London Deep
Simon never trusted me with a key to his flat, but Mum and Dad had one, so almost three weeks to the hour since I’d last seen my brother, I let myself into his home.
I called his name a few times, half hoping he might respond, but there was only silence.
A scattering of letters obscured the hallway carpet—mainly junk mail and takeaway menus—and a fusty smell wafted from the kitchen.
When I checked the bin, the remains of our takeaway were still sitting on top, the chow mein beginning to show a faint white fuzz.
The air felt dusty and still. It was clear nobody had been home for at least a week.
My visit revealed nothing of interest. I’d hoped to uncover the secrets of a hidden life, or even some insight into the man my brother had become, but I was disappointed.
The rooms were largely clear of clutter in a way that mine never were, all his belongings tidy and in their place, everything serving a function.
His bookshelves were notably short of fiction, most of the space given over to engineering textbooks and hardback pictorial guides to famous buildings.
His bed was freshly made, his pajamas (a gray T-shirt and shorts) folded neatly beneath the pillow.
His toothbrush was still in its holder, the bristles bone dry.
I was tempted to catch a few hours’ sleep on his mattress, but the notion felt wrong, as if he was already deceased and I would be sleeping in a dead man’s bed.
Instead, I cleared the mail into a pile, tied up the bag of garbage, and took it with me as I locked the front door.
* * *
The last time I’d seen Simon, at the end of October, had been unremarkable in almost every way.
The rain had been falling heavily, as it had done the day before, and for several weeks before that; the newspapers had reported that the Thames Barrier was failing, and London was cold, and damp, and perpetually wet underfoot as if the concrete itself was saturated with rainwater.
Simon had been called in to undertake remedial work on one of his projects, The Aerial at Canary Wharf, part of the latest rash of office blocks springing up in the city’s Docklands.
I recalled when he had received the commission eight years earlier, the excitement it had drawn out of him, as if this edifice might finally make something within him whole.
He’d been this way ever since we were kids, attaching his enthusiasm to project after project, each one more ambitious than the last.
It was the elevator shaft that was causing problems at The Aerial.
That Tuesday evening, he had tried to explain the technicalities to me over a Chinese takeaway in his Putney flat, but I’d found it hard to concentrate on what he was saying.
My eyes drifted from time to time toward the window of the living room, which usually offered an uninterrupted view of the Thames flowing relentlessly seaward; but that night the rain was so heavy it obscured everything but the most basic shapes and patterns, its pounding against the glass a steady thrum in the background.
“So what you’re saying,” I interrupted, not thinking twice about cutting him off mid-flow, “is that the elevator shaft you built has flooded?”
He nodded, using the break in the conversation to slurp a forkful of noodles into his mouth. It took him a moment to chew and swallow, during which time the only other noise was the rain.
“That’s more or less it,” he eventually replied, wiping his chin with a napkin.
“There are complications, it’s not quite so simple—but yes, bloody thing’s flooded.
The water table’s so high right now, particularly near the river.
We never predicted it. There are sewers down there to contend with too, and overflow outlets, so it’s complex.
We can’t just pump it out, the water will only flow back in again. ”
He then embarked on an extremely dry and technical description of the various options for solving the problem, but I’m ashamed to say that I tuned out for most of it.
Without four years of an engineering degree to prop up my understanding, it sounded like so much nonsensical babble.
It had always been that way between us, since we were at school: Simon collecting academic awards like they were Topps cards, while I did my best to muddle through.
I’d quickly come to terms with the fact that I would never catch up with him, no matter how hard I raced.
I wish I could say that we hugged as we said goodbye that evening, or even argued, but there was nothing dramatic about our parting.
I said that I’d see him in two Sundays’ time at our parents’ house in Angmering, and he muttered something about “work permitting.” The evening was in many ways so bland and commonplace that it would not be worth mentioning, were it not for what happened afterward.
I remember running home from the Tube as the rain pounded the pavements, soaking me to the skin through my waterproof jacket, surrounded by similarly drenched and sorry souls flapping around in the puddles like so many beached fish.
I recall taking a scalding hot shower to try and rinse the chill from me.
But beyond that, I forgot almost instantly everything that Simon had told me.
* * *
I was at the office when the police called almost two weeks later. Had I seen my brother recently? The question jolted me out of my work as if someone had just punched me in the chest. It took a moment to catch my breath.
I’d met with him for dinner a fortnight ago, I told them, but we’d had no contact at all since then.
How had he seemed? Fine. His usual self.
What had we talked about? I paused, stumbling my way through the vaguest of answers, not because I was hiding anything but because I didn’t know.
I told the officer on the phone that Simon had talked about being recalled to the work he’d done on The Aerial, the flooding in the elevator shaft.
“Why? Has something happened to him?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Eventually, he said, “Your brother hasn’t been seen for a few days, that’s all. His employer called it in. He hasn’t turned up for work. If you hear from him at all, or are able to make contact, can you call us and let us know?”
I said I would, and hung up. The news had left me confused.
Simon wasn’t the sort to shirk responsibilities, and if he hadn’t turned up for work then I could only imagine that something must be seriously wrong.
Had there been an implication in the officer’s questions that he might have harmed himself?
I thought there had, but that too would be so unlike him, so out of character, that I found it hard to fathom.
The flooding at The Aerial had annoyed him, but he had shown no hint of depression or feeling overwhelmed by it, no suggestion of—what?
Suicide? I was aware suddenly of how little I really knew my brother, and how poorly I had connected with him.
It was possible that I’d missed all the signs, too wrapped up in my own meager life to care.
* * *
I won’t pretend that I spent the week worrying about him, but he did occasionally cross my mind.
I wondered briefly if he’d found himself a woman at last. His couple of half-hearted attempts at girlfriends had fizzled out before going anywhere, and I’d often secretly wondered if he might be gay.
When he failed to turn up at our parents’ house on the Sunday, though, and didn’t respond to any of the answerphone messages we left, I was tasked with tracking him down and finding out what was going on.
Like me, my parents had discounted the possibility of suicide, and we were all agreed that at the very least it was wildly out of character.
I didn’t say it, but part of me hoped he’d thrown caution to the wind and shacked up with a Camden barman.
After that first, perfunctory search of his flat, several days passed before I returned to it again.
I was dismayed to discover that nothing had been moved.
Wherever Simon was, he hadn’t come home.
Sitting at his desk, I tried to imagine my way inside his head, to work out what made my brother tick and maybe sleuth my way toward him.
The task was harder than I’d expected, though, and eventually I gave up.
We were two very different people who had made no attempt to find common ground in over thirty years. It was too late to start.
In the end, I found the notebook tucked between back issues of engineering periodicals on his shelf.
He hadn’t made any effort to disguise it, but I still had the sense that it had been hidden away, as if he preferred not to see it.
The cover was a plain green, the paper covered with a finely partitioned blue grid, each square hardly any bigger than a grain of sugar.
It was filled with his drawings and his notes, a meticulously neat hand that I recognized instantly, rows of tiny capitals, perfectly formed in miniature.
At first glance they looked almost as if they might be rows of data, and only a closer inspection revealed them to be words.
I flicked through the book, trying to make sense of it.