Tideline (3 page)

‘Then why are you determined to remain there? When everyone wants to move on? Why do you always make trouble, Sonia? Greg thinks the house is worth . . . what was it, something million?
No. Impossible! Oh dear me. I do get my noughts mixed up. But it’s a gold mine! And yet you insist on staying!’

‘You spoke to Greg?’ I can hear the flint in my voice.

‘He does phone, from time to time. We talk. You know we talk. The River House is a yoke around my neck. It’s time you moved on. He understands that. It’s only you who digs your
heels in, Sonia.’

I’m in danger of losing my temper at this point. I stand up, say I need the loo. In her bathroom I curl my fingers over the porcelain of the basin, count to ten, try to control my fury.
She knows how much this subject upsets me. Yet she persists! I think of the things I do for her. The little sacrifices I make, constantly, to keep her happy, yet she cannot let me be where I need
to be. Now that Jez lies peaceful in the music room, it hurts me all the more. I’ve sacrificed being with him for her. What if he leaves before I return? What if I’ve lost him for the
sake of keeping her appeased with gin and newpapers?

Back in her sitting room I apologize, say I can only stay for twenty minutes this morning. Fortunately, my mother appears to have forgotten the subject of the River House. She hands me coffee
and spends the rest of my visit recalling the singing teacher who flicked chalk at her across the classroom when she was a girl. She remembers the shade and texture of the teacher’s lipstick.
Can even recall the hymn they sang that morning.

‘Break temptation’s fatal power,’
she warbles. Her pale-blue eyes water as she drifts back in time.
‘Shielding all with guardian care, Safe in every careless hour, Safe
from sloth and sensual snare . . .’

It’s what’s supposed to happen when you’re in your twilight years, this slipping from the present into the past, I think as I hurry at last back down the corridor. What’s
odd is that it’s happened to me too recently, since Kit left home.

Memories creep up on me. Push up against me the way a cat rubs itself against your leg, purring, refusing to be ignored. Feelings swamp me out of the blue. There’s nostalgia sometimes.
More often there’s a startling upsurge of guilt, shame, regret. I wish I could talk to my mother about this, but her reactions are always tinged with criticism, with accusation. There are so
many places I dare not go with her.

Greg, Kit even, now she’s the age I was when I left the house for the first time, argue that the past is gone. You move on. For a long time, I agreed with them. After all, I’d been a
student, worked as an actress. I’d married Greg, had a daughter and set up my own business. The past had been erased. Sometimes I reel at the number of years that have flowed away.

But recently I’ve come to know that time does not pass, it folds. As the river loops back upon itself in Greenwich, so some distant years seem closer than those that have only just passed,
and forgotten moments shove their way back in. It is, for example, a shock, a marvellous one, that I awoke this morning with the same sensation I had at thirteen when Seb and I first kissed. A
revelation that the desire I had then – to feel his eyelashes against my fingers, my tongue against his lips, is still in me. Time has fallen away, a dust sheet slithering to the floor, to
reveal what had always been beneath.

Sonia

On the bus, a memory takes hold of me as I pass the Starbucks that was once our local sweet shop.

A summer’s day. The middle of a heat wave. I was thirteen. Where was my mother that day? She must have started her teaching job, because I felt free in a way I never did when she was at
home.

I can feel the way the cotton of my sundress teased my thighs as I walked back from the shop along the alley. I sucked an orange ice lolly. My flip-flops caught on the paving stones that were
sticky with drink and the dribblings of other people’s ice creams. The smell of the river was close and intense. Metallic, mixed with tar and alcohol. Always the residual scent of beer on the
breeze round here, from the pubs, from dregs left by those who sat on the wall to drink. The tide was out. At the steep stone mooring steps near our house I went dreamily down, sucking my lolly.
The riverweed that often left them slippy had dried out. At the bottom I kicked off my flip–flops and stood at the water’s edge. The river lapped at my feet, cooled them. Mud oozed up
between my toes. I curled them round little hard objects buried there.

‘Sonia! Sonneeeah!’

Startled out of my trance, I looked up. Out in the river, balancing on the edge of some old moored cargo barges, were Seb and his friend Mark, naked but for their underpants gone saggy in the
water. Mark shoved Seb hard.

‘Hey Sonia, he-elp!’ cried Seb. He windmilled his arms, feigned terror, tumbled sideways into the water, and vanished into its depths. Mark collapsed laughing. After a bit, when Seb
hadn’t reappeared, Mark dived after him. Now both were under the soupy brown water, so thick with gunk it barely reflected the sun. Seconds passed. Minutes. Nothing broke the dense surface.
My heart began to thump, my mouth went dry, the lolly stuck to my tongue.

At last, a splash. A head. Mark. He clambered back onto the barge and disappeared into its bows.

Still no Seb.

I stepped into the water. Stared out at the motionless river, a heat haze blurring the wharves down towards Blackwall. Everything fell silent.

A motor launch went past, sending waves hurrying over the surface towards me where they leapt up at my calves, before everything went still again. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. The
world had ended.

Then, at last,
whoosh!

Seb appeared a few feet from me, dripping with oil and river muck. He lurched at me, grabbed my arm, and dragged me towards him. I resisted for a bit. Dropped the dregs of my lolly, sank my
nails into the flesh of his shoulders. He laughed. I tried to kick him but it was hopeless, he was so much stronger than me. Soon the water was up to my thighs, my dress clung to my skin. He pulled
me again and I lost my balance. The cool water was a relief after the heat. I followed him in, splashing furiously, and he taunted me, ‘Oooh, scary Sonia.’

Mark joined us. They climbed onto me and pushed my head under. Seb grabbed my legs. I lashed out, reached for their hair, missed, bit Mark’s arm hard. He yelled and let go and I gasped
lungfuls of muggy air as my face came back into the sunshine.

Wet cloth slapping against me in the cool murky water. Seb’s strong hands on my ankles. The sun beating down above us.

‘Time for a beer!’ Seb cried, letting go of me, and he and Mark began to front crawl, racing towards the barges, rather than the shore. I swam behind them trying not to let the river
splash into my mouth. I’d been told there were poisons in the water that could paralyze you. It was thick, it felt sticky on my skin as I swam. I could not see beneath the fetid surface. You
could develop photos in it, that’s what people said. It was a chemical broth, barely water at all. As I swam I felt things brush against my legs. The ticklish drag of a plastic bag, the nudge
of something large and slimy. I tried not to imagine what else might touch me, lick me. Eat me even.

Out in the middle, a riverbus passed, its passengers waving cheerily. On the other side, the wharves of the Isle of Dogs were shrouded in thick grey fumes. At the barges, I tried to haul myself
up as the boys had done, but slipped on the algae-covered edge. The wood splintered my hands and my nails broke as I clawed at the sides.

‘What a sissy!’ Mark yelled. ‘Pathetic isn’t she, Seb?’

‘Leave her alone,’ said Seb and my heart swelled. I found a foothold towards the back of the boat where a tyre was attached and managed to clamber in. The boys had fashioned some old
fishing net into a bag, tied on a rope, brought cans of lager and packets of crisps out in it. They’d hung the net over the edge of the barge with the lager in to keep it cool in the water.
We lay back on the boat’s hot wooden floor hidden from view of the outside world and let the sun dry the river-water from our clothes. There was a gentle
knock knock knock
as the barges
bumped against each other. Then a police boat passed, trailing a wake that made the barges sway, creak, and bash together alarmingly, so we were tossed about as if in the midst of a storm.

When they settled back down again there was nothing but sun and scalding wood and us. ‘Do this,’ Seb told me, making an ‘O’ shape with his lips.

I did as he asked. He took a swig of lager, leant over me, pressed his lips against mine, and let the cold liquid seep slowly into my mouth. It tasted tinny and cool, against the warmth of him.
I felt strange, as if my legs were melting in the sun. Then Seb turned to Mark and did the same with him. He asked me to do it back to each of them. He wanted to feel what it would be like, he
said. He was always wondering what things would feel like. It was lovely, the cold of the liquid coming in from between warm lips, so we carried on like this for a while longer, drinking from each
other’s mouths until the lager grew tepid.

‘Touch my tongue with yours,’ Seb said then, and so I did. Mark watched. Seb wrapped his tongue around mine and kissed me long and hard. He tasted of beer and river.

‘Oh yuck, you moron,’ Mark said, and Seb peeled his mouth off mine and kissed Mark instead. That shut him up.

‘I’m gonna swim under the barges,’ said Seb.

‘Don’t Seb. What’s the point?’

‘What’s the point in anything? Just wanna see if I can.’

‘What if you get halfway and run out of breath?’

‘Don’t be pathetic.’

Mark stood and laughed and said, ‘You wally,’ as Seb dived into the water and disappeared under the barges.

‘What a brain-dead moron,’ Mark said as we waited for Seb to reappear on the other side. I wanted him to shut up. I wanted to hold my breath until Seb came back, to check it was
possible. To check Seb would live.

It was ages before he reappeared, shaking his head to get the water out of his ears. Then he placed his hands on the edge of the boat and was up and in it before you could blink.

‘Go on, your turn,’ Seb said, and Mark, who wasn’t as brave as Seb, made some excuse about needing to get back. We watched him swim to the shore. Then Seb made me lie on top of
him.

‘Take off your dress,’ he said. I smacked his face.

‘Ooof!’ he said, moving it aside, laughing. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘Only if you take your underpants off.’

‘It’s a deal.’

He slid off his pants and I peeled off my dress. I was still too undeveloped to wear a bra, so I lay with my bare chest pressed against his and we seemed to mould into one another, our bodies
slotting perfectly together. We were like pieces of a 3D jigsaw, needing each other’s bodies to make a complete, flawless whole. That’s the feeling I remember most clearly now as I walk
the same route as I walked that day along the alley towards the house. Our bodies, warm from the sun, slightly sticky from the effluent in the river, smelling of mud, locked together.

I loved Seb, that doesn’t need saying. I thought he was the most beautiful creature that ever walked upon the earth. That day on the barge, I looked down into his face and wondered how
anyone could have been created so perfectly. He had long almond-shaped blue eyes and lips that seemed permanently red and swollen as if he’d been eating strawberry ice lollies. His mouth
turned down at the edges as if he thought everyone was too dim for him, as if he was waiting for the world to catch up with him. I could feel his sharp hip bones press into the dips just beneath my
own, his skin warm and ridged where he slotted into the gaps between my ribs, my chest, that was only just beginning to soften, yield to his.

‘Lie under me,’ he said after a while, so we rolled over. I had a vague idea that perhaps I should make him stop. I wriggled beneath him, trying to push him off. But what I remember
now is the feel of the warm wood of the barge floor banging against my back as he held me, the sound of his breath in my ear.

I arrive back at the River House, tense with anxiety. What if Jez has already woken? Left before I could say goodbye properly? I should never have left him alone.

I clutch Mother’s Flurazepam in my pocket, rub the foil blisters with my thumb. Bound up the stairs to the first floor then on up the steep steps to the landing outside the music room.
Light comes in from the narrow windows around the top of the walls. I turn the door handle, and push it open, hardly daring to hope.

He’s there. Still drowsy. But his eyes are open.

I go straight to him. Sit on the bed.

‘You passed out.’

‘What?’

‘Last night. Had a few too many glasses of wine.’

I look down at him. A prince emerging from a hundred years’ sleep. He tries to lift his head, frowns, then gives up.

‘It’s OK. You’re at the River House. Do you remember now?’

‘Oh God!’

‘You’re not to worry. We all drink too much sometimes, believe me. It happens to the best of us.’

‘What’s the time? I’m getting the ten thirty to Paris.’

‘Oh, it’s way past ten thirty! But there are plenty of other trains. We can let people know, all in due course.’

‘I feel sick.’

He lifts himself up on one elbow, his eyes screwed up against the light.

‘You need to rehydrate. Here.’

I take the glass from the bedside table and hold it to his lips, watching them moisten as he takes a sip. A bead of water clings to one of the specks of boyish stubble on his upper lip. It
glistens silver for a second before he licks it off.

‘Jesus. What the fuck did we drink last night?’

His voice is still not mature even though it’s well past breaking stage. It’s got that boyish ring to it. He shuts his eyes and puts his head back down on the pillow.

‘You’ll feel better later. I’ll bring you bagels and coffee in half an hour or so. You can take a shower. In there.’ I nod towards the en suite. ‘How do you have
your coffee?’