After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry Page B

if they really believe me.’ He nodded ruefully towards the house. ‘They think I’m being a bit, you know.’ He tapped his forehead, and we both laughed.
    As I remember it now I think how mad we both must have looked: Alex naked and at ease, idly batting away a fly drawn to his sweat, and me a little distance away fussing over an armful of clothes. I did what was easiest – I laughed with him, and tapped my own forehead too, and said, ‘No-one could think that, not really. Not if you told them everything you’ve told me.’ I let him think nothing could be more logical than for him to pick his way on bare feet across the rubble beach towards the black water.
    The moon and the yellow light from the tower gave enough brightness for me to see him dwindle until the dark water reached his waist, then he struck out for the dam wall. He called out to me once, then after that it was so quiet I could hear the swift splashes of his arms cutting through the water. A moment later and there was nothing, although I think I heard him call again from somewhere away to my right.
    I don’t know how long I waited. Perhaps he really had timed how long the task took, but it seemed to me that the moon moved across the sky and back while I walked up and down at the foot of the slope. Once or twice the yellow light flickered violently and I thought the bulb would blow – that I’d be left alone in the dark, and he’d have nothing to guide him out of the water – but it always came back and sent my shadow across the lawn towards the house. By the time he climbed silently out of the water I was tired and distracted, and when I felt his wet hand on my shoulder I thought for a moment the drowned men Clare was afraid of had found me out.
    He said, ‘Nothing tonight, I’m afraid – nothing to see.’ He patted my back, as if he thought I’d disappointed too. ‘It’s all right, we can check tomorrow, can’t we, now we both know what we’ve got on our hands? Makes a difference to me, I can tell you, knowing you believe me – I’ll sleep better tonight.’ He grinned, took his clothes from me and quickly dressed. ‘You look awful,’ he said, ‘Let’s get you home.’ And because it was so ridiculous, finding myself being kindly led indoors by a half-naked boy, still wet from swimming at night to find a place underwater where birds might nest, I began to laugh and, as though it were contagious, he did too. By the time we reached the house we were both laughing, until we gasped for breath and clutched at each other’s arms as we walked.
    At the foot of the stairs he said, ‘I’ll leave you now – I won’t sleep for a long while,’ and turned towards the kitchen. His feet left black prints on the flagstones. Then he turned back and said, shyly and as though he were afraid he might have transgressed, ‘Sometimes I forget where I’ve been and what I’ve done, so you see I don’t like to be alone… Tonight while I was in the water I thought, I can feel it on my back, and I can hear it splashing, and John is there waiting, and if he is there, so must I be too…’ Then he plunged forward, with the same motion as when he had struck out into the water, and squeezed my shoulder so hard that I have the marks of his hand on me now. Then Hester called him from the kitchen and I came upstairs alone.

 
    IV
    Hester watched their return across the lawn. The yellow light from the reservoir gave each man a kind of aura, and it was impossible to tell from that distance who was supporting whom, only that every few steps one would stagger a little with laughter or weariness and be tugged to his feet again. She drew the curtains, not wanting to be seen, and sat at the dining table rolling the glass eye back and forth across the wood. She felt rather sorry for it, with the white clouded and bloodshot, and the hazel-streaked iris turning uselessly this way and that. The house closed about her like a clam shell; it was the hour she liked best,