The Night of the Flood Read online

  It was funny how he had resolved to hate her.

  Determined to keep up with their games, she would appear, eyes narrowed with satisfaction, pouncing on their latest den in the pine trees or the dunes.

  He would catch her looking at him over Peter’s shoulder and a small smile of victory would twitch at the corner of her mouth. Sometimes she would say mean things. If she’d been a boy he would have punched her, but she was just a little girl. He wanted to say something horrid too but when he opened his mouth to speak there was a hard defiance on her face which looked like it could burst and it made him uneasy. He often caught her peering at him from under the black fringe and he grew a kind of fondness for that fierce look of hers, the way her eyebrows furrowed into a deep frown. He found himself looking for her when they were playing, wanting her to find them and missing her when she didn’t come.

  Once, they were running together, he faster than her now he had grown, but he could hear her breathing behind him, the swish of the wheat as she pushed through it, just an arm’s stretch behind him. Through the woods she kept up with him, then something caught at his foot as he scrabbled over the dunes and down he fell. Falling, sand flying. She banged up against his back and down they dropped, like two dominoes. She thrust against him as they fell. He remembered the thrilling feeling of the weight of her chest on his back, her cry in his ear. They landed with their legs sprawled on the side of the dunes, sand in his face.

  ‘I’ve got you now,’ she said, triumphant.

  He manoeuvred himself round to push her off him and sit up but she took hold of his wrists and held them down in the sand and sat astride him. He thought he could break free but her grip was strong and his first effort failed. Her fringe had been cut back and the twin scythes of her black bob cut across her jaw. The sun created a halo glow on the top of her head. He squinted up at her, not wanting any more to release himself from her hold. It was then, he realised later, as he lay pinned down by her on the hot sand, that she had won. She had been trying, ever since he had arrived in their garden, to claim him as her own, playing a silent game with Peter over his loyalty and love. And now she had won, there on the dunes. She had won him forever.

  *

  From the golf course, you could see out over the fields to a faint sheen where the sea must be. They were the same twisted rope, Verity and this place. He couldn’t unknot one from the other, and yet he knew that he must.

  6.

  June

  Eight months before the flood

  From the middle of June onwards, the heat kept rising to an almost unbearable level. Verity was the only one who liked it. Mrs Timms complained about the milk curdling. On the marsh, gnats multiplied, grass withered and mud dried and cracked. Peter kept moving the cows to find somewhere to graze and they slapped their tails against the flies and drooped their heavy heads. A heat haze shimmered between the land and the vast, oppressive sky. Beyond the parched fields and the wilted barley, the sea glittered a bright, blinding white.

  But the languid, stifling days and hot nights suited her post-school mood. Her exams were over and she wore a floppy straw hat, one of her mother’s old gardening ones, tried and mostly failed to sketch, left her legs bare and considered reading the pile of books her History mistress, Miss Gardiner, had recommended for cramming for the Oxford entrance in October.

  Miss Gardiner. Oh, there was a crush. She was a slim, neat kind of woman, not much older than the students, with very straight hair always kept in a trim bun. She seemed impossibly glamorous and clever to Verity with her little berets and French cigarettes. Verity had wanted to be everything Miss Gardiner was: beautiful, erudite and educated. The mistress had taken her to her bosom and lent her all sorts of books and pictures of art. In the absence of close friends, Miss Gardiner was a worthy substitute.

  Sometime in the winter, they had been taking tea in the rooms off the school where Miss Gardiner – ‘Call me Cecily’ – lodged. It had been late afternoon and getting dark. The teacher was leaning over the grill, toasting bread, and in the inadequate yellow light of the primitive kitchen area, Verity noticed the lines around Miss Gardiner’s eyes. She had thought of her as someone romantic, her lover killed in the war (his picture was on the mantelpiece, staring into the camera, serious and very young), and rather glorious in a ballet dancer kind of way. Though they had no proof whatsoever, the girls at school had often speculated that the mistress had been in the Resistance or something else exciting.

  ‘Miss Gardiner – Cecily,’ she said, plunging forward, ‘do you ever feel as if there is more to life than being stuck out here in Norfolk?’

  At first, Miss Gardiner didn’t move. There was the slightest contraction in her thin neck. She turned and said cheerfully, ‘Oh, but my dear, I know there is. I have travelled, you know. Before the war. To Paris and Florence and Rome. It was our Grand Tour. My friends and I were rather intrepid, you know. The Uffizi, the Louvre. All of it.’

  ‘God, I wish I could do that. Father would never let me.’

  ‘Then you must find another way.’

  For a while they were silent, eating toast and drinking tea. Daringly, because this was her old teacher after all, Verity lit a cigarette and sat happily sated in a warm fug of smoke.

  ‘But why did you end up here of all places?’

  ‘My family found me the position, after the war.’

  A veil had come down. Verity was stupid to have asked. Then the mistress reached over and held Verity’s hand hard as if she was going to embrace it.

  ‘You really should go and see the world, my dear. Don’t wait.’

  There was a hunger and a desperation in Miss Gardiner’s primly lovely face. Suddenly, Verity wanted to jump up and leave, as if the sadness of lost chances she smelt on the mistress would catch and infect her too.

  *

  It was a late afternoon of swooning heat. She hadn’t been to tea at Cecily Gardiner’s for months now. She felt guilty but dismissed it, shucking off any sense of obligation she couldn’t bear to feel. Her mother had made her like this – unable to connect with anyone, unable to find a real friend. There was some coldness, some distancing in her that had contaminated Verity too. Only Arthur had ever come close, and now, what was he?

  She was lying on her stomach under the tree, eyes closed, feeling the prickles of dry grass under her legs and the heat of the afternoon sun on the backs of her calves. The textbook about the French Revolution was lying face down on the grass. Her sketchbook was open but she’d abandoned her attempt at a charcoal landscape. The image of the red-haired American with the sly, fox-like grin flitted across her vision but she shook it away. It was replaced by the burning sensation of his hand on hers. Like slow waves, the sensations fell over her prone, sun-warmed body.

  From somewhere nearby, the revving of an engine, a rough and shocking noise, tore through the low hum of the hot summer’s afternoon. Curious, she slipped into the house via the kitchen back door and heard voices in the hallway. With an ear to the door, she could hear Mrs Timms was clucking around Peter, but another voice chimed in, lower than the others, with a distinctive twang: foreign, assured. She took the back stairs to the landing. A rainbow of diffuse light filtered through the stained glass of the porch door into the hall but she was hidden in the shadows and could observe, unseen, the unexpected visitor from above. Through the banisters she tried to work out who it was. She could only see the tops of their heads and couldn’t be sure of the colour in the washed-out light.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t stay for supper, Peter? And your guest…’

  ‘Jack,’ said the other man. ‘A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,’ and he stepped forward into Verity’s line of vision and took the housekeeper’s plump hand in both of his.

  Verity swallowed. It was the American. Of course – Peter talked of no one else. Mrs Timms must be bristling at his impertinence but he didn’t seem to notice. Verity leaned forward to try to see him more clearly, but he had his back to her.

  �
��That’s awfully kind of you, Mrs T,’ said Peter. ‘Maybe a drink or two would do the trick. Show this uncouth fellow how we do things in the old world. Can’t stay long, though.’

  ‘Peter? Is that you?’ Father’s voice cut through the hallway from his study at the back of the house. Verity stiffened.

  Her father came out to the entrance hall. He was tall and used to commanding the attention of the workers on his farm and his family, but from her position on the landing he appeared to stoop. He moved slowly as if he had all the time in the world – or as if he was in pain.

  ‘And who are you, young man?’

  Jack sprang forward and shook her father’s hand before Peter could introduce him. ‘Jack Doherty, sir. So great to meet you.’

  ‘Is it? I can’t think why.’

  Jack laughed and Verity thought her father would be horrified at the crude sound of it, shattering the usual hush of the house, but instead he let out a bark, which turned into a cough.

  ‘Father, Jack has been helping me with the herd. He’s a fine herder, you know – he was brought up on a ranch.’

  ‘A ranch? Cattle man, are you? Dairy or stock?’

  Verity thought Jack twitched slightly. There was a small hesitation before he said, ‘Both.’

  ‘You sound American. Well, at least you’re making yourself useful here. Unlike the rest of your lot. Don’t know why you still need to be here. War’s over, after all.’

  ‘Father…’ said Peter, hopping about.

  ‘It’s all right, Peter,’ their father waved a hand at him, ‘I shan’t go on.’

  ‘Mr Frost, you may have a point there. I don’t suppose we’ll be here for much longer. But there is a war, sir. It’s just playing out a little differently. You know, I sure have been surprised by the welcome I’ve received. You have a beautiful country.’

  Father grunted again but Verity saw how his back seemed to straighten.

  What had Arthur said to her? The planes they had were bombers. She remembered the Pathé footage she’d seen showing the mushroom clouds somewhere in Australia, and the voiceover man pronouncing, ‘It seems that by the possession of such deadly weapons, peace can be maintained in this troubled world.’ That was a twisted way of looking at it.

  ‘I was just going to get Jack a drink, Father, can we…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ her father said, ‘go ahead. You youngsters will drink a man dry.’ He waved them into the front room. ‘Mrs Timms, fetch Verity.’

  Before Verity could scuttle back to her room, Jack lifted his eyes to the banisters. Although surely he couldn’t possibly know that she was there, he smiled in the direction of the landing where she was crouching in the shadows as if he could sense her watching him. Quickly, she jerked back and tiptoed to her room.

  Her mind was all over the place. She had taken something of a dislike to the American and his secret war but for some reason she had the stupid thought that he was here to see her. It was important, she decided, to let him understand that not only was she not interested in his advances if that’s what they were, but that they were actually rather unwelcome.

  Despite the summons, she absolutely could not go downstairs in her current state, hair dishevelled and face all crumpled from lying in the garden for hours. At her dressing table, adorned with her mother’s pearl-inlaid hair brush and hand mirror, Verity smoothed her hair at the glass and rubbed just a hint of rouge into her cheeks to add some colour into her skin. Her face had a light tan from the sun but in the gloom of the house it looked yellow, like jaundice. Her mother would have known how to handle Americans. She would have disarmed this one with her trilling laugh. All men had loved her. She’d known how to flatter them, to make them feel special and, unlike Verity, she had been a fragile, delicate thing and it made men want to protect her too. Father said once that her brothers had worshipped her and been protective and he’d had to reassure them that he was good enough for her. Verity dabbed a spot of her mother’s precious L’Air du Temps on her wrists. None of them had protected her, though, it turned out, had they?

  A pale light suffused the east-facing drawing room but did not fully illuminate it. Her father and Jack sat either side of the cold fireplace. Peter stood next to the drinks cabinet. As Verity entered the room, the door creaked and they all turned to see her. She was warm with embarrassment, but her father just said, ‘Come in, come in,’ and waved at her impatiently. Peter helped himself to a generous measure of whisky. He winked at her.

  ‘Creep,’ she mouthed.

  Her father did not offer her a drink. Instead, he was intent on listening to the American’s tales of breaking in horses on a ranch in Arizona. Verity perched on the edge of an armchair and studied their guest. His hair was the colour of pale wood. Or was it a peach? Yes, that was it. But there was copper too. It seemed to change and shift when he moved and his golden head caught the light from the reading lamps. And his face was strange too: it was strictly rather ugly but undeniably compelling. She imagined drawing the line of his profile in pencil, down along the thin nose, twisted slightly to the left to his large mouth and his hard little chin. As she was recreating his image, the portrait himself turned and looked at her.

  ‘Hello there.’

  She almost fell back into the chair. But as he turned back to her brother she found herself looking at him again, studying the lines and contours of his form.

  As if aware of her gaze, Jack shot back a searching glance. He wandered over to the other side of the room and asked about the telescope in the corner, positioned by the window. Her father was only too delighted to show the American his collection of optical instruments. His ‘star-gazers’ as he called them.

  She watched as Jack’s pale fingers clicked the pieces into place and he leaned down to look through the eye-piece. Her father looked on proudly. ‘Have you ever done any of this yourself, young man?’

  Jack gave him a white-toothed smile. ‘Some. For the services, you see. What’s this?’ He was holding up a camera in his hand, cradling it in his palm as if it was a precious bird’s egg. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  The air in the room cooled. It had been her mother’s. It was a shiny metal camera that could fit in the palm of your hand. It had an odd French name – LeCoultre Compass – and had been passed down to her mother by an old uncle. She had used it all the time, but since her death, no one had touched it. It remained on the corner table by the window, sat there like a useless ornament, stoppered, gathering dust.

  No one spoke for a few seconds and she saw that Jack noticed this but did not seem perturbed. Finally, Peter stepped in.

  ‘It was Mother’s,’ he said. ‘Photography was something of a family hobby. I think it was actually invented by a family member – one of Mother’s aristocratic lot – apparently he took on a bet that you couldn’t make a camera that would fit in a cigarette packet. Mother was an amateur, but very good.’ He glanced at their father.

  ‘Madmen, the lot of them,’ Father grunted.

  Jack set the camera down on the table gently. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘It’s incredibly rare.’ He had a dreamy look she hadn’t seen before. None of them had ever paid much attention to her mother’s interest. The American was saying something under his breath while his fingers nimbly caressed the levers and dials but she couldn’t catch what it was.

  ‘Father, Jack and I really need to get off,’ said Peter, downing his drink.

  Her father seemed to jolt himself into joviality. ‘Yes, yes. You go and have your fun. One minute, though, Peter, I need to have a word with you.’ Peter gave Jack a strangled look and Jack jumped out of his chair.

  ‘Mr Frost, sir, would you mind if I took a look around your home? I’ve always had a great interest in English country houses but I haven’t had the chance to take a good look at one as fantastic as this. Could Miss Frost show me?’ Peter had his eyes raised to heaven but Jack took no notice.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said her father. ‘It’s eighteenth century, quite old. But
then I suppose everything must seem old to your lot. I would give you a tour myself but I must speak with Peter. Verity, please show Mr Doherty the house.’

  ‘Me?’ But it was no use complaining; she had no reasonable excuse. And perhaps this was her chance to see him off.

  ‘Father, I can show Jack the house.’ The colour had risen in Peter’s face.

  Realising that he desperately didn’t want her anywhere near his precious Jack, she said, quite casually, ‘Oh all right then, if I must.’

  He followed her around the hushed and half-lit house, hardly a step behind her, admiring everything in a drawling voice that always seemed amused. The house was dark and gloomy and somehow tired. It was like a mausoleum, without Mother there. On the hallway stairs, he stopped in front of a framed photograph of her and Peter dressed up as Arabians in silk cloths. She winced.

  ‘Mother took that. It was one of her things. Dressing us up, posing. I loathed it.’

  He smiled. ‘I love it,’ he said, his fingertips touching the frame. ‘I think I’d have got on well with your mother.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ she said in a withering tone but it sounded silly. It was true, what he’d said. Her mother, before her descent into – whatever it was – had been interested in people. Or at least she had appeared to be and had made everyone feel as if they were interesting. At parties, she would stand with a glass in her hand and cock her head to one side with wide eyes as if whatever dull nonsense the person was spouting was fascinating. Her mother would have been besotted by this odd American boy and he with her, and it made Verity feel strangely left out.

  On the upstairs landing, they stood in front of some watery Norfolk landscapes.

  ‘They’re Cotman. Norwich school. Mother inherited them. Do you like them?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘I don’t. Not any more. I’m fed up with old things. Sick of them. I’m supposed to be studying History, did you know that? But you know what’s funny? I can’t stand history. I hate it all. All the old stuff. I think I only chose it because of one of the mistresses at my school.’