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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

His mother pursed her lips and stirred her tea vigorously.

‘I thought we might check the stock.’ She left a heavy pause, sipped her tea. ‘But that’s fine. You need a day of rest. I’ll go to church.’

‘I can help on Monday, Mother. But I should get a job. I can’t stay here forever.’

‘Monday. Thank you, Arthur.’

In the evening they sat in the front room, overlooking the harbour, and listened to the wireless. At least, his mother listened, the click clack of her knitting needles the background music to the evening play: a George Bernard Shaw, which was typical of the radio. There was rarely anything new and the theatre itself wasn’t much better – just farces and sentimental musicals, nothing that reflected real life. He stared out of the window at the twilight. The purple bruising of the sky was silvering, boats turning to black shapes, the sea into mist. He wished he was in one of the planes he’d seen and that he could fly away from here.

More than ever he felt that this place was a sickness, a sleeping sickness in the head.

And it had killed Mrs Frost. He could not forgive it for that. He’d been on leave at the time, a few rushed days before returning to the camp. He remembered her body, a collapsed form washed up on the beach below the farm. No one understood how she could have drowned; she’d been a competent swimmer. There were whispers, rumours. He knew it, that this place had drained her of vitality with its endless sky, its slow attrition, the salt that killed everything. It had dragged her out to sea and thrown her back again. He’d known. She’d had on a nightdress when they found her. Grey and clinging to her, indecent. On the train back to the camp, he’d found he couldn’t stop thinking about the way the folds of the material made ripples like the patterns in the wet sand all over her.

But he wouldn’t let it kill him too. He would get out, he would see the world, report on it, and he would take Verity with him.

At this moment, looking out over the cold sea, he knew why he’d come back. He was here for her. That was all.

3.

Deep into the veins of the east saltmarshes, Muriel sailed her dad’s old crabbing boat. The water was just high enough to manoeuvre it through the creeks to Blakeney Pit but it took skill to navigate. The boat’s underside could easily catch on the mud and marsh grass and if you timed the tide wrong, you’d be stuck and that was that. Like a warning, she passed the rotting skeleton of an old abandoned boat, sacrificed to the sea.