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About the Author

Kerry Andrew is a London-based author and musician, whose debut novel Swansong was described as a ‘darkly captivating tale of myth, magic and sinister secrets’ by the Mail on Sunday, and whose ‘To Belong To’ was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. Kerry is the winner of four British Composer Awards, and best known for experimental vocal, choral and music-theatre work, often based around themes of community, landscape and myth. Kerry has released two albums with the band You Are Wolf: Hawk to the Hunting Gone (2014), a collection of avian folk-songs re-interpreted, and Keld (2018), inspired by freshwater folklore. ‘One Swallow’ was Kerry’s short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

By the Same Author

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Swansong

Dedication

To Andy, my darling, for everything

Epigraph

The water sustains me without even trying

The water can’t drown me

I’m done with my dying

Johnny Flynn, ‘The Water’

Water, is taught by thirst.

Emily Dickinson

Part One

1985

Chapter 1

Matty’s dad was missing.

He’d gone out in the morning, same as always, on the last ever day of primary school. Half a piece of toast eaten. A hand on Matty’s head, Marmitey crumbs getting in the curls, and a peck to Mamma’s cheek. Door going. And he hadn’t come back.

After school, it had been home to their maisonette above the supermarket for tea, shirt covered in scribbles from the entire class. Mamma turned Matty round like a card carousel, frowning at the scrawled farewells: ‘NEVER CROSS THE STREAMS’; ‘Call this number if you want sexing’; ‘Luv U Matty’. Tea. Telly. Matty had waited up to tell Dad about the football match with the teachers and how they’d played the Fame song in assembly and the class had danced around on the stage, but he must have stayed out really late. Bed.

Next morning, still no Dad. Mamma’s voice had been carefully stretched. She’d said that maybe he had gone out for a drink with a friend, it had got late, he’d stayed with them. But why would he have to do that when he could catch a bus or two back? You could get anywhere in London, anytime. It was easy.

The next morning. Mamma was angry. Repeating I don’t know, the pauses between the words getting heavier as she saw to things that didn’t need doing, glasses that had already been dried, bread already spread with Vitalite twice over. They didn’t go to church. That afternoon, she sat in the hallway, one leg crossed over the other, holding onto the phone very carefully with both hands as if it would come apart otherwise.

Day after, the police were in their living room. Looking ginormous. A man and a woman, black and white checks round their hats like tiny versions of a motor-racing flag. The woman wrote tiny words with a tiny pencil onto a tiny notepad and kept giving Matty soft looks. Mamma had put make-up on, wore her shiny black heels even though she was indoors. The policeman spread his thighs wide, taking deep sniffs, looking around. You could see his willie poking there, just a bit. When he left, the point of his hat almost touched his nose.

Just the woman the second time. Mamma’s voice, raised. Her Italian accent always got stronger when she was upset. Matty sat out in the hall, drinking orange squash through a straw, kicking the skirting board, listening. Something about a pond. ‘I would have known,’ Mamma had said. ‘Fine. You have to search. It’s your job!’

The policewoman asked Matty questions this time too, shifting her skirt down over her knees. Her tights were thick and deep beige, like her legs had gone on holiday. Lipstick the colour of pink wafers. Mamma had gone to make her a cup of tea. Thanks, Rosa, the policewoman had said, as if they were friends.

‘Your dad liked swimming, didn’t he?’

Did he? ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, we think he might have gone swimming in the Men’s Pond. Someone at his work said as much. You know the one, on the Heath? Did you ever go there with him?’

Head-shake.

‘Was he upset about anything? Maybe he and your mum …’ her voice quietened. ‘Did they argue much?’

Shrug. Everyone’s parents did. Every kid crept out of bed to sit at the top of the stairs, making two dents in their forehead from the banister rails, listening to them shouting, collecting their swearwords like Panini football stickers. Didn’t they?

Just gone, clean gone. He’d been kidnapped by gangsters, whipped off the street, tugged into a car with a handkerchief soaked in chloroform over his nose. The ransom note to them had got lost in the post. Or he was a spy. Top-secret operations, classified. The Soviets had got him because he knew confidential information about cruise missiles, and a sniper had taken him out as he’d been walking to work, which wasn’t foreman at Anlow Shopfitters – that had all been just a disguise. He’d been so good at his real job that even his family were none the wiser. All this time, and neither of them had ever known.

Matty daren’t ask Mamma whether it was the Mafia or the KGB. But it was clear enough from Mamma’s mood that something very bad had happened. She went silent, like she did when she was grumpy, became forgetful. Tins of food were left open, half a can of baked beans in a puddle of orange. Taps running. She spent ages in the bathroom, but when she came out she didn’t look any better. Normally, she wore perfectly applied thick make-up, dark-green eyeshadow and deep red lipstick, even if she was just going downstairs to the shop. The phone was left off the hook, gurgling to itself.

Dad. Joe. Who came along to skateboarding, sitting on a bench very far away behind his Irish Times so as not to be a gigantic embarrassment, though he might as well have cut holes in it he looked so obvious. Who made really good pancakes, thin and crisped on the outside, with chocolate spread and peanut butter. Who sang loudly to the radio, turning it up when the neighbours banged on the wall, turning himself up. Whose Italian, when he tried to speak to Nonna and Nonno, had a distinctive Irish slur. He always sounded drunk when he spoke Italian.

After the first few days, Matty couldn’t stand being at home any longer. Hampstead Ponds, the policewoman had said. Over the other side of the Heath from where they lived in Golders Green. The A–Z sat unused underneath the phone book. There were several ponds, chunks of blue along the edges of the green on the map. Three for swimming – the Mixed Pond was near the road, and the separate ones further north. They’d been past them a few times. Highgate Men’s Bathing Pond was the second up in a row.

A can of Fanta. The map. Walkman. Matty stood very still in the hallway, like a wolf, hairs raised, ears raised. Upstairs, there was a creak on the floorboards and the dull click of the bathroom door shutting again.

Time to sneak out.

Sitting on the back seat on the lower deck of the bus was like sitting in an oven. The chair material itched. Matty hadn’t travelled alone before. School was only up the road, an amble along the pavement if walking with Dad, a quicker one if with Mamma, who always acted like they were late. Three Indian women got on the bus with shopping bags, talking loudly. An old man holding a bundle of newspapers glanced towards the back. Matty turned to face the window as the bus slowly hauled itself up the hill, headphones on but no tape playing. Just be normal.

Dad wouldn’t have gone this way. He got two tubes to work – ‘to the Shoplifters’, he’d say, with a wink – but maybe he could get a bus to the Heath from there. Swimming. When he came back late, he’d always say that he’d been at the pub or the park, but he’d never mentioned swimming.

He was more of a spectator at sports, generally. Football at the pub or at Barnet, sometimes with Matty, freezing their bums off on the wonky terrace. The odd ‘butterfly’ on the races, as he called it with a little flutter of his fingers. His winning streaks lasted about as long as a butterfly’s lifespan. And he spectated Matty, too. Boxing as well as skateboarding. Matty had been going to the club for six months and Dad was always there, having a quiet word with Freddie, sending a wink and a nod over.

Raised voices at the front, the bus going nowhere. A man with dreadlocks and long, pumpkin-coloured shorts was arguing with the driver about ten pence that he didn’t have. Long, loose words and a wet sound through his teeth. The A–Z was getting sticky on both knees. They had stopped by Jack Straw’s Castle, the big pub. It was near enough. Matty hopped out of the still-open doors.

It was a different world up here. Like going through a magic wardrobe or being spun round to the other side of a secret wall. No shops, just big single houses in neat red brick, and the road signs looked like they had been very carefully painted a hundred years ago. Old-fashioned names – Vale of Health, Squire’s Mount, Well Walk. The smell was different, too, not exhausts and baking bagels but heavy, woody.

Matty had been to the Heath plenty of times, going up with Dad to chuck a ball around. It felt different being here alone. Senses on red alert. Traffic still rumbled past, very close, but there was a layer of birdsong underneath the rocking of cars and vans, drawing you in, as if coming from further back in time.

A wide path led into the park with fat, overlapping trees on either side that turned afternoon into evening. Just birds now. Matty still didn’t press play on the Walkman. The trees were giants, looking down, wondering what this small, scruffy-haired person was doing. Two women with a dog and a pushchair walked past. I won’t have him do that again, you know? one was saying. Gotta have some self-respect, one said, the other nodding.

As the path climbed higher, the trees fell away. The top of the Heath was where some families from church had picnics on Sunday afternoons, though the three of them hadn’t gone for ages. Mamma always said she was busy these days. There was the tall spire on the left and hard glints of the City further over. Kids were everywhere. The sort that would be on the new bus to St George’s, kids who weren’t really kids any longer. Taller, wider, louder. They sat in circles like Boy Scouts, crisp packets in place of a fire. Smaller children were with their parents. Bikes, pushchairs. And more dogs than people.

The map didn’t make much sense anymore. Matty walked straight through the shin-deep grass, eyes down, hoping to hear two syllables called, sounds that would make everything OK again. Mat-ty.

He might be here. He’d decided to camp for a bit, live off the land. His Gypsy blood. He often talked about going back to Ireland, where everything was so green. ‘Green,’ he’d say, gently shaking Matty by the shoulders. ‘Not grey.’ But he liked it really, London. He liked the mix of people, and the noise. Flip him like a coin, and he’d say that Ireland was ‘quiet as the bloody grave. I’m never going back there. My God.’

Or he might be wandering the Heath. He’d lost his memory and somehow ended up here. Not known his name. ‘Joe,’ he’d normally say with his hand out to just about everyone he met, people in the international kosher supermarket below their flat, people on the street, cigarette propped in the side of his mouth or between his fingers. They always shook his hand, told him their name.

A quick look at the squashed blue shape on the map. It was just down there. Matty descended the hill and stood by the fence, heart tap-tapping loudly.

Clusters of cow-parsley, like mini-nuclear explosions, sloped down to a wide stretch of water. The Men’s Pond. It was the same colour as the clouded sky and had a smaller version of itself drawn by rope-markers, with a square platform in the middle. Inside the ropes, you could see the pink arms of men doing laps. A yellow swimming hat. A red one.

There were a few shouts and a splash. From further along the path, a long wooden platform was visible and behind that a queue of men waiting to dive from the concrete walkway, chatting to each other. Two of them were wearing T-shirts. A man was at the edge of the board, standing very straight, before his knees bent and he made a quick, neat arc into the water. Another two jumped in after him, whooping, and swam together with their heads close. You couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. There was a pull, like the birdsong from earlier, something enchanting about the wink of light on the surface of the pond.

The last place that Dad was seen. People might have known him in there. He knew everyone.

The path dipped down and round the corner, where a few men were on a narrow stretch of grass in front of the entrance gate. Sitting, standing, lying down, most just in trunks, though there wasn’t much sun. The pool was hidden from here. There was a corrugated iron roof and two Raleigh Burners locked to the fence. Matty stood at the gate, looking at the sign: NO LADIES ALLOWED TO SWIM. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to pay for entry.

‘Going in, are you?’

A deeply tanned man with a white beard that touched his bare belly stood with feet planted apart. He was wearing trunks and fraying leather sandals. Slowly, his eyebrows lifted, eyes twinkling. His belly stuck out like a half-full rubbish bag. He waited a little longer, before walking past the gate with a strange, slow bounce and disappearing round the corner. You could just hear the splashes from here.

No, not going in this time, Matty thought. But the man had asked. So – imagining Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wraparound sunglasses and the set jaw – I’ll be back.

Further up the path, someone was sleeping on a bench, a coat over their head.

Dad might have been attacked. People did that, stabbed other people on the street and took their wallets. Someone had stabbed Dad and taken all his money and that would have been when he’d lost his memory and didn’t know that he lived in Golders Green and was from Ireland and sort of supported Barnet, even if they were a bunch of legless eedjits. Matty crept closer to the bench. The smell of pee or beer or both got stronger.

A football sailed over and landed on the person, bouncing off a harder part. There was a sudden sound from underneath the coat like a furious monster woken from hibernation. A flash of grizzled, snot-streaked cheek. White stubble, and an eye black and bright and fixed on Matty.

Run.

Matty let the door slam and waited in the hallway, scuffing toes on the mat. Waiting for Dad to stick his head round from the kitchen, his eyes narrowed in foxish amusement, to say, what feckin’ time d’you call this, crackerjack?

Nothing. Only the clock, and the traffic outside.

Mamma appeared at the top of the landing. She was still in her dressing gown. ‘Where have you been?’ Her voice didn’t have any colour in it.

‘Nowhere. Just out.’ Matty kicked the skirting board gently, wanting to ask ten questions back. Where’s Dad? Kick. Why aren’t you talking about him? Kick.

‘You want to make me think that you are gone too?’

Matty hadn’t thought of that. ‘What’s for tea?’

Mamma’s shoulders went straight and her head jerked to the side. ‘What’s for tea,’ she said, in the same flat voice. ‘Is this all I do? Sit here and make you tea? If you are old enough to go out on your own and not come back for hours, you are old enough to make your own tea.’ She turned and went back into their bedroom.

Madonna was on the telly, the video of one of her songs. She wore loads of wristbands and a cross hung from one ear. Matty had another spoonful of baked beans from the bowl and drank the warm can of Fanta that had remained unopened all afternoon, sitting close to the screen with a sticky orange mouth. In the video, they kept cutting to a man and woman, and the woman looked like Mamma when she’d had that perm. They seemed really in love, and Madonna was holding her microphone as if it was precious. Cyndi Lauper was better. A city princess dancing around with multi-coloured hair and a voice like glacé cherries. Loads of girls wanted to look like her. Sometimes you saw girls like Siouxie Sioux too, even in Golders Green, witchy eyebrows and heads shaved, looking really moody.

Top 40. They never showed hip-hop on Top of the Pops, except for Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel once. That was the best music. Kyle from school sometimes lent his big brother’s cassettes, themselves sent from a cousin in America. The Sugarhill Gang, the Wild Style original soundtrack. Speaking, not singing, words like little punches. Matty liked the ones about parties and the ones about thieves and problems in the streets. The Eurythmics were on now. The short-haired singer with her white denim jacket and white trousers singing about angels.

There was a new layer of sound in the song. Matty leant over and turned the volume down on the TV. Mamma was on the phone. Her voice was low, but occasionally it got louder.

‘Non lo so. Non lo so, mamma. No, non lo ha fatto.’

Matty knew some Italian, from the holidays there – as well as from Mamma, who would slip into it as if she was an alien who kept forgetting her disguise. Sono di Londra. Buonanotte, dormi bene. Cioccolato all’arancia, per favore. They went most summers, Matty turning red then brown, Nonna tutting and barking in her sandpaper voice at the peeling skin. Nonno walked with a rocking limp on one side and sweets secreted in a palm. His pockets must be full of sugar.

Mamma always complained about London. How Italy was better, hotter, less rough, good values, no Indians, no West Indians. But after a day or two, you could see that she wanted to go back home. ‘My mother,’ she would say in a dagger-voice to Dad. He was the other way round, itchy and quiet for the first couple of days, and then practically Italian himself, leaning back on the plastic lounge chair in the garden, drinking limoncello and crooning songs at Nonna until she flicked a tea towel at him.

Now, out in the hallway, talking to Nonna, Mamma sounded like she always did. Like she wanted very much to be there, and she wanted very much not to. ‘Joe,’ Matty heard. ‘Joe. Non lo so. Che cosa ho fatto?’

***

The next day Matty walked, with a rucksack. It wasn’t that far. Up the hill towards the posh houses, until the birds started singing. The sun and the trees’ shadows made jigsaw pieces on the path and the top of the Heath was full of people again. The bench where the tramp had been lying was empty, and there was a dull gold sign: In Loving Memory of Our Mother Mildred Himoff Lewis 1912–1985.

If Dad had just gone away, he would have left a note. He would have stuck it on the fridge, or under Matty’s pillow if it was a secret mission. Some sort of dead drop. He wouldn’t have gone without saying anything. ‘You’ve got my back, haven’t you?’ he’d say sometimes, pointing a finger that was mustard-coloured from nicotine. ‘And I’ve got yours. The Ronans. Family true and true. This version, anyway.’ He’d mean ‘through and through’, but would exaggerate the accent. Both words worked. Matty would nod and imagine the two of them thinly slicing their palms open, and shaking hands to mix the blood together.

Nearing the highest part of the Heath, Matty looked up at the sun, and the day blotted, a split-second of blackness before the sky was nothing but bright blue again.

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