As I hurry back towards the river, there’s a sudden uproar. The judder of a police helicopter, the wail of the pontoon, the clank of the cranes, all rise to a crescendo at once, like a football chant starting up in unison. It’s a phenomenon of the river I should be used to, but it’s too much right now. It all seems directed at me, a sort of jeering. I stop and lean against the black railings to catch my breath.
At last I reach the alley, and the noise drops. The sun’s moved round and the path is in shadow. I shiver, but I’m not sure if it’s with the cold. I hurry past the Anchor. Michael’s gone inside, leaving his pavement swept clean. He’s written on the blackboard; they’re doing an offer on Shrove Tuesday, seafood platter, followed by pancakes with lemon and sugar. I see early drinkers leaning on the bar and catch the whiff of disinfectant as I pass the doorway. Since the smoking ban, pubs no longer smell of pub, but of cleaning fluids, harsh and accusatory. Oh, for the days when all our sins were veiled in cigarette smoke! I hug the paper bag of patisserie to my aching chest. My footsteps echo off the walls. My breath comes in short, shallow gasps. I have the urge to run. But run where? What for?
Helen! Of course I could phone her, explain. But I haven’t spoken to her for ages. She’ll want to know why I didn’t contact her earlier. She’ll find it odd.
Other thoughts elbow their way into my head. It’s Monday today. As far as they’re concerned, Jez has been missing since Friday. That’s three nights. I can’t tell them he’s been with me all that time. No one’ll understand. It won’t fit anyone’s idea of how the world works. It doesn’t fit, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be. And the journalists who already, so soon, have wind of his story will turn it into something smutty. It’ll get out there, and they’ll defile it.
What the stupid reporter who wrote this doesn’t realize is that he’s made it impossible for me to let Jez go now. If I do, his face will be plastered across every cheap magazine in the country. He’ll be the focus of those gutter-press journalists, of the paparazzi. He’ll be offered money for his story. This article has given me no choice but to have him to stay a little longer than I intended, at least until the furore dies down.
I reach the door in the wall. My hands tremble as I put the key in the lock and turn it. Simon’s coming. I was going to introduce him to Jez. But what if he recognizes Jez’s face from the paper, from the billboards all across south-east London? I’ll have to keep Simon downstairs for his session. Then, he might ask why we’re not using the recording equipment in the music room? We often work up there. And if I insist on remaining in the kitchen, and he decides to use the bathroom in the music room, finds the room locked, peeks through one of the windows, what then?
I’m so twitchy by the time I get into the living room I can barely punch the numbers into the phone.
‘Simon, hi, it’s Sonia.’
‘Babes! How are things?’
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to cancel this morning’s session. I’ve woken up with a dreadful sore throat. Aching all over.’
‘Oh God, you’ve got swine flu.’
‘Ha!’ My voice is dry, dusty. I can’t get any saliva into my mouth.
‘You do sound rough, darling.’
‘Do you want to book in for next week – two weeks’ time?’
As I speak, thoughts tumble through my head. How long can I keep Jez before more people start to look for him? And how will I let him go discreetly, without media attention? I think of the locked door, my mother’s drugs, the scarves, as if for the first time. I’m not hurting him. The pleasure I’ve got from him so far has been taken quietly without causing him any guilt or pain. So why do I feel a kind of shame? My whole body shudders again. Maybe I really do have the flu.
‘Pencil me in for next week, will you, Sonia? Let me know, please, if you’re not fully better. I don’t want your germs, sweetie. Can’t afford to lose my voice while the show’s still up.’
When Simon’s gone I cancel all today’s appointments, saying I’ve got the flu. I need the house to myself for the next couple of days at least, so that I can concentrate on Jez. I refuse to think as far ahead as Thursday, when Greg and Kit are due back. And I won’t contemplate yet how I’m going to let him go, or when. All these things are uncertain, unanswered questions, and I haven’t the energy to think about them now.
In the kitchen, I lean on the counter. Put the kettle on. Make toast and breathe its comforting scent. Then I reach for a jar of marmalade, stopping for a moment as a ray of sunlight slants in through the jar, lighting up all the little pieces of orange peel suspended in the amber jelly. For some reason this image calms me, my heart rate slows. We’re going to be alright, Jez and me. I’ll take it all one step at a time.
My mobile sounds as I’m about to go back up to Jez. I flick it open, concerned it’s a client I’ve missed. It’s Kit.
‘Mum! You didn’t return my call. I was worried.’
‘Did you call? When was that?’
‘Last night. And I texted. Where’ve you been? You always go on about me letting you know where I am! Then when I do ring, you don’t call back.’
‘Well I’m here now.’ I realize I sound edgy, impatient.
‘Where, where are you?’
‘At home. In the kitchen.’
‘But I called home this morning and you didn’t pick up. Are you OK? Dad couldn’t get hold of you. He’s emailed and everything.’
‘Has he?’
‘Yes. He’s worried about you. He wanted to check you were alright.’
‘Is that what he says?’
‘Mum! Stop it.’ She sounds desperate, on the verge of tears. I take a deep breath.
‘OK. I’ll ring him. Are you coming on Thursday or not?’
‘Aha, so you did get my message.’ Relief in her tone. ‘Yes, I’m coming on Thursday and I’m bringing Harry. I want you to meet him. He’s kind of special.’
I don’t answer this. Kit’s boyfriends in the past have not been to my taste. Often sporty, usually blond, and always in some fast vehicle or other. I wonder in what way Harry is special, recoiling at the thought of any young man that isn’t Jez in the house.
‘And Mum,’ tentative now, ‘I thought we could sleep in the spare bedroom. I know you don’t like using it, but it’s got that big bed in there and—’
‘Please Kit!’ I say. ‘I need time. I need space. Don’t crowd out my brain.’ I’m aware I’ve left Jez longer than I intended to. That time’s passing and he must be hungry and thirsty.
There’s a long pause. I hear her breathe. Then she sighs and says in a false, calm tone, ‘I’m sorry. It can wait, we can play it by ear. But you’ll ring Dad?
‘Yes. I’ll ring Dad.’
‘It’ll be nice to be together again. It seems ages since Christmas.’
‘Yes darling. Yes,’ I say.
I go through to the kitchen, fumble in Jez’s leather-jacket pocket and find the tiny pack of weed he mentioned. There are some Rizlas there too.
Through the high windows I see he is sitting on the bed, his bad leg propped up, so I go in to him, brandishing the paraphernalia.
I watch as he rolls the joint in his long fingers, then I strike a match for him and light it and he takes a deep toke.
I explain there’s been a slight change of plan. That Simon isn’t coming today after all.
‘Then when will you introduce me?’
‘All in good time. We need to wait a bit. It wouldn’t be safe today.’
‘Safe?’
‘Don’t look so alarmed. I don’t mean you’re in danger, it’s just we don’t want people talking . . .’
‘I get it. You’re afraid he’ll find out I know about the party.’
The weed relaxes him and he smiles. I feel, at last, that we’re getting back to the way things were when he arrived.
Later that afternoon, when the smoke has given him such an appetite he’s swallowed a vast meal washed down by a cup of tea with some Flurazepam crushed into it, he fall
s into a deep, drug-enhanced sleep. I slip into bed next to him and push the hair away from his ear. The love bite is diminishing. I remove the black horn thing from his earlobe, push it deep into my pocket, take the soft flesh of his ear into my mouth.
I can see a sharp crescent moon rise in the pale-orange light of the London sky through one of the high windows. There will be another frost tonight. The water will be icy cold. Just as it was the night of the cygnets.
Seb was determined to prove they were there, though it seemed far too cold for baby swans to survive on a night like this. It was pitch dark. Not even a street light on in the alley. Seb let himself down the wall on the mooring chain to the shore below. I could hear the waves sigh. The tide was coming in. I leant on the low wall opposite the house and gazed down into the dark water. Seb’s voice floated up to me.
‘They’re here, Sonia. The babies are riding the swans, nestled under the wings. It’s incredible. Come and see!’
‘It’s too dark Seb. Come back.’
‘Bloody hell this water’s cold. My feet are numb.’
‘Hurry Seb. The tide’s rising. I can hear it on the wall.’
‘I’m coming up.’
‘Go to the steps!’ I shouted.
The indistinct forms of swans bobbed against the dark water. I felt the cold brick of the wall press against my chest. A bell struck twelve in the almshouses, followed shortly afterwards by the bell from St Alfridges over in Greenwich. The two were always slightly out of synch.
‘The tide’s too far up. I’m climbing back up the chain.’
‘That’s mad. The wall’s too high! You won’t make it. Go to the steps!’
I heard the chain creak and clank against the wall as Seb clutched the vast iron links down below. I stretched my arm out into the abyss. Could feel the beat of my heart against the cold of the wall, the frozen ring of steel under my hand. At last I felt hair, Seb’s warm head. My hand moved instinctively across it, cupping the perfectly shaped top of his skull. I caught his hand, pulled him back up and over.
‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘I’d like to follow them but we’ll have to wait till it’s warmer. We can nick a boat. Or we’ll build a raft. Follow the swans upstream to Jacob’s Island. Wherever it is they go. Hide out there.’
‘It’s dangerous, Seb.’
‘Or over there, to the Isle of Dogs.’
The dark side of the river was a forbidden zone, where the black windows of grim warehouses stared across the water, and chimneys belched toxic fumes into the contaminated night sky. Dry docks and crumbling landing stages hid who knew what diseases and fetid rubbish. I’d been warned not to wander onto the other side. Not to go into the foot tunnel alone, that the Isle of Dogs was dangerous. Not to ever try and row over there either. When the tide turned, the incoming water met the outgoing: the two tussled and produced currents that were unpredictable and lethal.
Seb said they couldn’t stop us. They were always trying to stop me doing this, doing that. They were always telling me I was too young. He told me they treated my spirit the way ancient Chinese people treated a girl’s foot. Squashing it into a shape that was too small so it would never grow or develop naturally.
‘You and me we know the river, we can deal with it,’ he said. ‘And as soon as it’s warm enough we’re building a raft and rowing away and no one will stop us.’
And Seb’s plan sat in my heart, as Jez does now, a warm secret, like a cygnet curled into a hidden place under a wing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tuesday
Sonia
I’m on the 386 to my mother’s. It’s one of those days when the whole of London’s being dug up to have drains restored or cables put in or burst pipes replaced. The city’s bowels are being dragged into the open, its entrails exposed. There’s a whole world down there under the pavements and tarmac, not just the tube system, but warrens carrying electricity and gas and water all over the city, and sewers and tunnels and cellars and basements and drains. Whole chambers and underground rivers. Rats too, and worms and things called cave spiders. Bones and blood and rotting corpses. Most of London’s plague victims lie under the turf of Blackheath. The land here is riddled with bones. What we see as we go about our everyday business on the surface is just the fragile tip of a vast graveyard.
This morning there are roadworks everywhere and the traffic crawls along. I think about getting off at the next stop and taking a short cut across the park but just as I get up to do so, the bus jerks into motion. A veil of rain sweeps over the trees in Greenwich park, beyond the white colonnades of the Queen’s House, and I can see Seb and me running up the hill, up through the rain in the empty afternoon, laughing at the shared thrill of being chased. Who were we running from?
We were looking for the small red-brick house that sat mysteriously locked at all times, incarcerated in its own little barrier of iron railings. A cold rain spat into our faces as we ran, releasing a scent of soil and dead leaf. Seb went ahead. He picked up sticks and hurled them back down the hill at our invisible pursuer. It took us some time to find the house, running up and down the park, along the official tarmac paths, and then up and down the unofficial mud paths worn through the grassy areas left to grow wild. We spotted it at last. Way over towards Crooms Hill, snuggled under the boughs of oaks and horse chestnut trees. It was pretty, with an archway over the green door, and a big black knocker, though no one lived there. It had no windows.
Seb leapt over the railings and battered on the door.
‘Let us in,’ he yelled, shaking the handle.
‘Don’t be silly. It’s always locked,’ I said. ‘No one lives here.’
The park was deserted, silent but for the patter of rain on leaf. Whoever we’d been running from had disappeared.
‘I’m cold. Can we go to the café, get a hot chocolate?’ I asked.
‘You got money?’
‘No.’
‘Nor me. I want to know what it’s like inside.’
‘It’s just the entrance to the conduits.’
‘What’s conduits?’ Seb picked up a piece of branch that must have blown off a nearby oak tree and used it as a battering ram against the door.
‘Secret tunnels. They all run under the park and the heath,’ I said. ‘They were put there to carry water pipes and electricity cables to the hospital in the old days.’
‘How do you know?’
‘We did it at school. They used them as an air-raid shelter in the war, ’cos they go right down underground. It was safe from the bombs down there.’
‘I wanna see,’ said Seb, taking another charge at the door. It rattled on its hinges this time as he thrust his weight against it. The rain began to come harder, and I shivered and huddled up under the brick arch over the entrance while Seb took out his penknife and began to fiddle with the padlock. Rain fell on the sycamore leaves on the trees overhead, a rich earthy scent rose into the moist air. But I couldn’t get warm, my teeth clenched together.
‘Let’s go Seb, I’m freezing,’ I said.
‘Shh. You’re always wanting to go,’ said Seb. ‘I’m not going. I wanna get in here.’
He knew I wouldn’t argue, however much I craved to be somewhere warm and dry, to feel hot food inside me. He knew I’d do whatever he wanted.
It seemed ages before he forced the door open and it creaked back on its rusty hinges, bringing a waft of stale air as the darkness opened up in front of us. Seb took some tentative steps forward. I followed, clinging onto his anorak. As our eyes adjusted to the gloom, he began to edge down steep, crumbly steps. Through the light from the open doorway at the top, we could just discern a pool filled with water. Seb got out the torch he kept in his pocket with his penknife – always prepared for potential adventures. We made our way round the pool to a low, arched tunnel, bending as we went. There was an eerie silence, interrupted by the occasional magnified plop of water, and a sort of whistling sound that must have been the wind siphoned down from above. But otherwise, the sounds
of the outside world above us were muted. They could have been a thousand miles away.
‘Sit,’ said Seb, and I did, feeling the rough wall against my back. He struck a match and I could see by its light that he had a pack of cigarettes in his hand. He lit two together and handed one to me. I drew in the dizzying smoke.
‘Where d’you get ’em?’
‘Out there. Someone was hanging about behind the trees. He left his jacket on the ground – they were in the pocket.’
‘That’s stealing. We could get into trouble.’
‘He shouldn’t have been sitting there if he didn’t want ’em nicked. He was watching us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Before. In the flower garden. He was hanging about watching. I saw. Then when we stood up he walked off.’
‘Who?’
Seb shrugged. Dragged on his cigarette.
‘Let’s go. I’m scared,’ I said standing up.
‘So you should be. I’m going to lock you up in here and leave you,’ Seb said, grabbing me, then pushing me up against the wall. I could feel his now familiar hardness press against my thigh.
‘Not scared of you! Of the weirdo who’s watching us. What if he’s in here?’ I whispered.
Seb held my neck in his hand, squeezed so hard I coughed. But I could tell he was afraid now too.
‘What’ll you do for me if I let you go?’
‘Nothing,’ I choked. ‘Get off, Seb.’
His hand increased its grip. I could see the blue vein stand up on his forearm, the muscles tense.
‘What’ll you do?’
‘Anything.’ I gasped, giving in to the pressure. ‘The thing you like?’
‘Now?’
‘Outside. Only if we can go outside.’
‘In the park?’
‘Yes. Here. But in the air. I don’t like it in the dark.’
He let go and we began to make our way quickly through the dark towards the stairwell, where light filtered down from above. I felt my heart pummel against my ribcage as we went.
Tideline Page 8
