The Water Children

by Anne Berry

  ‘They found it by the river. He had tucked it under his clothes. But it was wet and so it got a bit damp. The pages are ribbed, see, but you can still read them. And make out the diagrams clearly too. It’s a book teaching you how to swim. It’s very dated. Ancient, almost. And some of the pictures are so funny.’ She smiles, and Owen imagines Sean, the boy, poring over them, his heart racketing in his bony chest as he risked unleashing his imagination.

  ‘I can’t swim,’ Owen confesses, noting how the passage of air from the pedestal fan stirs her hair. He lays his hand on the swimming bible and swears to tell the truth. ‘My sister drowned. Sarah. She was nearly five. We went to the seaside and my mother told me not to leave her but . . .’

  ‘Go on,’ she urges. And he tells her all of it.

  When he finishes they sit in silence, their thoughts perfectly synchronized, swimming through a sea of grief. Then it is Catherine’s turn. Owen walks with her through the snow. He lets his eyes be mesmerized by its stark monochrome colours. He shares the sense of purpose as they trudge, and the wonder that the ice island holds when they stumble on it. He sees cousin Rosalyn, skating on the ice, her red beret like a bead of blood in the large whiteness. And he sees the two girls sinking into a web of cracks.

  ‘I thought it was Rosalyn who was crippled that day, but it was me. It was me, Owen. And I have been dying ever since. If it wasn’t for Bria . . .’ But she does not have to complete the sentence. He knows, knows that neither of them are tethered to the jetty of their lives, that all it will take is one rogue wave and they will be driftwood forever. They look through the book at the posturing man demonstrating swimming strokes. Catherine casts her green eyes up and sees a healing breath of laughter making Owen’s lips quiver. He traces one of the diagrams with a tremulous finger and she sees a tenuous curiosity light his eyes. He takes it in, this half man, half fish, this merman, setting him a challenge.

  ‘Owen, there’s something you should know.’

  ‘Yes?’ He has a sudden twinge of concern at what she may be about to divulge.

  ‘I . . . I only hope that it doesn’t shock you.’ He runs a finger up and down the condensation on the side of his glass, his breath bated. ‘I didn’t love Sean. And I don’t believe he loved me either. I shouldn’t have married him. My parents had persuaded me to go to secretarial college. I hated it there. I felt so boxed in, living with them, training for a job I didn’t want. Marriage offered me a way out.’ She takes a swallow of her drink and pushes her lips together before continuing. ‘I think he had his reasons for marrying me, too. He thought having a middle-class English woman for a wife was the benchmark of respectability. He was so ambitious, wanting to improve his lot. But it all went wrong.’ She inhales shakily. ‘Bria wasn’t planned. If it hadn’t been for her I think we would have parted within weeks of the wedding. There, so now you know.’

  He smiles at her reassuringly. ‘I guessed it wasn’t working out.’

  ‘I’m going to start over, begin again, get it right.’

  ‘So am I,’ Owen says. Their eyes meet and hold, and for long seconds neither speaks. There is no need.

  Then, ‘I have to pick up Sean’s things from the flat. It’s the landlord’s furniture so there shouldn’t be very much,’ she says. ‘But I wondered if you’d help me.’

  ‘Look, I’ll pack them up for you. As soon as they’re ready I’ll call. You can come by and we’ll load them straight into a car. That way you don’t have to cope with seeing Naomi. How’s that sound?’

  She nods, looking relieved. She tells him that she is catching a train from Waterloo, hurrying back to Bria who is being minded by her parents. They walk together, the heat making them dawdle. The commuters have caught their trains. The streets have thinned. The traffic still grinds, but it is more like whinging than grumbling. The dust of the day is settling. The low sun makes the windows of tall buildings twinkle as if festooned with fairy lights. They reach the bridge, Waterloo Bridge, and Owen hesitates. The Thames eyes him blackly, a sardonic humour in its heavy drag. Catherine takes his hand and he learns to walk on water, one step, two steps, three steps, four. He wobbles a bit, but not so that you would notice. She wraps the stone of his resistant hand in the quietly determined paper of hers – and wins.

  They pause in the middle of the bridge, the Water Children, poised above the sleek inky river decked in its reflected finery. They blink in unison. The Houses of Parliament stare them down. Important matters of government are decided here, but none as important as what is being decided on Waterloo Bridge this second. Big Ben courteously slows down time.

  ‘I can teach you to swim,’ says Catherine, looking up at Owen. ‘I’m a strong swimmer. We can go to a swimming pool together and I can teach you.’ He remembers the lessons with his father, the humiliation of them, floundering in the water, gulping for air, his father glancing up at the clock, begrudging the wasted minutes. His eyes veer to Big Ben. But Big Ben refuses to be hurried. Take my time, he says. Help yourself. Plenty more where this comes from. ‘You’ll be safe with me. I promise.’

  And Owen knows that this is a certainty, that with Catherine there he will not drown, that the paper of her resolve will make a sailboat of him and keep him afloat. The rocks of his resistant hands cup her face. He leans and she stretches, and their lips meet with a salt-sweet tenderness that only spirits of the water can impart.

  The woman who has been following them is standing by the riverside in the shadow cast by a tree. She has two profiles, two faces. One, blue eyed, is glacial, clinical, calculating. The other, brown eyed, is a conundrum, fathomless. And both are trained on the couple kissing on the bridge. Owen and Catherine . . . Owen and Judy . . . Walt and Judy. The names jostle in her head. He betrayed her with Judy. She saw them, fire lit, saw them embracing, saw that he wanted her, wanted to take her right there and then. Crouched in the tent, she observed them sleeping, while music washed over them, making the canvas quake.

  There isn’t much time, not if she is going to catch Leonard Cohen. To have come all this way and then not hear him sing? She must hurry if she does not want to miss him. He will perform ‘Suzanne’ for her, only for her, for Mara and no one else. In his poetry is her history. He knows the danger in her sea currents, the way she shelves steeply, and he sees the answers in her deadly depths. For she is the lady of the lake, and in the mirror of it her other self is revealed.

  ***

  As Owen ascends the stairs to the flat his trepidation grows. He is not sure what he hopes for, that Naomi will not be there, that if she is, she will be repentant, approachable. He cannot insist she has treatment, only advise. Still, perhaps in this interim period while he has been absent, she has done some soul-searching, and reached the same conclusion as him. It is as he passes the first-floor landing that he hears the music, together with the trilling of the ’phone. But it is not until he is taking the last flight of stairs that he can place it. ‘Suzanne’, the Leonard Cohen ballad. It is one of her favourite records and he takes it as a good omen. The ringing stops as he approaches the door. The caller, whoever it was, has hung up. He has his key ready but it is ajar. When he examines it he sees splintered wood, that the lock is broken. He thinks immediately of Blue and proceeds cautiously, prodding the door open.

  Chapter 25

  Catherine watches his receding back as he crosses the bridge, a tall young man with untidy fair hair, shy blue eyes, and the hint of an iron determination growing in the line of his mouth. She can still feel him on her lips, taste him. Something wondrous has happened to time. All the seconds, all the minutes, all the hours, are overlapping, so that she is no longer sure any accurate measure of them is possible. Surely she has known Owen all her life. And yet if the calendar is to be believed, they have only met a few times. She glances across at Big Ben, at the implacable face, to see if he has any explanation. But he is giving nothing away. If the kiss was a colour, then that colour has bled into the seconds before and after it, dyeing them. The outline of her, so
sharp and distinct all her life, has suddenly blurred. And the outline of him, please tell her that she has not made a mistake, that has fogged too. She no longer knows where she ends, but she thinks it is in Owen.

  It is while she is grappling with this that she notices a variation in the river. There is a strange silvery light playing on the face of the water. Can it be true that the reflected bleached hue of this everlasting summer is fading? Slowly she raises her eyes to the sky and the breath flutters into her at what she sees there. A bank of oyster grey, of gorgeous oyster grey massing on the horizon. A mirage or real? Other people are stopping on the bridge and pointing now. She overhears someone say it, their voice hushed with veneration. ‘Rain clouds. I think it is.’ Distantly there comes a rumble of thunder. This nimbostratus cloud has become such a rare phenomenon that she has the urge to rub her eyes to be certain of what she sees. Can it be, can it really be that rain is coming? That at last rain is coming? That the long hot summer of 1976 is over?

  She turns towards the train station but every step that brings her closer to it, takes her further away from Owen. The silver light skimming on the water beckons irresistibly. As she stares at it over the bridge railings she glimpses a man sitting by the river. He is facing away from her, wearing a black hood. And now he is turning, slowly turning and raising his head. She tears her gaze away, her growing recognition too appalling to contemplate. When she glances back he is nowhere to be seen. Then comes the still small voice in her head. ‘If you catch your train you will never see Owen again.’ For an instant she is hypnotized by the flickering light. And now she can smell rain, honeyed rain, percolating through the air. Distantly a jag of brilliance flashes in the sky. ‘If you catch your train you will never see Owen again.’ She hears the solid thud of his heart through the cotton of his shirt as she weeps into his chest, feels his broad shoulders carrying her. She sees him standing on her doorstep, backlit with blinding sunshine, Bria alive and safe in his arms. She feels his hands cupping her face, his lips on hers, him in her and her in him. Their separateness unravels, and the river glides on by beneath them. By the third time she hears the voice she is belting across the bridge, dodging bemused spectators, her panting breaths knifing into her lungs. At her back the approaching storm snarls.

  Chapter 26

  For an instant Owen makes no move, only listens, teasing apart the sounds that reach him. The lyrics of the song ‘Suzanne’, the backing chords of the guitar, the husky sigh of the leaking taps, the murmur of traffic.

  ‘Naomi?’ Intending not to startle her, his tone is deliberately soft. ‘Naomi? It’s Owen.’ Her bedroom door is closed. He knocks softly. ‘Naomi?’ He tries the handle with gentle pressure and finds it locked. In his room the contents of the wardrobe and drawers lie ripped and scattered over the bed and floor. The cardboard boxes of stock for the market have been torn open and gilt key-rings, costume jewellery, bags and purses litter the floor. Now he becomes aware of another noise, louder than the rest, the pounding of his own heart. But his framed photograph is where he left it and he retrieves it. He leaves his room, and parts the bead curtain before stepping through it. Cupboards have been emptied in the galley kitchen, but the lounge is relatively unscathed. Cushions lie on the floor, along with a couple of ashtrays spilling over with cigarette stubs. There is a vase of dead browning carnations in murky water on the small dining table. The record is going round and round on its turntable, the whine of the song emitting from the record player’s built-in speaker.

  Behind him the beads clatter. A shriek rends the air. Owen wheels round as Naomi launches herself at him. She clutches a carving knife, stabbing frenziedly. Instinctively his hands shoot up, palms outwards in self-defence. The framed photograph crashes to the floor. Arms flaying, he knocks the vase, sending it flying. It shatters. Shrivelled flowers scatter. Slimy water puddles over the photograph of the snowman. Light jewels it. The flash of a face contorted with malice comes at him. A smear of heavy make-up. The blur of a flowered smock. The knife thrusting. He feels the blade slash. The soft flesh of his hand bursts open. He grabs her wrist, tries to turn the weapon away from him. His grasp slips on his own blood. Her strength is staggering. They arm wrestle, knocking the lava lamp over, the telephone. His shoes and her bare feet trample the shards of the glass. His heart is pumping, the tip of the knife only inches from it. He knows he is about to die.

  An arm sweeps aside the bead curtain. Catherine screams . . . Naomi’s head snaps round . . . Owen twists her wrist . . . the angle of the blade shifts . . . he skids on the wet slick . . . Naomi’s head snaps round . . . he skids on the wet slick . . . Owen twists her wrist . . . the angle of the blade shifts . . . Catherine screams . . . they fall in an elegant arc. The knife roots in her soft belly. Naomi gives a breathy grunt. Time stops.

  There is an indeterminate interval. Then Catherine’s face swims above Owen, the red hair dangling down. Did a strand of it touch his face? He thinks it did. He thinks amid all the other sensations, he can isolate that one. The tickle of her red hair. He feels the warm blood pumping between the sandwich of his body and Naomi’s. He is not sure if he is dying, not sure which of them the knife has skewered. Catherine is calling his name. Then she is gone and he can hear her reeling off an address. It is the address of a flat in Covent Garden. It is where he has been living with Naomi and Sean all this long, hot summer. He inhales the chalky taint of powdery make-up. Naomi’s eyelids, half open, waver. Her lips are parted, bluish and dry as asbestos. Her pallor is lead-white. Her mouth is froth-full of blood.

  ‘Naomi?’ he says.

  She lifts her neck in one final supreme effort of will, her bloodied lips moving against his ear make her faltering reply. ‘Ma . . . Mara.’ As the song finishes, the first fat drops of rain strike the windows.

  Chapter 27

  They are standing in the garden examining the sky. This became Bill’s habit in June, when the extreme temperatures began reaping horticultural casualties. Ruth joined him, and now this sky-watching ritual is well established. He is squinting at a distant grey mash of gathering clouds, his brow furrowing.

  ‘Do you think it could be rain?’ he asks optimistically.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ Ruth replies. They have been fooled before. Clouds materialize and then evanesce without a single drop of moisture falling. Her brow is lined too. But it is not the promise of rain that is absorbing her, although she does grant that there is a queer silvery quality to the light this evening. It is their conversation of minutes ago that is fraying her thoughts and unravelling her composure. Bill mentioned, almost casually, almost in passing, that he has been unable to get hold of Owen since he returned from his holiday in Italy and dropped the car off. Again, in isolation this comment would not have been a source of undue concern. Their son lives in London where there is life at night. He is in the heart of theatre land. It is probable, likely even, that when Bill rang he was out and about watching a show, or eating at a restaurant. No, it is his elaboration that is unsettling her.

  ‘Someone answered the ’phone all right. On each occasion. And I rung three times in all, Ruth. I could hear them breathing down the line and some music playing in the background. I asked if Owen was there. I said, it’s Bill Abingdon here, Owen’s father, and can I speak to him. Not a word of answer. The first time I wondered if I’d dialled the wrong number, so I hung up and had another go. I even tried his flatmates’ names, Sean, and the one we met, the woman who stayed here overnight, Naomi. Not a sausage. Bizarre. Still, I should think there’s a plausible explanation.’

  And now Naomi’s image keeps hatching in her reverie, the perplexing eyes of different colours, the way they glazed over periodically, the messy tired hair that looked as if it had been repeatedly dyed. As she gazes at the sky and prays for her husband’s sake that rain is imminent, her maternal instinct tells her that there is something odd about this woman, something menacing.

  She hoods her eyes with a hand and peers and peers. All in all, Ruth has had a
strange day. Days have become monotonous for her, one very like another. But this one she has felt, and this in itself is remarkable. Because she has not felt anything very much for years, it seems. There is an expression that seems apt when describing the all-pervasive mood of this particular day, the calm before the storm – except that, increasingly, she is not calm.

  This morning she went to visit Sarah’s grave, the grassy hump frizzled to tired brown straw. And there was nothing unusual about this. She goes most days, keeps it tidy, takes flowers. Only the flowers have been a problem of late with this intolerable heat. You’d have thought, being married to a gardener, that he would have managed to come up with something. But no, the gardens he worked in, and their own, have become wastelands, the plants so dehydrated you imagine that you hear them crying out for water as you stroll past the beds. She’d finally settled for shop-bought carnations, pale pink as it happens, and then immediately regretted her purchase. She hates carnations, well, certainly the modern varieties. The old-fashioned sort are passable, she supposes. They are larger and at least they have a scent. But the ones everyone has nowadays are small fussy flowers, with absolutely no fragrance whatsoever. What she especially dislikes about them are the very things that make them so popular, the longevity of the cut blossoms, the way weeks after they have past their best the eye can be tricked into believing that there is still life in them.