Warning! Deep Water

Chapter 1: The Stranger-George

Chapter 1: The Stranger—GeorgeGeorge wrote the final cheque, put it in its envelope, and wrote the address on it, threw it in the stack to be posted, and pushed the pile of paperwork away with a sigh. There, that was it. The month’s bills paid. And a bit left in the bank. A good month, then, especially after such a long, hard, winter.

He rubbed his hands up over his face and into his hair, easing the tension out of his forehead by pulling at it. It needed cutting. He’d ask Mrs Leland to do it for him when she came back in the morning. For now though, he’d been inside all day…it was time for a walk round the place, check that the vents and doors on the greenhouses were closed, and stretch his legs.

“Come on, Polly,” he said to the dog stretched out in front of the Rayburn as he stood up. “On your feet!”

She raised her head and looked at him enquiringly, not sure whether he was really going out and not just moving round the kitchen to put the kettle on.

“Walk time,” he told her. “I’ll put my boots on and we can go. I want to see how they’ve got on with planting the Christmas chrysants.” It seemed like it had been lettuces and tomatoes for interminable years now—they’d started growing them at the beginning of the war to feed the troops stationed locally and had only been allowed to keep a minimal amount of flowers planted every year to keep their stocks fresh. This was the first year he’d been able to plan for a Christmas flower crop since 1939.

Once Polly could see he wasn’t kidding her, she got to her feet and stretched as George collected the heavy ring of keys from the hook beside the door and got his boots out of the boot cupboard. She was an old dog now, going on twelve…he should probably think about getting a pup, but he was comfortable as he was and didn’t want the bother of training one. Just as well, for over the past winter they’d spent most of the time hunkered down by the fire when they weren’t trying to clear the snow off the glasshouse roofs to avoid collapse. Perhaps later in the year, if things continued to look up, he’d think about it more seriously.

He took his slippers off and slid his feet into his wellingtons. He didn’t bother with his jacket, it was quite warm for the front end of May, even though it was late in the evening, just getting dark. Polly snaked around his legs and out of the door, waiting for him on the path. “Come on then, girl,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

They wound their way idly down past the break room toward the packing shed first, enjoying the mild evening and the dimpsy light. The lettuces they’d picked today were stacked in crates, ready to take down to the wholesaler in the morning. He shut the door, with the little lift needed to ease it onto the threshold and get it to latch. Locked it with the big, bent key. Made sure the tool shed was padlocked. Shut up the hens.

He looked into the big boiler house they used to heat the houses they were using for tomatoes and threw a bit more coal in. It had been a clear day, warm for the time of year, but he didn’t want to let the boilers out quite yet, it was still chilly at night.

Shutting the doors and releasing the levers to lower the ceiling vents in each of the long glasshouses, he made his way around the looping path until it turned and he began to make his way back toward the house.

Polly ran on ahead as usual, her initial stiffness worked out of her joints by this point in their evening perambulation. As she got to the top of the path by the smaller glasshouse where they grew on the young plants, she began to bark.

It wasn’t her rabbit-bark or her squirrel-bark. It was her here’s something odd bark.

George lengthened his stride to catch up with her.

“What’s up, girly?” he asked. “Fox?” It wasn’t her fox-bark, either.

As he drew level with her and turned the corner, he saw what she was barking at. There was someone in the pump house with the big water tank, at the end of one of the houses of young tomatoes. He could see them moving through the glass walls.

“Oi!” he shouted, as he began to run toward them, wellies slopping as he ran. “Oi! What’s going on?” The figure inside, who hadn’t seemed disturbed by the dog, moved sharply, clearly swinging round to face him.

He reached the door and pulled it open. It was a man. He had just climbed out of the mossy, green depths of the ten-thousand gallon tank. He was dripping wet, and completely naked.

George slammed to a halt as if he’d hit a brick wall, staring open mouthed.

The man stared back at him. He was probably a bit younger than George, somewhere in his early thirties. His hair was shaggy and badly cut and his stubble was coming through. He was…lovely, actually. Spare and pale—but who wasn’t spare and pale these days—and he had what looked like a knife or bayonet scar on his left thigh…that was all George registered before the man grabbed a ragged army blanket from where it was tossed over the edge of the tank and wrapped it round his waist.

“s**t!” he said. “s**t, I’m so sorry! f**k! I didn’t think anyone was…shit!”

George held up his hands and took a step back.

The cooler air from outside was blowing in through the open door of the greenhouse and he pushed it shut behind him with his foot. He didn’t want to hurt his tomatoes and the chap was coming up in goose bumps from the draught.

“All right!” he said. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you!”

Although to be honest the chap looked like he’d be the one doing the hurting if it came down to it. He was lithe with muscle. George was probably ten years older and this last winter he’d definitely realised why they hadn’t wanted to call up men in their forties.

Lots of blokes hadn’t slotted back into post-army life as easily as he had. They drifted from job to job, place to place, not able to settle anywhere. There was always a steady trickle of them, passing the door, asking for a billy-can of water or a few hours work in exchange for food or a few shillings. He remembered them from his childhood too, casualties of the Great War. This one though. This one was young. His own generation.

“Where are your clothes?” George asked.

The man waved his hand vaguely at the tank.

Ah. Awkward.