Waterland

by Graham Swift

  For just as inexorably as I explored Mary’s hole, Mary explored my thing. Indeed, she was the bolder of the two of us. It was she whose fingers first got the itch and were at work before I dared, and only then at her prompting – her grabbing and guiding of my hand, her pulling up and pulling down of clothing – to use mine.

  Mary itched. And this itch of Mary’s was the itch of curiosity. In her fifteen-year-old body curiosity tickled and chafed, making her fidgety and roving-eyed. Curiosity drove her, beyond all restraint, to want to touch, witness, experience whatever was unknown and hidden from her. Do not smirk, children. Curiosity, which, with other things, distinguishes us from the animals, is an ingredient of love. Is a vital force. Curiosity, which bogs us down in arduous meditations and can lead to the writing of history books, will also, on occasion, as on that afternoon by the Hockwell Lode, reveal to us that which we seldom glimpse unscathed – for it appears more often (dead bodies, boat-hooks) dressed in terror: the Here and Now.

  When I had finished exploring Mary’s hole, Mary continued our homage to curiosity by verbal means. She spoke of hymens and of her monthly bleedings. She was proud of her bleedings. She wanted to show me when she bled. She wanted me to see. And it was as she spoke of these mysteries, and of others, while the sun still shone on coppery hairs, that I thought (so too perhaps did Mary): everything is open, everything is plain; there are no secrets, here, now, in this nothing-landscape. Us Fenlanders do not try to hide – since we know God is watching.

  Within the windmill by the Hockwell Lode curiosity and innocence held hands. And explored holes. Within its stunted, wooden walls we first used those magic, those spell-binding words which make the empty world seem full, just as surely as a thing fits inside a hole: I love – I love – Love, love … And perhaps the windmill itself, empty and abandoned since steam and diesel power encroached, and the Leem Drainage Board in its wisdom reviewed its pumping system, found in our presence a new-found windmill-purpose.

  But this was when Mary was fifteen, and so was I. This was in prehistorical, pubescent times, when we drifted instinctively, without the need for prior arrangement, to our meeting-place. How had it arisen that in the space of a year our encounters were now a matter of appointment and calculation; that during the summer months we would meet to love each other (and sometimes merely to talk) only between the hours of three and five-thirty in the afternoon?

  For two reasons. Because between the hours of three and five-thirty, at least, Dick would still be at work on the dredger, watching the dripping silt of the Ouse disgorge itself from the river-bed. Thus, needing time to ride home and eat his supper, he could not – for want of a better phrase – go awooing along the Hockwell Lode till seven at the earliest. At six-thirty every evening Mary ate her own supper at Polt Fen Farm, under the austere eye of her father, who daily shook his head (having given up remonstrating) over his reprobate daughter; and thus would not be free to present herself to be wooed till nearer seven-thirty. By which time I would be hard at my history books.

  Secondly: to avoid Freddie Parr. For though Freddie Parr, a pupil at the Gildsey Secondary School, had, like ourselves, the freedom of the summer days, he would be engaged most weekday afternoons on certain business for his father, signalman and guardian of the Hockwell level-crossing, for which Freddie earned good pocket-money; thus gaining an advantage over us neighbouring children whose own pocket-money (with the exception of Mary’s – till her father stopped it) was negligible, and thus acquiring a small-time monopoly in various black-market goods, ranging from Lucky Strikes to condoms.

  At two-thirty or so Freddie would set out from Hockwell with one, sometimes two sacks under his arm. Forsaking his bicycle – because he would never know that on his return his sacks might not be heavily and bulkily laden – he would walk by road and field in the direction of Wash Fen Mere, and, in particular, in the direction of the marsh-hut occupied in the summer months by Bill Clay, whose age no one knew.

  No one knew either what it was that Bill Clay and Jack Parr had in common; unless it was something that had stemmed from some favour in the past. Unless Jack Parr, who was a superstitious man, more superstitious even than my father, had once as a boy – long before he became a trainee signalman – made visits to the old fowler (he was old even then) and had been prepared, as few were, to sip his lethal poppy tea and listen to his half-comprehensible yarns. Yet everyone knew that Jack Parr’s present dealings with Bill Clay were of a more material kind. That Jack Parr, renowned for his ability to pass clandestine messages up and down the lines of the Great Eastern Railway and thus obtain from near and far all sorts of unauthorized consignments, to which the company guards turned a blind eye, merely kept Bill supplied with certain articles hard to come by in these belligerent times. And that the sacks which Freddie Parr carried to Wash Fen Mere were not always empty but sometimes contained canisters of gunpowder and bottles of rum and whisky.

  Bill Clay still shot duck during the winter floods on Wash Fen Mere. In the summer, when there were no big flights, he grew torpid like the Mere itself which became in places little more than a stagnant bog, and contented himself with eeling and setting springes in the reed beds. Bill Clay sent his winter bags of fowl legitimately to market but his summer bags were sold locally and without licence to all comers – much to the irritation of the inspectors of the Ministry of Food. An official was duly sent from the food office in Gildsey to appeal to Bill’s patriotic instinct and sense of fair play in these days of rationing; to be met by the 6-bore barrel of Bill’s punt-gun, a muzzle-loader for which supplies of gunpowder were essential.

  It was for these same illicit summer fowl that Freddie Parr brought his sacks. Indeed Jack Parr was Bill Clay’s chief customer. Within hours of Freddie’s return with his haul, the sack or sacks of birds would be on their way by the evening train to a station on the Mildenhall line. Here (guard and station-master taking their share) they would be collected by a jeep of the United States Air Force, whose driver would convey them to certain officers at the nearby base, who took solace in having their orderlies serve up for them what they regarded as the traditional fare of the region before they took off on their insane daylight missions, to be killed – or live for another feast. In return for these regular banquets, the officers were prepared to pay at a good American rate; and back up the line every week, dispatched by the selfsame corporal in his jeep, would come sometimes foodstuffs, sometimes tobacco, but always, and most importantly for Jack Parr, several bottles of Old Grand-dad Kentucky bourbon.

  Jack Parr could not desert his signal-box and level-crossing. So every alternate afternoon, between half-past two and half-past five, Freddie Parr would make his way to Bill Clay’s marsh-hut. He would hand over the smuggled contents of his sack. Then the two of them would set off round the margins of Wash Fen Mere. While Mary and I nestled in the old windmill, Bill Clay would inspect his springes. If a bird were caught, he would grasp it with a fowler’s firm yet pacifying grip, unsnare it, and with a casual action, as if he were shaking out a tea-towel, wring its neck. Freddie – so he told us – learnt to do likewise. While Mary and I engaged in caresses that were no longer exploratory yet far from unadventurous, three, four, six or more birds, snagged by the neck or leg, would struggle, flap, thrash at approaching footsteps, be stilled by Bill Clay’s horny hand and dispatched. Doubtless, throughout all this Bill Clay talked, and, doubtless, Freddie listened. For Freddie, who was a great blabber-mouth and divulged everything about his father’s dealings with the US Air Force, told us – me, Mary, and the others – much about Bill Clay, which may or may not have been embellished. How, though Bill wasn’t the wisest man in the world, he was certainly the most extraordinary. How he ate water-rats, hypnotized animals; how he was over a hundred; how he knew about the singing swans. How, though he left his cottage and lived alone for weeks on end in his tiny marsh-hut, he was still ‘married’ to Martha Clay and they still ‘did it’ (a remarkable sight it was too) in the open air amongst the
reeds.

  But I never told Freddie what Mary and I did on summer afternoons.

  Freddie Parr. My own brother. You see the shape of my dilemma – and the extent of Mary’s curiosity. And why I was obliged to meet Mary only at selected and predetermined times.

  But on July the twenty-sixth, 1943, I was late for my rendezvous. Because – because, in a word, Freddie Parr was dead. And Mary was squatting on top of the windmill emplacement, chin on knees, arms round shins, rocking to and fro in agitation. Scarcely, it’s true, the agitation of the impatient mistress kept waiting by her lover. Because she must have heard by now— Because by now the whole of Hockwell had heard— But Mary’s agitation had another source too. For three weeks now there’d been no misreading the signs. For Mary – if you haven’t guessed already – was pregnant.

  Beyond the poplar spinney, I wheeled my bike down the landward side of the Lode bank, let it drop in the long grass, ran the last few paces, because of the steepness, on to level ground, then continued to run, helter-skelter, though I didn’t have to, across the wedge of meadow between bank and windmill.

  A simple but edifying scene in which Mary and I embrace to confirm the power of our love in the face of the unforeseen perils of the world and the frailty of flesh, as witness the death of a mutual friend. Not to be. Mary doesn’t unclasp her shins. Because a new bruise on an old bruise …

  ‘Dead, Mary. Dead. Right there on the tow-path. Dead. I saw him.’

  But she cuts me short, lifting her chin from her knees. Dark brown hair. Smoke-blue eyes. She must be braver than me. No wasted emotions. Facts. Facts.

  ‘Listen – did anyone say anything? Your Dad? The police?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘About how Freddie died.’

  ‘He drowned.’

  Mary bites her lip.

  ‘About how he drowned.’

  ‘He fell in the river. Couldn’t swim, could he?’

  The schoolboy game. Act innocent: you’ll be innocent. Act ignorant: people will think you don’t know.

  But Mary has buried her face in her knees again. She shakes her head. Poplar trees rustle. When she looks up she seems three times older than me, as if she’s become a hard-featured woman with a past. Then I see it’s because something’s gone from her face. Curiosity’s gone.

  ‘Freddie didn’t fall in. Someone made him fall in. Dick made him fall in.’

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘I saw them together last night, down near the footbridge. Freddie was drunk.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Because I told him. Because I thought sooner or later he’ll have to know. I told him. He looked so pleased. Because he thinks— And I said, No, Dick. Not yours. And now I think maybe I should have said Yes. If I’d said Yes, yours— Then he just stared at me, so I had to say something. I said it was Freddie. I told him it was Freddie’s.’

  I look at Mary. I’m trying to interpret her words. At the same time I’m thinking: Dick came in last night, at about half-past eight, then left again with something in the pocket of his windcheater.

  But all this must look to Mary like disbelief.

  ‘I said it to protect you. Maybe I shouldn’t.’

  She lowers her chin, then looks up again with the air of a martyr.

  ‘It’s true. I told him it was Freddie. Dick killed Freddie Parr because he thought it was him. Which means we’re to blame too.’

  The cattle in the meadow have moved round a bend in the banks. The landscape is emptying.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I know Dick.’

  I look at her.

  ‘I know Dick.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t know anything.’

  Soft cotton-wool clouds drift across the July sky. We let them drift for a full minute.

  ‘Mary – is it Freddie’s?’

  ‘No, it’s not Freddie’s.’

  Which still keeps me guessing.

  ‘Is it Dick’s?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been Dick’s.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because—’ she looks at the ground, ‘—because it was too big.’

  ‘Too big?’

  ‘Too big.’

  ‘To go in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if it was too – why should he think—?’

  ‘You know, you know. Because he didn’t know how, in any case. He thought you could have one just by thinking about it. He thought you could have one – just by loving.’

  Which still keeps me guessing. Because I don’t believe that if Dick didn’t know how, Mary wouldn’t have taught him. Wasn’t that why Dick made his evening trips to the Lode? To be taught? Why Mary and I took pity? Poor Dick, who wasn’t allowed to be educated … Poor Dick who wanted to know about love.

  That – and Mary’s itching curiosity. Which has suddenly gone.

  ‘It was too big. It wouldn’t— But that’s not the main thing any more now, is it?’

  And I’m still guessing after we part on the Lode bank and Mary walks off, without a backward glance, in the direction of the farmhouse. Brown hair; erect carriage; flat land. I don’t know what to guess, what to believe. Superstition’s easy; to know what’s real – that’s hard.

  I’m still guessing that same evening, on the river-bank under the willow tree, as I watch Dick tinkering with his motor-bike. (No, he’s not going wooing tonight.) But that same evening too I pick out from the river a beer bottle of curious appearance. I know what was in that bottle. I know where that bottle came from. Guesswork forms conclusions (which don’t quell fear). So Dick comes home from seeing Mary and goes out again with something in the pocket of his windcheater. He waylays Freddie near the footbridge. He knows that Freddie, like his father, never refuses a drink, and though Dick is never known to drink himself, he offers him something special – a beer like no other. With the result that Freddie, who can’t swim anyway, will be in no state to save himself. ‘Freddie want drink?’ They sit on the footbridge. For good measure, before pushing him in, Dick hits him with the empty bottle. On the right temple. Then Dick throws the bottle into the river too. And, like Freddie, the bottle floats downstream …

  I take the beer bottle and carry it, unseen, beyond the obstacle of the sluice, meaning to throw it in once more, to float away for good this time, perhaps to float all the way to the sea. But at the last moment something stops me. I thrust it inside my shirt and smuggle it up to my bedroom. And that night, as I go to bed and Dick goes to bed, I do something I’ve never done before. I take the old rusty never-used key to my room from a hook on the wall and lock the door.

  8

  About the Story-telling Animal

  I KNOW what you feel. I know what you think when you sit in your rows, in attitudes of boredom, listlessness, resentment, forbearance, desultory concentration. I know what all children think when submitted to the regimen of history lessons, to spooned-down doses of the past: ‘But what about Now? Now, we are Now. What about Now?’

  Before you a balding quinquagenarian who gabbles about the Ancien Régime, Rousseau, Diderot and the insolvency of the French Crown; behind you, beyond the window, grey winter light, an empty playground, forlorn and misty tower blocks … And around you this stale-smelling classroom in which you are suspended, encaged like animals removed from a natural habitat.

  Now. What about Now?

  Price pipes up – one of his numerous attempts to subvert the French Revolution, to disrupt disruption – and says: ‘What matters is the here and now.’

  But what is this much-adduced Here and Now? What is this indefinable zone between what is past and what is to come; this free and airy present tense in which we are always longing to take flight into the boundless future?

  How many times do we enter the Here and Now? How many times does the Here and Now pay us visits? It comes so rarely that it is never what we imagine, and it is the Here and Now that turns out to be the fairy-tale, not History,
whose substance is at least for ever determined and unchangeable. For the Here and Now has more than one face. It was the Here and Now which by the banks of the Hockwell Lode with Mary Metcalf unlocked for me realms of candour and rapture. But it was the Here and Now also which pinioned me with fear when livid-tinted blood, drawn by a boat-hook, appeared on Freddie Parr’s right temple, and again when, after a certain meeting with Mary Metcalf, I hid a beer bottle in my shirt and, retiring to my bedroom, locked the door.

  And so often it is precisely these surprise attacks of the Here and Now which, far from launching us into the present tense, which they do, it is true, for a brief and giddy interval, announce that time has taken us prisoner. So that you can be sure that on that July day in 1943 your juvenile history teacher ceased to be a babe. As you may be sure that when during the French Revolution the hair of Marie Antoinette, who once played at Little Bo-Peep and other childish pranks in the gardens of Versailles, turned, in a single coach journey from Varennes to Paris, white as a fleece, she was aware not only of the Here and Now but that History had engulfed her.

  Yet the Here and Now, which brings both joy and terror, comes but rarely – does not come even when we call it. That’s the way it is: life includes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue, nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth Here and Now, nine-tenths a history lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.