Tideline (22 page)

‘Hmmm. I’ve got you some drinks here. A choice. But the weed you had has run out. Where am I going to get more from?’

‘You could ask Alicia.’

I flinch at the sound of her name.

‘I don’t know Alicia,’ I say.

‘Helen knows her! And you know Helen! You can phone her. You know you can.’

‘OK Jez, look, I’ll get you some dope, but I’m not speaking to Alicia; I think we should keep her out of this.’

He raises his voice.

‘Out of what? You still haven’t said what’s going on! It’s weird. It’s bloody mad.’

‘Out of us. Out of you and me.’

‘Look,’ he says, as if he’s trying his best to be patient with a small child, ‘Alicia has dope. If she doesn’t have any on her, she knows where to get some from.
And I need it.’

‘It’s not good for you, you know,’ I tell him. ‘It can mess up your brain.’

‘We don’t smoke skunk,’ he says, and the ‘we’ riles me. Is he doing this deliberately?

‘It’s just mild stuff. Grass. I can tell you exactly what to ask for. It would do me so much good. It would make me a nicer boy to be with.’ He grins. It’s not a real,
genuine, happy grin, but it’s the first time he’s smiled since he came to the garage.

‘OK.’

It occurs to me that weed might be of help to me, as it has been already. When Jez smokes he loses the will to resist food, which enables me to administer the sleeping drugs he needs to keep him
calm and complicit. And I do have another contact who can probably get me some marijuana.

‘I said I’d get you whatever you want. So I will. You need some new clothes too. Tell me what you’d like. You can’t stay in Greg’s old trousers. And I haven’t
been able to wash the things I took off you yesterday.’

‘Could do with some warmer stuff,’ he mutters.

‘I need to know your size then,’ I say. ‘Let me look.’

His eyes go hard, and for quite a few seconds I’m afraid he’s going to spit again. I step back in self-defence, but then he capitulates, and gives a little nod.

I step towards him, gently, and he lets me pull out the collar of his T-shirt to look at the label. I ask him to roll over as far as he is able to in the bonds, so I can lift his hair to get a
better look. I notice the fine hair that runs down the valley of his neck to the top of his spine. I turn down the top of Greg’s trousers, which are far too loose round the waist for him, to
look at the label on his boxers. Here, his back narrows, the skin like sand that has never been walked on, a gentle sheen of golden down where it disappears into the waistband of his shorts. Is
this all I need? To experience the transient stage his body is at, to have it near me, to sense it with my eyes, my nose. I appreciate this best when he’s asleep, when I can indulge myself
and float back in time. But even that is not enough. It’s something else, something that nags at me so I cannot let him go until I can capture it for once and for all.

‘Got it?’

‘What?’

‘The size.’

‘OK. Yes. Sure. So I’ll get you jeans, some T-shirts, boxers and a hoodie. Maybe a body warmer and some thick socks.’

‘I won’t need all that.’

‘I think you might.’

‘Not if I’m leaving soon, like you said.’

‘Better to be on the safe side though,’ I say. ‘Now is there anything else?’

‘There’s no music in here,’ he says. ‘All I can hear is the river.’

‘I thought you liked the sound of the river? I remember you saying, you know, that first night we spent together, how it’s a kind of urban music. You haven’t stopped hearing
it, have you? Because it can happen, when you get used to something. You lose your sensitivity to it.’

He looks at me as if he doesn’t understand what the hell I’m on about.

‘Listen,’ I say, sitting down on the end of the bed. ‘When the tide’s out, you can hear the water on the shingle. There’s a constant background rhythm. But when
it’s in, the sounds can catch you off-guard. Haven’t you heard the pontoon? It sounds like a child crying when it moves. And you get those sudden surges in the waves, when a boat goes
by. The ebb and flow, if you tune in, is rhythmic, like life. Reminds us that nothing lasts. Yet everything that goes away comes back in some form or another.’

‘All I know is I need music.’

‘OK. I’m sorry.’ I see he isn’t in the mood for one of our deeper conversations. ‘I was trying to convince you, but of course. Music is essential to you, Jez. I do
understand that. I’ll sort it. Don’t worry.’

‘And I want to speak to them. Mum and Alicia. Because they have no idea where I am. Do they? They’ll be worried sick by now. I hate to think of what they must be going
through.’

I walk to the tiny window, push it open further. A blast of cold, river-scented air comes in, lifts the cobwebs so they catch the light and gleam.

‘Jez, I don’t know what to do! You can’t speak to them yet. And I can’t let you out of here until Greg goes. I can’t make him leave, but neither can I bear for him
to stay. I feel trapped.’

‘You? Trapped?’ He laughs, an ironic, bitter laugh. I turn and look at him. The light that comes in through the open window catches him and I see now that he looks nothing like he
did that first day. His face is drawn and pale, and there are spots appearing around his mouth. His beauty’s fading in this dreadful place.

Is the solution, after all, to let him go? I could simply slash off the tape, walk out, leave the garage door open, let him make his way home. It isn’t even far to Helen’s house. He
could be back there in ten minutes. I imagine the looks on their faces, Maria and Mick and Helen. It would be doing Helen a favour. The dynamics have changed in their household, and I hold the key
to restoring them. But would they be restored? This thing I’ve set in motion by taking Jez into my life has taken on a momentum of its own. There are certain things that can’t be
altered. I suspect that Mick’s loss of respect for Helen is irreversible, that Helen’s drinking will continue to escalate. That the simmering passion, if that’s what it is,
between Mick and Maria will run its course. I can’t save them. And where would it leave me? Back to square one, with Greg. Jez would grow into some grotesque adult. His beauty, this perfect
state between boy and man would pass, until it vanished altogether. It would be as if the simple twist of fate that brought Jez into my life never happened.

Sonia

I leave the garage. I’m afraid if I stay there I’ll cry. With fury, indignation and hurt at Greg, and at the impossibility of the situation for Jez. Instead of
going straight home, I go down the steps to the beach. The tide’s out. I walk along, wanting to feel the cold air on my face, breathe the river’s mingled scents.

The shore is clean these days compared to how it was when Seb and I played here. Yes, there’s a car tyre washed up on the shore, a length of pipe, the usual discarded bits of electricals,
kitchen appliances. Polystyrene burger containers. Even a pumpkin, hollowed, rolling on the shore, a relic of Hallowe’en, goodness knows how it’s survived this long. But they’re
washed clean from the water and beneath them is sand, stones whitened, pieces of smoothed glass and china. The mud, the oil, the dense chemical stew that Seb and I played in is no more. I sit down
on a concrete slab. Behind me the wall is coated up to the tideline in green river weed and above it soar the chimneys of the power station, towering over the great crumbling chalky-white walls. To
the right of the power station is the little old hospital, now almshouses, with its black and gold clock on its pretty tower, its delicate crenellated eaves, two incongruous buildings juxtaposed.
This is one of my favourite places to sit, the tall protective walls behind me, the river in front.

I have to hug my coat around me, pull up the collar to keep off the vicious wind. I wonder if it might snow. I listen to the water lap the shore. There’s the gentle bell-like tinkle of
china against stone, or metal on bone, as the waves nudge the debris on the shore.

I stare at the river and suddenly I see us. The day we built the raft. The hot summer of that year had ended. It must have been early autumn. I can remember a mist coming off
the river. An acrid reek drifted up from Dartford as if some toxic substance had leaked from a chemical plant. Early morning. Something had happened in the River House. There had been some row,
shouting, threats. I’d stormed out of the house in tears. I had the same ache in my chest I have now, as if I were holding in months of misery and hurt. Then I spotted Seb down here on the
shore and felt things lift. I joined him at the water’s edge. He was staring into the murk.

‘What’s that?’

Something floated on the tide towards us, wood, part of a fish box by the looks of it.

‘Grab it, Sonia.’

I waded obediently through the mud into the water, not heeding the cold – something I challenged myself to do when I was with Seb, so he couldn’t accuse me of being feeble. I hauled
the fish box towards the shore.

‘Ideal raft material!’ Seb said. ‘Then we can get away and hide from everyone. No one can stop us, Sonia. We’ll disappear like the swans. We’ll vanish!’

I looked at him and smiled. It was a crazy idea but I loved Seb for it. He always believed we could achieve the impossible.

‘Brill. This is perfect as a start. When it’s built, we can go across to the Isle of Dogs. Make our escape route from there.’

‘Will it be safe?’

‘It’ll be fine. We need an oar though. And some kind of barrier so we don’t tip out. And some buoyancy aids. And a painter. Fetch that car tyre, we can use it to make a kind of
seat thing.’

I knew about buoyancy. It’s something that’s second nature to you when you live by water. I’d learnt about it in the various rowing boats and motor launches I’d travelled
in. I collected bits of polystyrene, of which there were plenty in those days, scattered along the tideline, and filled plastic bags with them. Meanwhile Seb collected bits from the shore, oil
drums and bits of beer barrel and driftwood and ropes. It took us most of the day to build the raft, wading in and out of the water to test it, starting again, redesigning it until it was ready to
take across the river. We spent hours tying ragged bits of discarded fishing net between two long ropes to make a ladder.

‘We can use it to scale the wall on the other side,’ Seb said. ‘We’ll have to wait for the tide, though, it’ll be useless if it won’t reach the top of the
wall.’

It was getting dark by the time the water was high enough to launch the raft.

The wind had got up, sending waves hurtling upriver. Yellow lights winked on along the banks, both north and south. In the middle of the river too, they flickered on, on the moored ships, on the
smaller river-buses that were making their last journeys of the day along the now bronze waterway.

I wondered what we’d do if a ship came up the river and we were unable to get out of its way but Seb said we’d be alright so I kept my mouth shut. If the worst comes to the worst, I
thought, we can just dive off and swim for it. As usual, it was more important to maintain Seb’s respect than to ensure my own safety.

I slipped silently back into the River House to fetch waterproof outer garments from the hall. Wet suits weren’t used in those days. The house was silent. Whoever had upset me that morning
had disappeared. I unhooked oilcloth raincoats for both of us and slithered back down the steps that were being licked by the water at the bottom.

‘Now we’ve got to launch her,’ said Seb. ‘She needs a name, Sonia. What’re we going to call her?’

‘Tamasa,’ I said.

‘Tamasa?’

‘It’s the old word for Thames,’ I said. ‘It means “dark river”. We did it at school. And the river’s almost dark now.’

‘OK. We’ll smash a bottle against her side. Launch her properly.’

We stood on the steps. Seb tied a piece of rope to the handle of one of the oil drums that made up
Tamasa
’s body, then tied a full bottle of Brown Ale to the other end, and threw it
hard against the raft’s side. It took several attempts. In the end we had to employ the aid of the stone steps, but at last the bottle shattered and bubbles hissed along the surface of the
water, fusing and mingling with the toxic froth that had accumulated at the edge.

We walked down the last two steps into the churning tide, and, resigned to what lay ahead, I ignored the water sloshing over the top of my boots and helped Seb shove the raft out into the waves.
We jumped on board and set off across the misty water, lying on our stomachs. Seb got the paddle and rowed like fury but after a few minutes he gave up. The currents were far stronger than his
rowing. There was no point in trying to navigate. The river was going to do with us what it liked.

Within seconds we were out near the middle. The shore seemed further away than ever in the gathering dusk. The raft barely floated above the surface of the water.

‘Whoaa!’ Seb shouted as the tidal currents took us up again and sent us heading upriver.

‘Row harder!’ he shouted, ‘or we’ll end up beyond Rotherhithe or Jacob’s Island! God! The current’s stronger than I thought!’

I think that even Seb was scared at this point. The raft veered around, dipped, bobbed up again, and icy water splashed over the side and into our faces. Soon we swung over to the north of the
river, way up. The water had carried us faster and further than we’d imagined it could. Over to our right were the pilings, great wooden posts holding up the street above, linked by chains
and with steel ladders reaching to the landing stages. Seb’s breathing was coming fast now, and I sensed that he was close to panic.

‘Hold on!’ he shouted, above the roar of the wind, the slosh of water over the raft, the rumble of traffic and thunder of motor launches that rocked obliviously past us. In the dusk
there was no way they’d be able to see us from their brightly lit interiors.

‘Stick the oar in and keep it there or— Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!’

I pressed the plank we were using as an oar into the water and the raft swung right.

At last we managed to arrive under a landing stage, though whether this was due to my navigation or the river’s will, it was impossible to say. The sounds changed. Gulps and drips echoed
in the darkness. Seb’s voice bounced back off the walls as he spoke.