Slow River

by Nicola Griffith

  This is fine with Lore, who is not entirely sure she wants the coffee anyway, but before she can speak, her mother says lightly, “Oh, let the child have some coffee, Oster. Even if it keeps her up half the night, she’ll be game for whatever you have planned at the crack of dawn. She takes after me in that respect. The more she does, the more she can do.”

  There is a silence at the table and from that silence Lore understands that she is the chosen battleground of her parents, that whatever she does, however hard she tries, one of them will feel betrayed. But she is not even eleven, and she cannot help but try. So she drinks the coffee, and gets up the next day before dawn to go fish with Oster. The night of her birthday she is included for the first time in her mother’s and Greta’s discussion on a reclamation project in Longzhou; she swims the following day with Oster and Tok.

  She never complains and never says she is not interested when Katerine scribbles some catalytic reaction equation on a napkin, or Oster suggests they go look for some tree frogs, but by the end of the holiday, for the first time she is glad to get back to school.

  At school, the principal, Mr. Achwabe, makes a comment about the fact that she has lost weight, but she just smiles and determines privately to eat more. In the evenings she reads the case studies her mother sends over the net, and talks to her father about the new species of carp he plans to introduce at Ratnapida before she comes home again.

  The time she spends with her friends is almost desperate. She wants to shout to them, Help me! Make them stop, but she does not know how. They are her parents. They love her. She loves them.

  Chapter 9

  As I walked back to the flat with my sack of flower bulbs, I wondered why autumn sunshine hurt the eyes more than sun in spring or summer. Probably something to do with refraction, with the fact that the October sky was a hard, arcing blue and the air was drier than a good gin. Whatever the reason, the slanting eleven-in-the-morning sunshine was smeared gaudily all over the remains of the night frost on rooftiles and guttering, bouncing off the front windows of passenger slides, even reflecting sharply from the lenses of one shopper’s ski glasses. Everyone was wearing bright colors, their cheeks red and eyes sparkling. I doubted they were as cheerful as they looked.

  Despite my hangover, I did feel cheerful, and it was somehow related to last night, my time on the roof. I felt different. Nothing miraculous… more as though something tangled up inside me had begun to resolve itself.

  My first thoughts this morning when I woke had not been about how I had nearly fallen to my death, or the various diseases and corruptions of a city, but of the planters. Of how I had painstakingly built them, carried them onto the roof, filled them with good, black dirt. Of how they were empty. That, I had thought as I drank hot tea and got dressed, is something I can fix.

  And I felt absurdly pleased with the bulbs I had selected, all locally grown: crocuses and tulips, snowdrops and marigolds, iris and verbena and salvia. Rich, bright colors that would last from the end of January up until midsummer. Maybe the scents and colors would bring bees. I tried to imagine lying on the sun-warmed tiles, smelling flowers, listening to the hum of bees, but I realized I was also hearing imaginary fountains plashing softly and the sough of wind in trees, and under all those the bone-deep vibration of sea against rock: Ratnapida.

  I had to stop in the middle of the street for a man with three children who was trying to get on a slide. One of the children was refusing to budge and the man—the father, I assumed—was forced to drag him, wailing. The father shot me an embarrassed smile; I nodded as though I understood he had no other choice, but the truth was, I didn’t know. Had Oster ever taken us three—Tok and Stella and me—out by himself? Even if he had, and even if one of us had had the bad manners to pull a tantrum, the family car would not have been far away to whisk us all off to luxurious privacy. I started walking again. One of these days I would be able to see flowers without thinking of family, or Ratnapida, its grass and fountains and low trees.

  Maybe a tree wouldn’t be a bad idea. A sapling wouldn’t need too big a planter to start with, and I could get something that blossomed in spring: apple, maybe, or pear. But the wood, and the dirt, and the tree itself would all cost, and the money I took when I left Spanner was running low. I crossed the road on the ceramic safeway opposite my building, trying to work out how much I would get paid at the end of the week and, if I budgeted properly, whether or not I would have enough extra for a tree.

  An old man was dragging a small shopping cart into my doorway. I had seen him before. He lived on the third or fourth floor. The cart looked heavy.

  “Can I help you with that?”

  He looked at me. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes filmy but his voice was robust. “Bird, isn’t it? Sal Bird?” I nodded. He thought for a moment. “Fifth floor,” he said, evidently satisfied with his knowledge.

  I looked at the nameplates in neat rows by the ancient intercom. I had no idea which was his. He laughed at my expression.

  “Tom Wilson, third floor. And yes, I’d count it a great favor if you’d help a tired old man with his groceries.”

  His suit jacket hung from broad shoulders; he would have been a big man thirty years ago. I wondered what it must be like to get old.

  I balanced my sack on top of his groceries, and he talked as I humped the cart, one tread at a time, up the three flights of stairs. “What have you got in here?”

  The look on his face was interesting: unsure whether or not it was polite to be offended at this invasion of privacy by a Good Samaritan. In the end, he grinned and said slyly, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  I smiled wryly. He was right. I shouldn’t have asked. “It’s heavy, whatever it is.”

  “Do you good;” He held open a door for me and I pulled the cart gratefully onto the landing.

  “Can you manage from here?”

  “Didn’t think you had to set off for your job for hours yet.” That sly grin again. “I thought you might like to share a cup of tea with a lonely old man.”

  I couldn’t think of any reason to refuse him, so I followed him into his flat.

  It was bigger than mine, and cozy, filled with Scandinavian furniture, the blond wood and gray-nubbed fabrics of twenty or thirty years ago. Everything was very clean. He watched me take it all in. “Nicer than that tomb of a room the landlord gave you upstairs. Warmer too. How strong do you like it?”

  “What?”

  “Your tea. I’m partial to strong tea myself.”

  “Oh. Whatever you’re having.”

  “You won’t ever get what you want unless you know. And unless you tell those who ask. I’ll ask you again: How do you like your tea?”

  I closed my eyes, thought back to other times. “Lapsang souchong, no milk, no sugar, no lemon, three heaped teaspoons in a pot big enough for two. And hot, not luke-warm. Served in bone china—the old kind, wafer thin, so you can see the color of the tea through the white—with a silver spoon. Steel spoils the taste.” I opened my eyes. “Well, you asked.”

  “I did, I did. And thank you for sharing that with me.” He nodded at me seriously, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  He brought out a tray and took it over to the table by the window: two pots, two cups. One of the cups was Wedgwood. It had a tiny chip on the rim. He took it over to the table by the window which, unlike mine, looked out onto the street. “For you,” he said, handing me the Wedgewood cup, and pointing to one of the pots. “Right out of Lapsang souchong and silver teaspoons. But I found some Earl Grey.” I poured for both of us. My tea was that lovely light brown gray of undyed fine tea. His looked like treacle.

  He sipped and smacked his lips. “Strong enough to stand a spoon up in.”

  I sipped mine. It was delicate and deliciously hot. I smiled and nodded. “Very nice.”

  “A simple pleasure, tea. Doesn’t matter how rich or poor a person might be, good tea is good tea.” He looked at me over the rim of his cup. His eyes we
re gray as a winter sea.

  “Lot of simple pleasures are very important. Take that window, now. I can sit by it when I’m too stiff to get up and down the stairs, and watch the world. I know every one of the tenants in this building by sight. I know what time they go to work, or not, as the case may be. I know who visits them, and for how long.”

  I know you’re lonely, he seemed to be saying. I am, too. If you talk to me I won’t pry for more, and I won’t tell anyone else. I didn’t say anything.

  “For example, I know that Mr. Rachmindi is moving out next month. His place is nicer than yours, and not much more a month.”

  “I’m happy where I am.”

  “Maybe you are, but think about the weather as the winter gets on. You’ll be mewling with cold come January. And his window looks out onto the trees at the back, if that’s what you’ll miss.”

  “It’s not that.” He just waited. “It’s…” I stood up, found my sack of bulbs, brought them back. I rolled one onto my palm. “Jonquil. In April that’ll be a flower the color of hot sun on white sand.” I put it on the table and took out another. “Bluebell. Like soft babies’ eyes. Freesias, violets, crocuses, verbena…” They rolled out of the sack like toy trucks. “I took my flat because I can get onto the roof. I’m going to grow these.” Where the squirrels could not get at them. “It will be a place of wild things, natural things. I need them.” A tear dripped onto the lacy brown and beige wrinkles of the bulb in my palm.

  Tom Wilson’s papery hands reached out and folded my fingers over the bulb. “Best keep it dry,” he said, and produced a large white handkerchief from somewhere. He watched silently as I wiped my face, then my nose, and put the bulbs back into the bag.

  “This garden of yours… Will you invite me up to see it, when it starts to bloom?”

  I opened my mouth to say, I’d love to, but you will you get your old bones out onto the roof? and said, instead, “Yes.” If he wanted to see the flowers, we’d find a way.

  I spent two hours with Tom Wilson and afterward climbed the stairs to my flat thoughtfully.

  When I got in I called Spanner. She answered immediately. “Did you get those changes made on my PIDA?”

  “Last night.”

  “All of it?” I needed to feel safe from Magyar.

  “Everything. You are now a fully three-dimensional paragon of virtue.” She was still in that expansive, good mood. “I was tempted to add a police record, something along the lines of swimming naked in the docks as a protest for, oh, animal rights or something.” She grinned. “But I decided against it.”

  I couldn’t help it—I grinned back. She could be so charming when she wanted. “I’m glad to hear it.” Even more glad to hear that the work was done. Now Magyar could check all she liked.

  “About that equipment,” she said. “You available late tonight for a meeting? Good. I’ll see you here after work.”

  The screen went blank.

  * * *

  The morning of Spanner’s birthday they stayed in bed all day, eating, drinking, sometimes unbuttoning their shirts to make love, sometimes buttoning them again to sit up and talk. Lore told Spanner about Belize, about the Heliconias with their leaves the size of canoe paddies, the Santa Maria pine and black poisonwood; Spanner told her about forests she had seen on the net. While Spanner talked, Lore wondered if she had ever been outside the city. She thought of her visit on her own to the park yesterday, how she had found a hidden corner where no one seemed to go. She had stepped over a formal border, following a squirrel, and found herself among the dark and secret greenery of a classical Victorian shrubbery—bay and laurel and yew. Under the waxy leaves of a rhododendron she had come across a female mallard, its feathers a ruffled mix of tawny browns and beige and cream, asleep with its head under a wing. In the spring, she suspected the shrubbery would glimmer with pearly snowdrops and crocuses the color of March sunshine. Like lemon drops against the black, bitter dirt.

  Spanner paused, wine bottle halfway to her mouth. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes.” And she was, sort of.

  “Good. We’re the same, you and I. We understand each other.”

  All Lore understood about Spanner was that whenever Lore reached for her, she wavered and was gone, like the shimmering reflection on the oily surface of the river.

  “You know what it’s like. To have someone kill herself. You know how it feels. Because of your sister, your sister…”

  “Stella.” It was hard to say her name aloud. Her sister’s suicide was public property. She supposed it had been all over the net. “Who do you know that killed themselves?”

  Spanner ignored her. “You know what that’s like. How hard it is to explain to people. You can say, I saw it coming. You can say, It was only a matter of time. You can say, There was nothing I could do. And they don’t believe you. Did you find that?”

  “I didn’t know Stella was going to kill herself.”

  Spanner squinted at her. “Yes, you did. She was unhappy, wasn’t she?”

  Lore nodded because she couldn’t speak. She tried not to think about Stella and why she killed herself, because then she would have to think about Tok, about her father about herself. “Leave some of that wine for me.”

  But Spanner was leaning down out of bed, bottom flashing as her shirt rode up to her waist. She seemed to be tugging on something under the. bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Box.” She heaved, and an ancient cardboard box slid out onto the carpet. She got out of bed and sat cross-legged by it. “There’s a picture of my mother in here, somewhere.” Her mother… Spanner scrabbled about in the box, which Lore could not see. She knew better than to try and look.

  “Here.” Spanner handed Lore an old-fashioned CD-ROM disk, poked about some more and came up with a flat gray drive case and some cable. She shoved the box back under the bed and stood up. “Bring the wine.”

  Lore followed her into the living room.

  “I made the drive when I was fifteen,” Spanner said as she plugged it into her system and ran a couple of tests. “Give me the disk. There.”

  The first picture that came up on the screen was a dog, an impossibly elegant whippet with a patch of black fur over one eye. “That’s Anne Bonny. My dog, when I was nine. Looks like a pirate, doesn’t she.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Spanner ignored that. Several pictures whipped by too fast for Lore to follow. She tried to remember if whippets were expensive, what kind of money Spanner’s family might have had.

  “My mother.” She had blond hair, lighter than Spanner’s, and her face was thinner, almost hollow. She looked as though she had bird bones; one hard squeeze would crumple her like paper. Lore could not tell how old she was, but she thought she might have been around forty. She was wearing a dress of some kind of silky material, the kind that had been popular on soap operas fifteen years ago.

  Lore wanted to know more about her. She was desperate to learn about Spanner. But she knew what kind of questions Spanner would ignore. “Did you take the photograph? Looks like it might have been a new dress.”

  “It was. She got it for her birthday. We all clubbed together for it.” Not rich, then. But who did she mean by we? “She said she loved that dress. I looked for it, after she died. I thought I’d keep it, keep something that had meant a lot to her, you know, something that we had had between us. But it wasn’t hanging in her wardrobe. I had to search the whole house. It was in a bag full of rubbish, old tat that was going to go to charity that Christmas. It was all wrinkled. Smelled like it had been in the bag for months. I threw it away.” Spanner held out her hand for the wine bottle, took a long gulp, then wiped her mouth with her hand. “It was then that I realized that everyone lies. About everything. She must have hated that dress, must have been laughing at us all the time she wore it. And then she just left us. Like that. Didn’t even leave a note.” Spanner ejected the disk and hurled it against the east wall so hard that it chipped aw
ay a lump of plaster.

  Lore took Spanner’s hand. “I’m not lying. I’m not laughing at you. I want you to have a happy birthday. If you don’t like the cheese plant, you don’t have to pretend. If you buy me presents, I won’t pretend.”

  She could not heal all of Spanner’s hurt, she could not even offer the kind of love she thought Spanner might want, but she could offer the beginnings of trust. She hoped Spanner would know what to do with it. She thought about bulbs unfolding in the cold and dark, reaching up through the soil in blind faith.

  Winter had come slowly and gently Lore’s first year in the city, but the soft grays of December changed suddenly to an iron frost in January. The sun no longer reached high enough to coat the sandstone of the Polar Bear with gold. In the morning, the light was lemony-gray, like a falsely tinted black and white photograph. People walking stiffly in the cold on their way to the slide poles squinted against the long, slanting sunshine, the occasional glitter of frost on the pavement. A squirrel, its thick winter coat-making it comical, like a furry dumpling, looked up at the ice-slicked cable that ran past the second-floor window, and stayed on the ground. It scrabbled halfheartedly at the frozen dirt around the roots of the tree outside. Lore wondered why it wasn’t hibernating.

  Outside, the temperature plummeted. Spanner went out less frequently to do business—“People don’t go out as much in this weather.” And Lore, who had now cleared most of the debris from the back garden and planted her spring bulbs more than a month ago, only went out to leave plates of leftovers for the cat she had seen that once.

  They were watching the news and drinking loc—a hot, chocolate liqueur—when they heard about a fire in the warehouse district.

  “Get your coat on.”

  By the time they got there, the firefighters were gone and all that was left was the stink of charred three-hundred-year-old timbers and bricks cracked open by the heat. The warehouse was still dripping, but icicles were forming, and the lake of hose water was turning to sheet ice. There was no one about; it was too cold for sightseeing. In the orangy street light, Lore’s breath cloud looked like a bizarre special effect.