The Last Night

by Cesca Major

  He walked over to the door, pausing as she called his name in a voice filled with a pain he recognized as his own. ‘Please try and find Mary.’

  He gulped as he looked back at her, trying to give her a reassuring smile but not managing it, then gently closed the door behind him.

  The village seemed worse in the harsh daylight, brighter and more exposing than the hours before, or perhaps the shock was wearing off. Even the glimpses as he picked his way down the path – the ground saturated, moss clinging to stone walls, reeking of the recent rain, droplets on leaves, puddles at every turn – didn’t make sense to him. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, his brain moving through the images he knew, the places that were so familiar to him now distorted, twisted, smashed. Some not even there.

  All across the village men with rolled-up shirtsleeves carried buckets, removing rocks, calling to each other, exclaiming over the crumpled wreckage of another automobile, a house, its contents gaping. In the sea beyond, the line of ghostly trees remained, propped up by their roots, splintered wood on the shore, the tide revealing more objects, masonry, bricks, upturned chairs, smashed bowls.

  There was a line of bodies under blankets, a small hand peeking from the side of one. Richard found himself staring at the little finger; a man slopped mud on his boots as he lingered, muttering an apology, not able to look away. He stood there until someone steered him gently back, gave him a bucket, a hand on his shoulder, words in his ear. Bill rubbing at his glasses as he looked at him, his own face grey, bags under his eyes.

  They worked in silence, filling their buckets, clambering over boulders, staring up as shouts in the distance indicated something else had been found.

  He spent an age clearing the area around the cottages, the foundations gone, Richard having to look back up at the valley to get his bearings, touching the ground where the houses had once been. His father was found later that day in amongst the slabs of brick, the rocks pulled up gently by Bill and a couple of other lads, carefully muttering to each other in low voices, one holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, his eyes on Richard, who felt his world temporarily stop turning. Bill next to him then, a hand on his shoulder again as he fought to hold back the tears building behind his eyes and in his throat. He had needed to see him, to know. He didn’t look like his dad anymore. Richard felt something lurch in his stomach, held up a hand to his mouth, grateful for the sheet they put over the body.

  The next morning he found himself heading down to the village again, in a trance, leaving Abigail sitting in the cottage, pacing up and down as she waited for him to return with news. More bodies found, no sign of Mary. An eleven-year-old who lived over a mile away had been found under the butcher’s slab on Watersmeet Road. They hadn’t located the body of his little brother. The tide swept in and out, crammed with broken wood, wheels of motor cars, misshapen metal. At times he felt completely lost, as if this was an entirely different place and his father was somewhere else, a village up the coastline, untouched.

  There were huge stone boulders that Richard craned his neck to look at. They entered his dreams: he was pushing at one hopelessly, imagining his father underneath it, pinned, sinking into the silt, the rock weighing him down. He woke to that image, moving around and around, until Abi held him, told him where he was, brought him back to her.

  Enough water to supply both villages for a century had hurtled down the two-river valley in a few short hours, destroying their idyllic home, the honeymooner’s paradise. The rivers had turned roads into streams and streams into rivers that flowed with furious energy down to the sea, taking everything in their path. There were dozens of mangled motor cars settled upside down and crooked. On the third day Richard stopped short, his breathing thick as he recognized the navy hood of a pram, its metal frame distorted and barely recognizable nearby, wheel-less. He sank to his knees, patting at the debris below it, not wanting to imagine what was hidden there.

  Uniformed men from various agencies roamed amongst fishermen and villagers. People stood in the midst of the chaos, carting debris, lifting buckets, picking through the wreckage, returning to salvage belongings from broken homes. A lot of movement and then stillness as they suddenly stopped and stared at the devastation, observing it as if for the first time, as if for a second they had forgotten, that it couldn’t have happened, then starting up again, filling another bucket load.

  He returned to the cottage every evening, Abigail waiting for him with questions, the cottage swept and tidied. He knew he should make her leave, should make her return to her sister, but as he folded her into his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So she stayed and they didn’t discuss it.

  On the third day there were rumours that the body of a young woman had been found further down the coast; a little girl had discovered it in the water that morning. There was talk of who it could be. She was being brought back for identification, worried relatives hoping the interminable wait for news might be over. There was a small crowd around the body when it was carried into the village on a stretcher. One man, keen to lay claim to a maid in his service, stepped forward to survey the body. Richard lingered at the edge of the group. A bloated arm, brown hair. Her flesh was exposed, shoes long gone, but Richard recognized the scrap of material found with her, the sleeve of a light pink blouse she’d been wearing that night.

  The man shook his head, stepped backwards, and Richard recognized Abigail’s sister, standing behind her husband, a startled bird. The husband moved forward, looking strangely out of place in a clean shirt and a bowler hat; he raised a thick eyebrow at her as he turned to steer her towards the blanket, one hand on the small of her back. She remained frozen, had to reach out for his arm at one point or she would have stumbled. Her pale lips were bitten down, her eyes the same shape as Abigail’s; she had the same slender neck but was somehow still, as if she were behind a pane of glass, whereas Abigail would have been vivid, breaking through it with her stare.

  The man asked for the blanket to be removed from the face. He tipped his head to one side, assessing it, as if he were about to buy a barrel of fish. Richard felt his fists curl into themselves as he stood there, wanting to launch himself over the rocks at him. That was the man.

  As if he had shouted his thoughts, he sensed Abigail’s sister glance over at him, start at the sight of him. She held his gaze, a steady look. Richard felt himself heat up, his skin itch. He should say something.

  ‘It’s not her.’ Her husband stepped backwards, interrupting Richard’s thoughts, his voice loud, bouncing off the debris, giving others hope that they might recognize the woman.

  ‘Wait.’ Abigail’s sister spoke quietly, her voice indistinct at first and then growing stronger. ‘I want to see.’

  Richard watched her closely, his feet planted, unable to move at all, knowing he should go to her but finding himself immobilized, his eyes unable to leave her.

  She walked forward, slowly, carefully, stumbling a little on the uneven ground, a handkerchief pressed into her mouth as she stared down at the body beneath the blankets. There was a beat and then she announced it in a quiet voice. ‘It’s her,’ she said, not looking at her husband but rather at the man with the clipboard.

  Richard saw her husband take her elbow in one hand, forcibly steer her away. ‘Woman’s mistaken,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not. It’s her,’ she said, and as she repeated it she looked over her shoulder, straight at Richard. ‘It’s Abigail. She’s dead. She’s gone.’ She held his gaze, urgency in her voice.

  Richard couldn’t look away, stared back at her, hearing the words as if from a great distance.

  Then there was movement; she pulled away, back towards the body, but her husband marched across, seized her arm again. ‘It’s not her. My wife’s overwrought, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

  The man holding the clipboard frowned, looked from one to the other. ‘
If you’re sure…’

  Abigail’s sister was muttering now, people’s eyes swivelling to the pair of them, voices in the crowd. Bill glanced up at Richard, a question on his lips as he searched his face. Her husband drew her away, his hand firm on her arm, his mouth set in a line.

  She looked back once, meeting Richard’s eye again. ‘She’s gone.’

  IRINA

  He had sounded surprised when she’d phoned him and asked if she could deliver the bureau to him personally. She told Andrew everything on the journey down and his jaw dropped when she explained where they were headed and who the client had turned out to be.

  They found the cottage reasonably easily, although they had to abandon the van in a nearby lane, a locked five-bar gate blocking their way.

  ‘Let’s check we’re right before we unload it,’ Andrew said, looking down the dirt track.

  The cottage sat a hundred yards or so along on the right, an oak tree at the entrance to it, the house itself on a cliff looking out over the village below. A patch of the moor was laid out to their left, the heather and grasses shifting in the sunlight, an endless palette of purples, greens and browns.

  He answered the door dressed in burgundy cords, a moth-eaten navy jumper and a faded yellow shirt, a walking stick in one hand. His green eyes crinkled as he ushered them both in, shaking Andrew’s hand and kissing Irina on the cheek.

  ‘It’s wonderful to meet you in the flesh,’ he said, his voice a curious mix of accents, part American and part something else she couldn’t place.

  ‘It’s good to meet you too,’ Irina said.

  ‘And you’ve come all this way to deliver it personally,’ he said, lifting an eyebrow.

  Andrew and Irina swapped a look, ‘Well… it has been a bit unusual.’

  ‘Unusual has it?’

  Irina didn’t think he looked surprised, more curious as he turned and called behind him, ‘I think you better come in.’

  They filed into a large room on the right: an enormous fireplace on one side, a neat stack of logs piled high, a square of rug in front of it, a battered leather sofa, an abandoned book on a side table. Across the room a kitchen counter, various utensils hanging from hooks, a sink beneath a window, herbs in a pot on the windowsill.

  ‘Please…’ He gestured to the sofa. ‘And would you like a drink?’

  They both refused, Irina perching on the edge of the seat in her eagerness to talk, Andrew relaxing into the sofa, a hand reaching to touch the small of her back.

  Richard lowered himself into an armchair opposite and looked at Irina with interest. ‘I should apologize for having been so hard to pin down. I did get your emails but all in a rush. I’ve been moving everything over from the States, travelling here and there, staying with children, and I’m pretty hopeless anyway when it comes to emails and things. So what is the great mystery?’

  Irina thought she might fall onto the carpet as she leant forward to look at him. ‘The bureau, I was wondering how it had come into your possession?’

  ‘It was my wife’s,’ Richard explained. ‘She bought it in New York; she loved to write. She wanted it restored, told me a month or so before she died that she wanted me to have it, to bring it here.’

  Irina sat back a little. ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized.’

  Richard held up a hand. ‘That’s OK. I’m looking forward to seeing it again, it reminds me of her.’

  ‘We found things.’ Irina blurted it out before she could think.

  Richard frowned. ‘Things?’

  ‘It had secret compartments; we found things inside it.’

  Richard’s eyebrows lifted and it was his turn to edge forward. ‘What things?’

  Irina twisted round, opened up her handbag and drew out the items, laying them carefully on the coffee table in front of her.

  Richard picked them up one by one, rotating the shell in his hand with a frown, stroking the feather, unfolding the handkerchief, tracing the letter ‘A’ with a finger, before turning to the brooch, staring at it for the longest time. His hand closed over it, ‘She… All this time.’

  Andrew had got up and she joined him, feeling the need to give Richard some privacy, something about his expression making her realize he should be alone. They stood looking out of the window over the butler’s sink, down to an overgrown garden, the sea glittering in the distance beyond. Irina was restless as she turned back around. ‘What an amazing view.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I’ve missed the place desperately: the village and the moors. I always wanted to come back, and Abi loved the sea.’ Richard said it without looking up, still gazing at the brooch.

  ‘I thought…’ Irina fell silent then, thrown by his use of the name, the woman she had convinced herself had died the night of the flood.

  Richard stared up at her. ‘You thought what?’

  ‘Well, Bill told me that Abigail… That she didn’t survive… in… in the flood.’

  ‘Yes.’ Richard settled back into his chair as Irina waited for more. ‘I need to go and see Bill, I’ve missed him.’ He tapped a finger to his teeth.

  ‘So, Abi, um… who was Abi?’ Irina asked, feeling Andrew tense next to her, just as keen to know.

  Richard pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece showing a woman with dark hair and a wide smile surrounded by children and grandchildren; in another she was standing next to a young girl with long brown hair dressed in a cap and gown. ‘My wife, Abigail. She’s there with our eldest, with Mary.’

  ‘Mary,’ Irina whispered, pulling the pile of letters out of her handbag. She leant forward to hand them to Richard. ‘But I don’t understand, did she write these to her?’

  Richard seemed taken aback now, his brow creasing as he took the pile from her and looked through each letter, turning them over, reading the words as if he were thirsty for knowledge.

  ‘I had no idea,’ he said after a long time, his eyes watery as he traced the words, lingered over the flamboyant signature. ‘She wrote to her, for all those years.’

  ‘But Mary looks so young…?’

  ‘Mary was named after Abi’s best friend. She… she wanted desperately to keep her memory alive.’ He wiped at his eyes. ‘All those years.’ He was staring at the ‘Lynton’ postcard.

  ‘Abi must have loved her, this friend.’

  Richard didn’t respond at first, had flipped over the postcard to see the two words on the back: ‘Forgive me’. When he finally answered there were fresh tears in his eyes. ‘Oh she did,’ he said. ‘She did. It was a terrible thing, but it was her way out of here.’

  ‘Way out?’ Irina asked, her turn to sound confused.

  Richard was nodding slowly, eyes still fixed on the postcard. ‘She had to leave, she couldn’t stay.’

  ‘So who was Mary?’ Irina asked. ‘Is she the Unknown Woman?’

  Richard looked over at her, a slow, crooked smile lighting up his face. ‘I suppose I better tell you the rest.’

  THE END

  Historical Note

  I was on holiday with my husband in the West Country and we decided to stop for a couple of days in Lynmouth. Walking through the streets, we noticed a museum and went in to investigate. I hadn’t heard of the Lynmouth flood before that moment, but immediately we were inside it was obvious it had had a catastrophic and lasting effect on the small seaside village. A scale model showed the buildings before the flood and newsreels from the 1950s were being played continuously.

  There was a plaque showing the names of all the victims of the flood. The same surnames sprang out at us. The details of one family – the Richards – seemed particularly upsetting: a couple and their two children, who were aged three years and three months respectively. At the bottom of the plaque was the simple line, ‘Unknown Woman’, a blank next to her age. I paused in front of it, feeling an overwhelming
sadness for this victim that no one had claimed or identified.

  Who was she? Why had she been in Lynmouth on the night of the flood? Why did no one know who she was? Had no one missed her?

  These questions were on a loop for the rest of the holiday and I knew I wanted to write her story.

  Why did it happen?

  Most reports state that the flood was caused by heavy rainfall due to low pressure over the Atlantic. This seems likely; there had been an exceptional amount of rain across the West Country that day, and Lynmouth had been flooded in previous centuries. Some had warned against building too many houses in certain areas of the popular village, anticipating that they could be affected by severe flooding.

  There is also a conspiracy theory about the disaster, which was explored in a BBC documentary in 2001. The theory holds that the flash-flooding was in fact due to Ministry of Defence experiments in rain-making. Project Cumulus was looking at ways of starting heavy storms to hinder enemy movement. This involved cloud-seeding – dropping dry ice into clouds to trigger storms. Supposedly the RAF had been running such experiments in southern England just days before the Lynmouth flood happened. According to the documentary, classified documents on the trials have gone missing. Survivors of the flood called for an inquiry, but this never happened. The Ministry of Defence denied that these experiments had taken place.

  The night of the flood

  On 15th August 1952 ninety million tons of rain fell on Exmoor. The topsoil, already saturated from terrible weather two weeks previously, could not take it and the water was channelled down both the West and East Lyn rivers, sweeping trees, bridges, boulders and other debris in its path. The two rivers merged and the water and debris tore through the picturesque village of Lynmouth, destroying buildings, cars and infrastructure. The official death toll was thirty-four.

  There are no photographs of the flood itself, largely because it happened in the hours of darkness. Locals state that it was already pitch black that day as early as 5.30 p.m., even though it was the middle of August. Others talk about the sky that afternoon – a disturbing bank of dark cloud tinged with red. There is no doubt that one of the most terrifying aspects of that night was the darkness; the village lost power around 7.30 p.m., when the hydro-electric plant faltered, and the only light came from candles and the constant flashes of lightning. One woman making her way through the village in search of safety ordered her children not to touch anything metal as they moved through the water.