We have never really spoken about the day he taught me to climb that tree. I have always wanted to thank him. I have always wanted to tell him that day mattered to me.
fifteen
The rain became quite unbelievable. A continuous sheet of water poured down incessantly from the dark, grey clouds above. It was as if the dredgers had planned it, to help clean up anything that they had left behind. But I didn’t want things to be washed away. I wanted things to remain the same. No, I wanted things to begin anew, as if it was my first day on the canal again, my first venture towards it. She could never have realised that this was how I actually felt at that precise moment — and if she did, I know now that she wouldn’t have given it much thought. I often wonder, if she had the chance, if she would have thought about it enough to have done something about our pointless situation? Maybe she would have turned herself in to the police? Or told me that everything was a complete figment of her own imagination?
I peered from under the bridge. The heavy, cold, droplets of rain hit my cheeks, soaking my face and neck. Most of the windows in the whitewashed office block had steamed up, but the windows that protected the private offices of the office elite — i.e., middle management and above — remained clear and intact from condensation. She was staring into the murky water, watching the rain bounce back up from it. Pretty soon droplets of rusty, dirty water began to fall from the underside of the bridge to pool at my feet. I noticed that the towpath had been stained by it, where each droplet connected back to the ground. Every time the clouds above burst, the brown stain — achieved over years’ worth of downpours — came to resemble the rings of a newly cut tree trunk.
I was sitting on the cold, linoleum floor, looking up towards the hole where the water was pouring in. I was mesmerised by it. I realised that things weren’t as they seemed, that things could happen and change. I realised that things could suddenly begin that you never thought imaginable. I could be imparting wisdom from the present onto the past, as this is how I see things now, I’m not sure; I do know that it seemed absurd to me that instead of fixing the hole my mother and father placed a large cooking pot directly underneath the leak, collecting the water and then pouring it away, down the sink, when the pot was nearly full. They seemed content with this repetitive activity, as if the hole didn’t matter to them (even though it must have mattered to them, as the leak was eventually fixed). They didn’t seem too fussed. In fact, they found the whole scenario quite amusing, my father especially, laughing as my mother rushed into the kitchen every now and again, breaking from her crossword puzzle, to empty the near-full cooking pot. I was sitting by the pot, watching the long stream of water pour through the hole and down, in one constant stream, into it. I loved the sound it made, the perpetual trickle that, at that time to me, seemed infinite. That sound still penetrates my memory.
The leak fascinated me because I couldn’t fathom where it was coming from. I knew it came through the hole, but beyond that I was empty of ideas and understanding, although I knew it had to come from somewhere. I couldn’t understand why all that water would appear from a little hole in the ceiling of my parents’ kitchen. A hole, a crack, a fissure in the ceiling, it seemed to me as if I was witnessing some form of magic: that something was pulling all that water down from the sky above, down through our ceiling, towards me, so I could delight in the sound it made. And then I realised there was no room above the kitchen, the kitchen was an extension attached onto the house after it had been originally built. There must have been a hole in the roof, and the water was being pulled down from the clouds above. It was rainwater being pulled back down to earth, through our roof, into our small kitchen. This revelation thrilled me.
Where did all that water go to? When my mother poured it down the sink, down all those pipes, down again through the subterranean sewage and water networks beneath our feet. I understood enough to realise that it didn’t disappear. I wanted to know exactly where it was going, where it would end up next, the water from my ceiling. Surely it all had to end up somewhere? Surely it still can’t be continuing its journey away from me? Surely it must have come to some sort of stop? Settled, in some form or other, somewhere? But why should these thoughts, these little, annoying thoughts matter to me? Surely I should let them wash over me? I truly feel they are of no use to me now. No use at all. Yet, they persist, pouring into me.
She was squinting. It looked like she was trying to focus on something that wasn’t there, something invisible down by her feet. She began to kick her shoes into some loose gravel.
“We could have seen all this coming, you know …”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s all so obvious, isn’t it?”
“Is it? What is?”
“This is …”
She looked up. She began a long, drawn out yawn, scratching her left cheek at the same time. When she had finished the yawn, which seemed to last far longer than necessary, she looked at me, through me, nowhere in particular, before she continued.
“It’s all over.”
“What is?”
“This is …”
“What do you mean by this?”
She shrugged her shoulders, child-like and unconcerned, but I knew she shrugged not out of ignorance, but out of some desire for me to understand. It was better for her not to say anything, or not too much, in the hope that she could continue. Eventually, after taking some time to bite her nails, she began to talk, this time with a little bit more clarity.