Jess
Saturday, ten in the morning, and there's a police inspector at a trestle table under the pulpit, between the tea urn and a box of donated socks.
The turn's at ten to midnight. That's fourteen hours. It's the thirteenth night, and the last bottle's under the sea bank.
The church still smells of a hundred and sixty people who slept in it. Half of them are in the pews with mugs, watching me. I'm the woman who carried the cat out last night, sneezing on them. The parrot's still on the war-graves table. It says "Oh dear" as I go past.
The inspector's about fifty, with a wet coat on the back of his chair and a laptop he isn't using. He's got a sign on the table, a sheet of paper folded in half: Police. Missing Persons, Property, Concerns. I'm a concern.
I put Mo's bottle on the table in a freezer bag. I put the crime number down next to it on the back of a receipt.
"Right," he says. "Talk me through it."
I talk him through it. Agatha's cat ate a sardine in oil off her wall on the Sunday night and slept so hard she fell over him. The drops in that bottle are Mo's, and they go down faster than she takes them, and only her lodger uses her bathroom. The vicar saw her lodger's torch on the drove that night. Her lodger opened the sluice on me at half one in the morning with me asleep in my car.
"And the lodger is."
"Ned. From the board."
He writes it down. He's got very neat writing. Then he looks up.
"Ned Rowse," he says. "The pump-keeper."
"Yes."
"Ned Rowse who was on the bonnet of your taxi on Monday night calling the depths." He doesn't look at his notes. "Who went into the chemist's for Mrs Tebbutt. Who went into a flooded car on Wednesday night and broke the window with his arm and pulled you out of it. I've got that one from three people. I've got it from you." He puts the pen down. "Miss Crowle, that man has pulled half the high street out of the water."
"I know."
"And you're telling me he did it all so an old lady would trip over her cat."
"Yes."
"Did you see him take the book?"
"No."
"Has anybody got the book?"
"He has."
"Did he say so?"
"Near enough."
"Did he say any of it?"
I think about Mo's kitchen. Hello, Azzariel. I'm sorry about your bottle, Mo. Tell them the cat said.
"He said if she'd stepped over the cat, he'd have waited for the next one. And he said he'd see me on the bank."
The inspector looks at me for a while. He looks at my face. It's going down, but it's still a lot of face.
"Dashcam?" he says. "You've got one, haven't you. Mr Thew mentioned it."
"It drowned with the car. The last thing on the card is my own knees and the water coming in. It never saw the sluice."
"Right." He turns the freezer bag over with one finger. "A pensioner's sleeping drops. A fish nobody kept. A crime number for a book. And a cat."
I don't say anything. That's the list.
He picks up his phone and rings the drainage board. I listen to his half. He asks for the duty officer. He says it's about tonight's tide at Thornbury, and the pumps. He listens. He says, "Has he." He says, "Right. All in hand." He says, "Thanks," and puts the phone down.
"Tide warnings for tonight all go to the keeper's phone," he says. "They always have. The duty officer rang him back an hour ago. He says it's all in hand." He puts his pen in his pocket. "I'll make a note, Miss Crowle. I'll be honest with you. It's a note."
The church door goes behind me.
I don't have to turn round. Half the pews do it for me. There's a noise from them like a car park when the barrier goes up.
Ned comes up the nave in his waders, with his head torch pushed up on his forehead and his hi-vis open. He's got a clipboard. He stops at the font, where it's still standing by the chancel since he wheeled it there last night, and he puts one hand on it.
"Morning," he says. "Sorry. I'll be quick. I know you've all had a night." His voice goes up into the roof, easy, like he's done it before. "Tonight's the big one. Biggest spring tide for forty years, near enough. Top of it's ten to midnight. Now, round about dusk, when the tide gets up past the outfall, the flap on the end of it shuts itself against the sea, that's what it's for, and when the flap's shut there's nowhere for Maud to pump to. So I stop her. That's called tide-lock. It's standard. Every big tide, every keeper, since they built her. So when it all goes quiet tonight, don't panic. That's me. That's the system working."
People nod. The bowls captain nods. A woman from Eel Row says, "Thank you, Ned," like he's brought her a parcel.
"And one more thing." He looks at me. He doesn't look away. "Jess has signed an option with Gavin Thew. Ten thousand pounds. It's not a secret, she'll tell you herself. It means when the time comes the drove goes to lodges, and the cottage is the road in. I'm not saying it to be nasty. I'm saying it because she's going to tell you things about me this morning, and you ought to know who's telling you."
Nobody says anything. I can hear the urn.
"And nobody touches that cat," says Ned. "I mean it. Nobody puts anything in a sack in this church again. He's done nothing. Leave him be."
Somebody claps. It's one person, at the back, and then it's six.
He nods to the inspector, who nods back. He goes out through the vestry door.
I stand there. I've got the freezer bag in my hand. I count the people in the nearest pew. Eight. None of them look at me.
Then the west door goes again, and it's Gavin.
He's in the gilet. He's got his folder. He's come up the lane through the water in a pair of new waders with the label still on the back, and he's smiling, and then he sees me and he stops smiling and comes up the aisle anyway.
"Jess," he says. "Good. I was going to drop it at the cottage. This is better, actually, at the end of the day, it's all above board." He holds out an envelope. "Notice of exercise. Under the option. It's a formality. It means I'm buying, completion when probate comes through, and nothing changes till then, nothing at all. Nobody's being turfed out of anything." He says that last bit louder, to the pews. "I'm not the bad guy here."
I take it. I don't open it.
"Lovely," says Gavin. "Lovely. I'll be in my bag if anybody wants me."
Outside, somebody has spat on Mo's car.
It's on the grass by the lychgate where I left it, and Mo's in the passenger seat with her coat buttoned over her nightie, and there's spit on the windscreen in three places and on the driver's door. I count it. Four. A man in a Barbour is walking away down the lane.
"Brian Pettit!" shouts Mo, through the inch of window. "I know your mother, Brian Pettit!"
I get in. The cat's on the dashboard with his feet together. He's been there since I left him. He looks at the envelope in my hand.
"Well?" he says.
"He's stopping the pumps at dusk. He told the whole church."
"And the town?"
"Clapped him."
"And the police?"
"It's a note."
He looks out of the windscreen at the church, at the people coming out of it with their mugs, looking at Mo's car and not coming any nearer.
"He'll want them to see it," says the cat.
I look at the envelope. Notice of exercise. I look at the freezer bag. I look at the clock on Mo's dashboard, which is eleven minutes fast, she says, so she's never late for the bus. It's ten to twelve, really. Twelve hours.
"Agatha'd have knocked us all up an hour since," I say. "With her stick."
Mo turns round in her seat. "That's what I said. That's what I said the first night."
"I know. I heard you."
"She did it in fifty-three," says the cat. "Two in the morning. Every door on the drove. She said two words."
"What two words?"
"Up," says the cat. "And water."
I start the car. It coughs twice and catches.
"Where to?" says Mo. That's mine.
"Every door," I say.
He gives me the list off the dashboard with his eyes shut, as if he's reading it off the inside of his head. Eel Row, the odd side, one to fifteen, the evens are under. The almshouses behind the memorial, four doors. The flat over the chip shop. The bowls club. The vicarage. The lock. The bungalows at the top of the drove. I don't write it down. I drive it.
Eel Row's water to the doorsteps on the odd side and to the window sills on the even. I park on the dry end and walk it. I knock on number one. A woman opens it with a mop.
"Up," I say. "Water. Tonight. Go up the church."
"We've just come down from the church."
"Go back up."
"Who d'you think you are?"
I don't know. I go to number three.
At number seven a man shouts down from an upstairs window with a towel round his neck and the steam coming out past him. "I'm in the bath!"
"Get out of it. Up the church. Tonight."
"I've only just got in it! It's the first hot water we've had since Monday!"
"Then get out of it hot," I say, and go to number nine.
Mo's got her hand flat on the horn. She's leaning over from the passenger seat to do it, and the horn on a Micra sounds like a goose with a cold, and she does it at every door I get to, three goes, so they know. Somebody shouts at her to pack it in. She shouts back about his mother.
At number eleven the woman shuts the door in my face. At number thirteen they spit, on the step, by my trainer. I count that too. Five.
The bell starts at the almshouses.
It's coming from the church on the rise, behind us, and it's wrong. It's one bell, going, too fast and then too slow, and then twice together like somebody's let go of the rope and grabbed it again. It doesn't stop. I stand at the first almshouse door with my hand up and listen to it go. Bong. Bong bong. A long gap. Bong.
"That is the vicar," says the cat, from the car. "I believe it is the rhythm of his Latin."
The almshouse door opens. It's the two old men from the first night, holding hands, each holding a budgerigar in a cage.
"Is it the water again, love?" says one.
"Up," I say. "Water. Go up the church. Tonight. Take the birds."
"We'll get our coats," says the other. They get their coats. They come out holding hands with the cages, and they stop at Mo's car, and the first one bends to my window.
"What do we owe you, love?"
"Nothing," I say. "Go on. Up."
Something turns in my chest, low, under the ribs. A quarter-turn. I stand by the almshouse wall with my hand on the brick. On the dashboard the cat's sat up with his ears forward and his eyes wide, absolutely still, looking at me through the glass.
That's three.
I don't say anything. He doesn't. I go to the next door.
The flat over the chip shop's got nobody in. The bowls club's got a meeting on, in the bar, twelve men in blazers with their trousers rolled to the knee round a table, taking minutes about the flood. The captain looks at me over his glasses.
"We're in session," he says.
"Up," I say. "Water. Tonight."
"Proposed," he says, "that we go up the church." Somebody seconds it. They vote. It's carried.
At the vicarage there's nobody, because the vicar's in the tower with the rope. Gavin's surveyors are on the corner of Low Drove in their white van, measuring the bend with the yellow box on its legs, in water to their shins.
"Saturday rate," says the tall one, through his window.
"Up," I say. "Water."
"It's in the notes," he says, and writes it down.
It takes all afternoon. Every door wants an argument before it wants a coat.
The lock's out on the edge of the fen, down the towpath, and it's getting dark by then. The boat with the geraniums is low in the water with smoke coming out of the chimney. I knock on the hatch, twice, with my knuckle.
It slides back about four inches. Doctor Pedley looks out of the gap, in her reading glasses.
"Up," I say. "Water. Tonight. Up the church."
"No," says Doctor Pedley.
The hatch shuts.
I stand on the towpath. The bell's still going, back over the town, slower now, like he's tired. Bong. Bong. I count the time. It's ten past six. Five hours and forty minutes.
The last door's the bungalows at the top of the drove. There's six. The light's going out of the sky over the fen and coming up orange from the town behind us, and I knock on all six, and five of them say something to me I won't repeat, and get their coats.
At the sixth, a little girl opens it, in pyjamas, with a gap in her teeth.
"Is it Pudding?" she says, and looks past me at the car.
"Up," I say. "Water. Get your mum."
Her mum's already behind her with a bag. She looks at me. She doesn't say anything. She takes the girl's hand and goes past me down the path toward the high street and the bell and the church, and the girl looks back at the car the whole way.
I stand on the step.
And the hum stops.
I've heard it every night for thirteen nights, under everything, and I've never once listened to it. Now it's gone, and the quiet's so big it's got a sound of its own. The reeds tick. The dyke at the side of the drove makes a small wet noise.
That's him. That's the system working.
The cat's out of the car. He's on the bank of the dyke with his nose down to the water and his tail straight up, not moving. Then he comes back across the drove to me, fast, low, and up onto the bonnet, and he's got his ears flat.
"Salt," he says.
"What?"
"Salt. In the dyke. Coming up from the drain. It is coming the wrong way, madam, it is coming in." He looks at me with his two coins. "If the flap is shut against the sea, why does the dyke taste of the sea?"
I look at the dyke. It's moving. It wasn't moving a minute ago. It's going the wrong way, slow, back up the drove, toward the town, black, with a skin on it. At the end of the street the first drain in the road coughs, and a little brown fountain comes up out of the grating, and falls back.
Mo's got out of the car. She's standing in the road in her coat and her nightie with her hand on her chest.
Down the drove, past the cottage, past the end of it, a mile off over the fields, where the sea bank is a long black line under a lighter one, a light comes on. A lamp. One. On top of the bank, at the low place, where the drove path meets it.
Five hours and twenty minutes.