Flood (15 page)

Mirror writing. He smudged it, wetted the finger, and the word vanished completely. It was as easy as that on a typewriter carriage.

Dear Mary,

Yes, it's that time again - a letter from your ageing brother. How's tricks? How's life with old Andy Schoolmaster?

I hope he's treating you in the style to which etc etc. And how is my little Sandy? His exams must be long over by now (?). I hope he's enjoying his vacation. I'm planning on going north to the wilder parts of this fine country in a few weeks. Tell him that he doesn't know what he's missing, not coming across to see his long-lost Unc. I see from a recent correspondence with my bank manager and yours that you haven't touched the account yet. Like I said, sis, I'm not touching it, so it's all yours.

Should you need it. I know that I bring this up every letter, but it is important to me. Okay? Looks like I'm being shifted to our Toronto office. I don't know what this means. I think it probably means that Old Emerson has got tired of having someone efficient and trustworthy around here. Still, joking apart, it means I'm in with the really big boys (oh goody-goody!). I'm earning so much it's embarrassing. In fact, I'm earning so much I can afford to take a girl out every now and again. I've been seeing quite a few ladies recently, one of whom I can even stand. Maybe things are looking up.

(There might be a bad joke hidden in there somewhere, but I'm not saying where.)

Well, Mary, I've not written a very long letter, but I know that you will, as always, understand. I get very little time to myself these days. It's all company this and company that, not forgetting female company. God, if I got the boot from Emerson maybe I could make it as a professional comedian. What do you say? Listen, tell Sandy he gets no Christmas pressie this year if he doesn't put pen to paper pronto and write to Santa Tom. Okay?

The office beckons. Och aye the noo. Take best care.

Tom

XXX

She was drowning. There were weeds above and around her.

They twisted themselves sinuously around her arms and legs, embracing her. She could not find the bottom. There was no bottom. Bubbles of precious air escaped from her nostrils. Her lungs ached. Her brain told her one thing, but her heart was telling her another. Eventually her heart won.

She opened her mouth and felt the water gushing in. The choking commenced. Her eyes began to darken. Then the pain hit her, centred in her head, right at the scalp. She began painfully to rise towards what looked like the surface.

She was a long way beneath the glittering pool of light, but slowly she floated towards it. She broke the surface with a choke from her mouth and water dribbling down her chin, as if she were some badly fed baby. She roared. The pain was in her stomach now, as if her belly was distending with some quickening foetus. She wiped her face and cried out at the injustice. Andy was there to comfort her. Some of her hair had come out at the roots and he wiped it from his hands. He settled her back on the wet grass. Her dress was clinging to her. She was almost naked. Her body was clearly visible through the saturated cotton, as if she were a dancer behind the silkiest of veils. She lay back to rest, but Andy's fingers were touching her. He was towering over her. He was peaking, but the water still rushed in her ears. The word she could make out was 'reward'.

He was tugging at her dress, lying across her now. All at once she realised what he was about to do. She pushed at him, her arms weak.

She wanted to tell him that she was already pregnant. She tried to shout, but only water gurgled from her throat. She had become a fish, flailing on land, the line still holding her. She gurgled in protest. There was a shadowy figure behind Andy now. Then two shadowy figures, watching interestedly, their hands behind their backs. She beat at Andy with her fists.

She cleared the water from her lungs and screamed . . .

The pillow was over her head. She shook herself free of it, drew back the bedcovers, and sat up. She was damp with sweat. It was light behind the blue curtains. She fumbled for the clock, brought it to her, and found that it was five thirty.

The birds were singing outside. What a nightmare. She shook her hair, crumpling it into place. Patting the sheets, she found that she had wet the bed.

She rose quickly, put on her slippers, and stripped off the sheet. She tucked it under her arm and padded down to the kitchen, avoiding the creaky parts of the staircase for fear of waking Sandy. In the kitchen she stuffed the sheet into her washing basket, filled the kettle, plugged it in, and slumped on to one of the stools.

She had very occasionally, in the past twenty years, dreamt of drowning, of that day in the hot burn, but never had Andy been a part of the dream before, and never had she wet the bed. The reason why Andy now entered the dream was crystal clear to her. She felt like crying, but the kettle had boiled, so she made the tea and, feeling that this was breakfast-time, buttered some bread which she then cut into half-slice triangles. She stirred a spoonful of sugar into her tea. She tried to persuade herself that it would take time, this curative. With Andy's patience she would win through. She hoped that she would not need to submit herself to any specialist. She could not tell anyone her horror story. Not even Andy? Not yet anyway. She looked to the ceiling. The paint was cracked from light fitting to back door.

It had been like that for years. Sandy was asleep just a few feet above her. She closed her eyes for a moment. No, she did not regret it. Regret lay elsewhere. Regret lay in someone's shame, in someone's eternal shame.

She heard the floorboards creak. Sandy walked slowly to the bathroom. The toilet flushed. He padded back to bed.

She sat in silence, comfortable with the secret that she was already awake and up and listening to him.

Sandy, having wiped himself with toilet paper, returned to his bed and tried to avoid the chilled, clammy patch on his sheet. He had not experienced a wet dream for a long time.

He tried to get to sleep again, to perhaps take up the dream, but could not. He listened to the silence of the house.

Sometimes he thought that he could hear his mother's breathing. He had been dreaming of Rian, naturally. She had been walking naked through the mansion, touching things. He had watched her, nothing more. Just her nakedness had brought him beyond. The cold patch of wet had rung like an alarm clock and brought his dream to an inconclusive end. He could not recall at what point exactly in the dream he had come. That was unusual. He wanted Rian more badly than ever. He wanted to walk up Main Street with her, his arm over her shoulders, and show everyone, all the gossipy old women and the unemployed men and the gangs of young boys, that she was his, only his. But these stories she told: could they be true, and if they were, then what exactly did she do for these men? And for Robbie, come to that. Sandy knew that he could not beat Robbie in a fair fight. What he could do was take Rian away from him by stealth and bring her here to stay with his mother and him.

It was the wildest of plans. It was the only plan he had. How could he ask his mother? Would she understand? Surely, once he had put the facts to her, she could not refuse. She, more than anyone, knew what it was like to be an outsider, to be cast out and have to depend on yourself. He would put it to her that Rian was in the same situation. A refugee of sorts. He would ask her, but first he had to see Rian. And he had to find out the truth, which meant talking with Robbie when Rian was not present. He had much to do. A trickle of watery semen escaped and ran coolly down his thigh. He rubbed it dry and hoped that the sheet wouldn't stain.

Mary, tidying his room later that day while Sandy was out (he hated her doing this, feeling that it breached his privacy), found the hardened patch on the white sheet. She smiled a little as she tucked in the top sheet and threw the blanket over the bed. It was about time Sandy had a girl of his own, she thought to herself. He was a bit old now for this sort of thing. She caught herself - what was she thinking!

The boy was only fifteen, albeit fifteen and ten months. She was his mother after all. The last thing she should want was for him to get some girl into trouble. Nocturnal emissions did no harm. She piled up some pop magazines and put them beside his bed. Then she dusted, spraying polish on to the wooden surfaces. The smell was beautiful. Nothing resembled it. She put the duster to her nose. Beautiful. She hummed a song to herself as she closed the door and went through to her own room. She rarely dusted in the back room.

This afternoon she would visit the grave and tell her mother about the wonderful weather, the ban on hosepipes.

Later, Andy was taking her to Kirkcaldy. She had to make out a shopping list, though he would be disappointed that it was not to be a pleasure-only trip. She hoped that Sandy would come along too. There was a tension between Andy and her son, quite understandably, but the only way to break it was for them to meet often and find out about each other. She thought of herself as a humble amateur psychologist and matchmaker as she sprayed her polish liberally on to the pre-war dresser. She worked the polish in slowly, humming a nonsense tune and smiling. The wood became like the surface of a pond and, staring into it, Mary recoiled from the memory of her nightmare. She went giddy and gripped the edge of the dresser until her eyes cleared. She had to sort things out. She had to. This was something she could not talk to her mother about, not with her father listening. And she could never be certain that he wasn't.

Especially today, when she had Tom's letter to tell them about. Her father was bound to be there today. Her speech was nervous when she thought her father might be listening.

The man who had killed himself. She was sure it had been suicide. God save him. Dear Lord God save him. She began dusting again. Suicide, because of her.

There was a new minister in town, it was said. It had not taken long. Out with the old and in with the new, with no respectful period of mourning. She would have expected better from the Church. She would go to kirk this week and see what he was like. She doubted if she would like him nearly as well as she had liked the Reverend Davidson. Still, she had to give the man a chance. Everyone warranted a chance.

And perhaps, just perhaps, she would find that she could talk to him.

The single bell of St Cuthbert's Parish Church pealed out across the sleeping rooftops of the hungover houses in its midst. The Sunday morning had begun with the sluggish movements of the newspaper boys. A few keening dogs had been walked by their listless owners. Birds feasted up and down Main Street on the discarded wrappings of fish and chips from the raucous night before. These gouged balls of paper would be blown by the morning's breeze down Main Street and into the churchyard itself, lying against the dank walls of the church as if listening to a neighbour's argument.

A car would stop occasionally beside the newsagent's for the Sunday paper and the day's ration of cigarettes. A pool of vomit near the door was finally and inexorably trodden into the shop, making its sticky smell obvious to those who had so carefully tried to avoid its presence outside. Old ladies with old hats pinned to their heads, so long unfashionable as to be nearly fashionable again, would mutter dark utterances to the bleary-eyed newsagent before departing with their pandrops towards the church. They would walk the slow length of Main Street commenting upon a full week's gossip, would enter the awkwardly gravelled kirkyard, and would stand outside talking until the chill pushed them into the doorway, where a trim and proper elder stood smiling, hands clasped importantly in front of him. He would offer them a hymnbook as usual, and they would refuse as usual, having possessed their own (they would inform him) since they had first been able to read, and that wasn't yesterday.

The organist, ruddy-cheeked, had chosen his piece and was playing it to the morning chorus of whispers and coughs as the self-conscious congregation settled into the well-worn, comfortable rhythm of Sunday morning. The bell tolled overhead and around them. It was as if the outside world had never been.

When Mary came into his room carrying a cup of tea and two ginger-nuts, Sandy was waking from another tolerable dream - though a kind of nightmare - concerning Rian and himself.

They were being chased by a gang, and had climbed to the top floor of a block of flats in order to escape. They had found one flat open and had swept inside, locking and bolting the door behind them. It had been a nice flat and Rian had immediately made herself at home, trying out the gadgets in the kitchen and turning on television, radio, stereo. He tried to make her see the danger they were in. The door was being pushed at by some vast, faceless force, but she had ignored him. Look, he said, I'm trying to save us. Can't you help? She had come to him, smiling, as distant as ever, had kissed him on the cheek and had placed a bread knife in his hand. Use this, she had said, and kissed him again. He looked at the obscenely serrated edge of the knife. The door opened a fraction, held only by the chain, and a hand crawled round its edge, fiddling with the lock, trying to snap the flimsy chain. Methodically, but hating himself, he had begun to slice at the hand, which he wedged with all his might into the gap in the door so that it could not escape, and suddenly it was an animal, its body its own, belonging to nothing outside of the door. Gashes, but no blood. Screams, but no mouth. It had dropped to the floor in snake-like agony. Rian had come up behind him with a cup of tea. She had tapped him on the back. A cup of tea, Sandy, she had said. A cup of tea.

It was his mother's voice, too sharp to be part of the dream. He blinked open his eyes and brought his head out from beneath the sheet. The light bit him. The curtains had been opened and his mother was standing in her dressing gown with a mug of tea in her hand.

'Cup of tea?' she repeated. He was plunged back into the dream for a moment, and at the same time was aware of an erection beneath the bedclothes. He sat up, concentrating on the tea and the new day, feeling the throb easing.