Submersion (8 page)

We were ten, and Esther nine, on the day Jessie came by with a gift for me.

‘It’s a garage,’ he announced, carrying a bulky wooden construction in his arms.

He set it down on the lawn of our back garden and allowed me to get a good look. The build was simple and crude to an extent; open-fronted and consisting of two storeys, the garage was little more than a stripped-back doll’s house, with a steep slope in place of a staircase.

‘That’s for the cars to go up and down,’ Jessie explained, pulling a single car from his trouser pocket and demonstrating.

He had painted the whole thing a pale green, a detail that has always stuck in my head. Looking back, it was a clear attempt to make the item more appealing to me. You see, I had no interest playing with cars. I was a traditional girl and the contents of my toy box reflected this. But I loved Jessie, even back then, and his gift overwhelmed me all the same. I also felt compelled to return this gesture with more than just affection. So, I dashed in indoors, grabbed a few pennies from my purse and insisted we visit the shop that was just two doors down, at the corner of our road, to buy a handful of sweets.

Yes, you can go,
Mother had agreed, yet her eyes conveyed the constant fear that lived with us. The fear that
they
would come, and the fear of what
they
might take.
But be careful. Keep a look-out, Jessie.

We were gone no longer than ten minutes. I distinctly remember the flavour in my mouth when we came back and turned the corner into the garden again:
Black Jacks.
Jessie and I were eating
Black Jack
penny chews.

‘What have you done?’

The voice and words belonged to Jessie, full of horror and hurt.

He was talking to Esther, who stood before us, on the grass, adjacent to what had been Jessie’s pale green garage only minutes before. The garage had been broken apart and the seven flat sections of thin plywood that had formed its sides, floor and roof were scattered across the lawn like a disjointed path.

‘I’ve made stepping stones,’ Esther announced, a sweet, innocent, flat smile upon her face. She proceeded to demonstrate her new game by lightly skipping along the path of
stones.
‘It’s a game for three,’ she added, maintaining her cool, virtuous façade.

When I think back, that small act of destruction hurts deeper than any tiny bite from a dream; it still shocks me, too. It was so unexpected, as was the depth of the hurt in Jessie’s face. Oddly, I’ve never spoken to him about that day, despite the fact it features vibrantly in the tapestry of those early years. I guess it’s always been there, silently lurking in the room with us.

It wasn’t an isolated incident, either. Esther’s jealousy surfaced again, a little later in our lives, directly leading to the choices she made.

I followed the screaming from my bedroom, down the first and the second flights of stairs and out into the street, awkwardly hauling on my protective clothing and mask as I went. Outside, I could see Tristan wading out into the water, wearing nothing but his indoor clothes. The river-road was up to his waist and whatever he was heading towards must have borne some importance to him, as he didn’t seem to care what he was exposing his skin and lungs to. Eventually, I made out the reason for his unprotected dash – my nephew, Billy, stranded in the middle of the river, in one of our small boats. Seeing Billy instantly drew me to the source of the wailing that woke me: Esther and Aunt Penny. But that didn’t explain two key points: why wasn’t Billy rowing himself in and why had Tristan headed off so rashly.

Then I saw it: the body.

‘Bloody hell.’

I must have said it out-loud, as my presence was momentarily acknowledged by my sister and aunt, who turned to glance at me.

‘We need to get them back in, as soon as,’ Ronan was suddenly saying to me. When had he arrived?

‘Yes, yes,’ I told him and the look of horror on Aunt Penny’s face made me wonder if she thought Ronan included the body in his
them
, rather than just Tristan and the boy. ‘Tristan, have you got him?’ I called out, just to clarify.

As it turned out, Ronan had meant all three – no, we couldn’t leave Tristan or Billy out there, but we couldn’t leave the corpse, either.

‘You have got to be kidding me!’ Aunt Penny protested, moving very quickly back inside the house, as Billy and Tristan finally made it back on dry land. I watched her visibly shrink away from their wet clothing, as if even the smallest exposure would lead to an infection. ‘Over my dead body!’ she cried back to Ronan, who resisted the temptation of sarcasm.

‘It’s gotta come out of the water, though,’ he insisted and I suggested he tried Papa Harold’s, until the authorities could come and take it away. ‘I’ll ask him,’ he agreed, venturing to our neighbour’s house, in full protective gear.

Despite the shock of being woken by this sudden drama, it gave me a sense of purpose for a moment. I found a sense of strength in it. Esther and Aunt Penny remained rendered useless by their fears –
How long were they out in it? What if they’ve brought something into the house? Billy didn’t have his mask on – what if he swallowed something? Remember the Radley boy? Remember what happened to his lungs?

I told Esther in my most patient voice that Clay Radley had a respiratory disease and in my next breath told our sopping males: ‘Strip that lot off!’

Despite her fears for her son, Esther would not venture near my bathroom – where I had ushered Billy and Tristan – for the additional fear of seeing Tristan naked, I’m certain. I turned on the shower and insisted both got in. Despite a little embarrassment from Billy, both did strip, taking it in turns under the lukewarm spray. One soaped up, the other rinsed off. Any embarrassment was a luxury; despite the unnecessary excitement from my aunt and sister, they were right to fear the water. We did not know what was in it. We did not truly know its danger. Yes, it saved us from the dogs. After all, the flood came and the dogs went: a straightforward equation at that surface level. But everyone knows that dogs can swim. Soon after, the authorities issued warnings about the water’s safety, implying it had been treated to
keep us safe,
and the archaic protective gear was distributed to all households, along with our government-issue rowing boats. So, it was imperative we washed the river-road water off as soon and as thoroughly as we could.

Still, the height of Esther’s hysteria was not justified.

‘Keep scrubbing!’ I instructed. ‘You need to get into every corner. You need to get it all off, just in case.’

‘Can you get us some clothes?’ Tristan asked after a while. He reached for a towel, ready to get out. ‘Billy will need something too,’ he added.

I headed off, with my sister calling out in the background –
Is it all off? Has he been under there long enough? Are you sure? –
but I’d given up listening altogether. Let her fret; let her arrange a
service
; let her whatever…

In Tristan’s room I opened his drawers, pulled out boxer shorts, jeans and a t-shirt. Then I instinctively drifted into Elinor’s to find something suitable for Billy. Despite the two-year age gap, Billy wasn’t much smaller than my daughter.

And that’s where Tristan found me, fifteen minutes later: sat on the edge of Elinor’s bed, a plain white t-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms folded in my lap, the drawers of her clothes chest pulled open. He’d waited patiently enough, but eventually, he just had to wrap himself up in a towel and come looking.

And he knew exactly what to say and do.

‘Let me take that,’ I heard him say, taking the unisex clothes I had selected for Billy and the ones I had next to me on the bed for him. Then he left, closed the door.

Beyond it, I heard further shushing away. There was a little protest from Esther –
But she’s my sister, she’ll need me
– but Tristan simply moved them all along, told them to leave me be. ‘Here you go,’ I heard him tell Billy, moving the conversation on with a practical instruction, ‘try these on for size.’

I was moved by Tristan’s smooth yet firm authority. He was not fazed by Esther’s
if-you’re-not-family-you-don’t-count
attitude to things and, as a consequence, her objections carried little weight. I smiled to myself as I imagined the extent of her frustration. Tristan’s approach helped me make a decision of my own: I needed to stop pretending he was just my lodger. I was under no illusions that anyone still believed that story, and I’d only kept to it myself as a means to protect Elinor. But from what? I was no longer sure. In any case, what did it matter? Now that she was…

‘Missing,’ I heard myself say.

Missing. There you go. You got a bit more from me that you expected. More than I expected, too. But there you have it: my daughter Elinor is missing. And it’s been seven weeks since.
Since.

‘We need to get that stuff in soak,’ I told Tristan, returning to the bathroom, a further ten minutes after he’d left me in Elinor’s room.

Elinor who was missing – there, I’ve said it again. Faced it again. I guess this is my therapy?

‘Let’s get this bath filled up and we’ll do it in as big a load as the thing can manage.’

And so I went from the practical to the emotional, and then back again to the practical.

‘You okay?’ Tristan asked, when we had a moment to ourselves – he’d sent an eager-to-help Billy off to the kitchen in search of detergent.

‘It’s stored under the sink,’ I shouted out to the boy and then turned and nodded to Tristan. I didn’t
say –
I just nodded. It would do for now. And Tristan understood that was it. It was all I needed and all I could muster. ‘Right!’ I exclaimed, when Billy returned with a box of powder. ‘Sprinkle it into the water and swish it around.’

But Esther was not keen to have Billy help with the washing, terrified that, if he touched the river soaked clothes and protective gear, he would definitely be infected.

‘We’re all wearing rubber gloves!’ I cried with impatience, resisting the temptation to point out he’d already had a good soaking in the road, but she insisted her son withdraw.

‘I want him to rest now, he’s been through enough,’ she said, coming as close to the bathroom as her fear would allow.

The comment caught in my throat – did she truly believe that
this
was the real tragedy of late? But I repelled the urge to react.

‘As you like cleaning so much, Esther,’ Tristan suggested, unable to hold his own tongue, ‘maybe you’d like to take Billy’s place? It was him I took all those risks for, after all.’

If Esther’s comment caught in my throat, Tristan’s caught my breath. He was obviously more angered by Esther’s words than I imagined, as it was out of character for him to be quite so blunt. My sister wasn’t quite sure how to react, but his words definitely made her think.

‘I’ll just look after my son, if that’s ok,’ she said, her officious tone retreating. ‘I do appreciate it, Tristan. Come on, Billy. Is it alright if he rests in Elinor’s room?’

Yes,
I nodded, feeling a little sorry for her.

Tristan went to apologise to me for his outburst, but I rubbed his arm affectionately, another sign he understood:
there is no need,
it told him.

We finished off the job in hand in almost silence. Whilst involving Billy had added a touch of fun to the proceedings – and allowed my nephew to contribute to the clean-up of the drama he’d started – his absence didn’t slow us down, and my sister’s domestic expertise wasn’t required, either. The cleaning aspect was easy – we swished the snakes of fabric and rubber arms and legs around in the soapy bath water until we were satisfied they were clean, drained the small pool and filled it up again with clear, warm water, repeating the swishing.

‘That will have to do,’ I told Tristan, pulling the plug a second time.

The water had discoloured, suggesting we could do with another rinse, but clean water wasn’t something to be wasted. Whilst we were surrounded by floods, very little of it was purified and pumped into our homes. What we did receive was somehow rationed; don’t ask me how – Tristan could probably tell you. But shortly after the Great Drowning, the authorities had set to work, re-engineering our city to cope with the water, to control the damage. Yet, damage wasn’t the only thing they set out to control and clean water, like electricity, like media, like food, remained limited to us everyday people. It had been this way with most things, even in the years before the flood. As a child, I remember everything being in short-supply and tightly regulated.

I’d never got to the point where I’d used too much of it, but Esther had. Just the once, and she didn’t have a supply for three days.

She must have done her nut,
Tristan had laughed, wickedly, when I’d told him.

‘Okay,’ he agreed, as grimy water swirled away, gurgled down the pipes of our plumbing system. ‘So, next job – finding a place where all this can dry.’

That wasn’t quite so easy. Tristan rung it all out by hand and I took his and Billy’s clothes from him, placing them all on an airer I kept folded-up in the kitchen. But the protective gear that Billy had been wearing was rubber based and therefore difficult –
impossible
– to ring out. Eventually, Tristan hauled it over the pole that held the shower curtain over the bath, and let it drip. He kept vigil, mopping up the wet that gathered on the bathroom floor.