After Me Comes the Flood Read online

  The land through which these channels ran was piebald green and blue, covered in grasses and fat blades of samphire or broad patches of sea lavender, its flowers so fine it might have been a bluish mist settling at ankle height, rolling in from the sea. It was impossible to believe it could ever have been underwater, but here and there a fine dark lacework of seaweed lay on the tips of the grasses, hanging like cobwebs in a forgotten room.

  It was not a wholly unfamiliar scene – his brother had taken him to places like it often over the years. ‘These salt-flats are an eerie sort of place,’ Christopher had written to him, soon after he moved to the coast: ‘You couldn’t possibly stand alone out there under that massive sky and not feel something.’ On his first visit John had seen how empty it was, and how doleful, and felt nothing but the damp chill of a winter morning. That a man’s spirit could be brought low by nothing more than empty sky over empty land was absurd, he’d thought, and thumped his brother’s shoulder with cheerful force as they walked home.

  He came down from the raised shingle track onto a broad stretch of cracked mud on which white salt stains glittered. Above him the sky was bright and the small hard sun pricked at his scalp. From away to his left, deep in a channel he couldn’t see, a curlew began to sing with a bubbling call that might have come from underwater.

  He stooped to pick a head or two of sea lavender, wincing as the sturdy sharp stems rasped against the flesh in the crook of his fingers. The flowers were papery and dry, and held no scent. ‘All will be well,’ said John hopelessly to a herring gull dozing on a wooden boat nearby. ‘All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.’ It was plain the gull doubted this, and with a tired thrust of its wings it abandoned its wooden perch. John, who hadn’t noticed the boat when first coming down from the embankment path, walked curiously over. By far the largest of the crafts stranded on the marshes, it was an ugly, ill-proportioned, unpainted thing, with no rudder, mast or sail that he could see, as unseaworthy as a garden shed. A black stovepipe stuck up from the roof of the cabin, reaching down to a grimed oven that could just be seen through the centre of the boat’s three windows.

  Moving a little closer, setting his feet carefully on the few raised firm patches between the damp rivulets of mud, John peered in. The window on the left was half-open, and swayed now and then in the breeze, sending the reflected sun sliding back and forth over the smeared glass. Three pans, untidily stacked, sat on the stovetop; a clean towel hung on a wooden rail. On a shelf nailed over the stove was a tin can with its bright label turned to the wall, and a childish egg cup with a blue stripe. If he stood on tiptoe it was possible to see, in the centre of a pine table pushed under the window, a stack of blue napkins ironed into neat squares, and a magazine with half its cover in shade, and half bleached pale by the sun. The boat was stranded in a stretch of damp mud as pale as the cap of a mushroom – no-one could possibly reach it from the soft wet marshes without floundering. A set of tracks, plainly showing the paws of a curious dog, led halfway to the tilting hull and back again at the anxious call of its master. Where the drier marshes met the mud several wooden planks were stacked, caked with mud and in places draped with seaweed. They made a dry path out to the boat a short distance away, but there were no marks in the mud. John watched it awhile, half-expecting to see a face at the window, but there was only his own, thinner than he remembered it, and anxious under an untidy thatch of hair.

  Turning away, he returned to the path and followed it towards the empty horizon. Small furtive movements came from the grasses and sea lavender at his ankles, and sometimes a gull screamed out. Behind the stranded houseboat, beyond the embankment path, a line of pine trees showed black against the empty sky. Pigeons squabbled in the branches, bursting out of one tree and furiously into another. John watched them, peering through the black thicket. The sun raged at him – he felt it burning through the thin weave of his shirt and sending the blood to his head, where it beat implacably behind his eyes. A woman and child coming down the shingled path looked at him, startled, as they passed, the woman tugging at the boy’s hand to walk a little distance away from him. She had a pleasant soft face tanned by a week’s holiday; the boy was small, thin-legged, inquisitive, his green T-shirt still damp at the edges from the sea. Not sharing his mother’s suspicion, he eyed John frankly as he passed, taking him in with the same joyful interest he showed in the deep-cut channel and the listing boats.

  ‘Look, look,’ he said, seeing the window on the houseboat swing open and shut. ‘Is someone in there? Can we see? Do they live inside?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s too old. No-one lives there now.’

  The two stood side by side at the edge of the pool of mud, dampened by thin channels of rising water. ‘Yes they do, they do – look.’ The boy jumped up and down to see better. ‘They’ve had their dinner, look.’ The woman peered in. ‘A long time ago, maybe. There’s no-one there now.’

  ‘But I want to go inside!’ His voice rose with indignation.

  ‘Well. You can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  John had almost reached the path. Beside the wooden houseboat, the boy tugged thoughtfully at his T-shirt. ‘Because it isn’t mine?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s not ours, so we can’t go in.’ The woman smoothed his hair, then said: ‘Listen! Can you hear that funny sound again?’ She stooped to crouch beside the boy and turning him towards her put her head beside his. ‘Be quiet, and listen, there it is again!’

  The child cupped his hands behind his ears and pulled them comically forward, straining into the breeze. John heard it too: the mournful bubbling call not far away now, hidden somewhere in the marsh. ‘It’s a curlew,’ he said, not quite to himself. The boy heard him and turned sharply.

  ‘That man said something!’ he whispered loudly, looking at John with astonishment. The woman stood and turned to John, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘It’s a curlew,’ he said again apologetically. ‘You can tell because he sounds like he’s singing under the sea. Like there are bubbles coming out of his beak.’ He smiled at the boy. ‘Listen. Can you hear it?’ There was nothing for a while, then it came again, starting on a high fluting note and falling unevenly through a scale. ‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ said John, ‘because his beak turns down at the end, like this.’ He made a curving gesture, and the child glanced quickly at his mother – could this be true? – and back, wide-eyed, at John. ‘Watch out for it,’ he said. ‘It won’t fly very high. It’s just a brown old thing, really. Quite ordinary. You wouldn’t notice it, in a crowd.’ He smiled at them both and turned back to the path.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the woman, smiling uncertainly at him. Then she said, ‘Say thank you!’ and the boy did, twisting the green fabric of his T-shirt around a dirty thumb.

  When John was only a few feet along the embankment path he heard the call again, and the young child shouting. They’ve seen it, he thought, and hoped they’d not be disappointed.

  Late in the afternoon he found Hester sitting alone with her back to the rock, her hands clasped over her stomach. ‘You’ve been gone a long time. I was worried – it would be easy to get lost, out there. I did once.’ She gave the impression she’d done so only out of choice, and enjoyed every minute of it.

  ‘I heard curlews singing, and the tide coming in – look: I picked some sea lavender.’ He’d tied the bunch with a ribbon of grass, and blushed when he gave it to her.

  ‘John! How sweet you are, and the flowers won’t fade, you know – there are bunches in the glasshouse someone must have picked just when the last century turned. Sit down, won’t you, and have a drink with me – let’s see if it’s kept cold, all tombed up in the sand…’ John took a bottle of beer from her and sank into the meagre shade. There was no sign of the rising tide – the sea was as far away as ever, and hadn’t yet reached the long pool which was busy with children, and with old women who’d wet their feet and go no furthe
r.

  ‘You’re all alone here, then?’ He fell to wondering where Eve might have gone, and whether she’d kept the sun from scorching her skin. He thought of the curlew’s call, and wished she’d heard it too.

  ‘Clare’s over there’ – Hester jerked her head to the left, where he could see the girl stooping to the sand, her amber hair falling over her eyes – ‘collecting shells. She’s making a picture in the sand – a tree, I think – it’s not very good.’ She paused, scratched her head, and seemed about to speak, but changed her mind. ‘Alex has been swimming but he’s there now, can you see? He seems to have made a new friend.’ Not far away, between their disarrayed blankets and books and the shallow pool, Alex crouched and spoke to a child. Leaning forward John saw the green T-shirt and recognised the inquisitive boy from an hour or so before. ‘Oh yes, I spoke to him earlier on the marshes – his mother can’t be far away.’

  ‘Children adore Alex – they climb all over him like he’s a friendly dog.’ She watched the two with such pride and gentleness, it transformed her face: her fine eyes seemed to broaden and spread, pushing at the lines and furrows that coarsened her features, making her, for a brief moment, handsome as a healthy girl. Catching John’s eye, she flushed, and the effect fractured; she looked, he thought, rather astonished, guilty, as if she’d been caught out in a secret vice. ‘Here comes Clare,’ she said, rearing up on her knees and waving the bunch of drying sea lavender over her head: ‘Move along a little, John – the shadows are getting longer now, there’s plenty of room.’

  II

  Things have changed – I can feel it from here. My mother used to go out on to the doorstep at the end of summer and scent the air like a dog and say, ‘Change of season coming,’ and go back inside and put the kettle on as if she felt a chill. It was always hard to believe she could be right, but it would never be long before the leaves turned. I saw it happen yesterday: not just the end of the heatwave – though thank God, I think it’s coming – but one complete and final change, as if the tide’s going out and won’t ever come back again.

  In the house where I grew up, there was a painting in the dining room. I always took the same seat at the table (even now I’ll sit with my back to the window and with the wall to my right, if I can – anything else makes me uneasy), and I could see it as I ate. Years later I found a copy and meant to hang it in the shop, although I never did. The picture shows a woman in a black dress with a pale anxious face, sitting at a dinner table. You can just see a man sitting almost out of the frame, and he’s talking to her, but she isn’t listening – she’s looking straight out of the canvas. She has a small mouth, and it’s half-open, as if she’s waiting for someone and has just seen them coming. She has a glass of red wine in her hands, and on the table in front of her there’s a jug of wine so dark it looks black. There are lamps with red shades, and the flowers on the table are red, and red catches the silver candlesticks and the ice bucket on the white tablecloth. The whole painting is saturated with colour and light, and seeing it there was like finding a gap in the drab walls of the house, with something realer and more vivid just the other side. When I was young it used to frighten me – I didn’t think a painting should look at me like that. Sometimes I’d stand directly in front of it, and see my own reflected face laid over hers, and I would wonder which of us was painted, and who was watching whom.

  Everything that happened today brought that painting back to me as clearly as if it were hanging on the wall between the windows. I’ve been outside them all looking in, or thought I had; it has been as though I were holding them in my hands between the covers of a book, so that when I grow tired of them I can set them all down and find a better story elsewhere. But I begin to feel myself being drawn against my will – it’s as if one day I passed that painting and from the corner of my eye saw the woman in the black dress reaching out to give me a glass of wine.

  After I came back from walking on the salt-marsh I sat with Hester for a long time. The day I saw her first she’d looked at me as if I’d been numbers scribbled on a piece of paper that could be added up, and I felt as if she knew me then as well as anyone ever has, or is likely to. I wish I hadn’t described her as ugly. I’ve seen what happens to that face of hers when she looks at Alex – her bright dark eyes seem to refine and illuminate the rest of her, and make her beautiful.

  We sat together watching the emptying beach. I could see the child I’d spoken to, playing with Alex in the shallow pool between the rocks and the sea – I remembered wondering where his mother had gone, but by then it was late in the afternoon and I was tired, and my head had begun to ache. The pieces of rock where we sat soaked up the sun, and sent its heat into my blood and bones. Every time I opened my eyes I’d see Hester still sitting like Buddha with her legs crossed, patiently watching Alex playing with the child, and each time the tall boy with his hair lit amber by the sun and the child in his green T-shirt would be further away until we couldn’t hear them laughing and shrieking in the water any more. When I closed my eyes for the last time it must have been to sleep for a long while, because I was woken by the sound of footsteps thudding into the sand. At first I thought it was my own blood beating in my head but it grew nearer and louder, and when I looked up a woman was running towards us with her arms outspread, shouting. When she reached us she kicked up the sand and it went in my eyes, and for a moment I was blinded. I turned away and cleared them, and recognised her as the woman I’d last seen on the marshes, telling her son to thank the strange man who’d known the sound of a curlew.

  She’d been crying, and must have come a long way – sweat dripped from her forehead into her eyes and ran down with the tears and gathered into a stream under her chin. ‘Have you seen him?’ she was saying, ‘my boy – he’s in a green T-shirt – have you seen him? I’ve been looking and I can’t find him. He was with a man with red hair – did you see him?’ All of this came out between deep rasping breaths, and her eyes were so wide I could see the whites of them all around. I tried to get up but my legs had gone to sleep, and I had to brace myself against the rock. Hester took her by the shoulders and said, ‘Calm down sweetheart, calm down, stop and breathe. That’s right, we’ll find him, he won’t be far. That’s right; that’s right.’ She said those last words over and over until it was really just a soft and soothing hiss: ’ssri, ’ssri… Then the woman recognised me, and turned her body slightly to catch me in her distress. I felt it reach me – the pulse in my head began to beat harder and faster. The woman’s anguish was horrible – although she was calmer she shivered violently, and the skin was drawn tight across her cheekbones, making her seem to have been starved in the short space since I’d seen her last. Hester remained as she always was, a solid calm presence, still murmuring to the woman so that she too had to lower her voice, although she asked the same question over and over – ‘Have you seen him? Where’s he gone? Did you see him? Where’s he gone?’

  Hester questioned her, as if she had authority over her and the whole beach and everyone on it: the poor woman had fallen asleep, beaten into the shade by the sun and worn out by the wind. She’d watched her son from the corner of her eye as he played with a kind young man on a half-empty beach where surely no-one was ever lost or hurt. He was a talkative boy and trusting, but not stupid; sure he’d talk to strangers but not go anywhere with them; he knew better than that. She berated herself for having fallen asleep – ‘But he seemed so nice, just a young man, not much more than a boy himself really; they were just over there and I was so tired…’ While she was still talking, pleading partly for help and partly for forgiveness, Hester – still gripping the woman’s hands – turned to me and said, very calmly and quietly, ‘Can you see Alex?’

  My eyes were still sore from the sand and my vision was blurred, but I shaded them from the sun and scanned the beach back and forth two or three times. The light coming back from the hard-packed white sand was so dazzling I felt it pierce through to my already aching head, and it was hard to tell w
hat was heat-haze pooling on the beach, and where the sea began. I could see Clare crouching by her collected shells nearby, making spirals out of cockle shells and not noticing the tension that had suddenly bound us tightly to a stranger. Our three shadows reached her red plastic bucket and made it dark, but she didn’t look up. Further off a tall pair made thin and fragile by the distance walked slowly at the water’s edge. ‘I can’t see him.’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s there.’ My words went further and did more than I meant them to. The woman had given in to Hester’s soothing, but when she heard me she stiffened, became combative. ‘That man he was with, the young man with the red hair, he’s with you?’

  ‘He’s with me,’ said Hester.

  The other woman had been holding Hester’s hands, or letting her own be held, but when she heard this she pulled them out, and her eyes, which hadn’t left the other woman’s face, narrowed with sudden distrust. I felt the air change slightly as her anxiety flared into anger. She’d been angry before, but it had been turned inward and made into guilt. What I’d said gave her liberty to fling it at other targets. Hester stepped away from her and held up her hands like someone fending off a blow. The woman said ‘What…’ and shook her head violently. ‘What? He’s with you? Then…’ Stumbling on the sand, which must have burnt her bare feet, she moved quickly round the blankets and books and empty water bottles that staked our claim to the beach. ‘Ben?’ She pushed past me, not maliciously but because she couldn’t really see either of us any more. ‘Ben, are you here, can you hear me?’ She slid behind the black rocks we’d been leaning against and raised her voice. It was compressed by the rocks and I thought: He wouldn’t hear you, even if he was nearby, even if we were keeping him out of sight. ‘Answer me, darling. Mummy isn’t cross with you. Ben? Can you hear me?’