by Jim Kelly
This was Jack Dryden’s local. Had he come to the singles club having pinned up the card in his hallway – or did he not have the guts for it? Humph didn’t have the guts for it. He was only here to be nosy, to try and find that elusive up-to-date picture of Jack Dryden. He was sweating into his Ipswich Town 1961–2 First Division Champions commemorative top.
On the way in he’d passed a set of group photos of the locals on days out each summer to the coast: Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Felixstowe. An awayzgoose – a celebration to mark the end of summer. Humph knew that because he’d read it somewhere and he liked the word. One of the pictures had a caption with names taken from the local paper – no sign of a Jack Dryden.
He picked at his chest, lifting the stretched nylon of his top away from his skin, letting some air circulate. The movement woke Boudicca, who tried to force her muzzle between the table edge and his crotch.
The door opened and five women came in. It took them nearly eight minutes to buy five drinks – each one paying alone, each one offering the others to join the round, each one politely declining. Humph tried not to listen. They all seemed distracted, overexcited, but he guessed that they’d seen him. Given he’d just topped eighteen stone he was difficult to miss.
Humph’s legs twitched as he fought back the urge to bolt. The music died and there was no more money to keep the entertainment going. In the silence he could hear the sound of a wooden hammer from the cellar and a clock on the wall ticking. He’d read somewhere that clocks don’t go tick tock at all. They go tick tick. It’s just that we can’t stand the idea of an infinite series of unchanging sounds – we need a cycle, a beginning and an end – so we hear the tock. The human need for a pattern, and our fascination with mortality, alters our perception – that’s what he’d read. He listened, his eyes closed. Bollocks. It was tocking all right.
The publican appeared and placed a plate of sandwiches on the table. Humph had one before anyone looked, and had time to rearrange the rest so the gap didn’t show. The women walked over, smiling in a kind of communal rictus.
‘Welcome,’ said one, holding out a hand. ‘I’m Val.’
Humph tried to stand, tipped the table, and they all grabbed their glasses. Subsiding he held up a delicate hand by way of acknowledgement. ‘Humph. First time,’ he added, taking his hand off the table and leaving behind a damp imprint of his fingers like four slug-trails.
When the men arrived it was better. Six men, then another three women. He listened to other people’s conversations. He thought about his wife. When they’d been out together she’d orbited him as if he was a planet, and he’d been able just to be there, because everyone was watching her. Grace had been eight stone and remarkably elfin for a farmer’s daughter from Manea. Their daughters had taken after her, at least physically – although he hadn’t seen either of them for nearly six months, so who knows. Grace had run off with a postman and they all lived now, as a family, at Witchford, just a few miles away. Humph often drove that way, hoping he’d catch sight of one of his daughters, but he never did. If he caught sight of the postman he’d run the bastard over.
The chairman of the group was called Lionel. He was in his mid-fifties, with one of those faces that’s just a single feature short of actually being handsome. In his case it was the chin, which was too big for his small, slightly pouting mouth, and made his grey eyes look weak. The one thing you’d remember if you met Lionel was the birthmark: port wine in colour, round the left eye.
Lionel tapped a glass of white wine with a teaspoon. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a little bad news. I’m afraid it’s Paul. He rang. He’s moving to Melton Mowbray.’
He’ll have upped sticks for the pies, thought Humph, taking a sandwich. ‘I came because a friend said it was a good club,’ said Humph. ‘Jack – Jack Dryden? He lived up the road. Taught kids science at home.’
No one reacted. So he hadn’t had the guts.
After that things got worse. They talked about the annual dinner and dance which was held at a pub in the town centre. Humph was asked if he’d like to come and he said he’d love to and Lionel said he’d bring the tickets next time. Which was lucky, because there was no way Humph was coming back. Everyone finished their drinks but no one offered a refill. They sat there for nearly an hour and a half looking at empty glasses. Each time the flagging conversation revived Humph felt another blow to his will to live.
Then Val, clearly the leader of the women, said she had to go, which prompted a general exodus. By the time he heard the cathedral bell chime ten he was alone again at the table. The TV was on showing European football and some kids played pool in the other bar. He got himself a fresh drink and the barman moaned about the singles club.
‘We’ve thought about chucking ’em out,’ he said. ‘Sat there – a glass of wine or half a bitter – how long?’
‘Couple of hours, but it felt longer,’ said Humph.
‘One of them asked for tap water. That was it. Fucking cheek.’
The door to the loo opened and Lionel walked out. So they hadn’t all gone home. ‘Drink?’ he asked Humph. ‘I live round the corner so I’m always last,’ said Lionel, his eyes drifting to the football. Something made the birthmark more vivid, alcohol, perhaps, or the heat.
They didn’t go back to the singles table but sat at the bar. Lionel rolled up his sleeve revealing tattoos – thick and blue, like a Maori. ‘I don’t know why I bother,’ he said. Now they were alone his accent had coarsened, Estuary English with an edge, and he’d pulled a pale red tie away from his neck. Humph smelt cigarette smoke and guessed that’s where he’d been – out the back, topping up the nicotine levels.
‘How’d you mean?’ asked Humph, his bow-like lips extending to reach the lip of the pint.
‘Singles. It’s not singles at all – it’s loners. We just meet once a week to swap loneliness.’ He snorted, as if expelling cigarette smoke.
They drank. The football stopped for half-time adverts which they watched. When the second half started Lionel got a round.
He gave Humph a sly look. ‘I didn’t say – when you mentioned Jack – but we were friends.’
Humph tried not to jump in, appear too eager. ‘You know he’s dead?’
‘Yeah. Only today – the name’s in the paper.’ He held up a copy of The Crow. Dryden had done a paragraph on the police issuing the name – nothing else.
‘I know someone in the family,’ said Humph. ‘We went out to view the body today. At Manea.’
‘Hell,’ said Lionel. ‘Rather you than me.’
‘He didn’t come to the club?’
‘Nah. Not Jack. You think we’re loners. Christ – he was his own man, Jack. He didn’t do people. But he did me a favour.’
Humph’s emotional intelligence was poor but he knew when to shut up.
‘Five years ago I got done – GBH. I hit a kid in the Red Room one night,’ said Lionel. The Red Room was Ely’s nightclub, an old cinema on Witchford Road, derelict by day, desperate by night. ‘Broke his jaw. I’d had a session in here first, then another there. Woke up in the cells. I didn’t know what month it was.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘It’s not the first time so they sent me down – six months. Lincoln. Jack wrote – once a week, like clockwork.’
Lincoln. Humph thought about the cat making a figure of eight round Dryden’s legs. ‘Really?’ he said, genuinely impressed. ‘Why?’ It sounded cruel so he added: ‘He must have been a good friend.’
Lionel didn’t take it badly, just shrugged. ‘That’s what I thought. We’d talked a bit – a couple of drinks. He didn’t say much. But like I knew nothing about him – ’cept he was smart. Taught kids, you know, like science. When I got the first letter I thought – right off – he’s a God-botherer. But it wasn’t like that.’
‘So why did he write?’
‘Second letter he told me. That he’d been in himself – long time ago, but he’d been in. A stretch too.’
Humph looked
doubtful.
‘No – he had. Believe me. I didn’t believe it at first because he was tough, Jack, but not coarse.’ He looked around the bar and – for the first time – Humph saw the intelligence in his eyes. ‘Or bitter. It wasn’t like he didn’t care what other people thought of him – it was like he’d didn’t know, couldn’t imagine. He asked in his letter where I was – the cell, the wing. Return of post he described it – honest, you can’t make it up. He knew. Like the corridor from the canteen where you can smoke ’coz they can’t see you from the guard room. Or the view from the cell – the old walls, the top of the cathedral, one of those gasometer things. Things had changed sure – but not much. It’s a dump, Lincoln – grotty. He’d been in.’
Lionel went to the loo and Humph took the opportunity to ask the barman what his full name was: Lionel Wraight. Ex-railway worker.
Lionel came back, doing up his zip in public. ‘Jack knew the ropes all right. Prisons are all different, on the inside. He sent phone cards, fags, mags. You can use them, like a currency. I’d done field work as a kid – picking – so he said I should ask to help out in the gardens. Get out. Get trusted. He played chess. Ended up playing the guvnor. Kept his head down – and didn’t do drugs, because if you do that you have to do something for them. And you don’t want to know what you have to do.’
Humph knew he’d failed to keep the look of disgust off his face. ‘Anyone else write?’
‘Me brother – once. He lives in bloody Scunthorpe; he could have come and seen me. It’s only twenty miles away. Nobody visited. Jack said he’d had letters – from home – and he said it helped. He said he liked letters, better than visits, because it was up to you when to read them. But if people came to see you, you had to deal with it then – you couldn’t put it off. I think he was a bit scared of people.’
‘Shy?’ prompted Humph.
Lionel stood. ‘But one thing had changed.’ He leant in close and Humph smelt cigarette ash. ‘I didn’t say, right. But it was Category A when he was in because he said they was kept in solitary – and that’s not Lincoln now. It’s Category B. So it was a time ago and he did something a bit choice. Category A is for the dangerous, right – the violent. If you’re Category A they don’t turn their backs – not once. Me – I’m a puppy dog. But Jack, there was something – cool. No – icy.’
‘When did it change?’
‘What?’
‘From Category A.’
‘Why would I know?’
He went out the back to smoke. When he got back Humph was gone.
EIGHTEEN
The submerged hamlet of River Bank lay a mile and a half from the jetty, beneath nearly thirty feet of fresh water, as it had done now for four winters – each of which had been cold enough to seal the ruins under a thin layer of ice. It was the first time Dryden had been back since the day they’d opened the sluices, when he’d seen his mother’s grave set in the green water, the newly planted lilies waving in the current. Four winters and four summers during which the flooded woods had rotted, the dead trees falling silently and in slow motion, unheard, while the mud slowly obscured the drove roads and fences, the cottages and the barns. Fish swam where birds had flown.
His uncle ran his nets and traps from the ruins of the village which were still above water, providing a rare fixed point on the great sheet of shifting water. Dryden headed directly for the bell tower of the little chapel. With evening gathering the wind had dropped but it still raised white horses – ragged, random, and stained green by the algae and weed in the mere. And the boat left a wake, a widening V, opening out behind him as if he was unzipping the lake. A mile out he lost sight of the jetty he’d left behind and became the moving centre of a watery world, a disc of blue, darkening to meet the dusk rising in the east.
His right hand reeked of petrol because he’d had to fish the ignition key out of the fuel tank on its line of thread, so he let his fingers trail in the water as he had done on that day when the sluices had first opened. Fresh water to him looked oilier than seawater, less easily creased by wind, thicker, perhaps, even syrupy. He felt the warmth of it too, as it tugged at his hand. Touching it to his lips he tasted how sweet it was.
An oak had stood on the edge of the village on a small island of clay in the peat. Its dead branches still rose from the water in a delicate crown. It alone had survived the four winters, but perhaps not five. He cut the engine to idle and let the boat drift through its shadows, looking down into the water. Below he saw a rooftop – one of the village’s outlying cottages, the original sharp lines blurred by a layer of weed and reeds. He’d noted the peculiar quality of mere water: both clear and dense, as if he was peering into solid green glass, into which the ruins of River Bank had been set, like a village in a paperweight.
Another image from Beowulf came to him – the monster swimming up from the depths, mud trailing from its webbed feet – and despite himself he had to look away, up through the branches of the oak at the sky. The first faux star, Venus, was just visible.
The boat drifted on, out of the shadows, into the light and towards the chapel. He tried again to recall some detail of this lost place from his childhood and remembered a small garage and petrol station, a lone attendant sat out on a seat, a peaked cap pulled down over his eyes. Opposite, on the empty corner, a patch of grass and a bench. He’d have been ten, cycling past, thinking he could be out on the Great Plains somewhere, a cowboy in search of a waterhole. The memory made him feel like a child again, a physical jolt, as if he was back in the younger body, living in the moment of an everyday adventure.
Only the remnants of River Bank broke the surface of the new mere. The chapel and its tower, the rotting crown of the great oak, the skeleton of a metal grain silo, the single chimney stack of the Victorian villa which had stood at the centre of the village. Dryden recalled the big house’s owners, given a bench set aside in honour at the harvest festival in the chapel when he’d gone one year with his parents. Lords, even then, of a manor, now subterranean. A month before the sluice gates had been opened and the village drowned the local museum at Ely had asked permission to remove the Victorian stained glass from the villa’s windows. They’d shown the chapel, the great oak and the apostles. Dryden had noticed them on a recent visit when he’d done a story about a new exhibition of local fossils. One of the panes had been emblazoned with the villa’s name: Fenlandia. And there’d been a black-and-white turn-of-the-century picture of River Bank: the villa dominating even the chapel – four-square, rooted to the spot.
He let the boat drift on towards the chapel. He could see through the west window – the glass gone, just a cave-like opening into the body of the chapel, the water flowing through, constricted, so that the mere seemed to funnel into the body of the ruin. It made Dryden’s blood cool – the thought he might be drawn in. He let the boat bump against the brickwork beside the gap.
He splashed his face with the water and the noise of it almost made him miss what he thought was a lone bark of a dog. His uncle had a dog, an obedient sheepdog called Bay. His aunt hadn’t mentioned the dog but he hadn’t seen him at the farm, or heard him. Dryden examined the silence. A minute passed, then a single bark again, echoing out from the gaping arch of the window.
He called out his uncle’s name for the first time and the barking picked up a rhythmic beat – and with it an echo, which rounded the sound, as if the dog was beneath the water. Edging the boat inside the window, using the paddle, he had to duck his head under the pointed neo-Gothic arch. Inside, the watery aisle was lit from the empty narrow windows on either side – their arches just clear of the surface. The roof was wooden, a Victorian barrel design, with pin points of light showing where the lead had been stripped on the outside. As Dryden edged the boat forwards bats swung above his head. It was his imagination, he knew, but he felt he could hear their high-pitched sonar, and he wondered if the dog could hear too.
There was still no sign of Roger’s twenty-foot eel boat.
; He shouted the name again and the sound seemed to ricochet off the water. The dog barked in reply.
As the boat slipped forward he looked down and saw the gliding forms of eels in the shadows, intertwining. There appeared to be hundreds, thousands, as if there was no water at all, just the eels turning over each other, a living weave, their movement seeming to carry the boat forward. He caught sight of the font below – white stone, the bowl full of slim black eels turning in a circle.
He saw the dog on a set of high stone steps which led up to a door behind the pulpit. His thin paws skittered on the stone at the edge of the water.
‘Hi, boy,’ said Dryden, bringing the boat in. He didn’t like dogs, but they loved him, and Bay licked his hand and jumped aboard. ‘Where’s Roger, eh, boy? Where’s Roger?’ The fact that the eel boat was missing too was a comfort because it meant that his uncle had gone somewhere else to lay his traps and would return. But why leave the dog?
Dryden stepped out, taking the rope. Inside the old chapel the temperature seemed almost icy. The little lancet door was on a latch and open. ‘One minute,’ he said to the dog, which sat down and whimpered.
He climbed the corkscrew stairs. After three twists he passed a narrow doorway into an empty room. A rusted metal frame showed where a clock mechanism had been lodged. Turning away to continue the climb he heard a skittering and caught sight of a rat running at the foot of a wall at a supernatural speed. Breathing deeply he noted that despite its inundation the building retained that peculiar smell that is ‘old church’ – dust and stone and candle wax.
The room above was the old ringing chamber. The wooden roof had just one hole for a rope. Dryden thought an echo of the bell hung in the air; a kind of audible tension, imprinted now in the walls and flaking plaster.
