Читать книгу The Drowning Pool - Syd Moore - Страница 11

When I woke I was moody and morose. Though I tried to perk myself up when I roused Alfie, I never really got rid of that shirty, melancholy the whole weekend. In fact it got worse.

I had a slight reprieve late Saturday morning (less of the melancholy, more of the shirtiness) when my sister, Lottie, and nephew, Thomas, turned up for a picnic at Leigh beach. Thomas was eight months older than Alfie and the boys got on very well together.

The sun was nearing its noon zenith when they arrived. My hangover had slowed me so I was still half dressed. Lottie made it clear that she wanted to spend no time inside. A true sun-worshipper, she insisted we packed a picnic lunch and got down to the beach as soon as possible. I tried not to sulk but my older sister’s assumed authority and unassailable competence always brought out the child in me. Lottie had always been more organized, more academic and wittier than anyone else. Leaving college with a first-class degree in English, and with an outstanding final term as an award-winning editor of the college mag, she dashed everyone’s expectations by turning her back on a promising career in journalism and established her own theatre company, which she ran for several years before a BBC head-hunter netted her. She gave up working for the BBC when she was pregnant with Thomas and now worked as a freelance consultant. In her spare time she was writing a trilogy of children’s books for a US publisher.

I examined her from beneath my mat of stringy uncombed fringe. In immaculate Capri pants and oversized black sunglasses, she resembled a sexy sixties siren.

‘Come on, Sarah. I want to get down to the beach before one. Let’s make the most of the sunshine.’ She swished her curtain of shiny black hair and winked. ‘Chop chop.’

I fingered my pyjama bottoms gingerly and told her to keep her hair on, then stomped upstairs while she made sandwiches for the four of us.

Outdoors the full impact of last night’s two (or was it three?) bottles of wine kicked in. My tongue was so absurdly dry I downed a litre bottle of water in ten minutes.

We wandered down the Broadway keeping one eye on the boys and another on the windows of the boutique shops and bursting cafés, stopping at the greengrocer’s that sold Alfie’s favourite ice creams, a soft, local recipe introduced to the area by a family of Italian ice-cream makers. We fetched the two 99’s and two colas and then went across the road into The Library Gardens.

Situated by St Clements church, off the main street, and right at the top of the hill the library gardens weren’t the geographical centre of town yet the small park felt like the heart of Leigh. A place where the different communities that existed in the town converged and relaxed: the lower gardens provided a meeting place for teenage gangs and novice smokers. The upper ground, with its compact playground area, had fostered many a friendship amongst young families. The actual gardens were the perfect place for old timers to take in the views across the estuary and down into the Old Town. There were lots of benches dotted around to do just that.

I told Lottie I could do with a rest so we took a seat between the herb garden and the red-brick walls of the Victorian rectory, now the library.

The sun was so strong now it scorched the skin on the crown of my head. The others had sun hats but I, of course, had forgotten mine so wrapped my scarf around my head.

‘You look like a bag lady,’ said Lottie. I made a face and stretched across her to adjust Alfie’s ice-cream-stained shirt.

This corner of the park had an aromatic garden for the blind. The air was thick with the citrus tang of catnip and meaty wafts of purple sage and rosemary. On other days I’d sit here with pleasure, but now the pungent earthy reek made me feel like I was roasting.

I suggested we move on so Lottie led the way through the park down into the Old Town.

It was almost high tide and the modest scrap of Leigh beach was crammed. Day-trippers and locals filled every square metre of sand with towels, blankets, buckets, spades, sandcastles, lilos and rapidly reddening flesh.

We made the decision to walk east along the towpath to the larger and less crowded beach at Chalkwell and saw off a mutiny from Thomas and Alfie with the shameless promise of more ice cream. I know you’re not meant to bribe kids but honestly, sometimes, it’s the only way. Plus Lottie was making sounds that she wanted to talk. Proper grown-up talk.

Her husband, David, had piled up some ludicrous debt and, although it was a dead cert their marriage would survive, Lottie was livid and bandying around words like ‘divorce’ and ‘separation’.

They say usually the thing that attracts you to your lover is what irritates the hell out of you in the end. I remembered how Lottie loved David’s easy generosity when she met him. Now look at the pair of them.

I’d never know if it would have gone that way with Josh for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve realized I’m not like other people so I’m not sure any of those generalizations really apply to me. Granted, physically, I look fairly human: two arms, two legs, average build, height, weight. Mousy hair, which I dye, sometimes auburn, occasionally red, currently brown. But psychologically and sociologically I really have no idea what makes other people tick. I don’t follow The X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing. In fact, I don’t watch TV. I didn’t get excited about my son’s first tooth, first word, first wet bed or bad dream. I don’t drink modestly and I don’t wear widow’s weeds. I achieved ten GCSE’s, five ‘A’ Levels, and have a good degree in music and education yet the majority of people think I’m thick on account of my estuarine accent. My IQ plunges with each dropped consonant.

Secondly, when the number 73 lost control at Newington Green and mangled Josh and his bike into its back left wheel, it robbed me of the chance to find all that stuff out.

I was so warped with shock at the time I never really got that it was game over. I kept wanting to turn around and ask him, ‘Can you believe this is happening? I mean, can you?’

So when they told us later that he didn’t feel anything, I just stared at them with my mouth open. They wanted a reaction but I couldn’t get it going so the policeman added, ‘It would have been too quick. He wouldn’t have had time to realize what was happening. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.’

And I did this weird thing, apparently, so his mum, Margaret, said. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me for it. I said, ‘Easy come, easy go.’

That’s when Margaret started hitting me and, by all accounts, the police had to intervene.

I don’t remember it, and I know it must have seemed heartless, but I can understand what I meant. Josh was easy: persistently mild and laid back. I have this enduring image of him, hunched over his laptop with headphones on. His straw-like gingery hair jutting out at odd angles, Paul Newman blue eyes closed, head nodding, mouth creeping into a dopey grin. Not stoned. Just happy. He loved his tunes, the pitches, chords, non-sequential effects, banging rhythms. Most of it bored me, but I used to make the right noises as if I totally loved his creations. He didn’t care anyway. If we’d been on the Titanic he would have packed me and Alfie off in a lifeboat and happily joined the orchestra. Nothing fazed Josh. And that’s what I liked about him when I first met him. Everyone at Stealth Records, where I used to work, used to flap like seals on speed if a taxi didn’t arrive on time or if a press release missed its deadline. But it was impossible to get a rise out of Josh. He’d just shrug and come out with some kind of non sequitur, giving the impression of confusion and/or low IQ, so the executives mostly left him alone.

He never said much. Even when we were married he wasn’t verbally expressive. But he’d write messages on Post-it notes and leave them around the flat and sometimes in my desk at work for me to find.

I loved it that he hadn’t got sucked into the utterly manic culture of Stealth, especially as, when I started, I got landed with a massive campaign and spent my first year spinning in a PR tiz. But on Friday afternoons, after the marketing meeting, I’d sneak off down to the studio and watch Josh work, not listening or paying much attention to the music but basking in the calm he radiated.

He was in constant demand for engineering even though, truth be told, he wasn’t the best. Josh was simply cool. He was cool in life and he was cool at the end. I was glad he felt nothing.

I didn’t either for the first week.

Then the rage and frustration came.

The pain was my connection for a long time. He had given it to me. It was all that was left attaching me to him, along with his name, the care of our son and an insurance policy that eventually paid off the mortgage on our flat.

I tried to keep things normal for Alfie but it was hard to live there with the constant expectation Josh would wheel his bike through the front door.

One day I found a Post-it in my jumper drawer. He must have hidden it months before. It read ‘I don’t tell you enough that I love you’.

It killed me.

I mean, it really, truly finished me off. The old Sarah died that day.

After the sobbing and puking and screaming I knew I couldn’t remain in the husk of my old life.

Josh had moved on and so must I.

So that was that.

I left the flat that night and returned to Essex to stay with my mum. The next day I put the flat on the market. Three months later Alfie and I moved into the house in Leigh-on-Sea.

For the most part it pleased me to live in Leigh. There was a sense of community, tradition. People knew each other and soon started to recognize me and Alfie. It was nice, different to London, although sometimes, I’ve got to say, I missed the cynicism, the illegal twenty-four-hour off-licences and the anonymity. Down here you couldn’t mention someone’s name without being overheard by their wife/husband/cousin/sister/brother-in-law/mum/best friend (delete as appropriate).

But the up side was that the grocer called you by your first name when he handed over your change, on Thursdays the Rag and Bone man drove down the street, the butcher saved you lardons on a Saturday, and the library would phone you to let you know that book you were discussing had arrived.

No, at that point in time, I didn’t mind Leigh at all.

We reached the beach and as I came out of my thoughts I heard Lottie saying ‘And then the credit card! Honestly, Sarah, I could have killed him.’

Remembering herself she apologized. ‘I’m sorry. Metaphorical and all that.’

I was used to it. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. But I was pleased when, once we’d set out the blanket and the picnic, Lottie took the boys off to get their sugary rewards.

Determined to enjoy a moment to myself I removed my sandals, rolled up my trousers and sauntered down to the sea.

The noise levels were more subdued here than at Leigh. The lazy rhythmic lap of the waves frothed about my ankles, warm and inviting. Out on the grey horizon a large transport tanker crept towards the North Sea.

I closed my eyes, lifted my head to the sun and breathed the salty air in deeply. The tension in my body started to dissipate.

‘Sarah.’

It was a low whisper, close to my ear. I opened my eyes and turned around. A quick scan of the beach revealed no one that I knew. I stood alone in the surf. On the beach I saw our blanket was empty. Lottie and the boys were still on their ice-cream expedition.

‘Sarah.’

A woman’s voice.

This time it seemed to come from my left but there were only two children determinedly building a wall against the encroaching tide. The voice was much older.

‘Sarah.’

Something drew my eyes down to look at the sand.

I froze.

Caught in the high beam of the one o’clock sun, my shadow barely stretched before me – a fat compact dwarf-like outline.

But beside it there was another shadow – the long blackened haze of a woman’s shape.

As I stared transfixed, small strands of shadow hair wisped out of what looked like a bonnet and fluttered in the breeze.

And then it came to me, like a forgotten memory or a dream, swamping me, taking me down.

Running aimlessly through a garden: hurtling, staggering, losing my footing in the loose earth, sprawling, staggering, rushing towards … no, no, not going towards, but running from something or someone. My sobs choke me and I feel the desperate strangling claustrophobia of misery, of utter desolation, entrapment. There is no hope. Then out of the garden up to the road. Slowing to an unsteady walk. Vision blurred. Panting. Wet face.

Clouds roll in over the heavens. Grey sky. Buildings the colour of slate give way to reveal the water surrounded by rushes. It is waiting for me, the Drowning Pool, my saviour, my haven. Take me.

Through the reeds, I descend deeper into the water’s embrace. Then from behind, a shout. ‘Sarah!’ A middle-aged man in an ochre jacket. Father. Panic, thrashing into the pool. No! I step backwards. Away. Wading further into the centre.

Take me.

The heavy drag of wet fabric makes me stumble. Water-drenched, my skirt billows out beneath me in the shallows.

My doom.

A foot catches the floating cloth and I am under, gulping the pond into my lungs, filling them, losing myself in the pool’s murky depths.

Take me to him.

Down, deeper into the blackness of death, swirling, searching for welcoming numbness.

Then suddenly fingers around the back of my neck, gripping my dress. Hands about my waist, heaving, lifting, bearing me through the water. Staggering, falling, up again. On the grass. The hardness of the road, mud under my head. Coughing water, air. Two faces above, father and another, a woman full of tears: Mother. Oh, Mother. Look what has become of me.

Beyond them, a crowd.

A woman in a black bonnet has stopped to stare. She nudges her gentleman companion. ‘Who is it there?’

A voice loud and booming. ‘’Tis the Sutton girl in the Drowning Pool.’

The woman clucks. ‘It wouldn’t take her, see. She floats.’

‘No, the water will not take her sort.’ A large man now, white beard, shabby frock coat. Fierce. ‘She cannot drown herself.’ He makes the sign of the cross.

Spittle on my feet.

‘Witch.’

‘Sarah!’ The voice cut through the scene like a blast of cold air. Familiar, shrill – Lottie.

‘Deaf as a bloody post. What are you doing? Standing there like a zombie? Your jeans are soaked.’ She was holding an ice cream to me. ‘I thought I may as well get one for us too.’

The sun was burning my back. The cheerful sound of beach pandemonium hit me again.

I was back.

The sea lapped at my knees.

The children to my left had retreated, their sea wall long defeated by the tide.

‘What’s up?’ Lottie grimaced at my stricken expression. ‘Did the tide creep up on you? Have you got a cossie underneath that? If not I think I’ve got a spare pair of shorts somewhere. Come on.’ Her sturdy ankles sank into the sand as she returned to the blanket.

I tumbled forwards out of the sea and sat down. My shadow mimicked me but it was alone.

What had just happened?

I touched the centre of my chest, lightly. It rose and fell in a super-quick rhythm. There was some pain but not of a physical kind. I had known this misery when I first lost Josh: I was cloaked in gloom, the feeling had followed me back from the dream.

What on earth was I doing to myself?

It must have been brought on by my earlier musings about Josh. I cursed and kicked up the sand with my foot.

I’d heard a phrase used once to describe this sort of thing. What was it called? Oh yes – a waking dream.

That must have been it.

Perhaps I still had a lot of alcohol in my system. I had certainly been knocking it back last night. The natural balance of my brain must be off. A sudden surge of the wrong chemical had churned up some morbid hallucination.

‘It’s the booze,’ I thought.

‘It’s the tumour,’ an inner demon said.

Or perhaps it was a side effect of cutting back the medication?

I’d seen a woman at Stealth Records come straight off lithium and go completely hat stand. One day she was striding through the atrium in a neat Chanel two-piece, barking orders at her p.a., the next she was barefoot and wandering the corridors. She went on sick leave and never came back.

I wasn’t going to go that way.

My hands were trembling so I clenched them tightly and took a deep breath in, held it, then blew out slowly. After several repetitions the shakes started to subside.

With some effort I took a step forwards. Plastering a bright smile onto my face, I returned to Lottie and the boys.

Alfie and Thomas were a way away. They had built a sandcastle and were using it as a backdrop to some as yet unwritten Spiderman episode featuring lots of explosions.

I sat down next to Lottie and licked my ice cream, trying to settle my nerves and ignore the aftershocks of the incident.

‘Sorry, Sarah. Couldn’t find the shorts. Must have left them at home.’ Lottie dabbed her hands with a wet wipe and offered me the pack.

‘No thanks.’ My cone trembled. ‘In a minute.’

‘What’s up, Sarah?’ Lottie’s smile was encouraging.

I contemplated her open, oval face, the dark glossy locks that curved around it, the slightly Roman line of her nose and her big loud mouth. A sensible and rather noble older sister, Charlotte Rose was a good woman. Strong too. Her broad shoulders had taken much of the burden when our dad died.

I took a breath. Now was the time. ‘I might have a brain tumour.’

The smile melted down her face.

‘But then again, I might not.’ I told her why.

She didn’t take it very well, so after I recounted most of what Doctor Cook had said, I omitted the hallucinations bit. ‘So what’s next? When do you get the hospital appointment?’ Lottie’s eyebrows knitted together. There she went – organizing, reorganizing, taking charge, planning, trying to contain her alarm.

I couldn’t remember. ‘I guess it’ll come in the post.’

‘Yes, but when?’

‘Soon.’

My big sister sighed and gazed out into the estuary. The tide had turned and some of the children were picking over the rock pools with buckets and fishing nets. Alfie and Thomas had abandoned their Spiderman game and were crouching over a dead crab. ‘Well, will you let me know?’

I nodded.

‘Have you told Mum?’

I shook my head. ‘No. There’s no point worrying her at this stage.’

‘OK.’ Lottie leant over, grabbed my free hand and rubbed it. ‘You know it’s probably nothing. Like the doctor said. But I’m glad you’re taking it seriously. I understand that you don’t want to tell Mum now but if something does …’ she trailed off and sent me this small, mournful smile. ‘You’ll be fine, I’m sure.’

I stuffed the remnants of the cone into my mouth and tried hard not to cry.

Lottie and Thomas came back to the house to clean up. After tea I opened a bottle of Spanish wine. I shared half of it with Lottie before David arrived to pick up his clan. He had a sheepish air about him, perhaps guessing that Lottie had confided in me. I did my best to be bright and jolly. Then Alfie chucked a hissy fit about Thomas packing up, and demanded his cousin stay for a sleepover. But it was gone seven so once Lottie and co. had beaten a hasty exit I plopped him briefly in the bath then sang him to sleep.

It was still early evening for me, and after the day I’d had, I didn’t want to be alone. I composed a message requesting company then texted Martha, Sharon and Corinne. I added John as an afterthought though the chances of him being allowed out were remote.

Downstairs I threw back the French doors and breathed in jasmine-soaked air. Though the dusky shadow of the house covered most of the back garden, the furthermost part was alight with the amber pink luminosity of high summer. The flower-boat swayed seductively in the soft evening breeze, lifting my spirits a little, which was just as well as at that moment my phone beeped several times: Martha was feeling the same as me but was also stranded in her home with kids and no babysitter. Corinne was in London and Sharon was on an internet date. Nothing from John, but then he didn’t monitor his phone religiously like the rest of us.

I grabbed the wine off the kitchen table and optimistically took two glasses to the hammock. There was something so comforting about its gentle rock that I soon let my eyes close. The worries of the day slipped far away.

About half-past ten I was woken into a moonlit garden by the bleep of the mobile in the pocket of my jeans. One text from a private gym offering me a membership trial. And one missed call: private number.

I dialled my voicemail. ‘You have one new message. Last message left at 12.01 a.m.’

Strange that it had only just notified me of the call almost twenty-two hours later. Although with the cliffs and the beach, the signal in these parts was quite often intermittent.

As I listened, I could hear hissing interference like choppy waves lurching high and low, similar to when someone has accidentally misdialled you and you can hear the sound of the phone jogging around in a jacket or handbag. Then there was a crashing sound and a bang. The roaring sound rose abruptly and then just before it cut out I heard a woman’s voice, muffled against the sibilant white noise.

‘Help me,’ she pleaded.

The tone was desperate, the texture of her voice rough and rasping. I mentally filed through a list of people who could have dialled my number at midnight last night. All my Leigh chicks were accounted for. Who had I left in the pub? Nancy? No, the voice was older. Sue? Pregnant Sue! But why would she phone me?

A thought flashed. Of course – check the call log. And that’s when I saw it. The last missed call at 12.01 yesterday night had been dialled from 01702 785471 – my own landline.

It didn’t make sense. I was home then. I’d got the cab around ten thirty, got rid of Giselle and had passed out by 11.15.

I played it again.

This time the voice was clearer, more disturbing.

‘Help me.’

I shivered.

The garden was in complete darkness now but I must have left a light on in the kitchen because I could see the phone sitting on the wall.

An uncomfortable thought was starting to form at the back of my mind but I managed to contain it and dropped out of the hammock.

I walked up the garden path towards the phone.

A crack on the windowpane stopped me rock still.

I eased my breathing and strained my ears.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked in warning.

A flutter of panic hit.

I didn’t want to look at the decking by the window. And yet I couldn’t help myself. Something was drawing me to the French doors.

Even though I kind of knew it would be there my eyes widened with shock as they absorbed the small, white, gleaming cockleshell.

I hugged myself, too frightened now to move closer. A strangled whistle sound wheezed in my throat.

The temperature had dropped to cold, almost frosty.

About the French doors the air began to crackle.

Draughts stirred, lifting and billowing the curtains at their sides.

A darkness beside them was thickening and warping. Something was coming, swirling into being – a shape, a dark mass.

Then I saw it clearly – the murky shade of a woman in a long gown, discarnate, shadowed with blacks and greys. I had the impression of dark curls snaking around the palest of faces like seaweed clinging to a corpse, a marbled neck and stained cotton dress. But it was just that – a notion. I didn’t see them with my eyes but with my mind, like my imagination was filling the contours within the depth of blackness.

There was the acrid smell of muddy sulphur and an unbearable feeling of loss.

For a long second it hovered there like a storm cloud.

Then a heartbeat later it was gone.