Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

‘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.

Arthur Bryant stood at the edge of the waste ground in his sagging hat and baggy black mackintosh, looking like a cross between a collapsed umbrella and an extremely decrepit vampire. ‘Have you found anything?’ he called.