Authors: Lucy Wood
Pepper went to find Captain and make sure he was OK with having Shep in the house. It was late afternoon and dark. Captain hissed and backed away. Probably best to keep them separate. The fire was roaring and every single window was open even though it was cold, to try and get rid of the damp. All the sodden things had been piled up outside: one pile for saving, one pile for throwing away.
When she got back into the kitchen, Tristan was chopping onions and his eyes were watering. He’d brought over a camping stove to cook on because their oven didn’t work. Her mother’s hand was on his back. The sizzling oil and the sizzling onions covered up the sour, fetid smell in the kitchen.
Later, her mother smoothed the covers around her in bed. She smoothed and then she pushed at the lumpy bits in the mattress. ‘Do you like Tristan?’ she said eventually.
Pepper traced the stars on the duvet. ‘Do you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ her mother told her. ‘I do.’
Pepper thought about it. ‘I like Shep and Tristan the same.’ She propped herself up to look at her mother better. ‘He looks younger than you,’ she said. Thought about when her mother’s knees cracked, and the tiny grey hairs behind her ear.
‘Do you think so?’
Pepper nodded. ‘He doesn’t have lines like this,’ she said. She put her finger on the creases around her mother’s eyes.
‘Maybe he hasn’t laughed as much as me,’ her mother said.
Pepper patted her mother’s hand. The dry knuckles and the scalds and the bitten skin. She patted and patted.
In the morning they got out buckets and mops and soapy water. The bubbles had rainbows in them. The disinfectant burned up Pepper’s nose. ‘This better not happen again,’ she said.
‘It might,’ her mother told her. She wiped the wall by the front door.
Pepper crouched down and scrubbed at the floor. Remembered something that Petey had told her. ‘Judy and Robbie’s animals,’ she said. ‘Why do they have them there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The cows and stuff.’ She dunked her sponge in the hot water. ‘I stroked them.’
Her mother stopped wiping. ‘You know why,’ she said. ‘It’s a farm. They milk some of them and they sell others for food.’
Pepper nodded and slowly lifted the sponge out. Wrung it out so that bubbles and grit dripped back in. Vowed then and there that she would never eat meat again. Another surprise for her mother.
She scrubbed for a few minutes, then she put the sponge down and went into the study. The windows were wide open and the wind was blowing in. The bare floor was dark and gritty. They kept finding pins and clips and bits of jewellery in between the boards. There were coins and a gold ring, like treasure. All the boxes were stacked on the shelves out of the way. Pepper went over to the box with her name on it. Patted the dusty jackdaw as she went past. She could hear the river, high and drumming. She found her camera, leaned out of the window and took a picture of the wide puddle outside. Then went back out into the hall and took one of her mother scrubbing the bit of floor Pepper was meant to be doing, her hair tied with a scarf. A flash of Captain’s tail. Shep drinking the horrible water pooled by the front door.
She put on her boots and coat. ‘Come and see the river,’ she said to her mother.
‘I better finish this,’ her mother said. Shep came over and sniffed her hand and she moved it away.
Tristan came out of the kitchen and pounded Shep’s back. ‘Don’t take it personally buddy,’ he said. He ran his hands down the hinges on the door.
Her mother reached out and touched Shep’s ear with the back of her hand. ‘There,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ Pepper said. ‘I want to show you.’ She shoved her mother’s coat at her and told her to put it on.
The ground was like a bog. Sucking at their boots. Mud and water clagging on their heels. Her mother stopped and looked back at the house and said something about the tiles.
‘Come on,’ Pepper said. The grass was yellow and crushed. There was a tideline of wet leaves pushed halfway up the field. She looked around for the old woman but couldn’t see her anywhere. ‘Petey says it’s going to snow some more,’ she said.
Her mother stopped again and bent down to adjust her laces. ‘I hope not,’ she said.
The grass got wetter and wetter and then there was the river, heaving past their feet. Wide and deep and brown, with thick swells moving through it. A magnificent booming sound, like a metal drum rolling around in a gale. Most of the rocks were covered, just a few grey tops jutting out, and the bank had crumbled, whole chunks fallen away like the river had grabbed handfuls of it.
‘Look at all that stuff,’ Pepper shouted. There was a tree stuck under the bridge. And a road sign, and a tractor tyre, and what looked like a front door – the handle still hanging on it. Torrents and creases; the water overlapping itself, crumpling under its own weight. And the floodwater had scoured the ground, exposing all the trees’ roots underneath. ‘Look at it,’ she said.
‘I am,’ her mother said.
Pepper looked at the trees in front of her and then at the next field over. There were still shallow pools of water spreading over the grass. And there was something standing in the middle, something grey and hunched. She closed her eyes, then looked again. It was still there, standing very upright and not moving. Pepper didn’t move. The heron was big and grey, almost purple in places. It had a bright white neck and a black bit of punky hair at the top. It looked like it was wrapped in a tatty cloak. And its yellow eye was staring down at the water. She reached for the camera but the heron looked over and shuffled its feathers. Then it hunched forward and glared right at her. A bolt of joy passed through her.
‘Frank,’ she said. ‘Frank, Frank.’
‘What did you say?’ her mother asked.
‘It’s what the heron says,’ Pepper told her.
‘Yes,’ her mother said quietly. ‘I think I knew that.’
The heron swivelled its head and then it shifted, flexed its shoulders and took off downriver, crying out as it went. Wings wide, legs dangling, almost skimming the top of the water.
‘It won’t have gone far,’ her mother said. She walked through the grass the same way that the heron had gone. ‘They don’t usually fly far when they get disturbed. There’s a wider bit further down here they sometimes go.’ She started walking along the bank.
‘How do you know?’ Pepper said. But further down, exactly where her mother said, there was the heron. Hunched over at the edge of the bank, staring down at the fast-moving water. ‘What’s it doing?’ she whispered.
‘Hunting,’ her mother said. ‘Looking for fish.’
They crouched down in the wet grass and watched. Pepper took the camera out of the case. She adjusted the focus very carefully. The heron stepped through the water, moving further along the bank. She started to roll up her trousers. ‘I need to get closer,’ she said. There was a wide shingly beach below the bank and her mother held Pepper’s arm and lowered her down.
The wet stones glinted dark grey and orange, like rusty pipes. They crunched as she stepped forward. Water swirled among the pebbles. The first icy shock as it crept into her boots. She squatted down and lifted the camera.
The heron was looking at her again. She held the camera steady. Thin mist clung to the edges of the bank. She heard her mother jump softly down onto the beach. She glanced back and saw her standing on varnished stones, watching.
She turned back to the heron. It was standing so still; she had enough time to get it exactly right if she just waited, if she just waited a bit more. She adjusted the focus again and looked. The heron moved to one side. She followed it with the camera, waiting, waiting. The heron stopped moving and hunched forward. It stood so still. She had it in focus but she waited a moment longer, it was important to get the clearest shot, to capture exactly how it was, right now, with the wet stones and the crushed grass and the mist. She made one more small adjustment, held the camera steady, noticed the orange beak and an orange leaf floating past, and then she clicked the shutter, and just at that moment the heron took off again. Maybe she had caught it, or maybe she had clicked too late and there would be a wing, a foot, glimpsed in the corner of the frame as the heron glided out of sight, streaming out beyond the picture like a kite. But she could try again and again and again and . . .
Here she was again, back by the river. Freezing water rushing under her feet. Stones flipping like drop-scones; purple and green and mackerel-coloured. Fragments of smashed terracotta, stirred-up silt, peaks and creases and wrinkles. The bank worn down to pale roots, tangled inside like the workings of a body.
More beautiful than she remembered. Ada watched Pepper crouch down, almost kneel, in the water and aim the camera at the heron. Her mouth twitching with concentration. Keeping herself very still, but not rigid, not fraught; a calmness in the way she held the camera and waited. The water pushed past, restless and glinting. Soaking through the seams of Ada’s boots, making her toes prickle. She had forgotten, or maybe never noticed, the sound the river made when it lapped at the shallow edges, how the drizzly mist clung to the surface like static on fabric. And all the shifting colours. She’d thought of it as dull and monotonous, the same old river from one moment to the next. But it changed second by second: now a clump of feathers tumbling down, now a plank of wood, now the water riled up around a snapped sapling.
Ada watched the heron – solitary, hunched, staring fixedly at Pepper. It was standing very still, just its eyes flicking between Pepper and the water. Pepper’s finger hovered over the button.
‘Take it,’ Ada whispered. The heron was shuffling its feet, an agitated twitch in its feathers. Pepper raised the camera, pointed it, and clicked. At the same moment, the heron took off, clattering up out of the water, soaring away with its legs dangling. Its croaking calls merging with the sounds of the river: with the water glugging around the rocks, the deeper thrumming like boots thumping across a floor, or doors opening and closing. And the rhythmic click of stone against stone, like a clock ticking. And the saffron glints like jewellery scattered across a desk. The low rumbling sounds, as if someone in the distance was coughing and clearing their throat.
Pepper turned and started to wade back over to Ada, her trousers soaking, holding the camera carefully so that it didn’t get wet. She kept talking about getting a TV, so they could watch cartoons, and the news, and those cowboy films where everyone walks off into a sunset. Ada glanced back at the house, just glimpsed the dripping roof, the battered chimney. Thought of Tristan waiting for them in the kitchen. The mouldy floors and warped doors, the grass in front churned with mud. No sunset there, but a February fog, woolly and glorious.
She looked downriver at the old bridge. The water was moving in wide, choppy waves, making its way past all the branches and bits of fence that had banked up. Further down, on the other side of the bridge, there was a deep pool. When the river was calm, the water there slowed down and turned very clear. Tiny fish darted through it and insects skimmed over the surface. It was the place her mother used to go to swim. She would slip out early in the mornings, before Ada woke up, and come back with soaking hair and goosebumps all over her arms. And one morning, Ada had got up and followed her.
It had been early spring, the first hints of pale shoots, a solitary bumble-bee working its way around the trees. The sky grey and still. She could see herself now, hiding behind that tree, leaning against the rough bark and chewing the ends of her hair. There she was: the same age as Pepper, just a bit taller, digging into the bark with her fingers and watching her mother wade into the water – her pale legs and arms, skin soft and slightly slack, turquoise veins, a black swimming costume. Ribbed lines around her ankles from where her socks had dug in. Her mother’s hair was longer back then, a rich auburn tinge to it, and it curled in the damp around the nape of her neck. The wind lifted it softly. She waded into the water step by step, and the water was so clear, Ada could see her feet moulding themselves around the stones. Step by step, her eyes fixed on the water. Freckles flung over her shoulders like salt. The river lapping around her knees, then her thighs, and she crouched down in the water and let out a quiet gasp at the cold.
Ada had stopped picking at the tree. She leaned forward, watching. Her mother spread her arms out and then she pushed herself forward through the water. She hardly made a sound. Leaves and seeds floated slowly. A small ripple circled out, growing wider, the circles doubling then tripling, then washing up against the bank below Ada’s feet. Her mother’s skin looked green and yellow, her arms pale and wavering. Like a strange underwater flower blooming.
And then she’d ducked under. One moment she was there and the next moment there was just a wide circle of ripples moving slowly outwards.
Ada stayed very still and watched the water. What thoughts had passed through her mind, exactly? There she was, behind the tree, chewing her hair instead of her nails, wearing her favourite glittery jelly shoes. Her skin smooth and cold: no scars, no dents, no scalds. But what had she been thinking? She couldn’t remember. All she remembered was the sound of the wind through the trees, how she had turned over a loose stone with her foot, waiting, watching the ripples spreading out and out . . .