Authors: Lucy Wood
Ada watched the bubbles rolling on the water.
‘So I’m willing to make you an offer.’ He named a figure that was significantly less than she’d asked for at the beginning. Said it like he was doing her a favour. ‘It needs a lot of work,’ he said. ‘But I can do that. You wouldn’t have to worry about it any more. I guess it’s got potential in a lot of ways.’ He was speaking a lot faster now. He slurped at the coffee she gave him and added three spoons of sugar.
Ada looked out at the pouring rain. The snow going crumbly and grey as old pastry. Things underneath battered but emerging.
Ray said: ‘Alright, alright, I’ll give you what you asked for.’ He stood behind a chair and tipped it backwards and forwards. ‘You’re right. I was being cheap before but you’re right.’ He wiped at his forehead. ‘I shouldn’t have even said that.’
Ada shook her head.
Ray named a figure that was over the original price. ‘Hell, woman,’ he said. ‘You haven’t even got electricity. Look at this place.’ He tapped on the counter, on the sink.
‘I changed my mind,’ she told him.
Ray put down his half-finished coffee and touched his coat in the sink. ‘You changed your mind,’ he said. His sleeves dribbled dye down his hands. He put the coat on and it clung to his arms and wrinkled. ‘I suppose no one can stop you doing that.’
‘Soap,’ Ada told him. ‘Remember? To get the dye out. Rub it with plain soap.’
He stopped in the doorway and looked out towards the road. Water was pouring down. ‘Snow-melt,’ he said. ‘From up there.’ Pointing at the moor. ‘And all this rain.’ He shook his head. ‘Listen. There’s going to be a lot of water coming down here soon. It was running down the road when I was driving. Watch out OK? I think you’ve got it coming.’ He said it kindly. He pulled at his shrunken coat, put the hood up, then turned and ran to his car, splashing up snow and water.
Ada stood for a moment in the doorway. A lot of water coming. She ran out to the barn, found two sandbags and slung them against the front steps. Glimpsed the river running very high and fast. It was dark brown and choppy. As she watched, water spilled over the top of the bank and sank into the rain-soaked grass.
The rain chewed snow down to wet crust. The roof streamed like washing. Trees dripped. The moor shucked off snow and was soon back down to bare husk.
And the water had to go somewhere. It ran down the moor in rivulets that joined up and became a torrent. Over saturated bogs, through knotted grass, into fields and lanes. It gushed down the roads, overflowed ditches and drains. Bubbled out of grilles. The snow melted off trees in the wood, and the melt-water poured with the rain into the river. The river swelled and thundered through the valley. It doubled its width until it had flowed over the banks towards the house. It soaked through the grass and met the water pouring down from the road above it.
‘Why’s there water coming into the house?’ Pepper said. She lifted her foot up and looked at it. Then crouched down on the kitchen floor and poked at a seeping puddle. Ada looked. Water was rising up through the floor and spreading, darkening the tiles as she watched. ‘I put out sandbags,’ she said. ‘I put out sandbags.’ She went over to the window and looked out. No grass. The house on a shallow lake. Trees standing in the middle like waders sifting through an estuary.
She ran out and down the hallway. Saw water pushing in under the front door, more rising through the skirting and floorboards. The lino in the kitchen was lifting and peeling, a tile floating off already. The water pushed up and spread and in minutes was a centimetre deep. Brown, gritty water, bits of crap from the fields and the road brought with it.
‘Captain,’ Pepper shouted. ‘Captain, where are you?’ She splashed into the hall, calling. ‘Captain will drown,’ she said.
‘He’s probably upstairs already,’ Ada told her. ‘Go and look.’
Pepper ran upstairs and then back down again shouting that he wasn’t there. Ada went through the house looking. How had it happened so quickly? She stood on the top step of the study and looked down. The room was filled with a foot of dirty water. It lapped against the bottom step. Captain was on the armchair in the corner, asleep but twitching, his hackles rising as if his dream-self knew what was coming. The water just touching the bottom of the seat. ‘He’s down here,’ she called.
Pepper rushed in and stopped next to Ada. ‘The cameras,’ she yelled.
‘They’re OK on the desk for now,’ Ada said. ‘Get the cat upstairs.’
Pepper ran and got a blanket, waded through the water and shoved it over Captain, hauled him upstairs as he struggled and hissed inside. ‘I’m trying to save you,’ Pepper shouted at him.
Ada stepped into the cold water and lugged a box off the desk, carried it through the hall and put it halfway up the stairs. Went back to get another. The rest of the books were safe on the top shelves. She touched them as she went past, a page tearing in the damp and sticking to her hand.
She heard Pepper come back down and suddenly wail, ‘Where is it? Where’s it gone?’ She came down into the study and plunged her hands in the water. ‘My button,’ she said. She sifted through the water and then went out of the room, still looking.
‘Stay upstairs with the cat,’ Ada called. ‘Don’t let him come down.’ Then she ran down the hallway, stopped, shouted ‘Gas’, and went through the kitchen to turn everything off. She went to the front door, opened it, and started to brush the water out. There was a huge puddle on the front step that kept washing in. Rain drove into her face. She turned and saw her mother leaning against the wall, shaking her head as if trying to clear her thoughts. Water pouring down her hair and her back.
‘Sandbags,’ Ada said. ‘Are there any more?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘Just let it come,’ she said. ‘There’s no stopping it.’ Her voice drummed like the rain and water streamed down her face and dripped off her hands. Ada stopped brushing and leaned the broom slowly against the door.
Her mother staggered and held onto the wall.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Ada said. A cold feeling pumping in her chest. The water gushed like a tap. Pushing in and out of the house like something breathing.
Her mother’s eyes were swimming with murky water. She let go of the wall and stood for a moment, swaying, then she stumbled down the hall and towards her study. Stood in the deep water at the bottom of the steps.
Ada followed her. Her mother’s skin seemed to ripple and stretch, grit lodged under her fingernails. She was trailing her fingers through the water. ‘The window broke,’ she said. ‘And the snowball dripped through my fingers.’ She swayed, then stepped back to get her balance. ‘Fob watches,’ she said. ‘The lovely way the oil smelled. I never thought it would become my favourite smell. Or matches. And the bread when it was baking. But the bread burned and I threw it in the bin.’
Ada watched her closely. There was so much water dripping, it was hard to keep her in focus. ‘I ate it,’ she said. ‘I took it out and I ate it. It was perfect in the middle.’ She’d cut the burned crust off and the middle was soft and full of air.
‘You ate it,’ her mother said. Her knees gave way and she stumbled, almost fell right into the water. Her arms plunged in. ‘It’s dragging at me again,’ she said.
Ada moved forward but her own legs buckled and went numb. She crumpled onto the top step. ‘Try and hold on here,’ she said.
‘It’s a strong one,’ her mother said. ‘There’s no question about that.’ She closed her eyes, then opened them. ‘It’s crashing into things. Boulders, trees, taking everything with it. A branch is getting hauled right under.’ She slipped again. Water rushed over her skin, turning it murky and thin. Ada could almost see the window through it.
‘Tell me what birds you see,’ Ada said. Her legs were so cold.
‘You don’t want to hear about that.’
‘I do,’ Ada said. ‘I do.’
‘Well,’ her mother said. ‘There’s a pied wagtail on the highest rock, keeping its distance from the water. And a heron in the flooded field. By God it looks happy, extended fishing grounds. What is one person’s disaster is another’s opportunity.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘And a kingfisher just speeding downriver, trying to find a branch to land on. Like a bright bolt. Yes, and a wren watching it all from a tree, and a crow just over there.’ Her foot drifted backwards with the water. ‘The crow’s waiting, just waiting to see what happens. Biding his time, the canny devil.’ Her voice flooded with water now, the water pouring off her clothes and lapping against the walls. The current pulling at her. The water surging and rain pouring. Mixing everything up, loosening grips, churning leaves and dragging back silt and grit and stones, dragging everything back down to the river.
Ada stayed sitting on the step for a long time, watching the water. Listening to it like a voice that faded and surged and faded again.
Everything was pouring again, everything was on the move. The snow restless as it melted – breaking up and spreading and letting go of itself.
Pearl felt very thin and stretched. Once again the sound of the river was deep and unremitting; she could taste ditches and fields and wet carpets. She looked down at herself and saw only water – brown and gritty and strangely still. But there was a great dragging pressure – an unrelenting pull, as if a plug had been unstoppered somewhere.
She was taut and cold and aching. She lapped against walls. She split the desk’s wooden legs. She toppled a lamp. A wire fizzed. A coat slumped like a drowned body. A notebook fell off a shelf and its sodden spine tore. The pages floated – all her observations, all her lists; hours and days and years. A record of her attentiveness. Now dissolving in the water, the ink thinning like skin.
The river roared. She was hauled downwards and out – through plaster and brick and cobwebs, through mouse tunnels and the gap under the door. Suddenly merging with rain and huge puddles. Gravel from the road, a shoe like a bloated fish. Sweeping past swampy grass, past clumps of sludgy snow and drooling ice; the water rushing back down to the river, more water spilling over the bank and pushing up towards the house. Pearl caught in the middle of it – the river pushing and pulling like the pumping of silty blood.
Everything teemed. The bank crumbled and Pearl went with it – back into the churning river, which was bloated and brawny, ripping up roots and hurling branches as it went. Bowling a tractor tyre along like a toy. Juggling a ripped fence. She saw the house as she went, standing among shallow water like something marooned. Propped up and grey and bedraggled. An infuriating place. But it was hers. Yes. It was hers. Where she had ended up. Not what she had expected, but perhaps not the worst thing, to have had her life here. For it to have become home without her noticing. Her rapids, her slushy snow, her watery, boggy greens and greys. Her pain-in-the-arse remoteness, not seeing anyone for weeks. Her power cuts, her seeping and ancient moor. Her birds, her narrow and bastard roads. Her flooding river: brown and silver and fat as a trout.
Down the bank and into the pounding current. There were no slow, quiet parts of the river now. No eddying, no stagnant pools with nests of caught sticks and feathers. The water riled everything up. Leaves split and tore. Branches snapped and were flung down-river. Pearl swept out into the middle where the water was fastest, hurtled down and round the bend and . . . wait. The house was about to go out of sight. She clung onto a boulder instinctively. Somehow managed to grip onto the stone’s rough edges, work her way into the moss and cracks and haul herself up. She stared at the house. She wasn’t ready. Suddenly, she wasn’t ready.
She clung on. The river rushed past her and through her and its roaring was so loud, so steady, that she stopped hearing it. In amongst the ceaseless pressure everything became silent and calm. The browns turned into greens and yellows, the water glinted, and she remembered the first time she had stepped into the river. The first cold shock of it.
It was early spring and they had just moved into the house that winter. The first daffodils coming up like lamps, and the ramsons’ white flowers coating everything as if the snow had never left. Their pungent smell after it rained. The wind whipping. Silky buds on the alder trees like mice. Frank opening all the doors and windows to air the house and saying that he was going to teach her to swim. It was never too late to learn, apparently. He knew a nice easy stretch where the river wasn’t too deep, the current slackening and good to swim against.
Her hair had lifted up in the wind. The river was wide and glittering and they walked down the long grass, along the bank and down onto a shingly beach. Pearl took her shoes off and hobbled on the sharp stones, her soles not yet toughened up. No cracked, hard skin back then. She watched Frank take off his belt and his trousers and his shirt. He waded in. The colour of his body against the water: the creams and coppers and dusty purples. His spine like the lovely bumps in a chrysalis.
Pearl took her clothes off down to her underwear, felt Frank watching her, and folded them carefully. It was very cold. She waded in, the freezing water pushing against her toes, then her ankles, then her thighs. She waded over to Frank and ran her finger down his back. She had only known him for a year.
‘Sit in the water first,’ he told her. ‘So that you get used to it.’
They sat in the river, their skin gleaming and pale and looking not part of themselves at all, but part of the rippled and moving water. She could feel the current tugging at her and the wind pulling at the water’s surface and at the surface of her skin, making creases and goosebumps. Everything glittered green and copper, like a rusty coin being cleaned.