After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry Page A

me on the forehead like he always does when he’s sorry… and of course that was the year we took Alex away…’
    At this she fell silent, so that the sound of the beads clicking in her lap roused John, who looked up between outspread fingers to see her frowning over her shoulder, back towards the house. After a while she began singing under her breath: Oh, thunderbug fly away home, your house is on fire and your children will burn … The low hum went through her and into the hard earth, and became part of the heat and the dry rustle of wind in the dying branches of the elm. Soon after he must have fallen asleep, because when he was woken by Clare shaking him urgently by the shoulder it had begun to grow dark, and the empty garden was in shadow.
    The sound of a dog barking frantically reached them from the open windows of the house, and with it an unfamiliar voice raised in hysterical anger or pleading. John sat up too quickly, and felt the blood drain from his head. Specks of light floated in front of his eyes; shaking his head to be rid of them, he asked the girl, ‘What’s that, who’s come here? Who is it?’ His first thought was that he’d been finally found out, and his stomach lurched once and then receded, leaving him breathless and hollow.
    Clare twisted the fabric of her skirt. ‘I think it’s that woman again…’
    ‘What woman?’
    ‘She never told us her name… She comes sometimes, because –’ She stopped herself, pressing her hand to her mouth as if she’d suddenly remembered there were things she mustn’t say. Then she slid her hand into his and said, ‘You won’t let her come down here?’
    ‘Of course I won’t,’ he said, thinking of the name written in the notebook upstairs, and engraved into the table in the kitchen. Was this Eadwacer then, come to deliver another of those foolish letters?
    ‘Let’s stay here.’ Clare crouched beside him clasping her knees, and whispered: ‘She always goes away after a while, let’s just stay here where she won’t see us – where’s Alex? She mustn’t find him.’ Up on the embankment wall, John could see the young man pacing back and forth. The yellow light above the tower had come on, and shed a sickly glow on the grass. ‘It’s all right, he’s up there,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’
    ‘She’s horrible – she shouts and cries, and always brings her dog. And I don’t like looking at her face – it’s all soft, like she doesn’t have any bones. Alex knew her, you know, back when he went away. She’s always trying to find him.’ She started to cry, and John patted her helplessly on the shoulder.
    Then there was a lull in the noise from the house, and instead they heard Elijah’s deep and measured voice. The dog barked once more, in a single threatened yelp, and the cat bolted from the house with its ragged ears flattened against its scalp. Spying John and Clare huddled at the foot of the elm, it slowed to a saunter, and reaching them thrust its head into Clare’s palm and set up an ecstatic purr. The girl fussed over it for a while, and then said, ‘I can see her, look.’
    As it grew darker, the lamp-lit rooms of the house became more distinct, and they could make out a small group in the kitchen, stiffly ranged against each other. Hester and Elijah stood side by side, their backs to the window, making a barrier. Elijah spoke, the lights making an untidy halo of the reddish curls on his head, his hand raised in a defensive soothing gesture. In the centre of the room John saw a short woman with thick colourless hair and a pale soft face twisted with anger or misery. She wore a shapeless grey coat buttoned to the neck, and light reflecting from the thick lenses of her glasses gave her movements a blind menacing look. The sight of her fractured John’s false sense of belonging – it seemed to him that she’d come to spite him, and he felt a surge of loathing and disgust, as though he’d woken up to find a spider on his