Waiting for Wednesday

her, but she would lay down hers for no reason at all, except that it seemed a
cursed thing.
    A short distance away in the opposite
direction, the Wandle disappeared underground for ever, into a network of springs,
burrowing its way under the earth. Here it wound north, the path following it almost
closed over now with nettles that stung her feet and hanging branches that stroked her
cheeks, so that Frieda felt she was in a tunnel of green light. She smelt something
sweet and nasty; there must be the carcass of an animal or bird rotting nearby. This
little river had worked so hard in its time, and carried so much shit and poison and
death, a sclerotic artery clogged with waste. There would have been water mills once,
and tanning factories, lavender fields and watercress ponds, litter and chemicals and
flowers. All gone now, demolished and lying buried under concrete and housing estates.
To her left Frieda could see through the tangle of weeds a deserted warehouse, a rash of
light industrial units, a deserted car park, a rubbish dump rising out of the dusk. But
the little river flowed on, quick and clear, leading her out of the labyrinth.
    The water widened again, slowed. There were
faces she could see in its swirling course, rising up at her. Faces of young women.
Weeds for hair. Calling out for help. Too late. Only Sharon Gibbs had been saved: Frieda
could hear her animal cries and smell her dying flesh. In the darkness, rats with yellow
teeth – what had been done to her and what had she felt? Drinking tea in the garden,
smiling. Shaking his hand – what had that hand done? His daughter. Lily. Lila. Wild
child. All those wild children. Lost young women. How many more were there, in their own
underworlds?
    She saw Ted’s young face, then
Dora’s and Judith’s – motherless, fatherless children, hungry for love and
for safety. Lives wrecked. Homes torn apart. What had she done? Howcould she bear the damage she had caused and carry the burden through the rest of her
days?
    Now the river was channelled between
concrete banks, tamed. And suddenly the path was a road that ran alongside a red-brick,
buttressed wall. For a moment, she felt that she was in a country village long ago.
There was a grey church beside her, surrounded by a huddle of graves. Frieda looked at
one of the names, a teenage boy dead in the Great War. She thought she saw a shape rise
up from the ground, but it was only a trick of the dying day. She didn’t know what
time it was. She didn’t want to turn on her mobile to see. It didn’t matter
anyway. She could walk through the evening and into the night. She could walk for days
and never stop. The pain in her legs and her lungs was good; better than pain in her
heart.
    But where was her river? It had disappeared.
They had taken it away from her. She stumbled, feeling sharp pebbles under her soles.
Ahead, a park stretched out, an avenue of great trees. She walked towards it and after a
while saw a small stone bridge. She had found it again and it took her to a pond.
Dragonflies in the dusk. A child’s sandal on the bank. But it led her to a road
and then disappeared, and a car sped by with the bass thump of music coming from it, and
then a man in black leather crouched low on his motorbike, and Frieda was lost in a
dingy corridor of houses and flats. But she walked in the direction it had been flowing
and after a few minutes there it was, merry and leaping, as if it had been teasing her.
Past buildings, cottages, an old mill, and once more she was on an overgrown path,
leaving the road behind. The surface of the city dropped away as she walked along its
hidden corridor. You could stand ten feet away and not know it was there. You could hide
there, seeing but unseen. Like a ghost.
    Too many ghosts. Too many dead people in her
life. Already a crowd of them behind her. The ghost of herself, young and eager. You
start on your journey full of ignorance and hope. Her father. Sometimes she still saw
him, not just in her dreams but among the faces she passed on the streets. There was
something she wanted to tell him but she could no longer remember what it was. Darkness
was gathering round her. Her head was filled with the colours of pain.
    Past an old deserted warehouse, painted an
ugly blue and covered with graffiti. Shattered windows. You could hide there. Perhaps
it, too, was full of dead people, or of lost people. You couldn’t look everywhere.
There isn’t an end, there are always others, and