She pitches gently forward.
It is both more and less real than anything he has ever seen. Time really does slow down. Her blonde hair rises like a candle flame. She seems completely relaxed, more like someone sleeping than someone falling.
She vanishes into the foam.
Everything is suddenly back to normal, the dandelions, the clouds, the buzzard. For a few seconds he wonders if he really saw it. But Leo is standing on the bank beside him, barking at the water, and he thinks how the woman has a name and a family and is dying right now, somewhere out there, trapped in the stopper, perhaps, being tumbled and battered in that big drum of water. He takes his phone out of his trouser pocket but his hands are trembling too much to dial a number. Then he sees it in the water, the briefest flash of red.
The phone is back in his pocket and his shoes are off. He does not remember doing this. It frightens him because he is not a good swimmer. He removes his jacket.
Red again midstream. Both dogs at the bank now, barking.
He jumps into the shallows. This is a stupid thing to do. Weed and sucking mud. He throws himself forward in a clumsy half-dive and the silty bottom reluctantly lets him go. The water is so cold his chest seizes and he cannot breathe. He gathers his energy and shouts the way he would shout if he were lifting a big weight. His ribs loosen.
It is nothing like the sea, it is nothing like a pool. The water sweeps him sideways. He can no longer touch the bottom with his feet. He realises how big the river is now that he is inside it, how strong, how lost the woman must be and how slim his chances are of finding her. He ducks under the surface but the water is the cloudy green of Victorian bottle glass and he can see for no more than a couple of feet at most. He lifts his head out of the water and sees how swiftly he is being carried downriver. The banks are hidden now behind half-submerged bushes and trapped flotsam, the stream narrowing and picking up speed to squeeze under the bridge. Below the bridge is the weir stream for the next lock. He is suddenly very alone and very frightened, an idiot who has jumped into a swollen river. His sodden clothes are shockingly heavy and it is becoming increasingly hard to keep his head above water.
She looms out of the bubbling green and claws at his face.
Mostly he is angry that she should attack him when he is risking his life to save her. Memories of lifesaving classes at school, Mr. Schiller with his speech impediment, pyjama bottoms knotted at the ankles. He yanks her round so she’s facing away from him. Cup a hand under the chin, that was it. Her arms and legs are pedalling hard. Silver bubbles pour from her nose. He can’t keep her mouth above the surface. The rucksack. Christ. He’d forgotten. He doesn’t have the strength but the idea of giving up now is unbearable. He gulps as much air as he can then ducks under. They sink together, the big red ballast pulling them down. He turns her round and grabs the belt. Which sort of buckle is it? Sudden darkness overhead. The bridge. They’re moving fast. He needs a knife. He doesn’t have a knife. Yank, squeeze, twist. She is punching him and grabbing his hair but whether she is trying to get to the surface or stop him undoing the rucksack he cannot tell. His lungs are crying out for air. Don’t breathe. A vicious scrabbling panic. His thoughts are becoming blurred, the brain starting to shut down.
Some fierce animal hunger for life wipes the woman from his mind. He kicks upwards—hang on, hang on—and bursts into sunlight. He heaves down a lungful of air and dirty water, chokes and coughs it out then sucks down another lungful, then a third. She is down there somewhere, dead, dying. He can hear the dogs barking nearby.
She surfaces suddenly beside him, head above the water now. No rucksack. He must have got it off. Her eyes are closed and she’s not moving. He grabs her hair this time. No time for niceties. She doesn’t respond. Maybe he is dragging a corpse. He swims with one arm and breaststroke legs. Way past the bridge now. Thirty metres until the weir stream peels off and sucks them in. He swims hard in the opposite direction. He grabs the end of a thorny branch. It snaps. He grabs another. It holds. They swing towards the bank and slow down as they move out of the main current. The bottom, he can feel it, thank God. Sludge and roots. He heaves her shoulders upright so she’s sitting in the shallow water. A reedy foot of bank between two brambles. The dogs stand side by side watching them. Is she breathing? He can’t tell.
One last effort. He gets a firmer purchase under his feet and hoists her onto the grass. So heavy for such a tiny thing. He climbs out over her and drags her away from the edge. Her flopping head smacks the ground as he rolls her onto her front. Recovery position, left knee up, left elbow up.
He collapses onto all fours beside her, breathing hard. He is seeing stars, pinpricks of light swarming across his picture of the world. Absurd quiet all around. Two red admirals. An ant walks over his finger.
Her skin is grey-blue. Her earrings are little chains of turquoise beads with silver spacers, hippyish, the kind he hasn’t seen in a long time. An image of her looking into a lacquer box on the bedside table, choosing what to wear on her last day. Would you think about that kind of thing? Her leggings have been ripped and there is a bloody gash down her thigh. His own hand is bleeding. Those thorns? He can’t see her chest moving. He takes hold of her wrist to check her pulse and it’s like pressing a button. She vomits up a pint of river water and something that looks like breakfast cereal. She coughs violently, brings up more sick then rolls onto her back. Her eyes are still closed, her hair matted and tangled.
He takes his phone out. A single air bubble is trapped under the waterlogged screen like a ball bearing in a child’s puzzle. Damn. The car is sixty metres away, his shoes and jacket three hundred. He can’t leave her alone. The keys are in his pocket, though. “Come on.” He squats and slips his hands under her armpits. Fireman’s lift. He carries her towards the car. Thistles and sheep shit under his socks. Desperate to have the place to himself most days but today there is no one. Sod’s Law. He’s freezing. And, unlike her, he’s got a decent layer of fat on him. Hope to goodness the dogs haven’t gone under a van trying to cross the road. Up the steps and through the kissing gate which clangs shut behind them. Fran and Leo are standing by the car, waiting patiently, eerily human. He shifts her centre of gravity so he can extract the key from his sodden pocket. He beeps the lock and whisks the rug out with one hand before the dogs leap on top of it.
He props her against the car and wraps the rug around her. Mud and hair and dog stink. Her whole body is shivering. He opens the passenger door and lowers her in, banging her head a second time. “Let’s get you to a hospital.” She makes a noise which might or might not be a word. Seat belt. Don’t want to save her from drowning then break her neck in an accident.
He starts the ignition and twists the heater to max. A burst of Garth Brooks till he hits the off button. The air still warm from the journey down, thankfully. Something almost fun about it now, dripping wet, driving in his socks, the glow of post-heroics.
Coming back down the Woodstock Road she says something.
“I didn’t catch that.”
Slurred words, head lolling. “Not the hospital.”
“Well, I’m not going to leave you by the side of the road.”
She reaches out and puts her hand on his forearm and it is the first time anyone has touched him with anything approaching tenderness in years. It is this moment which will come back later when he asks himself why he did something so stupid.
“Please.”
It’s like the shoes. He doesn’t turn along the Marston Ferry Road towards the hospital. He is taking her home. The decision has already been taken. Or is he just looking for an excuse?
He parks outside the house and leaves the engine running and there is a moment of balance when the day could roll either way, but when he imagines walking her into A&E and handing her to a nurse and watching her vanish through those automated doors he feels something painful for which he doesn’t have a name. He twists the key and takes it out of the ignition. He lets the dogs out, unclips her seat
belt, lifts her onto her feet then into his arms.
“I don’t want…”
“It’s not the hospital.” He kicks the door shut.
Having juggled her sideways down the hall he lays her on the sofa where she curls up like a dormouse. The shivering has become shaking. He drags the old bar fire from the bottom of the coat cupboard. Central heating on, thermostat to 22. He realises, only now, that he will need to undress her if he is going to get her warm and dry. Maria’s voice in his head. How did this not occur to you? Fran is in the spare armchair. He can hear Leo eating biscuits from the clangy metal bowl in the kitchen. He goes upstairs. Tracksuit bottoms, sweatshirt, woolly socks, towel.
“I’m getting you into dry clothes.” She does not respond. He unlaces her black boots. The smell of burning dust as the elements heat up and turn orange. A flash of Timothy when he was tiny. Buckles and poppers and Velcro. Socks off.
He unbuttons her denim skirt, puts a hand under her hips, lifts her an inch or two off the rug, pulls it out then rolls down her torn black leggings. His hand briefly pressed to her flesh, the weight of her. Scrawny thighs and damp white knickers with pink roses on. A tiny rose of pink ribbon on the waistband. A little curl of pubic hair coming out from under the hem. That long bloody cut on goose-pimpled skin. Memories of being this close to other young bodies. Maria, Jane Taylor, Mona Kerr, Jamila, a woman at a party in Dalston whose name went long ago but whose laugh and whose perfect plump stomach come back to him in dreams every now and then. The thrill of unwrapping someone for the first time.
He starts to take her sodden knickers off but it frightens him, what he might feel, what she might think. He leaves them on and pats her dry as best he can. Blood on the towel. He pushes the bar fire back a little and slips the tracksuit trousers on, one leg at a time. They are ridiculously baggy. He sits her up and slips his socks over her tiny feet.
“Where am I?”
He slides her tartan shirt off and shows her the sweatshirt. “You need to put this on.”
She’s gone again, fuzzy, uncompliant. Bloody hell. He lifts her T-shirt. No bra. The fear that someone is going to materialise at the window or walk through the door. Skinny ribs and small breasts. Such pale skin. He leans forward to pull the T-shirt over her head and down her arms, trying to touch her as little as possible. He sits back and can’t stop himself. He looks at her, naked from the waist up, for thirty seconds maybe, unable to take his eyes away. To his surprise he is on the verge of tears. So many lost things. He cloaks her with the towel, gently rubbing her arms and back and shoulders. Like Timothy after a bath. More gently still he presses the towel to her chest and stomach. The soft give of her breasts under his hand. He puts the towel aside and slips the sweatshirt over her head. Right arm, left arm. He lifts her briefly to remove the dog rug and flip the wet cushions over.
Leo comes into the room and stands watching them, unsettled, on guard, never quite relaxed with new people.
He moves behind the sofa so he can dry her hair while holding her head steady against his stomach. Timothy again. Feelings that shouldn’t be sharing the same space in his head. He has never felt so old. He puts the towel down. “I’ll get you a hot drink.” She flops sideways and curls up again. She’s shaking less. Or is that wishful thinking?
Only when he tries to put the kettle on does he become aware of how bone-cold he is himself. A slab of ice is stacked against his spine. He feels feverish. It’s a relief to have this single, simple sensation consume him. He has to hold on to the banister on the way upstairs. He drops his clothes on the bathroom floor. He should have a hot shower but he can’t leave her on her own down there. He dries himself with a new towel from the airing cupboard and pulls on his jeans, a shirt, the big jumper Maria bought for him in Oslo. Walking socks then a scarf from the newel post. That cold slab still sitting at his core.
The kettle rumbles to a climax and clicks off. Instant coffee for speed, with a spoonful of sugar. He sits her up and she helps a little this time. “Hold this.” She puts her hands around the mug at least and balances it on her knees.
He says, “You’re all right now,” which sounds ridiculous as soon as he says it, because it might be a disaster, finding yourself alive after putting yourself through all that. A memory of the water, the sheer mass and speed of it. How close he came.
She leans her head back, eyes closed, and breathes out. She’s ugly almost. The blonde hair had fooled him. Big features, wonky nose. “Fuck,” she says. “Fucking fuck.”
He’s never been comfortable with people swearing. “My name’s Ian.”
She doesn’t offer her own.
“Why didn’t you want to go to hospital?”
She lifts her head and opens her eyes and looks at the tracksuit trousers, the sweatshirt, the socks. “What did you do to me?”
“I put you into dry clothes.”
“Did you rape me?”
He is too surprised to think of an answer.
“You took my clothes off.” She’s panicking. “Where are my clothes?”
A rush of terror. The thoughts that came into his head undressing her. Was she just pretending to be unconscious? “You jumped into the river.”
She is suddenly calm again. “Yeh. I do that kind of thing.” She laughs a humourless laugh.
His heart is hammering. “But you’re alive.”
“They stick needles into you.” She sounds drunk. He wonders if she took pills before going to the river. Belt and braces. “They cover you in wires, like a monkey in a lab. They find out what you’re thinking.”
“Your clothes are in the kitchen.” The adrenaline is ebbing a little. “I’ll dry them for you.”
“The small print on that form no one reads?” She drinks the sugary coffee. “They can do anything.”
Were they really in the Thames less than half an hour ago?
“I fuck everything up. It’s my thing.”
The sour self-pity in her voice, daring him to reach out and have his hand slapped away. He’s disappointed to realise that he doesn’t like her very much. “Sorry I saved you.” It’s meant to sound wry and funny, but he’s shocked by how close it comes to what he’s feeling.
“I’m so fucking cold.”
He fetches her a scarf left years ago by some forgetful dinner guest. “Why did you do it?”
“Like you’d understand.”
“Try me.”
“You’re just being nice.” She does quote marks with her fingers, like she’s fifteen. “No one actually cares.”
He bites his lip. He’s surprised at how angry he is. Then he can’t stop himself. “You don’t throw a life away.” It’s Timothy he’s thinking about, of course, the nights when he never came home, those God-awful, semi-homeless friends, the smell of them. “Someone cares. Your parents, your brother, your sister, your friends, your neighbours, your doctor, the teachers you had at school, at college, even if it’s only the poor bastard who has to pull your body out of the river…” He’s choking up a little. He’s never thought of it this way, that lives are held in common, that we lose a little something of ourselves with every death. Or is it just the desperate hope that some frail strand still connects him to his son, the tiny tug of which might one day bring him home?
“Whoa there.” She holds up her hand in a comedy stop gesture but without smiling. “I don’t need a sermon.”
“I nearly died.” He wants very much to have the house to himself again. “I’m not asking you for thanks, but the least you can do is to take this seriously.”
She crumples and starts to cry. Are they real tears? He’s not sure.
“I should take you to hospital. Someone needs to sort out that cut on your leg.”
“I told you. I’m really, really frightened of hospitals.” This feels like the truth.
“Because…?”
“I told you. They get inside your mind.” She puts her hand against her head as if her thoughts are precious or painful. She is still shivering.
&
nbsp; It seems obvious now, the possibility that she’s mentally ill. He feels like an idiot for not having thought about it before. She was trying to kill herself. It’s not like the signs were hidden. He has no idea what to say. He has never known anyone who is mentally ill.
She says, very quietly, as if she might be overheard, “Everything talks.” She sounds younger now. Twelve? Ten? Eight years old?
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Trees, walls, that clock, this wood.” She touches the table and for a second she really does look as if she’s listening. “Your dogs.”
She’s so sure of herself that he very nearly asks her what the dogs are saying.
“Stones just repeat themselves,” she says, “over and over. I’m a stone, I’m a stone…It’s raining, it’s raining…Walls gossip all the time. The stuff they’ve had to listen to over the years. If you go into a graveyard you can hear the dead talking to one another underground.”
She’s crazy, obviously, but she doesn’t sound crazy. She sounds like a sane person who lives in a different world to this one.
She cocks her head slightly, the way Leo and Fran do when they catch an interesting smell. She says, “This house is not happy,” which unnerves him more than it should. “I used to think everyone could hear these things. Then I realised that it was only me.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Some days the only thing I want is silence.”
He asks if she has any family. He needs to find someone else who can be responsible, someone who can take her off his hands.
“My brother fucked off to Wales. My dad’s got emphysema.”
“Your mum?”
“She’s got a shitload of her own stuff to deal with.”
“You haven’t got a boyfriend, a husband…?”
“Yeh, right.” Another humourless laugh.