The Night of the Flood Read online

  THE

  NIGHT

  OF THE

  FLOOD

  THE

  NIGHT

  OF THE

  FLOOD

  ZOË SOMERVILLE

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Zoë Somerville, 2020

  The moral right of Zoë Somerville to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9781838934637

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  To Will

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1954: A year after the flood

  PART 1: LOW TIDE

  May 1952: Nine months before the flood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  June: Eight months before the flood

  Chapter 7

  Midsummer’s Night

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART 2: FLOW

  October: Four months before the flood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  November

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  December

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  January 1953

  Chapter 9

  Friday, 30th January 1953: The day before the flood

  Chapter 10

  Afternoon

  PART 3: HIGH TIDE

  Saturday, 31st January 1953: The day of the flood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Before dawn, Sunday, 1st February

  PART 4: EBB

  Sunday, 1st February 1953: The morning after the flood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Tuesday, 3rd February

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  1954: A year after the flood

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  1954

  A year after the flood

  It’s over a year since the flood. Verity sits in the window seat of a train to London. Now she sees that some things loop and circle and come back again and again, like the tide. What keeps returning is the image of his body. Behind her eyes, when she dozes, or at night when she sleeps, or even, like now, fully awake, gazing through the rain-spattered train window – this is what she sees, half memory, half nightmare.

  In the ruined aftershock of the flooded marsh, she is running, hurtling towards the pine trees. At the far edge of her vision, a flash of white. She falls and trips and her mouth is filled with saltwater, choked with marram grass. Sinking into the bog, she is submerged. When she rises, spitting, retching, the white flash is transformed. It is an arm dangling down from a tree, the skin mottled and pale. Outlined against the setting sun over the salt-wrecked marsh, a white arm reaching from a black tree. It does not make sense.

  Then in the flare of a bright light – a torch – the rest of the body is illuminated, hanging, up-ended, ghoulishly white. The legs are twisted up, the face in shock, like a puppet thrown from the sky.

  The train whistles and Verity starts. Through the smeared glass, a shaft of sun breaks through the cloud, illuminating the window and blinding her temporarily.

  PART 1

  LOW TIDE

  May 1952

  Nine months before the flood

  Temperatures above average for the time of year

  Fog expected on the coast

  Waxing crescent moon

  1.

  Verity was jittery. As she walked towards the woods on her way to see Arthur, the barley sheaves scratched her bare legs. She was glad to get out of the gloomy house where no one spoke of anything that mattered. Pollen caught in her nose, making her sneeze. It had been a day like this then too, the day her mother died. The same sudden heat and sunlight. The same grass-green and dazzling white sprung up on all sides. The same tang of manure from the fields. Everything erupting, spilling over with life. It had been the wrong kind of day to die. Too much life. In a burst of impatience, she took long strides to the last field, stopping short at the sight of the pines that divided the land and marsh from the sea. Mother must also have walked this way that day. It was the route Verity had later run down, desperate to see for herself. As she had then, she stood still on this spot, transfixed by the way the trees curled along the coastline in a long spine of darkness. There had been a sudden feeling of plunging, of vertigo. Her brother had been forced to hold her back.

  They hadn’t let her see the body but in her mind she saw it as a beached fish, silver-coloured, curled and semi-translucent, shining in the pale spring morning. An aberration.

  *

  A shadow unfurled across the field. Arthur emerged from the gloom of the woods. Usually he would wait by the hollow tree but here he was, blinking in the sun like a woodland creature, unused to light. From her vantage point on the slight slope down from the farmhouse, she could see him clearly, his form cut out by the cool sun and looking away from her towards the sea. Warmth trickled into her blood at the familiar sight of him. And yet, as she watched him, his mouth looked set, hard and fixed. He didn’t look the same. Was it some new hardness that had been instilled in him by National Service? She remembered her letters, or the lack of them. She had no good excuse – except that when she’d lifted her pen to write she didn’t have the words to describe her motherless state. And with his absence she’d begun to wonder what they were to each other. Arthur was all tied up with her childhood and now that world had been shattered. He might be tired of her now. He might have met a girl… Her whole body withdrew and the heat evaporated from her skin. She felt like turning, running back and carrying on running, as far away as she could.

  But she was being a coward. It must be something in her – some coldness, or distance. Since the funeral she’d hardly seen him. In her grief she hadn’t noticed, but now it felt as if he was no longer part of the family. She bit her thumbnail. It was Arthur, her beloved Arthur. She’d known him since he was a skinny eight-year-old evacuee, brought home by her mother. Still, she didn’t move. Then there was a whisper in the barley – a snap, a vibration in the sheaves – a ferret or a fox – and he looked up and saw her.

  Quickly, she began to walk towards him, closing the gap across the last field. He stood still, his hand shielding his eyes. As she reached him, she took in his wavy brown hair that wouldn’t lie flat, the dark eyes and the thick eyebrows she liked to touch. Th
e months apart vibrated between them.

  She said, ‘There’s something different about you but I can’t think what it is,’ and reached up and ruffled his hair. It wasn’t what she’d planned to say to him.

  He frowned. ‘You too,’ he said, and took her hand.

  In the woods, something sour mingled with the sweet pine sap, making the air smell sickly. An animal rustled in the ferns underfoot and scooted off. A light breeze shook the pine needles and she shivered.

  They found their place by the hollowed-out tree. As they talked, she took out the Thermos she’d brought and poured the tea, spilling it over his mac, though he didn’t seem to mind. They ate some raisin cake washed down with weak tea.

  ‘I brought beer,’ he said, and poured some into their empty teacups. Dozy and laughing, they lay on their backs. Above them, the tops of the trees swayed in the breeze. He picked up her hand and kissed it. She wriggled and laughed but didn’t pull away. Their faces were close now. He leaned over her and kissed her mouth, biting at the bottom lip. She felt his tongue probing between her teeth and allowed him to prise them open.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, and she murmured, unable to speak. His breath was malty and sweet with beer and cake. His hand crept down her dress to her legs and her skin rippled under his fingers. But it was too soon. She withdrew, pulled her mouth from his. Her heart beat hard in her chest. Aware of him watching her, she clambered on top of him like she used to do when they were children, tickling him and pinning him down. But he took her wrists and looked up at her without laughing, and she climbed off, confused.

  She yawned and stretched, and moved an inch or two away from him on the coat.

  ‘Come on then, spill the beans. I’ve been dying to hear what you’ve been up to. Your letters say absolutely nothing. It’s been dull as ditchwater round here. No doubt Peter will bore you rigid about the farm. He’s desperate for Father to get a new-fangled milking parlour and stop doing any by hand so we can sell more to the dairy, but Father doesn’t want to. Says we can’t afford it. Peter doesn’t understand why not. They talk about money all the time. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s constant. But I just can’t be bothered with it any more, Arty.’ She looked at him, sighed. ‘I’ve been too busy with the books. Thank God it’ll be over soon.’

  ‘But when the exams are over, you can have the summer, can’t you? There’s no hurry, is there?’ he said, circling her ankle bone with tickling fingers.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I can,’ she said, and smiled at him, taking his hand off her ankle and holding it.

  The summer, then. It was theirs to take.

  They lay on their backs on the rug and she wondered if he would try to kiss her again but he didn’t. Her body relaxed and she closed her eyes. She felt his bulk next to her, his hand resting near her thigh, and she imagined what it would be like for him to be on top of her as she’d read about in novels.

  Strange to think of their first innocent kiss in the midst of war. There had been the noise of German bombers overhead, but empty of bombs. The girl and the boy in the pine wood knew the Luftwaffe would have dropped the remaining ones on Norwich if they had any left after London or Coventry. They had grown used to the bombless planes, heading back to Germany, so they weren’t afraid. Sometimes she waved at them, though she felt a prickle of fear. And sometimes, looking up at the black lines flying past on their way to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, she imagined with a delicious shiver the terrifying dark woods and endless snowy wastes of unknown, dangerous lands.

  They met by the hollowed-out tree, where the sand met the pines, past the beach huts, beyond Pinewoods caravan site and the brackish lake, Abraham’s Bosun. The two of them – eleven and thirteen in her memory – were crouched, heads together. They were inspecting each other’s hands. A trickle of blood was crawling down Verity’s left hand from where Arthur had cut her.

  ‘Your turn now,’ she said, and took the penknife from him. He kneeled, eyes open, fixed on the knife, and she held the penknife aloft. It caught the light from the morning sun. Her right arm, holding the knife, trembled a little but she stilled it. This was all her idea and she was exultant at it coming to pass. They had decided the words together.

  ‘Here in this sacred wood on the 24th April 1945, we hereby…’ She was pleased with the hereby, that was one of hers. It made it sound official and important. ‘… hereby make a pact of undying friendship and unity in all things. Unto death do us part.’

  ‘Until,’ Arthur said. His eyes were still fixed on her hand and the knife.

  ‘Yes, until,’ she said, slightly annoyed at the interruption. ‘And with this mark I do unite us.’

  She glanced at him, but his eyes seemed to say yes so she looked down at his hand held out. It was darker than hers, and bigger now with a hardness that was new. He had only recently found out that his father was missing. Missing presumed dead, they said. He’d not said anything about it. With a sudden, quick movement she cut into the flesh below his left thumb. It was tougher than she thought it would be. The skin didn’t yield much and she realised belatedly that there was muscle there. She thought she might have to cut it again and blanched at the idea but there was no need for more. Blood was already beading up along the cut. Quickly, it became a line and the line lengthened, grew and began to drip down on the sandy floor. The two of them knelt, suspended, both watching the red blood mingle with the dusty sand and dirt of the woodland ground.

  ‘We have to mix it,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and they put their bloody left hands together. Her blood was browning, drying, but the fresh blood on his hand was still bright. She gasped as the cuts on their hands met. The pain was sharp and sickening but ebbed as soon as it came, leaving just a throb. She licked her thumb. It tasted metallic and sweet.

  ‘I think we should kiss now,’ she said. She tried to keep her voice calm and serious, like his was, but her heart was pumping hard. She was thrilled and shocked at herself.

  Arthur looked up at her with a pained expression. She had made a mistake. Slowly, he said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We don’t have to,’ she said, her throat hot with the shame of it and her eyes instantly pricking with tears.

  ‘No, it’s just I didn’t think. I’ve never…’ He seemed to be squirming with embarrassment.

  ‘Me neither, silly,’ she said.

  The excitement rose again. She leaned towards him and put her lips against his, which were surprisingly fleshy and wet.

  A crackle in the undergrowth and they both flinched and spun round. Nothing but the tail of an animal. They collapsed in a laughing heap.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling him up. ‘I’ll race you back.’

  *

  A twig snapped. Next to her, Arthur tensed. She had a sudden sensation that they were being watched.

  They were. Opening her eyes, she caught a brief glimpse of a fox staring at them. Its eyes were gold, rimmed with black, its coat a deep, tawny red and across its white muzzle a black mouth that seemed to smile. Then it was gone.

  It was late. She stood up, brushing crumbs from her skirt. Without looking at him, she said, ‘It’s getting on, Arty, I really ought to go. There’s a tea. Nothing too formal. But Father wanted to mark…’

  ‘How have you been holding up?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘It was a year ago, actually. It was a year today.’ It came out apologetic as if it was embarrassing to mention. She wanted to be open with him as she’d always been but something was clamming up her mouth. It had been the same on the day of the funeral. He’d tried to comfort her – he’d put his hand on the small of her back, followed her into the pantry and kissed her clumsily. She’d stiffened, unable to accept the affection. He was going back to his posting that night but she couldn’t bring herself to touch him.

  ‘I’m sorry, I—’ he started but she waved it away.

  ‘You never did tell me about what you’ve been doing all this time,’ she said, brightly, realisi
ng too late that he’d said hardly anything, while she’d chattered inconsequentially in her nervous, overwrought state. The distance between them remained.

  *

  Out of the woods, Verity arched her back, tilting her face to the sun. She heard the low buzz of aircraft and ducked. Laughing at herself, she straightened and looked up. It was a silver plane, low in the sky, not one she recognised.

  The plane drew its black course through the blue, cloudless sky, south-west, away from the sea. She watched it go, imagining the pilot inside peering down at the dark-haired girl in the long skirt standing in the field of barley. She twirled round, her skirt flung out wide and her arms stretched out. When it had gone, she swayed and blinked at the waving sheaves and remembered she needed to hurry home. Mrs Timms, their housekeeper, was baking a special cake, supposedly to fortify her for the imminent school exams, but really in honour of their mother. It was bound to be as bland as all the others but she saved their sugar rations and put some effort in, which was much more than anyone else did now Mother was gone. Mrs Timms was the only one left now from the old staff. It was wrong that Arthur hadn’t been invited to the tea, but it was just too awkward. If she was being completely honest, it was a relief for him not to be there, to avoid any evasions about their relationship. And to avoid a repeat of the way he’d hovered on the edge of the funeral tea a year ago, not family but more than a friend. She had made her choice. It was more important to persuade her father to allow her to take the Oxford entrance than to make a point about Arthur. In the woods, sharing wet, hoppy mouths, and pushing each other over like they used to do when they were younger, she was both there and not there. It had felt like they were children and yet they weren’t children any more.

  She could hear Peter’s voice. Arthur? Are you joking? Behind the patronising tone would be something else too. She couldn’t bear her brother’s confusion, or worse, revulsion, at what he would consider wrong. But she and Arthur were not brother and sister any more; they had long ceased to be that. If only she knew what they were now. She didn’t want to decide. He was just her Arthur and had always been there. She conjured a picture of her coming home to him one holiday from Oxford and telling him she’d found a lover. It gave her a kind of exquisite pain to imagine the expression on his face. They would make ferocious goodbye-love. Though what that actually entailed she had no idea.