Waterland

by Graham Swift

  So how was I, in our Lode-side bower, while far away the world wrote its chronicle of war, while Mary told me about her widowed father and the sisters of St Gunnhilda (how hard it was to be a little Madonna) and I told Mary of my game-legged and likewise widowed Dad – how was I to avoid giving voice to a pitiful account of my brother? (How envy, growing contrite, turns charitable.) And how was Mary to avoid confessing that, even before that day by the Lode, to be completely honest, to be completely frank, she’d been – curious? And, putting together this pity and this curiosity, how could we avoid forming a plan?

  ‘Yes, poor Dick.’

  ‘Poor Dick, with only his motor-bike.’

  And if you add to pity and curiosity just a touch of fear – for Mary also confessed, not without a certain shiver of delight, that, along with her curiosity, she was just a weeny bit … and I said (so sure) Dick would never hurt a fly— then you have more than a plan, you have the tangled stuff of which stories are made.

  So this is the story of how Mary, aided and abetted by Tom, took upon herself Dick’s education, so harshly thwarted in the past. His sentimental education, that is, his training in matters of the heart. This is the story of how Mary tried to teach my mute brute of a brother.

  Or, alternatively, of how Mary’s curiosity—

  Or, alternatively, of how a little learning …

  It’s Mary’s story. Told to me on Monday and Thursday afternoons, in instalments, throughout that summer of 1943. While on Wednesday and Saturday evenings -and sometimes on Sundays too …

  It’s Mary’s story, pieced together and construed by me. So how can I be certain what really—?

  Eye-witness accounts have it that when, on alternate evenings on his return from work, Dick took a detour off the Gildsey-Hockwell road on to the track running north along Stott’s Drain with the object of bringing home in the shape of a sack of live eels what, in those wartime days, formed not only our staple diet but a source of clandestine income, he did not merely haul in the traps and bag what they contained. He lingered over this slimy operation. He interrupted it indeed (the Velocette keeping sentinel close by) to sit and stare at the river in a manner that could only be described as meditative, if not forlorn. As if thinking still – though she’s six years gone now – of his vanished mother; or, conceivably, of another subject, also female and tantalizing.

  Eye-witness? Yes, because one evening, early in May, there’s someone watching him. No, it’s not his little brother, not this time. And it’s not his resurrected mother. It’s Mary. And it’s I who’ve tipped her off about the see-and-not-be-seen properties of that farther river-bank. She watches, unobserved. But the next evening but one she’s watching again, this time unconcealed. She’s sitting in plain view on the visible slope of the river-bank (knees drawn up, hands round shins, one cheek resting on knees), but so watchfully and motionlessly that it’s some while before Dick, intent on tipping eels from trap to sack, sees her.

  And when he does (or so I picture it) he freezes, stock-still, in the shocked and disbelieving manner of people whose thoughts have suddenly taken material form.

  Mary shouts across the water: ‘Hello, Dick.’

  Dick says nothing. Then, after a volume of river water which can never be calculated has slid between them: ‘Hello.’

  ‘Got many?’

  ‘Ma-many?’

  ‘Eels.’

  A difficult point. Since Dick is being asked, by implication, to count. A testing process at the best of times. He can scurry to ten, stumble, with luck, to twenty. At the best of times eels twined together in the bottom of a sack don’t make easy counting. And under those watching eyes…

  So he nods. Gives a shrewd answer.

  ‘S-some.’

  Mary lifts her cheek from her knee.

  ‘You see, if you’ve got any to spare … My Dad’s fond of eels. So am I. We eat fish every Friday, you know. If you could spare a couple? One big one would do.’ She nuzzles her chin on her knees. ‘Haven’t you got a nice eel for me?’

  Now Dick understands this, or thinks he understands it – because to understand is itself confusing. That is, he understands not only the simple substance of the request, but something profoundly, amazingly deeper. He understands that he, Dick, is being asked to offer her, Mary – yes, it’s either Mary or a mirage – a Gift. This is something that no person (if we exclude the rituals of family birthdays when Dick – good with his hands – produced for his Mum such wonders as a money-box made from a cocoa tin) has ever sought of him before. A gift. A gift. Something of his own that another would value. And so momentous is this concept that he is rendered quite incapable of making it actual.

  He sits on the river-bank, a twitching sack between his knees. The river flows, unblinking, by.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ Mary says at length, getting to her feet and brushing down her wartime curtain-fabric skirt. ‘Another time maybe.’ And then, perhaps with one of those narrow, knowing looks of hers, which even forty feet of river do not weaken: ‘I can come again, can’t I? You’ll be here – on Friday, won’t you?’

  And this drops into Dick’s scheme of things yet another monumental notion. For not only does it suggest that this creature on the far shore takes an interest in him and watches his movements (but then hasn’t Dick watched hers?), it suggests something more astounding and unprecedented still, so astounding that in order to appreciate it, Dick has simultaneously to discover for himself previously unimagined mental territory.

  It has the air of what other people call (though Dick’s never heard the word) an assignation. It unveils that heady realm, known already to countless initiates (including young Tom), to which the password, when uttered in a certain breathy way, may be some such innocent phrase as ‘Meet me …’, ‘See you …’, ‘I’ll be there if …’

  It’s something you can’t get from motor-bikes.

  ‘Ye-yes,’ he says. ‘He-here.’

  She leaves, with a darting smile, before he can say more.

  And there’s something strange about her departure. She goes, but she doesn’t go, exactly. There’s something left behind. A feeling. A beautiful feeling. It lingers in the soft evening air. It lingers as Dick rides home, along the Hockwell road, on his back the sack of eels which are in no situation to be experiencing beautiful feelings. And it lingers that evening in the cottage (I observe but don’t tell Mary), where Dick, with lashes working furiously, picks and pecks at his eel supper and Dad is driven to ask: ‘What’s up, Dick? What’s the matter – not well?’

  Now when did Dick ever lose his appetite or ever find anything exceptional in a May evening?

  Once again (that very Friday) Dick visits the eel-traps at Stott’s Drain. Once again the creature appears, like some conjured genie, on the far bank. Once again, the river flows mutely between them, evoking the plight of Hero and Leander. Again the creature asks, in her maidenly and water-borne voice, for the gift of an eel. And this time she has something with her. A pail. A milking pail (into which before now, before Harold Metcalf’s reproving hand slapped hers for stooping to such lowly work, Mary has attempted to squirt the frothing milk of her father’s Friesians).

  Now clearly she means business. She means to have her gift of an eel. Because she’s brought something along to take it home in …

  ‘That one,’ says Mary, ‘that’s a nice one.’ As Dick, like a gormless fishmonger, holds up, item by item, the contents of his sack.

  ‘You wa-want?’

  ‘Yes please – if it’s all right. Please.’

  Though how do you convey an eel across a river? For, certainly, the last thing it will do is swim across and deliver itself.

  Dick looks at Mary, gift in hand.

  But Mary has an answer to this too. She’s been counting on this. She puts down her pail. Settles into her knees-up position.

  ‘You can swim. I’ve seen you swim – before.’

  And – if indeed it has ever sunk completely into the Lethe of Dick’s brain �
�� it returns again now, it rises, buoyantly and pungently, to the surface: that memory which disturbs and confuses, goads and exacerbates the beautiful feeling. Another eel, in a certain position of intimate proximity …

  At least six swarms of May midges float over the river, at least a dozen swallows flitter like cupids along the surface of the Leem, taking their evening sips of water and exposing their cherub-breasts to the evening sun, while fixed and still, Mary stares at Dick and Dick stares at Mary. While, far from still, the chosen eel (it’s not so big, but it’s no tiddler either) squirms and strains in Dick’s grip. And while, if the truth be known, Mary too, beneath her skirt, squirms and tenses just a little (possessing a very good memory). For though it may not be clear from her present behaviour Mary doesn’t entirely like eels. Hasn’t liked them ever since—

  But there’s nothing to say that we shouldn’t be drawn by, even desire, what makes us recoil …

  Mary moves at last. Turns her head in a gesture of impatience and disappointment as if about to make her departure. And no sooner does she do this than Dick, with his free hand, whips off his Wellington boots and plunges, torpedo-fashion, into the river. Not only plunges, but in the very same instant, it seems, reappears on the farther side, without having broken surface in between, and clambers out, streaming and mud-stained, still grasping, what’s more, in his right hand, a quite dumbfounded eel (it’s a remarkable grip that can not only hold an eel but keep holding it under water); so that Mary leaps up, squeals, steps back then forward again, giggles at her own squeal, laughs away her giggle, before recovering her former poise.

  But now Dick must present his gift and Mary must receive it. He picks up the pail (yes, he guesses its purpose), half fills it at the water’s edge, and drops in the eel. Then, eyelashes beating so hard that they turn into spray the drops descending from his hair, he hands the pail to Mary.

  Mary takes it; peers inside.

  And a strange thing follows. For despite her qualms regarding eels, for which there are very good reasons, she has to admit that, returned to its native element, no longer wriggling and writhing but curled up passively round the bottom of the pail in a state of semi-shock, this eel is not an unhandsome creature. It’s sleek and smooth-skinned. It has little glimmering amber eyes which, for all one knows, could be the windows of a tiny eel-soul. It has little panting gills and, behind them, delicate whirring pectoral fins not unreminiscent of Dick’s whirring eyelashes …

  Mary bends over the pail. Dick bends also; draws nearer.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Mary. ‘Thank you. It’s beautiful.’ As if she means to take it home and feed it, in a glass bowl, on the daintiest titbits.

  ‘Bootiful,’ says Dick, looking at Mary. A word he’s never used before.

  And that’s how Dick began to go awooing along the Hockwell Lode. Or, if you prefer, that’s how Mary inaugurated a course of instruction …

  Let’s not go into the details of how, that same evening, Dick wanted to walk with Mary back to Polt Fen Farm. But Mary said no – in his sopping wet state? And with no Wellington boots? But promised to meet him again the next day. Or of how, on Mary’s parting, Dick had no option but to swim back the way he came, across this Fenland Hellespont, to his abandoned and – who knows? – jealousy-smitten motor-bike; and, having to account later for his arrival home in a sodden condition, explained that he had swerved into a ditch to avoid an ill-driven farm truck – a story which might have been more plausible and shown an untypical streak of cunning if only his bike had shown also a splash or two of mud. Or of how Mary, in parting from Dick, strode back, pail in hand, towards Polt Fen, while Dick watched, but as soon as she had slipped from Dick’s gaze, stopped by one of the drains which join the Hockwell Lode and tipped the eel discreetly into it, where, doubtless, recovering from this spell in the limelight of human intrigue, it continued its obscure and anonymous eel-existence …)

  But how well does Dick learn? Does he progress? Does he make a keen and responsive pupil? And does Mary prove an able teacher?

  And meanwhile, as on Wednesday and Saturday evenings he makes way so generously and tactfully for Dick and waits for the emergence of a new, improved brother, how does little Tom occupy his surplus time? You’ve guessed it, children. In studies of his own. As a matter of fact, in this burgeoning summer of 1943, while the scales of war tip (victory in Africa, German withdrawals in the east), he’s reading for the first time old Carlyle’s French Revolution.

  Does Dick confide in his seemingly heedless, book-burrowing brother about this enlightening liaison of his? Does he offer, while we begin to win the war, excited communiques of his own? No. But every Wednesday and Saturday evening, on his return from the dredger, he goes through a routine formerly not to be imagined of him. He takes a bath. In our old white-enamel tub, before the kitchen range, he attacks his body with soapy water and a scrubbing brush. With steamy and splish-splashing determination he attempts to expunge from his person, like some incriminating stain, all vestige of that stubborn and degrading smell of silt.

  Now see what happens when you dabble in education …

  But to no avail. Because, scrub and rub though he might, there is still – others can detect it – that residual whiff of the river-bed; and step though he does after these brisk ablutions into clean clothes, he only wraps himself once more in the old contamination. For Mrs Forbes, a Hockwell matron, who for a weekly stipend takes in the Crick laundry, can never quite, though no niggard with her suds and rinsings, expel from Dick’s garments that tell-tale odour.

  But thus, to his mind, cleansed and purified, his hair combed, slicked and even larded with brilliantine, a hasty supper crammed into his belly, Dick rides off, without a word, every Wednesday and Saturday evening. Dad watches. He does not mistake the signs; even regards them with a certain satisfaction (so, he’s normal, in that respect, after all …) But Dad doesn’t know, and it’s just as well, who it is that Dick goes wooing on these twice-weekly sorties. Nor does he know that the reason why his younger son never sees Mary Metcalf after Dick’s return from work is so that Dick’s education—

  So, is he learning? For if he’s learning shouldn’t this course of lessons be coming to some completion? How much longer is it going to go on? To what advanced and proficient stages is it going to be taken? And supposing it’s not such a simple matter of teacher and pupil; supposing Mary’s out to learn a thing or two as well. (Ah, how charity, turning again to jealousy …)

  And, if he’s learning, if he’s making headway, why these troubled and baffled looks? For they start to appear, as instruction continues, on Dick’s blank and impervious face which has scarcely registered such things before. Merest shadows, slightest furrows. An outsider might not see them. But a brother can. And who can say what internal tumult the slightest surface ruffles on the likes of Dick might portend? Is he learning that it’s hard to learn? Is there something he doesn’t understand? Is he learning that if he’d never set out to learn he’d never have learnt that it’s all beyond him?

  Why does he hang his head and gaze at the ground? Why, returning on these long summer evenings, does he loiter as of old with his motor-bike by the lean-to, tinker with it, whisper to it, as to some chromium-plated confessor?

  Can it be that knowledge has indeed dawned and that Dick, for so long ignorant even of this fact, realizes that he’s not like other people? He’s defective; he’s a botched job. And this being the case, perhaps it’s time the truth were faced. Perhaps it’s time (he confides to his long-suffering Velocette) something better were found to replace this abortive experiment called Dick Crick …

  Yet he must be learning, or he must be learning and yet not learning, and this whole course of lessons has got more serious – and more dangerous – than we imagined. Because one day, over supper (not eels this time, but spam fritters), Dick asks, as if there’s something Mary’s said he wants to verify:

  ‘Wh-where do ba-babies come from?’

  Panic fills Dad’s eyes. He looks a
t Dick. He looks at me – an interrogating, almost accusatory, yet strangely pleading look. Outside, beyond the kitchen window, louring summer rain clouds are marauding the horizon.

  ‘Where do they come from?’ he echoes, looking now neither at Dick nor at me, but frantically around the kitchen as if for inspiration (they’re baked in the oven … they appear one morning in the bread bin …).

  At length, laying down his knife and fork, swallowing the lump of spam that has lodged temporarily in the pouch of his cheek, he says, with an air of solemn resignation (no yarns this time, no fibs about storks or gooseberry bushes):

  ‘They come from love, Dick. They’re made with – Love.’

  He releases the mystic word then shuts tight his lips – as if it must do its best to cross the dizzy gulf to Dick and not come fluttering back for assistance.

  But Dick wants answers, not more conundrums.

  ‘Love,’ he says. (He’s heard this bare little syllable before but never—) ‘What’s lu-love?’

  At which Dad’s clamped lips open again to form for a moment that old gaping zero.

  ‘Love, Dick, is a feeling. A good feeling. It’s like the feeling you felt for your poor Mum. Like the feeling she felt for you.’

  He looks at his plate. His plate seems to flash back rapid alarm signals.

  ‘That’s to say – it’s a very important thing. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s the most wonderful thing there is—’

  A sudden patter of rain. The first thick drops which herald a May downpour plop on to the vegetable patch and slide lachrymosely down the window. That evening Dad (assisted by Dick) will raise the sluice, cranking with extra violence the sluice engine.

  Dick sits at the supper table. His big hands, his twenty years, belie the look on his face of a lost little boy.

  ‘Lu-love,’ he says. Another difficult word.

  33

  Who Says?

  ‘BUT you’ve got to be kidding, sir. This “one day you’ll be grown up too” stuff, this “one day you’ll be like your parents” crap. Even supposing that’s how it is – who says we’re going to be around long enough to be parents anyway …?’