After Me Comes the Flood Read online

  The laughter made the pain in my head so fierce that the kitchen and the girl’s face were obscured by bright specks of light. I stopped suddenly and put my hand over my eyes and said carefully, ‘It’s just that my head hurts, you see, and my heart isn’t beating right––’ I clapped a hand to my chest as if I’d be able to force it back into its proper rhythm and said much too loudly, ‘After all I only wanted water for the car…’ When I tried to stand the ringing in my ears grew more persistent but also further away, as if it came from another room. The girl ran to my side and thrust herself under my arm and said, ‘I think I’d better take you upstairs, don’t you?’ I remember looking down at the top of her head and seeing her amber hair ringed with brightness where the lights in the ceiling struck it. It was so like a painted halo that it set me off laughing again, stopping me from speaking and saying she was mistaken, and that someone else must be on their way, perhaps was there already on the doorstep, waiting for her to come and fetch them in.

  Instead I let her lead me up a flight of stairs to a long corridor carpeted with thinning rugs, and it seemed to me that we passed a dozen doors before she paused at one and kicked it open, saying, ‘Here we are now, there you are – you can have a sleep.’ She pushed me into the room and closed the door behind me as if she were glad to have finally finished the task she’d been given, and I heard her running away down the hall.

  I stood swaying on the threshold and saw in front of me a narrow bed with a peeling white iron frame and a patchwork bedspread, an empty bookshelf, and a pair of windows that tapered to a point. In a corner of the room a narrow door stood half-open, and I could see through it a bathroom tiled in blue. From a plain oak frame propped in the corner a painted Puritan with a square white collar eyed me over his Bible, and beside him there was a wooden desk and chair. In a jug on a stool beside the bed a few flowers had used up their water and slumped on their stems, and as I watched one fell rustling to the floor. At the foot of the bed was a heap of boxes sealed with brown tape. There was a large white label on each lid, and the labels all bore the same name, and the name was mine.

  I don’t know what I did then – I only remember seeing my name over and over, and putting my thumbs to the pain in my eye sockets to try and push it away – but I must have collapsed on to the narrow bed and fallen at once into a deep sleep.

  Much later I was woken by more of that insistent ringing in my ears, but as I listened it became more and more distant until I realised it was coming from downstairs. It was like the ringing of a bell, tolling the same note, growing louder then fading until I couldn’t hear it any more. Then the single note became a peal and eventually a melody I half remembered, and I knew it wasn’t a bell after all but a piano, expertly and patiently played. I stood, feeling the blood drain from my head and into my fingertips, then went to the windows to see where I was. Immediately below me I saw a stone terrace, bordered by more of those dying roses, although someone must have been watering these and a few parchment-coloured flowers clung on. Around the edge of the terrace was a stone balustrade with pieces missing, so that the barrier to the lawn was broken. In the middle of the terrace I could see a sundial on a stone column, but when I leant closer to try and see how long I’d slept I saw its blade was crooked and told two times at once.

  This room overlooks land at the back of the house, and I couldn’t see the forest or the path I’d taken. Below me there’s a glasshouse and a terrace, then the dry lawn slopes downward for a hundred yards or so, and becomes a stretch of scrub where brambles and nettles have taken over. Beyond there (and I’ve never seen anything like it before) I could see a steep embankment rising to perhaps fifteen feet. Though all around it the lawn is parched and dry, the grass on the embankment is vivid green as though it’s found a source of water it’s too selfish to share. You could scramble up it, if you tried, although I don’t know what could be on the other side. On the right, almost out of view, I could make out a folly of a building: a little red-brick tower with an arched wooden door, and a yellow light high up on a crenellated roof. It’s this light that reaches me here, as bright as if someone’s behind me shining a torch on the page. It looks so out of place I half expect to see a pair of knights-at-arms come tumbling out, with the yellow light shining from the blades of their lances.

  While I stood at the window, wondering how far I’d strayed from my path and how long I’d have to walk before I found my car, someone knocked on the door. I jumped like a guilty child, then the knock came again, and the girl who’d brought me upstairs put her head slowly into the room. She’d put up her hair, and the effect of that lovely face seeming to float in the dark space behind the door was so strange it stopped me from speaking. She smiled at me and said, ‘Oh good, I’m glad you’re awake. Dinner’s ready. Are you better now? You look better. Come down, I’ve saved you a seat and everyone’s waiting.’

  It’s thirty years since I conquered my stammer, but it came back then, taking hold of my tongue so that none of the words I had ready (something like: You’ve been so kind, but really I think there’s been a mistake…) came out. While I stood stupidly mouthing at the air the girl in the doorway flung up her hand and reared away, because downstairs someone was calling her. She rolled her eyes at me and said, ‘I’d better go. I’ll see you down there – you know where to find us.’ Then she slammed the door and I was left alone again.

  I can’t remember the last time I felt anger: I can’t help thinking it’s a weakness I despise and pity. But the confusion and aimlessness that had dogged me all day vanished, and were replaced by a pure burst of fury. Here at last was a moment of perfect clarity: I must be the butt of an unkind joke. I imagined conspirators laughing in a room downstairs, my brother pouring them all wine; but recalling the boxes, with my name on each, the anger gave way to unease. My memory had never been trustworthy – was there some other plan I’d forgotten – did they know me, after all? I knelt at the foot of the bed and drew towards me a large leather bag, and the painted Puritan, spotting a sin, raised an eyebrow as I undid the straps.

  What did I expect to see – my own clothes pressed and folded, the books I’d lately been reading? My pulse leapt and I flinched as if something might have been waiting to take my hand – but there was nothing inside but clothes that smelt of another man’s sweat, and a few objects wrapped in plastic bags. A white label hung from the leather handle and I lifted it to the light and saw that it wasn’t my name written there as I had thought, but something as different as it was the same: JON COULES, in the thick ink of a felt-tipped pen. It was repeated over all the other boxes tumbled at the end of the bed, and at the sight of it the world settled around me: I felt as though I might be coming off a long sea trip to stand on solid ground. I wasn’t supposed to be here, of course I wasn’t – no-one wanted me and there was no reason I should stay.

  So I smoothed my hair, undid my tie and knotted it again, and went downstairs. The notes from the piano had stopped, and I could hear voices muddling in the easy way of people who’ve spoken so often they don’t need manners any more. There was the sound of cutlery thrown down, plates passed from hand to hand and bottles knocking against glass rims. Now and then someone laughed with a sound that wasn’t quite sincere, the sort that’s meant to please the teller of a tale, and I followed the laughter towards the darker end of the hall where a door stood open a little, and through which spilled out light and the scent of cooked meat. I could smell along with the meat my own sweat, and I knew I looked dishevelled and foolish. But I thought I’d despise myself if I turned like a coward and left without saying goodbye to the girl or explaining her kind mistake. So I drew in a breath that did nothing to settle my stomach, and pushed open the door.

  Seated at a long table five people went on talking and eating as though they hadn’t seen me come in. The table reflected the blue-grey paper on the walls, and the dim lights in the ceiling and the lamps on the sideboard were shaded in blue glass – it looked like they were dining underwater. Behind
the table a pair of glass doors blurred with the heat of their bodies overlooked the terrace I’d seen from my window, and I could make out the sundial’s slanted blade shining in the yellow light at the garden’s end. A big moth beat its wings against a lamp and set soft shadows moving on the walls, and a painting with colours darkened and cracked in pieces showed a bearded man with a clever shy face. He was sitting at a table holding a steel ruler and a pair of compasses so large they might have been a weapon, and another moth had settled on his painted hand. At the head of the table a man rather older than me sat in an oak chair like a bishop’s throne. A branched candlestick stuck up from the high back of the chair, and someone had only just blown out the candles, so that his head was wreathed in bluish smoke. He didn’t seem to notice, but sat staring at his plate and drumming his fingers on the table. He too had a long beard and was so like the painting on the wall that I kept looking from one to the other and wouldn’t have been surprised to see either of them turn to me and speak.

  The chairs on either side of him were empty, and to his left the girl who’d welcomed me in sat spreading butter thickly on a roll. The roll was hot, and melted butter ran into the crook of her elbow. She didn’t notice, or didn’t care, but went on chatting in an amiable inconsequential way I recognised as fondly as if I already knew her well. Another woman sat at the foot of the table with her back to me. She had thick grey hair fastened at the crown with a broken pencil. On the right of the man in the bishop’s chair, a tall boy with black curly hair so glossy it picked up the blue light of the lamps sat turned away from me. I remember thinking how fragile and white his neck looked, with the bone at the top of his spine casting a blue shadow. He was listening attentively to a grey-haired man who leant back in his chair with an indolence I immediately disliked. The man wore a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and he was inspecting the nails on his left hand and murmuring quietly. The table was covered with far more food than they could possibly have needed, on chipped platters showing blurred flowers like old stains, and there were several open bottles of wine.

  With my hand on the door I waited for someone to see me standing there, and the wait went on and on until I couldn’t bear it any more and shoved the door so that it knocked against an empty chair. Immediately they all fell silent: a knife was dropped and hastily snatched up and the moth paused mid-flight and turned to look at me. Then the girl with the amber hair stood and said, ‘Look, it’s John! Look everyone, he’s here!’ She dashed round the table, took my hand, and pulled me further into the room. And I couldn’t resist, of course – she smiled up at me as if she’d been waiting all day to have me there, as though I were something she wanted to show off. ‘I told you I’d look after him, didn’t I,’ she said. ‘Well I did, and here he is.’

  I think I said ‘Hello’, or ‘Good evening’, but before I could pull my arm away and begin to explain the older woman stood and turned to face me. She was very tall, so that her eyes were almost level with mine, and she came towards me with her arms outstretched. I found my hands going up to meet hers, not from any impulse of my own but as if she compelled them to her. She held onto me and said, in what was both a welcome and a chastisement: ‘Finally. You look pale – have you slept? Well – I’m Hester, of course.’

  I said, ‘Of course’, because it was expected and because she startled me. Her eyes were black and fiercely lit: I couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. It was like being put under a magnifying glass and inspected for flaws or virtues, and it made me flush more than ever and think how unfit those clear fine eyes were to the rest of her. I never think much about appearance, my own or anyone else’s, and I don’t think I’d ever thought of someone as ugly before. But for her it’s the only word that will do: everything about her seemed poorly assembled, as though she’d been put together from leftover pieces – her eyes set under a deeply lined forehead, her nose crooked like a child’s drawing of a witch, her skin thick and coarse. It looked to me as if she must have stolen her wonderful eyes from someone else. I didn’t notice her body then, but remember it now, her heaviness as she sat passing wine or getting up to look out of the glass doors – she was padded everywhere with flesh so there was no distinction between her shoulders and her waist, and had covered herself in a shabby dark blue dress. Her ankles were swollen in the heat and she wore ugly leather sandals with broken straps.

  I went on saying ‘Of course, of course’, letting her hold my hands, while she looked at me as though she knew what I was thinking and wasn’t hurt, but found it amusing. Then she pushed me towards a chair, and gesturing around the table said, ‘Clare you know of course. This is Elijah’ – the man in the high-backed chair nodded gravely and went on tapping at the table – ‘Have you met Walker? No? Walker, pour our guest a glass of wine. White, I think, John?’ I nodded. The grey-haired man leant forward rather slowly, and passed me a glass that was much too full. He gave me a disinterested look, shrugged faintly, and turned back to the boy beside him. Hester flung out her hand towards the boy and said, ‘Eve, my darling, remember your manners.’ Then she leant and whispered to me, ‘I do what I can with them all, but really…’ I took a sip of wine and the black-haired boy turned reluctantly from the man beside him to look at me. I spilt my wine, which was so cold on my shirt I shivered – it wasn’t a boy at all, but a young woman who must have cut her own hair in a fit of rage or boredom, because it stood out from her head in irregular curls, some of them clinging to the sheen of sweat on her forehead.

  She stood and reached across the table to shake my hand. Hers was as small as a child’s and her nails were dirty. She was very slender, and I could see how fine and sharp her bones were, with a thin covering of white skin glossy in the heat. In a voice on the verge of singing she said: ‘You must be hungry, John. Do sit, won’t you? And don’t let Walker frighten you: he will, you know – if he can.’ She gestured towards the man sitting next to her, who concealed a smile, then struck a match on the table’s edge and lit a cigarette.

  I think I said that yes, I was hungry; then straightened my shoulders, raised my voice, and prepared to explain their mistake. But from all sides hands appeared, passing me a plate piled with roast lamb and sliced tomatoes, and more wine, and torn pieces of bread that burnt my fingers, and the old stammer kept me quiet. Clare, the girl who’d brought me in, kept smiling as if I were a particular friend of hers that no-one had believed would come, and I couldn’t think how to get out of it without making her look foolish. I felt as if I’d tried to cross a small stream, sure I’d reach the bank in a stride or two, and suddenly found myself in a strong current, borne out to sea.

  Sometimes they spoke to me, saying, ‘Isn’t it better now, without the sun, and wouldn’t you be glad if it never rose again?’ or ‘The salt, John, would you mind?’, and then seemed to forget I was there. I remember it all in fragments: the black-haired young woman taking her companion’s cigarette and drawing so deeply her eyes ran, but refusing to cough; amber-haired Clare leaning her head on Hester’s shoulder and instantly sleeping; the tap-tap-tap of the older man’s fingers on the chair. Then I began to notice a sort of watchfulness, as though they were waiting for something to happen. Now and then the older woman looked up to the glass doors and then down at her plate with a frown. Once she saw me catch her out in an anxious glance and I believe she looked for a fraction of a second guilty, before passing me meat that had grown cold.

  A little later, as I was beginning to think with relief that I was dreaming, somebody else came in. He was young, no more than twenty-five, and I guessed from the colour of his hair and eyes that he was Clare’s brother. His clothes were wet, and he’d grazed the knuckles of his left hand. He looked weary but jubilant and said, ‘You know, I think it might be all right, after all… Maybe I’ve been wrong all this time and everything’s safe and sound…’ He stooped over his sister, his bright head touching hers, took her plate and began to finish off her meal, talking between mouthfuls about a water level somewhere and
house martins making their nests. Then the girl whispered into his ear, and gulping down a piece of bread he wiped his hand on his shirt and thrust it towards me. ‘Oh – didn’t see you there – turned up all right, then? I hope it’s not too much for you, shut up in here with us all…’ He gestured around the table and they all laughed, affectionately but also too loudly, as though they were indulging a child who’d spoken out of turn. I said that no, of course it wasn’t too much, and wondered why it was they all seemed to be straining towards him across the table, sometimes reaching out to touch him on the shoulder, or brush dust from his sleeve. Once the older woman came to crouch by his side, steadying herself on the table’s edge and saying: ‘What were you up to last night? I heard banging downstairs as though you were breaking up the furniture – I almost called the police!’ He looked up, baffled, as though she must have been talking to someone else, but she shrugged and squeezed his shoulder and said, ‘Ah well – no harm done.’ For a few moments he was silent and troubled; then he shook his head violently as though to clear it and asked, smiling, if there was more to eat.

  So it went on, I don’t know for how much longer, and when the wine was gone they drifted out into the garden. Only the older man stayed, sometimes turning with an anxious look towards the glass doors to the terrace where the young man stood with his arm around his sister’s shoulders.

  I ought to have roused myself then, and found courage or reason or whatever it was I’d been missing all day. But the drink made me slow and foolish, and I might have stayed all night at the threshold watching and listening, if a phone had not begun to ring just the other side of the door. Elijah seemed not to hear it, nor the others in the garden; it went on and on, the shrill alarm one of those old-fashioned phones that were only ever used for bad news.

  The sound of it brought on my headache again, and broke through the indolence that had settled on me with the heat and the wine. I got up and followed the sound to a low table at the foot of the stairs and stood looking down at the receiver waiting for someone to come running. Then it stopped, and the silence was so complete I heard the cat purring in another room. I sat on the bottom step and looked at the front door. The key was in the lock and on the other side was the road home, and there was no-one to see me leave. I began pulling myself to my feet – I knew I’d been foolish to stay as long as I had, and little better than a liar and a thief when you thought about it, taking their food and their kindness – then I realised that of course I was drunk – my head ached, my legs were slow and heavy. I could no more drive home than run there. I sat heavily against the stairs, jarring my spine against the step. Then the phone began to ring again, and with a sort of reflex action that had nothing to do with me I snatched it up and said, ‘Hello?’ At the other end someone was shouting. It was a bad line, from a mobile phone or a call-box, and I could hear traffic and noisy passers-by. A man’s voice said, ‘Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? Hester, is that you?’