Submersion (17 page)

That week continued much the same – school for me, work for Mother, although Monty Harrison made no further house calls and Mother didn’t lock me in my room again. Until the Friday - then there were some small changes. Tilly Harrison, Monty’s niece, was moved out of our class and put four classes below our level. Miss Cracker brushed this off as an administration error.

I also noticed that the three girls who had been present when Elinor had disappeared were also no longer in the class.

‘Where are they Miss?’ I asked, catching my teacher, as we filed out for home time.

‘Where are who?’ she replied sharply, tiny slugs of phlegm wiggling in the corners of her mouth.

When I clarified who I meant, she simply looked at me coldly for a few minutes, a look that made my skin and bones retract and shrink a little.

‘Administration,’ she spat, singularly, as if this offered a full explanation. ‘Now, run along!’

If this was supposed to indicate that these three – like Tilly – had been in my class by accident, it didn’t quite match up to the facts. You see, unlike Tilly, these three didn’t turn up in anyone else’s class. I kept an eye out too, even making a few subtle enquiries. I didn’t mention it to Miss Cracker again – something about her icy stare warned me not to – but not one person I asked had seen the girls or knew what had happened to them.

‘I think they’ve vanished,’ I confessed to Tristan one evening.

We were round Aunt Agnes’, a family gathering, although Mother and Great-Aunt Penny disputed this labelling, on account of the presence of Grandad Ronan and Tristan himself.

We were in his room, half-way through a game of Rummy.

‘Like Elinor?’ Tristan asked, facing his hand of cards down, signaling I had his full attention.

‘Yes,’ I replied, a tiny rasp of excitement in my voice.

‘And you’ve been asking questions?’

There was a darkness, a fear that crept into his tone like a thick, slow wave rolling in to silently drown you.

‘Yes,’ I answered, but without a trace of thrill.

‘You must stop,’ Tristan instructed, his voice quiet, but hard and cutting, like flint. Like someone else. ‘You hear me, Billy? No more asking questions.’

‘Okay.’

‘You must swear to me, you hear me?’

‘Okay.’

Tristan held my gaze a few moments longer and the cold, menacing wave rolled on, releasing softness back into his face. He picked up his hand and commenced with our game, picking up a card from the stack between us, instantly throwing it down in defeat.

‘Your turn.’

And I kept my word – I asked no more questions. The unblinking fear in Tristan’s eyes was enough to ensure that. But I did keep my eyes peeled and those girls didn’t return to our school. Maybe they had all gone somewhere else? Maybe their parents had coincidentally sailed out of town around the same time, never to be seen again? There was no way of me finding out. Without my questions, I couldn’t ask their friends. And the water restricted everyone’s freedom to explore and observe our city, so I could only look out for them at school or home, or the places I was rowed to in between.

‘Maybe they’ve been taken,’ Tilly proposed one lunch time.

Despite being moved out of my class, Tilly had started to talk to me at break times and we started sitting together at lunch.

‘Who?’ I questioned, feigning ignorance. I hadn’t voiced my concerns about the girls for several weeks, strictly following Tristan’s guidance.

‘You know who.’

I shrugged.

‘And what do you mean ‘taken’?’

‘You know, like they used to, in the old times.’

I shook my head, shrugged again.

‘You really don’t know?’

Another innocent shake. A gradual, curl of pleasure twisted a smile onto Tilly’s face – she knew something I didn’t.

‘Tell me,’ I demanded, gently.

‘Later,’ Tilly insisted, enjoying the drama in the moment, making the very most of it. ‘Not here,’ she added, increasing the secret nature of her tale. ‘Could you get out to the train graveyard later? I could tell you there – where no one else can hear?’

‘Okay,’ I agreed, excited at the prospect, but also a little sad. That was mine and Elinor’s place. And, whilst Tilly was proving to be good company, it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t my cousin.

That evening, I snuck out when Mother was distracted – scrubbing our bathroom with a brush and the cleaning fluids she had acquired from Monty. I took our small boat and rowed all the way to the train graveyard. I’d described the place where Elinor and I would meet up – inside one of the train carriages that were arranged like an accident, twisted together, some upside-down.

I found Tilly there when I arrived, sat upright in an old seat, as if she was going on a journey. She giggled, her laugh vibrated by her gas mask, and I laughed along, liking her joke. Liking Tilly, even if she was a shadow of the friend I really wanted.

‘So, tell me,’ I asked her, and so she unveiled her tale.

‘In the old days, before the flooding,’ she began, relishing each word, as she captivated her audience of one, ‘in the days of the dogs, they used to take children from schools. Not just any children, but the intelligent ones. Take them from their schools and never return them!’

‘Why?’ I asked, thinking this was a tall tale; something Elinor might make up herself. ‘And who?’ I added, before Tilly could respond.

She simply shrugged.

‘Is that what you brought me here to tell me?’ I inquired, my disappointment evident. It wasn’t true and it wasn’t even a good story. Tristan could tell a good story – blood, guts, trepidation and horror, all wrapped up with a twist or something that made you jump or laugh. But Tilly’s tale was empty – just a couple of lame lines.

‘It’s what my Uncle Monty said to me. It’s what he reckons happened to your cousin. It’s why your mother is all worried, too.’

This piqued my interest.

‘What do you know about my mother?’

‘I know she’s worried. Heard Uncle Monty saying. I know she doesn’t want you in that
top class anymore. That she’s worried it’s started up again, that’s the school’s in cahoots with the authori-.’

‘That’s why you’ve been moved!’ I interrupted and it silenced her. ‘Isn’t it - that’s why you’re not in my class? You’re uncle spoke to someone, and Mother wants him to get me moved. That’s why he’s been round.’

Tilly looked to her lap, picked at the damp fabric of the train seat she was perched on.

‘Tilly?’

A shrug. ‘I think so. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.’

‘But you’ve started telling me.’

‘I don’t really know anything else.’

I sighed. Frustrated and now a little concerned, as her story seemed a little more real, even if it was incomplete.

‘But who would take anyone from school and why?’ I said, repeating my questions from earlier and Tilly replayed her response – she shrugged.

We stayed at the dump till it started to turn dark. I knew Mother would have noticed my absence by then, but she could do little about it. Ring my aunt or great-aunt and –uncle, but little else as I had our rowing boat after all.

Rowing back, I was a little shocked by my bravado. A few weeks earlier, I wouldn’t have dreamt of sneaking out or staying out after dark. But I’d survived the dreaded waters and even encountered a dead dog. Somehow, that had given me an edge, a sense of being brave, even if I had screamed at the time.

The closer I got to home though, my old fears returned. I would be in trouble, I would face a scolding, and maybe a smack. Then Tilly’s words began to nag at me.
I know she’s worried. Heard Uncle Monty saying. I know she doesn’t want you in that top class anymore. That she’s worried it’s started up again.
Even if it wasn’t true, this
taking
business, I did believe that something was worrying Mother. I
knew
something was worrying Mother, as I’d seen how she’d been behaving, how she reacted to the news I was in the top class. That last street home, I rowed as fast as I could.

She was waiting for me on the step, dressed in full protective gear. As I predicted, she was frantic with worry and heavy-handed with her scolding.

‘Get in and get up to bed! Where have you been? How dare you just sneak off, stealing the boat, leaving me worried like this? Anything could have happened to you! Anything!’

Did you think I’d been taken?
I wanted to try out, to test her reaction and Tilly’s story with one quick line, but I didn’t have the nerve. I simply took the verbal punishment and the hard slap on my right arm in silence and went up to my room as instructed.

The house was silent for a while. Mother was downstairs, in the living room, possibly seated at the table. I could have taken myself down, apologised, but I feared she wasn’t ready yet. And, if she wasn’t ready, I would simply have received a repeat of the reprimand I got on my way in. So, I stayed in my room, thinking over Tilly’s words, wondering.

Later, there was a tap at our front door, indicating a late-night visitor. I wondered if it was Monty again and thought about Tilly’s words again, too. If they were true, would I hear Mother pleading with him, asking his help to get me out of that top class? So, I crept down the attic stairs and located their voices: the living room.

Only, it wasn’t Monty Harrison at all – it was Great-Uncle Jimmy, by himself. That alone heightened my interest. They spoke in hushed, night-time tones.

‘Just thought I’d pop by, check in.’

‘Good, everything alright?’

‘Yes, just come from locking the shop up.’

‘Everything okay there?’

‘Yes, all ship-shape, nothing to worry about.’

‘And he’s okay, is he?’

‘Yes, he’s fine, nothing to worry about.’

For a second, I thought they were talking about me, that Uncle Jimmy was asking if I was
alright, following my temporary disappearance earlier. But the voices were the other way round and that didn’t make sense.

That night, when Mother eventually came to bed, she climbed the attic stairs and locked my door, keeping me prison-secure until the morning.

PLAY

‘When they took me, they kept me isolated at first. The idea was to break me in some way. Remove contact with other reasonable humans with the view of removing humanity from me entirely. During that time, they continued to test me. In between meals and trips to the bathroom, and sleep, of course, they brought me papers to complete, or lists of questions I had to answer. And once we had gone through all that, they introduced the experiments.’

‘Experiments?’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t the worst of it.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘No, that came later. You see, I was compliant at first. Tests, questions, experiments – I went along with it all. But then I was introduced to him and that’s when the real terror began.’

‘Him? Who do you mean?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘A secret?’

‘A secret name.’

‘Tell me. Please. Tell me his name.’

PAUSE

              6. Agnes

When the young man in the suit appeared on my doorstop that morning, upright in his boat, floating but still, balanced, offering me hope, his very words –
Hello, I’m Reuben, and I’m here to talk to you about Hope
- I took it as a signal. A signal of what, I couldn’t exactly define. But it acted as a stopping device, a pause button.

And I did something very uncharacteristic - I invited him in, then and there.

Whilst he was dressed just like all the other young Christian missionaries that floated in on the weak and needy, he could have been anybody, and he could have done anything to me.

But my instinct told me he wouldn’t and inviting him in was what I needed to do.

I knew him, something in the back of my head told me. And when I looked into that face, it was somehow familiar, only I couldn’t quite tap into my memories. It was as if
how I knew him,
and
who he was,
was trapped behind a screen of blurred perspex.

Once we were stripped of our protective gear, I set the kettle on the stove and left Reuben seated at the kitchen table. Then I made a call that changed the course of things for a while, a call to work. I was through to Jerry Carter, my boss at the government office, in a matter of seconds.

‘Hello, Agnes, I’ve been wondering when I’d hear from you,’ Jerry opened, his calm, soft voice instantly putting me at ease. ‘We’ve all been wondering how you have been.’

‘I’m not as good as I thought, Jerry,’ I told him, before reciting a dialogue I hoped wouldn’t sound too well practiced.

I’d stepped out the front,
I continued, keeping my voice low – I didn’t want Reuben hearing my every word -
and knew I couldn’t go any further, not yet, I wasn’t ready.

Jerry was understanding, like I knew he would be;
you take your time, we’ll cope without you for now, but just stay in touch.

I promised I would and that was that. At least, it was for now. I had every intention of going back – and eventually fulfilled that intention – but for now something else was demanding my attention: Reuben.

I still wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do with him, what the purpose or outcome of inviting him in would be. But I felt driven all the same. There was something so familiar about him and that was both compelling and comforting.

The telephone was attached to the wall on the first landing, where the stairs down to our waterlogged ground floor met the set that ascended to the dry, upper quarters. I could spy
Reuben from there without being seen myself – just a thin strip of him in the gap between the living area door and its frame. Black suit, white shirt, black tie and shiny black shoes, all of which came out unscathed from the rough rubber and waxy fabric of his outdoor garments. Dark hair – not quite black – short and smart, and a clean, shaven face;
decent looking,
my mother would have labelled him. He was neatly folded up at the table – perfectly horizontal from his head to his waist, where he folded at a right-angle along to his knees, falling horizontally again to his ankles, where there was another 90˚ angle at the vertical shelf of his feet.

Just like you all those years ago,
I felt my lips mouth, silently, remembering.

The kettle whistled on the stove behind him and he jumped, his perf
ect poise crumbling a little with this sudden jerk. I stifled a laugh and rejoined him.

‘Tea or coffee?’ I asked him, striding towards the cupboard where we kept the mugs.

‘Tea,’ he answered, clear, precise, clipped.

Rehearsed –
my mother’s voice again.

Yes, I thought to myself, thinking back, recalling another man at my mother’s own
kitchen table, dressed just as smartly and acting just as politely, as if he had been coached to perfection. All those years ago.

‘Penny for them?’
Reuben asked, interrupting my far-off gaze.

Penny for them.
Old fashioned words from such a young man, delivered in a formal tone.

‘Your thoughts?’ he added, mistaking my pause for misunderstanding.

I knew what he was; under no illusion there. I recognised the black uniform from the uninvited visitors I received when Mother died. Could still see the blood-red fury in Ronan’s face when he shouted one of them back out onto the street. Reuben may have offered me
hope
when I opened the door and found him there,
but he meant God. Yes, I knew all that. So why had I still let him in?

With tea brewing in the pot and two tannin stained mugs on the table between us, the answer continued to elude me; an absolute explanation just out of my conscious reach. But I did know that someone needed saving – Elinor, him, or me? Another question
I couldn’t answer, but in this instance I was prepared to invest. And, despite what Reuben had meant, it
was
hope I found in him. Hope, and that reflection of another man from the past.

‘I was thinking about another visit from a smart young man,’ I said, finally replying to his question, pulling my chair in towards the table. ‘A confident young man who entered my family home and changed my life forever, a long time ago, though.’

‘Would you like to talk about him?’

The question caught me off guard completely and I felt myself bristle, annoyed with him and myself in an instant. I
never
spoke about
him –
why would I want to speak to this complete stranger about it? And what would he do with the information I gave him? Would he use it to his advantage, manipulate me along a path that led to his true purpose - to recruit me? And yet, I
had
spoken about him, hadn’t I? I had started this whole business, in fact.

‘I didn’t mean to pry…’ he added, and his voice and face revealed a little discomfort. He’d sensed my irritation.  Suddenly, I had the sense he was new to this. He could have used my switch in emotions to pry further –
you look uncomfortable with that question, maybe we should talk about that, I clearly hit on an area that we should explore, you will feel the benefit if you open up
– but instead he simply looked embarrassed. And a little lost.

I shook my head, shaking out the mess of thoughts and unspoken conversations.

‘It was me that brought it up,’ I said, almost apologising, as I poured us both a mug of weak, pale tea.

Handing the tea over, I had that feeling again, the one I’d had when I opened the front door and invited Reuben in: instinct. Instinct that here was an old friend before me. And instinct to change the course of things.

‘Maybe it would help,’ I heard myself say.

But you never talk about him, ever,
a sharp inner voice reminded me.

‘It usually does,’ he replied, his awkwardness subsiding, as proceedings followed a more expected route.

Agnes, don’t say a word! This is private. You’ve kept this secret for a reason! He’s just using it to lure you in…

‘Okay, here goes. I’ll tell you about him,’ I agreed, saying it aloud to confirm to myself as much as him. ‘I think it will help. But I hope you’ve got the time – it’s a long story.’

‘Plenty,’ Reuben replied, suppressing an eager smile. All that training they’d given him at religion HQ was paying off…

Embracing my heart and ignoring my head, I took a deep breath and broke my silence on a closely guarded family secret to a young missionary I had met only minutes earlier…

‘
One summer’s night, when I was thirteen, I was taken from my parents’ house in the middle of night and placed in an isolated facility. I have only glimpses of memory about what happened. Big shadows looming over me in the darkness, a pricking sensation in my arm as if something had been injected there, the sense of thick arms sliding under my body, lifting me up. But none of this is true. It’s just my imagination compensating for the poor job my memory has done. In truth, I have no idea how I was taken that night. And for a while, my parents were equally in the dark, as were the many other families affected.

‘The school was involved, we later found out. Something that shocked us all, that an institution we put so much natural trust in could have betrayed so many. St Patrick’s – the place we considered our family school, attended by my mother, father, sister, aunt and uncle, my friend Jessie, too, if you count unofficial extended family – had been testing us all. Dividing us up into categories of skill and intelligence on a number of subjects. And those who fitted a certain demographic were then taken from their families.
For the greater good
the shamed authorities later admitted. But at first, they denied everything. A foolish move, really, when the connection was so obvious. But that’s the authorities for you. Denial is their natural default. Their policy.

‘That’s when I first met him – at the place I was taken to. He didn’t reme
mber - least he said he didn’t - but I never forgot.

‘Like the night I was taken, I don’t remember a good deal of the details regarding the facility they took me to. But I remember how it made me
feel:
terrified, isolated, exposed, wondering why I had been taken and whether I would see my parents and sister again.

‘They kept me for four weeks. I spent the whole of my waking hours in that same state of terror, largely sat at a desk in a huge, echoing hall, alongside other equally terrified children of a similar age to me. Each day, we completed written tests, one after the other. We sat in silence whilst each one was collected and marked. Then we would receive another test and the process would be repeated.

‘We were fed in that hall, too, uniform meals brought to us on uniform trays. If we needed to use the lavatories, we were escorted out individually by what I assumed were guards, but we were not spoken to. There were not enough guards to overpower us – ten to the fifty children present. But the fear silently generated in that place was. I had no idea where I was, who I was surrounded by, why I was even there.

‘Outside of that room, I remember next to nothing. There must have been somewhere that I slept, washed and changed my clothes, but I have little recollection. I recall grey walls, steel doors, rough blankets and lumpy pillows soaked with a frightened girl’s tears. I’ve speculated that maybe there was something in that final meal of the day – a pill or potion that induced sleep. Maybe I was washed and dressed in my sleep. Or maybe something else – maybe further tests or experiments were performed on me. But I think my subconscious mind has probably just done me a favour – blocked it out, made me forget.

‘I asked him once – the man I’m going to tell you about.
Could he remember what happened to him once the day of testing was over?
But he denied even being there. Said he had no idea what I was speaking about. But I knew it was him, and I remembered what he did there…’