Try them!’ Swallowing the other half with lip-smacking relish, she offered the bag. ‘Sour, hard and hairy,’ she said. ‘Fair description of my son’s father as I recall, but give me a gooseberry every time.’
Aldous and Mimi each took a gooseberry, and a tentative taste. Larissa beamed when their cheeks hollowed. They nibbled dutifully after that, with taut expressions, while she popped whole gooseberries one after the other into her mouth, biting down enthusiastically.
‘Gooseberries are sometimes called fayberries,’ their aunt told them, tucking in with a will. ‘Fayberries, fairyberries, because it was once believed that fairies sheltered in the prickly bushes from predators like us. My granny – Elvira, her name was – informed me at a very tender age that I was born under the gooseberry bushes at Withern Rise.’ She hooted with laughter. ‘Took me years to realize that it might not be entirely true. Probably scarred me for life.’
Tart and juiceless as the gooseberries were, to Aldous and Mimi, in a boat so far from home, and their mother’s watchful eye, they were a rare gift. Nibbling and grimacing on the still water, beneath a cool white sun, there was an air of serenity that felt timeless and complete – until a small, red-brown, bushy-tailed creature tripped down a pine tree on the bank to nibble a cone gripped in its claws, and Larissa whispered: ‘Squirrel!’
They watched for a minute in silence before Larissa said, still in a very hushed voice, ‘I lived for a while in Ontario, you know. Log cabin by a lake, heavenly until winter came, when I would head south, to Florida. I had a companion called Tallulah at the time, glorious hair, writing a book about British women who settled in Canada in the late eighteen eighties. One spring at the lake, while Lulah was with me, I found a baby squirrel in the grass. He was quite tiny; so new that his eyes were still shut. I picked the little thing up, fed him with an eye dropper, kept him in the bedroom, and he thrived. He became very attached to me. I called him Scallywag. Scally for short. That Fall, I took him outside and put him in a tree. Told him to go find his own kind. He wouldn’t leave. Absolutely refused. I tried this any number of times, but he simply wouldn’t go, preferred to tuck himself inside my shirt or under my arm. I tried taking a branch into the house to get him used to trees, but he wasn’t interested unless I sat on the branch with him. When he could get away with it, Scally slept in my sweater drawer. Sometimes I would take out a jumper and he would tumble onto the floor. Outside the cabin, he would race around me, round and round and round, the way squirrels race round trees, then jump on my shoulders, and rummage in my pockets for peanuts and acorns.’
Larissa paused, thinking back, a small private smile on her lips.
‘Fortunately,’ she went on, again quietly, so as not to disturb the nibbling squirrel, ‘just before we went south that year, Scally at last took to the trees. Vanished without so much as a farewell twitch of the tail. Surprising how much that hurt. But the following spring when I returned – minus lovely Lulah – I was talking to an elderly neighbor who lived year round along the lake, and he told me that one morning he was sitting outside eating his breakfast and a red squirrel jumped onto his shoulder and tried to burrow into his pocket. It could only have been my Scallywag.’
As Larissa finished her story, the squirrel on the bank became aware of watching eyes. It tossed the pine cone in the air and shot up the tree as though fired from a gun. Larissa glanced at Aldous and Mimi. They’d never seen such a smile on her face. Within that swathe of leaning bulrushes, one pale June day when the water was high, a boy and his young sister sat in a nook of tranquility that would stay with them for life. A life which, for one, would extend into old age, and for the other, end tomorrow.
Wednesday: 5
As they approached the house, with Naia leading the way, another face appeared in the window below the man’s: a small boy’s.
‘We were looking for Aldous,’ Naia said.
‘Ah, well, you’ve missed him. He’s off boating with his aunt and sister. Anything I can do?’
‘Not really. We were just going to... hang out.’
‘Hang out?’
‘Pass the time.’
‘Bit old for friends of my son’s, aren’t you?’ the man said as Alaric drew alongside Naia, at a calculated arm’s reach.
‘We were staying with relatives when the floods came,’ Naia said, ‘and then we couldn’t go home. We met Aldous a couple of days ago. He was in his boat.’
‘He wasn’t allowed beyond the gate,’ the man said dubiously.
‘That’s where we met him – at your gate. We were just passing. He said we ought to pop in and say hello next time we were…’
It sounded dodgy even to her, but the man evidently decided to accept it, for he said: ‘I’ll come down. I was going to collect the eggs anyway.’
‘Daddy, me too, Daddy, please?’ the small boy said.
The man laughed. ‘Got to bring my lad, it seems. Would you catch this?’
A wicker basket tumbled through the air. Naia lurched toward it, missed it, and lost her footing. Reaching frantically for something to save herself, she caught Alaric’s arm before he could step away. He would have shaken her off, but she held on and pulled herself upright.
‘You’d see me drown, would you?’ she said to him.
‘I caught you, didn’t I?’
‘I caught you. But at least we know that touching doesn’t do anything here. Sorry!’ she said, holding up the dripping basket for the benefit of the man at the window.
‘Never mind, doesn’t have to be dry,’ he said, popping a leg over the sill. He stepped very cautiously onto the ladder, his little boy astride his neck, and backed slowly down, rung by careful rung.
‘What now?’ Alaric whispered.
‘You tell me,’ Naia said.
The man, in chest-high one-piece black waders, lowered himself into the water around the foot of the ladder. ‘This is Ray,’ he said, turning, patting his son’s knee.
Naia smiled. ‘Hello, Ray. How are you?’
‘I’m very well, thank you,’ the boy said. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m very well too.’
‘How are you?’ he asked Alaric.
‘Stunning,’ Alaric grunted.
‘Would you like some eggs to take back with you?’ the man asked them.
‘Oh, thanks,’ Naia said, ‘but I don’t think we need any.’
‘Course you do.
Everyone needs eggs. This way.’
Alaric glanced about him with studied indifference as they followed the man and his son round the side of the house. Naia’s more inquisitive eyes absorbed everything. They were wading past the front door when the man began to sing.
O, there was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He grew whiskers on his chin again…
The visitors exchanged amused glances; even more amused when the croaky little voice of the boy joined in.
The wind came out and blew them in again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan begin again.
There… was an old man named…
There were a number of notable differences between their versions of the house and this. The window surrounds were varnished, there were painted lead drainpipes instead of black PVC ones, no front porch, and there was a door between the main door and the kitchen’s. At Naia’s and Alaric’s there was no such door, only a vertical discoloration where there’d once been one.
He ran a race and thought he’d win again,
Got so puffed he had to go in again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan begin again.
There… was an old man named…
They passed the turf-covered hut, over the door of which hung a sheet of coarse brown leather. Naia would have asked about the hut if not for the singing, which, from his tormented expression, was getting on Alaric’s nerves.
He got drunk from drinking gin again
Thus he wasted all his tin again
Poor old Michael Finnegan McGinnegan.
The verse ended as they reached a wooden shack with windows of wire mesh which occupied part of the space where the garage should be. As his father unhooked the gate, the boy on his shoulders turned to look at Naia, who was immediately behind them. Up close, she noticed that he had a dimple in his left cheek and startlingly blue eyes, a combination which jogged something in her, though she failed to pin it down before the father made some bland comment about the floods which she felt obliged to respond to.
There’d been no barrier to keep the water out of the hen house, but there were straw-filled shelves around the walls, where the birds perched, slept, laid their eggs. Naia and Alaric waited outside while the man and his son ducked through the door. The chickens hadn’t been fed any less promptly during the floods. Grain and meal had been spread daily along their beds instead of scattered haphazardly across the ground, so they were inconvenienced hardly at all.
‘Better off than us, they are,’ the man said. ‘No one feeds us, and we can’t get near our kitchen.’
All the time his father was collecting the eggs, the boy barely took his eyes off Naia and Alaric. Alaric hated being stared at and looked away. It was while Naia was returning that curious gaze that she realized what it was about the boy. ‘My God,’ she said, and with the realization several things clicked into place at once.
‘Pardon?’ the father said, turning.
‘Nothing, I... just remembered that we promised to be home by now.’
‘Well, let’s get to the kitchen and find something to put some of these in. Bye for now, my pretties,’ he said to his chickens as he closed their door.
He closed the wire gate and started back, the boy still on his shoulders. Following, Naia looked about her with new eyes, wide eyes, taking in even more details than before, breathlessly.
Ohhhh, there was an old man named Michael Finnegan…
Alaric groaned.
He went fishing with a pin again,
Caught a fish and dropped it in again,
Poor old Michael Finnegan McGinnegan.
The man pushed the kitchen door back. The water was as high inside as out. Naia and Alaric remained outside, he affecting boredom, she too bemused by the flash of intuition at the hen house to realize that she was craning her neck to peer inside. It wasn’t much like the kitchen she knew. No fitted units; instead, open shelves and free-standing cabinets. The sink was a large white enamel job with wooden drainers on either side, and there was an old range, huge and black, instead of a modern cooker. No fridge or freezer.
‘Can’t we just go?’ Alaric whispered.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go,’ he hissed.
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. The tree?’
‘And do what? Wait to be whisked back where we came from?’
‘What else?’
‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ Naia said.
‘What about?’
She nodded at the man in the kitchen sorting through the eggs, his son still on his shoulders, leaning over to count them into a small bag.
‘Doesn’t the boy remind you of someone?’
‘No. Should he?’
‘Give him a good look when they come out.’
Alaric scowled. ‘Why don’t you just tell me?’
‘All right. I think he’s Grandpa Rayner.’
‘Uh?’
‘I think the boy is Grandpa Rayner. Want me to say it again?’
‘Grandpa Rayner? But he was an old man.’
‘Not so old.’
‘And he’s dead.’
‘Yes, but – ’
She might have completed the explanation, or part of it, but for a shift in the light and a switch of surroundings. Two switches.
‘Here we are,’ A.E. said, emerging from the kitchen with the bag of eggs. He glanced about. So did little Ray. Their visitors had gone.
‘Look up!’ cried a voice before they could express surprise.
Father and son looked up.
‘Step back!’ the voice commanded.
They stepped back.
‘Wave!’
They waved.
‘Smile!’
They smiled.
Marie, leaning out of a first-floor window, took a snapshot with her husband’s Baby Brownie. Some months from now she would put the small black-and-white print in the family album with tears in her eyes. Everything would be seen through tears then.
Wednesday: 6
The only thing that hadn’t changed was their proximity to the house. The kitchen door was closed, the water level was lower, and they were alone, Naia in her present reality, Alaric in his. Their bodies sagged and it was a real effort to get to the window in the Long Room and climb in. Alex was in the utility room off the kitchen, so Alaric wasn’t seen, but Naia was.
‘Naia?’ Kate said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I just... Wooh!’
Kate helped her out of the waders and guided her to the couch, arm round her shoulders.
‘What happened?’
‘I came over a bit dizzy, that’s all. Just need to sit a while.’
‘Anything I can get you?’
‘No. Thanks.’
‘Want me to go?’
Naia said nothing, just stared ahead of her. Kate took the hint. When she was alone Naia lay back with relief, too worn out to even think.
Wednesday: 7
Alaric took his shorts off in the bathroom, dried his legs, and stumbled along the landing feeling as though he’d just climbed a very steep hill instead of the stairs. In his room he closed the door very quietly, lay on his bed, and shut his eyes, gratefully.
Wednesday: 8
When Naia woke there was a mug of chocolate on the coffee table near her head. She sat up and put the mug to her lips. The chocolate was cool but still good. After a while she went upstairs. She reached the landing as Alaric, in his reality, got off his bed, moved toward the door, stepped outside. They headed for the box room at the very same instant.
On an otherwise clear wall in both box rooms there was a rack of metal shelves, put up by two Alex Underwoods to hold jigsaws, board games, and odds and ends that had no place elsewhere. On the top shelf there was a handful of dog-eared pamphlets and books. The books included an out of date Atlas of the Universe, On the Plurality of Worlds by David Lewis, the 1890 Punch annual, 1981’s Baedeker’s Italy, and the old family album.
 
; Unaware of their impeccable timing, Naia and Alaric took down the old photo albums and carried them to their rooms. There, seated in their identical chairs, they began their search for faces, names, clues.
Wednesday: 9
Naia often went into the garden when she had a problem to resolve, but walking through high water was hard work, so when she came to the upturned rowing boat on the slope above the landing stage she welcomed it as a place to sit. The repetitive call of a pigeon on the roof, and evening light like old parchment, soothed her. At certain times – and this was undoubtedly such a time – the garden at Withern Rise, even under water, felt as solitary as could be. She’d never been afraid of solitude, but she would have valued company just now. Alaric’s company. He was still prickly, still suspicious of flights of the imagination, but he was the only person who wouldn’t think she was out of her mind to speak of the things that troubled and confused it.
Naia – Alaric too, though she didn’t know it – had gathered enough information from the old family album to convince her of who they had met in the other reality. Most of the photos were untitled and undated, but two had the name ‘Rayner’ written underneath. One of these showed a putty-faced baby in a crocheted shawl and someone’s arms, and the other a boy of four or five on the garden swing, an older sister standing beside him, frowning for the lens. But it was a third picture that clinched the boy’s identity. Unlike many of the others, this one was captioned The Floods, June 1945. In it the boy sat astride the shoulders of his father, who wore high rubber waders and stood in water. The man held a small paper bag in one hand and his other hand rested on the boy’s right knee, and both father and son waved at the camera situated somewhere above them. There was no doubt in Naia’s mind – or Alaric’s when he saw this picture – that the small boy who’d found them so fascinating that morning was the grandfather last seen five years ago, aged sixty-two, on his premature deathbed. The man whose shoulders he rode, in whose song he had joined, was Alaric Eldon Underwood, their great-grandfather, who died about twenty years before their parents were born.
The Realities of Aldous U Page 22