I’m not really alive unless I’m with her. I feel as though I’ve never been fully awake, as if I’ve been sleepwalking through my life. She makes everything new minted. I think I love her, I really do, but when I try to tell her, she shuts me up, or changes the subject, so I don’t know what she thinks, or feels.
I can’t figure out where I am with her. I never know exactly where we are going, or what we’re going to do, or even if I’m going to see her. She never calls or texts me. She’s either there. Or not there. She brings an element of mystery. Something like adventure. She introduces me to new things. Things I’ve never done before. I can’t get enough of her, but she teaches me to wait, to taste and savour; she teaches me the difference between greed and appetite. She likes to be in command.
I don’t stop to think what it would be like, how she would react if things got seriously, and I mean seriously, out of her control; if somebody came along who refused to obey her rules.
‘I like to plan things out. Choreograph them,’ she says. ‘Direct the action.’
‘Like a play.’
‘More like a film.’
‘Is that what you want to do? Make films?’
‘No. I want to change the world.’
She is testing me, pushing me, into doing things I wouldn’t ordinarily do. Some I don’t mind so much. Like having sex in public places.
Some things I do.
‘Do it,’ she says, ‘do it for me. You aren’t scared, are you?’
Being scared is not something she understands.
I’m not scared. It’s just that this particular thing she wants me to do is betraying a trust. She doesn’t understand that, either. I don’t think she trusts anybody and doesn’t expect anyone to trust her.
She wants me to take a punt out at night, take her down the river. If the boats belonged to anyone else, I wouldn’t have a problem. But these are Alan’s boats. I know how much they cost. I know how much he worries about theft and vandalism. He’s just invested in a heavy-duty chain that runs along the line of them, linking them together, secured by a massive padlock.
I don’t say anything, but she senses my reluctance and the reason for it. We are beginning to know what the other one is thinking. At least, she knows what I’m thinking. With her, I can never be sure.
‘You care what he thinks?’ She says this like it’s a bit of a revelation.
‘Yeah. I do.’
She shrugs, like that is an alien concept and gives me a look, like she knows I’ll do it anyway, so what’s the problem? I’d do anything for her and she knows it, anything she asked me to do.
The chain is shiny and new, some kind of special alloy, impossible to cut through, but I don’t need to because I have the key. She stands on the bank, her slim shape dark against the willows and the lights from the town, while I squat in the mud, trying not to drop the key into the water, or fall in myself. I don’t want to look nervous, jumpy, but the key slips in my grip a little bit and my hand is shaking slightly as I fit it into the hefty padlock. I’m rubbish at locks at the best of times. My fingers feel banana thick and I wish I’d brought a torch with me. I steady myself and take a breath. The more you think something won’t work, the more it isn’t going to.
‘Having trouble?’ Her voice rings down the river, setting the ducks quacking.
I want to shout, ‘Shut the fuck up, will you?’ But I don’t.
I just work away until I hear the key click home. The big hasp comes loose in my hands. The chain slithers down the line of boats as it slackens, rattling in the quiet of the river like machine gun chatter. I sense her impatience like a breath on my neck but I have to be careful to secure the other boats or they could all go floating off down the river and over the weir. She wouldn’t care about that – she might even think it was funny – but Alan doesn’t deserve that. Plus I have to keep the one I want steady or we’ll be going nowhere. Usually, it takes two of us to free the boats.
I’m not even thinking about getting caught or who might be watching, just getting the boat free and ready.
I thought she might act as lookout or even help me. Fat chance. She just stands staring at the river, like she’s admiring the play of lights on the water. Like it’s nothing to do with her. First sound of a siren, she’d be walking away, leaving me to face the music. Guaranteed. I know it and I don’t care. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.
When it all looks sorted, she comes down the bank to join me, as nonchalant as if it’s Sunday afternoon. I wait, patient as a ferryman, there to serve her. There’s no question who’s in charge here and I know it. I offer my arm and she smiles as if she sees what I’m thinking. She knows it, too.
I take the pole and guide us out to the middle of the river. The water slips under the till, the black surface rippling with silver, orange, red and green reflected light. The effect is hypnotic; I try not to look at it, concentrate on what I’m doing. She stares at the patterns sliding by. Once we are away from the bridge, we are out of danger. I relax a bit. The town lights fade from the water, replaced by the matt shadows of the trees, the silver moonlight. From the bank comes the slap and slosh that marks our passage, the secret rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth, the croaking call of a coot in the rushes, the sleepy settle of ducks, huddled together, quacking quietly on a bare patch of bank. We are getting near. The ait is a solid, dark shape in front of us. I can hear the rush and churn of the weir. I take us in under the willows, find the landing point, ship the pole, jump out and tie up. We don’t say anything. We just hold hands tightly as we go on to the island.
The willows close behind us, swishing together like ribbon curtains. It’s dark inside the tent that the leaves make. I stumble over a root and swear.
‘Should have brought a torch.’
‘No, she says, ‘no torches. I told you before.’
I think that we will stop here, but she leads me on.
‘I want to go to the other island,’ she says, ‘the one across the weir.’
I don’t want to do that at all. I find it hard enough in the daytime, let alone at night, but I can’t show her that I’m frightened, or even reluctant. She holds my hand tighter and leads me.
Water plunges over the broken lintel, rushing down the sloping concrete, churning and foaming white above the blackness. The river is deep below the weir, the surface dimpled with eddies and plaited with currents. A branch tumbles over and does not reappear.
She skips across. I stand and watch her. I should just do it. Don’t think. I can hear Rob’s voice in my head. Just do it. You think too much. She beckons, calling me on. I step out. Halfway across, a stone rocks and nearly tips me down on to the concrete weir. It’s always the same one but this time it’s even further out of position, right over the edge. I nearly lose my balance and seesaw backwards and forwards, the dark water flowing past my feet so fast that it looks glossy and solid, like glass. It hisses with the speed of its falling, seething white and frothing at the bottom of the concrete slope. I see the branch bob up again, turned and tossed like a twig in the white water. How long was it under there being tumbled over and over? One minute? Two minutes? Long enough to drown.
‘Come on. Quickly,’ she calls to me. ‘Do it quickly. Look at me.’ She holds her hand out, crossing back for me, the water flowing fast over and round her bare feet. ‘Don’t look down.’
Our hands don’t meet, but it’s as if there is an invisible rope joining us. She steps backwards as I move forwards. She gains the bank and suddenly I’m there beside her. I don’t mean to but I nearly push her over, we both stagger back, falling on to a soft bed of silvery leaves. I lie there, shivering and sweating. She sits with her hands clasped round her knees. In the moonlight, her face is washed of colour.
‘Fear death by water,’ she whispers. Her eyes are huge and black as the river. ‘It was in the rune cast. On the windowsill where you let the stones fall. I noticed it after you left. What if I turn a tarot card, what will I find?’ She says quietly, almost to herself. ‘The Drowned Phoenician Sailor?’ She leans forward, her hair swinging like a curtain. ‘The card that is blank. It is something he carries on his back.’ She looks up at me. ‘Your card, Jamie.’
She’s acting so strange that I feel a different kind of chill, the short hairs rising. ‘Do you believe all that?’
‘Not me, stupid! T.S. Eliot.’
As if to defy the words she’s just spoken, she takes off her dress, walks back on to the slippery stones and steps straight off into the pool behind the weir where the river is deep and still. She disappears for heart-stopping seconds, then breaks the surface, sending out silver ripples.
‘You can’t swim here!’ I stand up and shout down at her. ‘There are signs up all over the place!’
The water’s got to be full of all kinds of crap, you could catch anything from it, and the bottom could be littered with all sorts of stuff: broken bottles, old crates, supermarket trolleys. She ignores me. For her, prohibition acts as some kind of permission. Rules are there to be broken. She swims out and turns, treading water, laughing at me, beckoning like some kind of dangerous water spirit.
I strip off and jump in, just to show her. I swim out a little bit and then back again. I’m careful not to swallow any water.
‘You look like a mermaid,’ I say as she pulls her self out of the pool.
‘You mean lorelei or nixie. Mermaids belong to the sea.’
‘It’s dangerous to swim here.’
‘Water’s my element. It won’t harm me.’
She lays a towel down on top of the blanket that she has brought with her. Her skin is mushroom cool and her hair smells of the river. She pulls me to her. I hear distant sounds: a shout of male laughter, a high yelping scream, a siren’s wail.
On the way back, I’m extra careful crossing the weir. Looks to me like someone has shifted the stone in the middle, the one that’s loose. It’s right out of place, set at an angle. It would take the full force of the river in spate to shift it that much. Someone must have moved it. Why would you do that?
We don’t go to the island at night again.