Pearl endured the rain all night. The kind that wore away at her bones. Battered, huddled on her rock, each drop seeping in until she was doused.
The rain filled holes in the road; it filled flowerpots to the brim. It filled the blocked gutters of the house and spilled over – dark, shiny water mixed with leaves and soil. It churned the fields to mud and when the fields couldn’t take any more, it ran down in wide gulleys to the river. The river rose by a foot.
Then, slowly, very slowly, it stopped, as if someone was turning a stiff tap. Leaving behind sallow light, roads and roofs lacquered with rain. The ground pulpy and bruised as an old peach.
The river was up around Pearl’s knees and flowing fast. It was choppy and brown as dishwater. She got down off the rock and stood in the water, leaning against the current. The weight of it knocked into her legs and she staggered, managed to get her balance, then started to wade towards the bank. Halfway across she stumbled and plunged her hands in to steady herself. The water rushed on, grabbing anything – sticks, rocks, weeds – and dragging them with it. Breaking up leaves, spitting and guzzling. Trying to do the same with her. She braced herself, then stumbled again on clumps of roots. She gripped them and clung on, managed to get one foot on a rock, another on a root, handfuls of mud and stones, and then she was at the top of the bank, hauled out in the long wet grass.
She lay there for a long time. Water ran off her and pooled on the bank. After a while she knelt up and blinked away silt. The river pulled at her legs and her feet. ‘Get off,’ she said. She shook her foot. ‘Bugger off for a minute.’ The river roared and jostled at her but she kicked at it and stood up, her wet bones buckling. She lurched and water sloshed in her ears. Told herself to get a grip and took a step through the grass. It was difficult, her legs heavy and bowing but she moved slowly away from the river. The wet ground made it easier: the wet ground and the wet grass and the damp air – everything drenched with water. Water brimmed up from the ground to meet her and mist clung to her sleeves and hair. She saw each droplet, like tiny stitches in a blanket.
And up ahead, through the mist, she saw the house. Still ugly, still looking like it was about to collapse. But it wouldn’t collapse – battered by wind, flooded, cracked; always mended. There were the seams of repaired plaster, the nailed-down tiles, the patched-up corrugated roof. The wood reinforced with brick. Guttering lashed on with wire. A tough place, like a ship leaning out. She took a step closer. It was so wet, so dark, so isolated – how had she ended up here? She moved closer. A light came on in the upstairs window. The curtain moved. The river roared; there was no getting away from it. Impossible to shake off. She could feel it pulling at her, the cold working its way in. Sometimes, on a freezing night you could hear the creaking echo of the glacier it used to be. Cracking its bones. The river reminding itself.
But she tried to shake it off; she tried to make her way towards the house. It was easier to move in the mist, as if she were extra drops of water; the air and water curdling. Actually, it was easier to crouch down, where the mist was thicker. She got down on her knees and crawled, feet and hems dragging, hips shuddering. There were the front steps and the door above them. But the mist thinned a few metres away from the house. She tried to crawl just a bit further . . . she could almost reach out and touch the steps.
There was the light again. Pearl looked up, thought she saw a blurred shape moving past the window. The curtain moved. She strained to see but her eyes were murky and useless. Something moved, a hand pressed against the glass. The mist crept around Pearl’s knees. Then the light clicked off and the house was dark again.
Pearl lingered at the edge of the house, trying to remember. Why here? Why by herself? It wasn’t what she expected. What she needed to do was to go back over it – it was important to try and work her way back to the beginning. Dredge something up. Her thoughts were foggy, they kept scudding away over stones, but she remembered a few things. What it had been like, near the end. Stuck in the house on her own. That was it: she had been stuck in the house for God knows how long and it had been boring, it really had, what with her staying in bed all hours, and sitting still for hours, her hands on her knees as if she was old.
And it had happened suddenly, as far as she could tell. One moment chopping up wood for the fire, and the next, struggling to do it, struggling to lift the axe. The routine of it slipping along with her hands: how to work the vents, how to sweep the ashes, how to strike the match against the box.
She wouldn’t let anybody in the house. She slept in the chair in the kitchen, nothing but her old brown coat to keep her warm. A rattly little snore in one nostril. ‘Now for one thing,’ she would sometimes say to herself. And: ‘I suppose I should be getting on with it.’ But she would just stay sitting there, staring at the wall. Maybe she would listen to a mouse skittering. Sometimes a breeze would come in and scatter bits of paper and envelopes, and, startled, she would turn and watch them flap down onto the floor. It would remind her of something, and she would get up and wander around the room, looking for something. ‘That isn’t it,’ she would say. She would fumble through piles of papers, open the kettle and peer in. She would reach up and feel along the top of a cupboard and then in her hand there would be ropes of dust and a twenty-pound note. She would smooth the money out carefully and then roll it up and put it inside a mug. Yes, that was it; she would put it inside a mug and then later she’d take it out again and hide it under the telephone. Or do something ridiculous like put a newspaper in the fridge, guarding it jealously from no one.
She could picture herself now, those last few months. Wandering around the house as if she were lost, tapping on walls, moving a book from place to place, picking up a watch and staring at it as if there was something she should be doing with it. Sometimes going to bed in the morning and getting up in the middle of the night; eating bread in the dark, sleeping through a whole day. Calling out names . . . although whose, she couldn’t quite recall. Sitting still as a rock in the chair but her mind surging. An image, a word, a sentence sometimes rising to the surface out of the din, sharp as a watch pin. ‘There you go then,’ she would say. ‘There you go.’ Over and over.
Not acting like herself at all. Her mind a tangle. No idea what she had been thinking. It was almost impossible to recognise herself, like seeing her face through a murky mirror.
She needed to go back further than that. What she needed was to try and cast her mind back further. But the ground slurped at her feet and the river roared and tugged. The air stank of rain and bonfires, the mist thinned, rainwater ran down towards the river. She slipped and raked her fingers against the wall. The mist lifted. Her thoughts sloshed and dripped and tangled and the river dragged at her; back over the grass, back over the mud and the stones.
She had tried to put on a chair as a jacket. The memory jumped out at her like a slap in the face. There she was: struggling in the kitchen to put a chair on, convinced it was a jacket. One arm under each side. The rungs digging in. Her back arched over. She could hardly bear thinking about it. Putting on a chair. She had always been a fool, she knew that. But a chair. Pearl shook her head. She could almost laugh about it now. Looking back she could almost laugh about the whole thing.