Иэн Рэнкин - The Flood

Sandy was born in the middle of September. When she was released from hospital and was home, one of the first things Mary did was to take the tiny boy to his grandfather’s still fresh graveside in the town’s cemetery. She held him in her arms and looked at the gravestone of shining grey and blue marble. Her mother stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder, and no tears were shed while the sun shone overhead and the baby lifted his face to the sky to gaze at the brightness. Crows chattered in the distance. The baby realised their presence and searched for a movement. He frowned when there was none. Afterwards, they walked back to the house in silence. The past had been somehow erased. The future could begin.

‘One of those,’ he said, and the man’s plump hand fished in the glass jar for one.

‘On the house, Sandy,’ said the man, handing it to him and reaching over the crowded counter to ruffle the boy’s unwilling hair. ‘But don’t tell your pals, mind, or they’ll all be in here shouting about discrimination.’ The man winked. ‘And don’t tell your mother. You know what she’s like. I’m not giving you charity.’

Sandy smiled shyly. He was embarrassed by his standing as Mr Patterson’s favourite. He knew that behind the action lay real pity for him. Mr Patterson was good that way; everyone said so. The old and the young women discussed him in the street with string bags full of shopping weighing from their arms like pendulums. They called Mr Patterson “sweet” and “a treasure”. Mr Patterson was a bachelor and owned the Soda Fountain, which was Carsden’s sweet shop. He also cut hair in a tiny room at the back of the shop whenever anyone asked him to. He cut Sandy’s hair sometimes, and would take great care when doing so. Sandy knew that Mr Patterson used to be friendly with his grandfather, and that Mr Patterson had been with his grandfather the night he had been knocked down. His mother had never spoken to him about that night, and so he assumed it was something nobody wanted reminding of. He knew that this was why Mr Patterson gave him his sweets free, and even money sometimes, especially at Christmas, but always with the admonition ‘Don’t tell your mother. You know what she’s like.’ Yes, Sandy knew. Mr Patterson’s kindness would only remind her of times which had been pushed into the past in order to be forgotten. Sandy smiled, thanking Mr Patterson for the sweets.

‘Cheerio, son,’ said Mr Patterson, who was rubbing his pudgy hands together as if trying to wash away the stickiness of the sweets.

When Sandy left the shop its bell tinkled and some women outside stopped talking and stared at him instead. As he passed the silent huddle, sucking on the hard nougat, he wondered if they had been talking about his mother, and his face flushed. They would not be as generous as Mr Patterson in their words. Sandy was the son of the local witch, and although he seemed a nice enough lad — quiet, kind, polite still you could never be sure. They pitied him his fate, whatever that might be, but they scrubbed at his clothes with their eyes, imagining the filth beneath.

Sandy could have told them that, being fifteen, he took baths often. He could have told them that the reason they thought him just a little grubby was his root-black hair, shot through with hints of blue. He had dark eyes too, with thick eyelashes which curled like a girl’s.

It wasn’t his fault if he was dark.

His mother’s hair was silver and black, but mostly silver. It straggled down her back when she brushed it out in front of her mirror. His mother had dark eyelashes like his. Her face was pale and fragile. Yet the townspeople thought of her as the witchy woman, and she had never, to his knowledge, denied it. But she wasn’t a witch, he knew as he swung his satchel to and fro and made his way vaguely homewards. She wasn’t a witch.

It had begun even before he had started school. He had not wondered at his lack of friends. In his solitude it seemed to him that everyone had to be the same. Then the taunts had begun. Witchy, witchy, tinker, your mummy is a stinker, she casts a spell and runs like hell, witchy, witchy, tinker. And he a tiny boy and amazed by it all, carrying bread home to his mother and his grandmother. Witch. Tinker. If he came into the house with mud all over him from having fallen, then his grandmother would slap the front of her apron and stand back to mock him: ‘Well, well,’ she would say, ‘and who’s this wee tinker-boy, eh?’ Tinkers were gypsies. They travelled around in cars and caravans and hoarded their money while pretending poverty. They came to your door and offered to sharpen your cutlery, then ran away with your forks and knives and sold them elsewhere. They tried to sell you flowers which they had picked from dead people’s graves. They were dirty and sly and not to be trusted.

‘I’m not a witchy-tinker!’ he had shouted at the pack of taunters one day. They had stood back a few paces at that, as if expecting him to lash out at them. His face was red. He repeated the denial and some of them giggled. He started to chase them, but they flew apart like leaves in a sudden breeze. He touched one or two, no more. They shrieked and ducked and flew further from his reach.

‘I’ve got bugs!’ one yelled. ‘The tinker got me!’ The others had laughed and he had continued to chase them. The boy who had cried out stood catching his breath and trying to blow on to the spot where Sandy had touched him, as if that would cleanse the stain. Sandy walked up to him, the loaf of bread squashed beneath his arm, and touched him again. The boy screeched. Someone said, “You’re it!” and the boy began to chase them all. Sandy soon caught on and ran with the best of them, dodging and weaving and never once being touched. His grandmother called to him from the end of the road. Everybody stopped playing and looked towards her.

‘Come on, Sandy. Tea’s ready.’ He began to walk away.

‘Cheerio,’ said one of the girls.

‘Aye, I’ll see you.’ Sandy began to trot towards his retreating grandmother. He was eager to tell his mother that he had been playing with his friends.

Was it soon after that that his grandmother had died? He could not remember exactly. No, it was after that that she had taken the first of her bad turns; the first at which he had been present. It had scared him for days afterwards.

He had described it to his new friends as they played behind the picture-house. ‘She couldn’t speak or anything,’ he had told them. ‘She just sat in her chair. Her mouth was open a little and she was dribbling. Spit was running down her jersey.’ They made funny faces at that. One or two laughed. The girls seemed more intrigued than the boys. ‘And her hand was shaking like somebody shivering, but she was sweating. She was like that for ages. Sometimes her eyes would open. Then they would close again.’ The girls gasped in horror at the thought.

‘Sounds like what happened to my uncle,’ said one of the boys, chalking his name on the wall with a stone. ‘He was sitting reading in the house one day and the next thing he was on the floor. He coughed and blood came out of his mouth.’ He gazed at them to fathom the effect of his words. One of the girls put her hand to her throat and said, ‘Eeyuk,’ while another closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears theatrically. Even Sandy was sweating a little as he imagined the scene. Blood coming out of your mouth! It was horrific. He tapped his fingers on the stone wall and tried not to look a sissy. He noticed that the other boys were doing much the same thing. Someone suggested a game of football and it seemed like a good idea, but the ball was at the boy’s house in Dundell, and Sandy didn’t think he was allowed to go that far away. He watched them all leave, still shouting at him to join them. He smiled and shook his head.