Flood (24 page)

She paused. Her throat was dry. She scooped up some water from a puddle and lapped at it like a dog. She felt she was going too quickly; none of it seemed plausible.

'I don't really know what I'm trying to say, Mum. It was so long ago. But later, when Dad was sick and had to go to the bathroom and collapsed there, well, Patterson. He did it. He did it. And it was against my will all right, but I was confused. I hit him, but he was a big, heavy man. And he was talking to me, but differently from Dad ... He was trying to talk like a boyfriend. It was horrible. Talking about maybe getting married. Eventually I ran upstairs and sat with my body against the bedroom door in case they tried to get in.

I was awake all night while they slept. It was disgusting, Mum, but how could I tell you? How could I? I

don't know why I'm telling you now.'

She wiped tears from her face. Her breath was heavy. Her heart was a slow machine, rusted. She looked again at the ground, at the broken flowers in their jars, at the earth which held the two corpses.

'Oh, Mum, I don't know, I really don't know. But that's why Dad committed suicide. Because . .. I'm not even sure if he knew about Patterson. Probably not. So all the guilt was on him.

But now all the guilt is on Patterson, you see. And though I love Sandy with all my might, still I can't help feeling sometimes that part of him belongs to someone else, someone I hate. Oh, Jesus, help me. You see now, Mum, don't you? And I couldn't tell Andy. If only I could tell Andy.

Tom had nothing to do with it, you see. Nothing at all. He was mystified when he found out. He thought it might have been one of his friends. Oh, Jesus, how can I talk to you again, Mum? How can I make you listen? I'm sorry. But it wasn't my fault, Mum. It wasn't my fault.'

She breathed deeply, her face to the cast-iron sky. Rain was falling somewhere, and soon would fall here again. She walked quickly from the cemetery, her coat around her like a rough skin. A car had stopped at the gates, but it was not Andy. There were to be no miracles. It was the minister. He walked around the car towards her. She was elsewhere, but he could not see it.

'Miss . .. Mrs Miller, eh, I was just coming to see you. I didn't catch you at your house so I. . .'

'Go away, will you? Just leave me alone!' She began to run downhill. She did not know where she was going, but she knew that it had to be somewhere lonely and somewhere uninvolved. In the end, she ran towards the flooded park.

Robbie was blind drunk. That much Sandy knew by just looking at him. The young man was slumped against the outside wall of the mansion. He cradled a near-empty bottle of vodka in his arms and sang to it as if it were his baby sister.

'Oh ho,' he said as the boy approached. 'It's Sandy, is it?

Will you sit down here and have a drink with me, Sandy?'

He waved the bottle in Sandy's general direction. 'You will have a drink, won't you? I'm hellish lonely these evenings.

You stopped coming to see us. What's wrong?'

Sandy crouched in front of him. With one hand he steadied himself on the ground, while the other hand stayed in his pocket, where the roll of notes lurked.

'Listen, Robbie,' he began, staring at the bleary slits of the young gypsy's eyes, watching the eyes themselves glisten and roll and pull themselves into focus, 'I want to speak to you about Rian.'

'About Rian? Ha! That little bitch? Don't let's speak about her, Alexander. Let's enjoy ourselves. Here.' He motioned towards Sandy with the bottle. Sandy took it from him and gulped down the vodka. It burned in his throat, but made him feel better.

Tea,' he continued, 'about Rian. I've got some money together, Robbie, and I want to ...' Robbie's head rolled.

'Money,' he said, 'money, is it? Oh yes,' he rubbed at his chin and a little wise old man's face came over him, 'the money. Rian told me about that. You're supposed to be getting together some money. What for again? Oh yes, to buy her from me. Ha! That's a good one! Buy Rian! As if she could be bought. She can be bought, mind you, but not like that.

No, not like that at all.' It was as if he were talking to himself. His eyes stared at the gathering dusk, seeking answers to unspoken questions, then were dragged towards the ground by the weight of the alcohol. 'No, Sandy, you can't buy Rian. It was a trick. She told me all about it. Told me to keep quiet. But you're me pal, aren't you? I'll tell you. It was her idea, Sandy. Nothing to do with me.' He shook his head vigorously, but his eyes fixed themselves on the sky. 'Rain.

Any minute. Anyone can see that. More fucking rain. It's damp in that house. Why does nobody ever come to fix the roof? The tarpaulin's all torn or worn away or something.

The ceiling is rotten. Not fit to live in. Not fit. Ah, but Sandy me boy, she was taking you for a ride. Not her usual ride, but a ride all the same.' He laughed at the gods. It was the sound of drunken jubilation. It would be forgotten by morning. Taking you for a ride, my son. She wanted me to grab the money, then neither of us would have anything to do with you afterwards. We'd board up the windows proper, or disappear, and never see you again. What could you do, eh?' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Nothing. Unless you were prepared to tell people that you had been planning to buy yourself a gyppo girl, and who'd have sympathy for you then, eh? No-fucking-body. Not in this town, Sandy. So you'd be up the creek, right? Without a paddle, right? But never fear.

Your old pal has told you. He's saved your fucking neck, so sit and have a drink with him. Sit yourself down.'

He patted the ground beside him. The grass was sodden. Sandy could feel it underhand. His heart was racing. He

understood now, and he believed. It had been stupid all along not to. Robbie, Aunt Kitty, his own mother - they had known, they had instinctively known the rottenness that

was core deep, for they had lived through it themselves in many manifestations. Yet she had been loving towards him, gentle, fragile. Could it possibly have been merely a game, a charade for her own benefit? Robbie was speaking again.

^You're awful quiet, Sandy. Did you fall for it then? Did you really save up all your pennies? So have others before you. You're not alone.

Have you come here to give all your pennies to Robbie? Do us a favour and go get another bottle

instead. Keep the change. You can have the bitch for free, but I doubt if you'll be able to take her.' He grew less animated. 'She makes good money sometimes, and when she does she gives me some for a little drink. To keep me quiet, I suppose, and so I'll look after her and protect her from the big wide world out there. But I'll let you into a secret, Sandy.

I'd look after her anyway, without the bribes and the booze.

She's my sister, you see, and I've been looking after her since I was a kid.' He waved his arms in an uncertain sweep. 'How much did you bring, Sandy? Fifty pounds? She said you'd manage fifty, said you had some nice things in your house.

Myself, I said I doubted whether you'd get more than thirty or thirty-five, but she was adamant that you'd manage fifty for her. She said you were that much in love.'

'Shut up!' The final syllable racketed around the garden and in Sandy's ears. 'Shut the fuck up!'

Robbie put his hands comically over his ears, grimacing, letting the bottle slip to the grass. Sandy remembered that he was only a few years younger than the gypsy. He reached out and slapped Robbie with his free hand. The feeling was shocking, but satisfying too, as if he had done something really wicked against authority: dropping litter or shitting in the playground. He touched his stinging palm with his fingertips. Robbie rubbed at the spot of red on his grey cheek. He was not going to retaliate. Sandy wondered if this were the same strong, cocky person whom he had encountered in a shadowed room only a few months previously. It was like watching a cancer victim growing old too quickly. It was like watching his grandmother as she had wept herself towards death.

'Where is she?' he asked. His voice was firm like a film actor's. Robbie shook his head. He was studying Sandy's feet now.

'Could be two or three places,' he said, still drunk but trying not to be. 'Could be down by the river in the park, but it's flooded, isn't it? Sometimes she takes them to the back of the swimming pool. Other times it's behind the Miners'

Institute.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'It's no use, though.

What could you do? Nothing. Better leave her alone, Sandy.

You'll only hurt yourself. I don't want my pal hurting himself. Stay here. Come on, we'll finish this bottle and get another. Nothing's to blame really. Just, well, everything.

This fucking town. This fucking country. Anything you want to blame.' He shook his head wearily. 'Stay here, Sandy. It's getting cold. We can go inside, if I can get up the bloody pipe.

You can wait for her inside. Look, look,' he put his hands out, palms upward, like a slouching Buddha, 'look, Sandy, it's beginning to rain again.'

But when Robbie looked up, Sandy had vanished. He peered into the gloom, but saw nothing.

'Sandy,' he said. 'Sandy, you'll only . ..' Robbie slid sideways down the wall and was asleep.

She was not at the Miners' Institute. He walked on, down the hill towards the swimming pool. It had been a gift to the town from the miners, built in the mid-1960s when things were already beginning to turn sour. It had been popular throughout Fife for a time, but then a much larger pool had been built in Kirkcaldy, and another dream had become merely an echo in the showers. Now it was used by the town's swimming club and by some old people. It was falling into disrepair. Gangs painted its walls with vaguely sectarian slogans and would gather against its back wall to be warmed by the hot air ducts there. Some public conveniences, much vandalised, stood locked nearby, and the park was separated from the pool only by the town's bowling green.

Sandy took a short cut behind the bingo hall, wary of the shadows. The Cars might not be far away. He could easily fight them all on a night like this. The slap he had given Robbie stung in his memory.

The rain hardly touched him, and his eyes stared at the backs of the buildings. It looked as though someone had broken into the Soda Fountain, but that was of no concern to him. She had been cruel. She had been needlessly cruel.

Every fibre of her was rotten with experience. She might burn in hell, but she would have to face him first. His fingers tightened into hardening fists.

Mary walked by the edge of the flooded park. Her shoes were sucked at by the sodden grass, but she could not feel the dampness rising around her. She had stopped crying, and had set up the necessary barriers between herself and her grief. She would survive, but she wished that the night were over. She wished that she could transport herself many weeks into the future, to a time when everything had healed and seemed to have taken place in an unreal time. Either that or let her fade into the long past, beyond the Boxing Day to a time when the world had promised much and asked for little. She stopped to look over a railing. The stagnant, near-dead burn had filled with rain-water. It was as if it had been revitalised. For a moment she might have been ten again and watching Tom playing football. She remembered that day. The goblins in the burn. Her burning hair. It was dreamlike now, as this night would sometime be ...

Sandy heard the animal sounds and recognised them. His stomach like a sea-squall, he turned the corner. She was against the wall, moving with a forced motion up and down it. A duct hummed above her and sent a small amount of steam curling down over her and the figure which obscenely wedged her against that rough wall. He knew that figure. It was the worst thing he could have imagined. The grunts were unbearable. He watched in fascination as the rhythm played itself out. He almost laughed. It was banal; like adults playing at being children. Then he walked toward! them. Her head turned and she saw him approaching pushed at Belly Martin, but his weight was on heavy winter blankets. His head rested against 1

eased himself down towards reality.

The reality was stunning. Sandy pulled him off!

the hair, lank and greasy, away from the unresisting He threw him, grunting, against the wall, turned him, and kicked him solidly in his absurdly babylike genitals. The squeal was satisfying. His fist sank into an unfeeling, doughy mass. He stood back and kicked again, and Belly Martin squealed again and went down on all fours to be sick.

Sandy, breathing lightly, looked at her. She had smoothed her skirt down and her head was bowed, her lips red and bated.

'Slut,' he said. It was as if he had hit her. She jerked a little, but kept her eyes on the ground. He saw that she had the shawl, grubby now and hanging heavy with rain, around her shoulders. He did not want to touch it. Suddenly he felt subdued, tired. His brain was tired and his legs were tired and he wished that it would end. He eased himself against the wall beside her and rubbed at his forehead. Boot-polish still hung in the air around him, the grubbiness of gypsies.

She had not moved.

'Sandy . . . ' Her voice was quieter than Belly Martin's retching. 'Sandy, it was Robbie . . . ' He shook his head in disgust.

Belly was cursing him with what breath he had. Sandy pushed the obscenity with his foot and watched it roll over.

It curled itself into a foetal, protective position, rather like a snail, and did not move.

'Sandy, it's not like you think.'

'No more tricks, Rian. I've been too fucking stupid for too long.' But then why was he listening to her at all? And why was his head thumping like some tightened drum-skin? He should leave now. He should make the best of it. What was the best of it? He levered himself from the wall and moved past her. She put a gentle hand on his back.

*No, Sandy, listen to me. It's you I want, Sandy. It's you.'

When he turned she was right behind him, and she stood forward even then to kiss him on the lips. Her tongue ran along his teeth, her hand snaking to the back of his neck, caressing the headache, the tension. He felt her cool saliva.

How much of it, he thought with sudden revulsion, was Belly Martin's? He pushed her away, but she fell against the wall, steam wafting around her. Graffiti encircled her like the frame of a painting. Her hands were behind her back and inviting, the whole of her body open to him. He faced her and felt triumphant, a warrior claiming some prize. But she was . . . He should . . . There was no sense . . . Her hand went to his thigh. He was a child again, staring at what he did not really understand.