Then it comes, like a great grey curtain being dragged down from the hills, the fields smudged and darkened. A noise like wet gravel smashed against the glass. The guttering fills and bubbles and water gushes from the feet of downpipes. Drops fantail on the bench top and the stone steps and the polished roof of the Mercedes. Water pools and runs in the ruts of the drive, drips down the chimney and pings and fizzes on the hot metal of the stove; it squeezes through the old putty that holds the leaded windows fast to puddle on sills. The rain near-horizontal now, a living graph of the wind’s force. All external points of reference gone, no horizon, no fixed lines. The house is airborne, riding the storm, borne on something that is neither wholly air, nor wholly water, Kansas vanished long ago, borders crossed and broken, the ground a thousand fathoms below.
Benjy stands at the dining-room window, spellbound by the sheer thereness of it, the world outside his head for once louder and more insistent than the world inside. Drops scuttle down the gridded panes, marbling the world, everything green and silver, the clatter against the glass now softer, now louder, as the great bead curtain of falling liquid swings back and forth.
Noah’s Ark. And God said I will destroy the world because human beings are sinful. The animals went in two by two, marmosets and black widow spiders, Japhet and Daphet and Baphet. And everyone else was killed, like in the tsunami, cars and walls and trees pouring down the street, people ripped apart in a great wet grinding machine. And when the dove flew over the land there would have been bodies everywhere all bloated and black like in New Orleans. A sudden shadow and the smack of something thrown against the glass only inches from his face. He turns and runs, crying, Mum…Mum…Mum…
♦
Dominic stands in the hallway, water creeping in under the front door, a sound like the chaos between radio stations. He should go and talk to Daisy, tell her it’s all right, tell her they love her, that they will always love her. Why is he so scared of doing this? He has never thought about her as a sexual person. The idea disturbs him in a way he can’t quite identify. All those little waystations. Daisy, Alex, Benjy, the first time they read to themselves, the first time they walked to school on their own. He remembers holding Daisy as a baby, those tiny perfect fingers gripping his thumb, the eczema, the blonde quiff. He imagines someone else holding her now, the two of them naked, and the clash of these two kinds of tenderness is like chariot wheels touching. Out of nowhere he thinks of Andrew, lying in a hospital bed, Amy sitting beside him, head bowed, holding his hand. He feels ashamed for having ignored the message. He has never really solved a problem in his life, he has simply averted his eyes and left other people to do the dirty work. The creak of wood. He turns and sees Daisy coming down the stairs. How are you feeling?
A bit better. She pauses, hand on the little metal dog of the newel post. I’m just going to get something to eat.
He wonders briefly if she is waiting to tell him about the encounter with Melissa but she doesn’t and what he feels mostly is relief, that she seems happier, that he has over-reacted, perhaps, that Melissa was lying, that there is nothing for him to do.
♦
A growing conviction that something was wrong, the hackles of the animal curled in the brainstem. Richard came to a halt so he could listen and watch more carefully. A sudden coldness, something about the quality of the light, a sense that other people were no longer simply absent but a very long way away. It was behind him, wasn’t it? He spun round and saw horizontal rain coming out of a vast wall of lead-grey cloud. A sudden fear, then the rain hit him, a hard cold sideways shower, funny almost, once it had happened, thinking about the story he would be telling later on, about how he had been forced to hop through driving rain in the middle of nowhere wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Ten minutes later and it was less funny because neither the wind nor the rain were slacking off, he was freezing, the pain in his ankle was, if anything, getting worse and it was going to be some considerable time before he got off the ridge. Childish scenarios began to play on repeat in his head: being rescued by the red helicopter they had seen two days ago, losing consciousness and lying down and night falling. He realised that he had not told anyone where he was intending to run.
♦
Louisa makes a jug of coffee and puts it on the dining-room table, sugar, milk jug, a wonky tower of cups. Richard was meant to be back forty minutes ago and the storm is still raging outside. An air of mild emergency hangs over the house and however much people drift away there is a centre of gravity in the room which draws them back.
He’ll turn up in five minutes, says Melissa, showing off about how manly he is.
I hope he fucking dies, thinks Alex. He wonders whether Richard told Louisa about the bollocking. Maybe he has bollocked her in the same way. Alex tries to catch her eye but she is too distracted by Richard’s absence to notice anyone else.
Angela says, Those paths will be a nightmare in this weather. She means to be reassuring, explaining how he will have to take his time, but it comes out wrong. Louisa’s nervousness is starting to infect her. Too many people lost, the membrane between here and the other place thinned almost to nothing by this unnatural weather, waiting for the foolish and the insufficiently loved to stumble through.
This is totally a record. Benjy has built a domino tower of nine storeys.
Alex wants to be asked to go and look for Richard, but he is not going to offer until he is asked. He wants it publicly acknowledged that he is the expert when it comes to running and walking in these hills. He wants it publicly acknowledged that Richard was pretending to be twenty years old and that he has made a fucking tit of himself in the process.
Daisy comes into the room and Melissa says, languorously, Morning, Daisy, but it is only Daisy who notices the barb.
Hello, love, says Angela. How are you doing this morning?
She is hoping Mum will offer to get her some breakfast so they can go into the kitchen and talk, but Angela seems distracted and there is no way that she is going to ask while Melissa is watching, so she heads to the kitchen where she puts the kettle on then leans on the draining board with her head in her hands.
And, Oh! says Benjy, and, Oh! says everyone else, as if they’re watching a firework display but it’s Benjy’s tower which collapsed next door, sending dominoes clattering all over the table and on to the stone floor.
An hour, says Louisa. A part of her wonders if he has done this to spite her.
Benjy is rebuilding his tower, placing the dominoes horizontally this time for greater stability.
He’s Richard, says Angela. He’ll be fine.
But Richard isn’t always fine, he screws up, she knows this now.
You don’t die by getting caught out in the rain, says Dominic.
That’s not strictly true, says Alex. People do die of exposure in the Brecon Beacons. The room ices over.