Chapter 3: Keir and the Canal

Rachel's grief lasted for several weeks, although nobody could establish precisely when it ended.

One morning she was crying over Jeromy's photograph. By the afternoon, she was asking whether anyone knew where she could buy a new kettle. The following day, she announced that Jeromy would have wanted her to be happy, despite the fact that nobody could remember him ever expressing an opinion on the subject.

Then Keir arrived.

Keir was quieter than Jeromy, but no less troubled. He had the air of a man who had spent a great deal of time thinking about his problems and considerably less time working out what to do about them.

He was also, in Rachel's eyes, a figure of immense sophistication.

He could discuss music, politics, philosophy, and the general hopelessness of existence. Rachel understood virtually none of it, but she found his voice reassuring.

When Keir spoke, she listened.

When he paused, she nodded.

When he asked what she thought, she looked at him with genuine panic.

"I think you're very clever," she replied.

Keir smiled sadly.

Rachel was in love again.

Within days, she had adopted Keir's habits. She began listening to the music he liked, repeating the expressions he used, and complaining about the things that irritated him.

She had never previously shown any interest in philosophy. Now she announced that she had always been fascinated by the meaning of life.

She could not explain what the meaning of life was, but she was certain that it was important.

Keir was going through a difficult period. He felt trapped by his circumstances, disappointed in himself, and unable to imagine a future that looked any better than the present.

Rachel tried to comfort him.

"Everything will be all right," she told him.

"How do you know?"

Rachel considered this question with the intensity of a woman attempting to solve an advanced mathematical problem.

"Because... everything usually is."

Keir looked at her.

"That isn't true."

"No," Rachel agreed. "I suppose it isn't."

She felt she had contributed something meaningful to the conversation.

As the weeks passed, Keir became increasingly withdrawn. The refuge staff noticed his distress and tried to encourage him to accept support. Rachel, however, was unequipped to understand what was happening.

She mistook his silence for contemplation and his despair for a philosophical position.

If Keir said that life was pointless, Rachel agreed that life was pointless. If he complained that nobody understood him, she assured him that nobody understood him. She believed that agreement was the same thing as comfort.

One cold afternoon, Keir left the refuge alone.

He went towards the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, carrying the weight of his despair with him. At a shallow stretch, where the water appeared scarcely two feet deep, he entered the canal intending to end his life.

Despite the shallowness of the water, Keir drowned.

It was a terrible tragedy, and the apparent harmlessness of the place offered no comfort to those who learned what had happened.

When the news reached Rachel, she was bewildered.

"The canal?" she asked.

The staff member explaining the situation nodded.

"But it's hardly deep enough to swim in."

"I know, Rachel. But shallow water can still be dangerous."

Rachel absorbed this information slowly.

"So you can drown in water that isn't very deep?"

"Yes."

She sat silently for a moment.

"I shall never go swimming there, then."

The staff member closed her eyes briefly.

Rachel was not being deliberately insensitive. She simply could not grasp the scale of what had happened, nor could she understand why her observation sounded so inadequate.

Keir's death left her devastated.

For a while, she wandered the corridors repeating that the canal had taken him. She described the water as though it had been an evil creature lying in wait for him.

She told one resident that Keir had been a brilliant man. She told another that he had always been troubled. She told a third that he would never have done such a thing if he had understood how shallow the water was.

Each statement contradicted the last.

Rachel saw no contradiction.

The refuge staff did what they could to support her, while also recognising that she needed more help than another resident could provide. They encouraged her to speak about her grief and reminded her that Keir's death was not her fault.

Rachel repeated their words faithfully.

"It's not my fault," she told herself.

Then, a moment later, she wondered whether she ought to have reminded Keir to take his coat.

She could not distinguish between the things she might reasonably have done and the things that had never been within her power.

For the second time, she had lost a husband.

For the second time, she had lost the person who had supplied her with an identity.

And for the second time, she was left staring into the empty room of her own mind.

This time, however, something had changed.

Rachel was beginning to understand that she could not bear being alone.

Unfortunately, she drew the wrong conclusion from this realisation.

She decided that she needed another husband.