‘He could have bloody well guessed. He was so fucking obstinate.’
‘Your mother could have phoned the doctor anyway.’
‘She couldn’t. That wasn’t the way things happened. He made the decisions. He earned the money. He was the one who was going to look after us all. The trouble is he didn’t realize that when it stops hurting is when things are really bad.’
‘I don’t suppose he was thinking straight by then.’
‘No. Kids at school used to ask about how he died. They’d been told not to, but of course they did anyway. In the corner, at the back of the kitchens, where the steam came out of the Ventilators so it was warm, and the dinner ladies couldn’t see us. The steam always smelled of stew and boiled cloth. And there’d be a whole crowd of the big girls round me, being nice, asking more and more questions. But I didn’t know the answers. I never saw him in hospital. All I remember is the doctor coming to the house, then I suppose an ambulance must have taken him to hospital. We were playing in our bedroom and we didn’t come out. Maybe Mum had told us not to come out. There was a lot of bumping. I thought it was Mum moving the furniture round to clean, but it must have been the stretcher going downstairs. I didn’t see him after that. But I saw him when he was dead.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know? I never told you.’
‘Jenny told me. She said your mother asked you both if you’d like to see your father, and she said no, but you said you would. When you came back she asked you what it was like but you wouldn’t tell her. You said she should have gone herself if she wanted to know.’
‘Did I really say that? What a little cow.’
‘That’s what she thought. Listen, you’re not still going out, are you? It’s Saturday morning, you can relax. Don’t get up. I’ll make you breakfast in bed.’
He pulls on a sweater and goes out to make toast. I lie flat and stare at the window, which only shows the sky from here. Michael’s waiting, out there. He needs me. He won’t go away. He’s out there in the rain, not far away.
Donald brings mugs of tea and a plate of toast. The toast is thin and dark brown, the way I like it. I bite, expecting the greasy slur of margarine against my teeth, and taste butter. The toast is still hot, the butter solid but beginning to melt. It’s white, salty butter, the kind I like. He must have gone out and bought it yesterday, thinking that he was thinking of me. But he was thinking of the five thousand pounds he’s about to borrow. It will wreck us.
‘We’ll be all right,’ says Donald presently, out of some train of private thought. I look at us both, and the crumpled bed, and then Donald smiles at me. That’s when I realize that I don’t hope for anything from him any more. I bite into the toast. I look up at him and say, We’re not going to fail, not any more.’
I know too much about failure. I’ve had it in my office, the pain and shame of it, and in front of me in chambers. There are people who fight it to the last drop of blood. There are others, and you get to know them, who have made friends with it secretly, behind their own backs. They’ll follow failure, and they’ll be able to smell it in the air like a disgusting and familiar perfume, even when no one else can smell anything. They will follow it because somewhere in themselves they recognize it, and they want it. Only when the worst has happened and everything has been pulled down around them can they begin to feel safe.
I say they, because I can’t bear to say ‘we’. I’ve been stupid. All these weeks of reacting and not thinking. I’ve let myself be panicked in the direction Michael wanted me to go. He wants to pull me down, and I’ve let myself run, swerving this way and that until I’m easy meat. But he’s not going to do it. Blackmail is a crime, not the basis for a relationship.
You think you know me, Michael. But you don’t know me any more. You don’t know who I am, what moves me, what I am capable of now that I have two children sleeping in the next room.
‘We’re fine,’ I say to Donald, touching his hand which is exactly the same temperature as my own. He turns his hand over, clasps mine. Our hands hold tight, melting together. I dip my head and kiss his knuckles.
‘You don’t need to worry,’ I tell him.
TWENTY
I’ve got Michael’s last letter in the pocket of my waterproof. I’m here now, here with you … Remember I love you. You can’t get away from that. It’s the word love that frightens me. It’s a stocking full of presents, dumped on the end of your bed while you’re asleep. You can pinch it and feel the crackle but you never know what’s inside. The letter slides down inside my pocket, against my thigh. You can’t get away from that.
The fields and marsh are misted with rain. It’s fine rain, but it soaks its way into everything. I’ve put on Donald’s waterproof trousers, rolled over at the waist, and my own waterproof jacket. The fields are soggy, as if the marsh is already taking them back, after one night of rain. Autumn’s here. I shut my eyes and I can smell it, hurrying in from the west where the weather comes from.
The next stile is a shallow step on this side, but four steps deep on the other, where the level of the field drops. As I put one foot on top and swing the other over, he rises from the shelter where he’s been waiting.
‘Here I am.’
He holds out a hand, but I don’t take it. I grip the wood of the stile, polished by all the hands that have ever gone over it. Then I let go, and jump. I land beside him, jarring myself.
‘Here I am,’ I say back, as if I’ve expected him. ‘Have you been waiting long?’
‘I’ve been waiting a while.’
He is not dressed for the weather. His jacket is already sodden with rain, and water must be coming through the seams. The weight of it seems to bow him forward, or else it’s the cold that has made him hunch over. His hands, that used to be so tanned and supple, are waxen now, and puffy.
‘Are you cold?’
‘No. Is the weather always this bad here?’
We’ve fallen into step, going down the field to the sea-wall.
Already a fog of rain has swallowed the house.
‘It was so hot two years ago that the fields burnt brown and cracked open. Or so they say. It was before we came. I don’t think the marsh ever dries up. There’s water seeping into it all the time. Where it turns into bog it’s not really land at all.’
‘That must be farther down the coast. This land’s been drained, right?’
‘These fields have been drained. But all that – look – that’s marsh land.’
‘So where’s the bog land?’
‘I told you, it’s just a couple of miles down the coast.’
‘Maybe we could walk there.’
‘If you like.’
‘That ship you were talking about — were you serious, Simone?’
‘Of course.’
‘I can’t believe that no one’s dug it out for a museum.’
‘This is England, Michael. There are more things under the earth than there are on top of it. And more people too. If we find a few bones we just throw them back in again.’
He laughs. He doesn’t seem to feel the rain. His shoes are light trainers, cheap ones with spongy soles. They must be letting in water.
‘I didn’t think it would rain like this,’ he says. I look again at the jacket and trainers. They look as if he doesn’t care what he puts on. He’s not even thought of protecting himself from the weather. To him this is just a holiday place, so small and cosy that nothing real can happen here. English rain won’t soak you to the bone, English seas won’t drown you. I remember the way he looked out at the water: Doesn’t seem like the real ocean to me. He is off his guard. I wonder if he has really been thinking of me all these years, as he says he has. He’s lain in my mind, a place like a bruise which I don’t visit. I would never have thought of seeking him out.
‘It won’t take us long to get there, if we walk along the top of the sea-wall,’ I say.
We are up on the sea-wall. The rain blows in our faces, lightly, soaking in ev
erywhere.
‘We’re not going to see a lot if it goes on this way,’ says Michael.
‘It’ll clear.’ I take his letter out of my pocket as we walk. I unfold it and hold out the sheet of paper for the rain. At once the letters start to blur and bleed into one another. ‘Why did you write this, Michael?’
‘It was just a letter.’
‘Was it true what you told me, about Calvin dying?’
He looks at me, indignant, affronted. Play-acting, I think. Play-acting. Nothing is as true as Michael tries to make it seem.
‘Why would I lie about a thing like that?’
‘You might have a reason. Tell me. Were you outside my house last night?’
For a dozen or so paces he keeps on, head down, then he glances sideways at me. ‘You know I was.’
‘Were you here all night?’
‘I slept in your woodshed.’
‘You slept in the woodshed?’ Next to Donald’s wall of wood, the defences he is building against the cold of the coming winter. In Donald’s place, the only place where he feels at home here. That was a good choice.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I say.
‘Hey, I’m sorry if it upsets you.’
‘Don’t be sorry, Michael. You haven’t come all this way to be sorry.’
This letter is dissolving. It is written on open-pored recycled paper, and now the paper is saturated. It can’t take any more. I flag it down hard, and the paper gives along the seams where he has folded it. I do it again and again until his letter is torn into wet ribbons. Mail smells of people. But your letter smells of rain now, Michael. It was a beautiful night. The words ache in my head.
‘Why’d you do that?’
‘I didn’t want to carry it with me any more.’
The cloud coming in from the sea is the colour of mussel-shells, bringing heavier rain.
‘If we hurry we can reach the pill-box before the rain gets too heavy.’
‘Pill-box?’
‘It doesn’t look like anything from here. It’s mostly underground. They were supposed to knock them down after the war, but no one ever bothered. It’ll be dry in there.’
We step out. I lengthen my stride to his in a way I remember from a long time ago, and heat flows through me. I am stronger than I used to be, and I can walk a long way now. This is my country, this rainy country which stretches all around us. More sheets of rain come in from the sea, one after the next like closing curtains. The curtains shiver. Each time you look they are hiding more. He’s soaked. Why doesn’t he feel it? Why doesn’t he wipe away the rain that is trickling down his face as if down a pane of glass?
The pill-box is covered with marram grass and sea holly, sunk into the land. It’s a smooth hump, and you can’t see the entrance until you go around the back. We get to the steps and peer down, smelling the public toilet smell of raw concrete and urine. I stand aside to let him go down first, and the cloud reaches us, rattling down rain on the surface of my waterproof. I watch the top of his head, moving, going down. The space is enclosed and the windows are tiny, much too small for anyone to climb through. There’s only one way back out once you’re down there, and I don’t want to be down there with him.
‘You coming, Simone?’
‘I’m all right up here. My clothes are waterproof.’
I hear him moving around. ‘It stinks of piss down here,’ he calls up. I know it doesn’t. There’s a faint tang of urine, almost homely. A few kids from the village might make it out here on a summer night, to drink cider and piss it up against the wall. But in the winter the storms scour the pill-box and fill it up with pebbles, razor shells, seaweed and bits of cork.
The rain pours steadily, parting on the peak of my hood and running down the front of the jacket. To come out he’s got to go past me. To find me again he’ll have to come up these steps. There is something frightening about the thought of it, a stranger rising from those dark places. I look around quickly, my eyes tracking the driftwood. A defence, a barrier. But there’s none, only a worn, white piece like an owl’s breastbone. And a heap of wrack speckled with polystyrene. The entrance to the pill-box is scrawled with red paint graffiti. Angry symbols and numbers that mean nothing to me.
‘Simone?’
I let him wait a little while. Then I call back, ‘I’m still here.’
‘Why don’t you come in out of the rain? We need to talk.’
‘In a little while.’
But I know I won’t go in there. I won’t talk now. From now on, I’m choosing the territory. I watch the way rain and wind are combing down the marram grass. Out on the sea a ferry hangs, seeming not to move. Below us the shore is cut by a concrete breakwater. They have worked hard to break the power of the waves here, building up the sea-wall, replacing the old wooden breakwater. The sea idles at the foot of the wall, beyond the pale strip of pebbles, biding its time.
I want to swim. The sea will feel warm, coming out of the cold rain. Turn my back on all this, climb down the sea-wall, take off my clothes and wrap them inside the waterproof jacket, then weigh them down with stones.
I step back slowly, so there’ll be no sudden change in the light coming through the entrance. I don’t want him to have any warning. Just to come up and find me gone. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is not be there. It’s like silence in court, an unwillingness to be led where your questioner wants to lead you.
There is a paler strip of sky behind the rain. I run along the sea-wall until I get to the rusty metal hoop that marks the steps down, cut into the concrete. I climb down onto the beach, and crunch across the pebbles. I look up at the sky then strip off my clothes quickly, wrap them inside the waterproof jacket and pile stones on top into a cairn. The air is not as cold as I thought it would be, but the stones are sharp under my feet. I start to walk carefully down the steep beach, placing my feet on the roundest stones, wanting to run. The stones slither and a small avalanche of them breaks away. There’s just enough wind to turn the waves.
The water is cold, but not too cold. I put one foot forward and the stones kick away and dissolve into nothing. The water is dark. There must be a steep shelf here. I don’t even have to wade in. All I have to do is lean forward.
I lean forward. I close my eyes and let go.
TWENTY-ONE
It isn’t cold once you start to swim. Once I’m in deep water I breathe out until my lungs are empty of air, then I let myself sink, closing my eyes against the thick salt. I curl tight, wrap my arms around my knees and let myself hang in the water. It’s noisy inside the sea, not peaceful at all. When holding my breath begins to hurt, I kick upwards and let myself rise to the surface. As my head bursts through the skin of the sea, I open my eyes. The rainy sky is dazzling, brilliant. I float on my back, sculling with my hands, and the little waves rock me. A drop of rain falls in my eye. I lie low in the water with only my lips and eyes above the surface, breathing quietly.
I should keep swimming, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to make any effort at all. I’m far enough now, a hundred yards out, beyond a stone’s throw, moving quietly with whatever currents there are here. Beyond everything but water. I don’t know if I’m cold any longer or warm. It must still be raining, though the sky is white when you look straight up at it like this. White sky and grey water. You should never be afraid. I’ve been afraid for a long time. The breast of the sea moves easily, as if it’s breathing, and I move with it.
After a long time I open my eyes. I’ve let myself drift quite a way, but the current runs parallel to the shore and I’m not much farther out than I was. Perhaps two hundred yards. Certainly not more than a quarter of a mile. It’s hard to tell, across the water. A quarter of a mile isn’t far. I can swim a mile; I used to be able to swim a mile. Michael always said if you fell overboard, swim like hell. The boat moves much faster than you think. You’ve got about five minutes. One minute the boat would be there then a wave would hide it and you’d be left swimming, your hair plast
ered to you, your clothes pulling you down.
I stop floating and tread water. I can’t see far, because of the rise and fall of the swell. The land looks small from this angle, so much less real than the cluck of water in my ears. There’s an enormous pale sky behind the sea-wall. When you’re walking on land you don’t realize that it’s just a little strip between sky and sea. Land is like being alive. It slips away when you’re not looking. That must be the pill-box, there. And there’s someone walking along the sea-wall: Michael, or someone else? Not many people walk here. The figure is moving, I’m sure of it. It must be Michael. He’ll be looking for me. He’ll think I’ve walked on while he was sheltering from the rain.
I’ve been in the water quite a while now. Why do I feel so warm? Warm and sleepy, as if I’m slipping deep into a bed where someone else is already asleep. The heat of another body close to mine. Who’d have thought this grey water had such comfort in it?
Michael’s letter opens in my mind.
Do you like getting mail? I like it because it’s been touched. Did you just lift up this letter and smell it? I knew it. I know you so well. No, Michael, I didn’t lift it up. I didn’t want to touch you. I don’t want you any more. I want this. The sea; every inch of me entered by it. There’s nowhere to hide from it, but I don’t want to hide. I can put my head down now, and soon I’ll sleep.
But not yet. The word ‘sleep’ sharpens as I think of the boys. They appear before my eyes, their mouths parted, their eyelids down. Joe sleeps at ease, but Matt twitches and throws out an arm, and cries out. He’s fearful, like me. Every day he has to brace himself. He shoves me away as Joe never would, because he’s afraid of how much he needs me. It used to squeeze my heart when I waited for Matt to come out of school, and saw him come out alone, head up, and knew he’d had a bad day. Then Joe would burst out of the door in a puppy scuffle of little boys.
‘Had a good day?’ I’d asked Matt, casually, while Joe yelled his goodbyes.
‘Yeah, it was fine.’ And then a sudden, bitter punch at Joe behind my back.