The Water Room

19. FEET OF CLAY

It had taken Elliot Copeland all day to get the front yard of the builders’ merchant broken up and loaded on to his truck. Beneath the concrete slabs, the earth was as wet and heavy as a Christmas pudding. He had found fragments of horse bone buried deep in the brown London clay, remnants from the time when the Green Street Races were held in Kentish Town. Dozens of delicately curved white pipes poked out of the mud like bird ribs; each lay discarded where it had been smoked. The soil held more secrets than anyone could know. The roads traced the jigsaw patterns of ancient settlements, following their hedgerows and tributaries, titled after their landlords and hunting grounds, their mistresses and battles. Nothing was as arbitrary as it appeared. Even the public houses were still imprisoned by their nomenclature, despite numerous name-changes and makeovers.

His arms and back ached. He badly needed another drink, but had finished the quart of scotch he kept in the cab. At least the men in the builders’ machine shop were decent local types, not like the street’s new arrivals, who were incapable of painting a wall without calling for help. Somewhere along the line he had got the reputation of being cheap, and now it had proven impossible to raise his prices without them all complaining. He could have done with a work-mate today, but couldn’t afford to pay one. Was this, he wondered, what his life had boiled down to? He’d left art college with big ideas, but unfortunately so had everyone else. After the time of the Hornsey riots, everyone had wanted to be a rebellious art student, but what all that rebellion and popularity meant was that there were no jobs at the other end.

He was forty-six, the divorced father of a child he was no longer allowed to visit, because his inarticulate anger arose in drunkenness. And all people saw when they looked at him was an overweight loser with a screwdriver and a paintbrush. He had thought this was all life could offer now, loss and disappointment-but you never knew what fate held in store, and a short while ago he had been given his chance. The trick was knowing when to act upon his knowledge-but soon, he was sure, people would look at him with new-found respect. He shouldn’t have talked to Jake Avery at the party, though. It didn’t pay for too many people to be involved. The drink always made him gabby. He backed the truck up to the muddy pit and clambered down from the cab, thinking about what to do.

Before he went to the police, he would have some fun with the yuppie scum. He was the longest-remaining resident in the street, had lived here when kids still played in the road and mothers sat in deckchairs on their front steps, when there had still been a corner pub and a shellfish stall, long before all the estate-agent boards had appeared and the dry-as-dust middle-class couples had transformed the street’s loud, crowded family rooms into havens of hushed elegance. Now the road was lined with pristine cars and the houses were inhabited by invisible people who came home late and sat in their gardens drinking wine in the summer, hankering for a kind of village life that only existed in their collective imagination, because community spirit, the real spirit of the streets, meant brawling and shouting and getting your hands dirty.

He’d been invited to their party out of politeness; no one had intended him to take the invitation seriously and actually turn up. But he had a secret that would surprise them all, and perhaps it was time to do something with it.

Kallie closed the windows in the front bedroom because the rain was soaking the carpet. It seemed impossible to keep water out of the house. She could hardly believe that Paul had gone. The drawers in his side of the flimsy flatpack wardrobe were empty. This morning at dawn he had thrown some pants and Tshirts into a brand-new nylon backpack, and had taken off. It did not matter who he had slept with in Manchester, only that he had done it at all. The thought allowed her to release him. If he was ever to go, let it be now.

He had tried to write her a note; she found several unfinished attempts in the kitchen bin. It struck her as odd that in order for a man to find himself, he first had to shake off the attentions of those who truly cared for him. She sat on the bed and listened to the rain in the gullies, wondering whether she had smothered too much, pushing him too quickly into setting up house. He had craved spontaneity and she had acted accordingly, but apparently it had been the wrong type of spontaneity.

She shopped and bought a paper, leaving the dripping umbrella to form a puddle on the bare boards in the hall. She painted a dresser pale-blue, and attempted to strip some of the maroon lincrusta wallpaper in the lounge, but cut her hand on the scraper. Finally, she went to see Heather.

Kallie had not been looking for a shoulder to cry on. Compassion ill-suited her neighbour. Heather was far too self-interested to express concern for anyone else’s misfortune. However, when she opened the door, she was an alarming sight. Heather was seething with misplaced energy; Kallie could almost see sparks arcing in aberrant neural connections. What’s wrong with her? she thought. Is she ill? She had expected to be faced with Heather’s patented brand of nervy bravado. Instead she found a borderline hysteric, as distracted as any Ophelia. Heather had flung back the door and walked away into the kitchen, where she paced beside the counter.

‘He’s planning to divorce me,’ she explained, ‘taking everything and giving it all to her. What is it about Paris that makes middle-aged men do this?’

‘Wait, back up,’ begged Kallie. ‘George is having an affair?’

‘He’s screwing some dark-eyed child in the City of Light, and he’ll spend all his money on her, the money that should be coming to me because I’m the one that sits and waits, the one who gets older waiting for him to come home, while she’s bought bracelets and dinners in discreet hotels.’

It was hardly earth-shattering news. George had never put his feet on the ground for fear of taking root in this dank city, and Heather clearly did not have the kind of attitude that could encourage him to stay.

‘He’ll leave me with nothing.’ Her pacing and turning seemed overwrought and theatrical.

‘But you’ll keep the house?’

‘Oh, the house, yes. This place, that’s just great, wonderful, a terrace of redbrick that comes with rising damp and a resale value slightly lower than we paid. I can’t wait to see how the rest of my life pans out based on this.’

Kallie cleared her throat. ‘Well, we seem to be in the same boat,’ she admitted. ‘Paul’s gone.’

Heather stopped in her tracks. For a moment, Kallie thought she might break into a smile. The misfortunes of friends had always cheered her up. ‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’

‘You know how he’s been since he lost his job. He never had the chance to travel. He started work the day after he left school. He wants to see the world, and I can’t go because I’ve bought this place and I’m still working.’

‘Is that how he convinced you? Christ, Kallie, how gullible can you be? That’s what men say when they feel the noose tightening. Thank God you didn’t marry him. How do you know he’s really gone travelling? For all you know he might have met someone else. It could be just a pack of lies.’

Kallie thought of the purple crescent on the back of Paul’s neck. It was so fresh that he probably hadn’t even spotted it himself. ‘No,’ she heard herself lie, ‘he needed a break. Actually, I encouraged him to go. He works hard and he’s never had any time to himself. We both thought it was a good idea.’

‘You’re lying.’ It was amazing how quickly her old friend had brightened. Suddenly she was almost enjoying herself. ‘Aren’t we a pair? Dumped in our prime, although I’m older, so you haven’t even reached yours. God, we need a drink.’ She yanked open the kitchen cupboards and slammed them. ‘There’s nothing here because his bloody wine club didn’t deliver. Now that he knows he’s going, I don’t suppose he’ll pay any of the bills.’

‘I have a bottle of gin,’ Kallie offered.

‘God no, mother’s ruin, we’ll end up sobbing on each other’s shoulders. This calls for some decent vodka. I’ll go to the offie.’ She strode through to the front room and yanked up the roller blind. ‘Christ, it’s coming down stair-rods out there.’

Kallie joined her and peered out. The other side of the street was half-hidden behind a canescent veil, and yet there was someone standing near the corner, working on the waste ground in front of the builders’ yard. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

‘My glasses are upstairs, but it must be Elliot-that’s his truck.’ She watched for a minute in silence, suddenly subdued. ‘Wait, there’s a man with him. It looks like-’

Kallie wiped her palm through the condensation. She saw a figure, faint and dark, hunched behind the builder, covertly watching as he worked. ‘I have no idea who that is. Look, I can go to the off-licence. I’ve got an umbrella, it’ll only take me a few minutes.’

‘Then let me at least give you some money.’ Heather was still peering through the streaked glass. Kallie had forgotten how much her old friend thrived on the misfortunes of others. It seemed an odd trait in someone who could be so generous. Everything about Heather was schizophrenic. Her unpredictable behaviour had probably helped frighten poor old George into a belated bachelorhood.

‘Could you get a decent French dry white? I think we’re going to need chasers. And plain Pringles.’

Some things never change, thought Kallie as she grabbed her coat and headed out into the downpour. She always manages to get away without lifting a finger, and does it so sweetly.

Heather returned to the window of her front room, and gazed through the rain to make sense of what was happening across the road.

The soil had an elastic quality that pulled it from his shovel, and now the rain was turning the ground to mud. Distant thunder sounded, an industrial cacophony that tumbled about the buildings, trapped in whorls of pneumonic cloud. So far, Elliot’s labours had turned up a cache of tough yellow Victorian housebricks, as good today as the moment they had cooled in the mould. They were highly prized by developers offering properties constructed from reclaimed materials, and would fetch a good price. There were old floorboards, too, leached of their oils and twisted with perpetual damp, but still ripe for resale. He was stacking them in the cabin of the truck when he felt the man’s eyes on him, a prickling of his back that told him someone was watching.

It was almost dark now, and the light on the corner had still not been replaced. Looking up, all he could see was the empty street, the figure of a young woman-Kallie, the pretty new neighbour who had purchased number 5-vanishing into the next road, and the tall rustling bushes that bordered the waste ground. He moved behind the truck to dig again, just for five more minutes. It was hard to stop, knowing that there might be some other treasure waiting to be unearthed. The pit left by the bricks had already filled with dense brown liquid, as if fed by some unseen river. He wanted to jump down and continue digging, but was worried about losing his work boots in the mire. The back wall of the hole was already collapsing as the water took it, undermined from below.

He stopped and glanced back at the bushes just in time to see the branches close. It wouldn’t be kids, they couldn’t be torn from their terminals on sunny days, let alone on wretched nights like this. Something in the water surfaced for a moment, just long enough to give him hope. There was no way of avoiding it; he had to lower himself into the cavity and use his hands to search. There was nothing harmful in London soil, just soot and stones kept long from the light.

He didn’t see it, but he would have heard, if only thunder hadn’t bellowed the air once more. The first stone fell into the churning water with a plop, not enough to draw him from the task of finding what he’d seen. He groped deeper, feeling some small metal item slip from his fingers. He bent and reached again, his fingers closing over something that pricked him. A child’s badge: I Am 10. He tossed it back into the water in disgust. Moments later, the thick dank earth cascaded about him in a quicksilver torrent, pouring from above as if the world had collapsed upon itself, the pickaxe-broken concrete slabs skimming on plumes of soil as they slid from the diagonal bed of the truck, gathering lethal speed in their fall. One sizeable piece fractured his neck from behind, sending him face-down into the shallow swamp. He gasped in shock, drawing only the slippery loam-clouds of the ditch into his throat as earth and stones surged down with a terrible stifling weight, pulling him over, choking out his life in a grotesquely mechanized premature burial.

In his final moments, the thought flew by that he might be preserved in the city’s compacted dust and clay, to lie for ever in the fields beneath, truly a man of the soil.