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Mrs. P withered him, but I knew what he was getting at. I grabbed a word and shoved it at him. “Tragedy.”
“Well.” He looked a bit bemused. “It’s not that bad. It’s just one of those things that—”
Sometimes I just wanted to fucking punch myself in the fucking face. “No.” I clenched my fists. “The tragedy of the commons.”
“Oh. Right. Yes. Exactly.” It was like I’d turned on a light insidehim. And I suddenly realised I’d been looking at him, and he’d been looking at me, all this time. Four whole sentences. Four whole sentences each.
“Is there a point to this?” asked Mrs. P.
“Well, the sandbag thing is similar. I could give you a big fancy speech about air bricks and flow capacity but, in basic terms, if water gets into your house, it’ll get into your neighbour’s.”
She sighed. “All right, all right, I take your point. But if I end up having to eat my own arm like a coyote, I’m suing.”
Given what was clearly a dangerous tendency to stare at a stranger in Wellington boots, I had thought it best to limit my attention to the ground, or an empty space of air somewhere off to the left. But now I carefully focused on Mrs. P. My friend. I thought of tea and biscuits and Sunday afternoons—not a stranger whose ease and kindness was its own threat—and pulled out my words. Slowly, knowing that with Mrs. P, they would be safe.
“Last time I checked,” I said, “you have enough Hobnobs in there to last a nuclear winter.”
“A woman cannot live by Hobnobs alone.”
“No, you need”—custard creams—“Jammie Dodgers too.”
She nodded. “And protein.”
I went to get another sandbag. That little exchange should have pleased me, settled me. It had. It did. But there was a buzzing between my eyes and a tightness somewhere inside my skull.
No, you need Jammie Dodgers too.
Mrs. P didn’t even like Jammie Dodgers. Too sticky for her dentures.
Oh God. I was choosing my words. A technique I had learned, then built into a habit, then built into an instinct. And then fought so desperately over the years to break.
All because of—
Damnthe careless power of strangers.
And me for being weak and silly and vain. In the most harmful possible ways. By the time I’d assembled enough sandbags to build a barrier, the man—my too-gentle nemesis—was back, this time with a roll of ground sheeting.
He glanced my way. “You know the trick?”
I needed him to stop looking at me like that. It was casual. The way he’d look at anyone, I was sure. But it made me feel so verythere. I shook my head.
“There’s kind of a secret to it.” He smiled at me. “Can I show you?”
No one could have called him handsome, and the orange waders probably didn’t help—but when he smiled? Suddenly, handsome didn’t seem important anymore—only the things happiness could do to a man’s face. It was nothing more than a tendency of sociability, but it made me realise how long it had been since I’d been smiled at by a stranger. How long since I’d had someone to smile back to.
So I nodded.Yes, please, tell me a secret.
“Well, first you cover the doorway…” He began arranging sandbags over the plastic sheet, pulling them around until they were neatly lined up.
“You know,” said Mrs. P, “while you do that, why don’t I put the kettle on.”
He looked up, and there was his broad, effortless smile again. “That would be champion.”
Then he showed me how to build a defensive wall with sandbags, how to stack them in a pyramid, stamp them down against the ground to make a seal, and bundle the whole package in plastic sheeting. By rights, it shouldn’t have been particularly interesting, but his voice wrapped me up like a blanket, and I liked watching his big hands in their work gloves, pulling the sand this way and that with a kind of no-nonsense certainty.
It made me wonder how it would feel if—
No. I absolutely did not wonder that.
