“All right, all right!” I cry. “I still think I’m right. What do you say, Dinny?”
“I’m not sure. And I’m not sure I want to be a Calcott. They haven’t been very kind to the people I love, over the years,” he says, and his gaze is so direct that I have to look away.
“Well, drink up, cousin,” Patrick says. Conciliatory, but not convinced. The subject is changed, my parade rained upon.
“It was a good theory, though,” Beth says, chucking me with her elbow.
By midnight my ears are buzzing and when I turn my head the world blurs past, takes a while to settle back into the right order. I lean against Harry, who sits up straight and has drunk so much cola that he climbs over me to go to the toilet every twenty minutes or so. There is talk all around me and I am part of it, I am included. I am happy, drunk, blinkered. At midnight the barman turns the radio up loud and we listen to Big Ben, waiting with our breath paused in the gap before the first toll of the new year. The pub erupts and I think of London, of hearing those bells all the way from there, of my old life carrying on without me. I find I don’t want it back. Patrick and Beth and several others kiss me and then I turn to Dinny, proffer my cheek, and he plants a kiss there that I can still feel long after it’s gone, wonder if it will leave an indelible mark.
Not long afterwards Beth pulls my arm, says that she’s going. The crowd is thinning out, leaving the drunker people behind, of which I am one. I want to stay. I want to keep this party going, maintain the false impression that I belong with these people. Beth shakes her head and speaks into my ear.
“I’m tired. I think you should come too, so we can see each other safely back. You’ve had quite a bit to drink.”
“I’m fine!” I protest, too loudly, proving her point.
Beth gets up, smiles her goodbyes, starts to pull on her coat and hands me mine.
“We’re off,” she says, smiling in general but not meeting Dinny’s eye.
“Yep. Party’s pretty much over,” Patrick yawns. His bright eyes have turned pink.
“You can all come back to ours, if you want. Plenty of booze there,” I offer expansively. Beth shoots me a worried glance, but nobody takes me up-pleading lateness, drunkenness, impending headaches. I pull on my coat. I am clumsy, can’t find the arms. I knock the table as I climb out from behind it, rattling the glasses. As we turn to go Dinny catches Beth’s arm, pulls her down to him and speaks into her ear.
“Good night, cousin Erica!” he calls as I weave away.
“I’m right!” I insist, tumbling out of the pub.
“Erica! Wait for me!” Beth shouts into the wind as she emerges from the pub behind me. But I can’t seem to slow down. There’s a fire in my blood and it’s working my body, and I have no control. “Wait for me, will you!” She jogs to my side. “That was actually quite fun,” she says.
“Told you,” I say, loud above the buffeting air. I can’t quite name what I’m feeling. A huge impatience, the boundless frustration of knowing nothing for sure.
“What were you and Dinny whispering about back there?” I ask.
“He, uh…” She looks taken aback. “He just said to… see you safely to bed, that’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all! Erica, don’t start-you’re drunk.”
“I’m not that drunk! You two always did have your secrets and not much has changed. Why won’t either of you tell me what happened back then?”
“I… I’ve told you-I don’t want to talk about it and neither should you. Have you asked Dinny, then?” She sounds alarmed, almost frightened. I think back, muzzily, realize that I haven’t. Not outright.
“What did he really say just now?”
“I just told you what he said! My God, Erica… are you jealous? Still-after all this time?” I stop walking, turn to look at her in the last scatterings of light from the village. It never occurred to me that she knew. That they knew, that they noticed me clamoring for attention. Somehow, it’s worse that they did.
“I’m not jealous,” I mutter, wishing it were true. We walk on, stumble up the driveway in silence. As we get to the house I realize that I am uneasy. Some warning bell is trying to ring, beneath my drunken haze. It’s Beth’s silence, I think. The quality of it, its breadth and depth.
Beth opens the front door but I step back from the darkness inside. In the graphite glow of the moon, it looks like a grave mouth. Beth steps in, flicks on a blinding yellow light, and I turn away.
“Come on-you’re letting all the heat out,” she says at last.
I shake my head. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s half past one in the morning and it’s freezing. Come inside.”
“No. I’ll… stay in the gardens. I need to clear my head,” I tell her flatly, backing away. She is an outline in the doorway, faceless and black.
“I’ll wait for you to come in, then. Don’t be long.”
“Don’t wait. Go to bed. I won’t be long.”
“Erica!” she calls, as I turn away. “You’re… you’re not going to let it drop, are you? You’re not going to leave it alone.” Real fear in her voice now. It sounds as brittle as glass. I am frightened too, by this change in her, by her sudden vulnerability, the way she braces herself in the door frame as though she might fly apart. But I steel myself.
“No. I’m not,” I say, and I walk away from her.
I won’t let this evening end until I have something, until I have resolved something. Until I have remembered something. I stride across the choppy lawn, my legs running away with me, joints swinging, elastic. Under the trees, the dark is solid. I look up at the sky, put my hands in front of me to feel the way, continue. I know where I am going.
The dew pond is just more blackness at my feet. The stone-and-mud smell of the water rises to greet me. Above me the sky hangs motionless, and it seems unreal that the stars should not move, should not be swept away in the wind. Their stillness makes me dizzy. Here I sit in the dead of winter, in the dead of night, a woman with a head full of whisky trying to go back, trying to be a child full of fantasies under a hot summer sky. I stare at the water, I take myself there. My breathing slows and I notice the cold for the first time, the press of the ground through my jeans. I hug my knees into my chest. Have you pissed yourself, Erica? Henry laughing, Henry smiling that nasty smile of his. Henry bending down, looking around. What was he doing? What was he looking for? What was I doing? I went back into the water. I’m sure I did. It was a diversion-I was trying to break the tension. I turned and took a run up, and made as big a splash as I could, scrabbling under the surface because my knickers threatened to desert me. And when I came up… when I dashed the water from my eyes… had Henry found what he was looking for?
Before I know what I am doing, I am in. I have put myself there. I take a run up, I make as big a splash as I can; and then reality comes pouring all around me and my skin catches fire at the cold of the water. The pain is incredible. I have no idea which way is up, no idea where to go, what to do. I have no control over my body, which flails and contorts itself. The air has vanished from my lungs, they have collapsed, my ribs are crushed. I will die, I think. I am sinking like a stone. I will reach the bottom at last, just like I always strove to. The water has no surface, there is no sky any more. And I see Henry. My heart seems to stop. I see Henry. I see him, looking down at me from the bank, eyes wide and incredulous. I see him teetering, and I see blood running down into his eyes. So much blood. I see him start to fall. Then I am in the air again and it is a blessing-so warm, so full of life after the knife strike of the water. A gasp rushes air into my lungs; I cry out in pain.
I can see the bank. It tips and blurs in my view as my body threatens to sink again. I try to make my arms work, to kick my legs. Nothing will move as it is supposed to. My heart beats wildly now, too fast, too big in my chest. It’s trying to escape from me, from this leeching chill. I can’t get air to stay in my lungs. It whistles out as the water squeezes me. I am flayed alive; I am burning. One hand hits the bank and I can’t feel it on my skin, only the resistance of it. I claw at it, force my fingers into the mud, try to make my other hand reach it, try to pull myself out. I struggle. I am a rat in a barrel, a hedgehog in a pond. I am whimpering.