Attend

by West Camel

  And before they knew it, they were out on the breadth of the river; a strong gust hurled itself against the sail, the boat tipped dramatically, picking up speed as it did so. Anne gasped. Sam grinned and a laugh and spots of saliva escaped his mouth.

  ‘Where to, then?’ he asked, but his voice was lost. He roared the question again and Anne pointed downstream towards Greenwich. They would have to tack across the river, as the wind was blowing out of the east, opposing the flow of the river and the retreat of the tide.

  There were a few other vessels on the water: a couple of other sails, far off; a tug pulling a line of barges piled high with steel crates; a cruiser returning from Greenwich. He checked the pennant on the masthead for variances in the wind.

  The vibrations of the wood against the water made his body sing.

  He swung the tiller, shouted to Anne, ducked under the boom and began a new tack. And now his elevated pulse felt a little uncomfortable. Something low in his chest seemed undone – something was undone on the banks slipping past. He tweaked the sail’s angle and adjusted the tiller, in order to get the best from the wind, to move as fast and as cleanly through the water as possible, to get this key, safely, no mishaps. Things depended on him.

  ‘How much further?’ he called.

  Anne waved her hand: downstream, downstream. She was pleased Sam seemed so confident and happy sailing, but she wanted to be done with this bit of adventure. They seemed to be progressing too slowly, and it was odd to her, this need to cross the river, back and forth, over and over. She glanced about for the little police launches she knew plied the river and strained to see the face of the tug driver as he passed. The pleasure cruiser was near; but she saw now that it was half full, no heads turned to look at them, no one pointed over its rails at the old boat. It was as if they were slipping by unseen. Their quest went ignored. No one but her, Sam and Deborah knew what they were doing; not even the people they were doing it for.

  She thought of the crowd of aimless thugs in Rita’s flat – clenching their fists, but with no one to punch. And she thought of Tom, sucking on his bottle, staring at them all.

  At Sam’s shout she ducked and scrambled across to the other side of the boat again, just managing to avoid the boom. Perhaps one day, in a few years’ time, when Tom was of that age when fear and thrill begin to merge, when secret tunnels and sailing boats could excite him, she would tell him this story. What would she say? ‘Your granddad did this; so your nan had to sort it out.’ Or would she embellish it, obscure it? ‘Your grandmother met a young prince from far away, and a good witch from beside the creek. And together they broke the bad magic, but no one ever knew, except you.’

  Her cheekbones were wet – with splashes from the waves, she supposed, which were then taken by the wind into the hair above her ears. She looked down into the bottom of the boat. She would like to pick Tom up next time she saw him; she would squeeze him and kiss him, not so that Rita or Julie would see, but just for herself. And when he was older, he could come and visit her in her flat, and she would tell him odd little stories while she sewed things.

  The thought flicked her chin up and she saw Deborah’s tiny red-and-white buoy.

  ‘There!’ she shouted, pointing.

  Sam saw the buoy bobbing ahead of them on their portside. They were moving fast, the water was scattered with patches of gold and silver from the sun that slowly set behind them. They were just downstream from the spread of the Naval College, level with the riverside pub and its terrace where Derek had smashed a chair just days before. It seemed like long years. Somewhere beneath them, on the riverbed, was his wedding ring.

  Sam let the sail out, letting the wind escape. Their momentum took them past the buoy and Sam had to bring them about and sail back into the sun.

  ‘Where’s the key, then?’ he shouted, unnecessarily now, as the rush of sounds had dimmed.

  ‘When we were here before Deborah pulled a rope up from underneath the buoy and there was a box tied to it. I suppose it’s in there.’

  ‘OK, sit on the other side to balance me. I’ll try to feel for it.’

  Sam’s hand was cold in the water; he grabbed the buoy as they slid past it and the boat swung around, pulling his arm outwards.

  ‘Pull the tiller towards you, so the bow turns,’ he said to Anne without looking at her, leaning precariously over the side.

  ‘What?’

  Sam turned and pointed, a little frustrated. ‘That thing that you steer with – pull it towards you. It’ll make the boat turn, so I can pull the buoy up.’

  Anne did as she was told, and Sam managed to plunge his arm deep enough to grasp two ropes under the buoy. They were twisted around each other. One would be heavy – weighted with the buoy’s anchor; the other must be attached to the box. He pulled at each, but they were so entangled, it was difficult to know which was which.

  The boat had swung too far around now; Anne didn’t know she had to correct it.

  ‘Pull it back the other way now,’ Sam yelled.

  Both of his arms were in the water past the elbows; the boat pitched dangerously. He could hear the sail shaking, wanting to fill with wind. If it caught a gust, it could tip over and capsize them into the river. Not again. He shifted his legs to spread his weight, trying to ignore the picture in his mind of the blue body bound up with ropes, being pulled out of the lake.

  One hand rose up; this rope was less weighty, but was still wound around the other; he passed it from hand to hand, untwisting. The boat swung wildly; he could tell Anne was attempting to control it, learning as the moment necessitated. The rope in his hand shuddered, its taut thickness burning his palm. But it kept coming. And then, with a straining gloop, the box appeared – a large tin, wrapped in clear plastic.

  ‘Got it.’ And he had it in the boat, a puddle of water with it.

  Anne still had her hand on the tiller, trying to keep the boat straight. She leaned over to see the tin and found herself suddenly surrounded by a pulsating boom. The vibrations seemed to stir up the scent of the river and shuddered through her belly. She twisted around and saw, approaching them from upstream, a white cruise ship. Attended by two squat tugs and buzzed by a flock of fly-like craft, it was a building; a towering piece of architecture come adrift from the riverbank.

  ‘Oh fuck.’ This was it; she thought. The size of the ship was unimaginable. ‘Was that for us?’ But Sam was still busy untying the box from its rope.

  ‘Sam, there’s a fucking great big ship coming at us. We have to get out of the way. We’ll be killed.’

  ‘I know, I know. I just have to untie this.’

  ‘Leave it. We’ll have to come back.’ Anne pushed the tiller backwards and forwards crazily, trying to get the boat moving. The ship’s sharp prow seemed so close, she felt she had to look up at it. Surely someone on the ship would see them?

  ‘Sam!’

  ‘It’s still a long way off; it can’t go fast on the river.’ He wasn’t even looking up at it, his fingers still struggling with the rope.

  ‘But it’s nearly on top of us.’

  ‘It’s not,’ he finally looked up. ‘It’s just big.’

  He pulled hard and the bag and tin slipped out of the last loop. ‘Done it.’ The rope serpented across the gunwale and whipped him across the cheek with its sodden tail.

  The pain refocused him. The ship was moving faster than he had thought; it needed to get to the estuary ahead of the falling tide – such a huge vessel could only be clearing the riverbed by a few metres. Its horn bellowed urgently. The tugs and a pilot were running ahead of it – they would be with them first.

  He leaped to the tiller and mainsheet, almost sitting on Anne, and made a few quick movements. The sail filled and they were heading towards the north bank, just as the pilot boat and tugs cruised past.

  And then came the hulk of the ship.

  They were out of its path, but not of its bow wave. It lifted them up high and then they fell into the trough after; then up and
down again. His insides lagging behind the rest of him, Sam was exhilarated and sweating. He cheered and raised a pointless fist at the beetling decks above them.

  Anne was thrown off her thwart and slipped into the puddle of water in the bottom of the boat. She stayed there, damp and safe, looking up at the lines of lights above her, rivalling the luxury apartments and office blocks on the riverbanks. High up were silhouettes of figures, but no one waved at Sam’s fist.

  ‘They can’t see us,’ Anne said over the rumble of the ship’s engines and the smell of its burning fuel.

  Sam was above her, rocking around as the boat rose and fell. ‘No, they can’t.’

  The boat continued to pitch about with each large wave; but the ship had passed now, just its wake lingering on. It let out another bellow, and its retinue of little craft squeaked and parped in reply.

  Anne picked up the box. Perhaps they would never tell anyone about this close shave. If they managed to get back to Deborah’s, into the house in Albury Street and release Nigel, would they even need to?

  She pulled the box from the clear plastic bag it was folded in and grunted at the supermarket logo on its lid. She had thought it would be an old hinged thing, decorated with pictures of kings and queens. Trust Deborah to keep old secrets in something modern. The lid was stiff, though, and she had to claw at it with her stubby nails. When it came open, she found another plastic bag inside, and inside that, two keys on a large ring – a new, modern Yale, which glinted in the evening light, and an old mortice key, large, heavy and dark brown, barely visible in the dim of the boat bottom.

  Sam watched Anne silently, his hand on the tiller, keeping the boat still, the undulations fading as the wake of the ship died away. He pointed to something else in the bottom of the bag – a fold of paper. He had guessed what it was before Anne took it out and unwrapped it.

  The boat turned of its own accord and the sail swung out, allowing the very last of the sun’s long rays to fall on the strip of frayed and faded fabric in Anne’s hand. She held it up, so it swayed a little in the wind.

  ‘You know what it is?’ she asked him.

  Sam nodded. ‘It’s the motif,’ he said. ‘Deborah said she keeps it safe.’

  He was unsure how many moments they gazed silently at the pattern. At once simple and complex, it repeated, rotated, under and over and over and under.

  ‘So I suppose she’s told you all the stories she’s told me?’ he said at last, leaning on the tiller, the rocking of the still boat making him almost sleepy. ‘She thinks it’s some kind of magic.’

  Anne nodded without looking at him. ‘She wants me to undo it,’ she said, still holding the strip high.

  ‘She wants to die.’ Sam said the words slowly. He had met Deborah at her end. In a very short stretch of time she had gone from a sturdy little figure to a collapsed heap in her big, old bed. And, as he followed the wandering pattern in Anne’s hand, he thought he knew what Deborah believed had driven this sharp decline.

  He forced his eyes away from the motif. ‘She’s an old lady. Perhaps it’s just her time.’

  Anne couldn’t think what to reply, so she folded the motif into its layers of paper and placed it and the keys back in their bag. Then she put the bag in the tin, and wrapped it in the bigger bag. It was time to go back.

  Sam turned the boat as if he’d heard her thought, and with the wind behind them they sped, faster than before, back towards the creek. She could see no other craft on the river now – everyone seemed to have followed the cruise ship downstream. They were silent and alone, just the two of them.

  On the south bank, lights were appearing in the sweeps of new apartments that now occupied the old scrapyard, which itself had replaced a power station. On the north bank, the heaped towers of Canary Wharf sat on top of the old docks, carved out of the marsh mud two centuries before. The towers were flame-orange on their westward faces, and glowed with artificial light on their darkening sides.

  The sun was setting as they slipped quietly up the creek. The sky was turning violet and the surface of the water was dark. From a fair distance away, she saw a light in Deborah’s kitchen window.

  ‘What’s she doing out of bed?’

  Sam didn’t reply, and in the river gloaming she couldn’t read his expression.

  ‘What if someone’s there?’ She held the tin tightly to her chest and kept her eyes fixed on the glow of light until they bumped against the creek wall below it.

  The water was much lower than when they had left, or when Anne had been in the boat a few weeks before, when Deborah was still a smooth, indestructible pearl. Anne had to haul herself up the wall, barking her knees and taking some skin off her fingers.

  She pushed through the door, breathless. Deborah was sitting at the kitchen table, which was laid for a meal, the large camping lamp burning in the centre. She was dressed in her grey wool, with the addition of a thick scarf wound around her neck. In the lamplight, Anne could see that her complexion was hectic, that her eyes were wet and wide and that her hands trembled as they held the sheet, part of which lay on the table in front of her. She smiled at Anne with quivering lips.

  ‘What are you doing up? And what’s all this?’ Anne pointed at the bread, cheese, ham and pickles set out on the table.

  ‘I thought you two would need something to eat after your little trip – and before your adventure tonight.’ Deborah’s smile was mischievous.

  When Sam entered the room he thought he was looking at a plate from an old-fashioned children’s picture book; he could almost smell the glossy paper. But Anne intruded, in her jeans and modern jacket. She was holding Deborah’s hand, looking into her face. ‘You should be resting. You’re still feverish,’ she said.

  ‘No, no, I can’t be ill.’

  ‘I’m afraid you are, Deborah,’ said Sam. He took a seat at the table, realising his stomach was very empty.

  ‘I mean, I’m not good at it,’ Deborah said lightly. ‘No practice, you see.’

  Anne sat down too and put a piece of bread in her mouth; it was soft and it sweetened as she chewed it. She closed her eyes. She felt beautifully tired. The sounds of the wood shifting in the stove and the scents of the smoke, the cheese and the ham lulled her. There seemed to be a light gauze spread over the table, over the room; it could have been the mellow light of the lamp, or the warmth after the fresh air out on the river. But it felt more likely that it came from Deborah – silk from her skilful fingers.

  Sitting back with a mug of tea, Deborah pointed at a bag on a chair. ‘Now, you can’t even think of entering the tunnel before midnight.’ She laughed and coughed and dabbed her eyes and nose. ‘I’ve put a torch and some spare batteries in there for you. And, so that you can find your way out again, I’ve put in some reels of thread.’ She paused, flushing pink and breathing heavily. ‘You know, like Ariadne and the Minotaur.’ And she tittered girlishly, which started off another fit of coughing.

  ‘And you have the keys to get in and out,’ Deborah continued, ‘which is more than the poor bloke down there has. And you have each other, of course.’

  She pushed her plate aside and took the sheet off her lap and started to flatten it out on the table. Anne felt the temporary peace of the quiet meal had been disturbed by Deborah’s last comment. She was grateful that Deborah seemed about to start to tell them something else.

  ‘Now that you’re both here, I don’t have to tell this twice,’ Deborah looked from her to Sam. She picked up the needle, which was still attached by a shortish length of thread to one end of the sheet, and pointed at each of them with it, not saying anything, rather drawing something from them.

  Anne sat back from her plate, held the warm mug in her hand and waited, knowing the form by now: Deborah must tell her tale, they must attend. And, with laboured breaths and shaking hands, she began.

  Chapter 27: Deborah, 1941

  ‘I had carried the big key to the tunnel door on my key ring for years – for no reason that I could think of. I
suppose now I know why: I was able to unlock the door to the basement from inside the tunnel, and slip out the back of thirty-six Albury Street without a soul seeing me.

  ‘But outside, everything had changed. Albury Street was cut in half – there was a hole in one of the terraces, and bricks and beams and tiles were scattered all over the yards. The rest of the houses seemed to have shifted too; the windows were askew and the lines of bricks dipped downwards.

  ‘I picked my way over the mess, clutching my grey bag to me. It was full of sodden cloth and I could feel the damp coming through to my coat, but I held on to it tight.

  ‘Further up towards the High Street there were two more houses down and another looked as though someone had ripped the back off. There were blankets and carpets flapping from the floorboards.

  ‘It was still early morning, but the all-clear must have sounded, because people were out, going about their business. There was glass and rubble everywhere, and a thick layer of dust. The church bell rang just as I walked past. I looked in through the gate and saw that the church hadn’t been touched. It was a bit grimy, but against all the dirt and mess it looked white. I didn’t stop, though; I hurried on under the railway to the draper’s.

  ‘But it wasn’t there anymore.

  ‘The buildings on either side were still standing, but where the draper’s had been – the dark shop that was always quiet because of the piles of cloth; the flat above where the draper and his wife lived; my two rooms on the top floor, under the roof – there was a neat gap, a pile of bricks and plaster and wood spilling onto the pavement.

  ‘I stood looking at it for at least half an hour – I heard the church bell ring twice. I knew what I must have looked like, because I’d seen people standing like this, staring at the remains of their homes. But no one who passed stopped to say anything to me; not even the two wardens who kicked at the bricks, made a note of something in a little book, then took their black helmets off and put them back on again.