Tideline (12 page)

‘You need to phone the Smythes and tell them we can’t make it on Thursday. Kit’s home and we’ll want to spend the evening together. But that invitation’s
long-standing so you’ll have to make an excuse.’

‘What invitation?’

‘The Smythes, their silver wedding party. It came just after New Year. It’s pinned to the noticeboard over my desk. You’d better do it the minute you put the phone
down.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No. You must check the security people can come this weekend while I’m home. The alarm has to be working when we put the house up for sale. You’ll have to find the number on
Google. Oh, and Sonia? If the cold weather continues you must keep the heating on, even when you’re out. We don’t want burst pipes. They could do with lagging but that can wait till
I’m back.’

‘Greg you know we haven’t agreed on the sale. We need to talk before you go racing ahead.’

There’s a tense silence on the line.

‘Right. I see. So we’re still at this point, are we? Well, if you’d just get those things done, we’ll discuss it on Thursday.’

When he’s gone, another memory sidles up, one that’s been curled up in the corners all these years, one I haven’t wanted to disturb from its catlike slumber. It’s been
uncovered by Greg’s commandeering voice.

Greg and me, standing outside our new house. Kit was one and a half. We were the perfect little family. I was twenty-five, Greg forty. He had just heard he’d got the professorial chair in
Norwich. We’d bought this house in a village in Norfolk and everything was in front of us. I stared at the house, a flint, double-fronted Victorian cottage, at the end of the high street.
There was even a rose bush climbing around the door. Beyond it was a new housing estate, still surrounded by orchards of apple trees covered in blossom. I was holding Kit in my arms. It was a
blustery day and some of the petals had blown off in the wind. Kit pointed to them with her chubby finger, tiny dimples appearing in the back of her hand. She said ‘snow’ and we both
laughed, finding everything she said amazing, miraculous, believing we’d borne a little genius. Greg held up the key, put his arm around his two girls, me and Kit, and kissed us each on the
cheek. And he stepped forward and opened the door to the first home we’d owned. The hallway was light and you could see right down to the back door into the garden. It was very attractive, it
was what we liked about it the moment the estate agent let us in. The view from the front door of the green and white and dappled sunlight in the garden. But at this moment, as Greg opened up our
new home for us, I had an overwhelming sense that I could not go in. I wanted to turn and run. Walking over that threshold, I felt that a heavily reinforced door was going to slam behind me and
that I’d never get out again. I smiled back at Greg anyway, kissed my little Kit on her fine, blow-away hair, and went through.

‘Welcome to our family home,’ Greg said, walking backwards, his arms wide, letting me and Kit follow. He led us to the sitting room, the last door on the left at the end of the
hallway, bright and light and not yet cluttered with all the paraphernalia we would come to gather over the years here. Kit’s travel cot was in the corner, with her little blanket and knitted
rabbit.

‘Put Kit in her cot,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘and come up to bed with me.’

I put Kit down, willing her not to settle so I wouldn’t have to go upstairs with Greg. But she lay and gurgled happily. Within minutes she had her thumb in her mouth and was humming the
way she did before falling asleep. I followed Greg up to our new bedroom at the back, overlooking the tarmac road that would soon be the main route through the new housing estate. Greg turned back
the covers on our freshly made bed. And I got into bed with him, and as I always did, I closed my eyes and thought of something else, anything other than where I was and who was with me.
Greg’s hand on me made my skin flinch, his breath in my face made me turn aside. I writhed away from him.

‘Oh Sonia,’ he gasped as I tried to wriggle free, and he pinned me down and started to breathe more quickly, his rasping breath harsh and too loud in my ears. In the end I let Greg
get on with it until it was over. When at last he’d finished he fell asleep and I turned over and cried into our new pillows.

When Helen asked me a while ago, ‘But why do you stay with a man you don’t enjoy going to bed with?’ I stared at her.

‘It’s not Greg,’ I said. ‘It’s anyone.’

‘But . . .’

‘Greg is the right husband for me in every other way. He’s clever, he earns a good living and, I suppose, he loves me.’

It’s only now I have Jez in my house that I remember what really desiring another person once felt like.

The onions soften and turn translucent in the butter as I start to make lunch in the kitchen. So Greg is coming home on Thursday morning! Then I will have to let Jez go on his
birthday after all. The thought of him vanishing from me on the very day he turns sixteen, the apex that stands between boy and manhood, fills me with a terrible sense of regret that I am afraid
will taunt me for years to come. If I don’t snatch the moment while I’ve got this last chance, it will be lost to me forever.

I go to the window and gaze at the river. As I look, a huge dark seagull lands on an orange buoy. The Clipper passes, churning the water in its wake so the buoy tosses and tips in the river, as
if attempting to throw the seagull off. But the big bird clings on to the buoy with impressive determination, rising and falling but not letting go.

It has happened before when I am utterly lost, when I no longer know which way to turn. The river throws up the answer.

Sonia

Unlike Greenwich Market, the one in Deptford sells things people actually need. I walk there along the river, leaning into the perishing wind, screwing my eyes tight against
its whip and sting. The skyscrapers on Canary Wharf seem closer than ever. They loom over me, steel grey. The glass is dark this morning, reflecting the stormy sky, the black water.

I’m an anomaly at the market. I am conscious of my lack of expertise compared to the women who prod sweet potatoes and mangoes, who measure out lengths of fabric with their eyes. People
sew around here. They buy thread and thimbles and elastic. They sell the results on other stalls, copies of high street fashion at a fraction of high street prices. And they talk. They sit in the
cafés and stand in doorways and squat on boxes at market stalls. They pop out from nearby flats to fill blue carrier bags with chilli and mouli and fresh meat.

I move straight to the DIY stall where nuts and screws and bolts are displayed in blue plastic baskets and a Bible lies open upon a pile of batteries. A woman consults the stallholder,
‘It’s not my thing, you see, DIY. Large or small heads? How should I know?’ She is holding a bag of screws in each hand. They laugh together, they seem to have all day.

I pick out a roll of tape.

‘Only £2.50 for that,’ the vendor tells me, and spotting my obvious ignorance asks what I intend to use it for.

‘I’m fixing a burst pipe,’ I mutter, and he laughs.

‘You’d be better off calling a plumber, though with the cold and the leaks all over London you’ll be lucky to find one. You should of lagged ’em,’ he says.
‘Bit late now. Though they say there’s more snow on the way. Here.’ He hands me a card. ‘My plumber mate. Try him. He can only say no.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘But I’ll take the duck tape anyway.’

‘It’s duc
t
tape,’ he says. ‘Lot of people make that mistake. Gorilla, Rhino, Gaffer. It’s all the same stuff basically. It’ll stick anything to anything,
darling.’

‘I’ll take a couple. Be handy to have them in,’ I say, as if I’m talking about tins of beans.

In the second-hand yard people scrape a living selling whatever they can. Old car seats. Worn bras. Wooden spoons. Broken keys. At a stall selling used DVDs I find two films for Jez.
The
Night of the Hunter
and
Double Indemnity
. I put them in the blue carrier with the duct tape and walk back towards Creek Road.

The shops along the high street are specific: Christine’s Pork, the Egg Shop, the Fish Shop, Lobo Halal Meat, the Religious Icons shop. I draw in the smell of fried breakfasts that wafts
out of the cafés. There’s a constant exchange of goods amongst what seems a merry throng of people. I feel excluded and envious of their sense of community as I pass the pound shops,
the hairdressers offering corn rows at special prices for children, the Pie and Mash shop, even the funeral parlour. The whole of London is constantly shifting, being knocked down and rebuilt. The
landscape of the river changes daily before my eyes. But Deptford High Street has managed so far, in its essence, to resist the bang and crash of change.

Back along Creek Road, past the billboards promising a new life experience this side of the river. Luxury apartments and cafés and gardens, they proclaim, will replace the decaying
wharves and disused refineries and crumbling abandoned footpaths.

I pop into Casbah records as I come back into Greenwich, and my hand lands immediately on the CD I want: ‘The Best of Tim Buckley’.

‘Open them.’

As well as his presents I’ve brought Jez coffee, satsumas I could not resist from a fruit stall, and almond croissants from Rhodes.

This has to be a good day. It has to stay lit up in his memory, radiating golden light. I sit next to him.

‘They don’t call it sweet sixteen for nothing,’ I say. ‘Very soon it’ll be gone. You as you are now, pffff!’

I’m ashamed to feel tears spring to my eyes. I look him up and down, from the top of his head to his toes. He’s got that expectant look on his face, almost as though he was waiting
for me to come to him, an innocent, but slightly insolent look.

He pulls the paper off the parcels. ‘“The Best of Tim Buckley”,’ he says. ‘Hey that’s cool. It’s the one I wanted. Oh, and some DVDs. Thanks,
Sonia.’ He looks at me and I can see he’s trying to smile but he’s in conflict.

‘Has Mum called yet? Has Helen?’

When he swallows I can hear the saliva stick, his mouth’s dry. He’s still worrying about getting home.

‘Don’t look so forlorn,’ I tell him. ‘You can listen to the CD, or watch a film. Look, I’ll put this on now. I’ve few things to do, but when I get back, we
can go.’

‘Go?’

‘Yes.’

‘So . . . I
am
leaving?’

‘You are.’

His eyes widen. Regain their shine. His facial muscles relax and the original beauty that has been somewhat lost under the veil of anxiety and pain from his ankle, returns to his face.
It’s a little hurtful.

‘Greg’s coming home soon. You can’t stay. I’m sorry. There won’t be room. You must collect up your stuff.’

‘So,’ he says. He can’t quite suppress the excitement that flickers in his face. I notice the side of his nose twitch.

‘It
is
some sort of surprise you’ve all been cooking up! You’re making out it’s because your husband’s coming home! You can stop pretending now.’ He leans his
head back comfortably on the pillows, sighs. ‘I
thought
you and Helen and Alicia were planning a surprise party for me! But I’m like, would you go to these extremes? It sounds sad now,
I know. I was scared there was something weird going on!’

‘Weird?’

‘Kind of . . . well you got to admit it looks a bit strange . . . the scarves, the locked door—’

‘Jez!’

‘Yeah, but then I thought but you’ve been beast too.’

‘Beast?’

‘Cool. Good to me, with the guitars, the food and wine and getting me contacts.’

‘Of course. I never wanted to frighten you, Jez.’

‘I know. I can see that now. It’s just – and I’ll tell Helen too – it all did seem a bit dodgy.’

That makes me feel dirty. I shake my head.

‘Don’t ever think things like that about me,’ I say. ‘Now listen. We just need a little time to prepare things. I’ll be back to get you. Enjoy the
morning.’

I leave him watching
The Night of the Hunter
and hurry down the alley.

Our garage is in a row of three, just along the alley from the River House, accessible by the side road that goes up to the high street. It backs on to the river, a thirty foot
drop below. The one tiny window, no more than a foot square, opens just wide enough to let some air in, but barely any light. It’s reinforced in that grid wire that makes me think of primary
school classroom doors. The garage smells of damp, dust, mildew. There won’t be time to clean it properly and the cobwebs are thick and old and full of dead spiders, hanging suspended in
their own webs. As I peer more closely I realize that they’re not whole spiders but just the husks, perfectly formed, as if the inner spider had got up and walked away, leaving an inside-out
skeleton of itself. I stare for some time at this phenomenon. Perfect replicas of themselves in their own webs.

One of the pieces of furniture I’ve left in here is a pine bed I never liked. It’s been in the garage since we returned from the country and is leaning up against the back wall, its
mattress protected from the damp by polythene. Once I’ve made a space by shifting the office furniture to the side, I pull it down and place it in the middle of the room. I leave the filing
cabinet and shelf units, the swivel chair and a pile of old vinyl records, so the room has the semblance of somewhere cosy, habitable. Kit’s old cot can stay too, it’s in pieces and
stacked up in the corner. But there are piles of tools, cans of spray paint, varnish, a ladder and gardening implements including a hoe, all of which I’ll have to get rid of or store
elsewhere.

I’m standing in the open doorway, surveying all this and trying to decide how best to shift the unwanted stuff when Betty from one of the houses round the corner walks by.

‘Having a clear out?’ she asks, her breath rising in a cloud of mist in the cold air.

‘I need to free up some space,’ I say, hoping by my terse tone to put her off any further conversation.

She watches me. I try to look busy.