Still Water

  Still Water

  by Catherine Marshall

  Copyright © Catherine Marshall 2015

  The right of Catherine Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  About Catherine Marshall

  Chapter One

  My vision has blown. It’s no surprise, in the circumstances, my senses shutting down on me. Lights flash and glare, sound blares and rears like waves. Details jut from the blur - Information, Toilets, Costa Coffee; above me, high-pitched nasal announcements in a language I somehow do not speak. My legs begin to fold and I wait for the floor to smack against me because my balance is going as well.

  It doesn’t happen. I just sway, or I think I do. It’s hard to tell. I do know, though, I have to keep going, keep moving, escape, the impulse cold and hard against my spine. I head unsteadily across the concourse towards the cashpoints. There’s no queue but my hands are shaking so much it’s as though my card has been glued into its slit in my purse, even when I prise it out I can’t align it with the slot of the machine. People will think I’m drunk or stoned.

  People will think.

  It’s so late there’s hardly anyone around, the occasional dark haze of their presence brushes past me large but unthreatening like the ghosts of bears. I punch in the numbers of my birthday, Enter, and frown hard to read the screen. Another press, on the maximum amount offered, and my heart’s thudding in case they already know and have immediately blocked my account. In case they are searching already the CCTV footage, and I’ve betrayed myself already, because I’ve watched enough crime shows to know they can track you down every time you access your own money. The machine whirrs and my card ejects an inch. I snatch it back to safety, grab the notes and stuff them into my bag. I’m still shaking. Hot and shivering, slick with sweat inside my canvas jacket. But I can’t stop to deal with that because I have to buy a ticket and I don’t know when the last train goes I might be missing it even now.

  The ticket office is dark and empty. Feverishly I scan the Departures board, its dot matrix information barely discernible. I think I read the word I want, the destination I need, the number of the platform, the departure time five minutes from now.

  I can’t run. Can’t coordinate my legs, the synapses have burned through. I manage a halting stumble towards the platform, jerk myself up into the first carriage, fling inside. Lines of empty seats before me, no reservation tickets this time of night. No passengers, no luggage. The whole train is swinging like a hammock. My ears are ringing and I drop into an airline seat. Too much chance, at a table, of having another face in front of mine, eyes and knees and the smell of their polystyrene coffee.

  I crouch rigid. My head hurts, rammed full of spikes from the inside. As I stare sightless ahead, I’m vaguely aware of seats being filled, middle-aged adolescents with lager cans and stubbled scalps, thin dark wisps opening laptops or books. I hear, as if through water, a whistle, feel the jerk of the train beneath me. The platform begins to slide away.

  Moments pass. Minutes. “See your ticket, love?” I rummage for the notes I thrust inside my bag, draw out one, tell him where I want to go. I cannot look at his face, speak to him more than necessary, in case he remembers me. I have to blur in his mind with the other women alone on this train. My appearance won’t catch at his attention; distressed jeans, cotton khaki jacket, mass of hair. There are a lot of students where I’m going. I could be one of them. I’ve always looked younger than I am. He hands me my ticket and my change. I thank him and he moves away.

  And then it slices through me that I’m making the most dangerous assumption. I’ve no idea how I look. My reflection in the window throws back nothing, or not enough. I sway to my feet, out into the aisle, hit the ‘open door’ sign with my palm and lurch into the toilet capsule. Lock it fast behind me.

  Already it’s a mess. Reeking of pee, the pan stained or worse. Tissues soaked sticking to the floor. Graffiti, buzzing dim light. The usual. Rocking with the motion of the train I can’t meet my own eyes, try to examine myself with a cursory glance. My skin is greyish green, my eye sockets bruised, but that could be the light. I could just be ill. A second and final darting glimpse and I’m sure. My face is not marked with blood.

  So that’s all right then.

  The warning I get is a burning in my throat and nostrils, my stomach kicks and abruptly and violently I vomit into the stainless steel basin.

  The train cranks to a halt and I fall out onto the tarmac of the platform below. As I stumble upright a handful of shapes blur past me, heading towards the car park and the road up into town; it’s the middle of the night and the end of the line.

  I hang back, barely breathing. The others shift, slip away, an amorphous whisper and soundless footfall as they disappear ahead of me into the dark. I take the steepening path, walking so fast my chest hurts. Head down, tunnelling blind and deaf through empty streets, hell-bent on the light at their close. Every so often my feet skid from under me and I lurch and falter but I don’t stop.

  No concrete now, just the grass and the bare ground. Nothing stirs. The house looks shuttered against me and it burns across my mind that I’ve done the wrong thing. The fatal thing. I might have been protected by the anonymity of the city; having lost everything else, I could have lost myself too. But here is the first place anyone will come. And it’s already too late.

  Inside I tread over a deluge of mail and the taut thread that’s been keeping me going and focussed begins to spin away from me. Though I’m moving as fast as I can locking doors, throwing bolts, drawing curtains it’s like slo-mo, and all the time there’s a keening, whining noise which I know at some distant rational level is me.

  In the bathroom I vomit again. It gets in my hair. I’m crying and shuddering now, pulling blankets from the bed because I need to sleep but not up here, not in a bed, up here there’s too much space.

  Downstairs I drag cushions from the sofa and stuff them under the kitchen table. Crawl inside with my blanket. Sheltering from the bombs. I pull the blanket around me for suddenly it’s cold. So cold. I can mak
e out shapes on the dresser. A pile of books, hardbacks on their sides. I can’t quite read the titles but the gold lettering glints at me from their spines. Bottles, squarish ones of oil, taller ones of wine. It calms me for a minute, staring at these things, working to identify them. My heart rate begins to slow though my tears course still. There’s a can of something – air freshener? hairspray? – and a cable, an extension lead maybe or a phone charger, I can’t tell how thick it is and an old spherical CD player/radio with its mouth open like a Pacman and a photo in a frame.

  I’m sick again into my hand. Or I would be, if there were anything left in my stomach to hurl. I jerk up to find something on which to wipe the acid from my palm, hitting my head against the table, gritting my teeth in pain and it’s then that it comes

  the pounding on the front door

  I freeze, though I’m shaking so much I’d be out of the game, clamp my mouth shut to stop the whimpering.

  Again. A fist against the wood. Heavy with urgency. My eyes squeeze shut and I draw up my knees, bury my head against them.

  Go away go away go away go away

  And it does.

  It’s gone.

  At some point I must have stopped breathing because suddenly I have to start again and I gulp at the air, the sound rasping through the silence. And then I leap and splutter because this time the pounding is at the kitchen door, feet away from me, in the room with me, louder and more insistent and it’s a death knell.

  And then he shouts my name and my unravelling is complete.

  It’s Gil.

  Chapter Two

  First light, the sea a silent pale shimmer beneath a vast wash of sky. Gil let his backpack drop with a soft thud into the sand and inhaled deep. Nothing for the remainder of the summer would equal this first dawn, the salt taste of the water, early sun glittering off its surface, the caw of gulls above an empty beach. He felt his muscles loosen as he exhaled, his spirits kick free into swift and glorious ascent. It was like rebirth, he thought it every time, though he’d have said it out loud to no one. In the longed-for collapse of endless sunburned days through endless debauched nights, such an admission had no place, even if it were the truth.

  Because it was the truth.

  “Hey Gil!”

  He turned, smiling already at their voices. Henry and Radar and Buz, shaggy haired and long limbed, tanned and salt and sand encrusted way ahead of the season, all popped out of the same surf dude mould. They originally hailed from Barnstaple and Gloucester and Newport Pagnell yet their intonation rendered every statement a question, every ounce of their energy focussed on the next wave. There were, he knew, worse ways to be.

  “Hey guys.”

  “Where you been, mate?”

  “Earning a living.” He said it lightly, gestured towards his bag in the sand. “Just got in.”

  “Staying at Cecily’s?”

  He grinned, knowing already where this was going. Nothing ever changed. But whose fault was that, exactly? “If it’s free.”

  “She keeps it free for you.”

  “Keeps it warm for you.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, indicated the water. “Like a pond out there.”

  “S’all you know. Tide’s coming in.”

  And so it was. He hoisted one strap of his backpack over his shoulder. “Patrick’s? Around eight?”

  Henry smiled. “Sure thing. Good to have you back, Gil.”

  “Not coming out with us?” Radar, airing the old line. But nothing changed there either. Gil shook his head. “This is the year we’ll get you, you know.”

  He raised a hand. “See you later.” Watched them trot across the sand with their boards. He was one of them and he wasn’t. It had always been the case and it was kind of the way he liked it. Lingering as they vanished into the grey-blue water, he spotted after a moment their heads bobbing like buoys on the swell. Roll and heave and they were gone. Then rising crouched low, boards higher on the waves, bodies lifting tentatively, legs slowly straightening … and lost again in the crashing tide. He hesitated, sorely tempted to strip and plunge into the water himself, take his inaugural dip of the summer. But another reunion was tugging for his attention and he turned to stroll back along the beach.

  Climbing the steepening lanes behind the sea-front rows of tourist tat, whitewashed cottage walls bright with bougainvillea, sunshine already burning off the morning chill, he emerged into the palm-lined square which over the years had become something of an artists’ enclave. Gradually evolving from a potters’ workshop and makeshift tearoom, it had sprawled to include two seascape galleries and craft studios, a hippie-goth boutique stuffed with fantasies of black leather trenchcoats and black skirted basques, tie-dye shirts and floaty hems skimming the dust. At its centre stood a low-slung seventeenth century pub with ivy clad walls, lawned gardens overlooking the sweep of the bay. Beside it a second-hand bookstore crammed tight with torn and ageing stock, the little glass shop with its intricately formed roses complete with shards of thorns and dolphins riding a crystal surf. And here to his left the bow-fronted café decorated as he had always known it in creams and wedgewood blues, furnished with reclaimed pine settles and stained and splitting tables, the paintings on the walls and the pottery on the Welsh dresser all for sale. They supported each other, the people who lived their lives and ran their businesses in this square. Gil loved it all. Even the tourists.

  Pressing down the brass handle of the café door, he crossed the threshold. The place was empty but for an elderly couple finishing fruitbread toast and a pot of tea. Slipping his rucksack from his shoulders, he stowed it in a corner beside the dresser, dropped his jacket over the top.

  “Good morning.” He strolled over, smiled. “Everything all right?”

  “Oh, it’s very good, thank you.” The woman had neat grey hair, good clothes, a stern-approval thing going on. Retired school teacher, Gil decided. Maths.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “It’s what we come here for, this weather. We’ve never had it so nice anywhere.”

  “It isn’t so nice anywhere, but then I could be biased. Tell you where would be lovely this morning, the path around the top of the bay. You can pick up the footpath just down the side of the pub here. Easy walk, spectacular views, very peaceful. Now,” he smiled again. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

  They wanted only their bill, let him clear their cups and plates as though he had been waiting on them all morning and not just stepped in from the street. He carried the crockery through the archway to the kitchen, where a slender woman in denim shorts and a baggy vest, her tawny hair piled into a loose knot, was cutting rounds of pastry and singing along to the radio. His heart mushed a little.

  “Table two ready for their bill.”

  She caught her breath as she recognised his voice. “Gil!”

  He grinned. “Cecily.”

  She flung her arms around him. He hugged her in return, the warmth of baking on her skin. “Every year,” she said, “every year I think I’ll sense when you’re going to turn up. Every year you take me by surprise.”

  “Yeah that’s me. Predictably unpredictable.”

  She stood back from him, leaning against the cooker, her eyes still dancing with pleasure at seeing him again. “How are you? You look great.”

  He grinned back. “Well so do you. And I’m fine. And you’re doing breakfasts now?”

  “I figure I’m here, I might as well be taking money. It’s not like the place is ever over-run at this hour.” She was still gazing at him. “God. It is so good to see you.”

  He laughed. “Come here.” Hugged her again. Kissed her cheek. “So, there still a place for me here?”

  “Gil.” She was mock-solemn. “There will always be a place for you here.”

  The studio room he rented from her every summer lay at the top of an iron staircase attached to the side of the café. From its entrance it stretched south along the rear of the building, three walls of glass giving an uni
nterrupted view of the sea from emerald shallows to indigo horizon. A view of the sea, Gil admitted, which in his city days he could close his eyes and recall in the minutest of detail; a view which took his breath away even now. Across the floor of bare and creaking boards lay the bed with its tarnishing frame and boot sale quilts, beside it a folding stool holding the book he’d been reading when he’d last been here, under the windows the stained and battered table at which he worked.

  Cecily watched him. “It is in fact a shrine to you. I hold guided tours during the winter months – you know, when business gets a bit slow.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, you’d make a lot of money doing that.”

  “I’d make a lot of money redecorating and putting in a proper ensuite instead of that germ infested hell-hole you use.”

  “Hey. I like germ-infested hell-holes. What, tart it up and rent it out to some yuppie couple down from London, you mean?”

  “Did you actually use the word ‘yuppie’ then?”

  “Who’d spend all their time complaining about the birdshit and the tourists and the fact there’s nowhere to park?” He stopped, realising she was teasing him. “You’re not going to, are you?”

  “Nope. Can’t afford the refit.”

  “Cecily.”

  “And anyway.” She shrugged.

  He sat against the table, the sun already hot through the glass. Cecily drew a line in the table-top dust, pausing when her finger came within touching distance of his thigh. “Look at this. Appalling housekeeping. You should complain.”

  “Saw the guys,” he told her.

  “Patrick’s, tonight?”

  “I love how nothing changes here.” He caught her eye. “You’ll come?”

  She smiled, rueful about something she might confide to him later. After half a dozen drinks. A midnight walk along the beach. “Sure. Like the man said, nothing changes here.”

  A mile and another world away from the beach, the graveyard stretched some way along the headland, sun-bleached stones jutting among the marram grass under an open sky. Jem, kneeling on the damp soil at the foot of the grave, fitted her handful of wild poppies into a half-empty Evian bottle and placed it carefully before the weathered granite.