Flood (13 page)

He felt guilty. His heart pounded. The money felt heavy in his pocket. Yet he did not want his friends to know about Rian. Hearing them call from inside, he pushed open the door. Rian looked across towards him, and he quickly closed the door behind him.

Four men played pool in the middle of the pub and swore at each other. They were vivacious, and they were practically the only people in the bar. A jukebox fought with the volume of the television, from where a racing commentator tipped his hat towards Sandy and murmured something about the afternoon's racing. Sandy looked for a clock. It was one twenty. His friends were being served with beer at the bar. The barman was courteous, knowing that they were all underage. They walked timidly, but pleased, with their drinks over to a corner table. Colin picked up a newspaper lying there and began to read nonchalantly. Mark and Clark gulped their drinks greedily and looked about them, examining the bar's interior like pioneers in a new continent.

Sandy, last served, was wondering what to do. He had not seen Rian for some time. He wanted to see her, especially when Robbie was elsewhere, but how could he get away from his friends? He sat down at the table. It had not been wiped recently, if at all in living memory. Rings cut into more rings, the whole becoming a complex, interlinked artwork.

Sandy made several more marks with the bottom of his own glass. His mother, when baking, cut out circles of pastry with the rim of a cup. He ran his finger around the rim of his cold, wet glass. Mark and Clark spoke in hushed, respectful tones. They watched the men playing pool, but not too closely.

'The film starts in twenty minutes,' said Sandy, having taken a long draw on his drink and consequently feeling gassy and sick. 'There's something I really have to do before then. I'll leave you here and meet you at the ABC. Is that okay?' They looked at him.

'Scaredy-cat,' said Clark.

Colin rubbed at his face, touching lightly the landscape of acne around his mouth.

'Fine then,' he said, reaching the same hand for his drink.

'See you.'

'Who wants this?' said Sandy, pointing to his glass as he rose. There were three takers. He walked back into piercing daylight and fresh air. She had flown from her perch. Shit.

He crossed the road quickly, hearing change jangling in his pocket. Perhaps she had gone off begging for money for food.

He had money he could give her. He opened the door of the snooker hall, climbed the stairs, and stared through the glass into the hall itself. There was Robbie, playing by himself and cursing a bad shot, then looking slyly around at the other players. There was no sign of Rian. Sandy ran back down the stairs two at a time and opened the door. He looked left and right. There were so many people milling around, presenting him with a constantly slow-moving obstacle. He walked back along the High Street, looking in shops and crossing the road often to maximise his search. People were already queuing for the film. He did not have much time. Where was she? He remembered her kisses. He could hardly recall her face, but he knew her kisses as he had once known his mother's nipple. Both were sustaining forces. He clung to images of Rian and felt his shirt sticking to his back as he ran.

At the other end of the High Street he cursed the emptiness of his search. He decided to cut down on to the esplanade. Yes, if she were waiting for Robbie that would be as nice a place to wait as any. He found a narrow close between two shops and began to hurry down it, realising almost immediately that, as if in a dream, Rian was walking towards him from a long way away, her eyes on the ground, her legs weary. A man was walking the other way, down towards the esplanade. Sandy stopped. Rian looked up. Her face ;was red, her mouth redder than the rest. She was flustered by his sudden appearance, as he was by hers. They stood some feet apart, Sandy dripping sweat and breathing heavily.

'Rian?' he said, taking a step closer. Then he looked past her to where the man had been. 'What are you doing?' She became a bad actress.

'Oh, I've just been walking. Waiting for Robbie. He's playing snooker. Losing money probably. I'm just...' She smiled at him.

Her eyes were slightly wet, shell-like, as if the tide had touched them some time before. 'Let's walk,' she said, taking his arm. 'What are you doing here? You've been running. Did I see you going into a pub near the snooker hall?' She moved him away with her towards the High Street. Sandy panicked. He did not want to go back up there, back where all the people, all the potential enemies were, where his friends might see him with her. He tugged her arm.

'No,' he said, 'this way,' and she, compliant, let herself be taken down to the sea.

They sat on a hillside, sheltered by a boulder which made an excellent windbreak, and talked and laughed and ate and drank. Mary felt happier than she had done in some time.

She looked at her 'young man', as she called him, and was happy. He was the perfect gentleman. He served the wine and told her funny stories about school. He acted one of them out for her. She choked on her drink and got hiccups which took some time to dispel. The wine was finished. He let her in on a little secret. He had another bottle in the car.

He winked and trotted downhill to fetch it. Mary stifled her hiccups and tried to think straight. She was getting drunk.

She focused on the landscape. From her position on the side of a sloping hill she could see Loch Leven in the distance.

Tiny boats bobbed on the still surface of the loch, doubtless fishing. Kinross was even further away. They were going to Kinross for an evening meal, though she had said nothing to Sandy about being back late. Andy had told her that she needed to enjoy herself for a change. Rashly, she had agreed with him. She heard him singing as he clambered back towards her, his eyes alight and a bottle swinging from one hand.

They ate bananas and grapes while they sat on the seawall.

The tide was out. An ominous trawler sat a good way out in the steel-coloured water. Sandy wanted to ask her about the man, but could not force himself to speak the words. They spoke instead of more banal matters. Her voice was a soft, living thing, something that might be found on a beach as the tide was turning. Something no one would take home with them because to do so would be to destroy it for ever.

She spoke to him of her youth and her childhood and the few remembrances she had of when she had still been a baby.

Sandy could remember nothing as far back as that. Ah, she told him, it was a special gift. She could remember her aunt lifting her to her breast and holding her face to that suffocating dull thing for a long time, longer than a feeding time. It might have been days. Sandy blushed at this image.

He looked at her casually, but her face was innocence. She spoke on. The first time she had seen Robbie drunk. The first time she had been sent to beg for money. The time they had moved to the mansion. All the times. The sun was coming down low over them, curving down from its once great height until it swathed them in gold. Sandy thought that it must be getting late. Finally Rian coughed and said, 'Sandy, I've got to tell you. Promise you won't say anything.

Promise.' Her insistent eyes made him nod his head. She lowered her eyes then and spoke on, while gulls played on the seashore and a small boy poked with a stick at shadowy things by the waterline.

'I told you that you must trust me and not believe anything Robbie tells you. You've got to believe what I'm telling you now. Robbie is fed up with me. He's fed up of having to go out begging. He knows that it's me that brings in the money anyway. He's started to sell me, Sandy.' Her voice faded to nothing for a second. She coughed again, swallowed, and continued. 'I've got to do things for money, you know, with men. Nothing really serious. But it's horrible.' Her voice became a whisper, like a ghost in his burning ear. 'Robbie makes me give him the money. It saves him having to do any work himself, you see. That man in the alley ... You almost ... Well, you know.'

I don't really know, Rian, he wanted to say. Tell me. Tell me. He was ashamed of his grown erection, but there was disgust in his heart. Beer and pie and fruit churned uneasily in his stomach.

'It's not anything too serious yet, but I'm afraid. We had to leave the camp, you know. It was because our Auntie Kitty wanted to use me for much the same thing, I think. I'm not sure now. But Robbie still goes to see her. I think she's poisoned his mind against me. Oh, Sandy.. .' Tears glimmered in her lashes, but would not fall. 'I don't know what to do. Robbie's all I've got. Don't tell him I told you. Please don't. But I had to tell you. I had to. I love you, Sandy.' She looked at him and sniffled.

Sandy was staring hard at the beach where two gulls fought over a scrap of food. He was thinking back to his evenings in the mansion. It did not seem to fit. Hadn't Robbie been the one who looked scared? Hadn't Rian seemed the strong one? Robbie had been quite good to him, had said things. He could not think straight. Sandy thought that it must be after five. The film would be coming out. He had to catch the bus. His mother. His friends. What about Robbie?

'What about Robbie?' he said.

'What time is it?' she asked. He shrugged his shoulders.

Easily, she slid from the sea-wall and walked coyly over to a strolling man, who told her the time with a leer. Sandy examined her, this girlfriend of his. He realised that he had not the power to make her truly his, that any decision would be hers and hers alone. He shrugged off the knowledge, but felt wounded by it all the same.

'It's just five o'clock,' she said. 'I suppose I should go and get Robbie.'

They walked along the esplanade together, their bodies about a foot apart, their arms dangling close to each other.

They spoke little. He left her near the snooker hall and walked back along the esplanade towards the bus stop. He went into an amusement arcade and was asked by the proprietor if he could prove his age.

'I'm just past eighteen,' he protested.

'Well, you don't look it, son. If you don't have any means of proving your age then you'll have to go.'

'But I got served at the Harbour Tavern!'

He found himself astonished and back on the pavement.

Seagulls laughed overhead. He glared at them as they swerved high in their inviolable space. He would build wings and swoop up beside them, grabbing with nimble hands and throttling them into his sack. Nobody would laugh at him then.

Colin, Clark and Mark were unmistakable, even against the low and orange sun. They were coming down from the High Street like spent gunslingers. Sandy walked towards them.

'Hello, Sandy. What was the film like?' asked Colin before Sandy could ask him the same question. 'Did you get in?' It took a second for the truth to dawn on Sandy.

'Of course I did,' he said. 'Where were you lot?'

'We didn't get in. Not old enough,' said Colin, while Mark and Clark asked Sandy for details. The four young boys, nearly men but not quite accepted as such, walked with hands in pockets towards a revving bus, Sandy lying to his friends gloriously about a film he had just not seen.

'I'm sorry,' said Mary. She was sobbing. Her blouse was disarranged. She plucked fibres of wool out of the travel-rug.

Andy rubbed his hair, scratching at the scalp. He sighed.

'No, I'm sorry, Mary,' he said. 'I shouldn't even have tried.

I apologise. I don't know . . . the wine and everything. I just felt, well, I'm sorry.'

Mary's sobbing increased. She shook her head violently.

'No, no, no,' she said, 'it's not you. It's me. Me. I'm to blame.

But you've got to listen to me, Andy. I don't want to talk about it, but you must listen.'

Andy lay back. The sun was low over the hills. They seemed so very far away from everyone and everything. Yet it had not happened. He had planned it all to perfection, but Mary had not allowed it to happen. He felt embarrassment more than anything else. He had timed everything so well.

The second bottle of wine had been finished. Mary had been lying on her back with her eyes closed. A light breeze had curled around the rock, wafting over her face, drawing fine strands of silver hair across her eyes. Andy had bent low over her and kissed her neck, then her chin, then her ready mouth. He had slid down beside her and held her in his arms. Finally, and a long time later it was, she had panicked and pushed him away, gasping. She had sat upright and rigid. She had begun to weep.

Now she summoned up the courage to speak.

'Andy,' she said, 'I've not slept with a man for over sixteen years.' She was still pulling fibres out of the travel-rug. Andy watched her fingers as they slashed at the wool. 'In fact, since the night .. . the night Sandy was . . . was conceived.

I've slept with no man since that night.' She looked up at him. Her eyes were difficult to interpret, melting yet defiant.

'I'm frightened, that's all. I need time. Please give me time.'

These words were evenly spaced by slight pauses, as if she were rehearsing a speech. Andy's eyes were on hers as she spoke, but she closed her eyes suddenly as if fatigued. A single tear pushed from her eye like a chick escaping from its shell and wriggled its way down her cheek.

'Do you want to talk about it?' he asked softly. She shook her head. He wanted to press the point, but could not. She lay in his arms and slumbered until the sun fell away from the earth and the evening grew too cool for human sleep. It was time to return home.

The elderly man, hands dumped in his pockets as if stitched to the material, spat on to his favourite spot of pavement and watched the boy through slanted eyes. He had just left the bookmaker's, having lost a couple of crucial pounds, and was now, in his eternal bitterness, confronted by the memory of his only son's tragic death. He watched closely as the boy jauntily walked down from the direction of Cardell towards him. He curved his hands into taut fists. He was old perhaps, but there was strength in his heart for hatred, and hatred was what he felt for the boy and the whore of a witch who was his mother.

Sandy came to the low wall around one of the elderly persons' bungalows. He hoisted himself on to it and, dangling his legs, thought about Rian and her cryptic words to him. Could he believe her? And if he did, what more was she hiding from him?