The Moon Tunnel

26

Dryden walked out of The Tower, past Humph’s cab, tapping briefly twice on the roof, their habitual signal that the day had ended. The Capri overtook him a minute later on the drive. Dryden did not look up from his footsteps as it swept past, but raised his hand in farewell.

‘Footsteps,’ he said out loud, walking on towards the river, trying to concentrate only on the rhythmic click of his heels on stone. He thought of home, the boat at Barham’s Dock and the chill damp of the river, and a wave of self-pity made him feel physically sick, so he increased his pace and thought of nothing but the night around him.

Since the crash at Harrimere Drain five years earlier, Dryden’s emotions had been cauterized: all feeling burnt away where self-knowledge met the outside world. His love for Laura, which had stunned him with its intensity in the hours after the accident, had been transmuted by degrees into the dutiful attentions of a carer, a hospital visitor, a past husband, a future husband, but never today’s husband. It was like trying to love an old photograph, a black and white vision of what once had been.

But he felt an emotion now – anger – and he let it flow, feeling its strength and vitality. ‘Secrets,’ he said, slamming his heel into the pavement. He passed the town’s police station where a solitary drunk stood guard, supported by a bollard, swaying to a tune only he could hear.

Dryden walked on, letting his anger build, knowing that with it he could justify retaliation.

Every day since Laura’s coma had begun he had been at her bedside, even through those first months when she hadn’t made a single microscopic movement. And then every day, again, through the intermittent, half-senseless period in which she had begun to broadcast messages on the COMPASS. He had kept faith with her, and kept faith with their dream. He had dealt with the real world in the best way he could while she lived in her own world, about which he knew so little.

How could she have a secret? He felt his anger surge, displacing other stored emotions.

The problem was words, he knew that now. For all that his trade had taught him, and for all of Laura’s talent with a script, they were bad at words. When they’d married they’d almost stopped using them, retreating instead into a comfortable and intimate partnership where almost nothing needed to be said. Now everything needed to be said, their relationship reduced to a series of computer printouts, e-mails and text messages, and the strain was distorting his ability to feel anything, let alone love.

Which was why he could savour his anger now: how dare she keep a secret from him, how dare she refuse to share everything, as he felt he had done?

He reached the riverside, slumped on a bench and threw his head back to look at the sky. The smog of the day had again been swept away; stars jostled for position in a sky teeming with light.

A nearly full moon. He thought about Etterley, dancing beneath the moon, as he’d seen her the first night he’d met the Water Gypsies. There was something redolent of the harvest festival about her body: her full breasts, her ample figure, her opulent blonde hair. He imagined that body, swaying under the moonlight, sinking to her knees in the long grass gilded with the moon’s white light.

He stood, setting off for the water meadows.

He’d made the Faustian pact with the first step: if they were dancing, he’d join them, if not, he’d walk towards his boat and drink his anger away before the inevitable nightmare, the familiar one now, the claustrophobia of the sand in sharp contrast to this, the overarching vastness of the night sky. He walked along the old wharf, past the darkened gables of The Frog Hall, and out on to the fen.

He saw the fire first, flickering where the water meadows folded down a slope. Here, in the lee of the flood bank, the Water Gypsies were gathered in a half-circle around a burning pile of wood and cardboard. He stood on the edge of the pool of red light and saw her immediately, dancing on the far side of the flames, and when she saw him she stopped, holding her hand out for his.

Dryden could smell the dope on the breeze, and – closer – the heat on his face which made his blood race. He took a drink from Speedwing, who pressed his shoulder, and he looked down into the amber liquid in the tumbler and drank as he felt Etty’s arm loop itself around his waist and then rest at the base of his spine. Dryden felt her mouth, warm and moist on his neck, and he felt then the need to say something, so he held her close and as he kissed her said, ‘Secrets.’

The moon was overhead when the dancers fell to the ground. Dryden could feel the sweat running between his shoulder blades and across his chest, while his mouth hung open, drawing in the cool night air. He let Etty take his hand and lead him along the river bank, away from the light of the fire, but into a field of meadow grass which almost reached Dryden’s shoulders. Someone by the fire played a drum, a rhythmic beat which made him feel safe, even out by the water’s edge.

He reached out for her but she stood back, put a hand to her shoulder and unfastened her dress, which fell in a single slide into the grass. The moon, ample itself, revealed her nakedness, and Dryden drank her in. He took her then and pressed their bodies together as she tore at his buttons and belt, then they knelt, briefly kissing before tumbling together to the earth. Quickly inside her he felt warm, enveloped, and when he came he was looking at her eyes, the familiar aqueous brown reflecting perfectly two nearly full moons. She cried out, and the drumbeat stopped, and he knew then that he too had a secret.