‘You said it was all water under the bridge.’
‘I want to know why.’
‘We nearly got ourselves killed driving back from that fucking dreadful party you took us to. We took a moment.’
Michel comes down the ladder, very fast. I offer him his drink again. He slaps it out of my hand, but suddenly it all goes out of him. The anger. The frustration. ‘Fair enough,’ he says.
‘Your mum knew.’
‘Yes.’
‘She told you, that Christmas.’
Michel tries to laugh. ‘Not in so many words. She thought I ought to know. Because of your mum. Her depression. The way she vanished. All that.’
‘Well. Yes.’
I wish to God I’d said something before. It’s too late now.
The Margrave is still trading, in spite of the flood, the broken bridge, and all the petty emergencies snaggling the area. It’s a destination restaurant now, with a star. Green eels from the river in dill with a cucumber salad. Somewhere down the lane I dragged my mum’s body down, the water must be roiling by. I wonder what it looks like. I wonder if the flood is ploughing under all the changes that have been made since I was here last. I wonder if, unseen by me, it is returning the landscape to something I would recognise. I doubt it. Things do not ‘return to nature’. Nature fucks everything up and in the process fashions something new. The mind does not remember old geographies because, at its base, the mind is not nostalgic. It knows how the world is wired.
‘You think it’s coming, then. The Fall. In spite of this.’ I wave the menu – a symbol of human tenacity. It seems to me things are still pretty resilient. They’re serving puddings here, for crying out loud.
I tell him, ‘It seems to me there’s still a lot of rain left to fall before civilisation gives out.’
‘The flooding isn’t going to bring things down. I’m not talking about disasters.’
‘No?’
Michel shoots me a look. ‘Since when did disasters have anything to do with the collapse of civilisations? There’s always a flood, a drought, a plague of something. Civilisations deal with catastrophes. It’s why we commit to them.’
‘So why choose this moment to go play Noah in the woods? Christ’s sake, Michel, Agnes—’
‘Thank you for reminding me.’
‘Michel.’
‘I know I have a daughter. Why do you think I’m doing this?’
I push my plate away. ‘Try telling me, Mick. I’ve been a long time in the real world. It’s hard to think my way back into your bullshit.’
‘When civilisations collapse, it’s because they fall out of joint. They deafen on their own feedback. They can no longer imagine themselves.’
This is an insight Michel has wisely – or at any rate cynically – omitted from his commercial fiction.
He says to me, ‘Have you seen what Ralf is doing?’
This I don’t expect. But of course, Michel is still writing, and his writing is still grist to Bryon Vaux’s production mill. Of course Michel will know what Ralf is up to.
‘Broadcast AR.’
Michel’s smile is predatory. ‘Be careful how you blink.’
‘It won’t catch on.’
‘It won’t?’ He leans forward. ‘How will you know?’
It’s not something I want to think about. But it’s another reason, perhaps, why Michel and Hanna have been having such a bad time of it recently. Michel, sneaking off to construct his long-planned redoubt. Hanna with her outpatient’s appointment, her simple procedure, her permanently AR-enabled eyes.
On the way back to Poppy’s house we detour by the river. Or we try to.
‘Where is it?’
Though Michel knows the town better than I do, he’s as startled as I am by this change. ‘Fucked if I know.’
It’s not in flood. It’s not in spate. It’s not even here. It’s been paved over. Canalised. There is no millrace, and no bridge crossing the millrace, just a horseshoe of low stairs and a concrete ramp for prams and wheelchairs, and – where the river used to be – a bicycle lane winds through landscaped parkland. The underbrush and low trees that used to conceal the water have been cleared away and lime-green exercise machines put in their place. It’s nothing like I remember. It’s devastating. In a way I can’t put into words, it’s almost the opposite of what I remember, and as we walk, I can feel the memories of my youth begin to fizz and react in the solvent of this new real. I stare at my feet, afraid of how much of myself I am losing.
The same high, forbidding fence runs around the hotel garden. The lawn is the same but the beds have matured out of all recognition. They stand like eruptions of wildwood in all that close-cropped green. On the lawn, teams of young executives in branded T-shirts and sloppy pants are attempting to build a bridge from one flowerbed to another without stepping on the lawn. There are wooden poles, large, brightly coloured foam cushions, ropes and buckets. It is some sort of team-building exercise, and it seems to be working. At least, there is a lot of laughter.
‘Conrad?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Come on, Conrad,’ Michel says. ‘Let’s go home.’
Up in Poppy’s loft there’s light of sorts – a weak, dusty bulb shining from a socket screwed to a joist. Really the light from the bulb does little more than blend everything into everything else: cardboard, wood, roofing felt. Even the shadows are the colour of dried meat.
Light rises in white columns from the holes Michel has made. These shafts of dusty light do nothing to dispel the darkness; if anything, they make it more intense. I’m trying to orientate myself, but it seems to me that the holes are far too close together. If this is a hole in the living room ceiling, how can that be a hole in the dining room? The bungalow has always felt small, but this is ridiculous. Up here, you can move from room to room in a single stride.
Because the boxes are so heavy, Michel has been decanting their contents, balancing boxes and plastic-wrapped bundles on the rafters.
There’s a box full of toys. A metal dumper truck, heavy as a bastard. A pair of binoculars in a leather case – I suppose they must have been his father’s. In a plastic carrier bag I find an old film camera – Michel’s, confiscated by his mum when the school discovered him taking photographs of his elderly clients. Bit by bit I bring the stuff down. I try to interest Mick in keeping some of the toys and bits and pieces for Agnes. Agnes. Agnes this and Agnes that. I cannot help myself. I am afraid for her. Michel’s redoubt is for her – a bolt-hole for her when the world falls down. The thing is, the Fall will not declare itself. One day, Michel will simply draw a line in the sand and bear her off. ‘Does Hanna know what you’re planning?’
He says, ‘Why don’t you keep these at your place for when Agnes visits? We’ve got enough junk in the house.’
‘Michel.’
‘What?’
‘Does Hanna know?’
He pulls over another box and cuts it open with a knife. ‘You would think so by now.’
‘What does she say?’
Michel picks at the contents of the box. There’s all sorts of stuff in here. Old cigarette cards from the 1950s. Snow domes. Scarves.
‘She told me to fuck off, Connie, if you must know.’
I teeter from rafter to rafter, between boxes and tea chests, to where Michel has put his foot through the kitchen ceiling.
Given the wreck it has made of the room, the hole Michel’s foot has made is smaller than I expected. He’s stamped directly into the light, dislodging and breaking it. To see anything through the hole, though, I have to balance on the joists on my hands and knees. I peer around the metal light housing. It is still just about attached to the ceiling.
Particles of loft insulation are making my eyes smart, but looking through the gap, I see the kitchen laid out below me. The stainless-steel kitchen sink stands directly in front of the window, reflecting light entering from the garden. To the left of the sink is the fridge, and on top of the fridge is a radio. The fridge is next to the back door. The left-hand side of the door frame sits flush with the wall of the pantry.