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Back The Night of the Flood
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. 1954
  7. PART 1
  8. 1.
  9. 2.
  10. 3.
  11. 4.
  12. 5.
  13. 6.
  14. 7.
  15. 8.
  16. 9.
  17. PART 2
  18. 1.
  19. 2.
  20. 3.
  21. 4.
  22. 5.
  23. 6.
  24. 7.
  25. 8.
  26. 9.
  27. 10.
  28. PART 3
  29. 1.
  30. 2.
  31. 3.
  32. 4.
  33. 5.
  34. 6.
  35. 7.
  36. PART 4
  37. 1.
  38. 2.
  39. 3.
  40. 4.
  41. 5.
  42. 6.
  43. 7.
  44. 8.
  45. 9.
  46. 10.
  47. 11.
  48. 1954
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the author
  51. An Invitation from the Publisher

He smiled at her and touched his nose with his finger. ‘You don’t need to know none of that.’

She glared at him and he smiled disarmingly. ‘Okay. I give in. I’m from near New York and a friend in the city found it for me.’

‘Where near New York?’ She wanted a place, a name.

‘Schenectady. It’s Nowheresville, USA.’

‘It can’t be worse than here,’ she said.

‘Ah, it is. It’s industrial, ugly.’

She took his face in her hands and kissed his scarred cheek and twisted mouth. ‘I don’t understand anything about you,’ she said. She had so many questions. This tiny crumb of truth was unsatisfying but it tasted sweet.

‘You asked me what I do up there.’ He gestured out of the window at the dark sky above the marsh. ‘Imagine floating in the night sky, high above the world, up in the stars. Imagine it could suddenly end. Bang. Gone. That’s how it is.’ He clicked his fingers and she flinched.

He put his mouth near her ear and, breathing softly into it, reached behind her and unclasped her mother’s pearls from around her neck.

In the dark of their isolation, with the sun gone down and the flickering of wisps on the marsh, they lay back down on the bed. There was something about how easy it was to lie down. Although the bed was cold and dusty like everything else, it was better than the floor. On a bed it somehow made it all right. Almost respectable. She shut her eyes and gripped his back while his embraces pressed into her. Even then, until the last moment she thought she might stop. But it all happened so quickly. He’d pulled down her knickers and himself on top of her before she knew the danger and by then it was too late, she was consumed. There was a sharp pain inside her and she cried out.

Afterwards, he slept, his pale eyelashes flickering, the tautness in his body slackened in sleep and his metal oval identification tags hung over his collarbone. Gingerly, she picked one up and held it in her hand. Punched in and set out in lines, she read:

DOHERTY, JOHN H.

20899970 AF

A NEG

CATHOLIC

It was for if he died, she knew. There was another chain too, with a tiny key attached and a small metal pendant shaped like a thin finger. She wondered what they were for but was afraid to touch them in case he woke.