1976
Summer. Britain is in the grip of a heat wave. Drought conditions prevail. Anxious farmers squint at fields of atrophying crops. The rays of a milky sun, magnified through the starch-blue glass of the sky, scorch down mercilessly on both town and country alike. Cars have transformed into motorized ovens. People loll like panting tongues from open-mouthed windows. They crowd the air-conditioned cinemas where The Omen and The Man Who Fell to Earth are screening. Forests appear to spontaneously combust, the dry tinder of the trees bursting into flames. Humps of torched, blackened heath patch the hillsides. Low rivers thirstily suck back meandering streams. There is a rush on the diamond sparkle of water, a sudden lust for its many facets. Feverish residents huddle round standpipes, determinedly filling their bottles and pails. In the cities, dust, dirt, exhaust fumes, sweat and decay, all merge in the shimmering heat. Reservoirs gape with sinking watermarks. Placid temperaments are in meltdown, distilling into a collective swill of suppressed rage. Surges of uncontrollable anger test the seams of society until they burst.
A basement market in the centre of London. The fluorescent ceiling lights emit a flickering subterranean radiance. Here, if possible, it is even hotter than above ground. The music blares out from loudspeakers, the bass rhythm sounding the gonging heartbeat of this warren of trade. The merchandise, souvenir plates and cups, costume jewellery, watches, clothes, bags, belts and buckles, glitter like the treasure trove in an Aladdin’s cave. And the market people, sweat-slicked, grubby and old before their time, fan themselves with sticky hands, and swear disgruntled oaths. High noon, and they subside into lassitude, for once both depleted and defeated. The sales patter fogs in their fuddled brains, and sticks in their dry throats. They splash bottles of mineral water over their heads to keep cool. The victims, the tourists, their garish clothing tight against bulges of damp flesh, have grown rebellious in the close heat. They pick over the displays, point and scowl at the shoddy workmanship, gripe to each other at the exorbitant prices. Dry lips are licked. Soufflé hairdos collapse, makeup melts and colours blur. Beads of perspiration freckle brows, noses and upper lips. Plump thighs wedged in short skirts rub together until skin reddens and burns with prickly heat. Wilting banknotes stay snug in warm wallets, refusing to be peeled apart. London is holding its breath. If release does not come soon, if the rains do not fall, how long before markets, roads, traffic, buildings, people, Uncle Tom Cobley and all, will expire with heatstroke?
Only ten minutes earlier, Owen returned from the toilets, face wet, hair dripping, hands washed and mercifully clean for a space. Already his broiled flesh is crying out for another dunking, though. He is working the Irishman’s stall, Sean’s pitch, Sean Madigan. He has been here for only three weeks, although it feels like three years. He has come to London to reinvent himself. He plans to model his personality on Rhett Butler, a man who does not give a damn, not about the present, not about the future, and most crucially, not about the past. Looking young for his age, his age being twenty-three, is undoubtedly a disadvantage in this process. Fair hair, diffident blue eyes, virtually a stubble-free chin, is not an asset when you are aiming for hard-man status – but he determines to get there, to achieve the emotional lobotomy he craves. In his favour, he is tall, broad-shouldered, with the effortlessly well-toned build that some are lucky enough to inherit. Observing himself in the mirrored counter of the stall, Owen accepts that he looks more like a Romeo than a Tybalt.
Naomi Seddon, Sean’s girlfriend, as distinct from Sean’s wife, and his stall manager, has gone to buy them iced teas. She has promised extra mint and sugar, because it cools, she says. Owen is suffering with a bad headache. It feels as if his brain is alternately expanding and contracting inside his skull. He closes his eyes and backtracks. How is it that a lad from a council house in Wantage comes to be in the bustle of a London market enduring some of the highest temperatures since records began? Mentally he counts off the years.
Exams, university, dropping out, loafing about the house, sitting in Sarah’s room for hour after hour waiting for something to happen. Then the ad in the paper that grabbed his attention. Actors wanted for the Punchinello Children’s Theatre Company, a small innovative theatrical company, bringing theatre in education to schools. And subsequently the high-voltage enthusiasm that came from nowhere as he rehearsed his audition piece, Jimmy Porter, from John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger. The thrill of getting the job, of acquiring the much-coveted Equity card. The sudden recognition that here was a craft he was good at – a craft, unbeknownst to him, he had been practising for most of his life – the art of pretence. And the idea, gradually taking hold, that acting could transport him away from the sepulchre of their home, where Sarah’s ghost took up so much room that there was none left for him to occupy.
The slip of paper with the scribbled telephone number of Sean Madigan that a fellow actor had given him, on learning his plans to relocate to London. It came with the prospect of casual work, cash in hand, for those annoying periods all seasoned actors have to deal with when they were ‘resting’ – a euphemism thespians use for the long idle stretches when no employment can be found. Dialling the number from a callbox in Twickenham, where he had stayed with an old school friend temporarily. The conversation resulting in an on the spot offer of employment in a London market. He would be covering the busy tourist season. Time off for auditions as and when required? No problem. His new employer believed flexibility was a two-way street.
So there it is, a series of random events that transported him from Wantage to London, and ultimately delivered him here on what feels like the hottest day so far this summer. Sean’s Covent Garden flat, as of yesterday, Thursday, June 10th, officially became his home. Owen had been looking for a more central place to stay, a base from which he could attend auditions and interviews with agents, as well as somewhere within easy access of work. It made sense, especially considering the expense of train and tube fares. Within minutes of mentioning his dilemma to Sean, the solution had been hatched. He would flat share with Naomi, pay a nominal rent, and in return keep her company when Sean was away. This would be no hardship, he was sure.
He likes Naomi. Her most distinctive feature is her unique eyes. Her right eye is a pale powdery blue, the left is a rich brown. Her short blonde hair, dyed he thinks, is all awry as if permanently windblown. Her delicate nose and wide sensual mouth are set in a heart-shaped face. Of medium height and slim, he guesses that she is considerably older than him. It is hard to tell by exactly how much under that heavy make-up she wears, but he estimates that she is well into her thirties. Her undoubted experience, her confident dallying, her overt sexuality, all fascinate him. She makes him feel alive and manly. He’s had a few girlfriends, but none of the relationships were particularly successful. He finds young women difficult to talk to. They don’t seem content with his sporadic, trivial conversation. They all, without exception, arrive at the same conclusion, that he needs ‘bringing out of himself’. And when they come up against his Houdini-proof doors, they quickly lose interest. But so far, Naomi has not grilled him. She is, he is certain, far less interested in him, than he is in her. The prospect of having her all to himself some nights, of having those bewitching eyes focus entirely on him, is appealing to his young male ego.
To hear Sean talk, the flat is of the penthouse variety, a prime residence in a prime location. And Owen was duly impressed, he has to admit, until he saw it. Situated on the third floor of a ramshackle building, it is not much bigger than a large cupboard. A cramped hall, two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom with leaky bath taps, a small lounge-cum-diner, and a galley kitchen. He tries to marry this up with Sean’s initial description, but fails. It seems that his employer is also fond of pretence. And yet he cannot help but warm to this man. Apart from anything else he is affable, exudes easy Irish charm, and has his countrymen’s gift of fluency. He is of average height and thin, but not fit, if Owen is any judge. And he reckons that he too is in his thirties. Although his smoker’s cough is still in its infancy, there is a pallor about his face, an edginess in his jaundiced eyes, that suggests a lifestyle toll. Initially he thought that Sean was fair haired, like himself. But in the sunlight he has detected more than a hint of a gingery red in his shade.
One significant detail is that he has a patch of rough, inflamed, flaking skin on his neck, about the size of a thumbprint. If his collar is buttoned up, you may miss it. But the sun is loosening everything, collars included, exposing previously hidden flaws. Owen has noted his habit of scratching at it, and has seen that the resulting relief is merely temporary, that the irritation when it returns has only been exacerbated.
Actors must be observant, memorizing people’s idiosyncrasies to use at a later date when character building. He has read this. The market is an ideal source for a novice actor like him. Already it is making him into something of a sleuth. He is collecting intelligence, collating facts. As the mercury rises in thermometers in the capital, and the fetor of unwashed bodies crowds claustrophobically around him, he concentrates on putting together the puzzle. He selects one detail, picks it up like a jigsaw piece, examines the colour, the texture, the shape, gauges where it might fit in. Gradually he is starting to discern the picture. He keeps thinking that now, like Rolf Harris, he can tell what it is. But then he scrutinizes it from another angle, and it breaks on him that he is no nearer the truth.
Nevertheless, he thinks he has got an approximation of the arrangement now. Sean has set up his mistress, Naomi, in his rented flat. He stays over three nights, sometimes four, whenever he can get away, in fact. Get away from what? From a wife, Catherine, and from a new baby, he learns, a girl, who was born only days before Owen started work. He knows their names. He has overheard them. Catherine and Bria. He would almost prefer to be in ignorance. In his imagination they are becoming flesh and blood, a mother and baby surviving an unhappy situation, something he can relate to. They are giving his life the very quality he is fleeing from, the ring of reality.
At the close of his first week, Naomi and Sean asked him back for supper. He was flattered at the invitation. A fuss was being made of him, a welcome dinner. But when it came to it, the evening was hijacked by another, another complication, another adjustment in his perception. As far as he could tell, Enrico had not been formally invited. He was an audacious gatecrasher, slouching about drinking beer and leering at Naomi. He is the Italian who owns the first stall you come to when you descend the market stairs. Sean’s sobriquet for him, ‘a trashy dago’, did not bode particularly well for a harmonious evening, Owen decided. He soon grasped that far from being the honoured guest, he was as invisible here as he is at home.
They ate pasta, drank some wine that sent his head into a spin and caused his stomach to somersault, and smoked some dope that sliced into his throat like a scalpel and turned his limbs to steam. The lounge they sat in was so hot that it felt as if the foundations of the city, baked in the kiln of the day, were making a sauna of the night. Through the fuddled miasma that subsumed him, he watched. He watched as Sean drank, tossing back a succession of brandies like fruit juice, while his waxy skin freckled with clammy sweat, and his bloodshot eyes ogled Naomi, and fixed Enrico with lethal intent.
‘Tell us about the drowned village,’ Naomi said into the sudden ringing silence. ‘Tell us about the village that lies at the bottom of the lake.’ She was crouching down expectantly, her hands, with their bitten nails, resting on his parted knees. Their eyes, his granite grey, inscrutable, hers of two distinctive shades, locked. The silence climbed a scale or two until it screamed. Feeling a vein pulse at his temple, Owen balked. This was the last topic he could wish to discuss. Unable to help himself, he imagined that they were all under this fabled lake, that funnels of muddy green light were filtering down from the surface penetrating the gloom that engulfed them. His dope-fuelled fantasy conjured ghosts of the drowned flitting past them to skulk in the sunken houses. Sarah’s ghost, her blonde curls water-tousled, still wearing her spotted swimsuit, was among them. Naomi wetted her lips with the sharpened point of her tongue. ‘Tell us about Teodora. Tell us about the woman who sat combing her long dark hair and staring into the fire, while her husband froze to death on the mountain.’ With a heavy heart, Owen realized she was as insistent as an eager child wanting to hear a favourite oft-told bedtime story.
Without breaking her gaze, Enrico strummed a few chords on the guitar slung in his lap. They shared a smile and she drummed her fingers on his knees, while the plucked cat gut reverberated in the hollow wooden belly. Owen took stock of the tall Italian, of his sprawled rangy limbs, of his olive skin and his distracting orange string beard. Before such a blatant show of masculinity, Naomi looked feminine and petite. As for Owen, he perched beside the bare-chested musician feeling as uncomfortable as a schoolboy in a staff-room. If it were not for the fretboard of the instrument pinning him back, he would have been tempted to flee discourteously into the night’s obscurity.
Sean loured in the tatty spoon-back armchair, seeming no keener than Owen to let Enrico take centre stage. It was a poor throne, with its shabby green velvet upholstery. He was staring morosely into his tumbler of brandy, as if transfixed by something he saw there. His face was drawn, his sea-coloured eyes redrimmed and underscored with livid smudges. Despite the heat he was still wearing his swordfish-grey trousers. His suit jacket did sleeve his chair-back though, so that the toxic purple lining was visible. He was sweating profusely. And the patches mapped on his white shirt were fast spreading, like oceans reclaiming the land, Owen reflected dismally. His tie, a dizzying pattern of inter-locking diamonds in eye-watering shades, had been loosened. His shirt collar was undone, revealing the postage stamp of flaky, inflamed skin. Owen thought that he resembled a condemned man wearing a noose, waiting for the hangman to pull the lever.
‘Tell us about the drowned village, Enrico,’ Naomi persisted, her tone silky and seductive.
Sean mumbled sourly into his drink. ‘Not that fuckin’ nonsense again. It’s late. Perhaps we should call it a night. Some of us have work to do in the morning.’ His genteel Irish brogue sounded as if it had been roughed up in a bare-knuckle fight. Enrico, damned not with faint praise but this well-aimed brickbat, seemed blithely unconcerned. He arched his neck, fingered his golden medallion and swooned over his guitar. Owen felt the restraining pressure on his diaphragm. Naomi clambered up, using the Italian’s substantial knees for leverage. In the galley kitchen she opened another bottle of Mateus Rosé and topped up hers and Enrico’s glasses – though not Owen’s. He covered his and shook his head. He was unused to alcoholic beverages. The blur of a Hendrix and a Dylan poster, the lava lamp, the blow-up plastic chair, all revolved giddily about him. With each fresh heave of his stomach he earnestly wished everything were bolted down, him included. Naomi raised her glass to Enrico, sipped and then crossed to the record player on a corner shelf. She stooped to a wire rack on the floor, lifted up a single, removed its cover and whistled the dust from it.
‘“Suzanne”. Leonard Cohen. This is my song. He sings it for me, you see. Because I’m the lady of the lake, the lady of the sea,’ she crooned and swayed, briefly closing her eyes. ‘Mm . . . lady of the lake . . . lady of the sea.’ Her eyelids jumped, but it was a moment before they came unstuck and flew open. She put the record on and whirled round. She reached out her arms to Enrico. ‘Dance with me,’ she coaxed with a wiggle of her narrow hips. ‘Dance with me, Enrico.’ Obligingly he extricated himself from his guitar, as gently, Owen thought, as if he was climbing out of bed, trying not to disturb a sleeping lover. The music started. He moved close. They clasped each other.
Sean glowered at them over the rim of his glass. His eyes lingered on Naomi, on her snaking arms, her circling buttocks, on the page of flesh that gaped from her hipsters to her sleeveless shirt, which was knotted under her small breasts. Draining his drink, he jerked to his feet. He shouldered his way past the gyrating couple, and into the galley kitchen. There he poured himself another drink.
Although the guitar, propped up against the settee, was no longer an impediment to escape, Owen stayed seated. He felt stiff as a cardboard cut-out. Covertly he glanced about at the remains of the dinner party, plates smeared red with pasta sauce, scattered breadcrumbs, dregs of wine, melting butter. There was a mess of dirty cutlery too, looking as if murder had been done, or perhaps was about to be enacted. The flat is a lot pokier than Sean had initially let him believe, a lot shabbier. That night, his introduction to it, he was taken aback by the discrepancy between his employer’s earlier description and the reality that met him. Tiredness had fled now, to be replaced with the kind of itch that came when a wound was trying to repair itself.
Back in his chair nursing his drink, Sean’s sullen eyes resettled on the dancing partners. Naomi’s mouth was open, her tongue feeling its way along the serrated edges of her teeth. Owen detected the creak of Enrico’s leather waistcoat in the drone of music. His eyes followed the ripple of his dragon tattoo as he flexed his biceps, and the swish of his dark ponytail as he circled his head. The ants must really have been biting that evening because Jack rocketed out of his box again. Sean’s heels cracked on the wooden floor. The empty glass fell from his hand and bowled along a floorboard before coming to rest. Only Owen seemed to pay attention, sitting up a little straighter. The song finished. The record continued revolving on its turntable. The needle scratched rhythmically. Without haste or embarrassment the melded bodies divided.
Naomi blearily focused on Enrico’s medallion, St Christopher, patron saint of travellers, gleaming against a few curls of dark moist chest hair. She leaned in and kissed it. ‘I’m your lady of the lake,’ she muttered, then took a pace or two backwards. She put her palms together in a gesture of prayer, bowed her head, raised her eyes to Enrico’s, and giggled. He winked back, then tossed himself down on the settee. Naomi snuggled between him and Owen, then like déjà vu she said, ‘Tell us about Italy, about the village under the lake. Tell us about your home, Vagli Sotto, which overlooked the reservoir. Tell us about the woman who drowned in her cottage when they flooded the valley.’ And all Owen’s hopes that the taboo subject had been forgotten were dashed.
Enrico made himself comfortable, a far-off look stealing into his grey eyes. ‘Teodora was very young and beautiful. Big dark eyes. Thick black hair. She was in love with a boy from a nearby village. But he was poor.’ He shrugged and gave a half-smile. ‘Her father disapproved of the match and forced her to marry Anselmo. He was old and ugly,’ he continued, accompanying his narrative with an insolent grin and a sly nod of his head at his reluctant Irish host. ‘But he was rich.’ Sean sighed in irritation at the intended slight. Naomi was absorbed. But Owen was full of mute dread. ‘One freezing winter’s day, Anselmo went to collect fire-wood on the slopes. He strayed and lost track of the time. He missed his footing on the icy rocks, fell and broke his leg. He knew that if they did not come for him he would freeze to death overnight. But he consoled himself that his anxious wife was sure to raise the alarm. Soon they would rescue him.’
Naomi reached forward and playfully flicked the beads knotted into Enrico’s tassel beard. They jiggled and caught the light. She traced the metronome arc of them and whispered, ‘What happened then?’ Her bare arms were all gooseflesh with anticipation. Glimpsing Sean’s clenched fists, Owen gained the impression that he would quite like to punch Enrico’s teeth out. As if telepathic, the object of his rage bared his large, gleaming, white teeth – intact, every one.
Then, ‘Teodora sat by the fire and recalled her wedding night. She was filled with disgust at the memory. As the hours crawled by she glanced at the mantle-clock. But she stayed put, cosy by the fire, until daybreak. Only then did she raise the alarm. They bore his frozen body home late that afternoon and laid it out inside the church. And when Teodora came they eyed her fearfully, and called her a witch and a murderess.’
Naomi leapt to her feet. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’
Enrico raised his dark eyebrows sardonically. ‘She cursed them all. And when they dammed the Edron river and flooded the valley, the legend has it she stayed in her cottage and drowned with the village of Fabbriche di Careggine. It is still there, you know. In times of drought you can see the church tower poke up from the depths of the lake. And they say if you squint at the water, you can see Teodora swimming like a mermaid under the surface.’
‘What a load of gobshite!’ Sean exclaimed, on his feet for a third time. ‘I’m going to bed.’ He stomped from the room, tangling briefly and bad temperedly in the doorway’s bead curtain. The entire flat seemed to shake.
Enrico dragged himself up, gave a leisurely yawn, stretched and retrieved his guitar. ‘Perhaps I’d better go,’ he said, a remark that fell into the sudden stillness like an overdue library book. He leant over Naomi and spoke into her dishevelled hair, ‘Would you like to go? Would you like to see the lady in the lake for yourself ?’ For a second their eyes held, and then her gaze slipped past him. Next that hesitant blink of hers that Owen was getting used to, and the spell was broken. She rose, pushing him away, and shooed him off into the torrid night.
‘Oh, it’s hot as Africa here,’ she grumbled, fanning herself with a record sleeve. Her extraordinary eyes came to rest on Owen. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot about you.’ He looked up like a startled rabbit. She touched his arm, then took hold of his hand. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. It’s . . . it’s . . . late, that’s all. I’m overtired.’
‘Of course.’ She pulled him to his feet. ‘Let me show you your bed. I have made it up with clean sheets.’
‘Thanks,’ he murmured back. But he had not heard her. He was miles away, high up in the Tuscan mountains, where a dead village lay sprawled at the bottom of a lake. It was Teodora and not Naomi he saw leading the way. And she was not taking him to bed but to his watery grave.
Since then, he has had an unhealthy preoccupation with the lake and the submerged village. Now as he spots Naomi descending the stairs in a shaft of sunlight, he is reminded of his thirst. She pauses to flirt with Enrico, tiring of the sport suddenly and striding towards him. Sean is absent, utilizing the flexible two-way street to the full. He is often away and gives no explanations of his frequent comings and goings. A fat balding man rifles through a tray of belt buckles with sausage fingers. Owen polices him with his savvy eyes, giving fair warning that already he is wise to shop-lifters. But he stays perched on the stool, hostage to his lethargy. Why waste the effort? This man won’t buy, he can see it in his mean, closed expression. He will fiddle with the buckles, then say he doesn’t like any of them. After a minute, as he surmised, the fat man waddles off with an impatient shrug.
Owen fixes on the large paper cups of iced tea clasped in Naomi’s hands, thinks of her bitten nails digging into the cold condensation. His own throat is cardboard dry. He tries to swallow but can’t. Droplets of sweat trickle down from under his armpits, along the ridges of his spine, collect in the bends of his knees. His cheeks burn and his eyes itch. Then she is beside him.
‘Why so serious?’ she asks with a giggle.
His shoulders cave in. ‘It’s the heat,’ he pants. Her amazing eyes crinkle at the corners. He can see the swell of her breasts above the white vest top as she breathes in, breathes out. She sets the cups down on the mirrored counter, then ruffles his hair. The gesture has the element of surprise about it, of intimacy. Her fingers, still cool from their contact with the cups, feel like sprinkles of cologne on his scalp, the sensation making the roots of his hair tingle. Now she takes the lid off his tea and picks out an ice cube. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, she circles his face, draws it down his brow, along the bridge of his nose, over the tip, brings it to rest on his slightly parted lips. He can feel the scald of the ice trail. The cube is melting. He sucks in the cold moisture, feels a gelid slick soaking into his cardboard throat so that it spasms in thirsty anticipation. In a blink he summons the vast basin of Lake Vagli, with moonlit serpents flickering over its shivering surface. His hands are faintly trembling. He cannot hear the Abba lyrics, only the eerily bewitching song of Teodora, luring him into the chill marbled waters. Her eyes lock on his.
‘Better?’ she says.
He nods. And she pops the melting cube into her mouth and crunches it up.