Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  ‘The cold has delayed the aconites,’ Betty says. ‘But the snowdrops are everywhere. They lift my spirits more with each passing year. I do believe they get whiter!’

  There’s always that clanking from Colliers Wharf, even in a light breeze. And now there’s the whoop of a jet launch on the water and the whine of an aeroplane heading for City Airport. It’s difficult to pick out separate sounds but there’s a thump that is loud and distinct. Just as I decide with another lurch of the heart that it comes from my garage, Betty squeezes my arm and leans close to my ear.

  ‘You’re a naughty girl. You weren’t clearing the garage to put the car in, after all, were you?’

  ‘And what’s it to you?’ I ask, unlinking my arm.

  She totters a little and looks taken aback. ‘You told me you were going to put your car in there. Like your mother did. But it’s still on the street!’

  ‘What I do with my car is my business, thank you, Betty.’

  ‘I’ve told you, it isn’t safe. You’d be much better off parking it in your garage. There are vandals, Sonia. I’m only thinking of you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I relax a little. ‘But it’s actually rather hard to get it into that little space.’

  ‘Well, what else are you going to use it for?’ she asks turning away from me.

  I see that I’ve offended her, by overreacting to her comments, and that I had no reason to be alarmed. She’s making for the gate, so I call out to thank her for the tour of her beautiful garden and say how I wish there was a garden at the River House, but she disappears into her house without looking at me again. I feel sorry that I’ve upset her and angry with myself for my abrupt reaction, when all she had in mind was the safety of my old Saab.

  My hands are shaking as I fumble with the two padlocks on the garage door and finally manage to unhook them. I turn the Chubb in the metal inner door, and slip inside, shutting the door behind me and drawing the bolt across.

  The garage smells. I feel irritation sear through me again. This place with its bucket and its lack of running water or electricity is demeaning. There were none of these difficulties in the music room.

  Jez’s face is turned away from me, though I know he’s heard me come in. I can see the contour of his cheekbone which has lost its smooth curve. His body under the duvets seems almost flat. His arms and legs are still securely fastened to the bedposts so he must have been making the noise, as I feared, by banging the back of his head against the headboard.

  I sit down on the bed.

  ‘Jez, you’ve been banging your head. I could hear you outside. You must stop it,’ I say, as I take off the gag.

  ‘Why should I?’ Now his mouth is free I see he’s been working himself up into a fury. ‘What do you expect? When you’ve done this to me!’

  ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself,’ I say. ‘Banging your head is dangerous.’

  ‘But my arms and feet are tied,’ he says. ‘My head is all I’ve got.’

  ‘I don’t like tying you up either,’ I say gently. ‘But I need some cooperation from you if we’re to get you out of here later. If you arouse suspicion who knows what might happen to us?’

  ‘I’m locked up in this hole! No one’s come so far. So what’s the point in all this? You could untie me. The window’s too small to climb out of.’

  ‘I know. And you wouldn’t survive the drop to the river. If the tide was out, you’d break something, your neck or back, and if it were in, the currents would sweep you under in no time.’ I don’t like scaring him but I don’t want him to get ideas.

  He stares at me dumbstruck.

  ‘Though Seb would probably have found a way,’ I mutter. ‘He’d have made a rope ladder, and used something to break the window. Nothing stopped him once he had an idea in his head.’

  ‘Who? Who are you talking about?’

  I glance into Jez’s face. ‘No one,’ I say.

  ‘It’s freezing in here,’ Jez says. ‘And it smells and it’s disgusting. You’ve got to let me out.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Really I am. I thought everyone was leaving today. Now I hear Greg wants to stay longer. I’m fed up. It means you have to stay here for at least another night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If there’s anything you need that would make this better for you, I’ll get it.’

  ‘But you won’t let me go.’

  I look at him sadly, shake my head. ‘Not yet.’

  He’s silent for a while and I’m afraid he’s started to cry. But then he speaks. ‘If it’s sex you want I’ll do it. Then you can let me go. Please. I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Come on.’

  ‘Don’t Jez,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t do this. Don’t belittle it.’

  ‘But I don’t get it. If it’s not sex, why have you done this to me?’ He shakes his hands in their duct-tape bangles.

  ‘It’s enough having you here, near me,’ I say. But I can see he doesn’t understand. Or maybe he doesn’t want to. Not in the mood he’s in. The fact is, I want to explain, I’m overwhelmed by the compulsion to hold onto you. It wells up in me, threatens to overflow. It’s exhausting and demanding but I cannot give up.

  Then he tries another tactic. He tries to harden his voice, to sound more street than he is.

  ‘I’m not nice, you know. I take drugs. I spend too much time alone with my guitar. I can’t read or write properly. You don’t know me. If you did, you wouldn’t be interested in me.’

  I laugh. ‘You think people only like each other if they’re nice? The more I hear about the other side of you, the more I want you here. You could hardly have described Seb as nice. It didn’t stop me loving him.’

  ‘Seb again!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You keep mentioning this Seb person. Who is he?’

  ‘Never mind.’ I shiver. I must stop invoking Seb’s name, it feels like tempting fate.

  Jez continues. ‘You just don’t get it. My dad gave up on me years ago. I’ve disappointed my mum by turning out to be dyslexic. The only person who puts up with me is Helen.’

  ‘Helen! Your aunt? What’s so great about Helen? You talk as if she’s some kind of saint.’

  ‘What?’

  He’s startled by the vitriol in my words, as am I. Why can’t I bear to hear Jez sing Helen’s praises, or mention any other woman with affection?

  ‘You seem to put her on a pedestal.’

  ‘Hardly,’ he says. ‘She’s usually too pissed to notice what we’re doing, that’s all.’

  I soften a little. Even if he isn’t being entirely honest, he knows what I want to hear. He doesn’t want to hurt me. I appreciate that.

  ‘Helen doesn’t give a toss what we’re up to, me, Barney and Theo.’ His tone’s changed again, as if for the moment he’s forgotten he’s tied to the bed, and is simply sulking about his lot in life. ‘Whereas my mum’s at me all the time. Do this. Practise that. Take another exam. Prove I’m “intelligent” even if I can’t string a sentence together.’

  He pauses, sighs, looks up at me. ‘I could do with a smoke,’ he says, quite sweetly now. ‘And something to drink.’

  ‘Hmmm. I’ve got you some drinks here. A choice. But the weed you had has run out. Where am I going to get more from?’

  ‘You could ask Alicia.’

  I flinch at the sound of her name.

  ‘I don’t know Alicia,’ I say.

  ‘Helen knows her! And you know Helen! You can phone her. You know you can.’

  ‘OK Jez, look, I’ll get you some dope, but I’m not speaking to Alicia; I think we should keep her out of this.’

  He raises his voice.

  ‘Out of what? You still haven’t said what’s going on! It’s weird. It’s bloody mad.’

  ‘Out of us. Out of you and me.’

  ‘Look,’ he says, as if he’s trying his best to be patient with a small child, ‘Alicia has dope. If she doesn’t have any on her, she knows where to get some from.
And I need it.’

  ‘It’s not good for you, you know,’ I tell him. ‘It can mess up your brain.’

  ‘We don’t smoke skunk,’ he says, and the ‘we’ riles me. Is he doing this deliberately?

  ‘It’s just mild stuff. Grass. I can tell you exactly what to ask for. It would do me so much good. It would make me a nicer boy to be with.’ He grins. It’s not a real, genuine, happy grin, but it’s the first time he’s smiled since he came to the garage.

  ‘OK.’

  It occurs to me that weed might be of help to me, as it has been already. When Jez smokes he loses the will to resist food, which enables me to administer the sleeping drugs he needs to keep him calm and complicit. And I do have another contact who can probably get me some marijuana.

  ‘I said I’d get you whatever you want. So I will. You need some new clothes too. Tell me what you’d like. You can’t stay in Greg’s old trousers. And I haven’t been able to wash the things I took off you yesterday.’

  ‘Could do with some warmer stuff,’ he mutters.

  ‘I need to know your size then,’ I say. ‘Let me look.’

  His eyes go hard, and for quite a few seconds I’m afraid he’s going to spit again. I step back in self-defence, but then he capitulates, and gives a little nod.

  I step towards him, gently, and he lets me pull out the collar of his T-shirt to look at the label. I ask him to roll over as far as he is able to in the bonds, so I can lift his hair to get a better look. I notice the fine hair that runs down the valley of his neck to the top of his spine. I turn down the top of Greg’s trousers, which are far too loose round the waist for him, to look at the label on his boxers. Here, his back narrows, the skin like sand that has never been walked on, a gentle sheen of golden down where it disappears into the waistband of his shorts. Is this all I need? To experience the transient stage his body is at, to have it near me, to sense it with my eyes, my nose. I appreciate this best when he’s asleep, when I can indulge myself and float back in time. But even that is not enough. It’s something else, something that nags at me so I cannot let him go until I can capture it for once and for all.

  ‘Got it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The size.’

  ‘OK. Yes. Sure. So I’ll get you jeans, some T-shirts, boxers and a hoodie. Maybe a body warmer and some thick socks.’

  ‘I won’t need all that.’

  ‘I think you might.’

  ‘Not if I’m leaving soon, like you said.’

  ‘Better to be on the safe side though,’ I say. ‘Now is there anything else?’

  ‘There’s no music in here,’ he says. ‘All I can hear is the river.’

  ‘I thought you liked the sound of the river? I remember you saying, you know, that first night we spent together, how it’s a kind of urban music. You haven’t stopped hearing it, have you? Because it can happen, when you get used to something. You lose your sensitivity to it.’

  He looks at me as if he doesn’t understand what the hell I’m on about.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, sitting down on the end of the bed. ‘When the tide’s out, you can hear the water on the shingle. There’s a constant background rhythm. But when it’s in, the sounds can catch you off-guard. Haven’t you heard the pontoon? It sounds like a child crying when it moves. And you get those sudden surges in the waves, when a boat goes by. The ebb and flow, if you tune in, is rhythmic, like life. Reminds us that nothing lasts. Yet everything that goes away comes back in some form or another.’

  ‘All I know is I need music.’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry.’ I see he isn’t in the mood for one of our deeper conversations. ‘I was trying to convince you, but of course. Music is essential to you, Jez. I do understand that. I’ll sort it. Don’t worry.’

  ‘And I want to speak to them. Mum and Alicia. Because they have no idea where I am. Do they? They’ll be worried sick by now. I hate to think of what they must be going through.’

  I walk to the tiny window, push it open further. A blast of cold, river-scented air comes in, lifts the cobwebs so they catch the light and gleam.

  ‘Jez, I don’t know what to do! You can’t speak to them yet. And I can’t let you out of here until Greg goes. I can’t make him leave, but neither can I bear for him to stay. I feel trapped.’

  ‘You? Trapped?’ He laughs, an ironic, bitter laugh. I turn and look at him. The light that comes in through the open window catches him and I see now that he looks nothing like he did that first day. His face is drawn and pale, and there are spots appearing around his mouth. His beauty’s fading in this dreadful place.

  Is the solution, after all, to let him go? I could simply slash off the tape, walk out, leave the garage door open, let him make his way home. It isn’t even far to Helen’s house. He could be back there in ten minutes. I imagine the looks on their faces, Maria and Mick and Helen. It would be doing Helen a favour. The dynamics have changed in their household, and I hold the key to restoring them. But would they be restored? This thing I’ve set in motion by taking Jez into my life has taken on a momentum of its own. There are certain things that can’t be altered. I suspect that Mick’s loss of respect for Helen is irreversible, that Helen’s drinking will continue to escalate. That the simmering passion, if that’s what it is, between Mick and Maria will run its course. I can’t save them. And where would it leave me? Back to square one, with Greg. Jez would grow into some grotesque adult. His beauty, this perfect state between boy and man would pass, until it vanished altogether. It would be as if the simple twist of fate that brought Jez into my life never happened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Saturday

  Sonia

  I leave the garage. I’m afraid if I stay there I’ll cry. With fury, indignation and hurt at Greg, and at the impossibility of the situation for Jez. Instead of going straight home, I go down the steps to the beach. The tide’s out. I walk along, wanting to feel the cold air on my face, breathe the river’s mingled scents.

  The shore is clean these days compared to how it was when Seb and I played here. Yes, there’s a car tyre washed up on the shore, a length of pipe, the usual discarded bits of electricals, kitchen appliances. Polystyrene burger containers. Even a pumpkin, hollowed, rolling on the shore, a relic of Hallowe’en, goodness knows how it’s survived this long. But they’re washed clean from the water and beneath them is sand, stones whitened, pieces of smoothed glass and china. The mud, the oil, the dense chemical stew that Seb and I played in is no more. I sit down on a concrete slab. Behind me the wall is coated up to the tideline in green river weed and above it soar the chimneys of the power station, towering over the great crumbling chalky-white walls. To the right of the power station is the little old hospital, now almshouses, with its black and gold clock on its pretty tower, its delicate crenellated eaves, two incongruous buildings juxtaposed. This is one of my favourite places to sit, the tall protective walls behind me, the river in front.

  I have to hug my coat around me, pull up the collar to keep off the vicious wind. I wonder if it might snow. I listen to the water lap the shore. There’s the gentle bell-like tinkle of china against stone, or metal on bone, as the waves nudge the debris on the shore.

  I stare at the river and suddenly I see us. The day we built the raft. The hot summer of that year had ended. It must have been early autumn. I can remember a mist coming off the river. An acrid reek drifted up from Dartford as if some toxic substance had leaked from a chemical plant. Early morning. Something had happened in the River House. There had been some row, shouting, threats. I’d stormed out of the house in tears. I had the same ache in my chest I have now, as if I were holding in months of misery and hurt. Then I spotted Seb down here on the shore and felt things lift. I joined him at the water’s edge. He was staring into the murk.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Something floated on the tide towards us, wood, part of a fish box by the looks of it.

  ‘Grab it, Sonia.’

  I waded obediently
through the mud into the water, not heeding the cold – something I challenged myself to do when I was with Seb, so he couldn’t accuse me of being feeble. I hauled the fish box towards the shore.

  ‘Ideal raft material!’ Seb said. ‘Then we can get away and hide from everyone. No one can stop us, Sonia. We’ll disappear like the swans. We’ll vanish!’

  I looked at him and smiled. It was a crazy idea but I loved Seb for it. He always believed we could achieve the impossible.

  ‘Brill. This is perfect as a start. When it’s built, we can go across to the Isle of Dogs. Make our escape route from there.’

  ‘Will it be safe?’

  ‘It’ll be fine. We need an oar though. And some kind of barrier so we don’t tip out. And some buoyancy aids. And a painter. Fetch that car tyre, we can use it to make a kind of seat thing.’

  I knew about buoyancy. It’s something that’s second nature to you when you live by water. I’d learnt about it in the various rowing boats and motor launches I’d travelled in. I collected bits of polystyrene, of which there were plenty in those days, scattered along the tideline, and filled plastic bags with them. Meanwhile Seb collected bits from the shore, oil drums and bits of beer barrel and driftwood and ropes. It took us most of the day to build the raft, wading in and out of the water to test it, starting again, redesigning it until it was ready to take across the river. We spent hours tying ragged bits of discarded fishing net between two long ropes to make a ladder.

  ‘We can use it to scale the wall on the other side,’ Seb said. ‘We’ll have to wait for the tide, though, it’ll be useless if it won’t reach the top of the wall.’

  It was getting dark by the time the water was high enough to launch the raft.

  The wind had got up, sending waves hurtling upriver. Yellow lights winked on along the banks, both north and south. In the middle of the river too, they flickered on, on the moored ships, on the smaller river-buses that were making their last journeys of the day along the now bronze waterway.

  I wondered what we’d do if a ship came up the river and we were unable to get out of its way but Seb said we’d be alright so I kept my mouth shut. If the worst comes to the worst, I thought, we can just dive off and swim for it. As usual, it was more important to maintain Seb’s respect than to ensure my own safety.