Into the Water 16 страница

‘I wanted … I wanted …’

I couldn’t tell him what I wanted, because what I wanted was for things to go back to the way they were. I wanted us to go back to the time when Katie and I were always together, when we spent every hour of every day with each other, when we swam in the river and no one looked at us and our bodies were our own. I wanted to go back to the time before we came up with that game, before we realized what we could do. But that’s only what I wanted. Katie didn’t. Katie liked being looked at. For her, the game wasn’t just a game, it was more. Right back at the beginning, when I first found out and we were arguing about it, she said to me, ‘You don’t know what it feels like, Lena. Can you imagine? To have someone want you so much that he’ll risk everything for you – like, everything. His job, his relationship, his freedom. You don’t understand what that feels like. ’

I could feel Henderson watching me, waiting for me to speak. I wanted to find a way to say it, to make him see that she was getting off not just on him but on her power over him. I’d have liked to be able to tell him that, to wipe that look off his face, the one that said he knew her and I didn’t, not really. But I couldn’t find the words just then, and in any case it wasn’t the whole story because no one could deny that she did love him.

There was a pain behind my eyes, a sharp pinch that told me I was about to cry again, and I stared down at the ground because I didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes, and I saw that lying in the dirt, right between my feet, there was a nail. It was a long one, three or four inches at least. I moved my foot slightly so that I was covering the tip of it, then I pressed down to raise up the other end.

‘You were just jealous, Lena, ’ Henderson said. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it? You always were. I think you were jealous of both of us, weren’t you? Of me, because she chose me, and of her, because I chose her. Neither of us wanted you. And so you made us pay. You and your mother, you …’

I let him talk, I let him spout his deluded bullshit, and I didn’t even care then that he was so wrong about everything, because all I could focus on was the tip of that nail, which I’d levered up with my foot. I slipped my hand under the table. Mark stopped talking.

‘You should never have been with her, ’ I said. I was looking behind him, over his shoulder, trying to distract him. ‘You know that. You must know that. ’

‘She loved me, and I loved her, completely. ’

‘You’re an adult! ’ I said, keeping my eye on the space behind him, and it worked – for a second he glanced over his shoulder and I let my arm slip lower between my legs, stretching out my fingers. Cold metal in my grasp, I straightened my back, prepared myself. ‘Do you really think it matters how you felt about her? You were her teacher. You’re twice her fucking age. You were the one who was supposed to do the right thing. ’

‘She loved me, ’ he said again, hangdog. Pathetic.

‘She was too young for you, ’ I said, gripping the shaft of the nail tightly in my fist. ‘She was too good for you. ’

I went for him, but I wasn’t quick enough. As I sprang to my feet, I caught my hand under the table, just for a second. Mark lunged at me, grabbing my left arm, yanking it as hard as he could, pulling me halfway across the table.

‘What are you doing? ’ He leaped to his feet, still holding on to me, and pulled me sideways, twisting my arm back behind me. I yelped with pain. ‘What are you doing? ’ he shouted, pushing my arm higher, opening my fist with his fingers. He took the nail from my hand and shoved me down on to the table, his hand in my hair, his body on top of mine. I felt the metal spike graze against my throat, the weight of him on top of me, just like how she must have felt him when they were together. Vomit came up to my throat and I spat it out and said, ‘She was too good for you! She was too good for you! ’ I said it again and again until he’d crushed the breath out of me.

Jules

A CLICKING SOUND. Click and hiss, click and hiss, then: ‘Oh. There you are. I let myself in, hope you don’t mind. ’

The old woman – the one with the purple hair and the black eyeliner, the one who claims to be a psychic, the one who shuffles around town spitting and cursing at people, the one who I’d seen just the day before, arguing with Louise in front of the house – she was sitting on the window seat, swinging her swollen calves back and forth.

‘I do mind! ’ I said loudly, trying not to show her that I’d been afraid, that I was still – stupidly, ridiculously – afraid of her. ‘I bloody do mind. What are you doing here? ’ Click and hiss, click and hiss. The lighter – the silver lighter with Libby’s initials engraved on it – she had it in her hand. ‘That’s … Where did you get that? That’s Nel’s lighter! ’ She shook her head. ‘It is! How did you get hold of that? Have you been in this house, taking things? Have you—’

She waved a fat, gaudily bejewelled hand at me. ‘Oh, calm down, will you? ’ She gave me a dirty brown smile. ‘Sit down. Sit down, Julia. ’ She pointed at the armchair in front of her. ‘Come and join me. ’

I was so taken aback that I obliged. I crossed the room and sat down in front of her while she shifted around in her seat. ‘Not very comfy this, is it? Could do with a bit more padding. Although some might say I’ve got enough upholstery of my own! ’ She chortled at her own joke.

‘What do you want? ’ I asked her. ‘Why do you have Nel’s lighter? ’

‘Not Nel’s, it’s not Nel’s, is it? See here, ’ she pointed to the engraving. ‘There, see? LS. ’

‘Yes, I know. LS, Libby Seeton. But it didn’t actually belong to Libby, did it? I don’t think they were manufacturing that particular sort of lighter in the seventeenth century. ’

Nickie cackled. ‘It’s not Libby’s! You thought LS was for Libby? No, no, no! This lighter belonged to Lauren. Lauren Townsend. Lauren used-to-be-Slater. ’

‘Lauren Slater? ’

‘That’s right! Lauren Slater, also Lauren Townsend. Your detective inspector’s old girl. ’

‘Sean’s mother? ’ I was thinking about the boy coming up the steps, the boy on the bridge. ‘The Lauren in the story is Sean Townsend’s mother? ’

‘That’s right. Jesus! You’re not the sharpest, are you? And it’s not a story, is it? Not just a story. Lauren Slater married Patrick Townsend. She had a son who she loved to bits and pieces. All hunky-dory. Only then, so the coppers would have us believe, she went and topped herself! ’ She leaned forward and grinned at me. ‘Not very likely, is it? I said so at the time, of course, but no one listens to me. ’

Was Sean really that boy? The one on the steps, the one who watched his mother fall, or didn’t watch his mother fall, depending on who you believed? Was that really true, not just something you made up, Nel? Lauren was the one who had the affair, the one who drank too much, the wanton one, the bad mother. Wasn’t that her story? Lauren was the one on whose page you wrote: Beckford is not a suicide spot. Beckford is a place to get rid of troublesome women. What is it that you were trying to tell me?

Nickie was still talking. ‘See? ’ she said, jabbing a finger at me. ‘See? This is what I mean. No one listens to me. You’re sitting there and I’m right here in front of you and you’re not even listening! ’

‘I am listening, I am. I just … I don’t understand. ’

She harrumphed. ‘Well, if you’d listen you would. This lighter, ’ click, hiss, ‘this belonged to Lauren, yes? You need to ask yourself, why’s your sister got it up there with her things? ’

‘Up there? So you have been in the house! You did take it, you … was it you? Have you been in the bathroom? Did you write something on the mirror? ’

‘Listen to me! ’ She hauled herself to her feet. ‘Don’t worry about that, that’s not important. ’ She took a step towards me, leaning forward, and clicked the lighter again, the flame flickering between us. She smelled of burned coffee and overblown roses. I leaned back, away from her old-woman scent.

‘You know what he used this for? ’ she said.

‘What who used it for? Sean? ’

‘No, you idiot. ’ She rolled her eyes at me and heaved herself back on to the window seat, which creaked painfully underneath her. ‘Patrick! The old man. He didn’t use it to light his smokes either. After his wife died, he took all her things – all her clothes and her paintings and everything she owned – and he put it out back and he burned it. Burned the lot. And this’ – she clicked the lighter one final time – ‘is what he used to start the fire. ’

‘OK, ’ I said, my patience wearing thin. ‘But I still don’t get it. Why did Nel have it? And why did you take it from her? ’

‘Questions, questions, ’ Nickie said with a smile. ‘Well. As to why I’ve got it, I needed something of hers, didn’t I? So’s I could speak to her properly. I used to hear her voice nice and clear, but … you know. Sometimes voices get muted, don’t they? ’

‘I’ve really no idea about that, ’ I said coldly.

‘Oh, get you! You don’t believe me? It’s not like you’d ever talk to the dead, is it? ’ She laughed knowingly and my scalp shrivelled. ‘I needed something to conjure with. Here! ’ She offered the lighter to me. ‘You can have it back. I could’ve sold it, couldn’t I? I could have taken all sorts and flogged them – your sister had some expensive things, didn’t she, jewellery and that? But I didn’t. ’

‘Very good of you. ’

She grinned. ‘On to the next question: why did your sister have that lighter? Well, I can’t say for sure. ’

My frustration got the better of me. ‘Really? ’ I sneered at her. ‘I thought you could talk to the spirits? I thought that was your thing? ’ I looked around the room. ‘Is she here now? Why don’t you just ask her directly? ’

‘It’s not that easy, is it? ’ she said, wounded. ‘I’ve been trying to raise her, but she’s gone silent. ’ Could have fooled me. ‘There’s no need to get sniffy. All I’m trying to do is help. All I’m trying to do is tell you—’

‘Well, tell me, then! ’ I snapped. ‘Spit it out! ’

‘Keep your hair on, ’ she said, lower lip stuck out, chins wobbling. ‘I was telling you, if only you’d listen. The lighter is Lauren’s, and Patrick had it last. And that’s what’s important. I don’t know why Nel had it, but her having it is the thing, see? She took it from him, perhaps, or maybe he gave it to her. In any case, it’s the important thing. Lauren is the important one. All this – your Nel – it’s not about poor Katie Whittaker or that silly teacher or Katie’s mum or any of that. It’s about Lauren, and Patrick. ’

I bit my lip. ‘How is this about them? ’

‘Well. ’ She shifted in her seat. ‘She was writing her stories about them, wasn’t she? And she got her story from Sean Townsend, because, after all, he was supposed to be a witness, wasn’t he? So she thought he was telling the truth, and why wouldn’t she? ’

‘Why wouldn’t he? I mean, you’re saying Sean lied about what happened to his mother? ’

She pursed her lips. ‘Have you met the old man? He’s a devil, he is, and I don’t mean in a good way. ’

‘So Sean lied about how his mother died because he’s afraid of his father? ’

Nickie shrugged. ‘I can’t say for sure. But here’s what I know: the story Nel heard – the first version, the one where Lauren runs off in the night and her husband and son go chasing after her – it wasn’t true. I told her as much. Because you see, my Jeannie – that’s my sister – she was around at the time. She was there. That night—’ Abruptly, she plunged her hand inside her coat and began fishing around. ‘Thing is, ’ she said, ‘I told your Nel our Jeannie’s story and Nel wrote it down. ’ She pulled out a sheaf of papers. I reached for them, but Nickie snatched them back.

‘Just a minute, ’ she said. ‘You’ve got to understand that this’ – she shook the pages at me – ‘is not the whole story. Because even though I told her the whole story, she wouldn’t write it all down. Stubborn woman, your sister. Part of the reason I liked her so much. So that’s when we had our little disagreement. ’ She settled back in her seat, swinging her legs more vigorously. ‘I told her about Jeannie, who was a policewoman back when Lauren died. ’ She coughed loudly. ‘Jeannie didn’t believe she went in without a push, because there was all sorts of other stuff going on, you see. She knew that Lauren’s old man was a devil and that he smacked her about and told stories about her meeting some fancy man up at Anne Ward’s place, even though no one had ever seen hide nor hair of such a man. That was supposed to be the reason, see? The bloke she was doing the dirty with, he’d run off and left her and she was upset about it, so she jumped. ’ Nickie waved a hand at me. ‘Nonsense. With a six-year-old at home? Nonsense. ’

‘Well, actually, ’ I said, ‘I think you’ll find that depression is a complicated thing—’

‘Pffft! ’ She silenced me with another wave of her hand. ‘There was no fancy man. None that anyone around here ever saw. You could ask my Jeannie about that, except for the fact that she’s dead and gone. And you know who did for her, don’t you? ’

When at last she stopped talking, I heard the water whispering in the quiet. ‘You’re saying that Patrick killed his wife, and that Nel knew about it? You’re saying that she wrote it down? ’

Nickie tutted crossly. ‘No! That’s what I’m telling you. She wrote down some things, but not other things, and that’s where we disagreed, because she was perfectly happy to write down the things Jeannie told me when she was still alive, but not the things Jeannie told me when she was dead. Which makes no sense at all. ’

‘Well …’

‘No sense at all. But you need to listen. And if you won’t listen to me, ’ she said, thrusting the pages towards me, ‘you can listen to your sister. Because he did for them. After a fashion. Patrick Townsend did for Lauren, and he did for our Jeannie, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s done for your Nel and all. ’

The Drowning Pool

Lauren, again, 1983

LAUREN WALKED OUT to Anne Ward’s cottage. She went there more and more often these days – it was peaceful in a way that nowhere else in Beckford seemed to be. She felt an odd sort of kinship with poor Anne. She, too, was locked into a loveless marriage with a man who couldn’t stand her. Here, Lauren could swim and smoke and read and not be bothered by anyone. Usually.

One morning, there were two women out walking. She recognized them: a policewoman, Jeannie, a stout WPC with a ruddy face, and her sister, Nickie, the one who spoke to the dead. Lauren rather liked Nickie. She was funny and seemed kind. Even if she was a con artist.

Jeannie called out to her and Lauren waved in a dismissive way that she hoped would see them off. Usually she would have gone over to chat. But her face was a mess and she wasn’t in the mood to explain.

She went for a swim. She was conscious of doing things one final time: one last walk, one last smoke, one last kiss of her son’s pale forehead, one last dip in the river (next-to-last). As she slipped under the water, she wondered if this was how it would be, whether she would feel anything. She wondered where all her fight had gone.

It was Jeannie who arrived at the river first. She’d been at the station watching the storm when the call came: Patrick Townsend had been panicking and incoherent, shouting something over the radio about his wife. His wife and the Drowning Pool. When Jeannie got there, the boy was under the trees, his head on his knees. At first she thought he was asleep, but when he looked up his eyes were wide and black.

‘Sean, ’ she said, pulling off her coat and wrapping it around him. He was blue-white and shaking, his pyjamas sodden, his bare feet caked in mud. ‘What happened? ’

‘Mummy’s in the water, ’ he said. ‘I’m to stay here until he comes back. ’

‘Who? Your father? Where’s your father? ’

Sean disentangled one skinny arm from the coat and pointed behind her, and Jeannie saw Patrick dragging himself on to the bank, his breath coming in sobs, his face twisted with agony.

Jeannie went to him. ‘Sir, I … The ambulance is on its way, ETA four minutes now—’

‘Too late, ’ Patrick said, shaking his head. ‘I was too late. She’s gone. ’

Others arrived: paramedics and uniforms and one or two senior detectives. Sean had got to his feet; with Jeannie’s coat wrapped around him like a cape, he clung to his father.

‘Could you take him home? ’ one of the other detectives said to her.

The boy began to cry. ‘Please. No. I don’t want to. I don’t want to go. ’

Patrick said, ‘Jeannie, could you take him to your place? He’s frightened and he doesn’t want to go home. ’

Patrick kneeled in the mud, holding his son, cradling his head, whispering in his ear. By the time he stood, the boy seemed calm and docile. He slipped his hand into Jeannie’s, trotting along beside her without looking back.

Back at her flat, Jeannie got Sean out of his wet things. She wrapped him up in a blanket and made cheese on toast. Sean ate, quietly and carefully, leaning forward over the plate so as not to drop crumbs. When he was finished, he asked, ‘Is Mum going to be all right? ’

Jeannie busied herself with clearing away the plates. ‘Are you warm enough, Sean? ’ she asked him.

‘I’m OK. ’

Jeannie made cups of tea and gave them two sugars each. ‘Do you want to tell me what happened, Sean? ’ she asked, and he shook his head. ‘No? How did you get down to the river? You were terribly muddy. ’

‘We went in the car, but I fell over on the path, ’ he said.

‘OK. Did your dad drive you there, then? Or was it your mum? ’

‘We all went together, ’ Sean said.

‘All of you? ’

Sean’s face crumpled. ‘There was a storm when I woke up, it was very loud, and there were funny noises in the kitchen. ’

‘What sort of funny noises? ’

‘Like … like a dog makes, when it’s sad. ’

‘Like a whimper? ’

Sean nodded. ‘But we don’t have a dog because I’m not allowed. Dad says I won’t look after it properly and it’ll be just another thing for him to do. ’ He sipped his tea and wiped his eyes. ‘I didn’t want to be by myself because of the storm. So Dad put me in the car. ’

‘And your mum? ’

He frowned. ‘Well. She was in the river and I had to wait under the trees. I’m not supposed to talk about it. ’

‘What do you mean, Sean? What do you mean, not supposed to talk about it? ’

He shook his head and shrugged, and didn’t say another word.

Sean

HOWICK. NEAR CRASTER. Not so much history repeating itself as playing games with me. It’s not far from Beckford, not much more than an hour’s drive, but I never go. I don’t go to the beach or the castle, I’ve never been to eat the famous kippers from the famous smokehouse. That was my mother’s thing, my mother’s wish. My father never took me, and now I never go.

When Tracey told me where the house was, where I would have to go, I felt moved. I felt guilty. I felt the way I had when I thought about my mother’s promise of a birthday treat, the one I’d rejected in favour of the Tower of London. If I hadn’t been so ungrateful, if I’d said I wanted to go with her to the beach, to the castle, would she have stayed? Would things have turned out differently?

That never-to-be-taken trip was one of many subjects that occupied me after my mother died, when my whole being was consumed with constructing a new world, an alternate reality in which she did not have to die. If we had taken the trip to Craster, if I had cleaned my room when I was told, if I hadn’t muddied my new school satchel when I went swimming downriver, if I’d listened to my father and hadn’t disobeyed him so often. Or, later, I wondered whether perhaps I shouldn’t have listened to my father, perhaps I should have disobeyed him, perhaps I should have stayed up late that night instead of going to bed. Perhaps then I might have been able to persuade her not to go.

None of my alternative scenarios did the trick, and eventually, some years later, I came to understand that there was nothing I could have done. What my mother wanted was not for me to do something, it was for someone else to do something – or not do something: what she wanted was for the man she loved, the man she met in secret, the man with whom she’d been betraying my father, not to leave her. This man was unseen, unnamed. He was a phantom, our phantom – mine and my father’s. He gave us the why, he gave us some measure of relief: it wasn’t our fault. (It was his, or it was hers, theirs together, my traitorous mother and her lover. We couldn’t have done any better, she just didn’t love us enough. ) He gave us a way to get up in the morning, a way to go on.

And then Nel came along.

When she first came to the house, she asked for my father. She wanted to talk to him about my mother’s death. He wasn’t there that day and neither was I, so she spoke to Helen, who gave her short shrift. Not only will Patrick not speak to you, Helen told her, but he won’t appreciate the intrusion. Nor will Sean, nor any of us. It is private, Helen said, and it is past.

Nel ignored her and approached Dad anyway. His reaction intrigued her. He wasn’t angry, as she might have expected him to be; he didn’t tell her it was too painful to talk about, that he couldn’t bear to go over all that again. He said there was nothing to talk about. Nothing happened. That’s what he said to her. Nothing happened.

So, finally, she came to me. It was the middle of summer. I’d had a meeting at the station in Beckford and when I came out I found her leaning against my car. She was wearing a dress so long it swept the floor, leather sandals on suntanned feet, bright-blue polish on her toes. I’d seen her around before then, I’d noticed her – she was beautiful, hard not to notice. But I’d never until then seen her up close. I’d never realized how green her eyes were, how they gave her this look of otherness. Like she was not quite of this world, certainly not of this place. She was too exotic by half.

She told me what my father had said to her, that nothing happened, and she asked me, ‘Is that how you feel, too? ’ I told her he didn’t mean that, he didn’t really mean nothing happened. He just meant that we don’t talk about it, that it was behind us. We’d put it behind us.

‘Well, of course you have, ’ she said, smiling at me. ‘And I understand, but I’m working on this project, you see, a book, and maybe an exhibition, too, and I—’

‘No, ’ I told her. ‘I mean, I know what you’re doing but I – we – can’t be a part of all that. It’s shameful. ’

She drew back slightly, but her smile remained. ‘Shameful? What an odd word to use. What is it that’s shameful? ’

‘It’s shameful to us, ’ I said. ‘To him. ’ (To us or to him, I don’t remember which of these I said. )

‘Oh. ’ The smile fell from her face then, she looked troubled, concerned. ‘No. It’s not … no. It’s not shameful. I don’t think anyone thinks like that any longer, do they? ’

‘He does. ’

‘Please, ’ she said, ‘won’t you talk to me? ’

I think I must have turned away from her, because she put her hand on my arm. I looked down and I saw the silver rings on her fingers and the bracelet on her arm and the chipped blue polish on her fingers. ‘Please, Mr Townsend. Sean. I’ve wanted to talk to you about this for such a long time. ’

She was smiling again. Her way of addressing me, direct and intimate, made it impossible for me to refuse her. I knew then that I was in trouble, that she was trouble, the sort of trouble I’d been waiting for my whole adult life.

I agreed to tell her what I remembered about the night of my mother’s death. I said I would meet her at her home, at the Mill House. I asked her to keep this meeting private, because it would upset my father, it would upset my wife. She flinched at wife, and smiled again, and we both knew then where it was going. The first time I went to talk to her we didn’t talk at all.

So I had to go back. I kept going back to her and we kept not talking. I would spend an hour with her, or two, but when I left her it felt as though it had been days. I worried sometimes that I had drifted and lost time. I do that, occasionally. My father calls it absenting myself, as though it’s something I do on purpose, something I can control, but it isn’t. I’ve always done it, ever since childhood: one moment I’m there, and then I’m not. I don’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes, when I’ve drifted away, I become aware of it, and sometimes I can bring myself back – I taught myself a long time ago: I touch the scar on my wrist. It usually works. Not always.

I didn’t get around to telling her the story, not at the beginning. She pressed me, but I found her pleasingly easy to distract. I imagined that she was falling in love with me and that we would leave, she and Lena and I, we would uproot ourselves, leave the village, leave the country. I imagined that I would finally be allowed to forget. I imagined that Helen would not mourn me, that she would move on quickly to someone better suited to her steady goodness. I imagined that my father would die in his sleep.

She teased the story out of me, strand by strand, and it was clear to me that she was disappointed. It wasn’t the story she wanted to hear. She wanted the myth, the horror story, she wanted the boy who watched. I realized then that her approaching my father had been the starter: I was to be the main course. I was to be the heart of her project, because that was how it had started for her, with Libby and then with me.

She coaxed things out of me that I didn’t want to tell her. I knew that I should stop, but I couldn’t. I knew that I was being sucked into something from which I wouldn’t be able to extricate myself. I knew that I was becoming reckless. We stopped meeting at the Mill House, because the school holidays were starting and Lena was frequently home. We went to the cottage instead, which I knew was a risk, but there were no hotel rooms to rent, not locally, and where else could we go? It never crossed my mind that I should stop seeing her; back then it seemed impossible.

My father takes his walks at dawn, so I’ve no idea why he was there that afternoon. But he was, and he spotted my car; he waited in the trees until Nel had left and then he beat me. He punched me to the ground, kicked me in the chest and shoulder. I curled myself up, protecting my head, the way I’d been taught. I didn’t fight back, because I knew he’d stop when he’d had enough, and when he knew that I couldn’t take any more.

Afterwards, he took my keys and drove me home. Helen was incandescent: first with my father, for the beating, and then with me, when he explained the reason for it. I had never seen her angry before, not like that. It was only when I witnessed her rage, cold and terrifying, that I started to imagine what she might do, how she might take her revenge. I imagined her packing her bags and leaving, I imagined her resigning from the school, the public scandal, my father’s anger. That was the sort of revenge I imagined she might take. But I imagined wrong.

Lena

I GASPED. I gulped as much air as I could and jammed my elbow into his ribs. He squirmed, but still he held me down. His hot breath in my face made me want to hurl.

‘Too good for you, ’ I kept saying, ‘she was too good for you, too good for you to touch, too good for you to fuck … You cost her her life, you piece of shit. I don’t know how you do it, how you get up every day, how you go to work, how you look her mother in the eye …’

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