Bleak Water

She huddled back into bed, her hard-won warmth gone. Someone was moving around on the other side of the wall. She could hear soft footsteps moving backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. The baby had cried almost every night since Cara had moved in.

The rain was heavier now, and she could hear the drips from the gutter hitting the fire escape. She drifted into the suspension of time that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Her thoughts were starting to fragment into dreams. Then she was awake again. She had a residual awareness of a sudden noise. She listened. Only the rain and the blowing wind. Sometimes it blew through the broken roofs and windows of the canal-side buildings, making a shrill, wailing cry. She could hear the sound of the baby on the other side of the wall. She glanced at the clock again. Two. She was wide awake now. Maybe she should get some cocoa or something.

She needed to sleep. She’d try the hot-milk treatment. She got up and went over to the fridge. There wasn’t much milk left, but there was enough. Just. She tipped the milk into a pan and lit the gas, yawning and shivering slightly with the cold. Maybe she should curl up in a chair in front of the fire, drink her milk and try and drift off to sleep there.

The milk was starting to froth. She poured it into a glass, and sprinkled some chocolate on the top. She wrapped a blanket round her shoulders and curled up in the chair. The rain drummed on the skylight above her head. The wind was rising and the window rattled. She heard the staircase creak, and for a moment she thought there was someone out there, but it was only the wind making the building groan and rattle.

The crying had changed to hiccuping sobs. Eliza shifted restlessly. There was nothing she could do. She sipped the milk and tried to shut the sound out. The milk was warm and soothing, and the chair felt soft and comfortable as she sank back into its cushions. Her eyes were heavy now and she let the empty glass drop to the floor. Soft and warm. A sob, and silence. A sob and silence. She was looking for the baby. The corridor was long and there were doors and the baby was behind one of them, then she was in the gallery and the painting on the wall was the graveyard, and she protested because she didn’t want that painting. ‘You must.’ It was Maggie’s voice, and she laughed. She reached out to the painting but as she touched it, it fell apart under her fingers, the paint flaking away, falling off the canvas and vanishing as her hands dug deeper and deeper into the darkness, through the black of the topsoil and the yellow of the clay and then it was the canal and she could see the figure reaching up and up from the depths of the water, from the painted grave.

And then it was morning, bleak and dreary. She woke in the chair feeling stiff and cold. The rain had stopped, and on the other side of the wall there was silence.

The empty buildings were a faint presence in the dawn now, their dilapidation becoming apparent as the sun rose higher. The converted warehouse looked incongruous, new. The water lay still, gleaming in the faint morning light. The canal was little used here.

A bridge crossed the canal further down the towpath. The canal ran under the road through a short arched tunnel. The bridge was a silhouette as the sky lightened, the water in the tunnel opaque and black. The sky was heavy with clouds, promising more rain. The sound of the early traffic disturbed the silence, and the smell of car fumes drifted through the air. The light crept across the water, across the mouth of the tunnel, reflecting up on to the brickwork. The colours began to appear, the dull green of the undergrowth on the towpath, the black of the sodden ground, the reds and yellows and blues of discarded crisp bags, softdrink cans, cigarette cartons. It illuminated the crumbling brickwork, the weeds growing in the pointing. The shadow of the tunnel lay sharp across the water which moved slightly as the wind disturbed it, slapping against the side of the canal.

The rain was starting again, making the light dull, making the surface of the water dance. And there was something in the water under the bridge. It was like a tangle of weed and cloth, half in and half out of the shadow, sinking into the oily water. As the water rippled, the bundle moved slightly, rocking gently in the eddies. Rise and fall back. Rise and fall back. And sometimes as it moved, a faint gleam of something almost blue white gleamed through the water in the thin morning light.

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