Creatures of the Pool (17 page)

Perhaps nobody is. The light is too feeble to illuminate much at that distance. The blurred object, if it’s even there, resembles a growth—a huge pallid fungus with stalks like fat limbs and a lump that’s only something like a head. The lump does have features, even if too few: a pair of holes that might suggest irregular nostrils, and beneath them a wide gap from which an item surely too large for a tongue is dangling. That’s the only sign of movement. As the dangling object squeezes out it grows larger still—bigger than the orifice—before it drops to the floor with a moist flat thud.

As I sprawl backwards I glimpse it hopping away into the dark. I must have cried out, because Lucinda’s tiny voice calls “What’s wrong?”

I scramble to my feet, and the sensors turn the lights on. The carton I planted on the top step is balanced at the edge. The corner farthest from the ramp is empty except for a misshapen stain, and in a moment I’m not sure I even saw that. I retreat to the steps, lying as I go. “Nothing,” I do my best to hope.

Lucinda scrutinises my face as she climbs out of the car. “What was wrong?”

I glance past her at the corner, where any trace of moisture has vanished into the bricks. I’m sure of that, having ventured close, and I couldn’t see or hear a creature hopping or lying low beneath any of the cars, the only concealment. “Just the light,” I say. “It went off.”

“You sounded as if it was something worse. Didn’t you sleep?”

“When? What are you talking about?”

“Last night, Gavin. Did you get any sleep at all? You seem so on edge.”

“What do you expect with everything that’s happening?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t expect it, but I’d like to take some of the pressure off you if I could.”

“You can. You have. Think how long I’d have taken to bring all this stuff here by myself.”

She seems disappointed that I’m being so impersonally practical, but I’d rather not discuss my fears down here. “Let’s finish unloading,” I say, “and then we can relax.”

Perhaps that’s unrealistic. I lift a carton out of the boot and loiter with it until Lucinda says “You go ahead or we’ll be in each other’s way.”

I can’t avoid leaving her in the basement without inviting questions I don’t want to answer. I labour upstairs and dash back as soon as I’ve dumped my burden, slowing in time not to collide with Lucinda on the stairs or, I hope, for her to wonder about my haste. For the rest of the operation I contrive
not to be much more than a flight of stairs distant from her. At last all the cartons are in my biggest room, where we’ve stacked some on top of others. “Now we can do what you said,” Lucinda says.

Once she heads for the bathroom I realise she has relaxation in mind. “I just want to ask you about this,” I tell her.

She watches me heave cartons off cartons, turning the floor into as much of a maze as my father’s workroom was. Eventually I have to say “Did you bring the one with William Colquitt on top?”

“I’m sure I would have noticed. Do you need to find it now? You’re getting yourself into more of a state.”

No, I’m tipping up carton after carton to determine which of them has the page stuck underneath. “Come for a bath,” Lucinda says.

“Not until I show you.” I tilt the last carton and let it thud to the floor, where it puffs out a fungoid smell. Did I miss a carton? I wipe my damp hands on my trousers and rub my moist forehead and set about looking again. I’m so tired that when I peer at some of the topmost documents they look more blurred than they were—too blurred for me to decipher. Straining my eyes only aggravates the illegibility. “It was a verse that was only in the first edition of the book,” I complain. “Some kind of metaphor for filling in the Pool. It’s in the poem about Liverpool. My father found it in your library and thought it had something to do with John Strong.”

“If you don’t find it I’ll have a look tomorrow when I’m at work.” She helps me stack the cartons again and displays her hands, which look so discoloured that someone uninformed could think she has been underground. “Shall we have our bath now?” she suggests.

I linger to gaze at the boxes. If they’re damp I ought to replace them, but none of the nearby shops will be open now that night has fallen, and so I follow Lucinda. The bath is foaming with her favourite salts, Sea Whispers. As she stoops to ruffle up more waves, her spine is outlined all the
way down to the small of her back. While the sight and the hidden wings of her shoulder blades are as delectable as ever, just now the bones put me in mind of a fossil brought to light by excavation. Guilt at the thought is one reason why I trace them with my fingertips, but she straightens up before my hand reaches the firm curves of her bottom. “You aren’t even undressed yet,” she objects.

I strip in the bedroom and drop the dirtiest items in the wicker bin before returning the next dirtiest—me—to the bath. Lucinda is already in it, and rises like a mermaid from the foam, holding out slim arms scaly with bubbles. When I start to climb in facing her she makes a pass in the air with one hand to indicate I should turn around. Once I’ve lowered myself between her legs she massages my shoulders so gently that her hands almost feel as if they’re merging with me. She soaps and rinses my back and then nestles against me. Before long her warmth and the almost imperceptible movements of water and foam are closer to lulling me to sleep than anything has been for days, so that for a while I scarcely notice she’s murmuring a ditty in or behind my ear:

“…The mermaids down below

Would give their crystal kingdoms

For the love of Gav, I trow…”

“What’s that?” I mumble sleepily.

“Something from the archive,” she whispers, and at some point continues

“…For all the landsmen lovers

Are nothing after Gav…”

By now we’re in bed, and I could take the words as an invitation, but I’m sinking into the infinite depths of sleep. I can only hope she’s as content with our spoony embrace as I am. Is this what they used to mean by spooning? The thought floats away to join whatever else I might feel or think. Some indeterminate time later I’m not entirely wakened by
her or a voice resembling hers, which is murmuring more of the song. Perhaps it’s her mobile, which I’m surprised to realise I’ve never heard. Isn’t knowing your lover’s mobile tone an index of intimacy these days? The idea and the surprise are too distant to rouse me any further. Nevertheless, though far from immediately, it’s the notion of answering a phone that fishes me out of my sleep.

The room is full of daylight muted by the curtains, and I’m alone in bed. When I blink the clock into focus I see it’s almost noon. Lucinda must have left for work hours ago. I retrieve my mobile from the bedside table, but there’s no record of a missed call. I rest the landline receiver against my upturned ear while I stay supine, and then I rear up sideways. There has been a call from a withheld number.

I kick away the quilt and stumble to my workroom. The answering machine has recorded a message, if it isn’t just the click of somebody failing to leave one. The single digit resembles an I, a symbol of my insufficiently vigilant self. I fall to my knees and press the button, and wait while a shrill voice babbles backwards. As soon as it regains its usual sound I recognise it without welcoming it. “Mr Meadows?” it says, barely a question. “Hank Waterworth. Please contact me as soon as you pick this up.”

“Gavin Meadows for Hank Waterworth.”

The vague trace of reassurance that his first name seems to offer me—a name that a Liverpudlian might have adopted to sound as American as many British pop stars try to seem—vanishes as the receptionist raises her head, withdrawing her expression. She stays remote from me in every sense as she tells the phone “Mr Meadows is here” before advising me “Mr Waterworth is coming to get you.”

Is this a threat she’s enjoying behind her blank face? I feel as if I’m less awake than before I listened to his call, because I can’t think up an explanation for the list of names I sent him. In the shower the water drummed all thoughts out of my head, and then the crowds and the noise of traffic and renovation kept them at bay. Now they’re unable to reach through the tangle of languages that fills the hall where council tenants make their payments. None too soon I see Waterworth emerge from his office beyond the glass doors and outdo the receptionist in concealing any expression. When I step forward to help him with the last door, he gives me a frown and an equally brief shake of his head. Once the door is officially opened he says “Thank you for finding the time, Mr Meadows.”

“Call me Gavin,” I say, though only as an excuse to call him Hank.

“Please follow me,” he says and barely holds the door.

As I imitate his measured tread I recall that there used to be a circus on this site. His pace is theatrical, but what kind of act are we in? It feels more like being led into the Bridewell
prison in Cheapside across the road outside his window. He sits in Rhoda’s chair between views of an unrecognisably if not optimistically futuristic Liverpool and doesn’t quite wait for me to take a seat before he says “I’ve been talking to the library.”

“You’ve found me out, then. I had to get them from somewhere. I can’t remember everything and I can’t make that sort of thing up. There’s nothing wrong with my figures, though.”

Waterworth gazes at me as if he’s watching a performance, and then my resignation lets me see what I should have wondered sooner. “What made you get in touch with the library?”

“They got in touch with me.”

There’s only one question I want to ask, though I equally don’t. “Who did?”

“Who would you expect? The local history people.”

“Which of them?”

“I’ve told you before that I can’t discuss employees of the council with you.”

“Then just nod or shake your head,” I say as I imagine my father might. “Was it Lucinda Wade?”

“Once again, I’ve told you—”

I began by only needing confirmation of my disbelief, but that’s on its way to leaving me alone and worse than bewildered. “In other words, it was.”

“It was nobody like that. Please don’t pursue the matter.”

“So why did they get in touch?”

“You aren’t going to tell me you don’t know. About the scene you caused there, which sounds like the trouble they had with your father.”

“Are you telling me they called you about a bit of an argument with a couple of librarians? That’s worse than pathetic.”

“Among other incidents, Mr Meadows.”

“Gavin.” It’s partly his lack of response that provokes me
to add “If they say I did any more than disagree with them they’re lying and I’d like to know why.”

“I shouldn’t be too eager to accuse anyone of that. There’s quite a bunch of them.”

“Bring them on.”

“Let’s start with the Williamson tunnels. I’m told you made a scene there too and forced your way into an area that wasn’t open to the public.”

“Christ, have you got people everywhere? I didn’t force anything. The door was open and all I did was follow someone. Who told you different?”

“One of the people you harassed,” Waterworth says and scowls as if he has revealed too much. “Don’t try doing it to me.”

“Come on, I don’t harass people. If that’s what they call harassment I’m surprised they haven’t got a notice up about it. People used to be able to handle a bit of criticism of their work. Customers could be difficult without being made to feel like criminals.” I’m sounding more than ever like my father, which may be why I add “Pretty soon I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all against the law. If you so much as complain in a shop they’ll call security and then they’ll have to get counselling for stress.”

Having waited none too patiently for me to finish, Waterworth says “You disagree with Tasha Bailey, then.”

“I might if I knew who she was.”

“A member of Nicholas Noble’s historical troupe. I believe you interrupted a performance they were giving in a park and accused her of stealing your ideas and even swore at her in front of children in the audience.”

“Not at her.” I leave it there, though I’m even angrier than I was then. “I don’t think any children heard,” I say, “and I’m sure it was a lot milder than they hear in the schoolyard.”

“You’re supposed to be educating, not lowering yourself and your audience.” Waterworth gives me a moment to feel abashed and says “At whom, then?”

Perhaps my gaze makes it clear who I might have called a bastard. It halts the conversation until I say “I thought you had a man on my tours.”

“He’s filed his report.”

“Let me read it if you like.”

“I’m sure you know that won’t be possible.” With no lessening of reproof Waterworth says “He thought your script was incoherent and gave too much information.”

“Well, I certainly haven’t heard that objection before.”

At once I realise this may sound as if people have complained about a lack of substance, but Waterworth is already saying “Information some of your customers made it clear they didn’t want. I believe they were treated to more of your obsession with the Ripper business.”

“It isn’t my obsession. It’s nothing to do with me. Somebody wanted to hear about it. You met her.”

Now I recall that Moira Shea didn’t raise the subject, but Waterworth says only “I’m also told your tour was interrupted yet again while you talked to your girlfriend.”

“What are you on about, yet again? All right, it happened when you were there, but it’s only ever been twice.”

“And what was so important that you had to keep your customers standing around for three and a half minutes?”

Barely in time not to own up I remind myself that he’s unaware of my trick with the names I sent him. “My father,” I tell him.

“And did you learn anything helpful?” When I shake my head Waterworth says “You should realise your customers were left feeling guilty for taking up your time when you could have been searching for your father.”