‌Like Canute

‌Clare Dudman

Sophie begins the day by looking at the sky. No matter how this ends it will always be there. She likes the shade of duck-egg blue shining through a rip in the clouds just above the roofline, and wonders where she read that the only sea really this colour is the Mediterranean. As her tea brews she watches a reflection of herself in the glass door of the shower cubicle in the bathroom. She lowers herself over the pedestal. The bowl is too large for the room, and unfortunately also functions as a sound box. It would be embarrassing if anyone could hear, but no one ever does. As she rinses her hands, part of the manuscript she was reading last night comes back to her: a wisp of an idea that disappears when she tries to grasp it. What was it? Something she should know.

The thought that there is something she can’t quite remember bugs her on her journey to the office. Once or twice it almost comes to her, but then someone jostles it away. Maybe she’s getting old. Sometimes she finds herself wondering about the answers to the questions they ask to test for Alzheimer’s. Who’s the prime minister? She grins as she imagines her answer: who cares?

There’s a storm coming. It’s being announced everywhere: on the radio, by the newspaper vendor at the entrance to the station, and on the news site when she switches on her laptop at work. If it comes it will bring torrential rain: something most people will welcome after these weeks of drought. Her assistant tells her that someone from the council is wittering on about flooding, and the likelihood of the sewers overflowing. He’s recommending that people living at or below ground level acquire sand bags.

Long ago, on a childhood holiday, the rain came down so hard and fast that the roof of their tent was battered into a pool-filled valley. First it dripped but then it cascaded through the canvas, and they had had to wait out the rest of the day in the family car. Through patches in the steamed-up windows they had watched the rain-glazed pathways quickly become small, fast-flowing, dirty streams. There had been sandbags then. ‘Like Canute,’ her mother had said. ‘No one can stop the tide coming in.’

All morning they wait for the rain to start. Her assistant says she can smell it coming, as if the air is growing thick. In the afternoon, by the time the chief calls her in for a meeting, it has still not come. ‘Hope you’ve brought your umbrella, Norman,’ she tells him, ‘because I haven’t.’

Norman doesn’t smile. He tells her to sit, then says that he’s sorry, and he knows this is going to seem unfair because she’s been here even longer than he has, but he wants her to clear her desk. Even though she is the most valuable and dedicated member of staff, she is also the most expensive and it’s been hard, obviously, but the cuts are hurting everyone. No one is safe, he says. It’ll be the rest of us soon.

Her hands rest on the small arms of her chair. She notices the shininess of her skin over her knuckles, how she can see each ridge of her bone, and each blue string of vein threading over and between. Then she remembers what she has been trying to remember all morning. ‘There was a manuscript I read last night,’ she says, ‘I think it’s important. I think you should see it.’

Norman shakes his head. ‘Not now, Sophie,’ he says. He stands, pats her lightly on the shoulder, and then walks over to his door and opens it. He waits until she stands too, then steps aside so she can step through it. ‘Keep in touch,’ he says, his voice flat.

‘I’ve put everything in these bags,’ her assistant says when she returns to her desk.

‘Well, that was quick!’

The assistant gives a small smile, looks down, and then walks quickly back to her desk. Sophie wonders how long she’s known, and if all that conversation today about the rain was a way of filling in time, of saying nothing. But it still feels as though it will rain.

The uniformed man on the reception desk smiles widely when she hands in her pass cards. He posts them in a box and then waves goodbye just as cheerily as he has every evening for the last twenty-six years. By the time she has passed through the revolving door she has forgotten his face.

It is still mid-afternoon: a time of day she rarely sees outside the office. How quiet it is, and how hot. There’s something missing, a small sound that should be there but isn’t. A single man passes on a bicycle. There are no cars, no trams, and no buses at this time of day, not any more, but it’s not their roar that she’s missing. Something else. She will either have to walk or wait until the rush hour starts. The air is sucking moisture into itself. There is no wind, no sign of a storm, but the newspaper stall is still predicting it in scrawled capital letters. Everyone is waiting.

That night Sophie, who is not sleeping, is disturbed by a sound. When she opens her bedroom door, a man with a hood over his head, a scarf over his lower face, and a knife in his hand is standing by her open fridge. He has her cloth bag from a Trade Fair partly filled with food. ‘Hungry,’ he says, and his black eyes have a glittering violence to them. ‘I hungry. I have baby, wife, child. They all cry. You not need. I do.’

A refugee. He’s come from somewhere warmer and used to the sun. She can smell the dust and the heat on his clothes.

‘Take it.’ she whispers. ‘Take everything. Here.’ Inside her cupboards are vegetables, tins of fruit, and meat. She pulls out a shopping bag and thrusts it at him. ‘Fill it. Take what you want.’

When he has gone there is nothing left.

It takes her two days to reach it. One long journey by the only train that now travels that far north, and then a shorter one to reach the outskirts of the city. From there she has to walk. It has been a dry summer here, too. The uplands are covered by yellow grass, wiry thorns, and heather that crackles underfoot. The solitary sound. Only when she reaches a valley and a stream are there trees, but even these look parched, as if they are already dead.

MacPherson Health Spa used to be the seat of the Earl of Throckmorton. Now it is converted into apartments, and the surrounding deer park turned over to vegetables and a newly planted wood. Hoops of bamboo, covered in polythene, are arranged untidily alongside trees.

An avenue of sparsely-leaved poplars leads from the road to a large wooden front door. A handle brings a small hammer in contact with a large bell. The man who comes to open this door is just as she imagined he would be: a reddish-white beard and a large, upright frame. The top of his nose is etched with tiny red veins along its entire length, and his eyes are set so deeply she cannot see their colour. They peer at her as though she is standing against the sun.

‘Paul Smithson?’ She asks, and holds out her hand when he nods. ‘Sophie Galsworth,’ she says. ‘You sent me your manuscript.’

The top of the ring finger of his left hand is missing down past the second knuckle. The end of it is white and smooth, almost like bone. ‘An accident,’ he says, when he sees her looking at it. ‘Means I can’t get married,’ he says.

Sophie laughs, uncertain if this is a joke.

With a sweep of his arm he shows her into a brightly painted kitchen with a couple of large stoves and two long kitchen tables. Saucepans are hooked on the wall, and above them various ladles, spoons, and knives. Some of them are new and polished, while some are chipped, with broken handles. All of them look clean. A couple of young men in mud-spattered overalls are talking when she comes in. When they hear Paul’s voice they stop and acknowledge him with a nod.

‘Toby and Tom,’ he says.

‘Sophie,’ she replies.

There is no further introduction. Paul gestures for her to sit at the table, and Toby or Tom serves them with two lop-sided mugs full of milky tea.

Paul is reluctant for her to stay. ‘But what can you do besides correct manuscripts?’ he asks.

‘Nothing.’ She says. ‘It’s either this or …’ She indicates her bag at her feet. ‘This is all I have now.’

He looks at her where she sits at the table. ‘But you’re not …’ He pauses.

‘Young? Fit? No – thanks for pointing that out.’ She sighs, and with the thumb of her right hand, smoothes the edge of each of the nails of her left, one by one.

‘Well …’ he says, shifting, as though he is about to rise to his feet.

She interrupts him. ‘But it’s not too late, you know!’

‘I’m afraid I’m not looking to increase numbers just at the moment.’

‘I can learn!’ Gripping the edge of the table she looks at him. ‘I know I can!’

‘Everyone has to earn their place here.’

‘I know.’ Still gripping the table she leans towards him, her eyes intent on his. ‘Why don’t you just give me a chance, and see?’

■

She begins the day by looking at the sky. Its blue is intense, its clarity dizzying. She remembers contrails: the line of white ink becoming blurred on the wet paper. Now only the rich dream of launching themselves skywards. At the end of the garden there is a small shed with a wooden seat. As her tea brews she lowers herself onto it and pees onto the straw below. In a couple of weeks she will fork it onto the compost heap in the farthest corner; a rich, warm kingdom of worms, woodlice, and slugs.

She pauses outside the back door. The chickens have gone inside their coop to roost. So quiet. Always so quiet. Once she heard a seagull in the distance but when she rushed out to see it there was nothing but that intensely blue sky. She opens the door of their roost and smiles as they cluck their disapproval. Reaching under their warm softness she finds seven eggs. The four larger ones she will take to the woman in the village whose hens have stopped laying. ‘They need to watch their step,’ the woman had told Sophie with a fierce smile. ‘Any more of this and we’ll be having a good roast dinner every Sunday.’

It is mid-afternoon before she finishes planting out the potato chittings. She straightens slowly, vertebra by vertebra, her hands stroking out aches. Everything costs so much effort. Both knees ache. Her arms are mottled with nettle rash and her right index finger has an angry-looking, pus-filled wound where a thorn went in. Yesterday morning she spent an hour tying back beans, only for them to loosen again in the night, and last week she dug up a promising row of parsnip plants only to find the roots were the size of a baby’s finger. Swallowing down disappointment, she’d boiled them, but they were too bitter to eat. She looks around at the wilting vegetation. Everything seems constantly thirsty, and she worries about the stream at the bottom of the valley which seems to be shallower each time she sees it.

‘It’ll rain soon,’ Paul had said last night with a puzzling certainty. He visits her most nights with food he has spare.

‘But aren’t you worried it might not?’ she’d asked.

‘Worrying won’t help,’ he’d said, then on his way out, added, ‘Your hair looks good that way. You should keep it like that.’

She touches her hair now. Behind the vegetable beds are sweet chestnuts and apple trees; neither has fruited since she’s been here, but they keep off the worst of the sun. Their branches creak in the heat. A large white butterfly flutters daintily between her cabbages, laying an orange egg on each one, and Sophie follows her, scraping it away, and removing the tiny caterpillars that have already hatched. She digs between the carrots.

Her neighbour Brian passes on a bicycle. He waves at her and stops to tell her about the rain. He’s been in the hills to the west to catch rabbits, and although the trip yielded just a couple of young bucks, he’s seen a storm approaching. The clouds are large and grey: a classic anvil. It’s going to be a big one. Everyone is waiting.

He gives her a few blackberries he’s found growing on a verge, and she gives him one of the eggs for his teenage daughter. He stows it carefully in a box with the rest of his berries. ‘Our Gaia says she’s something for you,’ he says. ‘Don’t get too excited, it’s just a story. But she’s been on about showing it to you for days. Just say no, if you’d rather not. Apparently her mother and I don’t understand her.’

Sophie flushes. ‘She can come over any time she wants.’

‘I expect her mother will want you to sample some of her new jam, too,’ he says over his shoulder as he pedals off. ‘It’s gooseberry. New season.’

She returns to her weeding, pleased at the prospect of company. By the time the sun has set her right hip is aching as well as her knees. When she steps over the threshold to her cottage her leg gives way, and she finds herself clinging to the doorframe for a few seconds until the strength returns.

Paul finds her peeling the potato he gave her. ‘Jake Lamington says he’ll do us fifty copies!’ Paul is still determined to publish his manuscript. ‘Good news, eh? He says he’s traded a few books for some paper. Enough to do the lot.’

She nods but doesn’t look up.

‘And Thomas Finley wants to speak to you about his little project. He wants to use the bikes in the gym for something useful, and thinks he can work out a way of making them charge up a battery. If he does that, do you think you could write the manual?’

She nods again.

‘Anything wrong?’ he asks.

She straightens her knee. ‘Tired.’ She says. ‘I’m too old for this.’

He opens his mouth to reply, but then the windows rattle as something hits them. He runs to the door and throws it open and whoops. Rain. At last! Lots of it, all at once, driven by the wind into sheets.

‘Look!’ he says, smiling. ‘Something for your cabbages!’

She shrugs. She thinks about the caterpillars that are probably hiding in the stalks. When the rain stops they’ll be feasting again.

He swoops forward again and pulls her upright by her arms.

‘There’s something I wanted to show you,’ he says, ‘I was going to wait, but …’

He pulls her out of the door to where there are overhanging branches. She can’t remember when it last rained like this. She’d forgotten how quickly it soaks through clothes, and how it makes the earth smell of mould.

‘Here,’ he says, pulling her forward. There are so many trees and high bushes it is possible to traverse the whole length of the garden without breaking cover.

‘We have to be quiet now,’ he says, abruptly holding her still in his arms, ‘Keep looking at that nest of twigs on the ground.’

For a few minutes nothing happens. She can feel rather than hear the thud of his heart through her chest. She sniffs quietly, then holds her breath. Maybe she too smells just as strongly of stale sweat. It’s been weeks since either of them washed. She swallows down a little stomach acid.

‘Look, did you see it?’

She shakes her head.

‘Go a little closer.’

There’s something moving: a tiny furry-looking head and then a dull-brown thorax and abdomen. It gives a barely audible buzz.

‘That’s it!’ she says, ‘that’s what’s been missing.’

He claps her face between his two enormous hands and kisses it. ‘Yes!’ he says, squeezing tighter. ‘Now we can expect apples in a year or two, maybe even the chestnuts. Who’d have thought the bees would go for your messy woodpile?’

The sky is clearing. Behind his head the grey is giving way to duck-egg blue. Always there, she thinks. Even when everything else is gone: there’ll always be that blue, the colour of a warm, unruffled sea.