Submersion Page 5

  Elinor pressed a further button on the control and the music changed, and then changed again. I didn’t recognise the music, although I had heard similar on our small radio in the kitchen, on the days when limited music was transmitted. It was a composition of guitars, drums and a male voice, but not one I found pleasant. Elinor grinned and pressed the control again and the pace of the next piece was very different: strings, no drums or vocals. Classical, I thought to myself, recognising the style from a radio program Grandad Ronan listened to on occasion, late at night.

  ‘What’s the other cabinet?’ I asked, as Elinor switched the music again: this last arrangement was a violent mess of guitars crashing into each other.

  Elinor shrugged. ‘Dunno. It’s locked, no key. I’ve never asked. Come on, follow me.’ With that, Elinor led me out of the room and up a further floor. But the second locked cabinet stayed with me and, on one of my first visits without Elinor, I asked Old Man Merlin about it. To my surprise and delight, he fetched the key and revealed the wonder concealed within.

  The fourth level was less exciting that the previous three. Comprised of two rooms, one locked, the second occupied by a series of desks with fat, bold computer terminals perched upon them. I pressed a button on one of them that looked as if it would start the machine up, but the screen remained blank. I tried another, with the same result.

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Elinor explained, beckoning me with a finger, luring me away from this technical graveyard to the apex of the house.

  The fifth was simply an open plan attic room. Scanning the room, I was instantly aware that we shouldn’t have come this far. This final room was Old Merlin’s personal quarters. In truth, the whole house was his personal quarters, but the other floors had the cross-purpose feel of a museum and a workshop - a laboratory examining things from a distant past. The final storey was quite the opposite. Whilst only a single room, it was clearly divided into sub-rooms, just without dividing walls. One area was home to a bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers, indicating his sleeping arrangements. Two armchairs, a small coffee table and a rusting, grey fan heater created a cosy lounge area. In one corner, a dividing curtain was loosely hung up; a peak behind that revealed a bath, sink and lavatory, in white porcelain. A tiny stove, a kettle and a cardboard box of jars and tins was the only sign of a kitchen, so I assumed there were proper facilities below, at the very back of the house.

  ‘I don’t think we should be in here,’ I informed Elinor, who grinned, enjoying the discomforting effect my assumed intrusion was having upon me. ‘This seems too private.’

  ‘Okay,’ she nodded, and we descended the spiral staircase again, right down to the first floor, where she took another board game from the shelf – Guess Who? – and we played out the rest of our time there, working our way along the shelves.

  I went to Old Man Merlin’s many times with Elinor. On one other occasion he did the trick with the televisions screens again, but on the others he was busy at the back of his house, not wanting to be disturbed. So, we would venture up the steel staircase and play with the ancient delights concealed in his upper chambers. But it wasn’t until Elinor’s death that the place became my own; it wasn’t until she died that my true adventure with Old Man Merlin and his towering house began.

  The incident with the dead rat happened three days after my Cousin Elinor’s accident. We’d been staying at Aunt Agnes’ since it happened.

  On the day she drowned, Mother met me with the boat outside school and rowed us straight to her sister’s house. She said we needed to be there, for my aunt, but when we arrived it was clear to me that Aunt Agnes’ didn’t want us there at all. It wasn’t just us, either. My great-aunt and -uncle, Jimmy and Penny, soon arrived, as did Grandad Ronan, although Great-Aunt Penny would quietly correct me whenever I called him that. He’s not really your grandad, she would say, but not loud enough that anyone else could hear. I didn’t really like Great-Aunt Penny; I know I shouldn’t say that, but she wasn’t my idea of what a great-aunt should be like. I wanted a soft-faced, loving, cuddly old lady. Like our grandma, Jill, had been. I only vaguely remembered her, before she died. What I did remember – I was at pains to tell Great-Aunt Penny – was that Grandma Jill had been married to Grandad Ronan. Not married, my great-aunt insisted, her pursed lips and hissed words indicating she was annoyed at my questioning. Not married at all. Still, it didn’t bother me and I took my lead from Elinor and my Aunt Agnes: Elinor called him Grandad Ronan and that was enough to allow me to call him it too; likewise, I’d heard Aunt Agnes call him Dad on one or more private occasion, although in company he was always Ronan.

  On that day, it was clear that Aunt Agnes was after the company of only one person: Tristan. Every time she thought she heard a noise or a door, her head would turn suddenly, looking at the nearest entrance, anticipating his appearance.

  ‘He’ll be here as soon as he gets the message,’ Grandad Ronan would reassure her, something that annoyed Great-Aunt Penny, I could tell.

  By the time he finally arrived, I had been shooed out the way. I was getting-under-people’s-feet according to Mother and needed to occupy-myself-with-something-other-than-whining, although I was sure I hadn’t moaned a word.

  ‘Go play in Elinor’s room,’ my aunt had suggested, with a soft, flat smile. ‘She won’t mind,’ she added, and I left with a sense of reassurance: my aunt’s words suggested both Elinor’s approval and her eventual return.

  They suggested hope.

  But Elinor didn’t return and still hasn’t.

  My cousin’s room became mine for three nights. Like mine at home, it was a simple room. A single, narrow bed, with a top and bottom sheet, a single pillow and a couple of blankets to tuck you in and keep out the cold. She had a wardrobe and a small chest of drawers too, but I didn’t venture inside either. They were just for her clothes. The room also housed a small desk, with an upright chair in front of it and, for a while, I lifted its lid and looked over her things. Like me, she didn’t have a lot – a couple of books, well read, the pages yellowed; a journal, in which she appeared to be capturing the scary stories that Tristan told her; two bags of marbles and a small set of draughts. I took out the latter two and played with both for a while, but it wasn’t much fun, not on my own.

  There was one thing that Elinor owned that was a little unique, something Uncle Jessie had got her from God knows where – Great-Aunt Penny’s words, expelled with disapproval and a sniff. It was a small recording machine, with a microphone on a lead that she used to interview people about their lives. She had a couple of oblong cassettes that she inserted into the mechanism, on which she recorded what family and friends were saying. It looked like a lot of fun, although not everyone joined in with this spirit when she waved her microphone in their faces – you can guess who they might be. I thought I’d find this amongst her things that evening, thought I’d play back some of her recordings, listen to her familiar voice as it asked its questions, but I couldn’t find it.

  There was really only one interesting thing that happened that evening - when Grandad Ronan brought Tristan upstairs to tell him about Elinor. I stopped playing and listened to their conversation. Tristan was being blamed, it seemed, him and Uncle Jessie, who everyone knew was Elinor’s father, although that was another thing you weren’t allowed to say. But I didn’t understand how it could be their fault, when Elinor had drowned.

  ‘They built the platform, the one that gave way,’ Grandad Ronan explained to me the following day. ‘That’s what the police are saying. An accident, you understand.’

  ‘And is that what happened?’

  ‘Tristan’s not to blame, you understand, nor Jessie.’

  ‘But is that what happened?’ I asked again.

  ‘It looks that way,’ he confirmed, but there was a doubt, I could tell. Doubt that would surface again and again, from different minds and mouths, as the months since Elinor died or disappeared (depending on what you accepted) lengthened.

  With litt
le to do at my aunt’s house and wanting to be out from under the twin glares of disapproval that beamed from my mother and great-aunt, I borrowed a boat and rowed down to Old Man Merlin’s house the first morning after Elinor had gone.

  If Old Man Merlin knew about Elinor that first day I went by myself, then he didn’t show it. As with many of our visits, he was preoccupied with his machines, his white goods, as my cousin had continued to refer to them with an ironic smirk. A rusty, dirty, crumbling white.

  Upon my arrival, I knocked and he let me in, but didn’t acknowledge that I had come alone.

  ‘You know where the stuff is,’ he muttered, half-smiling, as I pulled off my protective mask. Then he padded his way back to the rear of his house, back to whatever he was working on. ‘Just don’t disturb me young man,’ he instructed, his tone friendly, but his intention firm.

  So, up the winding steel staircase I went, stepping off at just the first level. Popping my head into the games room, I thought instantly of my cousin: delving into the dressing up chest, pulling something ridiculous over her clothes, then reaching up for Kerplunk! or Buckaroo! Despite the image of her having fun, I felt saddened.

  Not wishing to hang out with melancholy, I drew away from the doorway and chose a different room, one I didn’t associate as keenly with our visits here.

  The library wasn’t a big room. Housing just two chairs – albeit large, plush leather chairs that swallowed you up like two fat lips of dough when you sat in them – it was the smallest room off that first landing, but the old man had made good use of the space. Every wall was heaving with books, the casings reaching up to the ceiling, with the last few inches between the top shelves and the plasterboard crammed with thin horizontal volumes.

  Previously, I had only spent a limited amount of time in there. Elinor wasn’t keen to linger. Much as she liked the tales that Tristan weaved for her – the journal I had found in her desk, documenting his every word, was proof of that – she wasn’t a very avid reader and none of the tomes in Merlin’s lair tempted her. They’re all a bit academic, she had criticised, dragging me away whenever I loitered too long in the doorway. But my cousin was wrong. Yes, there were lots of educational volumes – maths books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, endless spiral bound journals that covered all the sciences – but if you looked closely enough there were stories too. Many of these still did not appeal – books about murder and politics that held no mystery for my mind – but there were some with fantastic titles that drew me in. Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea – both by the same author. Given that Elinor hadn’t cared much for spending time in the library, I had previously sneaked the aforementioned novels out. Old Merlin wouldn’t mind, I had told myself, and as long as Mother didn’t find them I was safe on the home front too. I could just imagine her reaction: what on Earth were you thinking? You shouldn’t be looking about in that old man’s private things! And put that book out of sight, before people start asking questions!

  That was a thing with Mother, with Aunt Agnes and the others, too. Showing you were bright wasn’t welcomed. Be good with your hands, like Tristan, and that was applauded, but if you got something like a book out in company, or asked too many smart questions, they all went a bit quiet. Liked they feared something.

  I had been saving one title I particularly liked the sound of for quite a while. On that first morning without Elinor, I finally pulled it out from its tight place on the shelf and began reading.

  And, on the second day of Elinor’s absence, that’s where Old Man Merlin found me, engrossed in Alexander Dumas.

  ‘Ah, The Count of Monte Cristo,’ Merlin muttered, shuffling in, his hands gripping a small tray. ‘I thought you might like a little something.’

  That’s when I knew that the old man knew about Elinor. Whether he had just discovered the news, or whether he had known the previous day and simply been preoccupied with his work, I didn’t know. But on the tray was a glass of murky looking juice – It’s orange squash, a bit old, but it shouldn’t do you any harm – and a fruit bun that he appeared to have made – burnt, if I’m honest – his words. Merlin never offered us refreshments of any kind, not even those of an out-of-date or overcooked variety. So, this occurrence was a gesture of some kind.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, accepting the offering, hoping any concern over my future wellbeing wasn’t showing as I bit into the cake. It was a bit dry and bitter, but otherwise fine; the drink was surprisingly tasty, despite its slightly muddy pallor.

  ‘I’m to understand you are coming without the girl for a reason,’ he said, somewhere between a sentence and a question and I nodded in response, taking another sip of the cloudy squash.

  ‘They think,’ I began, trying to find the right words, but struggling to speak as sudden tears clogged them up. ‘They’re saying she drowned, swallowed up by the water.’ Though no one had said that, not directly, but that’s how saw it. It’s what I imagined happened - the waters opening up, like a huge wet jaw, its translucent head reaching out of the river and engulfing her. ‘Could it do that? They said it happened before. That the sea swallowed people whole.’

  ‘It did,’ Old Merlin replied, echoing my language. ‘As you said, it did swallow some people and some parts of our city whole. But I’ve already heard that they don’t exactly know what happened to Elinor, either. That she might be okay.’

  He said the might softly, carefully, trying not to suggest too much hope.

  ‘Do you think about the water a lot?’ I asked him, going slightly off our subject. ‘Do you wonder why it didn’t just go back to where it came from?’

  The old man gave me a half-smile – caught between the seriousness of the subject and the humorous simplicity of my question.

  ‘I think in the old times it might have done, eventually. But we’ve done a lot of damage to our world along the years. Progressed with so many great things, but lost sight of the cost as we went, despite the warning signs. So, I think maybe the way back for the water may no longer be there. So, here is its new home – this is now where it lives.’

  He searched my face with his eyes, trying to see if I understood. Seeing a glimpse of confusion there, he tried a different approach.

  ‘When you look out of the window, how many trees do you see?’ he asked.

  I thought for a minute, imagining the view from my attic window – grey skies and slated rooftops.

  ‘None.’

  ‘None,’ the old man repeated, as if instead he was saying exactly. ‘There’s a theory that the trees used to help break up the fall of the rain, keeping up to half of it off the land. But, look around you and you’ll not see many trees – if any - for miles. It’s got to have an impact.’

  ‘And that’s why the water doesn’t go?’ I asked, eager to latch onto this explanation, my young brain engaging with its simplicity, its appeal.

  ‘Well, it might be one reason our environment has changed, a contributing factor, but only one of many others,’ he answered, trying to steady my enthusiasm. ‘But it does explain why the flooding gets so much worse when it rains and why the rain always feels so heavy.’ He said that last word – heavy – with such weight I felt it load his entire body. ‘But, you know, we have to…’ His voice petered away, as he failed to finish his sentence. I mused over what he might have said and guessed he had simply lost faith in whatever snippet of hope he was going to expel. Instead, he changed the subject; a welcome diversion. ‘How about I show you something I always keep to myself?’

  ‘A secret thing?’ I asked, my spirits perking up.

  ‘Not really,’ he answered, trying not to dampen my spark of delight, but a flicker of disappointment must have flashed across my features, as he added quickly: ‘Private. Yes, it’s more like it’s something private. Something special to me.’

  It was enough. Yes, I nodded. Whatever it was, I wanted to see it.

  ‘This way then…’

  I followed him up to the second floor, to
the music room, as Elinor had labelled it.

  ‘I know you two have been in here, playing with the controls,’ he said, smiling, patting his sides at the same time, as if he was searching for something; he was. Pulling out a jangling set of keys from a pocket, he jingled through them until he found the one he wanted. Then, he approached one of the two cabinets that sat stout in the room – the locked one – and, upon inserting the key and releasing the lock, revealed what was hidden therein.

  ‘What you and Elinor have been privy to so far is just my digital collection – a computer, a hard-drive of music. Effective, but clinical, emotionless. This,’ he said, sweeping his hands in front of the open cabinet, as if revealing its contents by magic, ‘this is something very, very different.’

  I wasn’t sure what to think at a first glance.

  Merlin was right – Elinor and I had been in the room on numerous occasions. It was the one place in the house that our pleasure and amusement was equal. The other rooms – the library, the board games room, the model railway – they held our attention for differing spans. But the music room – once through the door and in those comfy seats, it enveloped us in its surround sound wonder. Where does it come from? we would gush, looking up at the ceiling, looking for those hidden speakers, looking back at the stark, black, cubic equipment and wondering how something so clinical and ugly could produce something so beautiful, so unworldly.

  When I asked Tristan why Old Man Merlin had so many things the rest of us didn’t, he just shrugged. Maybe his family had money in the darker times, maybe when everything of value was traded in or handed back, maybe he was from more fortunate stock, but it would be rude to ask. Tristan had simply insisted we enjoy the access we had. Just take it for the privilege it is; a kind old man sharing his own privileges.

  I would ask Old Man Merlin one day, I knew. But for now, I followed Tristan’s advice.