Strangers. Danuta Reah
after their first meeting they found themselves on the South Bank. They’d been to Tate Modern to see the Edward Hopper exhibition, and afterwards they’d wandered aimlessly back along the path. Joe had been quiet for most of the afternoon and Roisin was happy just to walk beside him and watch the river.
The water was translucent green except where the light glinting off the eddies and flows turned it silver. A tour boat went past, lines of seats visible inside the cabin where people sheltered from the brisk wind that blew up the river. The seats on the upper deck were empty apart from a couple who hung over the rail, pointing out the sights of the river as the boat passed. Briefly the voice of the guide boomed across the water:…the Houses of Parliament, built in the…A woman on the top deck leaned out dangerously to take a photograph as the boat rocked on an eddy.
‘She’s going to fall,’ Roisin said.
She felt him stiffen beside her. ‘She’s dead if she does. In this water you’ve got maybe two minutes before the cold paralyses you.’ They watched as the woman righted herself and the boat dwindled into the shadows under Waterloo Bridge. His voice was sombre when he spoke again. ‘I used to get the river deaths when I worked here before–a lot of them ended up in our mortuary. It’s a terrible way to die.’
She took his hand. This was the first time he’d talked about the darker side of his work. ‘I don’t remember reading about deaths in the river.’
He was still watching the water, his thoughts somewhere else. ‘There are so many they hardly bother reporting it now.’
She thought about the dark waters closing above her, the cold eating into her until it drove all feeling away, knowing that her existence would be snuffed out and forgotten and when her body was pulled out of the river–if it ever was–no one would care. The sky was grey and the wind off the water had a cutting edge.
She was still holding his hand. He tucked it in his pocket, and they continued along the riverside. She had walked here last May, past the concrete maze of the South Bank, enjoying the early summer sun, watching the crowds sitting at the tables in front of the National Film Theatre. They were deserted now. The wind blew and an empty can rattled its way across the paving stones. Behind her, a boat sounded its horn.
She could feel the touch of Joe’s fingers on her hand, the gentle pressure of his thumb as he circled it in her palm. Gulls were flying overhead, their calls echoing in the chill air. They didn’t speak again as they walked up the steps at the end of the bridge and paused to watch the water again. ‘What do you want to do now?’ she said.
He leaned back against the parapet and drew her towards him. ‘You’re cold.’
‘Everything’s cold.’
He opened his coat and wrapped it round her. ‘Not this,’ he said. She could feel the wind buffeting her ears and blowing her hair around his face as he kissed her. His lips felt icy as they touched hers, and just for a moment, she thought about the dead lips of drowned women under the water.
It was time for a decision. She could step back and draw the line that would define the path of their relationship, but she didn’t want to. She could feel the warmth of him pressing close to her, feel the slight roughness of his skin against her face. She had been standing in the shallows for too long, had been too frightened of stepping into the current, of getting her life back again. As Joe kissed her, she could feel the current start to lift her, start to carry her away. ‘Joe?’ she said.
He looked down at her. His face was warm and intent. ‘Let’s go back to your flat,’ he said.
As they wended their way back through Bloomsbury, she reminded herself that he was leaving, that by the autumn he would probably be gone, but it didn’t matter any more. What mattered was now.
It was a summer Roisin would never forget. In her memory, the sun always shone and the sky was cloudless. The forbidding river glittered as it flowed through the city, and the concrete of the South Bank warmed in the mellow light. She and Joe spent their lunch times wandering along the riverside, their evenings exploring the lanes and byways of London, and their nights at Roisin’s flat. She barely saw her friends, spent as little time at work as she could get away with. After a few days, he moved his possessions in, and stayed. It was as if they knew that their time together was short, and they didn’t want to lose a moment of it.
When she came home in the evenings, she’d pause for a moment with her key in the lock, wondering if he would be there, if the door would open to a waft of warmth and the smell of coffee brewing. ‘Joe?’ she’d call.
‘Hey, babes.’ He would come out of the small box room that masqueraded as a second bedroom, now converted into a makeshift office, and scoop her off the floor to kiss her. They would go out to eat, or take Shadow for a walk along the tow path, or spend the evening in the flat. They lived quietly in their own personal bubble that was completely absorbing, but so fragile and impermanent.
They never talked about the future, because very soon they would have to go their separate ways. She knew she had a decision to make, and kept putting it off. Each week, she looked at the jobs available all over the world for someone with her skills, and each week, she found a reason to reject every one.
Joe worked long, irregular hours and sometimes vanished for days if he was sent out of town. She got used to hearing his key in the lock in the small hours, feeling the mattress give as he slipped into the bed beside her.
It was after one such return towards the end of the summer when she woke suddenly. The display on the radio told her it was almost four. She could tell by Joe’s rigid stillness beside her that he was awake as well. ‘Joe?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’
He didn’t reply. He just rolled over towards her, and pressed his face between her breasts. She could feel him shaking. ‘Joe?’ she said again.
‘A bad dream,’ he said. ‘Go back to sleep, sweetheart. It was just a bad dream.’
London, September 2004
The water gleamed in the moonlight, black and impenetrable where it surged between the standing stones of Tower Bridge, translucent brown where it washed against the banks. The office and apartment blocks were dark and silent.
The river was old here, close to the end of its journey to the sea. Now it carried the filth and detritus of the city, away from the slow meander through the fields of Wiltshire, past the bridges of Oxford and the gentle lawns of Henley.
The tide had turned. The river was in ebb, receding from the banks, leaving a waste of mud and shingle behind. Narrow steps led down to the river’s edge where water washed against wooden piles. The moon was setting, and the first light of a grey dawn was gleaming through the clouds. The light caught the water, turning it to opaque steel, reflecting off the frameworks of glass that towered above the old city. The air carried the bite of frost.
The body of the woman had caught against the mooring and had been left on the bank as the water retreated. She was still wearing the remains of a black dress, sodden and skimpy. Her feet were bare. Her long hair lay in wet, dark lines across a face that the river had battered beyond recognition, the features almost gone.
She had been young. The men from the Marine Support Unit, the river police, could tell that much as they lifted the body, already pronounced dead by a doctor called from his bed in the small hours, short-tempered and abrupt. They had been expecting to find this body since the week before, when a witness had reported seeing a young woman jump from the riverside walk into the icy water.
Suicide, accident, foul play–bodies dragged from the Thames had different stories to tell. Some of them had families–grieving, frantic, knowing their loved ones had been lost. Others had no one, or no one who wanted to claim them. Drunks, the homeless, addicts, asylum seekers, the desperate with nowhere else to run. Some were old, some were, like this girl, young, and some were no more than children.
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