Above the long ribs of sand the moon winked: a banner flying out from the wharf had flapped across it. There were so few lights on the river, so many dark windows, and the tide was out. The sand-ribs were spread with their own granular moonlight, and pools of water, molasses-thick. You could smell the sea. Half a mile away the cranes reared high above the dock.
'I don't want to drown,' said Timon.
Five minutes' walk from here (if your legs were free for walking) people could be found in bars and bistros, and all the harlequin lights glittered. Voices spoke of wine and money. A taxi cruised for fares. Good times. Others begged from blankets, and their thin dogs scratched. But it was no use shouting.
'I don't want to drown. Kill me first, if you have to.'
'Perhaps you won't drown. The rats may oblige you.'
They worked hard with stakes and mallets. Three men, one hardly more than a boy. Plastic cords bound wrist and ankle. No one spoke after that.
At length the eldest stood for breath. He tugged the last stake and found it firm, then squatted beside the youth spread-eagled on the sand.
'The stars are out.'
'I've learnt my lesson. Let me go. Please.'
'But you're missing the point, Timon. You are the lesson - see?'
A length of tape stopped Timon's mouth. The man patted him on the cheek, then, with a salt-damp palm. 'You take care now. Be good.'
He turned to go, all weary, and tramped over the sand. The others followed.
'Be careful - don't lie too long!'
'Tide's turning!'
'Goodbye, Timon.'
They shambled off, departing revellers. The daring of it all had made them a bit drunk. In the morning they would spew out the horror, and sit with shaking limbs in front of the television, thinking of what they had done, waiting for news. When someone knocked at the door they would jump. They would not sleep. All except the eldest, and he would be thinking it was a pity, sure, how it was always the smart ones who tried to break the rules. But it passed off well enough, he would say. And Timon March won't be taking him for a fool again.
* * *
That was one way of imagining it. There were others, other ways of writing Timon's name in the dust. Daniel knew them all. He had lived and died them: felt the cold water lap his heels, the rats' scuttering feet. Timon had played a dangerous game and lost. But just what had he done, whom had he offended? There were answers to these questions, too many to sort out, and Daniel did not know how. Six years ago the tide had sluiced away his brother's body, pulling stakes from the sand bank like pins. By difficult currents it had been carried out to sea, and landed a good two miles away on a rocky beach. And there imagination lost its grip, for that story - of police, inquests, reports - belonged to other people, and in a thousand official forms they had told it. Timon's life was over. That was the point.
Daniel slid out of bed. He couldn't lie there any longer: he was getting afraid of the stillness, and what sleep might bring. It was now just four-thirty. His cold nose prophesied a chill. He dressed quickly, two jumpers and Max's old waxed jacket. One finger slid the length of the banisters. The mood still clung to him as he descended. Something to do with water, and broken surfaces.
In the dining room everything lay as it had the night before, the remains of his mother's and Max's party. Plates were piled at the side, wine glasses paddling in blue candle wax. He saw the bottles, three or four of them - the wine that made Max so talkative, and more so last night than usual. Last night, and something Max had said, teased at his brain. Later the cigarette smoke would bring on one of Ruby's air-freshening attacks, with windows open and a horizontal breeze. Daniel made a sandwich from yesterday's cold joint, and went to the garage for the fishing gear. He filled a plastic box from a writhing bucket of live bait, fed on some concoction best not pried into. The canal was just beyond the woods.
The closing of the door woke his mother, Lisa. 'What was that? Max, did you hear?'
Max grunted, snored, and started drifting again. 'Uh?'
'The door. I heard it close. Do you think someone's come into the house?'
He raised himself on his elbow. 'Or gone out. Doors have that dual function.'
'At this time of day? Night, I mean! It's pitch black.'
'Daniel has gone hunter-gathering I expect, my love. He'll be down on the canal with rod and line.'
Lisa had to admit this was likely: Daniel often went. 'But what if someone's breaking in?' she persisted after half a minute. 'Don't you think you'd better check?'
Max's head wasn't too good. He didn't fancy a wild goose chase, thanks - creeping around in the dark with a poker. Always supposing it was a wild goose chase. And if not - well! Even less appealing. The hi-fi was insured, come to that. He changed the subject. 'There's only one intruder in this house,' he said, rubbing his wife's abdomen. He caressed it with a slight kneading motion, whispering in her ear: 'And he's not going anywhere for the next few months.'
'He?' she asked, prepared to be soothed this way.
'My intuition.'
'Mmm.'
He looked down at her in the dim starlight, thinking, 'I'm going to be a father again. After everything.' Though he had no intention of leaving his bed, Lisa's appeal had made him feel chivalrous and protective. 'It's hard to believe,' he said.
'I know,' she replied softly - it was exciting to think they might be overheard. 'I think it will be that way as long as it's a secret. Like our private game.'
He hesitated. 'When do you think we should speak to the children?'
'Soon. Not just yet. I mean, Ruby's bound to be upset, and Daniel...' Lisa wasn't sure how to put this. 'To have a new brother or sister, and so unexpected - it won't be easy.'
'They may surprise you. It won't get easier for waiting.'
'No, it won't. But let's have this time to ourselves first, Max. There'll be no other. Not for years and years and years.'
He kissed her, as her voice faded. 'You are a wise old bird, Lisa.'
'I know,' said Lisa, and promptly fell asleep.
An hour later Ruby was disturbed by the coughing from Aunt Jenkins's room. Despite everything Aunt Jenkins smoked in bed, and one day, Ruby was sure, she would incinerate herself and half the house, and Max would regret not fitting a smoke alarm, and Ruby would point out how often she had asked him. But what would be the good of that?
Soon she was making tea, watching her hands go through the ritual of warming the pot, counting out the spoonfuls, and enjoying the regularity of that start to every day. But she screwed her face up at the smell of cigarette smoke.
By rising early Ruby gained a precious hour on her father's computer. The PC was her excuse, but the main attraction was the study itself: a windowless white-walled box, good for concentrating in. Max called it his asylum-for-one. Tea first, though. Her knock was answered by Aunt Jenkins's cracked cough of thanks. Ruby slipped the cup onto the table by the door without entering. For her father and Lisa, a tray on the carpet outside their room. The radio alarm was already provoking sounds of reluctant movement from their iron bedstead. Ruby wondered how much Lisa would be able to keep down this morning.
A year almost to the day since Max had moved her to this old mongrel house, and Ruby still could not get used to it. Its carpets and odd jutting walls conspired to knock her elbow, trip her feet. She could never remember where the light switches were, and found herself fumbling the wall. In one alcove on the landing it seemed to her a door ought to have been: every day she was surprised at finding it bare plaster still. The Easter vacation had barely begun, but already she longed for her Hall of Residence, with all its predictable modern dinginess.
Ruby closed the study door behind her, feeling the wood swish snugly against the new carpet. The place felt secure at last, and she settled down to her psychology revision. The morning would be devoted to the libido, with psychosis pencilled in for the afternoon. Ruby's head was awash with facts. Absorbed, she did not see the time, and (because the study had no windows) she did not see how dawn had crept up on this raggedly-begun day, or how the wind had sucked the blossom from the cherry trees and sent it in a pink torrent past the kitchen. Or how dismal the sky was. By now Aunt Jenkins had padded down for her second cup of Earl Grey, and was muttering that winter had come again.
