by Jojo Moyes
Margery winced suddenly at a complaint from some previously unknown muscle in her belly. She hesitated, doubled over, then stumbled toward Charley, as Beth unhooked the traces.
“Where next?” Beth yelled, hoisting herself aboard the skittering Scooter, and Margery, winded from the effort of climbing back aboard Charley, had to bend over a minute and catch her breath before she answered.
“Sophia,” she said, suddenly. “I’m going to check on Sophia. If this place is flooding, then Sophia and William’s will be, too. You head for the houses across the creek.”
Beth nodded, wheeled her horse around, and was gone.
* * *
• • •
Kathleen and Alice loaded the wheelbarrow with books, covering them with sacking so that Fred could push it up the soaking path toward his home. They had only one barrow, and the women would load it as swiftly as they could, carrying the books in stacks toward the back door, then following him laden with as many other books as they could fit into four saddlebags, knees buckling under the weight, heads bowed against the weather. They had cleared maybe a third of the library in the past hour but since then the water had risen to the second step and Alice was afraid they wouldn’t manage much more before it rose right over.
“You okay?” Fred passed Alice on the track back down. He was wrapped in oilcloth, and a trail of water ran from the side of his hat.
“I think Kathleen should leave. She shouldn’t be away from her children.”
Fred looked up at the skies, then down the road, where the mountains disappeared in a blur of gray. “Tell her to go,” he said.
“But what will you do?” said Kathleen, minutes later. “You can’t move all these, just the two of you.”
“We’ll save what we can. You need to go home.”
When she hesitated again, Fred put his hand on her upper arm. “They’re just books, Kathleen.”
She didn’t protest a second time. She just nodded, mounted Garrett’s horse and swung round, cantering back up the road so that sprays of water shot out behind her.
They rested a moment and stood briefly in the dry of the cabin, watching her go, their chests heaving with the effort. Water dripped off their oilcloth coats into pools on the wooden floor.
“You sure you’re okay, Alice? It’s heavy work.”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“Well, that’s the truth.”
They exchanged a small smile. Almost without thinking, Fred lifted a hand and slowly wiped a droplet of rain from under her eye with his thumb. Alice was briefly stilled by the electric shock of his skin on hers, by the unexpected intensity of his pale gray eyes, his lashes soaked into shining black points. She had the strangest urge to take his thumb into her mouth and bite it. Their eyes locked and she felt her breath pushed from her lungs, her face coloring, as if he could read her mind.
“Can I help?”
They sprang apart at the sight of Izzy in the doorway, her mother’s car parked haphazardly up against the rail, her riding boots in her hand. The roaring of the rain on the tin roof had muffled the sound of her arrival.
“Izzy!” Alice’s voice emerged in an embarrassed rush, too high, too shrill. She stepped forward impulsively and embraced her. “Oh, how we’ve missed you! Look, Fred, it’s Izzy!”
“Came to see if I could help,” said Izzy, blushing.
“That’s—that’s good news.” Fred was about to speak then looked down and realized she was not wearing her leg brace. “You ain’t going to be able to walk the track, are you?”
“Not very fast,” she said.
“Okay. Let me think. You drove that thing here?” he said, incredulous.
Izzy nodded. “Not too good on the clutch with my left leg but if I lean on it with my stick I’m fine.”
Fred’s eyebrows shot up, but he swiftly lowered them. “Margery and Beth have taken the routes nearer the south side of town. Take the car as far up to the school as you can and tell them on the other side of the creek that they need to get to higher ground. But go across the footbridge. Don’t try to drive that thing across the water, okay?”
* * *
• • •
Izzy ran for the car, her arms sheltering her head, and climbed in, trying to make sense of what she had just seen: Fred, cradling Alice’s face tenderly in his hand, the two of them just inches apart. She felt, suddenly, like she had done at school, never quite party to whatever was going on, and pushed the thought away, trying to smother it in the memory of Alice’s delight at seeing her. Izzy, we’ve missed you!
For the first time in a month, Izzy Brady felt something like herself again. She rammed her stick down onto the clutch, hauled the car into reverse, spun it round and set off for the far end of town, a determined jut to her chin, a woman once again with a mission.
* * *
• • •
Monarch Creek was already under a foot of water by the time they reached it. This was one of the lowest points of the county. There was a reason that this land had mostly been left to colored folk—it was lush, yes, but prone to flooding; mosquitoes and no-see-ums were thick in the air through the months of summer. Now, as Charley clattered down the hill through the sheeting rain, Margery could just make out Sophia, a wooden box atop her head, wading through the waters, her dress floating around her. A pile of her and William’s belongings sat on the slopes of the patch of woodland above. From the doorway William looked out, his face anxious, his wooden crutch wedged under his armpit.
“Oh, thank the Lord!” Sophia yelled, as Margery approached. “We need to save our things.”
Margery jumped off the mule and ran toward the house, heading into the water. Sophia had rigged up a rope between the porch and a telegraph pole by the road, and Margery now used this to make her way across the creek. The water was icy and the current ominously strong, although it only came to her knees. Inside the house Sophia’s cherished furniture had toppled over; the smaller items bobbing in the water. Margery found herself momentarily paralyzed: what to save? She grabbed for photographs on the wall, for books and ornaments, wedging them into her coat and reaching out for a side table, which she hauled to the doorway and out onto the grass. Her belly ached, the pain low in her pelvis, and she found herself wincing.
“You can’t save no more,” she yelled at Sophia. “Water’s coming up too fast.”
“That’s everything we own in there.” Sophia’s voice was despairing.
Margery bit her lip. “One more trip, then.”
William was moving around the flooded room, using his arms to support himself on the wall, trying to corral essentials—a pan, a chopping board, two bowls—clasping them in his huge hands. “That rain easing off any?” he said, but his face suggested he already knew the answer.
“It’s time to get out, William,” she said.
“Let me just fetch a couple more.”
How do you tell a proud amputee he can be of no help? How do you tell him the mere fact of him being in there is not just a hindrance but likely to put them all at risk? Margery bit back her words and reached for Sophia’s embroidery box, wedging it under her arm and wading outside, where she grabbed a wooden chair from the porch with her other, hauling them up to dry land, grunting with the effort. Then the pile of blankets, ported high above her head. Lord knew how they were going to dry those out. She looked down, feeling the sharp protest again from her womb. The water was now up to her crotch, her long coat swirling around her thighs. Three inches higher in the last ten minutes?
“We got to go!” she yelled, as Sophia, her head down, made her way back in. “No time.”
Sophia nodded, her face pained. Margery made it out of the water, feeling it drag at her, shifting and insistent. Up on the bank Charley shifted nervously, his reins taut against the pole, signaling his own desire to be far from there. He didn’t like water, never had, and she took a
second to soothe him. “I know, fella. You’re doing so good.”
Margery placed the last of Sophia’s items on the pile, pulling the tarpaulin over them, and wondering whether she could move any of it further up the hill. Something fluttered deep inside and she was startled until she realized what it was. She stopped and placed her hand upon her belly, feeling it again, flooded with an emotion she couldn’t identify.
“Margery!”
She spun round to see Sophia clutching at William’s sleeve. There appeared to have been some kind of surge and she was now up to her waist. The water, Margery saw, had turned black. “Oh, Lord,” she murmured. “Stay there!”
Sophia and William had stepped down gingerly onto the underwater steps, one hand each gripping the rope, Sophia’s free arm tight around her brother’s waist. The inky water rushed past them, its force sending a strange energy into the air. William’s eyes were down, his knuckles taut as he tried to steer his crutch forward through the swollen river.
Margery half ran, half stumbled down the hill, her eyes on them as they made their way toward her.
“Keep coming! You can make it!” she yelled, skidding to a stop at the edge. And then—snap!—the rope gave way, sending both Sophia and William off their feet and flinging them downstream. Sophia shrieked. She was thrown forward, her arms out, disappeared for a moment and then, emerging, managed to grab hold of a bush, her hands closing tight around its branches. Margery ran alongside her, her heart in her throat. She threw herself down on her belly and grabbed hold of Sophia’s wet wrist. Sophia switched her grip to Margery’s other wrist and, after a second, Margery had hauled her up the bank, where she collapsed backward and Sophia crouched on her muddied hands and knees, her clothes black and sodden, panting with the effort.
“William!”
Margery turned at Sophia’s voice to see William half submerged, his face screwed up with effort as he tried to haul himself back along the rope. His crutch had disappeared and the water was around his waist.
“I can’t get through!” he yelled.
“Can he swim?”
“No!” wailed Sophia.
Margery ran for Charley, her wet clothes dragging at every step. Somewhere she had lost her hat and the water sent her hair cascading over her face, so that she had to keep pushing it back to see.
“Okay, boy,” she murmured, unhooking Charley’s reins from the pole. “I need you to help me now.”
She pulled him down the bank and to the water where she waded in, her free hand out to the side to steady her, her boots testing the ground for obstacles. He stalled at first, his ears flat back and his eyes white, but at her urging he took a tentative step and then another and, huge ears flicking forward and back at the sound of her voice, he was splashing his way through, beside Margery, pushing against the torrent. William was gasping by the time they reached him, both hands on the rope as he scrabbled for purchase. He grabbed blindly at Margery, his face a mask of panic, and she yelled to be heard above the sound of the water. “Just hold him round his neck, William, okay? Wrap your arms around his neck.”
William held on to the mule, his great body pressed against Charley’s, and, groaning with the effort, Margery turned the two of them in the depths of the floodwater, back toward the bank, the mule protesting mutely at every step. The black water was up to her chest now and Charley, frightened, lifted his muzzle and tried to half leap forward. Another surge of water hit them, and as everything rushed around her she felt his legs lift and was filled with sudden terror, as if the ground would surely slip away from them all for good, but just as she thought they, too, would be carried away, she felt her feet touch the ground again, knew Charley’s had done the same, and she felt him take another tentative step forward.
“You okay, William?”
“I’m here.”
“Good boy, Charley. Come on, boy.”
Time slowed. They seemed to move forward in inches. She had no idea what was underneath. A solitary wooden drawer of neatly folded clothing floated by in front of them, followed by another, and then a small dead dog. She noted them only with some distant part of her brain. The black water had become a living, breathing thing. It snatched and pulled at her coat, blocking progress, demanding submission. It was relentless, deafening, and made fear rise, like iron, in her throat. Margery was now blue with cold, her skin pressed against Charley’s chestnut neck, her head bumping against William’s great arms, all consciousness reduced to one thing.
Just get me home, boy, please.
One step.
Two.
“You okay there, Margery?”
She felt William’s great hand on her arm, gripping her, and was unsure whether it was for his security or her own. The world had receded until it was just her and William and the mule, the roar in her ears, William’s voice murmuring a prayer she couldn’t make out, Charley straining valiantly against the water, his body buffeted by a force he didn’t understand, the ground slipping and sliding away from him every few steps, then again. A log whooshed past them, too big, too fast. Her eyes stung, filled with grit and water. She was dimly aware of Sophia reaching forward from the bank, her hand outstretched, as if she could haul the three of them up by force. Voices joined hers from the bank. A man. More men. She could no longer see through the water in her eyes. She could think about nothing, her fingers, now numb, wound into Charley’s short mane, her other hand on his bridle. Six more steps. Four more steps. A yard.
Please.
Please.
Please.
And then the mule lurched forward and upward and she could feel strong hands reaching for her, pulling at her shoulders, her sleeves, her body a landed fish, William’s shaking voice, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you!” Margery, feeling the river reluctantly relinquish its grip, uttered the same words silently through frozen lips. Her clenched fist, Charley’s hair still woven through her fingers, moved unthinkingly to her belly.
And then everything went black.
SEVENTEEN
Beth heard the girls before she saw them, their voices high above the roar of the water, childish and shrill. They clung to the front of a ramshackle cabin, their feet ankle deep in water, and yelling at her, “Miss! Miss!” She tried to recall the family name—McCarthy? McCallister?—and urged her horse across the water, but Scooter, already spooked by the strange electric atmosphere of the air and the dense, punishing rain, had made it partway across the swollen creek, then half reared and spun away so that she almost fell off. She righted herself but he would not be moved, snorting and running backward until his brain was so addled she feared he would do himself an injury.
Cursing, Beth had dismounted, thrown his reins over a pole and waded across the water toward them. They were young, the youngest maybe two at most, and clad in thin cotton dresses that clung to their pale skin. As she approached, they clamored for her, six little anemone arms, reaching, waving. She got to them just before the surge. A rush of black water, so fast and hard that she had to grab the baby around her middle to stop her being carried away. And then there she was, three small children huddled around her, gripping her coat, her voice making reassuring noises even as her brain raced to work out how in hell she was going to make her way out of this one.
“Is anyone in the house?” she yelled at the eldest, trying to be heard above the torrent. The child shook her head. Well, that’s something, she thought, pushing away visions of bedbound grandmothers. Beth’s bad arm ached already, holding the baby tight to her chest. She could see Scooter on the other side, jittering around the pole, no doubt ready to snap his reins and bolt. She had liked the fact that he was part Thoroughbred when Fred offered him to her; he was fast and showy and didn’t need to be pushed to go forward. Now she cursed his tendency to panic, his pea-sized brain. How was she going to get three babies onto him? She looked down as the water lapped around her boots, seeping into her stockings, and her
heart sank.
“Miss, are we stuck?”
“No, we ain’t stuck.”
And then she heard it, the whine of a car headed down the road toward her. Mrs. Brady? She squinted to see. The car slowed, stopped, and then, lo and behold, if Izzy Brady didn’t climb out, her hand sheltering her eyes as she tried to work out what she was seeing across the water.
“Izzy? That you? I need help!”
They shouted instructions to each other across the creek, but were unable to hear each other properly amid the noise. Finally Izzy waved her hand, as if to wait, crunched the big glossy car into gear and began to creep forward toward them, its engine roaring.
You can’t drive the damn car across the water, Beth breathed, shaking her head. Did the girl have no sense at all? But Izzy stopped just as the front wheels were almost submerged, then ran lopsidedly to the trunk and hauled it open, pulling out a rope. She ran back to the front of the car, unspooling it, and hurled the end of the rope at Beth, once, twice, and again before Beth was able to catch it. Now Beth understood. At this distance it was just long enough to secure to the post of the porch. Beth put her weight on it and noted with relief that it held firm.
“Your belt,” Izzy was yelling, gesticulating. “Tie your belt around the rope.” She was securing her end of the rope to the car, her hands swift and certain. And then Izzy took hold of the rope and began to make her way toward them, her limp no longer visible as she navigated the water. “You okay?” she said, as she reached them, hauling herself onto the porch. Her hair was flat and under her felt coat her pale, baby-soft sweater sagged with water.
“Take the baby,” Beth answered. She wanted to hug Izzy then, an uncharacteristic feeling, which she smothered in brisk activity. Izzy grasped the child, and gave the little girl a beaming smile, as if they were simply out on a picnic. All the while she was smiling, Izzy pulled her scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around the eldest’s waist, tying it to the rope.