We hadn’t left his house in some days. He was working on his manuscript and I - having been signed off sick for three weeks due to stress, and resigned to leaving my job - was busying myself with little household tasks to distract me from the future. I watered terminal plants. I put together complex salads. Mostly I tried not to be waiting.
We decided to take a walk. He said he wanted to clear his head, and I was becoming visibly angsty about what awaited me once I handed in my notice. If I quit the day that I was due to return to work, I would finish up around the start of the new year.
We lived on opposite sides of London. I was in a gentrified area in the south. He on the outskirts of the north, and I enjoyed blindly following him around the places that he knew. My vision is awful and I quite like being in situations where I’m not expected to see or know my surroundings.
He said there were wetlands not far from his house - swampy river banks inhabited by birds and wildlife. We walked past a sewage works on the way. Barbed wire wrapped round its fenced perimeter. The smell of rust. After 15 minutes or so of walking through what felt like countryside, we passed an official looking sign reading “WETLANDS CENTRE”.
We followed a river, with green sludge floating to the top in a way that made it look like a snakelike, never ending lawn. He pointed out two ducks, which I was excited to be able to see. Near the ducks, he told me that there was a moorhen rustling around making a nest for itself on the riverbank. I squinted but couldn’t see it. He said that it was because the hen’s feathers were dark and it was hiding in the long grass.
It was neither warm nor cold, and the low sun reflected off the visible patches of river. The sky was bright blue. He led us under an electricity pylon, towards what looked like a disused tower of some sort. It was imposing and wide, with large oval shaped windows that inspected us as we approached. We zipped up our hoodies because we could feel ourselves being bitten by mosquitos.
He pushed on the door of the tower. It felt eerie going inside, even though we immediately found a museum-style mural detailing the history of the building for any curious visitors. It used to provide water for the whole of north-east London. The wall said that there was still a Cold War bunker hidden somewhere in the marshes.
We turned left and climbed up a few sets of metal stairs, our steps echoing around the bare bricks. The top of the tower was more window than wall, a roof held aloft by a series of pillars with wide gaps between each of them. We looked out to what he said was north London - a mishmash of tower blocks, train lines, and other shapes that I could not place.
Looking down, closer, we saw a machine that was automatically and endlessly clawing at the river, rhythmically pulling trapped black blurry matter from a metal grate, and placing it into a dark pile. He told me that it was pondweed. It looked stringy and tangled. I watched the machine calmly travel back and forth, back and forth, like counting sheep. Two boys rode silently past on bikes, dressed in school uniforms.
It was a strange setting, bright green grassy banks, with the rush of the river and hum of whatever little creatures lived there mingling with distant trains and city sounds, like a white noise machine.
We clanged down stair by stair, and I followed him back the way that we had come. Just past the pylon I noticed a little red, shed-like building. Naively I thought that whoever controlled the electrical flow to the pylon must live inside, like a lighthouse keeper.
“Are you kidding?“ he said. “ Let me show you what’s in there”. He sounded excited.
He led me to the hut and lifted a small latch to open the door. Inside was wooden, lined with benches facing narrow, letter box-like windows that looked onto the river. We were the only ones there.
“We have to be quiet” he said. “It’s a bird hide - it’s used by bird watchers to try and spot different bird types.” He told me that he had been to lots of similar places as a child.
I felt safe in the bird hide. The ceiling was low, and the wooden walls meant that it was pleasantly dark. Keeping his voice low, he explained that the windows were designed so that we could look out at the birds, but they could not see us.
We sat side by side looking out of the small window. I stood up and moved closer to see better. My face touched the smudged glass. I could almost see my reflection. I held my breath so as not to fog it up.
He spotted a type of gull that he had read about online. He said that the feathers on its head turn black in summer, but otherwise stay white. I tensed my eyes trying to see it, but even when he pointed I couldn’t find it. He took his phone, opened the camera, and zoomed in on where the bird was standing. “Can you see it on here?”
I still couldn’t see the gull, but nodded anyway, then let my gaze drift elsewhere. I realised that I had left my phone back at his house.
To my surprise I saw some movement of my own, a tall pale bird with long spindly legs and a narrow beak. It looked as if it was hovering slightly above the water. It seemed to be building a nest. I found it funny watching it pick at the twigs, meticulously rearranging them, and shaking its head to dislodge the ones getting stuck in its long beak. It sounds silly, but I felt strangely proud to have spotted something myself.
“Look!” “There’s a bird there, to the left, it’s making a nest in the water!”
He looked, then narrowed his eyes, taking his phone out again like a makeshift binocular.
“Do you see it?”
My excitement faded and I felt embarrassed. It might not have been a bird at all. Perhaps a reflection, or a piece of rubbish floating upstream, or just wistful thinking.
“Yes I see it darling”
He put his phone back into his pocket.
“Shall we head back? It’s past lunch and I need a wee.”
He led me out of the hut and past the wetlands sign, taking long strides back towards his house. The journey felt shorter than it had on the way there, as is usually the way when you’re more familiar with a route. He was quiet. The two boys cycled past again.
When we got back, he went into the downstairs bathroom and I sat on the sofa in front of the television. The TV was different to mine, and had a lot of remotes, so I was used to him setting it up for me. I heard creaking from above me, and sat looking at the blank screen until he returned and sat down in his armchair.
There was a strange atmosphere in the room. I wondered if I had said something on the walk. I was so drained from all of my troubles with work that I couldn’t even remember what we had spoken about.
I did not like his face just then.
He spoke. “Darling, I am not trying to frighten you, but I need to show you something.”
Everything was silent for a moment. He handed me his phone, the long legged bird lit up by its screen.
“It’s the bird?”
He took the phone from me. His hands were cold. He pinched his fingers to zoom in on the image and handed it back.
Again all I saw was the bird, his nest, and the river.
But the bird had not been hovering. It was perched on something that was bobbing slightly above the water’s surface.
It was a person.
She was floating on her side, buoyant and bloated, her face below the water, the bird tugging at her lank, dark hair. The angle of the sun hitting the water magnified her features, and I saw two, cloudy, white eyes gazing blankly back at me like a statue.
“I’ve phoned the police.” he said.
——-
They searched the river early that evening and found her body. The wetlands were closed for a while, but we didn’t ever hear anything about who she could have been or what had led her there. Her eyes bore down on me on overcast days. And when I bathe, I do not close my eyes under the water for fear that I will open them to find her looking back.