Flood (7 page)

He was in a large room which would once have been a ward. The floorboards creaked from his unusual pressure upon them. The walls were grey-green, histories almost in themselves. The door was closed. He held his breath a little and turned the handle, then opened the door quickly in order to have it over and done with. He was in an empty corridor. The windows along its length threw substantial shadows across his path. He walked uneasily along the corridor, past several open doors which, thankfully, let him peer into their dull interiors to assure him that nothing was there. He found himself, in the end, confronted by a closed door which had to be opened if he was to continue. By now, though, it was more a game than anything else. No surprises had been planned today, and he could relax. He opened the door easily, just as he would have the living-room door at home, and walked into a room which contained two dark figures who shuffled away from him.

Sandy smiled at them. The man came forward and ruffled his hair.

'And how are you, Sandy boy?' His voice was clear and deep. It might have been Irish, sounding as if it had been arranged specially for the occasion, as one would have arranged a room in which to receive visitors. Smooth as a velvet dress, it faded behind him as its owner left the room:

'Just going to take a leak.' The door was pulled shut until only a gash of crimson light was left to lend any reality to the scene.

There she was, though, crouching low by the fireplace, her arms stretching down to the floor as she balanced herself on her toes. She felt comfortable like that, she had told him.

She was a black cat about to strike. Sandy smiled towards her blurred face, etching her with an inner eye before approaching. He squatted down near her.

'Hello, Rian,' he said. She brushed her hair away from where it lay across her solemn face. Her eyes seemed to cut through the space between them like metal through water.

He was, as always, affected by her, and he coughed his nervous little cough and bowed his head to a meditative silence. Bugger you, he thought. I'll not speak again till you do. They sat and awaited the brother's return. Sandy was about to speak when the door opened behind him.

'Hands off, Sandy. That's my bloody sister that you're manhandling there.' He adjusted his crotch as he entered, as though he really had been urinating. Sandy smiled and the young man chuckled. 'I know you young lads,' he continued, 'and you're all after just one thing. You won't let up until you get it. Well not from my sister you don't.' He chuckled again and Sandy smiled compliantly. The man was glancing nervously towards the girl. Sandy knew that for all his bravado, all the shoulder-punching and joking, Robbie really feared the girl. It was the fear that he would go too far in his jokes, in his teasing, the fear that she was more than she seemed. It appeared to Sandy that this somehow gave him an amount of power over the brother. He could sit in silent naivety and wait. Wait for all time. His eyes now sought those of the girl, but they were not yet to be had.

Robbie lit a candle between them, kneeling so as to make a triangle of crouched figures.

That's better,' he said. 'It's definitely getting lighter these evenings, though, Sandy.' The boy nodded. Robbie, for all his ways, was only five or so years older than him. His growth of beard was thin and slow, and his eyes were playful and filled with a bright life still to be lived. Yet he was his sister's protector, and so was a man. He had been a man almost from the day Rian had been born. His aunt had provided the feeding of the pair of them, it was true, but the small boy who had watched his mother's newly dead face being covered with a lace handkerchief and who had touched her cold forehead while simultaneously hearing the mewling of the new-born baby had known at once that he had somehow become his own father, though he could not be allowed to run away as his father had done so bitterly. His sister and he were inextricably joined by thick blood, and he would be a little soldier, as his Aunt Kitty repeatedly told him to be, and fend for his sister until the time came for an adult parting. Thereafter he had held tiny, rubber-bodied Rian in his arms as gingerly as if she had been a good china plate.

He had watched her sup on her bottle, had tipped her over his shoulder and rubbed her soothingly, coaxing her to laugh, which she seldom had done. Sometimes, however, she had managed a little soldier's smile back at her brother.

'I was a father at six,' his story to Sandy had begun, 'and to this little horror at that!' His thumb had jerked towards the faintly smiling girl. She had been curled on a blanket like a small kitten, Sandy recalled, and had sucked the edge of the blanket as though she were still teething. She had smiled that first time, but had said little. He had forced his eyes to remain trained on Robbie's face, not wishing him to perceive his own interest in the girl. Only when she had spoken had he turned to her, drawing in huge gulps of her as if she were water to his thirst.

He had fallen in love on that first day, and had known it, for he had thought about her all the next week at school and had walked often past the mansion hoping for a glimpse of her. On the following Friday, as had been agreed on that first day, after that surprise meeting (he had expected to find nothing but ghosts and memories in the old hospital), he had returned to the room. Robbie, drinking from a beer can and smoking a cigarette, had noted Sandy's acute embarrassment at even being in the same room as her. He had leaned across to the boy and given him a stinging slap on the thigh, saying, 'Ah, Sandy, Sandy, so you've caught the fever, eh? Too bad, son, too bad. It happens to the strongest men when they look at Rian, when they see that shining innocence, that knowing look, that mystery.' He had risen to his feet. His eyes were on his sister as she sat on her blanket. He had staggered a little, dragging his feet around the room while the candle sent grotesque shadows dancing on the walls. The too, man. Me too. She caught me before anyone else, before she could walk even, and only the thought of my . . .' he struggled with language, the mystery of words he needed but did not know, and frowned,' . . . my task, or something - only that knowledge, and the drink of course, keep me from . . . keep me sane.' He had leaned over his sister, studying her face as if he were a painter, his words hanging in the smoky air. Sandy had thought it time he was going. His cheeks were burning. He was full of questions and emotions. Robbie had slid silently down the wall and rested his chin on his chest. She had risen, had seen him silently to the window, had allowed him out on to his ledge before reaching forward to kiss him on the cheek.

Still her face had remained a mask. She might have been kissing the minister. He slipped down the pipe uneasily. His heart had been trembling. It would tremble for a long time as the kiss grew in his fertile mind.

That had been a full month ago. Now Robbie looked on Sandy as part of the scenario, albeit a moving, trustless part; the kind of thing a gypsy could appreciate.

'What's it like being a gypsy?' had been Sandy's first question to Rian. She had shrugged her shoulders. Robbie had answered for her.

'If gypsies are outcasts from their own tribe, then they're shadows in the dark, which is to say useless.'

Sandy knew that there was a loneliness in Robbie, and he could feel his visits bolstering the young man's sense of purpose. They were friends of a sort now. Rian was not Sandy's friend, nor could she be. A larger intent lay behind their thin but strengthening bond. It was something Robbie might one day find himself unable to stop. Sandy knew that his relationship with Rian would work inversely to his relationship with Robbie, and these were knotted strings with which his nimble fingers but clumsy brain played.

Something was unfolding, and Sandy shut from his mind the notion that its culmination would be pain or despair or frustration. He simply refused to consider those possibilities.

But he knew. And Robbie knew also, so that there was an inevitable tension in his visits: psychological jousting, with Rian looking on as impassively as a fair princess. There would be no favourites in the game. Not yet.

Tonight Robbie was speaking about some of the day's incidents. Rian had been begging in Craigore, a nearby town. They had some cheese and bread if Sandy was hungry, and a little milk besides. 'Time was,' Robbie was saying, 'you could have gone down to the river and used the water straight from it for a pot of tea, but not now. Pollution. A gypsy used to fend well for himself before all this . . . this . . .plastic shit.' Sandy studied the beer can in Robbie's hand as he waved it around. He felt that Robbie's drinking was frowned upon by Rian. It might prove a useful weapon in the fight. He had not accepted a drink from Robbie yet, though he was keen to, for it was something that had to be done at his age. He had resisted in order to impress Rian, and she looked across at him whenever he denied himself as though she were unusually full of curiosity about him. 'Suit yourself,' Robbie would say, and would then finish the contents of the tin quickly and noisily, smacking his lips in challenging satisfaction afterwards. Tonight Sandy felt like saying: 'Always enough money for drink, though, eh Robbie?'

That would have scored points, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Sandy said nothing; only listened and hoped that his princess would speak. Robbie talked about the snooker hall in Craigore. *You can sometimes make a few bob on a game, but not often and never much money. They're tight-fisted in that town all right. Mean shower. Rotten snooker players too. Almost embarrassing.' He looked at Rian, then at Sandy, and crushed the thin beer can with one hand, rubbing at his nose with the other.

'An itchy nose,' said Sandy. 'My mum says that means you're going to come into money.' Having said it, he felt stupid. It seemed banal. Robbie's eyes lit up, however, and he shook his head vigorously.

'Your mum's wrong. An itchy palm means money. An itchy nose doesn't mean anything. No, wait a minute. That's not right. It does mean something but I just can't think what.'

He furrowed his brow, put a hand across his eyes like a mind-reader. 'My Aunt Kitty used to tell me about all that stuff when I was a kid, but I've forgotten most of it.

Superstitious crap. No,' he shook his head and waved his hands in the air, 'I've forgotten it. She could help, though.

My Aunt Kitty at the caravan.'

'Caravan?' said Sandy.

'Caravan,' said Robbie. 'Where the hell did you think we came from? We didn't just appear out of thin air, man.

Didn't I tell you? Didn't Rian? We belong to the tinkers' site at the foot of Craigie Hill.'

'Then why did you move here?' Robbie hesitated at Sandy's question. He looked over to his sister, then at Sandy. Sandy nodded, though he felt that he had only half the picture. 'Oh,' he said.

*Yes,' Robbie continued, 'we should visit my Aunt Kitty some day.' He again looked to Rian, who suddenly came alive.

'She's my aunt too! She's not just your aunt!' She stared at her brother in a rage while he scratched his beard, then she blushed and dropped her eyes. Robbie chuckled.

'Oh?' he said. Well, maybe that's something to ask her, after what happened. Maybe all three of us should go up there just now and see what Aunt Kitty says to it. I seem to remember her saying something like "She's no relation of mine." Isn't that right then, Rian?' The girl was already on her feet. She moved swiftly, and in her movement Sandy was attracted to the shape of her body. She slammed the door as best she could behind her. Robbie hooted loudly, smiled at Sandy, then turned his eyes to the floor and thought to himself.

'I suppose I should be going,' said Sandy.

'But you've only just got here!' complained Robbie, who seemed genuinely upset.

'Yes, but my mum will have my tea ready. I'm hellish late for that.' Sandy had a sudden inspiration. 'And I want to ask her about the itchy nose. Then we can go and see your auntie. Okay?' For a second Sandy thought that it might have been a mistake to mention this, but Robbie nodded.

'Yes,' he said. 'You do that. Will you come back tomorrow?'

'Maybe, Robbie.' Sandy was already on his feet.

'Fine then.'

There was no sign of Rian in the corridor. 'Cheerio, Sandy,' said Robbie. As the door closed on him, he was hunting in his pockets for a cigarette.

'Cheerio, Robbie.'

He sat on the window ledge for a long time. Rian did not appear. Robbie was whistling in the far room. Sandy did not want Robbie to come out and find him still sitting there. It would be too much of an admission of interest in Rian. He sat for a full count of sixty. The golfers had abandoned the course. It was too dark now to play, though there was still a faint red glow in the sky. He reached out for the drainpipe and shimmied down, jumping the last five feet and feeling the drop through space thrill in his stomach. He landed with a grunt on the lawn. Some jotters had fallen from his satchel. He crouched and replaced them. When he stood up, she said something behind him.

'Don't believe him, Sandy. Don't believe anything he says.

There's a streak of badness in him.' Her voice was quiet and sugary. He turned to her and she stepped towards him. It was the easiest thing to just snake his arms around her waist. She touched his arms with her fingers. Her chest was against his ribcage. She was skinny, thought Sandy. All skin and bone really. 'Promise that you won't let him turn you against me. Promise me, Sandy.' There were tears in her eyes. She put her head to his shoulder. He felt an erection swelling and pulled his hips back a little so that she would not feel it. He had been embarrassed more than once at school dances when a girl had noticed his erection during a slow dance and told her friends, who would then giggle at him for the rest of the night. He wanted there to be no mistakes with Rian.

'Don't get me wrong, Sandy,' she was saying. 'I don't want to give you the wrong impression. Robbie is my brother and I wouldn't hurt him for the world, but he's bitter at having had to look after me all this time. He feels he's losing out on life, and yet he won't leave me alone because he feels it's his job to look after me. There's a jumble of things in his head, but he will try to turn you against me. I know he will. He's tried it before.' Sandy wanted to ask her a question then, but she gave him no opportunity. 'He'll do anything. He'll tell any lies he wants to. Don't believe them.' As he held her waist, her hair tickled the backs of his wrists. Her hair was longer than he had imagined. It reached down to her waist and beyond. He looked down at her cowering head, resting so easily upon him.