After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry Page A

wall.
    ‘Everyone knows, don’t they, how house martins make their nests in houses or barns – anywhere they find a place,’ he said. ‘But it was a long time before I knew what it meant, although now it seems so obvious – yes, yes: you thought of it straight away, didn’t you, I can tell! Somewhere there must be a hole or crack, just big enough for the bird to be making its nest, growing wider and longer every day while we all sit down there in the garden. But even then I didn’t see it. I was slow, always have been, but now I understand, now I know what’s coming. They say a storm’s on its way, and the water will rise and – oh,’ he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder and said, smiling, ‘I don’t need to tell you, do I, it’s so obvious – it’ll go into the crack and force it open, and then…’ He waved savagely towards the reservoir then swept his arm down towards the house, and I imagined that after it he brought a hundred thousand gallons of dirty water. ‘Hester, Elijah, Walker, Evie, Clare,’ he said, as if he were seeing them all going under.
    With every name he pressed my shoulder until it hurt, then suddenly he let go and took off his T-shirt. I remember turning away out of decency and confusion, then remembering that he also was a man and turning back. He was sunburned on his neck and forearms, and elsewhere his skin was pale as Eve’s – it looked in the dark as though he were dressed in white. When he turned away from me I saw, on his upper arm where a muscle dipped as he moved, a patch of darker skin the size of my palm, as though he were always accompanied by a small shadow. Then he dropped the shirt and looked out over the water. ‘It’s all right, I won’t be long,’ he said kindly, and I realised I must have looked apprehensive, and tried to pin up a smile. He said, ‘It takes me sixteen minutes – I know because I timed it. Four to swim there and four back, and a little while to see what’s happening.’
    He dropped the rest of his clothes in the dust, and I was so anxious to help, and so unsure what I should do, that I picked them up and began to fold them over my arm. His T-shirt had picked up burrs from the weeds growing thickly on the bank, and I tugged them free from the folds of cloth and tossed them into the water. He said, ‘I haven’t found it yet – the place where the dam’s breaking. But as the water-level gets lower and lower, I stand more chance of finding it, you see, and then’ – he nodded towards the valve tower – ‘then they’ll have to come, won’t they?’
    I’ve always thought people look diminished and vulnerable without their clothes, but Alex was so unselfconscious that he seemed to grow taller and broader as he stood there. He seemed to search my face for something – I don’t know what, or I’d have given it to him – then said again, ‘They will come, John, won’t they? When I tell them?’ Of course I didn’t know, though I doubted it – I was tired and hot, and the headache that had plagued me since I’d woken on the floor in my own room a hundred years ago was beginning to blind me again. I’d’ve said anything, I think, to avoid his gaze and go back to the iron bed upstairs, and draw the curtains against the sickly valve tower light. So I nodded and said, ‘I imagine they’d have to. If you had the proof.’ Then I immediately felt ashamed of myself and plucked another burr from the clothes I held – I knew I should reason with him, but I knew also that I was an imposter, and had no part in whatever they all chose to do. The young man’s face suddenly changed (it’s a trick they all have, I’ve noticed, of changing face like a tossed coin), and he gave me one of the frank childlike smiles that made me think he was saner than all of us.
    ‘Knew I could count on you,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Knew it! You see’ – he leant towards me and I could smell stale beer and meat on his breath – ‘I don’t know