Annan Water Read Free Page A

Michael’s scalp. He had heard it before. Like the river itself, the name seemed always to have been with him, deep in the marrow of his bones.
    He didn’t hear the car approaching, but his father did.
    ‘Horrocks,’ he said. ‘Get the mud knocked off him, quick.’
    They badly needed money. The move to Scotland had cleaned them out. But Horrocks behaved like a pig and put Frank Duggan in a foul temper for the rest of the day. Michael kept out of his way. He tried to get some information about the Annan Water from his mother, but she was moving too fast. When she got home from Dumfries she was busy boiling kettles and making the poultice for the bay thoroughbred who had got himself tangled up in the remains of an old tractor, and after that she had to ride two young horses before dark. Michael had to ride again as well, and when he was finished he slipped into the cold house before either of his parents could nab him.
    He was kneeling in front of the grate, dropping coals onto a pair of firelighters, when he was haunted again by the river.
    Annan Water’s wondrous deep …
    It came from nowhere. Words, some vague sense of a tune or a rhythm.
    I loathe that she should wet her feet …
    He stepped away from the fire and washed his hands in the sink. Then he poured half a stone of potatoes into it and began to scrub them.
    I must cross that stream tonight …
    The image of the tar-black water was so vivid in his mind that he could barely see the potatoes in his hands. It frightened him. He turned on the radio to drown out the invasion. It didn’t work.
    My love Annie is wondrous bonny …
    Michael knew about the tricks his mind could play. He had been through all kinds of mental contortions after Joanne died. But it hadn’t happened for a long time now. That girl must have got to him somehow.
    He dumped the heavy saucepan of spuds on the stove and turned on the heat, then went back into the living room. The firelighters were guttering pathetically. A single coal was smouldering, and the air was full of thin, fumy smoke, as though it had given up the battle against the heavy downslaught of rain in the chimney and retreated into the room.
    In the yard, Jean was pouring bags of feed into the steel bins they had brought with them from Yorkshire. Michael ripped into the work beside her.
    ‘I rode down to a river today,’ he said. ‘Dad thinks it’s the Annan Water.’
    ‘Sounds likely,’ said Jean. ‘How did you get there?’
    Michael sidestepped the question. ‘Where have I heard of the Annan Water?’
    Jean shrugged. ‘Geography maybe. In school.’
    Michael shook his head. He didn’t remember what anyone tried to teach him in school. He had missed too much of it. He wasn’t on the right wavelength at all. On the rare occasions that he went, he dreamed the days away. It wasn’t hard to stay invisible, when you knew how.
    ‘There’s a song or something,’ he said.
    Jean hefted a bag and nuts rattled into the bin. ‘You’re right,’ she said, remembering. ‘There is. My mother used to sing it. She used to sing it all the time.’
    Michael opened a sack of oats and poured it into another of the bins. ‘How does it go?’
    Jean stopped working for a rare moment. She looked at Michael and her lean, weather-tanned face twisted with the effort of dredging her memory. And she was almost there, Michael could tell, when his father’s voice reached them from the yard.
    ‘Can somebody give me a hand?’
    She was gone from him. Michael carried on with the work mechanically, but his spirits were dampened. It was always like that. There was never any peace. There were never any quiet, family moments. They were always working. All of them, all the time. For some reason Michael saw an image of the sitting room at the house in Yorkshire. The TV was on, but there was no one watching it. The terrier was polishing off a plate of dinner that had been abandoned on the arm of the couch. That was the way their lives were. They