The Last Night

by Cesca Major

  She was crying now, repeating to him the same words. ‘The woman, she was lost.’

  He was panicked now, scared beyond anything he’d ever been before as he pictured his father, hopelessly inert in the cottage. Were they safe? Had Mary managed to get him to an upstairs room? He pictured them bobbing around the living room, their belongings floating round them, then he shook his head, throwing the image off, urging her on. ‘We have to go home.’

  They couldn’t get across to the other side of the village, stood staring at the spot where the bridge had been, the river swollen, forcing them to scramble up behind the high street, weaving between the backs of buildings, holding onto each other for support, feeling comforted that at least they were together. They could make out the Lyndale Hotel up ahead, a mass of debris banked against it, windows faintly glowing on the top floor.

  They made it there, clutching each other, clambering over silt, a tyre, trees, to a window further up, everything catching, scratching at their arms, their legs. Men in the window of the hotel, candles lit behind them, reached out both arms, one man dangling, straining his fingers to claw at the air in front of them and snatch them when he could. Abigail had reached him, she was hauled through the open window, he could just make out her head and shoulders, hear the sound of people calling to him.

  He wavered, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the cottages, imagining Mary and his father huddled together, frightened. The Lyndale was a big hotel and he was clambering higher and higher; he imagined his father buried beneath the rubble below, everything was wrong, too high, the rivers too loud. Then he felt hands on his upper arms, voices around him, his body and feet sliding through the window.

  They crept together across the room. Abigail was silent, stripped of her cardigan, teeth chattering, mud on her face and in her hair. Someone thrust towels and blankets at them and they were steered to a corner of the room, people piled everywhere about them, holidaymakers soothing their children, the building vibrating as the bawling outside went on, everyone crammed now onto the top floor, nowhere else to climb to, the pale faces, wide eyes and intermittent sobs making the room feel alive with a crawling fear. Richard clutched Abigail tightly to him, whispering things into her hair, not sure what he was saying now, prayers, sentences, assurances, trying to block out the thud and screech, the constant shout of the water as it battered the building. A silence as they heard a terrible jarring sound, the walls reverberating, the hotel seeming to shift. He wondered which part of it had been swept away into the torrent. He realized then that they might die that night. He held Abigail even tighter, praying for the light of dawn, praying for the interminable night to end.

  IRINA

  The day had drained her, she and her mother talking over each other, clutching hands, sentences spilling out, the sounds of the apartment block fading into nothing. As she left the building she’d felt a weight lift, the stone she’d been dragging round with her for twenty years; staring up at her mother’s flat, feeling her hair ruffle in the breeze, the weather whisked it all away, breaking it apart.

  On the drive home she felt calmer, her body relaxing, a sense that things would be different now. She opened the shop door and lugged her bag through the beaded curtain. The workshop seemed different, late-afternoon sunlight spilling through the windows, dancing in the air, the wood warm, the room smelling of polish and shavings. The bureau stood in its place in the corner and she walked over to it and pulled back the dust cloth to place a hand on the leather. She needed to finish it now.

  She left her bag in the doorway, not bothering to unpack, feeling the old spark of excitement at getting on with a project, fetching her polish and cloth for a last layer of varnish. She worked deftly, humming a snatch of a song as she rubbed at the wood, tested the drawers, which ran smoothly and freely, pressed down lightly on the leather in the centre of the desktop.

  She didn’t know what made her look up, but something dragged her eyes away from the bureau. They were there in the mirror behind, as if they were in a room in another house. Two women sitting on a bench next to a river, one younger, with thick brown hair and round eyes, the other much older, her face lined, her hazel eyes crinkled, a warm smile as she rested a hand on the shoulder of the younger woman. Both familiar. Irina stared at them for the longest time, her body still, her mind calm, until their forms became indistinct, merging into the light reflected in the mirror, until there was just the empty glass, the wall opposite, and Irina wondered if she’d imagined them.

  Before, she would have felt on edge, but there had been something about the scene; she felt that something had shifted and, with a slow realization, remembered where she had seen one of the women before. She threw the dust cloth over the bureau, admiring the finished piece as she did so. Taking her bag, she crossed the workshop to the stairs to her apartment. Settling herself on the sofa, laptop open, she logged into her email, a flutter as she looked at the latest address. Finally, she had received a reply from the owner of the bureau. Opening it, she started at the name and knew there was only one thing left to do.

  ABIGAIL

  Light crept through the windows gradually. A dirty, grey light that highlighted the sleeping, exhausted children, their mothers bent over them, small fists clinging to fabric, blankets, tear-stained faces. Men stirred, protective arms around their loved ones, all crammed together in a damp, shocked mess. Abigail opened one eye, Richard shifting his arm, rubbing at it, a dead weight from where she’d finally fallen asleep. For a few seconds she couldn’t place them, was grateful for being held by him, and then she sat up abruptly as she remembered, hair released from its pins, dried mud still on her cheeks and streaking her stockinged legs, ladders running up, shoes ruined.

  ‘Mary,’ she said in a half-whisper.

  It seemed Richard had the same reaction. He pulled her to her feet, looked down at her, one hand reaching out to cup her cheek. He was damp and muddied, his face and neck smeared like a coal sweeper’s. They moved over to the window, and she hoped for a moment that they might have dreamt it all, that they would look down on a high street waking for the day, the familiar clink of milk being delivered, people pulling back shutters, women on the doorstep beating rugs.

  There was a crowd of men clustered around the window, a circle of smoke above them, serious faces. What she saw over their shoulders, in the gaps, seemed incredible. The silt, rocks, trees they’d clambered up were impossibly high, reaching the ledge, straining against the building. Beyond that, the village, the river swollen, shattered remnants of houses, overturned vehicles, uprooted trees, mud. Wordlessly she reached for Richard, clutching his hand in horror, fingers cold and inert. The look he gave her forced her to ball her other hand into a fist, hold it over her mouth. She didn’t want to scare the children. One girl, no more than eight, was looking at her through sleepy eyes. Abigail swallowed, trying hard not to panic, feeling her heart smashing against her rib cage.

  ‘The cottage,’ Richard whispered dumbly, looking across the river to the right, and a man in the circle turned to him, pity inching into his eyes.

  Abigail looked in that direction, her brain not making sense of what she was seeing.

  Carefully they clambered down the debris, hands reaching out to help them. Men were standing at intervals below, on the piles of rocks and mud pushed up against the building. Weary faces as they helped others down, arms around them guiding them mutely. At the bottom a cow’s carcass, bloated and disgusting, legs frozen towards the sky, one oddly bent; a tyre, twisted metal somewhere underneath and then, as they looked out to sea, the extraordinary sight of trees standing upright in the water a mile out, as if the forest had been relocated, the seawater brown. The house opposite spewing forth its insides. A washbasin perfectly intact, the rest of the room belched into the street, floorboards hanging down like a great dirty tongue, belongings strewn, limp, dangling. As if it were ten years ago and it had been bombed.

 
; They stumbled, the river still churning past them, travelling its new path, where the road had been. Around the corner, careful to avoid the crack, where gullies had opened up. Then the smell, the stench that met them, of open drains, disgusting and human, clinging to their nostrils as they moved unspeaking through the changed landscape. Abigail couldn’t help tripping as she stared at the devastation around them. Everything mud-soaked, dripping. A ragdoll in the branches of a tree. She stopped short, her legs unwilling. A shop, front wall ripped away, the till standing at the counter still showing 3s 7d, a shelf, the tins intact behind it. A child’s bicycle mangled beneath masonry; stones. She knew she would never forget these things.

  She was confused, couldn’t recall what had been there before, knew Richard knew every brick, house, path in the village, squeezed his hand tighter, tears pooling in his eyes, his face grey. He came to a sudden stop, looking out across a swirling, muddied section of the river, impossibly wide where before it had meandered around and behind houses, trickled underneath wrought-iron balconies, children treading over rocks, palms flat on the stones as they played.

  A gate, on its hinges that led nowhere. A sign for a B & B in a tree opposite, pointing to nothing.

  ‘The cottages… Oh God, the…’

  She looked down, along, backwards. She realized then what they were looking at, seeing the school on the cliff on the other side, the gap where the four cottages should have stood. Richard staring, mouth opening and closing, no words coming out. His house, completely washed away. The riverbed scoured. Nothing there now. Nothing.

  Slowly, a terrible lurch in her stomach as her thoughts tried to catch up. They got out, surely they got away?

  ‘They might have got out… We don’t know…’ She whispered it, unable to stop herself turning away from the river, staring out towards the sea, across the stretch of water, splintered wood, boulders, branches, trunks, twisted metal, silt, feeling her stomach churn as she wondered if their bodies lay there, in amongst the wreckage of the village. She jerked away from Richard then, bent down, expelled the contents of her stomach, her mouth acidic, her gut aching, wiped at her mouth.

  Richard had taken blankets from the Lyndale Hotel and she carried one under her arm. They turned away from where the cottages should have been, picked their way wordlessly up the path, both needing to get out of the village. He held her hand in his, silently, at one point squeezing so hard she had to put a hand on his arm and remind him she was there. He was holding an umbrella over them, a flimsy thing that seemed almost comical in the moment.

  Their feet and legs were soaked when they reached the cottage, the windows now tinged with the faint orange of dawn, the glass outlined in gold. The sun had started to creep across the moors towards them, the saturated ground spongy as they stepped between the heather, their footprints making noises that sucked at the earth as if they might be pulled right into the long grass.

  They lit a fire, Richard prodding at the flames, causing them to crackle and spark. Without blushing, Abigail stripped down to her undergarments, took off her stockings and shoes, leaving them to dry over the fireplace like ghostly clothing, wrinkled and thin. Richard had created a space for them on the floor in front of the hearth and they lay down together in the living room, her head on his chest. She felt empty, unresponsive and then suddenly her mind was full of her friend’s face. It had been her idea that she should come to the village; if she’d been with her in Lynton she would never have been caught up in all this.

  ‘We’ll go back, we’ll look for them, they might not be…’ Richard stopped, pulled her towards him, her cheek resting on his bare chest, his pulse loud in her head.

  She felt the first tear fall, marking a trail down her face. She went to wipe it away and then realized that Richard was shaking silently, his own tears falling in her hair.

  IRINA

  She swallowed as she stepped out of the car, reaching back in to grab the neck of the wine bottle. She felt her stomach turn over as she stared up at Andrew’s house.

  She was wearing a yellow dress, her hair tied back. She’d got ready in the mirror in the apartment, pressing her lips together, smoothing the bags underneath her eyes as if she’d woken from the longest sleep. The scars on her face had seemed less livid as she traced them with one finger.

  He opened the door, distracted by something behind him, before taking her in. He had a two-day stubble and was wearing a jumper with a stain on the sleeve. His dishevelment gave her a little more confidence. She didn’t want to mess this up again. He seemed wrong-footed as she asked in a small voice, ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ Andrew said, standing back. ‘I’ll just get on some—’

  ‘Don’t do anything,’ she said, one hand on his arm. ‘I just want to talk.’

  RICHARD

  He stood up, confused, eyes red from the tears, mouth dry, head pounding; it was a moment before he realized where they were, that they had slept again, a few short hours. His voice was slurred with the shock and tiredness of the night before as he nudged Abigail awake. She was clutching the blanket, biting on her lip, her face pale. It was mid-morning now, a new day, but he felt frozen in the night before, the last night.

  She raised herself up into a sitting position, her chin on her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. They stayed like that for a moment, him looking down at her, strands of hair loose from her chignon. The sun was streaking in the air, dust dancing in strips. He felt grateful at least that she was there, that he had found her. He knelt down to sit on the blankets, folded her into a hug, exhaling slowly as they held each other.

  ‘We should get you back to your sister’s…’

  ‘I can’t go back.’

  She whispered the words into his chest, so, for a moment, Richard wondered if she’d actually spoken.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ He pulled away so he could look at her. She had a streak of mud on one cheek and he reached out to wipe at it with a thumb. ‘She’ll want to know you’re safe.’

  She didn’t look up at him but stared ahead, unseeing, at the fire, long dead in the grate. ‘I can’t.’

  Richard felt his lips move into a rounded question; her voice was barely there, a new expression settling on her face.

  ‘What if they never knew?’ she continued, biting her lip again, her eyes darting left to right and then up at him.

  The ferocity of her gaze forced him to move round and kneel in front of her, tipping her chin towards him. ‘If they never knew what? What are you talking about, Abigail?’

  Her whole face transformed, a blush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. She swallowed once, then took a nervous breath. ‘If they never knew I survived.’

  He reeled back on his heels, his voice sharper than intended. ‘What do you mean? Why?’

  She reached out to him, her expression desperate, as if she was starving and he was holding the last morsel of food. ‘Richard, please. I can’t go back.’

  He felt a surge of anger at this girl he thought he knew. Had he been mistaken? Why would she say such a thing?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he repeated, wanting to understand, feeling overwhelmed with everything that was happening, still not able to keep up.

  ‘My brother-in-law…’ She spoke in the smallest voice so that he was forced to lean forward. ‘He…’

  Richard must have made a noise because she looked up at him sharply. ‘He, well, I…’ She started wringing her hands, trying to get the words out.

  He was thinking the worst things, watching as her eyes flicked left to right, her mouth stumbling over the sentences.

  ‘He tried to force himself on me. He is… If I could leave, I could… I don’t want to go back there. They’ll think I’ve gone… I’ll be free.’

  He didn’t know what to say, his head too full of everything, aching, the light pressing on him. His world se
emed to be tilting, making him clutch the blankets to keep himself grounded. He thought of his father in the cottage, leading Mary down to him, leaving them there. His fist tightened, he closed his eyes, picturing them in the house, trapped, the water rising.

  Abigail was holding her breath and he looked over at her as if he was trying to recall who she was, what she’d been saying.

  ‘Please, I don’t want you to think… I didn’t want to tell you, but…’ She pleaded, brushing the back of his hand.

  He snatched his hand away, too many noises in his head. ‘Don’t, Abi. I can’t think now, I can’t.’

  She nodded, looking down, the exuberant girl who’d screamed at the river now broken by it all. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.’

  He hated to see her like that, her shoulders drooping, her eyes dulled. He reached a hand up to her face and she leant her cheek into his palm as he kissed her, for a brief second trying to believe that it was a normal kiss, that nothing dreadful had happened. He closed his eyes, made a promise. ‘It will be alright, Abi.’

  ‘Will it?’ she whispered, tears filling her eyes before she looked away.

  He stood, walked out into the garden, returned with a bucket of water. Moving to the butler’s sink, he splashed his face, rubbed at his neck and cheeks, feeling drops dampen his collar.

  ‘I need to go back down; I need to see if I can find them.’

  Abigail nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand as she sat in the nest of blankets on the floor.