After The Floods

Rain drums against the windows of the train, driven against it by the wind. They turn a hard corner and the train rocks. A child shrieks, and Mare grips the table as she tries to stop the manuscript perched atop it from sliding. The light above flickers and she holds her breath until the train steadies and the light strengthens. It leaves her in a rush, and she closes her eyes for a moment as relief washes through her. Hopefully, this means she won't get stranded again. Nailsea and Blackwell station isn't far now, just another 5 minutes, so she flips the manuscript closed and slips it into her bag, dragging the zip shut behind it. There'll be plenty of time to read it on the ferry. She never takes much out on train journeys, and with the manuscript away, she's cleared the space around her. She stands to make her way towards the doors, but a sudden lurch sends her stumbling across the aisle. Mare catches herself with a knee on an empty seat and her hand gripping white-knuckled onto the back. There's still time as the train slows on the wet tracks, a ways from the station, and she waits for her legs to stop shaking before she moves again. Caution is always justified in these conditions.
Her little carryon suitcase is in the luggage rack by the doors, nestled between a duffle bag and the bars. She keeps both hands on the backs of seats as she walks the aisle, her handbag slung over one shoulder. There's the awful squeal as the breaks fight against the momentum and the rain-slick, and she finally sees the station glide past the windows. Suitcase in hand, she waits with her thumb poised over the button, gauging in her head just how far she'll have to go to get out of the rain. There's no chance she won't get soaked--it's coming down hard, with no sign of stopping. The button lights up, and she jams her thumb against it until the doors start to stutter open. She tosses her suitcase through as soon as the gap's wide enough and follows quickly after it, launching herself through the waiting crowd and towards the shelter by the exit. A droplet of water runs from her hairline, down her forehead to soak into her right eyebrow, and she shudders. A few scant seconds in the rain and still, the top layer of her hair is drenched. Wonderful.
The bus that will take her from the railway station to the ferry is still a few minutes away, so Mare moves from the shelter to the stationhouse. There's not much cover out front, leaving her to huddle in the doorway and accept her fate as a general nuisance to the other passengers coming in. There are a few dirty looks thrown her way, but more sympathetic ones as she stares balefully out at the rain. Some brave souls wait by the bus stop, holding their hoods over their heads and letting the water run down their sleeves. Puddles grow and fuse before her eyes, threatening floods. The thought tightens something in her stomach, but she refuses to dwell on it. Flooding won't affect the ferry, she's sure of it. The voyage from Nailsea and Blackwell is a long one, but the islands of the old coastline keep the waters relatively calm. The docking in Weston-super-Mare Harbour is bound to be hellish, though.

The bus is hailed by a wave of water as it sails into the car park, and Mare hurries out into the downpour to join the queue. The line moves quickly--no one wants to be the reason others get soaked--and soon she's holding her debit card over the reader with a mutter of 'ferry, please.'

'£1.95,' the driver says, and she taps her card before shuffling forwards. There are no seats, so she jams herself between a businessman and a teenage girl. He's reading emails, she's playing some ancient mobile game, one of the ones where you match brightly coloured tiles shaped like sweets. She reaches for one of the handles above her and holds tight, pretending she isn't absorbed in the girls game. It doesn't work, she sees the girl catch her. To her relief, she angles the phone so that Mare can see better and keeps playing. It's just a short trip to the station, and Mare is so absorbed in the girls game that she almost misses her stop. She catches her laughing as she finally joins the flow of people who had been pushing past her and is carried off the bus, back into the rain.

The ferry to Western-super-Mare is packed. The resort island is a popular destination this time of year, especially with families. Children shout and shove each other in the confined space, and it's all she can do to just grit her teeth and ignore them. She'd had to wait around at the onboard Costa for upwards of 10 minutes after getting her coffee before a table freed up. Once she'd got it, she had no intention of moving. The manuscript sits in front of her, her pens and highlighters tucked safely in her pencil case, protected against the ferry's rocking. The prose is competent, the plot a little contrived. As she reads, she catalogues suggested solutions in her notepad. The choppy waves turn her usually elegant loops into a scrawl, and the sight sets her teeth on edge. She'll have to rewrite them before the next meeting, or it'll completely throw her off. It's not long before the clamour of people sets her head throbbing, and she has to abandon the manuscript once again to the recesses of her handbag. She can't work above deck, but there, at least, she'll hear the wind and waves more than her fellow travellers.
It's a challenge to navigate the stairs with her suitcase, but she manages it all the same, pushing open the last door to cool, fresh air. Mare finds a seat quickly and breathes deep, savouring the slight taste of salt and the moment of peace. Her suitcase sits between her legs, her knees clamped against the top. Her father's gift is inside, along with her nice dress and most of her toiletries. They’re too important to sacrifice to the ocean.

'Daddy, look! I can see houses.' A child kneels on one of the benches, leaning slightly too far over the railing, peering down into the water. His father has a hand fisted in the back of his waterproof, keeping him on the ferry. Her curiosity gets the best of her, and she twists to face the water.

Far beneath the waves, tinted green by the water is what was once a street. Lined with terraced houses, their chimneys reaching up like spears of stone, it looks so much like the street she grew up on. Though there aren’t places she's been in England that are completely unrecognisable from one another. Mare thinks back to journeys taken before with her parents when they would point down and tell her the names of the drowned towns the ferry sailed over. This one, she thinks, was Yatton. She's sure of it when they float past a small island topped with an old railway station. They've passed it countless times, Mare and her parents, but its effect never lessened. As it would come into view, they would get quiet, her mother's jaw would clench, her father's eyes would mist. When they knew it, it was a functioning station, one link in the chain connecting Weston-super-Mare to Bristol. They would say it reminded them of their youth, a time where Cheddar was inland, not part of the coastline. This was before Mare was born, of course. By the time they had even started thinking of having a child, the flooding had started. By the time they did, floods had given way to the sea, and the towns they'd known their whole lives had been abandoned. Sometimes, when her mother had been on the gin, she would tell Mare that they hadn't meant to have a child. It had stung, at first, but as she got older, she understood. She wouldn't want to bring another life into a dying world, either.
The journey passes quicker when she starts to track it by which town they're over. At some point, the little boy, deterred by his father's lack of interest, starts talking to her instead, and she tells him as many of the towns as she can remember. When she can't, they make new ones. She draws a rough map of the voyage in her notepad, filling in the names, old and new, as they go. His name is Orion, he tells her, and he's 7 and three quarters. She tells him her full name, but when he trips over the syllables, she says he can just call her Mare. Weston-super-Mare appears on the horizon, and Orion asks if she was named after the place.

'I was named after a flower,' she tells him, 'one that looks a little bit like a lily.'

He insists that they disembark together, and Mare agrees, despite his father saying that she doesn't have to, really. But she's in no rush, her connection isn't for a while. She walks with them through the port, right up to the exit. Before they go, Orion's father shakes her hand and Orion waves madly, turning around as they walk through the gate to wave again and shout another goodbye. Mare waves back, smiling, and as her hand drops and the pair slip out of sight, her phone rings. She fishes it out of her bag and swipes to answer.

'Amaryllis?' her father's voice asks.

'Who else?' she answers.

'A stranger who stole her phone.'

'They must be a terrible thief then, to answer calls.'

'Must be. How's the journey been?'

'Not completely awful. I'll be getting the ferry to Burton Port soon.'

'Still got a long way to go, then.'

'Yes.' Her father pauses for a while, and Mare waits.

'It never used to be this hard,' he says, finally.

'I know, dad.' He and her mother talk about it, sometimes. How going from Bristol to Cheddar was less than an hour drive, and how the worst thing you had to worry about was traffic. He stops again, to collect his thoughts, and again she waits.

'We fought,' he says, 'you know that, right? We tried to stop this.' There's a tremble to his voice, one she knows well. They talk about this less. It's easier, Mare thinks, to speak fondly on what was, rather than how you came to lose it.

'I know you did.'

He tells her he loves her, and that he'll see them soon. She tells him to say hi to mum for her, and they hang up. Phone away, she walks back through the port, all the way to the harbour. Standing at the sea wall, she can see rooftops above the water, even top floor windows. She wonders who lived in them and how they felt when they had to leave. She wonders if they fought, too, against the rising tide and rushing water. Her parents watched the world drown, she thinks, and someone let it happen.

by Freya Campbell

About The Green Line

The Green Line is part of a third year collaborative project exploring our personal connection with the ongoing climate crisis. Over the next month we will be publishing a variety of pieces from the student community.

Find out more about The Green Line here.

Read entries: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine here