Free Waterland by Graham Swift Page A

perils of the world and the frailty of flesh, as witness the death of a mutual friend. Not to be. Mary doesn’t unclasp her shins. Because a new bruise on an old bruise …
    ‘Dead, Mary. Dead. Right there on the tow-path. Dead. I saw him.’
    But she cuts me short, lifting her chin from her knees. Dark brown hair. Smoke-blue eyes. She must be braver than me. No wasted emotions. Facts. Facts.
    ‘Listen – did anyone say anything? Your Dad? The police?’
    ‘Say?’
    ‘About how Freddie died.’
    ‘He drowned.’
    Mary bites her lip.
    ‘About how he drowned.’
    ‘He fell in the river. Couldn’t swim, could he?’
    The schoolboy game. Act innocent: you’ll be innocent.Act ignorant: people will think you don’t know.
    But Mary has buried her face in her knees again. She shakes her head. Poplar trees rustle. When she looks up she seems three times older than me, as if she’s become a hard-featured woman with a past. Then I see it’s because something’s gone from her face. Curiosity’s gone.
    ‘Freddie didn’t fall in. Someone made him fall in. Dick made him fall in.’
    ‘Mary.’
    ‘I saw them together last night, down near the footbridge. Freddie was drunk.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘Because I told him. Because I thought sooner or later he’ll have to know. I told him. He looked so pleased. Because he thinks— And I said, No, Dick. Not yours. And now I think maybe I should have said Yes. If I’d said Yes, yours— Then he just stared at me, so I had to say something. I said it was Freddie. I told him it was Freddie’s.’
    I look at Mary. I’m trying to interpret her words. At the same time I’m thinking: Dick came in last night, at about half-past eight, then left again with something in the pocket of his windcheater.
    But all this must look to Mary like disbelief.
    ‘I said it to protect you. Maybe I shouldn’t.’
    She lowers her chin, then looks up again with the air of a martyr.
    ‘It’s true. I told him it was Freddie. Dick killed Freddie Parr because he thought it was him. Which means we’re to blame too.’
    The cattle in the meadow have moved round a bend in the banks. The landscape is emptying.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because I know Dick.’
    I look at her.
    ‘I know Dick.’
    ‘Perhaps you don’t.’
    ‘Perhaps I don’t know anything.’
    Soft cotton-wool clouds drift across the July sky. We let them drift for a full minute.
    ‘Mary – is it Freddie’s?’
    ‘No, it’s not Freddie’s.’
    Which still keeps me guessing.
    ‘Is it Dick’s?’
    ‘It couldn’t have been Dick’s.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because—’ she looks at the ground, ‘—because it was too big.’
    ‘Too big?’
    ‘Too big.’
    ‘To go in?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But if it was too – why should he think—?’
    ‘You know, you know. Because he didn’t know how, in any case. He thought you could have one just by thinking about it. He thought you could have one – just by loving.’
    Which still keeps me guessing. Because I don’t believe that if Dick didn’t know how, Mary wouldn’t have taught him. Wasn’t that why Dick made his evening trips to the Lode? To be taught? Why Mary and I took pity? Poor Dick, who wasn’t allowed to be educated … Poor Dick who wanted to know about love.
    That – and Mary’s itching curiosity. Which has suddenly gone.
    ‘It was too big. It wouldn’t— But that’s not the main thing any more now, is it?’
    And I’m still guessing after we part on the Lode bank and Mary walks off, without a backward glance, in the direction of the farmhouse. Brown hair; erect carriage; flat land. I don’t know what to guess, what to believe. Superstition’s easy; to know what’s real – that’s hard.
    I’m still guessing that same evening, on the river-bank under the willow tree, as I watch Dick tinkering with his motor-bike. (No, he’s not going wooing tonight.) But that same evening too I pick out from the river a beer bottle of curious appearance. I know