Tideline

by Penny Hancock

  Me, she thought.

  The police interrogation yesterday had been awful. They’d asked her to confirm again where she’d been on Friday morning and she’d been forced to tell them she was at the Turkish baths. It was obvious that they didn’t believe her. May even have checked up on her by now. But rather than pursuing this, they had asked her about the course Jez had applied to. How badly had she wanted Barney to get a place? Did he have any other prospects? Was she angry that Jez had jeopardized her son’s chances? She had expressed a feeling of inferiority towards her sister and her nephew – did this ever make her think of doing anything to harm him?

  Helen knew they’d let her go. They had no evidence of course, never would. But it was time for her to take stock. Stop letting childish feelings of jealousy towards her sister, insecurity towards Mick enter into her head. Feelings that were putting her in a very unpleasant, even dangerous light.

  She never used to suffer from such a profound lack of self-confidence, such violent unpredictable avalanches of self-doubt. This week she’d wondered who Mick was, whether she knew him at all. Now she wondered whether she knew herself. This whole situation was about Jez. Her nephew. She must not let her own stuff cloud the fact he might be in serious danger.

  A woman walked past with a new baby in a sling and, seeing its tiny nose pressed against the woman’s coat, Helen remembered suddenly and with dreadful clarity the first time she’d ever seen Jez. Maria was ecstatic, the dark-haired baby at her breast making tiny smacking sounds with his lips. Helen had gone to visit her sister the day Jez was born, at home in that lovely flat they’d had at the top of Crooms Hill. The sisters had sat side by side on the bed, propped up on pillows, their knees bent up. They were close at that time, as if once Maria had become pregnant the gulf that had existed between them had closed for a while. There was a fabulous view of the river from that room, a silver ribbon in the distance, weaving its way through the industrial docks towards the sea.

  When Maria had finished breastfeeding she’d slipped the tiny boy over to Helen. Helen had rested him on the slope of her thighs, facing her, his tiny limbs folded and pudgy, and he’d fixed her with those mesmerizing dark eyes, and the overwhelming love she felt was matched only by what she already felt for her own sons. It had brought tears to her eyes. She had held lots of newborn babies by then, most of her friends were parents now, but there was something different about a blood-link, you couldn’t deny it. Jez was her baby nephew, her sister’s own son, and she loved him. She still loved him. Of course she did. It was impossible to imagine that he had come to any real harm.

  She left the café, still thinking, and walked between the wrought-iron gates of the park. As she passed the sign saying, ‘No itinerant ice-cream sales’ she could hear Theo read it aloud to Jez, as if they were right there with her now. ‘What’s “itinerant”?’ Jez had asked.

  ‘Exactly!’ Theo had said. ‘Why use a word like that?’

  They’d run along the path beside her, passing a stone as if it were a football and cracking jokes about the long words you could use on signs directed at people who couldn’t be expected to understand them.

  ‘People like me,’ said Jez, who was dyslexic.

  ‘Yeah,’ Barney said. ‘For you, the sign’d say, “No inebriated musicians!” and you’d just carry on being wasted and strumming your geeetar!’

  There was never any animosity between her sons and Jez. They all seemed to exist in a benign world of male camaraderie that hadn’t changed much since they were little, making fun of each other. Scrambling up things. Going to see bands.

  She had just reached the foot of the hill when her mobile went. It was Alicia.

  ‘I need to talk to you. I’ve found a clue.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Outside the university. On the river path. Can you come here? Then I can show you where I found it.’

  Helen hesitated. She wanted to go home, felt in need of a bath and a drink. But this might be an opportunity to do something constructive.

  ‘I’m in the park. I’ll come to you. Wait there.’

  Helen found Alicia on a bench staring out over the river. The tide was up and the water lapped at the wall only a few feet below. It was beginning to get dark and lights were coming on, yellow ones along the path and spangles of red, white and blue on the river and the opposite bank. Alicia looked up at Helen and held out a tiny, ragged piece of cardboard in the palm of her hand.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Helen, sitting down on the bench beside her, noticing how cold the seat was.

  ‘It’s a roach,’ Alicia said. ‘Jez’s. I found it on the path along there,’ she gestured to her right. ‘Just outside the power station.’

  Helen glanced in the direction Alicia pointed. The river was black towards the east, bottomless, rather threatening in the gathering dusk. The other way, towards the city, it still reflected the remains of a silvery sunset.

  ‘What makes you think it might be Jez’s?’

  ‘It’s made of a piece of ticket from a gig we went to. I know it. I recognize it. We rolled spliffs the night before he disappeared. Never smoked them because you came in.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, well, we thought you wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘And you found it down there?’

  ‘Yes. He left your house on Friday to come and see me in the foot tunnel. This is the way he’d of come. Down the hill, past the Cutty Sark pub, and then along the path. The entrance to the foot tunnel is just over there. ’ She nodded to her left. ‘I decided to do a search myself. No one else is looking properly.’

  Helen doubted the roach was Jez’s. She suspected Alicia needed to believe she was on to something, that the roach gave her hope. She wished she didn’t have to play along with what was almost certainly a red herring, but at the same time you can’t ignore anything, that’s what the police had said.

  ‘So you found it near Sonia’s?’

  ‘Sonia?’

  ‘She’s my friend. The one Jez was going to borrow music from. Her house is that way, but this side of the power station. He might have been on his way to hers when he dropped it.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Well let’s walk back that way now and you can show me exactly where you found it.’

  They stood up and hurried along the river path away from the light. Helen shivered at the sound of the water as it sucked and slurped at the wall. Dark shadows cast by the bars of the iron railings, and their own misshapen forms, loomed in front of them, grew, then vanished each time they passed through the glow of the lamps. They went by the pub, then along the alley. Sonia’s house was in darkness and the light outside wasn’t working. The path was all in shadow and eerily quiet and remote-seeming, in contrast to the floodlit O2 over on the bend of the river, and the white lights of Canary Wharf on the other side. They continued along the footpath to the power station, enormous and lowering above them. Underneath the coaling pier, Alicia stopped.

  ‘Here,’ she said, pointing at the ground by the wall. ‘This is where I found it.’

  The wind lifted something large in the black structure above them that clanked and banged and Helen felt a strange uneasiness sweep through her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said, and not wanting to alarm Alicia she added, ‘at least we know he got this far. As soon as we’ve found somewhere warm to sit, we’ll discuss what we’re going to do.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sunday

  Sonia

  It’s almost dark when I get back from my mother’s. Lights blink on along the river.

  I unload the wheelchair and push it to the garage, unlock the inner doors, shove the chair in. Jez is lying on his back still, his arms tied above his head. He is sweaty and pale.

  ‘Jez, we’re going back to the music room where I can look after you properly,’ I tell him. He gazes at me. There is no reaction. His face is gaunt and his lips look drained and blue. He mutters something incoherent, then closes
his eyes.

  ‘You’re unwell,’ I say. ‘We need to get you somewhere comfortable. Just slip into the wheelchair so I can push you home.’

  I slice the bonds at his arms and legs with the kitchen scissors I’ve brought in my pocket, and swing his legs off the bed so he’s forced into a sitting position. I support his back from behind. Somehow between us we manage to get him into the chair. I put Greg’s anorak back over him, making sure the hood covers his head, then wrap him in blankets. As a precaution against him making a run for it, even though I’m almost certain he’s too weak, I strap his hands and feet together again with the tape. I want to gag him, just in case someone stops and tries to talk to him, but I’m afraid that if I muffle his mouth he won’t be able to breathe at all. Already he is coughing and wheezing. Instead, I cover his face, pulling the hood down low and wrapping the scarf loosely over his nose. Only his eyes are visible once I’ve finished. I’m desperate to get him home. To nurse him back to health.

  I squat by the garage doors, push them open them a crack to see out, and survey the part of the alley that’s within my view.

  A gaggle of drinkers comes past, fooling about, pushing one another and laughing loudly. I watch as the girls teeter about on heels and lurch into the boys who sing and jeer and stagger from one side to another. They disappear up the street, their voices gradually fading away. More footsteps, the soft voices of two women talking. I squint through the crack in the door and gasp. One of the women looks like Helen. Is Helen. What’s she doing down here? She’s with someone slim whose face I can’t discern as she’s on Helen’s other side. I pull the door closed, and squat behind it, trying to control my breathing. After several minutes, I open the door a crack again.

  The alley’s in darkness now, only slices of it lit up by the street lamps. There are more footsteps coming from the direction of the pub. Two police officers, striding along, their fluorescent jackets glowing bright yellow in the dark, chatting together as they go. I withdraw into the garage.

  I pull the inner door shut, lock it, lean against it, my heart going so fast I’m afraid it’ll burst. I look at Jez. His head is nodding against his chest, he’s half asleep. I feel his forehead under the hood. Yes, he still has a temperature. His breath is laboured, wheezy. He needs an inhaler. I have to get him to the warmth and comfort of the River House. I can’t leave it much longer.

  At last the alley quietens down. There’s just the usual clank of the sheet of metal up on the coaling station and the smack of waves against the wall, some delayed wake from a passing boat has set them rolling across the river. I push open the doors, wheel Jez into the alley and back towards the door in the wall.

  I spend the whole night in a chair, beside Jez, holding his hand in the music room. He struggles for breath. Some of his coughing fits seem so gruelling it’s as if he doesn’t have the strength to push the air out of his lungs. Several times I’m afraid I will have to phone an ambulance. His breath is empty, it feels as if it is neither entering not leaving his lungs as it should. I rummage through the pockets in his leather jacket and the hoodie he wore when he arrived and find an inhaler in one of his pockets. I hold it to his mouth and pump it. This eases things a little but he remains virtually unconscious.

  At around four o’clock, when he still shows no signs of improvement, I realize I have to formulate a plan if I am to keep Jez safe. In this case, now, safe equals alive. I think it through step by step, trying not to let my feelings of loss or regret take hold. Jez must live.

  What I’ll do is take him to a hospital before first light. I can get him to my car in my mother’s wheelchair and I’ll drive to St Thomas’, or even as far as Hampstead and the Royal Free. I cannot take him to the local hospital, it will be too risky. I might be recognized and stopped. And I need time to get away before the family turn up. I’ll sedate him before we go, no longer a problem now I have Greg’s prescription. And I’ll wrap him up warm. I’ll leave him in the hospital foyer with a note asking that they look after him, and with contact details for Helen.

  Then I must disappear out of his life. Not only his life. I shall have to take myself away from Kit too, so that she will not have to endure the indignity of her mother’s crime. For I know this is how what I’ve done will be interpreted. And I must take myself away from Greg, who will want to know why and how, and to harangue and blame me for not going to the doctor about my ‘depression’. I will have to take myself away then from the River House.

  My eyes fill with tears as I think of how I must let everything go. Kit, and the River House, and Jez at his most exquisite. I squeeze his hand and let my tears fall onto his upturned wrist.

  Later, I will realize that fatigue made me see things in a distorted light. That the idea of taking Jez to hospital was neither necessary nor rational. But now, as the high windows begin to lighten almost imperceptibly in the dawn, I am convinced this is the end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Monday

  Sonia

  When I wake up later that morning, having fallen asleep at last in the chair, the sun fills the music room with a honeyed light. I can hear Jez’s breath flowing more freely. He is still in a deep sleep, but there is a little more colour in his cheeks. For the moment anyway he seems stable. I go downstairs.

  At ten o’clock Simon arrives for his voice-coaching session. He takes my hand in his and presses a small cling film-wrapped shape into my palm.

  ‘Your mother’s dope, darling. Medicinal marijuana, just as you ordered.’

  I kiss the air next to his cheek. ‘My dear, middle-aged drug dealer.’

  ‘No problem, Sons. You can knock the price off my bill.’

  It’s Monday. I’ve had to reinstate my voice-training sessions. I cannot remain out of circulation for too long or people will want to know why.

  ‘We’re going to conduct the session downstairs today,’ I tell him, ‘in the kitchen.’

  ‘I thought you preferred having me in the music room.’

  ‘We’re having some work done up there. The floorboards are up and it isn’t safe.’ It was having the builders on Saturday, putting up the window bars that gave me this idea.

  ‘If you need the loo, use the one down here. I’ll make you some coffee. Sit down.’

  ‘Are you completely better now, sweetie? We were all afraid you’d got swine flu! You look a little tired I must say. But you’re more glorious than ever. You’ve lost weight!’

  ‘A little, maybe.’

  ‘Not that you needed to, of course. But flu can streamline our jawlines which is never a bad thing in midlife’.

  ‘Simon!’

  ‘At my age you have to work at your looks. You can no longer take them for granted.’ Simon objects to time passing as if it were a personal affront. ‘I’m fifty-five, Sonia! It’s a travesty! How can I, Simon Swavesy, be fifty-five? Do I look it? Is it written all over my face?’

  ‘You look no different to the last time I saw you.’

  ‘But my jowls! And I’m sure I’m developing a double chin.’

  ‘Well, our voice exercises will help with all that,’ I say, pouring his coffee. ‘We must get to work.’

  The sun comes in through the kitchen window lighting the ledge inside, lending the kitchen a radiance it rarely displays. Little areas are thrown into relief, the mugs hanging along the shelf of the dresser, the oranges in the fruit bowl. I look at the row of marmalade jars glowing amber in the sunlight. I feel slightly removed from everything, perhaps due to having been awake most of the night.

  ‘How’s business then?’ Simon asks. ‘Not too effected by the economic crisis? One good thing, people always need escapism. Oh, I meant to ask, were you well enough to see Tosca?’

  ‘I was – just. And I loved it. You were amazing, Simon, as always.’

  There’s something exquisite about the precariousness of my secret, this double life. I never foresaw that this might be a consequence of Jez’s being here. Each time I get away with something I feel myself rise
upwards on a high that is incomparable with anything I’ve experienced since childhood.

  There’s a new smell in the breeze blowing in from the river. A freshness after the lowering, cloud-trapped chemical smell of winter.

  ‘What a sublime day!’ Simon says, leaning on the windowsill and gazing out over the water. The surface looks almost solid in this light, like satin or polished metal. ‘Do you think spring’s arrived at last?’

  The day does indeed feel sublime. There’s a kind of lifting in my heart as if it were a baby spider in its silken parachute sailing up into the spring sky over the river.

  I have Jez. He is recovering, thanks to me. I feel like I did as a child on the first day of the summer holidays when I awoke and knew the horrors of school lay so far away I did not have to think about them. That the days within sight were long and free.

  When Kit was a child of perhaps six or seven, she said she heard a bat squeal. We told her she was mistaken, that the human ear cannot detect such a sound. Now I’m discovering levels of feeling which were too extreme to be accessible to me before. Peaks of emotion that, like a bat’s cry, I had not thought a human was capable of detecting.

  After Simon leaves at eleven o’clock I go up to see Jez.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re OK, Jez. You’re back in the music room.’

  Even he must feel this lifting, this lightening of the atmosphere, the way the sun’s rays come through his high windows warming the covers on his bed.

  ‘What day is it? What time?’