Everything was pouring again, everything was on the move. The snow restless as it melted – breaking up and spreading and letting go of itself.
Pearl felt very thin and stretched. Once again the sound of the river was deep and unremitting; she could taste ditches and fields and wet carpets. She looked down at herself and saw only water – brown and gritty and strangely still. But there was a great dragging pressure – an unrelenting pull, as if a plug had been unstoppered somewhere.
She was taut and cold and aching. She lapped against walls. She split the desk’s wooden legs. She toppled a lamp. A wire fizzed. A coat slumped like a drowned body. A notebook fell off a shelf and its sodden spine tore. The pages floated – all her observations, all her lists; hours and days and years. A record of her attentiveness. Now dissolving in the water, the ink thinning like skin.
The river roared. She was hauled downwards and out – through plaster and brick and cobwebs, through mouse tunnels and the gap under the door. Suddenly merging with rain and huge puddles. Gravel from the road, a shoe like a bloated fish. Sweeping past swampy grass, past clumps of sludgy snow and drooling ice; the water rushing back down to the river, more water spilling over the bank and pushing up towards the house. Pearl caught in the middle of it – the river pushing and pulling like the pumping of silty blood.
Everything teemed. The bank crumbled and Pearl went with it – back into the churning river, which was bloated and brawny, ripping up roots and hurling branches as it went. Bowling a tractor tyre along like a toy. Juggling a ripped fence. She saw the house as she went, standing among shallow water like something marooned. Propped up and grey and bedraggled. An infuriating place. But it was hers. Yes. It was hers. Where she had ended up. Not what she had expected, but perhaps not the worst thing, to have had her life here. For it to have become home without her noticing. Her rapids, her slushy snow, her watery, boggy greens and greys. Her pain-in-the-arse remoteness, not seeing anyone for weeks. Her power cuts, her seeping and ancient moor. Her birds, her narrow and bastard roads. Her flooding river: brown and silver and fat as a trout.
Down the bank and into the pounding current. There were no slow, quiet parts of the river now. No eddying, no stagnant pools with nests of caught sticks and feathers. The water riled everything up. Leaves split and tore. Branches snapped and were flung down-river. Pearl swept out into the middle where the water was fastest, hurtled down and round the bend and . . . wait. The house was about to go out of sight. She clung onto a boulder instinctively. Somehow managed to grip onto the stone’s rough edges, work her way into the moss and cracks and haul herself up. She stared at the house. She wasn’t ready. Suddenly, she wasn’t ready.
She clung on. The river rushed past her and through her and its roaring was so loud, so steady, that she stopped hearing it. In amongst the ceaseless pressure everything became silent and calm. The browns turned into greens and yellows, the water glinted, and she remembered the first time she had stepped into the river. The first cold shock of it.
It was early spring and they had just moved into the house that winter. The first daffodils coming up like lamps, and the ramsons’ white flowers coating everything as if the snow had never left. Their pungent smell after it rained. The wind whipping. Silky buds on the alder trees like mice. Frank opening all the doors and windows to air the house and saying that he was going to teach her to swim. It was never too late to learn, apparently. He knew a nice easy stretch where the river wasn’t too deep, the current slackening and good to swim against.
Her hair had lifted up in the wind. The river was wide and glittering and they walked down the long grass, along the bank and down onto a shingly beach. Pearl took her shoes off and hobbled on the sharp stones, her soles not yet toughened up. No cracked, hard skin back then. She watched Frank take off his belt and his trousers and his shirt. He waded in. The colour of his body against the water: the creams and coppers and dusty purples. His spine like the lovely bumps in a chrysalis.
Pearl took her clothes off down to her underwear, felt Frank watching her, and folded them carefully. It was very cold. She waded in, the freezing water pushing against her toes, then her ankles, then her thighs. She waded over to Frank and ran her finger down his back. She had only known him for a year.
‘Sit in the water first,’ he told her. ‘So that you get used to it.’
They sat in the river, their skin gleaming and pale and looking not part of themselves at all, but part of the rippled and moving water. She could feel the current tugging at her and the wind pulling at the water’s surface and at the surface of her skin, making creases and goosebumps. Everything glittered green and copper, like a rusty coin being cleaned.
Frank knelt up and showed her how to lean forward and move her arms. ‘Try dipping your head under,’ he said.
She did, and got a shock of cold, blurry darkness, came up coughing.
‘Keep your mouth closed,’ he said.
Pearl spat out a mouthful of water. ‘I did,’ she said. Her first taste of the river, dank and fresh at the same time. She tried again. She dipped her head under and water streamed down her hair and back. It felt better this time; she kept her mouth closed and opened her eyes, saw brown silt and stones mixing. Frank’s feet among grey pebbles. She reached down and touched his toes and Frank ran his hand down the inside of her arm, then guided her into deeper water so that she was in above her waist. Her skin tingled. He let go of her and swam a few strokes out into the middle and beckoned her. She leaned forward and pushed with her arms. Her knees scraped along the stones, something in her wouldn’t let her knees go and she stayed there, attached to the stones like a weed. Tried again. She pushed off and her knees lifted and she was moving into the river, actually moving through the water, buoyed and lighter than she had felt before, stronger than the current, moving towards Frank’s arms. (And there was no need to go into the fact that a few strokes later she floundered and her arse floated up. What mattered were those first few strokes, cold and bright and wonderful.)
Now, Pearl clung to the stone. Alongside saturated moss, which was old and strong and probably didn’t even notice. Still she held on. The river dragged and she streamed out like a flag. Rain drummed. Pearl closed her eyes. Felt the water spreading and she a part of it, flooding through the valley.
Water poured down through the woods from the moor, picking up mud and clay and pine needles. The river slopped over the bank and onto the paths, scouring earth and leaves. Mixing with the rain and overflowing pipes. Gurgling up through drains and spilling out onto the roads. Reeking, mulchy water, full of dirt and rust. It carried sticks and sweet wrappers, tin cans, plastic bags, unidentifiable crud from a dumping place, a cup, a blanket, a handful of batteries.
And on the road outside their house, Clapper and Petey picked the rubbish out of the drains to help the water go down. Clapper picking carefully and Petey holding the bag as wide as it would go.
The water flowed out of the top fields, some of it bubbly with chemicals and soap, and streamed down the road that wound through the valley. Past front doors, past gates and down the hill, where cars had to stop and put their handbrakes on tight.
Over potholes and gravel, past verges and fences. Down towards the shop, where it pooled by the front door. Mick swept at it with a broom to keep it from getting in. He was wearing his wife’s old waders – too tight and wouldn’t go over his knees. He swept and swept, beating the water back. Praying that the water would stay away. His wife had been the canny one; he had stopped paying the insurance to save money.
The water poured down the narrow lanes and past the pub. Val heard the torrent and knelt on her bed to look out of the window. Saw the water whisking past, then turned over and went back to sleep, unalarmed. Making up for all those lost hours.
Down the valley and into Judy and Robbie’s farm, where it lost speed and spread over the lower fields, turning them to glistening marsh. Judy and Robbie up all night dragging in sheep and moving cows. The water not deep enough to do much damage; but more work, and more worry, and no sleep for them.
And at Luke’s place, the water ran through the garden and turned the bonfire remains into a charred stew. It started to pool in a long, deep hole in the garden, but Luke was nowhere to be seen.
A telegraph pole sparked and cut out. Everyone in the west of the valley lost their electricity. The Trewins made a grill out of a metal bucket and some coal and cooked rounds of sausages.
A group of bungalows was surrounded by hoarded sandbags.
The cafe was above it all and missed everything.
And what was happening at the house? The water was still pushing up through the foundations, filling the house with a shallow layer. Who was that? The little one, coming down the stairs, getting the broom and starting to sweep water out of the door, saying, go away, go away. And where was Ada? There she was, still sitting on the study steps, looking around like she didn’t know where she was exactly.
‘Come on girl,’ Pearl muttered. ‘There’s only one thing you can do.’ Still Ada sat there. And then, finally, she got up and went over to the desk and picked up a plastic box. She opened the window, bent down and started bailing. Throwing out box after box of water. ‘That’s right,’ Pearl said. Although it probably wouldn’t even touch it; but what else was there to do? She watched them sweep and bail. It was out of her hands.
The river swelled. A huge pressure, like cloth that was as taut as it could go at the seams. Pearl saw something glinting in the water. She reached down and grabbed it as it swept past. Her button. She clutched it tightly; although she couldn’t remember why it was so important . . . it was before all this, back before all this even happened. There was a lot more to go over, a lot more to sift through until she was back at the very start. Everything glinted silver and rushed fast and deep. An overwhelming circling feeling – the water seeping into mud then draining back, always separating and joining, always the backbreaking, bending feeling of the river trying to meet itself at the beginning.
A heavy branch crashed into the rock and Pearl slipped and scraped against the edge. The water slowly prising her off. She dug in harder and then stopped. Felt the current tug at her. The river calling out. She couldn’t cling on forever. It would be ridiculous. How long had she been here already? It felt like a long time. It felt like enough time. The water glinted and galloped. It peaked and folded, transforming second by second. Maybe better to see where it would take her.
So she let go.