I said we’d be there as soon as we could manage it. I didn’t feel like going but I couldn’t think of an excuse. Perhaps it would do me good to get out. It’d keep me from spending the night moping. Dermot was still hanging around by the door, waiting to see who I was talking to. I told him we had an invitation.
‘Well we’ve had a wasted day so far,’ he said. ‘Might as well go out for tea. At least she usually puts a good spread on. What did you have the other day?’
‘Crab cakes.’
‘Didn’t know crabs ate cakes, the crusty little fuckers. Come on. If we go now we’ll be in time for a drink or two. You’re driving. You never have a drink when you’re driving. You wouldn’t fucking dare. You won’t even have your mobile phone switched on while you’re driving.’
‘I can manage one or two drinks.’
‘Is that a bit of danger coming to the surface there? Is that a hint of risk? Holy mother of Mary the man’s turning human.’
We went back out again and got back into the Audi. As we passed Kingswinford for the umpteenth time that day, Dermot asked:
‘Are you sure you cancelled the milk?’
II
That morning, the sky had been clear. During the day it had turned hazy, and with evening coming on it had turned grey. Enormous dark blue smudges were crawling over the horizon and heading towards us. There were faint grumbles and rumblings from the air. Dermot held onto his flagon of cider as though it contained nitro-glycerine. As we crossed the bridge over the Severn fat raindrops began to speckle the windscreen. The barrage continued as we turned left towards the car park. The sky crackled like a speaker with a loose wire, and what seemed to be most of the water in Christendom fell on the area all at once.
‘Looks like rain,’ said Dermot. ‘I may have to wind the window up if this inclement weather persists.’
The range of vision closed around the car. I switched on the headlights and managed to gain another few feet of visibility. The windscreen wipers were overwhelmed and thrashed about in the water like swimmers with cramp. I wondered what state the river was in. It tended to get too lively for comfort in wet conditions.
‘What’s the river look like?’ I asked.
‘Fucking wet,’ said Dermot. ‘Like everything else.’
I parked as close to the edge of the car park as I could manage. That way we’d only have to run through three hundred yards of drenching downpour. There wasn’t anywhere else to park. Not many houses in Bewdley come equipped with garages, as the town was built centuries before the internal combustion engine was invented. The locals park in the streets, along both sides of the road.
‘We could wait for it to pass,’ I said.
Dermot shook his head.
‘It’s not going to pass,’ he said. ‘It’s going to make a night of it. We’ll have to run for it. I’ll bring the cider, you bring you. On three.’
He counted us out into the weather. By the time I’d beeped the locks shut – all of two seconds – the rain had penetrated through to my underwear. Neither of us had brought coats. It had seemed hot and muggy, and we’d thought that we might be sitting outside drinking Dermot’s farmhouse cider. Now, the outside had become waterlogged. The Severn was getting set to burst its banks and make everything wetter. Dermot had turned his shirt collar up, which did him no good at all. He was walking hunched over his cider, in case water got into it and diluted the impurities. Confused ducks wandered past, trying to find the main body of water.
‘The ducks are drier than we are,’ complained Dermot. ‘The fucking river is drier than we are.’
The sky roared and flashed. We reached the house and Dermot hammered on the door, hanging on to his cider with one hand. Roger opened it and looked at us.
‘What are you two doing here?’ he asked, nonplussed.
‘Tina asked us round for tea,’ I said.
‘Well you’re out of luck there. Tea’s off. But you can help us carry the furniture upstairs, while you’re passing. I suspect that was somewhere close to the top of her agenda.’
He let us in.
‘Don’t bother wiping your shoes,’ he said. ‘There’ll be two feet of water in here by midnight. According to the weather reports it’s been like this for most of the afternoon in Wales.’
III
The lower floor was looking empty. The rugs had gone upstairs, along with some of the furniture. Even the amber glow had been taken out of harm’s reach. A large, bearded, placid-looking man was helping Tina to get one of the chairs upstairs.
‘This is Martin, from next door,’ said Roger. ‘We’ve already lugged his stuff to the top floor. Can you two get everything out of the kitchen?’
Dermot and I began to empty the kitchen while Tina and Martin dragged furniture up the narrow winding staircase and Roger stood nearby looking elegant but bemused. He had the air of an Englishman in India as the Raj fell to pieces, locked in place by manners while his wife was savaged in the billiard room. In half an hour, we’d got everything moved to the spare room upstairs. That left the bathroom, the bedroom, and what Roger liked to call ‘the secondary living area’ free. That was a small upstairs room with a pair of armchairs and a few dark wood cupboards in it, along with a sideboard under the window. Tina had placed candles on all available surfaces.
‘I’ve turned off the gas,’ she said. Martin attempted to sneak quietly out, with a shy wave.
‘See you then Mart,’ shouted Dermot. ‘Nice work with that table.’
He looked around, searching for something.
‘Who’s got my cider?’ he asked. ‘We had to walk miles for that. You wouldn’t fucking believe what we had to go through to get that.’
Tina handed him his flagon, which had been sitting under a chair.
‘There might not be much for tea,’ she said. ‘As the cooker’s off. And so is the gas, and I’ll be switching the electricity off any time now. Would someone like to go for a Chinese?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Dermot. ‘I can’t get any wetter, can I? Mick can help me carry stuff. Will they be open?’
‘They’re up above the high-tide mark,’ said Tina. ‘They do a roaring trade when this happens. I’ll phone the order through. What do we want?’
There was the usual process of negotiation, making the Northern Ireland peace talks look rushed by comparison. Dermot put in bids for extra portions of rice and all the starters, Tina wanted crispy duck, and Roger tried to find something that no one else had tried before. I asked for anything with noodles and waited for everyone else to sort themselves out. Tina phoned the order through when we eventually settled on it.
‘They say it’ll be ready in about ten minutes,’ she said. ‘If you two go and get it, I’ll light up some candles and try and get cutlery organized. We’ve got some up here somewhere.’
‘Come on then,’ said Dermot. ‘Otherwise all of the candles will have burned down. Then we’ll have to sit in the fucking dark.’
We went back out into the weather. The sky had settled on a black and purple motif.
‘Looks like someone beat the shit out of it,’ said Dermot, looking up. ‘Serves it fucking right.’
The rain had eased, but the river was already reaching over the pavement with pudgy brown fingers. Lightning flashed in the distance, and a rumble of thunder went running past us, rattling windows in their panes. When we reached it the Chinese was a mass of steam contained by a plate glass window. From the middle of the cloud a smiling woman handed over two huge bags of cartons. I paid.
‘I’ll pay my share,’ said Dermot. ‘When I get paid.’
Taking a bag each, we made our third trip along the river in the rain.
IV
Tina had pushed the furniture in Roger’s secondary living area back against the walls. She had also spread a tablecloth on the floor. She’d put out plates and cutlery, including a few pairs of chopsticks, and there were glasses. Roger had been to the attic and had brought back a selection of bottles. The flagon of cider that De
rmot had somehow managed to bring back from my hallucination stood on one side. No one had tried it while we were out. Most of the candles were lit. I realized that Tina would have the electricity off by now. The river would be up to the level of the front door before much longer.
‘Bung all of the cartons down here,’ said Tina, indicating the centre of the cloth. ‘We’ll just grab whatever we want from there. We’ll have to squat. I hope your knees can cope with it.’
She settled down, folding her legs tidily underneath herself. Roger assumed the lotus position. No doubt he’d be using chopsticks, too. Dermot collapsed gracelessly, ending up with one leg sprawled across the cloth and the other somewhere underneath him. I made my way slowly to a squatting position. Computer programming doesn’t do much for suppleness or poise. By the time I got myself into a suitable position, Dermot was tearing foil lids from containers and helping himself to large portions of everything.
‘Chopsticks,’ he said. ‘I can use those. It’s a knack.’
He began to spread rice over quite an area. Roger looked on archly. Tina had half a smile, which I didn’t trust. To tell the truth, I didn’t trust her. At least with Roger you knew what you were getting. He thought that he was better than you, and there was a fair chance that he was right. He didn’t so much look down on you as get you to look up to him. He was permanently unruffled. Every time he began to speak, I thought he was about to say, ‘of course, dear boy …’ Dermot was a storm of energy. He looked as though he’d been to a wedding where they’d used fried rice for confetti. Despite that, he also appeared unruffled. I seemed to be the only ruffled person there. I drank another glass of wine. I’d heard rumours that you could sip wine. I’d have to try that one day.
‘These are out of whack,’ Dermot complained, waving the chopsticks. ‘They’re different lengths.’
He up-ended another couple of cartons onto his plate.
‘I don’t like prawns,’ he said. ‘They’re like woodlice. They’ve got legs. And feelers.’
I felt calmer. Perhaps that was because Roger kept refilling our glasses.
‘Here you go,’ he’d say. ‘A little bit of white in there won’t hurt.’
Once we’d finished the meal, Dermot cleared up by bundling everything into a carrier bag and knotting the handles together. He folded the tablecloth unevenly and put the bag on top of it.
‘There’s some rice down here,’ he said. ‘Someone’s a messy eater.’
Tina looked at the carpet.
‘Somebody is a spectacularly messy eater,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to get the hoover at that when we have the power back on.’
‘When will that be?’ I asked.
‘Days, probably. The water will come up another few feet tonight, some more tomorrow, then start to go down. The weather reports say a warm front hits Wales tomorrow afternoon. This is all run-off from the mountains, you know.’
As she said run-off from the mountains she looked at me. I wasn’t happy about that.
‘How deep is it now?’ I asked.
‘Have a look,’ said Roger. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
I went to the landing and looked down. The hall floor had vanished under water. In the darkness it looked heavy and cold. A smell rose from it, of damp and dirt. I knew that was nothing compared to the smell it’d leave when the water receded. I tried to remember how many stairs there were on their staircase. I couldn’t decide whether one or two were underwater. If it was two, the water was more than a foot deep already, and the house was a good few feet above the riverbank. It had risen a foot while we’d been watching Dermot demonstrating the incorrect use of chopsticks. There must be water across half the town. We’d have to wade to the car park.
I hoped the Audi was above the water level.
I wondered how we were going to get back to Dudley.
Tina joined me.
‘We’re filling up,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to stay here tonight.’
I shook my head.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You can’t go out there in this. And you’ve had about a litre of wine.’
‘I can’t have,’ I said, sounding unpleasantly like a sulky child. ‘I haven’t had that much.’
‘Roger’s getting through it tonight,’ she said. ‘So is Dermot, which isn’t surprising. But you’ve had plenty too. Come on, we’re opening that cider next. Where did you get it from?’
I didn’t know. It had come out of my imagination.
‘A farm,’ I told her.
‘Rough cider,’ she said. ‘It’s like being a student again. What’s bothering you?’
‘Nothing.’
She set her head at an angle and looked quizzical, but when she didn’t get a response she shrugged and went back to the others. I looked down at the water for a little longer, the river imposing its will on the building. It had imposed itself into the usual world, like the cider that we were all about to drink.
I went in and drank some. It wasn’t as though I had any other choices.
V
It had a flavour somewhere between apples and surgical spirit, and it was real enough. It had flakes floating in it. It might well have had twigs in it. After Roger’s wines it tasted very sweet.
I was already drunk, but so wound up about being in the house that I didn’t feel it. Dermot, on the other hand, was visibly plastered. This was something new. He could outdrink me, and I had the feeling that he could out-drink anyone. He was slurring. Drunk, he became more like a squirrel than ever, all bright eyes and sharp movements.
‘Why not write off the bottom floor?’ he asked. ‘Just live up here, and convert the loft.’
‘The wine’s in the loft,’ said Roger, looking pained.
‘Move it downstairs. Above the water level. Then that’s a cellar, this is the first floor, put the bedrooms in the loft. That’s easier than carrying everything up and down the stairs, surely.’
‘We like the exercise,’ said Roger. ‘Anyway, you can’t live here while it’s flooded.’
‘Some people do,’ said Tina.
‘Yes they do,’ said Roger. ‘They stay here with no power, no heating, and no running water.’
‘There’s all the running water you could want,’ said Dermot. ‘Your living room is full of the fucking stuff.’
‘You can’t drink it,’ said Roger. ‘It’s cloudier than this cider, which is saying something. Where did you get it from?’
‘A farm,’ said Tina.
‘Oh yes,’ said Dermot, ‘a farm. Nothing strange about that, except that it wasn’t real.’
Tina and Roger ignored him.
‘I mean it,’ he said, now in the stage of drunkenness where it becomes important to explain exactly what you’re talking about to everyone unfortunate enough to be trapped with you. ‘It’s a fact. We went through this field and then we were in one of his fucking visions. I was there too. It wasn’t a real house. It wasn’t a real farmer, either, and we got this cider and had to run off. From dogs. Across this chasm that was a stream before. We got the cider there.’
‘Are you telling me,’ asked Roger carefully, ‘that you saw one of Mick’s hallucinations? You could actually see it?’
‘Saw it? I was fucking standing in it. I had to run out of it. He set the dogs on me.’
‘Mick did?’
‘The farmer did. The dogs weren’t real either. They were all teeth and eyes’
‘But you saw all of this?’
‘Bet your fucking boots.’
Roger looked at Tina. Both of them looked at me.
‘It’s getting worse,’ Roger told me. ‘You’re getting worse. If you can affect him, you might affect the rest of us.’
‘Could it have been a real farm?’ asked Tina. ‘Could it have been real and you just put a hallucination over it? That’d explain the cider.’
‘It wouldn’t explain how he got Dermot into it,’ said Roger.
‘We had some acid with us,’ said Dermot, now apparently
happily settled into the drunken confessions stage. ‘I might have had some. I had it on my fingers and I might have had a go on them. I might have been a bit trippy.’
‘Acid?’ said Roger. ‘Is that normal for a day out?’
‘It is for me,’ said Dermot. ‘I can take anything.’
He looked as though he’d taken everything. The bright look in his eyes had given way to a dull one. He was pale and had started to do the ‘gradual lean followed by a sudden jump’ routine. I was sure he was going to be sick soon.
The four of us would be sharing the bathroom, I realized. Dermot and I would be sharing a room, along with Dermot’s excess rice.
I tuned back into the room. Dermot had fallen silent. I could see that Tina had been reassured by Dermot’s class-A substances story. Roger looked less than convinced, but wasn’t about to follow it up. That would have suggested that he might not be entirely composed.
There was some stilted conversation about the river, and how long the flood might last, and then Dermot announced his intention to be sick and left the room.
He was sick from the landing into the river water. Then he came back and lay down and started to snore.
‘Can you manage in here?’ asked Roger. ‘Only we’ve got nowhere else to put you.’
I looked at Dermot. He released a squeaky fart and grunted happily. I nodded.
At least the night couldn’t get any worse.
VI
After Tina and Roger had gone to bed, I brushed my teeth using my finger and some of their toothpaste, had a quick wash, and lay on the floor. Roger had told me that we’d have as much water as was in the main tank, which should last until morning if we didn’t waste it. It was cold, of course. There was no heating. Tina had provided me with a selection of cushions, and I used all of them to make myself a nest.
It was almost a quiet night. There was no traffic, because the road was underwater. There were no people outside for the same reason. The river didn’t make much noise, even after it had made its way into the houses. Tina and Roger didn’t make a sound.
Execution Plan Page 13
