by Emlyn Rees
Something inside the box caught Tony’s eye and he rummaged through it, before pulling out what looked like a giant yellow claw. ‘Are these –’
‘Bananas,’ the man confirmed. ‘Sent over from Jamaica as part of the relief effort.’
‘I’ve never seen them like this before,’ Tony said. ‘Only black. You know, the way they are when they’ve been preserved.’
‘Aye, well, that’s what they look like when they’re fresh.’
The man smiled at him and Tony smiled back. Fresh, he thought. A new beginning. The world was changing. He could feel it all around.
‘Tony!’ it was Rachel’s voice.
He turned to see her walking slowly towards him from the high street. Unlike Tony, who still had some clothes at his mother’s house, Rachel was dressed in donated too-big black leather shoes, too-long striped woollen leggings and a too-warm woollen dress.
Beneath the dress, her ribs were still bandaged tight to encourage them to heal. She was meant to be in bed, but had insisted on coming into town with him. To see her friend Pearl, she’d said. To check that she was OK.
Thanking the man behind the counter, Tony picked up the box and walked across the uneven ground towards Rachel.
‘Look!’ she said as she reached him. Her eyes were on fire, her shoes caked in mud. She held out her hands to show him what she’d found. ‘It’s Mum’s,’ she said.
He knew exactly what it was: the plain silver crucifix that Mrs Vale had dropped on the floor of Bill’s room on the night of the flood. He was staggered to see it in Rachel’s hands, and how she’d come by it, he had no idea.
‘You said you weren’t going to look.’ At the house, he meant. She’d said it the morning after the flood, as the waters had still been receding and they’d stared at the rank drift of mud where Vale Supplies and the ironmongery had once stood. Nothing had remained of the home in which Rachel and Bill had grown up.
‘I couldn’t help myself,’ she said. ‘I had to say goodbye. Not like at the service yesterday. But there, where it happened. And then I saw it, hanging from the side of the bus stop . . . like she’d left it there for me . . .’ He expected her to start crying, but she smiled at him instead. ‘I’m so glad I’ve got it to remember her by.’ She pushed it into his hands. ‘Will you look after it for me? I broke the chain when I pulled it free and this dress hasn’t got any pockets.’
He lowered the cardboard box on to the ground. The crucifix seemed to burn into his skin as he took it from her.
‘We should get going,’ he said, slipping it into his trouser pocket and picking up the box again.
But Rachel didn’t move. ‘Let’s not go straight back,’ she said.
‘But there’s nowhere else to go.’
‘Let’s pretend,’ she said, reaching up to touch his bruised face. An insane hopefulness filled her eyes. ‘Just for a while, let’s pretend that everything’s normal.’
‘How?’
Because it was impossible, wasn’t it? To be normal. Because, after all the destruction, now the work of rebuilding had begun. Roadblocks had been positioned on the roads into the town, keeping unwanted visitors out. A mains electricity cable had been fired across the valley using a rocket to restore power. Rickety buildings were being demolished and torn down with steel cables by bulldozers. Giant Scammel lorries crawled up the roads around Summerglade Hill, bearing the debris away. Council workers had set about mending the smashed and exposed sewerage pipes. The stink of the disinfectant sprayed by firemen as a precaution against disease drifted in the breeze across the town.
‘We’ll walk to the beach,’ Rachel said, ‘where all we can hear is the waves.’ She stared at him, determined. ‘We’ll walk there and we’ll turn our backs to the town until we can’t see it any more.’
‘All right,’ he agreed, willing to try anything that might help her wash away the pain.
She slipped her arm into his and they set out together in silence towards the east side of town. The harbour was strewn with boulders and its walls had crumbled like those of a sandcastle into the sea. Soldiers were working frantically while the tide was still out, bulldozing rubble and ploughing out mud and sand, in an effort to shore up the harbour’s defences against the sea.
The river channel which had once bisected the town was now being excavated, cleared and widened, so that nothing like this could ever happen again. The stones which had made up both South Bridge and Harbour Bridge had either been swept out into the estuary, or swallowed by mud. In their places, two shining new Bailey bridges stood, erected by the Royal Engineers who’d been sent to help rebuild the town. On the green metal bridge which had taken Harbour Bridge’s place, and towards which Tony and Rachel now walked, a Union Jack flag had been set into a steel oil drum, and now fluttered in the breeze.
Tony’s heart went out to Rachel in her despair. But a different emotion entirely had hold of him. Lucky, that’s how he felt. Lucky to have survived. Lucky that his family – his mother and Don and the twins – had survived. Lucky that his new family – Rachel and the baby – had, too. Lucky that they weren’t dead, not like so many of those who Tony had grown up with and around.
Wilfred Lee, who Tony had last seen when he’d spoken to him through the letter box, had died. His body had been found half buried in a mudbank the following morning. His house was still standing and Tony could only think that he’d stayed true to his word and attempted to cross the high street to help save Mrs Vale. Only to have then been swept away.
Tony’s oldest friend, Pete Booth, had also been killed, along with his father and mother, as the second – and now universally acknowledged, larger – wall of water had ploughed through the centre of the town. His tiny terraced house had been torn to pieces. Pete’s body was one of those missing. His parents had been found among the rubble of their home.
Tony still held out hope that Pete would somehow show up alive.
But it had been Emily’s death which had hit Tony hardest of all. According to Bill’s friend Richard Horner, it had been Bill who’d discovered her body, dishevelled and bruised, washed up on the seashore near where the Bathers’ Pavilion had once looked out across the waves. No one knew what he’d been doing down there to begin with, but he’d carried her body all the way to the churchyard on his own.
It had been Emily who Tony had thought of at the cemetery as the lone piper had played.
Tony glanced up what was left of the high street as they walked past its end. It was no longer straight, but warped and smashed. At the far end, the old oak tree stood firm, its leaves shimmering now in the warm summer breeze.
Lucky to have survived . . . by Christ, he’d been that.
Unlike Mrs Vale, whose body had been one of the first to be found, broken and twisted in the branches of a sycamore tree by the quayside. The same police launch which had rescued Tony had spent twenty minutes trying to coax her down, before they’d realised that she was already dead.
Tony pictured the crucifix falling once more to the floor in Bill’s bedroom, and remembered how Mrs Vale had screamed at him to get out.
As Mrs Vale had sunk beneath the water at the bottom of the stairs and the thunder outside had gathered and rolled towards him, Tony had snapped himself out of his trance and leapt to his feet.
No time to think. No time to think about what he’d done.
That’s when the first wave of water had hit the house. He’d watched from the landing as Bill’s room had literally been torn from the side of the building. A wave rushed in at him, hurling him back against the wall. The lamp shimmered and died. But already Tony had seen the ladder, leading up to Rachel’s room . . .
He scrambled up through the onslaught of spray and into the attic, slamming the trapdoor down behind him. Darkness all around. He fumbled across the groaning floorboards. Rafters cracked beneath him. Waves roared outside.
All he could think of was what Bill had said about the foundations. The house was going to collapse beneath him. He could feel it
breaking up. Any second now and it would be gone.
A flash of lightning and there, he saw it – a block of white leapt out of the darkness – the skylight leading on to the roof.
In the same instant, he remembered the oak tree he’d climbed that night back in June. Would it still be there? Would it have stood its ground as the river had tried to wrench it free?
It was the only chance he had.
As he opened the skylight, a great hissing sound filled his ears. Water – as high as the second floor – raged and foamed below. But the oak had held firm. As the roof creaked below him, Tony hauled himself up into the branches – first two, then three feet higher – until he could climb no more.
He tore his leather belt from round his waist and lashed his arm to the strongest branch he could find.
He thought it was over. The river had begun to drop. But then the noise of thunder rolling towards him down the valley picked up again. He thought of Rachel, alone in the van. He prayed she was beyond the river’s reach. Take me, he thought. Take me, but keep her safe.
As the thunder rose, he stared down through the furiously quivering mesh of branches and into the swathing, swirling black mass of water. It was like the end of the world, like the mouth of hell, devouring everything before it, sucking down everything in its path. A black soup of black souls. And his was darkened too, now, wasn’t it? He was going to die, damned and alone.
He bit down the whimpers he wanted to release and raise like a howl into the wind. He’d killed her. He hadn’t wanted to – hadn’t meant to – but he had. It was an accident, a voice inside him cried. But the result was the same. He’d killed Rachel’s mother, just as surely as his brother had killed her father.
He’d lose her. He knew he’d lose Rachel if he told her the truth.
The thunder was upon him now and the second great wave hit him like a punch to the back of the head. The tree screamed out, buckled under the strain. Then flexed back, dragging Tony upwards with it as it reared up out of the water.
Sheet lightning flashed again. The house swayed below. For an instant, Tony thought it would rock back on to its foundations and hold. But then it was falling away, vanishing into the raging torrent below him.
Vanishing, vanished: the house was gone, Mrs Vale’s body with it. Everything that had happened had been erased.
Tony was seized by the idea: no one need ever know what had gone on. He’d tell Rachel and Bill that he hadn’t got there in time. He’d claim he’d never set foot in the house.
Why would Rachel ever leave him if he’d done nothing wrong?
The tree cried out again, as another wave slammed into it. None of his scheming mattered. He’d be dead by morning for sure. And if this was the end of the world, then he’d see his brother in hell. He hadn’t even said goodbye to Rachel . . . Rachel . . . Let her be the last image in his head.
‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ Rachel now said. ‘Tell me. Tell me what it is.’
Guilt. That’s what it was. That’s what she was reading in his eyes now as they stopped and he turned to face her. It had kicked in the instant he’d lied to her and Bill about what had happened. And Bill had seen through him, hadn’t he? And since then it had only got worse. He wasn’t afraid he’d get caught. He wouldn’t.
But he didn’t want to lie to Rachel. Trust her. That’s what he should do. If he couldn’t do that, then what was the point in any of this? What good was love if it was based on lies?
They were standing on the east side of town, at the start of the rocky beach. Cars littered the foreshore like tin cans washed up by the tide, just some of the many which had been reported lost. Out to sea, a helicopter flew low over the waves.
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’ He sat down on a wide, flat rock. It was warm from the sun and smooth as steel, polished by the sea.
‘What?’ She sat down beside him.
Putting the box of supplies to one side, he took the necklace from this pocket. He wanted everything out in the open. The sooner the better, for them both. Trust her, he told himself again. Believe in her. Believe that she’ll forgive you.
‘It’s about your mother. It’s about the way she died. About what happened between me and her.’
Rachel’s face sank into uncertainty. ‘What do you mean, between you? You said you didn’t get to her in time.’
Tears filled his eyes, the same tears he’d been crying as he’d clung to the oak tree on the night of the flood and waited to die. That was the first time he remembered crying in his whole life, and this was the second. He began telling her the truth, about how he did make it inside the house after all, and about how Mrs Vale refused to come with him.
‘She screamed at me,’ he told her. ‘She screamed at me to leave. She screamed at me because of who I am, because she was scared . . .’
‘But you’re Tony,’ Rachel said, holding his shoulders now, looking deep into his eyes. ‘My Tony. You’d never do her any harm.’
It was there – in that sentence, in that faith Rachel had placed in him – that his own faith in her ability to forgive him suddenly died. You’d never do her any harm. That’s what Rachel believed. That he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t. Tell her the truth – that he’d fought with her mother, that he’d toppled her down the stairs – and that belief would be shattered. Then whose Tony would he be? Still hers? Or a different Tony, the one she’d used to think he was, the scumbag she’d used to cross the street to avoid? The one who could harm. The one who now had.
The truth? What good was the truth when it might only destroy them? Guilt, he decided there and then, he could live with. His fear of losing her was greater.
He started to lie again, the same as he’d done when the police launch had rescued him from the oak tree, the same as he’d done when he’d found Rachel and Bill up at the encampment.
He now invented a different ending to the real one. He softened the facts so that they’d be easier for Rachel to swallow.
‘Your mother was still in Bill’s room when the first wall of water came through,’ he said. ‘She was swept away with the side of the house.’
Rachel stared at him in astonishment. ‘But why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you lie?’
See: already his lie was taking on a life of its own. Already it was growing between them, like an evil seed which might one day rise up between them and force them apart.
‘Because I watched her die,’ he answered, making it up now as he went along, blending facts with lies, embellishing and improvising, until it all rang true. ‘I watched your mother die and I didn’t want you to know . . . I didn’t want you to know that the last thing she was thinking was how much she hated me . . . how she was prepared to die rather than trust me . . .’
‘But I love you. None of that would have made any difference. I knew she hated you. I told you what she said about the baby. What I should do with it. Because it was yours . . .’
Caught out already, his lie ran on. ‘I thought that if I told Bill how close I’d got, he’d only hate me more . . . for having terrified her in her last moments. And blame himself. For sending me to get her. Knowing that if it had been the other way round then she would have gone with him the moment he’d arrived. I thought that I could save him the guilt . . .’ he implored Rachel, willing her now to believe him. ‘And because she was already dead, I didn’t think it would matter what I said . . .’
‘But the truth always matters.’
‘I know. That’s why I’m telling you now.’
‘And if Bill had known before . . . he might not have left. If he’d known how hard you tried to save her.’ She was speaking faster, thinking aloud. ‘If he’d seen that it wasn’t your fault she died at all, but her own . . . Don’t you see that?’
Relief washed over him. She wasn’t going to leave him. She believed what he’d said. And if she believed it – she was right, why wouldn’t Bill? He cursed himself, wishing now that the story he’d just told Rachel wa
s the one he’d told Bill.
But how was he to know his original story of not reaching Mrs Vale in time to save her wouldn’t wash with Bill? And would have instead led Bill to conclude that it was Tony’s cowardice which had caused her death? Why would Tony have ever imagined that when the only act of cowardice Tony had ever committed in his life was just now when he’d failed to tell Rachel the truth?
She scrabbled to her feet. ‘I’ve got to tell him. He’s got to know.’
‘But how?’ Tony asked, standing, too. They hadn’t seen Bill since the argument. Richard Horner had come to see them two days afterwards to tell them that Bill had been staying with his family, but that now he’d gone. He wouldn’t be returning, Richard had said. There was nothing for him here any more. Bill had sworn as much.
‘He’ll come back,’ she said. Her eyes shone with optimism. ‘For Mum’s funeral . . . for –’
‘But what if he doesn’t?’ Tony asked. ‘What if he meant what he said to Richard?’
‘Then I’ll track him down.’ Again, that look of determination. ‘Somehow. Then . . . then I’ll write to him. I’ll tell him everything you’ve just told me. I’ll make him see sense . . .’
Tony looked past her at the bare patch of bulldozed ground near the new Harbour Bridge. Not a single brick of the Bathers’ Pavilion remained. All that had survived the great storm of 1933 had succumbed to that of the night of the fifteenth. Tony remembered the drawing of it which he’d seen in Bill’s room, in the moments before that had been swept away. Perhaps Bill was right, to have left. Perhaps there really was nothing for him here any more.
‘What about me?’ Tony asked. ‘Can you forgive me for lying to you?’
‘You’ve told me the truth now. How can I not?’
He wrapped his arms around her and stared over her shoulder at the devastated town. He’d miss them all, the people who’d died here. But, as with his brother Keith, in time he’d learn to live without them. He and Rachel were survivors. Nothing would ever change that. It was there in their natures, for ever now. Their future stretched before them, vast and unknowable. They’d run together towards it, he knew, holding hands, like children to the sea.
