The Flood

by Maggie Gee

  The little girl’s blouse was soaked with tears. She cried steadily, fluently, without words, like a tap welling up when the washer was gone. Milly held the child’s hot wet face to her own, and stroked her hair, and bore her sorrow.

  Yet twenty minutes later Gerda was in the water, the clear blue water with its minnows of sunlight, warm as happiness, swimming, swimming, and Davey, on the other side of the pool, cleaved powerfully, blindly through his programme, and Lorna stood on the side and watched them, wishing that she had learned to swim, wishing that she were young again, understanding and forgiving Gerda, and all the knots of passion and pain were dissolved in the moment, and floated away.

  But Zoe, on the pool-side, was not so happy. Too many things to fret about.

  She was worried about the war: not just the innate loathsomeness of it, the way the rich were attacking the poor, the lies that Mr Bliss was telling – but also the effect on her social life (too many evenings at boring meetings, too few evenings spent with Viola) and on her e-mail inbox, which was swamped in gloom: half a dozen rants per day, with giant attachments, too many to open, so she started to dread them, and once or twice, guiltily, deleted them unread. Zoe marched, she protested, she always had, but she didn’t enjoy it, or entirely believe in it. It was anger that motivated her, not hope. War was such a stupid waste of human time and effort. War kept her and Viola apart.

  Now Zoe was having to teach two different classes because Viola was late again. Why can’t she get a babysitter for that child and stay over with me? she thought, as so often. She quite liked Dwayne, but he complicated everything. If he weren’t there, anything might happen. Perhaps they would have a child together. She would make Viola pregnant, yes. Put a heavy child in that beautiful belly. She desired Viola fiercely, totally, missed and wanted her every night. Zoe had been pregnant when she was sixteen. She had run away from home, and had an abortion. She knew life owed her another baby. Why shouldn’t Viola give her one? They would be a family. For ever.

  But her mind began to move in familiar grooves as she got her baby class to float under water, their necks relaxed, their hair streaming out. Six little bodies suspended in a line, plump, prosperous, well-fed bodies; well-dressed mothers looked on from the side; private swimming classes weren’t cheap. Briefly, Zoe remembered the past, when she was a water baby herself, when her mother watched, and shrieked encouragement.

  It had put her off swimming for years and years. Maybe Gerda was lucky that her mother didn’t come. Zoe always suggested mothers keep praise for later. For half an hour, therefore, all the babies were hers. At first the underwater stuff seemed difficult, and the timid ones panicked and pushed their chins up, but in the end they had to trust the water; they would never swim well if they didn’t let go. ‘Well done,’ she called. ‘Now let’s try again.’

  They up-ended like ducks, adorable. ‘Very good, Farouk. Lovely, Sejal. Now let’s stand by the side and do breaststroke arms. No, standing, Daniel. And you’re not a windmill. Please copy Ben, he’s doing it just right. All of you listen: copy Ben.’

  Zoe left the babies for a moment and walked further up the pool to see how the Junior Dolphins were doing. There were some gifted little swimmers there. She would have merged the two classes, it would have been safer, but some of the older ones were really good. Gerda, for example, swam like a fish; she was already preparing for her lifesaver’s badge.

  ‘Staffing problems, these wretched floods,’ she apologized to Lorna as she padded past her. ‘I think you’re great,’ said Lorna, vaguely. ‘People of my age never learned to swim. Gerda’s been teaching the others to dive.’

  ‘What?’ said Zoe, anxious. ‘They can’t dive here,’ and she ran past Lorna to the middle of the pool, but there she found Gerda standing on the side, hair stuck to her scalp in a gleaming dark pelt, saying ‘One, two, three, jump! Go on, Dinesh. Copy me!’

  They plunged in the safe way, splashing, feet first. Relieved, Zoe smiled at them. ‘Well done, kids. Thank you, Gerda. I did need another teacher.’

  ‘I always teach when the teacher’s not there,’ said Gerda, pulling herself up from the water, beaming, beaming, wanting to give pleasure. ‘At school I read them fairy-tales.’

  ‘Because you’re sensible,’ said Zoe.

  Now they were all clustering round her, but Gerda was pulling at her hand, and her wide blue eyes weren’t happy any more. ‘I’m not sensible,’ she said. ‘Everyone says I’m sensible. I don’t want to be sensible. I want to be a baby.’

  Zoe laughed and took it lightly. ‘You’re a water baby,’ she said. There was something needy about that child, but she couldn’t deal with it today. ‘Now back into the water, Dolphins! Three lengths of freestyle. I’m watching you! Ready, steady, go!’

  There was hope, this morning, even in the Towers, where everyone lived who could do no better; the old, the mad, the poor, newcomers, and people like Faith, who cleaned the city. And rats, and mice, and bright mats of microbes. They liked the floods, and it was warming up, though to human beings, April still felt chilly. It didn’t matter; in the sun, people hoped. Hope was all they needed to go on living.

  Delorice and Viola were drinking coffee and staring down out of Viola’s fifteenth-floor window, their ears cocked for the sound of engines. The two young women, one office-sharp in skyscraper pin-stripes and high waxed hair, the other cupped by a pale soft tracksuit clinging like peach-down to waist and breasts, sat waiting, princesses in chaos, at the breakfast bar of the ugly room. The radio was on.

  ‘Did you hear him?’ asked Viola, derisive. ‘He goes, “We’re going to do whatever it takes to get our people to the Gala.” So who is this “our people” they’re goin’ on about? Where are these fancy river-buses? I can’t even go to work on time, you get me, never mind some fancy Gala.’

  ‘I couldn’t care if I’m late to work,’ said Delorice. ‘I’ve started to think my job is rubbish. But I have got a meeting after lunch. And I do have to get to the Gala tonight.’

  A look from Viola, half-glad, half-envious. She switched off the radio, trying not to get vexed. Delorice was always doing better than her –

  What if she did? She was family. Family mattered, to the Edwardses.

  There were only eighteen months between the two sisters. Viola, the elder, had always been the boss. They had gone to the same comprehensive school; shared lipstick, tights, shoe-sizes, been mistaken for each other any number of times, though Delorice was taller, and lighter-skinned – which Viola sometimes thought, in cynical moments, might be why she’d ended up doing better.

  Viola’s high-concept exercise machines shone out against damp, peeling walls. She noticed the stains more when she had company. How often had Viola asked the council to fix it? But nothing ever got done around here. Viola had the sense it was somehow her fault, the hopeless transport, the stains on the wall. Was her little sister judging her?

  Viola remembered the end of the world.

  ‘Delorice,’ said Viola. ‘It’s not that I believe it. Not that I’m worried, or anything. But I saw all that stuff at the weekend in the papers, about this programme Davey’s making. Saying that the world’s going to end tomorrow. I mean, it is bullshit, isn’t it?’

  ‘Davey is not a bullshitter,’ said Delorice. ‘But most of those programmes aren’t his idea. He doesn’t seem bothered himself, Viola.’

  ‘It frightens the kids though, dunnit?’ said Viola. ‘Dwayne was really scared, when he read that.’

  ‘Don’t stress, Viola,’ Delorice said, with one of her high-cheek-boned, half-moon smiles. ‘You know kids. They enjoy being worried.’ (But under the smile, she worried too: could she really trust Davey, however much she loved him? The stupid white powder, like frost, like snow.)

  ‘I think it’s, like, irresponsible,’ Viola said, suddenly vehement. Viola was the responsible one. She had taken in Elroy’s boy Dwayne, now eleven, when his mother died in the same year as Winston … It was down to Viola to hold the family together th
rough all that horror and mess and grief. Everyone had to be looked after. Whereas Delorice couldn’t even care for her own daughter.

  ‘Do you mind if I read?’ Delorice asked. She had something in her bag to read for Headstone, a vast new manuscript called Living in Time by someone whose name was completely unfamiliar, H. I. Segall. At first she had thought it wasn’t a good sign that Headstone were giving her stuff from the slush pile, then she saw it came with a passionate recommendation from Mohammed Habib, their new editor, and was to be discussed at today’s meeting, as a possible non-fiction lead for next spring. The note asked her to read a specimen chapter. She had started on one called ‘The Unending Moment’.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Viola. ‘You was always reading.’

  It was true, and Viola had never minded, but a new self-consciousness had come upon them. At school, where it wasn’t cool to be a boffin, Delorice had read novels under the desk. Now she read for a moment, then stopped. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ she said, looking out of the window at the blank bright water. The water-bus was two hours late. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it.’

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ said Viola. ‘It’s been like this for effing weeks. The effing council have stopped answering the phones. Nothing here works except my exercise machines.’

  She had taken up sport in a serious way after Winston died, going to college to do sports science. While Delorice had totally fallen apart. Then suddenly she was at college too, doing English, hooking up with Farhad Ahmad, getting herself a First, for Christ’s sake, a first class degree and a posh job in publishing.

  And Delorice wasn’t shy any more. None of that staring at her knees, and whispering. ‘I liked it, you know,’ she had said to Viola, ‘going to the opera with the Lucases. In one way it wasn’t me at all, I mean gondolas and dinner-jackets and “sir” and “madam” and all that shit, but in another way, it just felt great. I was there, with Davey, and his mum and dad liked me, and I loved the music, and the food, and everything. I was telling myself, I could get used to this.’

  Viola was watchful around this new little sister, with her new way of talking and new white friends. She sat there now, with her perfectly waxed parting and her high-powered suit, reading an impressively thick pile of paper. What was the word? She looked … classy. Viola found it all a bit hard to take.

  ‘How’s Leah?’ she asked, not quite innocently. ‘Did you go last weekend? Is her cough better?’

  ‘Went over to Mum’s for lunch,’ said Delorice, without looking up from the page she was reading. ‘I didn’t notice Leah having no cough. Having a cough,’ she corrected herself. When she was with Viola, the old phrases slipped out. She went back to her book; it was surprisingly good.

  No, you wouldn’t notice, thought Viola. Like you haven’t noticed me and Zoe. No one in the family wanted to know.

  Part of Viola longed to tell Delorice. But she imagined with horror what her sister might do: burst out laughing, refuse to believe her. Worst of all, pull a disgusted face like the one she had made, vexed, disbelieving, when their mother told them, wracked with sobs, that the police were saying Winston hadn’t been normal.

  Delorice was looking at her watch again. ‘Sorry, Vi, it’s just a habit.’

  ‘You thought I was just bunking off from the pool till you came here and saw for yourself what it’s like.’

  ‘I knew there was something I meant to tell you. Last time Davey and me went swimming, Zoe was really missing you. She said you’re the brains of the outfit,’ said Delorice. Viola rewarded her with a smile. She was good at business, she always had been. Zoe would have worked for nothing for ever; only the actual swimming mattered to her. But Viola made sure that they made good money.

  It paid for Dwayne’s expensive day-care, though he hadn’t been able to get there for weeks. For now, she was sending him five floors up to a young white girl who did child-minding, Kilda – which struck Viola as a sick kind of name, but it would do for the moment, till the floods went down. She was desperate to move before Dwayne hit his teens.

  ‘It’s been horrible here,’ she told her sister. ‘We couldn’t get milk, or papers, or nothing. We, you know, bartered, some days, for food. That wasn’t in the papers, was it? The government did fuck all for us. And then they’re surprised when there’s a little bit of trouble. It’s like, “Violent Riots”, and “Towers Mob Rule”. In any case, let’s hope it’s over. I’d started to think it would rain for ever.’

  The sun poured in through the bird-spattered glass, they were glad to be together, the news was good.

  ‘You could have left for a bit, I suppose,’ said Delorice. ‘Some people did, didn’t they?’

  Delorice made everything sound like her fault. ‘Why should I, like, leave my stuff behind?’ Viola asked, reaching for a cigarette, half-breaking the box in her sudden longing.

  ‘You’re smoking again,’ Delorice remarked.

  ‘Want one?’ The question had a touch of aggression.

  ‘Bet Zoe doesn’t like it,’ Delorice said. ‘It can’t be good for your swimming, girl.’

  ‘Zoe doesn’t know,’ said Viola, looking out over the shining water meadow that had replaced the usual sheets of concrete. The view from the Towers had got better since the floods. Were the waters going down? She squinted, minutely. Yes, on the facing tower, a band of dark wall showed where the flood had already receded. Maybe a metre in a couple of days. But the feeling of relief was mingled with anger; how would they ever clear up the mess? ‘You don’t understand. ’Ear me now. Your life is soft, girl. The people who left, all their stuff’s got tiefed, and like nutters and weirdos have gone in and lived there. Singing and chanting and sticking up weird posters. I don’t think the toilets are working or nothing. They’re probably doing their business on the floor. It’s just the way things are around here. It’s just the way things have always been. At home we were poor but it wasn’t like this. I smoke because it helps me get by.’ She drew in deeply, fiercely, looked hard at Delorice, blew smoke across her.

  ‘Well you could have moved in with me, for a bit,’ said Delorice. But she knew her flat was too small for two. Something stopped her at the last moment from saying, ‘You could have moved in with Zoe’.

  Then Viola, still annoyed with her sister, said the thing she didn’t usually say, sounding tight and nervous, not looking at Delorice. ‘I could have moved in with Zoe, of course. She’s practically begging me to live with her.’

  Delorice said nothing, then, awkwardly, ‘Right.’

  Viola, with the nicotine powering through her, suddenly knew she had to say more. There were pictures of Zoe all over the house, and one or two snaps of them both together, laughing in the water, their arms round each other. ‘You don’t like Zoe, do you?’ she asked. Both knew the question meant more than that.

  ‘Stop being so feisty,’ Delorice said. ‘Cha! I’m not going to quarrel with you, Viola. I trekked over here to see you, right? And now I’m so late for work it’s ridiculous. Zoe’s going to sack you if you’re always this late.’

  One look at Viola said she’d got it wrong. Her sister stood up and blocked out the window. She was toned and muscled; she looked frighteningly fit. Delorice knew Viola could lay a man out; she had done it last year, after a man in the lift had touched her booty and whispered ‘Black bitch’. ‘Her not going to sack me, we’re partners, get it. You don’t get me, do you, Delorice? Don’t you forget I’m your big sister –’

  ‘I was only, like, having a laugh’, said Delorice.

  ‘I mean, we’re partners. I mean, she loves me. You not the only one who got a lover. Smug little Delorice with her rich baby white boy.’

  Delorice let the insult pass. She felt winded, thrown, but she clutched at straws. ‘You don’t love her, though. You can’t. You’re normal. You’ve had more men than I have, girl.’

  ‘It’s not about normal. It’s not about men. She’s, like, just, you know, the person I love.’ Viola sat down, her anger going, but
she looked at the floor, at the window-frame. Her voice was different when she spoke again. ‘Swear on the Bible not to tell Mum.’

  A long silence, then the sound of a motor, a diesel engine, coming slowly closer. ‘Are you telling me something?’ Delorice asked, then, answering herself, ‘You’re telling me something.’ She broke off, suddenly. ‘I have to get my stuff,’ as she saw the boat, an aged-looking thing with yellow paint and ‘City Wonderama’ on the side, creep slowly into view underneath their window. The same boat had brought her here yesterday. There were others, apparently, but nowhere near enough. They smelled of fumes; they were slow; they were packed. The yellow boat was already overloaded, heavy, sluggish, riding low in the water.

  Both of them ran around finding things. They left, silent, abstracted with hurry, not looking each other in the eyes. Delorice was abstracted, her thoughts in turmoil. Maybe it was true about Winston, too. Maybe she had known about him, all along, but refused to accept it because of the shame. Maybe their mother had known, deep down. It was Mum who had accepted it, in the end, bringing down the fury of the family.

  Viola slammed her door, then padlocked it. ‘I got this yesterday,’ she muttered, manoeuvring the metal hasp into the slot. ‘Take a look at the posters on the way down. I’m not letting those bastards get in here with their creepy religious shit … Zoe asked me to put up some anti-war posters. I goes, “Do you think we need any more of dem tings?”’

  The lift was shut because of the floods; they hardly noticed, it was usually broken. They clattered down a stairwell wall-papered with posters. There were smells of seaweed, urine, mould. The notices were thickly bordered with black, printed in crude letters the colour of blood, with a picture of the Towers half-submerged in water, rising out of a crimson flood. ‘THESE ARE THE LAST DAYS,’ the posters shouted. ‘Sisters and Brothers, come and join us. We are here to save, we are here among you. Open your hearts, and come home.’