The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  And then he remembered the day that he had burned a wedding ring shaped hole through his soul.

  4

  Rain had tapped at the windows all morning. Davey had played with his cars behind the sofa while his mummy had read one of her romantic books. There was always a dark-haired man on the front cuddling a blonde haired woman in a dress that showed a lot of her bosoms, Davey had noticed. His mummy often muttered darkly when they saw a woman with her bosoms showing like that when they were out shopping but she didn't mind the women on the book covers. The sound of her regular breathing told him that she had fallen asleep; he could see her flesh-coloured stockinged feet poking over the arm of the chair. Occasionally, she would snore loudly causing Davey to giggle against his hand. Still, the sleep sounds of another and the warm raininess of the afternoon had a strangely hypnotic effect on the little boy. He felt his eyelids drooping as he watched the plastic wheels of the Corgi army jeep (his favourite) whirling and slowing, whirling and slowing.

  Thunder rattled at the window pane. Davey started. The day had darkened considerably. Now lightning flickered over the distant hills. Pitter patter became the thrum of impatient fingers on the glass as the skies opened. More thunder. Davey needed to pee. He glanced at his mummy, oblivious to the storm, her mouth open. Stop catching flies, she would have said to him, if she had caught at him staring at Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine gang in such a manner. The boy closed the door on her and padded upstairs to the bathroom

  Despite the earliness of the day, it was gloomy upstairs. He pulled the light cord in the bathroom. Nothing. The bulb had gone. It was dark enough to render his reflection in the bathroom mirror a mere shadow. Davey didn't like the dark. His idea was lit up by more flashbulb lightning. He trotted to his mummy's bedroom, flicked on her light and pushed the door wide open so that it would illuminate the hallway and bathroom. As he turned away from his mummy's room, he saw that her trunk was open. He ran to the bathroom, bursting now.

  As he aimed his jet at a piece of toilet paper that was caught under the rim, he thought of the trunk. Mummy's trunk. The trunk that had sat at the bottom of her bed since he had been a baby. Countless times he had been told off for standing on its sturdy oak lid when he went in to her in the morning to wake her up; he was not allowed to open the trunk either. He had asked her why he was not allowed once and she had told him that her special memories were kept in there and she would be very upset if he damaged anything or took something and then lost it. Davey was always losing stuff, he knew that was true but- he leaned back and looked through the bathroom door and in to her room; he could see one corner of the weathered box. He finished off and washed his hands. He flicked off mummy's bedroom light and headed down the stairway, to the warm sleepiness of the afternoon, his cars and the sound of his mummy's snores.

  He almost made it too. But the temptation was too great.

  Davey knelt in front of the box and breathed in the smells from within. The smell of aging paper combined sweetly with the pot pourri mummy always used to line draws and packing boxes before she put them in the attic, along with the layers of perfume she had donned from girlhood to womanhood. It was a good smell but there was dust too. Davey felt the beginnings of a sneeze and stifled it in his hand before absently wiping the snot on the back of his trousers. The trunk had been a Great Western Railway postal carrier in its former life; he knew this because he had asked his mummy what the G.W.R burned into the wood beneath the clasp meant. He had felt pleased to imagine the trunk traveling all over the world in the mail carriage of an old steam train. He pictured men in loincloths swinging boxes just like this one down a line, singing an unintelligible song in a foreign language like the natives in Tarzan of the Apes. His mummy's daddy had given her the trunk because he had worked for the railway before he had retired. There was a sheet of crumpled brown paper lying over the contents of the box. Barbara-paid, had been scrawled in one corner of the sheet. Davey reached to pull it back and then paused. Those are my private things, Davey. Mummy's memories and keepsakes. Even at five years of age, little Davey Weaver knew that it was wrong to go rooting (as in, "don't go rooting through my things, young man!" Mummy's word) through someone else's private things. Equally, he was subject to the curiosity that a secret provokes. Curiosity killed the cat, though. Everyone knew that. He also knew that cats had nine lives. Tom and Jerry had confirmed that on Saturday morning cartoon time. Of course, Davey knew that they hadn't really got nine lives. He had come across Grant Moran poking a dead cat with a stick a few weeks before; it was only a few months older than a kitten so there was no way it had used up all of its nine lives that quickly. He had told Grant this and Grant had looked at him with that screwed up face that meant he thought you were "being a spaz".

  Davey picked up the parcel paper and gently laid it on the carpet next to him. He peered at the contents of the trunk like a pirate at the end of a long quest for treasure in one of his adventure stories. There was a bundle of letters tied together with a piece of red ribbon; the corners of the envelopes were curled and the paper discoloured with age. He could read well enough and saw that they were all addressed to mummy but before she got married. Miss. B. Salter, they said. He undid the ribbon and allowed the letters to fall on to his lap. Carefully, taking the lined paper from the first envelope, he saw that they were covered in thin spidery joined up writing. He squinted at the first lines of the first sheet. He couldn't really decipher it and gave up. He tried to tie the letters back into a bundle, found that he couldn't and placed them back in the box hurriedly. He spied a glossy picture of a teenage girl and a little girl. They were holding hands. After a moment studying the faces and the old shed in the background (granddad's shed?), he realized that the big girl was his mummy and the little girl was his Aunty Sue. He smiled. They were so young. Aunty Sue looked about his age. It was really strange to think of these grown-ups as kids. Then there were pictures of the man that he had never known. Douglas Weaver laughing with an impossibly young Barbara Salter on the dodgems at the fair; Douglas Weaver holding a puppy, a boy himself with centre parting and sheepish grin; Douglas Weaver looking impossibly cool sat on a turnstile with the river flowing in the distance beyond the meadow; Douglas Weaver looking very smart in a suit, an elderly lady looking up at him admiringly; Douglas Weaver standing in front of the Pyramids in Egypt. Davey's mouth fell open. He knew about the pyramids. Mrs. Allen had told them all about them at school). And there were more, charting the span of a life taken too early. Davey felt hot tears threatening to spill on to his cheeks along with the It's not fair feeling that was usually close to the surface on Sports Day or when the mums and dads spoke to the teachers at school on parents' evening. This was slightly different though. Before, it had been about him. About David Michael Weaver and the fact that he did not have a daddy like all of the other kids in his class. But this was different. Seeing all of those photographs of his daddy made him realize that he had been a real person after all. He knew that was a silly thing to think but it was true. Before, his daddy had only ever been a man in a photograph. But those had been photographs that had been on his wall and at mummy's bedside all of his life. The discovery of these snapshots gave him a sense of the person that had been his daddy. A real person. Not a photograph. The It's not fair feeling was for his father this time, not for David-hisfatherdiedwhenhewasababynohedoesn'trememberhim- Weaver. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and put the photographs to one side. Beneath a once-white box with a silver 21 behind a plastic window, Davey found three thin cardboard certificates. He knew what the first one was; he had his own framed on his bedroom wall; it was a birth certificate. The second took some figuring out. It had his mummy's and daddy's names on it; he spelled out the word m-a-r-r-i-a-ge. Despite the rogue "i", the meaning became clear. The third was easier: death was easier to spell after all. Three pieces of paper to show for a lifetime. His young mind did not form this thought but he was bright enough to know that there was something incredibly sad about the flimsy pap
ers held tenderly in his ink stained hand, a plaster peeling back from his pinkie finger, the badge of a splinter picked up on the old merry-go-round at the park. He stared at the word Death until it blurred; he sat like that for several minutes, after the manner of a child, gone into that trance-world that is familiar to children but denied to the adult; it was the place of imagination, of fears, daydreams and warmth. He trembled slightly and came back to himself. He lovingly placed the plastic wallet back into its place, along with the photographs and letters. There were many other things wrapped in pretty paper or in small paper bags but he had seen enough. Besides, if his mummy woke up, she would worry. More than that, he would be in deep shit (another Grant swear). He was about to close the lid on mummy's treasures when he remembered that it had been open. He opened it to its full extent and rocked back onto the balls of his feet to stand. That was when he caught a glimpse of something shiny. There, behind a pack of greeting cards in a flowered paper bag, a glint of gold. He reached in carefully and plucked the ring from its hiding place. It was dulled with dust and time. He rubbed it vigourously on his jumper and held it up to the light. That was better. A shining band of gold. He held it close to his right eye in the manner of the High Street jeweller when mummy had wanted to find out how much her diamond ring was worth for "insurance purposes". There was something inscribed on the band. He squinted to make out the faded lettering. D and B Always.

  D and B. Douglas and Barbara.

  The band that sat coolly on the palm of his hand was his mother's wedding ring. Always, it said. Always. So why wasn't she wearing it now?

  Lightning flickered in the room once-twice-three times and the boom of thunder shook the house. Davey literally jumped. He heard his mummy's footsteps in the living room below; the quick step of panic. She called his name and opened the door at the foot of the stairs just as he turned off her bedroom light. "I've just been to the toilet," he said and squeezed the ring in his left hand. He felt the questions bubbling on his lips but held them back. When he reached his mother, at the bottom of the stairs, she ruffled his hair. "Mummy feels better after a sleep," she told him and followed him into the lounge. "Why don't you see if anything good is on and I'll make us some soup."

  Davey sat in front of Fingerbobs without truly seeing. Even Fingermouse himself was unable to inspire him. A ricochet of spinning rings filled his every thought, the lettering clearly visible on the shiny rounded surface of each. The cycle of the rings was marked by the rotation of the word always.

  Always.

  Always.

  Always.

  The river wound away out of sight but he knew its course well enough. Despite the horror of the summer of 76, he could never ignore it. It had had been a presence throughout his childhood to be crossed and re-crossed on the way to school and back, to town and back, to friends that lived in the upper part of the town and beyond. But more than that, Weaver thought now, it was an intrinsic part of the boy he had been and what he had become. No matter what he did in his life, the river would always be there, reminding him of the boy that had died for him and the mother that had lived for him.

  The man Weaver remembered that the boy Davey had waited until the foot of Ash Road, just before they crossed Riverside to reach Bridge Street. He felt the hard smoothness of the ring against the palm of his hand inside his duffel coat pocket. His mummy held his other hand as they walked with her usual- almost painful- tightness. She wore her favorite dress that day he remembered. It was navy blue with a red trim. Her faithful hand woven shopping basket at her side. She glanced down at him and smiled before noticing the concern on his face. She frowned. "What's up, little man?"

  "I was thinking about you and daddy," he said.

  "Hmm?"

  "Were you happy?"

  Mummy had looked down at his frowning face; she looked troubled herself. "Of course we were, darling boy." She went on one knee in the middle of the pavement, the rounded pillars of the bridge's wall behind her. Through her reddish brown hair he could see the distant pull-ferry inch across from Cornhill Bank to Priory Hill with Teddy the retarded man/boy straining at the rope. "Especially when you came along." She stroked his hair. "Why are you thinking about me and daddy?"

  "Are you still married to him even though he's in Heaven," Davey asked, watching the distant ferryman distractedly.

  "Yes, of course I am," she said and pulled him close. "I always will be."

  There it was again. Always. D and B Always. He squeezed down on the wedding ring in his coat pocket, among the detritus of smallboydom: bits of tissue, sweet papers, a broken Matchbox Austin Mini Cooper wheel.

  "But why don't you wear your wedding ring, then?"

  Mummy looked surprised. "Why ever are you thinking of that? I haven't worn my ring for years." She stood up again and they started walking over the bridge once more." I don't even know where it is," she lied. Davey knew she was lying. Mummy always knew where things were; she hated losing her things.

  "If I found it, would you wear it again," Davey said brightly. Mummy shook her head, annoyed with him.

  "Don't be silly now," she said.

  "But I know where it is!"

  "I don't care, Davey," she said firmly. "Now leave it."

  Davey didn't understand. Why was she angry with him? He felt hot tears threaten.

  "But mummy, you said you would be married to daddy always and that's what it says on your ring too. D and B Always."

  Mummy's hand tightened on his painfully. She swung him around so that he looked up into her face. She looked furious. This was the face that she had before she smacked him.

  "Listen to me, David. Your father is not here any more. I don't have to wear that ring for him and I won't wear it for you either!" The harshness of the words stung him but he felt his own anger rising rebelliously.

  "So you don't want it then?"

  "No!" She pulled on his arm aggressively. He stumbled along behind her.

  "Okay," he said sulkily. "I'll have it then. You don't want it!"

  Her reply was lost under the sound of a red double-decker bus as it thundered past them.

  "What?" He shouted to be heard, the noise of the bus receding. His mummy whipped round on him, her mouth set in an angry line.

  "Do what you like with it! I don't care!" She let go of his hand and marched towards the edge of the bridge. Right, he thought, his thoughts REDREDRED. He'd show her. In a fit of temper he pulled his hand out of pocket and tossed the ring over the side.

  In his dreams, the ring revolved in slow motion catching the sun in flashes and glints as it descended to its resting place in the darkness of the river. He pushed his head between the pillars and looked down to see the band of gold- plink!- in to the water and then descend. He strained his eyes to see it sink and thought he could but that must have been his imagination only. The instantaneous wave of shame and regret at what he had done, however, was not imagined. At the moment that the ring had left his hand, Davey experienced guilt beyond his own understanding. "Mummy!" he screamed and she turned back to him, concern replacing anger. Even at such a young age, the symbolic nature of his act appalled him. He burst into tears and fell sobbing into his mother's arms.

  Weaver imagined that ring floating around in the green and grey depths of the river in much the same way that it had drifted beneath the layers of his consciousness for a quarter of a century and flicked his cigarette over the side of the bridge. Around him the traffic had increased, people headed for work. He felt exposed under the hostile scrutiny of their bleary gazes and became self-conscious. He was the anachronism- a part of the past that did not belong and the cool stares of those locked into the routine of the present intensified his discomfort. He headed back to the car.

  Chapter six

  1

  By lunchtime, Measton was buzzing with the latest insanities. In The Crown and Trumpet, John Pickering held forth to the white collars, comprised of factory management, estate agents, chartered surveyors and a solicitor. He was in full fl
ow, telling the others that it was inevitable that crime in their town would escalate when one considered what was "going on in the world today" (a vague flap of the hand accompanied this phrase but was more than enough for the assembled sages who nodded wisely), when Steve Rodgers, local alcoholic and photographer for the Messenger twitched his way to the bar. By nature a nervous man, Rodgers suffered from tics that some of the locals surmised may or may not be connected to his dependence on the drink. The landlord, Henry Peters, eyed him warily from behind the bar; there was no love lost between them. When Rodgers was over the edge (most evenings), he could become verbally scathing and, at times, abusive, especially to women. Henry's wife had been nagging him for months to bar him but he was a regular source of income. No matter how shitty the weather or what the time of year, Rodgers could be counted on to come in and drink a gallon of pump ale and a third to a half a bottle of Bell's whisky. There were times when Rodgers single-handedly paid the bills. Today his presence was not only tolerated but awaited with keen anticipation. Rodgers would know all about the events of the previous evening.

  "Steve?"