Sunday: 3
While the only way to get Alaric’s album back to him looked like being to take it to the 1945 reality, it was too valuable to just dump there on the offchance that he would turn up at some point and find it. And what if it fell into the wrong hands? The bewilderment a full-color 21st century family album would cause in the 1940s! All she could do was attempt to go there and hope Alaric made the same attempt at the same time, and, like her, succeeded.
So she went to the tree and leaned against it, hoping to be transported to the earlier reality. When nothing had happened after ten minutes, she sighed, looped her wrist through the handles of the carrier bag that contained the album, and climbed up to the first bough. She sat astride the bough, and more time passed: time in which she grew first bored, then frustrated, then angry. The anger was initially directed at the tree for not performing, then at her continuing unhappy situation, and finally at Alaric himself. She’d been so much better off before Alaric strayed into her life back in February. Not only had she been happier in her ignorance of him and other realities, but she still had her mother, her boyfriend, her friends – her real friends, rather than people who thought they’d known her for years but had never heard of her until four months ago.
Fuming quietly about all this, vowing never again to try to return the album, she prepared to descend the tree, but before her feet met the water an excruciating pain leapt through her. It was short-lived, but in her haste to get down after suffering it, a pocket of her jeans caught on a jagged outcrop of the trunk. She looped the handles of the carrier over a branch and tugged her pocket free before completing her descent. In the water, about to reach up and reclaim the bag, she saw something beyond the tree’s spread that took her breath away. The doors of the house and garage were not the faded green they should be. They’d been stripped back to the wood.
As she stood trying to make sense of this, a man climbed out of a window of the Long Room. Ivan. An Ivan anyway. He looked no different to the Ivan in whose house she now resided, but, because of those doors, she knew that he was not Alaric’s father but her own, her actual father, and that this was the lost reality that she’d never expected to see again.
Heart racing, she darted round the back of the tree; leaned against the trunk for support, questions tumbling wildly, confusedly. What if I speak to him? Will he know me? Will there be a moment of limbo in which everything changes about us and I’m part of this world again as I’ve never been away? If that happens, what of Alaric? Will he still have a place here? We can’t both be here, surely. But what if –
The intense pain again ripped through her, with as little warning as before, and as briefly. Recovering, shaking a little, she peered round the tree. Her father was gone. The doors were green again.
A sob escaped her, but, determined to hold herself together, she reached for the carrier she’d hooked over the branch. When her hand found nothing, she looked up. It wasn’t there. It was still in the reality into which she’d taken it, on the branch she’d hung it on. Next time Alaric went to the tree he would find the bag, and the album inside it. She’d wanted him to have the album back, with the additional pages, but she’d wanted to present it to him personally, see his expression when he realized the extent of her sacrifice. Now he would simply find it, wonder how it got there, but think nothing of her generosity.
Now he had everything. Even the pictures of her mother.
She moped for the rest of the morning, unable to shake both her sense of failure at losing the album, and her frustration at having been back where she belonged so very briefly, and not speaking to her father, or – the bitterest disappointment – catching the slightest glimpse of her mother. She confined herself to her room for most of this time to avoid questions about her mood, but eventually, deciding that activity would be the best distraction, she went outside, to the upended rowing boat by the River Room. She plunged her hands into the water, wormed her fingers under the rim, tried to lift it.
‘Need some help down there?’
Kate, leaning out of the window of the bedroom she shared with Ivan.
‘No, it’s okay.’
‘I’ll be right down.’
Kate rarely wore anything on her feet inside the house now the weather was warmer, so she was already half prepared when she climbed out of the River Room window a minute later. Her faded blue chinos, cut-off at the knee, completed the water-wading attire.
‘Going for a row?’ Kate asked as they hauled the boat up onto its side.
‘Yes. Just round the garden, while I can.’
‘Good thinking. It might never be flooded again.’
‘Come with me,’ Naia said. Company might be better than solitude.
‘I would, but your dad’s just summoned me to the shop. He wants an opinion on some Deco stuff that’s come in. Thinks he has a few Clarice Cliffs from the Griffin collection. If he has, they might end up in the house, but he doesn’t know that yet.’
‘I don’t know how he ever managed without you,’ Naia said as they prepared to lower the boat gently into the water.
‘Nor does he, but he’d never admit it.’
It proved too heavy to lower with care, so they stepped back to let it fall. When it hit, water rose in a wave that drenched them both, to shrieks which quickly turned to riotous laughter. Dripping, still laughing, they went indoors to change. Fifteen minutes later Kate set off in high boots for the shop, and Naia, wearing her new bikini from Next for the first time, climbed into the waterlogged boat.
Sunday: 4
Alaric had planned to take the boat out before the end of the morning, but Alex had asked him to give her a hand moving furniture around: her favorite hobby. The furniture-moving led to supplementary chores, and time slipped by, so that it wasn’t until late-afternoon that he was able to get to the boat.
Rowing slowly, whenever he negotiated the great expanse of the south garden, he kept well away from the Family Tree. Even though he knew it was no longer necessary to be near it, the tree continued to make him uneasy. He felt the knife in his pocket. Next time he would definitely be ready.
Vigilant as he was, the rhythmic rowing motion relaxed a part of his mind that did not need to be alert to sudden change. Thus he was able to revisit his speculations about time-realities. History was nothing if not eventful. There’d been so many significant and momentous incidents that there might be as many small eternities as there were grains of sand in an egg-timer. This led to a wonder if the only way into them was by ‘invitation’. Also, if you were always kicked out of them so soon after your arrival, and why you had to undergo that loss of energy afterwards. Maybe your energy remained in the visited small eternity, like a toll of sorts for being allowed in.
But just a minute. Last night’s visit to the previous Sunday hadn’t drained him as much as the other trips. He was weary afterwards, but not so worn out that he could barely stand. Were the effects slighter because he’d only gone back a few days, to another part of his own small eternity instead of to a quite separate one? It couldn’t be because he’d been there such a short time, because the last time he went to 1945 he was only there a couple of minutes and he felt worse than ever on his return. He swore in frustration. How would he ever get the answers to such questions? There was no one to compare notes with, no reference book with an illuminating chapter that explained everything. There was just him, trying to work it out. Alone.
He had turned the boat toward the river and was crossing the still-submerged landing stage when, with no warning beyond the merest shudder of light, he was in 1945, and the tree, and instantly alert.
Sunday: 5
Naia spent much of the afternoon in the boat. Wonderful feeling, rowing so languorously, sun on bare skin. At one point she moored outside the front door, climbed through the kitchen window, and after a quick dash upstairs for a pee, grabbed a bottle of Lucozade, put some cake in a sandwich bag, and was off again, pursuing a haphazard course (which amounted to no course at all), as
happy as anyone can be in a world where they don’t belong. She had a book with her, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and every now and then would stop rowing and lie back, reading in the sunshine, wishing more than once that she’d brought a different book: Cider With Rosie perhaps.
Around four, she rowed along the drive, but got no further than the gate on finding that the water barely covered Withybank Lane beyond. She wasn’t too disappointed about this. If there were boys about, a girl in a bikini would attract leers, catcalls, the usual lewd remarks. Even with Alaric she might have felt self-conscious showing so much flesh. Not that he would look at her in that way. It was as unthinkable as her ogling his backside when he bent over. She grinned at that thought.
Sunday: 6
Time being so much against him, he squandered none of it, pushing his feet at once into the green expanse below. The blackbird that had looked in, seeing activity, had not stopped. As he settled on the lower bough, Alaric saw that the boy had already fallen, startled not by an overhead flurry this time, but by him, emerging so dramatically from above. Again, Aldous wore the bag over his head. Again the drawstring had caught on the stump and tightened sharply. His feet kicked just short of the water, one arm flailing uselessly while his other hand tried to tug the cord from his throat.
Alaric took out the jack-knife, inserted a thumbnail in the notch along the top of the blade, unfolded it. He reached for the length of cord between neck and tree, but the boy’s frantic movements jerked it out of his hand.
‘Hold on! Don’t struggle!’
He snatched the stretched cord, began sawing at it with the knife. The blade was dull, so it wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. The boy’s legs kicked wildly. His hands fluttered to his sides. Failure seemed likely yet again.
But then the cord snapped and Aldous dropped smoothly into the water. Yes! Alaric jumped after him. His feet hit the water, then the ground beneath. Steadying himself, he slipped one arm under the boy and raised him up, dipped the point of the knife into the heavy polythene, careful not to touch skin. The point was sharper than the blade, so a perforation was easily achieved and quickly converted into a gash. Without wasting time folding the knife and putting it away, he palmed the handle and tugged at the polythene with two fingers of that hand and the full frenzied complement of the other. The material tore easily now that it was cut. Aldous’s head was uncovered, but his face was lifeless, eyes closed. Alaric loosened the cord around his neck, yanked it away, threw it after the polythene remnants floating nearby.
‘Come on,’ he said, shaking the inert form. ‘Come on!’
Aldous’s eyelids fluttered, the light changed that merest fraction, and Alaric was no longer bearing him up, but back on the river sixty years hence, leaning dangerously over the side of the boat. Instantly, as though a switch had been thrown, all strength and energy drained from him. He toppled over, plunged down, the open knife still in his hand. Water filled his ears. He did not try to save himself. He couldn’t. He was barely awake. The hand holding the knife struck bottom first; twisted at the wrist. The knife turned upward as his passive form reached it. The sharp point found a way between ribs, and, as his body slid slowly down the blade, met his heart and ran it through.
It was 5.20 in the afternoon when Alaric died.
5.20pm. A pendulum stops in all the linked realities of The Underwood See where a Westminster clock stands on the mantelpiece. In more than one it is not restarted for two full years.
Sunday: 7
At 5.19 Naia rowed across the landing stage. One more day, she thought, and I’ll be able to stand here again. She was happy enough about that, and might have paused there a while, enjoying the last of the flooding, the river’s great width, the bobbing motion of the boat, if not for the spear of agony that pierced her heart without a whisper of warning. She drew the oars sharply into her chest, shoulders hunched, head down; endured the pain for as long as it took, having no choice. It diminished slowly, and when she was able to relax once more she did so cautiously, fearing its return. Simultaneously lifting her head she saw, just feet away, a boat like hers in every detail, rocking slightly, as though someone had jumped out of it seconds earlier.
Then, like the agony, the boat was gone.
The same apparition was seen by an eleven year old boy from his bedroom window in a small eternity sixty years away. Surprised to see an empty boat on the water, he ran for his mother, brought her to see it for herself. Too late, it was gone.
When the blade of Eldon Underwood’s knife penetrated Alaric’s heart, a reality in which it was deflected by his falling body did not form. New realities are not always born of such moments. There are no absolutes. Chance rules.
Sunday: 8
When Alaric was withdrawn from that small eternity, a vacuum was briefly created in which Aldous, gasping for breath, passed through the three realities in which he had died, returning in four heartbeats to the one in which he survived, where…
‘Aldous? Aldous, what are you doing over there? What’s happening?’
Larissa did not wait for a reply. Nor did she waste time turning the boat and rowing back. She stood up, jumped clumsily into the water, and waded to the tree as quickly as she could, with a great deal of splashing. She bent over the boy to make sure he was still breathing, and floated him to the house on his back. There she carried him into the kitchen and laid him on the table. For the first time since the flooding began, Marie came downstairs. She did not notice the discomfort. Ursula and Mimi were crying. Little Ray could only stare at his brother, so still, pale, deathlike.
Aldous could not be woken.
Months went by without improvement. A.E. was distraught, while Marie, after the initial shock, became businesslike. She consulted medical experts, but none could more than speculate about the cause of the boy’s condition. The best that any of them could suggest was full-time care at a specialist clinic some two hundred miles away: an expensive proposition. In April 1947, shortly after the great flood of that spring, Withern Rise was sold to pay for Aldous’s indefinite residence at the clinic. The family moved north and rented a small prefab nearby. The year after the move, the sorrowing A.E. failed to survive a massive stroke. He had outlived by twenty-two months his grieving counterparts in the three realities in which Aldous died.
After her husband’s death, with no change in her son’s condition, Marie set up a trust fund to cover his care in case anything happened to her before he returned to the world. He did stir every so often, and each time Marie thanked God for bringing him back to her; but he always fell back to sleep within hours, sometimes minutes. During these short periods of wakefulness, Aldous’s mind was a void. He recalled nothing of the life he had lived, of the accident, his family, the woman at his bedside sobbing gratitude to her deity. Even his own name was unknown to him. And he could not retain information. Anything he was told during one waking was completely forgotten by the next.
Years passed in this fashion. Marie remained close to the clinic, while Ursula, Mimi and Ray grew up and moved away to pursue their lives. While he slept, Aldous’s limbs were exercised and massaged to forestall muscular atrophy. He was kept on a drip to prevent dehydration, fed intravenously, turned frequently. The care was dedicated and thorough, but he showed no sign of waking for any length of time. When he woke for half an hour in the July of his forty-third year and his mother wasn’t there, he didn’t miss her. She wasn’t even a memory.
Sunday: 9
Naia had been sleeping soundly, but suddenly, around four, she was wide awake, as if sensing someone in the room. She turned her bedside light on. She was alone, but then a heartfelt grief overtook her; a loss beyond her understanding which brought her into a sitting position on the side of the bed. There, a slow horror filled her, and she jumped up, ran out of the room, started along the landing with dread. Mum! Something awful had happened to Mum! She reached the door of the master bedroom and was about to fling it open when everything came back in a rush. The panic dissolved
, but the grief remained. She retreated shakily, intending to return to her room, but passing the head of the stairs she paused, then went down.
Reaching the lower hall she turned left, into the Long Room. She went to the French doors and drew back the heavy curtains. High clear moon. Clouds like rags. South garden a gleaming lake. She stood there a minute, then went to the couch, where she sat with her knees drawn up, hugging a cushion, still bothered by something she couldn’t begin to identify. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked rhythmically; the clock she’d restarted earlier.
She stayed there, barely moving, thoughts jumping this way and that without focus or conclusion, until birds stirred and chuckled and began to sing, and first light started to seep across the waterlogged garden. Leaving the couch, she walked the length of the room very wearily, and climbed stairs which were suddenly very steep, to a room which, for once, did not feel quite her own. Yet she fell asleep immediately. Dreamed of a torrid affair with a man whose face she couldn’t quite make out.
MONDAY
Monday: 1
Alex was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, just sitting, staring at nothing. She vaguely heard the doorbell but did not stir. A pause, then Mr. Knight appeared at the open window.
‘Scuse, Alex, sorry to bother you, but I just found this in the old oak, hanging from a branch.’
He raised a carrier bag. She got up, puzzled. He handed it over. She looked inside, gaped, took out the photo album, returned to the table with it. She sat down again, heavily, began tracing random patterns on the cover with her fingertips.
‘You know, that tree’s blighted,’ Mr. Knight said. ‘Might not last much longer.’ She wasn’t listening. He considered leaving, but instead said, very gently: ‘Like me to make you a cuppa?’
The Realities of Aldous U Page 29