The Song House (30 page)

He dips his hand into his inside pocket and takes a stick of
gum, unwrapping it and folding it into his mouth before he
tries his phone again, reaching across the console and fumbling
about on the seat to find it. Still no signal. When he glances
back up at the road he slows down, to be sure of what he’s
seeing. It looks like a fallen branch but as he nears it he thinks
it’s a figure, a scarecrow, maybe, wrenched from a field by the
weather and thrown onto the fence. AsWilliam flicks his main
beam on, the scarecrow lifts its head and looks at him. The eyes
are fawn-like, lit up, blazing green.

She sees the car beam as a torchlight. It reaches up high as it
crests the hill and then she doesn’t see it, only the shape of the
dog, low, fast, racing down towards her with the moon behind
it, and she moves into the shadow of the trees.

William arrives to find Kenneth sitting in the hall at the bottom
of the staircase, a damp wind blowing through the house. He
can tell at once that his father’s had trouble; an abandoned pair
of mud-crusted trainers on the doorstep, bloody footprints in
a wandering pattern across the flagstones. Kenneth is bent
double, trying to unravel a length of bandage. Without
speaking, William kneels in front of him and takes hold of his
foot, lifting it, looking at the bent toes and greenish toenails,
the mud and gravel embedded in the skin. Gently, he sweeps
his fingers over the sole until the ragged gash is revealed.

It hurts a bit, his father says.

I bet it does. It’s pretty deep.

Kenneth lifts then drops again the strip of grey crepe bandage
in his lap.

Couldn’t find any more plasters. How did you manage to
get here?

With great difficulty, says William, The roads are – well,
they’re not roads any more. I asked Ali to call. We were worried
about you.

She called, says Kenneth. He pushes William’s hand away,
but his son persists, and they battle for a few seconds over the
foot, Kenneth pulling his knee to his chest, his son tugging on
the ankle, until Kenneth gives up the fight and leans back
against the banister. William scrutinizes the wound, angling his
father’s foot to the light.

It’ll need cleaning, he says. Stay here and I’ll fetch some antiseptic.
You’ll have some, won’t you? Bathroom?

Freya keeps it in the kitchen – under the sink.

Stay here. Don’t move. Hold that foot up.

Kenneth stares at William’s retreating figure, at his confident,
brisk walk and at the sheer grown-up
manliness
of him, and is
amazed. When did that happen? When did the awkward, sly
boy become this person?

I’m sorry, he yells, I shouldn’t have left you all alone. It was
wrong.

William heads off along the corridor. He doesn’t know what
gremlin idea has crept into his father’s mind this time, and
now, when he would really like a drink and a moment to himself,
he doesn’t want to hear it. There’s Dettol under the sink,
a plastic bottle lying on its side among an assortment of old
jam jars and rags and a box of tired-looking fish food.
Everything feels sticky and unclean. He pours a capful of the
antiseptic into a bowl and adds warm water, trying to still the
trembling in his hands, trying to concentrate only on the milky
liquid and the ticking sound of the house. It’s the most bizarre
night. The horses on the hill, and the roads awash, and that
thing leaning on the fence; his father, like a lunatic, and that
real lunatic Thomas. Behind him, Kenneth half-hops across the
floor and lowers himself onto a stool next to the sink.

Is your phone working? asks William, My mobile’s dead.

The phones are down, says Kenneth.

But you said Ali called?

She called in person, says Kenneth, And I sent her away
again. Don’t want her to be stuck here if it gets worse.

Don’t want to be stuck with her, more like, says William,
and Kenneth gives him a broad grin. He puts out his hand and
catches his son by the arm. He would like to say it again, how
sorry he is, but William interrupts.

It’s worse in the valley. Up here’s not so bad. And it said
on the traffic news they’re reopening the motorway. Crisis
over.

Not in my cellar, says Kenneth, That’s how I got my war
wound.

William ducks back down and replaces the bottle. He has an
urge to pull the jars out and wash them, run a cloth over the
shelves and throw the fish food in the bin. There’s a smell in
the air, cutting through the antiseptic, of rotting vegetation,
rank water. He’s only half listening to his father, some nonsense
about how his mind is a prison and he is the prisoner. When
he emerges again, Kenneth is looking at him: he has asked him
a question.

What’s that, say again?

I said, when I left for Bahrain, were you sad?

William decides he will have that drink, goes to the stash of
bottles on the counter and picks one at random.

How about some wine? I won’t be going anywhere tonight.
I suppose I can stay?

Of course you can, son, says Kenneth, But what did you
feel, at the time?

It’s so long ago, I can hardly remember.

Well, try, insists his father.

William would like to tell him how he was much more
concerned about his mother. Not concerned: devastated. How
he’d heard them, the doctor, and the nurse they’d hired, and
the river man – the river man, again – talking about her nerves.
How she was on the edge, how she so badly wanted another
child. And he says,

It changed everything. Of course it did. But at least it meant
I was more like the rest of them.

The rest of who?

The boys at school. Everyone divided their time, Dad,
between one parent or the other. Or I should say, between one
nanny or the other.

Ah, says Kenneth, swirling his foot in the bowl of water, So
it wasn’t a ruse?

What wasn’t?

That business with the child. You hadn’t concocted some
story with the water bailiff to make me come back?

It’s a bit of a stretch, William says, Even for me.

You really found her?

William studies the label on the bottle. He knows he should
be able to read it, but he can’t make the letters form words.
He did find her, every day: found her running naked along the
riverbank, a clown’s smile of dirt around her mouth; holding
the hand of the man in the market place while he sold his
drugs to the older boys; with her mother, the woman topless
and shining like an oyster; sitting alone in the long grass, talking
to herself, flexing her fingers to the sky. He would like to say,
Yes, I found her. She needed us. Instead, he says,

I found her all right – showing the bottle to his father –
How about a glass of this?

They remain in the kitchen, Kenneth with his foot in the bowl
of water, William leaning against the fridge, both back in the
same time and both remembering that same time differently.

Did you get my message, asks Kenneth, About the plumber?
Can’t find his number anywhere.

William nods. He won’t let on about the other calls. To distract
him, he begins to tell his father about the journey down, and
then another thought occurs.

What were you doing out there anyway? he says, nodding
to the hallway.

Kenneth puts his head back and shows his teeth in a grimace.

Don’t go saying I’m potty, he warns.

I won’t, says his son.

I thought I heard singing.

You’re potty, says William.

I’ll drink to that, says Kenneth, and they both raise their
glasses in salute.

Maggie sits between the two men. She has to keep wiping
her nose; it’s dripping wet, and her eyes are sore and gritty.
The dreamcatcher box is on her lap; the wood feels slimy, cold,
and water seeps from the underside, soaking her knees. Sam clicks
open the glove compartment and fishes about amongst the
assorted debris before he finds what he’s looking for; an old
patterned tea towel, folded into a triangle.

For emergencies, he says, smiling as he hands it to her, Plus,
it’s the only thing that’s dry.

She takes it from him. It smells faintly of petrol but she wipes
her nose and her eyes anyway. The view through the window
of the truck is smeared by the wipers and the weather; she
can’t tell whether she’s able to focus or not. There’s not much
space in the cabin, and despite herself, her leg is pressed close
against Aaron’s thigh; she can feel the heat of his body against
the wet of her jeans, and another kind of heat, an anger, thrilling
through him. It’s in the way he drives, the way he doesn’t speak.
Even though they’d caught up with her on the edge of a field,
Sam is proud: his first proper rescue, he calls it. He talks animatedly,
so fast and excited that Maggie tunes out now and then;
it’s all about the weather, the havoc; how they discovered a fox
in a bathroom, and a pair of kittens on a high shelf in the
kitchen of another house, as if they’d been put there for safety.
So still, he thought they were china ornaments. How the water
cut off this farm or roared into that house, sneaked up through
the skirting boards, fell through the roof. The roads like rivers.
That madman in the Mazda. All she wants to do now is sleep.
The warmth of the cabin makes her drowsy; the proximity of
the two bodies pressed on either side of her makes her skin
prickle: perhaps she is creating her own humid air.

We tried to tell him, anyway, he finishes. Silence resumes
for a moment, and then Aaron leans forward to turn up the radio.

Sorry, she says, What did you try?

We told him, there’s only one road up from Snelsmore and
he ain’t on it.

Where was he going? she asks.

The Earl place.

She leaves Aaron sleeping, moving swiftly past his living room,
where he has spent the last two nights, and lets herself out of
the house. She gets to the main road at the end of the Gatehouse
before turning back. It isn’t fair. Not right to disappear
like that.

After they’d picked her up, Sam wanted to take her to the
centre with the rest of the evacuees and get her checked over
by the nurse, but Aaron overruled him. He was going to keep
an eye on her, he said, she’d caused enough trouble. And he
did just that; didn’t ask her any questions, but watched her
carefully, attentively, in a manner that suggested she wasn’t
to be trusted. The following morning, when Maggie asked if
it might be possible for them to go back to Field Cottage to
pick up some more clothes, he snapped at her,

We’re not here at your beck and call. The village is flooded,
you’ll have noticed. People have lost everything. People have
drowned.
You
could have drowned.

It was only then she remembered his father, and how he’d
died. Even though she should have been thinking of Aaron and
of all he did to help her, Maggie’s mind chased in a straight
line back to Kenneth, standing in his den, peering into the fish
tank. The water gives up her dead, he’d said, when he’d told
her about finding Baggs. He was right. People are lost and
people are found. Aaron’s father hadn’t been saved, but he
had
been found. Everyone must be found, even her. But she hadn’t
been found by William, she’d been lost by him. He’d made her
vanish. What remained, said Kenneth, they’d found what remained
of Baggs. She turned it over and over in her mind; the
losing of her, and then the discovering of her, as if she were a
object, a buried thing unearthed. And what remained of her.
She’d been living her whole life with the remains. Until today.
Not dead yet.

She rehearses her speech, so when Aaron answers the door,
barely awake, and squints at her in the shimmering morning
light, the words tumble out of her mouth.

I wanted to say how very sorry I am about your father. And
how sorry I am about me and the way I’ve behaved. I’m really
grateful to you, for everything.

Aaron passes his hands over his face, blinking at the dark shape
of her, noting also the dark shape of the dreamcatcher box
under her arm.