by Mel McGrath
People lie all the time, Tash had said.
Well isn’t that the truth?
Chapter 17
Cullen
Ratner pokes his head around the door of the Dean’s office. ‘You called?’
‘Come in and close the door.’ Cullen has stationed himself in his office chair so he’s partially obscured by his computer monitor. His face has come out in blotches and he doesn’t want Ratner to see.
‘You all right? You look a bit sweaty,’ Ratner says, taking a seat.
‘As it happens, I am not all right. Nor are you, by the way, because my shit is about to hit your fan.’ He watches as Ratner’s eyes float across his desk to the Airblade in the corner. Not the sharpest tool in the box, Cullen thinks to himself, but most definitely a tool.
‘Perhaps you think that because I’m ten years younger than you I’m a decade stupider, in which case I might remind you that you’re in the office of your superior.’
‘I’m well aware of that,’ Ratner says, stiffening. Evidently, he is surprised by Cullen’s tone.
‘What did I say about your sordid little activities?’
Ratner lurches backwards then gathers himself and says, ‘You said to be careful.’
‘I told you to knock it off. Completely, I said. You think you can lie to me, you little fucker, but you’re spectacularly mistaken. And very, very stupid. Am I making myself plain?’ Cullen is aware that his face is now scarlet but he doesn’t care. He has never spoken to anyone like this before and it feels good. Primal. Powerful. Like taking a piss in the long grass. In the visitor chair on the other side of the desk Ratner blinks and clears his throat, the look of bewilderment transforming bit by bit into indignation, the way a chameleon’s skin switches colour.
‘Hang on a minute…’ Ratner says, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.
Just then Tina pops her head through the door. Cullen looks her way and raises his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Professor Cullen, your next is in ten.’ She smiles and with a nod disappears round the door. He waits until he hears the latch click into its keeper.
‘Tell me, is a blow job in the back of the car worth losing your marriage over? Your reputation? Your career?’
‘What?’ Ratner says, outraged. Cullen lets out a bleak laugh as he sees light dawning on Ratner’s face. ‘You were spying on me?’ Ratner gasps. A hand goes to his mouth.
‘A little airless up there on the moral high ground, is it?’
‘Look…’
‘I suppose you’ve considered what’s likely to happen if your paramour blabs?’ Cullen says.
‘She won’t,’ Ratner blusters. ‘Anyway, she came on to me. She keeps her trap shut about this and she graduates from Avon without any scandal hanging over her. She doesn’t throw thirty grand of student debt down the drain. She’s no Einstein but she’s not stupid. So she and I had a fling. No one cares.’
‘Your wife might, if I told her.’
Ratner swallows, hard.
‘And the Board of Governors might be prepared to overlook an affair, but they’d have something to say about you inflating a student’s grades in return for sexual favours.’
He watches the colour drain from Ratner’s face. At last, in a quiet voice, he says, ‘How did you find out?’
‘Let’s just say I’m not stupid, shall we?’
‘OK, OK.’ Ratner is shocked now, Cullen can see, and a hint of resignation has crept into his voice, but he isn’t quite out yet. Any moment now he’s going to rally and try to make a case for himself. It’s like watching a bull in the ring, half broken and bloodied with banderillas, taking a deep breath before going in for the final charge.
‘And Mark?’ he says, intimately.
‘Yes?’
‘I have a wife and mortgage to support. I also happen to like my career. I want you to consider that everything you do reflects on me. So if you don’t stop, and I mean completely cease, seeing that girl, I will kill you.’
Chapter 18
Honor
Honor blinks into the dark, puzzled by the unfamiliar surroundings, remembering moments later that she is lying on the mattress in Gerry the van. That explains why she can’t feel her fingers and toes. Even the boat never gets quite this cold. She checks her watch. It is still early, but going back to sleep now will be impossible. Sliding out of her sleeping bag, she clambers into the driver’s seat and starts the engine, watching her breath condensing on the windscreen. Pressing her palms against the air grills she waits for the hot air to blow away the night chill and hopes that Bill’s contact comes good with his offer of a place on a boat. No way could she stay in the van for long in this weather.
At a nearby McDonald’s she pays for a coffee and a McMuffin with what little remains in her purse and uses the toilets to wash and change into the charity shop formal tweeds and green shirt. Emerging from the cubicle, she checks herself in the mirror. How is a thirty-nine-year-old woman supposed to present herself? It’s so long since she’s had to make a good first impression. A few parent-teacher days and the odd meeting with the school head to talk about Nevis’s progress and her eccentricities. She rarely goes out socially and when she does it’s only ever with other bargees, who are a casual to casual-scruffy bunch. Most of her business in the very specialised world of narrowboat renovation and repair is repeat custom so no clients to impress and no requirement to dress up when you spend most of your day covered in engine grease.
Leaving the van in the McDonald’s car park she walks a few metres down the road to a supermarket, checks her bank balance at the ATM and takes out her last £100, using some of it in the store to buy toiletries, underwear and a bottle of hair tamer that promises to ease her frizz. She takes a bus towards the Harbourside, exiting beside the M-Shed Museum. Unlike the canalside in Honor’s part of Hackney Wick, which has steadfastly resisted gentrification, at Harbourside you can barely move for artisan coffee shops or vegan bakeries selling four quid loaves. The things that give harbours their proper quality – namely boats – have been relegated to a section on the eastern side of the Floating Harbour near Redcliffe Bridge. Heading east she soon leaves the cafes behind and the further she goes, the scruffier and more anarchic the view becomes. Ten minutes’ walk from the M-Shed the towpath narrows, its tarmac coat split and pitted and charming in a rackety way, like an old man in a ragged overcoat sunning his face on a bench, and a modest tent city reveals itself, the bivvies lined up along the walls of an abandoned factory. There a handful of inhabitants warm themselves on a giant brazier. How inviting it looks! A sudden reminder of the magical parts of her childhood. Push comes to shove, I can buy a cheap tent and stay here, Honor thinks.
The Helene sits at berth not far from the bridge, a forty-five-foot steel huller of pre-credit crunch vintage, with a semi-trad fit out. It is 8.45 a.m. and smoke is drifting up from a wood burner below deck, the chimney liner worn from many years of use suggesting the Helene is a proper live-onboard, not a hobbyist vessel or a rich person’s plaything. She calls out. A moment later a tousled head appears in the hatch and a windburned face looks up at her and smiles, exclaiming, ‘You’re Bill’s friend!’
Honor introduces herself, wishing her hair looked better and that there were no stains on her clothes and that they weren’t so obviously from a charity shop.
The man introduces himself as Alex Penney, and making a sweeping motion with his hand, says, ‘I’ve just put the kettle on and done the washing up. Come aboard and we’ll celebrate with a cuppa.’
They chat about boats for a while. Alex is perhaps late forties, fit, with an air of playfulness and a bargee’s hard-working, sausage-fingered hands.
‘She’s a beauty,’ says Honor, looking around. ‘You named her after Helen of Troy?’
He smiles and raises his eyebrows.
‘The classical education didn’t go completely to waste then. I’m a bit rusty, now, though,’ Honor says, taking the seat Alex offers her, folding her arms across her chest to make the eg
g stain on the shirt less visible.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Alex says cheerfully. ‘Bill told me you need somewhere to crash for a while.’
‘Yes, I have a … project,’ she says, and realising immediately how vague and evasive that sounds, adds, ‘Research.’
‘Aha. Anything interesting?’
‘Maybe. I’ve a way to go yet.’
‘There’s a boat a little further down the Floating Harbour. Halcyon Days. The owners had a sitter lined up but they were let down at the last minute. They’d rather have someone there for security.’
‘Halcyon Days. What a coincidence!’ When Nevis was young, Honor would read to her from a children’s book of Greek myths. Her favourite was Alcyone, daughter of the god of the wind, whom Zeus turned into a kingfisher after her husband Ceyx, son of Lucifer, was drowned at sea. ‘Our boat up in London is the Kingfisher.’
‘Our…?’
‘My daughter and I.’
‘Oh.’ She watches a smile appear on his face, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening.
‘Do you have kids?’
‘A son. He’s grown up now.’ There’s a pause during which words fall away, then patting his thighs as if about to stand up, Alex goes on, ‘The boat is a minute’s walk away. Why don’t we go and take a look at her?’
They make their way along the waterfront past mostly unoccupied boats and arrive at a sixty-footer trad with a cratch cover and a smart red trim, the name painted in black and gold.
Alex jumps aboard and holds a hand out to Honor who, surprising herself, takes it. ‘They winterised before they left, but I assume you can deal with that…?’
‘Fresh fuel, coolant, water.’
‘Check the batteries.’
‘Radiators?’
‘Burner only.’
The fit out below deck is less Halcyon Days and more Has Seen Better Days, but there is a dual-fuel stove and a kitchenette, the master bedroom is at the stern, a configuration Honor prefers, and someone has fitted cupboards in the engine cubby. It feels right.
‘As you can see, she needs some TLC. The bulkhead panelling could do with a strip down and revarnish. And there’s a couple of other bits and pieces, depending on how long you need to stay. The owners said they’d waive rental in return for maintenance. How does that sound?’
Alex throws the keys in the air and catches them again.
‘Brilliant,’ Honor says.
‘Want to think about it?’
‘I don’t need to.’
Alex looks pleased and relieved. ‘So when would you like to move in?’
‘No time like the present.’
He laughs and, teasing the keys from his ring, hands them to her. ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. I’m usually on the Helene. Drop by and let me know how you’re getting on.’
Once he’s gone, she calls Bill and passes on the news.
‘Alex seems nice,’ she says.
‘Oh does he?’ Bill says. She decides to ignore the edge in his voice.
‘Listen Bill, I’m going to need to rent out the Kingfisher. Not for cruising. Just for someone who wants to stay put for a while. A fellow bargee. I don’t suppose…’
‘Consider it done. How long for?’
‘At least until the end of the university year, say three months?’ Whatever happens to Satnam she has to be here for Nevis.
It takes her a few hours to do the basic de-winterising of the Halcyon Days then another couple to give the place a good clean. By lunchtime she is more or less done. She sits at the little table in the saloon and thinks about texting Nevis then decides to wait until she has been to see the head of student welfare at Avon and has something concrete to say.
At two she sets off walking. Outside the sun has emerged pale and lovely. The Avon campus lies just northwest of the city centre in Redland, beside the Downs, a good forty-five-minute walk from the Floating Harbour.
At the student welfare office, an administrator shows her to a seat in a small waiting area. At three precisely, a woman in her fifties, salt and pepper hair, bright patterned dress, big artsy glasses and the whisperings of a moustache emerges from another room and comes over, hand outstretched.
‘Mrs Smith, I’m Dr Keane.’
Honor holds out a hand and hopes the doctor will not notice that underneath the tweed Oxfam trousers she is wearing floral DMs, it having slipped her mind that a professional outfit might require more professional shoes.
‘I’m terribly sorry but it’s rather a busy day. I’ve only got a few minutes. If you could make an appointment to come back…?’
‘That’s fine, it’ll only take a few minutes.’
She watches Keane fluster.
‘Well, I suppose.’
‘That’s so kind of you,’ Honor says, sweeping into Keane’s office before she changes her mind. ‘My daughter Nevis was – is – Satnam Mann’s flatmate. Went with her in the ambulance. I wanted to see you because, obviously, she’s very shaken by what happened and I want to be sure the university will keep an eye on her. You haven’t spoken to her I suppose?’
‘Not yet. As I said, it’s all been rather busy.’
‘Nevis left Satnam on her own Sunday evening so she’s blaming herself for what happened.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m trying to understand why Satnam might have done this so I can reassure my daughter it wasn’t her fault and hopefully to prevent other similar things happening in future. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?’
‘Of course, Mrs Smith. But since none of us is able to speak with Satnam directly, our position at the university is to support her parents. They seem pretty convinced that the episode was an accident.’
‘Satnam took a ton of pills and drank a bottle of vodka then walked out of her apartment in Kingsdown and ended up two miles away on the suspension bridge trying to climb the suicide barrier. What part of that story sounds like an accident?’
‘Perhaps she took a taxi, we don’t know.’
A taxi? This is crazy. Why is Dr Keane even talking this way?
‘But that doesn’t make any sense.’
Keane stands, her face flushed. ‘I’m sorry but I am very pressed for time.’
‘Why are you insisting on something that’s patently untrue? My daughter was there.’
‘My point exactly, Mrs Smith. Why would anyone intent on ending their life ask someone to call their friend to come and pick them up?’
‘It wasn’t like that!’
‘Were you there? No, I didn’t think so. We’re very used to students in stressful positions and we’ll offer your daughter all the support we can but you need to allow us to do our jobs.’ She stands, brushes herself down with a hand, and gesturing to the door says, ‘Now, please, if you don’t mind, I have a great deal to be getting on with.’
Chapter 19
Nevis
Nevis wakes to the sound of oil barrels being moved in the backyard at Cod’s Plaice. She rubs her eyes and checks the time. The strange thought rises up that everything that has happened since the incident on the bridge has been part of some sinister waking dream. Pushing herself from the bed she goes out into the hallway and, taking a deep breath, lets herself into Satnam’s room. The space still buzzes with an odd energy that Nevis can’t quite put her finger on. The only way she can think of it is to imagine that someone has dropped a stone and the dying tremor of the last ripple is still reverberating through the walls. Or perhaps the walls themselves are trying to speak. She feels sweaty and panicked. She wonders if she’s losing it. Am I going mad?
Backing from the bedroom and closing the door behind her she moves quietly and swiftly through the flat, checking each room in turn, looking round corners and behind the doors, like a kid checking the bedroom for monsters. There is something but she cannot work out what. Her head feels sluggish and unrested and in her belly a fluttering has started up. She wonders now if she’s eaten since last night. Perhaps coffee will help. But the moment she enters th
e kitchen area, she feels it again. Not a smell exactly, nor a change in the light, something more like presence, a thickening of the air, as if someone has only an instant before left the room. She holds her breath and waits for the feeling to pass then reaches for the kettle.
The caffeine hits hard and for the first time in a few hours normality sets in. She remembers now that her wave modelling coursework is due and she’s nowhere near finishing it so she takes her mug over to the table and reaches for her laptop to tap out a quick email to Mark Ratner requesting a deadline extension and is startled to see an email from the Dean.
Nevis, in view of recent events, it may be a good idea for you to come in and discuss your academic progress. Would 4 p.m. today be convenient?
She types out a reply, her fingers trembling on the keyboard. The Dean! She’s been to his lectures, of course, and sat in seminars with him, once even had a face to face tutorial and nearly died of fright. He told her she was talented, which made her heart burst from its box, and he’d be watching out for her but he had never taken any more interest in her after that. Whenever she had seen him, either at lectures or, more usually, rushing along the corridors in the mathematics building or in the Deanery, she’d tried to catch his eye in the hope that he would remember his undertaking but he never so much as glanced her way. The prospect of being together with him in a room in her current weird, disconnected state to discuss something other than mathematics is so daunting it makes her throat hurt. But she can hardly say no and so she replies and presses ‘send’ and the email whooshes off and she sits in the stillness of the room for a moment, conscious that her life has already changed in ways that she may not ever come back from. Maybe that’s what the feeling is about. It’s not the flat that has changed but something inside her that has subtly and irrevocably altered, in the same way it did back in the summer, when she found the letter. Perhaps life consists of such moments, she thinks, until a person is so changed that she no longer recognises herself. Perhaps that’s what happened to Satnam.
