Canvey Island (3 page)

I found their names on the blackboard. Missing. Len Turner. Lily Turner.

Women came looking for their husbands, children for their parents, but none of them were Mum or Dad. I stood by the door, checking the face of every person that came in.

A man with sweat and water on his stubble said he'd rescued a couple from the roof of their house. They had been holding on to the chimney with a sheet tied round it. The storm had dashed the husband's foot against the metal gutter until there was nothing left but bone; but still he held on to his wife.

Auntie Vi started talking to a man in an old raincoat, a dock porter who had tried to bail out his house with a two-gallon pail. He was drying out a pound note on the radiator.

‘It's all I've got left, love.'

He had thick oatmeal socks but no shoes. He padded away to the nearest chair and sat down. Then he rolled a cigarette.

The woman by the urn was telling the schoolteacher: ‘Hitler didn't get me in the war and Father Thames won't get me this time. I may have been bombed out but I'll never be washed out.'

Some of the other children were playing Clap Hands but I didn't want to join in.

Then I heard a voice calling to my aunt.

He wasn't wearing a jacket, just his shirt and braces, and he'd pushed up his sleeves so you could see the tattoos on his arms: the boat and the anchor, the mermaid's tail with the word ‘Lily'.

His trousers were wet from the knee down. He had rolled them
up to get out of the water and I could see the cuts to his white shins above the ripped socks. There was even a bruise that had begun to yellow. He looked smaller, his hair was flat and thin, and his skin was paler than I had ever seen it.

For the first time I wished he wasn't my father.

At first, I didn't know what everyone was asking. There were people shuffling all around us and I couldn't understand how none of them had been told. I thought everyone would have known. Vi said things like ‘Where have you been?' and ‘What has happened?' Martin asked, ‘Have you seen Mum?'

‘Where's George?' I said. ‘Is George all right?'

‘Never mind about George,' said Vi.

‘Where is he?' I asked.

‘He went for a walk.'

‘A walk?' I said. ‘In this?'

‘What happened, Dad?'

‘Where's Lily?' Vi asked but she said it so quickly I hardly had time to think of an answer. They weren't listening to me that well.

‘I found her.'

‘Thank God.'

Perhaps if I said nothing I could undo it all, I could go back to when we were getting ready to go dancing, when we were a family and were happy. If I said it aloud then it would have to be true.

Vi gave me a cup of tea but I didn't know what to do with it. I only knew that I had come to the place where I had to tell my story and I didn't want to tell it.

‘I think she was breathing,' I said. ‘They couldn't be sure even though they felt for a pulse. I thought I heard Lily say something but it must have been the wind. The waters had gone down, and she had either fallen or she had been too tired to go further. Either way, I could see the strength had left her.

‘Her clothes were torn, and she was wearing her nightdress, the one with the rose petals round the neck – you gave it to her, Vi – and there was blood on her forehead and elbow but it didn't look like blood. It was dark in the centre and yet the ridges to the wounds were almost pink and her lips were a blue I'd never seen before. And her skin was so white. You could almost see through it.

‘She was so cold but the doctor who was with me swore that she might still be alive. He said, “No one is dead until warm and dead.”

‘So we lifted her into the ambulance and covered her with blankets. I started rubbing her arms and her legs, and then I began to pump at her heart to get it going again. The ambulance man told me to stop and give her the kiss of life. I didn't understand what to do so he showed me. I hated him touching her, his breathing into her mouth.

‘She was beautiful, Vi; she was so beautiful.

‘Then he let me try and I found that I was blowing into Lily's mouth, but her lips were thin and hard and cold, and it didn't feel right, I was embarrassed, people shouldn't have been looking. I wanted everyone to go away and leave me so I could help her properly. I didn't like being watched, blowing into the mouth and pressing on the chest of a woman I couldn't believe was my wife any more.

‘Then the man told me to stop. “Enough,” I think he said, but he was so quiet, “that's enough, Mr Turner.”

‘He had been feeling for her pulse. Now he leant against her chest. When he did so I took her hand. It felt a bit warmer, and I thought she must have been coming back to life, and that there was hope. But the man said, “I'm sorry, Mr Turner.” That was all. He didn't say dead or anything.

‘Then he said he wasn't sure if we had done the right thing in moving her. Perhaps we had made her warm too quickly. Perhaps we had tried too hard and taken it all too fast. How can you try your best and make a mistake by doing it like that? I did what he said. I did everything he said. All I wanted was for my wife to live, for us to be together. I took off my jacket and put it over her. How can I have done too much or tried too hard?

‘The man from the ambulance kept on talking like it was his wife that had died, not mine. He kept babbling on, talking so much that
I wanted to punch him. He said that if we had made her warm where she was instead of moving her then we might have had a better chance. But the road was cold and wet. There were other people and there were the cars. What were we supposed to do?'

Vi began to cry, her whole body shaking, except it wasn't so much crying as something I had never heard before. She was weeping with everything: her shoulders, her chest and her legs, her whole body twitching.

But Martin didn't move. ‘Go on, Dad,' he said.

I stared forward, speaking into the space ahead of me because I didn't want to see either of them listening.

‘Then other men came,' I said. ‘And some women. They asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. It would help, they thought. “Well,” I said, “a cup of tea isn't going to make much difference.”

‘“Can't do any harm.”

‘“Haven't you done enough?” I said.

‘And then I felt ashamed I'd said that. It wasn't their fault, but I wanted to be on my own with Lily, say sorry to the girl, you understand. I didn't want posh women with cups of tea telling me I'd be all right soon enough.'

Dad put his hand on my knee. ‘You're just a boy.'

‘Where is she?' Auntie Vi asked.

Dad didn't answer. He didn't even look at her. Then he took out a cigarette. He felt for his matches but stopped. Everything he had was wet.

‘I'm sorry, son. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. It was too late; too terrible. Life is such a mess. It's one bloody bastard of a mess.'

‘I want to see her,' I said.

Dad held his cigarette as if there was something wrong with it. He couldn't understand how it would not dry out or why he could not light it.

‘I'm not sure if that's right,' he said.

‘I don't want to be here.'

Then Auntie Vi said, ‘Let him come.'

‘I don't know,' said Dad. ‘I don't know anything.'

We walked down towards the first-aid centre. A man was putting slates and chimney pots into a wheelbarrow. Across the fields, I could see corn and haystacks shattered. A cowman was crying. He was crouching down with dead cows all around him. For a moment, I thought the pools of water were all the tears he had shed.

A police klaxon sounded and I could see its headlamps through the fog. When we got to Jones's stores in Long Road I saw they'd put a placard on the stuffed animal outside: ‘Bear up. Canvey will rise again.'

The first-aid-centre men were smoking, stamping their feet in the cold, trying not to look at us. There was a sign beside them lying in the road.
Straight On for the Sea
.

‘Don't ask us,' their eyes said. ‘Don't make us tell you what's happened. It's nothing to do with us.'

Auntie Vi wiped her feet on the doormat but it was covered in so much mud that it stuck to her shoes and we had to wait while she scraped both in turn on the step. I hoped she would take longer because if she did then we wouldn't have to go in. There was still time. Something might happen that would change everything. Perhaps they'd identified the wrong body. Perhaps it had been a mistake.

I could see a trolley in the centre of the room with a sheet over it.

‘You ready?' Dad asked.

Auntie Vi nodded.

There was a man dressed in a green coat and I realised he was the only dry person I had seen that night. He had a sad face with wrinkles. I wanted to look at him rather than the trolley. He pulled back the sheet.

‘Oh, Lily,' said Auntie Vi.

Mum was a kind of creamy yellow I'd never seen before. At first I was almost relieved, thinking that the woman in front of me could not be her. There was a smell of stale perfume that reminded me of the time she had last been ill, the Sunday Dad had ruined the dinner. I remembered being frightened that she would never get better; that she would be ill in bed for ever, or that she might die and leave me alone and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

‘It's all right, son, it's all right,' my father was saying.

I don't think I had ever seen Mum asleep. She was always up first, or it was dark, or she was propped up in bed with pillows. She didn't look real or like my mother or anyone I had ever seen before. ‘Wake up, Mummy,' I said.

Auntie Vi was staring. ‘There's hardly a mark.'

I touched Mum's hand. It felt cold, like metal. She was colder than the air, the coldest thing in the room.

The next day we were taken by bus to a Southend hotel that must have been glad of the business. I'd never normally have stayed in such a place but we didn't have a choice. Martin shared a twin room with his father and George and I took the double next door. We had our meals early, at five o'clock to suit the landlady, until we persuaded her to put on separate sittings for the children. Then we could send Martin off with the other kids, eat later and have a few drinks on our own. It was nice to get a break from the boy. Most times, he looked at me as if he thought I was in some way responsible for Lily's death. Perhaps he had wanted me to die instead of his mother; but then at other times he came over all soppy and I knew I had to take her place.

Len kept going on and on about money and fishing, death and the flood, and then after a few drinks he would suddenly start laughing, a great shuntering train-like laugh that he could not stop,
aha-aha-aha aha-aha-aha
, until sometimes it turned into weeping. Gallows humour, I suppose.

‘I should have known, Vi,' he said. ‘I've always been good with the weather. If we'd come back sooner we might have saved her. If the bus hadn't taken so long, if George hadn't needed the toilet, if we hadn't gone in the first place … even then I could have got to her in time.'

I wanted to say to everyone, look, she was my sister as well as your wife and your mother, but it never was my turn to grieve.

As we drank Len started to blame other people. ‘It was that ambulance man. Telling me to move her and get her in the van. I
didn't know what was going on, Vi; nobody knew what they were doing.'

I tried to calm him down. ‘It was the flood, Len, an act of God, no one could do anything about it.'

‘No, Vi. God helps those who help themselves. We should have done more.'

‘But what, Len, what?'

I had to judge his moods and sometimes we had to wait until I'd got George settled and asleep before we could talk properly.

‘Perhaps we killed her, Vi,' he said, ‘perhaps we made it worse by going out and the world stopped and it's our fault and I've got to live with this and I'm not sure I ever will.'

‘I'll look after you,' I said. ‘I'm here.'

The only way I could manage was to think my sister was still alive and that none of this had ever happened.

I said my prayers in the hotel as Mum would have wanted but I couldn't see the point when she wasn't with us.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep …

I tried to imagine Mum singing, kissing me on the forehead and walking backwards out of the room. Six steps: two on the rug and four on the lino. Then the last look and the wave. I could still see her through half-closed eyes, keeping the door slightly ajar, leaving the light on in the hall.

And if I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take
.

I could hear people in the corridors, talking about how the flood had happened and wondering why no one had been warned. If they knew in Norfolk and in Suffolk that a storm would rip through their lives in a few hours, then why had there been no mention of it in Canvey?

At least in the war we knew the enemy … you heard about Ivy's little girl? They thought Linda was lost and yet she was sitting there, drawing away as if it had nothing to do with her … what about the boy? Don't worry about him: he'll be all right …

I wanted to wait until the sounds of the night had gone: the toilet flushing, doors opening and closing, the pull-cord on the bathroom light, on and off, off and on, the front door bolted, the last rattle of the pipes. I tried to identify each noise and every footstep: Uncle George's shuffle, Dad's cough, Auntie Vi's heels.

Dad came into the bedroom, pulled back the sheets and sighed as soon as he lay down. Sometimes he would nod off in his clothes. He turned away from the light and on to his side and then fell asleep without washing or cleaning his teeth. I didn't mind. I just didn't want him to snore. I didn't want there to be any noise at all, only the silence of the night when everyone had stopped. I thought that if everything was quiet then I might see Mum again. She would come and no one else would know.