The Water Tower - Books 1-3

Chapter 3-1

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,and death shall be no more,

and death shall be no more,and death shall be no more,neither shall there be mourning,

neither shall there be mourning,neither shall there be mourning,nor crying, nor pain anymore,

nor crying, nor pain anymore,nor crying, nor pain anymore,for the former things have passed away.”

for the former things have passed away.”for the former things have passed away.”(Revelation 21:4, English Standard Version)

* * *

Iris Mabel Challinor died on the 15th of May – a Sunday. Her last will and testament bequeathed the entirety of her estate to her great nephew, Adam Chapman. Iris had never married, had no children of her own and her elder sister Margaret – Adam’s maternal grandmother – had gone to rest thirteen years earlier.

It was a brain aneurysm that took her. Silent and unforgiving, it had ballooned in the recesses of her head until it claimed Iris – without warning – after she returned to Orchard House, her home of fifty-six years, from morning Mass at the Church of St Mary Magdalene. She’d placed her prayer book on the stand as she’d left, clasped hands with Father Dermott they’d bid goodbye, and then walked unhurriedly through Market Square, past the War Memorial, and up the incline to where the cottages sat. She’d watched the world as it passed her and she passed it: at Woodlands, the house where her friend Alma Huntingdon lived, she’d smiled wryly at the young, dust-covered workman on the receiving end of one of Alma’s typical admonishments, as the pair stood gazing up at the half-complete rendering being applied to the front of the house. She’d nodded politely to Sally Lloyd, who’d stepped out of a house on Archer Street still wearing last night’s clothes, exchanging farewells with a middle-aged man on the doorstep, his crumpled, untucked shirt betraying the haste with which he’d dressed. Sally had seen Iris, flushed, and hurriedly waved back before quickly averting her gaze.

Woodlands, She’d seen Albert Turner next, heading towards the Village Green, his golden retriever Gypsy tugging on the leash coiled around her collar in an excitable bid for freedom. Iris had taken a moment to drink in the cool, fresh air that curled around her, and the light of day that fell from the span of pale blue sky above.

When death came, it wore a dark mask. It arrived surreptitiously, draped in a cloak of stealth that had allowed it to go undetected, free from symptoms or any manner of early warning. It had been an ordinary Sunday; offering nothing memorable with which to bookend the 78 years of Iris’s life. Outside her door, the world turned the way it always had: people were talking and hoping someone was listening, others were walking without destination, and women were trying to figure out how to handle their men. So when the aneurysm burst, it burst in an afternoon of ordinariness; with a sudden, sharp sting that injected itself into the post-meridian daylight, punctuated otherwise with nothing except the conventional and the predictable.

Iris had boiled the kettle. She’d eaten a plate of salmon and scrambled eggs for her lunch; a meal she’d enjoyed but thought nothing more of. She’d washed up, stacked her plate on the draining board and spent a moment peering through the kitchen window, admiring a blackbird that had come to rest on the garden fence.

And then the end had come. The aneurysm ruptured. The balloon popped. She had been overcome with a searing, striking pain. She’d dropped the mug she’d taken from the cupboard just moments earlier and it had shattered on the tiled kitchen floor. She’d fallen to her knees, her hands pressed against the side of her head, her mouth frozen in a surreal circle from which a gasping expression of anguish found release. Her vision had blurred as the room swam before her. Her neck became suddenly stiff. Inside her head, a scorching agony – the stuff of nightmares – announced itself by way of a poker-thin stabbing sensation that rampaged through her skull, as if an array of blinding hot needles had been pressed against her nerve endings.

She’d squeezed her eyes shut as her knees cracked against the floor, the bookend to her life propped roughly against a stack of preceding days. Darkness fell; on an ordinary, unexceptional Sunday, her exit from the world marked by a sudden, hasty conclusion that no one had expected, prepared for, or been able to predict.

The last hymn she’d sung had been Faith of Our Fathers:

Faith of Our Fathers:“Faith of our Fathers! we will love

“Faith of our Fathers! we will loveBoth friend and foe in all our strife:

Both friend and foe in all our strife:And preach thee too, as love knows how

And preach thee too, as love knows howBy kindly words and virtuous life…”

By kindly words and virtuous life…”And the words of that hymn carried her through the gates where St Peter waited, on a cloud of memory laced with the peace and virtue of all Iris Challinor’s years.

* * *

Adam Chapman stepped off the train, onto the platform, and into his childhood.

It had been over a month since Iris’s death; when he’d picked up the phone to his friend Hilda Stanton, who had found her on that fateful Monday morning when she hadn’t shown up for their weekly coffee together. The normally reserved, circumspect Hilda had broken down in tears as she’d related to Adam the sequence of events that had led her to the door of Orchard House, from which there had been no answer; and then to the side window, where she’d spotted Iris lying on the cold kitchen tiles, the remnants of a smashed ceramic mug surrounding her lifeless frame.

Adam had always imagined his great aunt to be in rude health; he’d been taken aback when he’d heard later that the results of her autopsy had concluded that a burst brain aneurysm had been the cause of her sudden death. It had seemed especially callous to him; a swift, unforgiving end that had given Iris no chance to reconcile herself to the finality of what was to come. She’d just carried on about her business the way she always had; full of heart and with a fire in her eyes that seemed like it would never fade. Then suddenly, it had. The fire had burned itself out and she was gone; a woman struck down unaware, swallowed irreversibly by forever in a second that came and went. The kind of second that changes lives.

Hilda had asked him to come straight away. She’d watched the ambulance crew taking Iris’s body away and he’d known that cold, exacting image must have been imprinted on her mind when she’d urged him to make the journey. She’d masked her disappointment well enough when he’d told her that he couldn’t. He’d pretended that he hadn’t been able to negotiate a leave of absence when, in fact, there had been no prospect of him coming home. Not then, or at any time during the days that followed. Hilda had told him she understood; she’d offered to make all the arrangements, providing a blanket of reassurance and support in the wake of Iris’s passing. All the same, he’d tasted the regret resting underneath her words.

Yet, somehow, she had still been the same Hilda he’d known for most of his life; the same warm Hilda with her shocks of silver hair, steeped in wisdom, whose spirit the years had never dimmed. How long had she been widowed now? His own memories of David were vague at best; her husband had died young, but Hilda had always seemed filled with more life than most people half her age.

Somewhere, at the fringes of his mind, he wondered if she’d had any inkling of what had kept him away this past month; whether she’d guessed, at some point during their exchange of phone calls and text messages, between the emails and invitations, or amid the back and forth of funeral arrangements that she had made but he had paid for. He wondered if she knew the real reason he hadn’t been able to face coming home. If she’d understood why he couldn’t stand to wade through the consequences of Iris’s death – the formalities, the paperwork, the unrelenting list of things – until the application of wet ink on a registry office certificate served as the final confirmation of her absence.

things Behind him, a whistle blew and the train set off, curling around the track that led away from Bassington Station towards Anglia and the South East coast. Adam began his walk down the platform, which was empty but for the handful of passengers his train had deposited. The journey had been slow, but uneventful, the train stopping periodically on its passage through the watercolour scenery and rolling countryside that surrounded Bassington. He’d dressed casually; in a loose blue shirt and chinos, with a lightweight jacket. Despite the mundanity, he’d been restless during the trip, both eager and wary of arriving.

A woman with burnt red hair was pulling her son away from the platform’s only vending machine; the young boy pointed longingly towards the stacked cans and chocolate bars that were inviting his attention from behind the plastic frontage.

I was you once, he thought.

I was you onceAdam could still recall those days; when Iris would meet him at the station and they’d drive down the hill that divided the village from Bassington Town. As the cottages came into view, and he’d seen Market Square for the first time, where the Water Tower dominated the skyline, he’d felt as if he were travelling through the mouth of the world, into a safe haven. A home.

He exited the station past the stack of lockers available for hire in the foyer, wondering idly if anyone ever used them these days. His travel bag was slung over his shoulder (he’d brought more than just the bare essentials with him, but not enough to permit himself the belief that his stay would be any longer than it needed to be) as he walked across the gravelled car park in the hope of finding a taxi. His tidy black hair was barely rippled by the gentle wind that whispered across the balmy June day.

The ticket office was closed and there didn’t seem to be anyone actually working at the station. He wondered how often it was manned. Perhaps it was destined to become another remnant of the past; the train station used to be bustling with travellers, but now seemed to be locked into a gradual decline. A ticket office that was hardly ever manned, its shutters down and counter closed, and trains which connected Bassington with London and the South East growing steadily more infrequent. For most people and for most things, the end came slowly; it was an incremental decay. In his world, it disregarded the rules and came instantaneously; a guillotine falling on the best chapters of his life. That’s the way it always seemed to be.

At the front of the station, he found a row of taxis waiting. The red-headed woman was bundling her son into the black cab that sat at the front of the rank. “Get in, Tommy, I’ve told you, we’ll get something as soon as we get there! In!”

InAdam caught the attention of the driver in the car behind, who threw his newspaper to one side and jerked his finger towards the back seat. Adam opened the door, dropping his travel bag down beside him as he clambered in.