The meanest Flood

Emperor of the Western Roman Empire in this very town at the dawn of the fourth century.
    The river was running high. From the Lendal Bridge the stream was fast and lively, an undercurrent forming eddies and swirling pools in the black water and various items of flotsam betraying the speed at which the waters fought their way towards the Humber estuary and the sea.
    A young woman on the east side of the bridge gazed lovingly into the river. Sam imagined her climbing on to the parapet and taking a dive, bringing her few short years to a watery end. She was twenty years old, maybe a year or two older, with thin hair and a whole summer behind her in which she had not been touched by the sun. Not an ugly girl, but one who had not learned how to look pretty. Or maybe she had learned and simply couldn’t be assed.
    Sam wanted to go to her, find the words to tell her that nothing was hopeless, that there would come a point in the future when she’d feel better about the world, about herself. Tell her that we needed more people in the world like her, people who still felt things. But he didn’t do it. Ours is not the kind of world in which you can tell a stranger not to jump. There are too many assumptions involved.
    But as he turned the corner, heading towards the post office, Sam couldn’t shake her out of his mind. He imagined the evening paper with her photograph, the tragic headlines and the knowledge that he might have been able to help. Sam had not experienced a moment when he wanted to take his own life. He had come to recognize that his years of alcohol addiction had been fuelled by a death-wish, but there had been no conscious decision to die in the relentless abuse of his health. He had wanted to blot out the world while still using its oxygen.
    The girl on the bridge - and he turned now and headed back in her direction - had a countenance which retained no illusions. She didn’t want herself and she didn’t want the palliatives that the world had to offer. She had looked into the dark eyes of death and imagined some comfort there.
    She was no longer on the bridge and Sam watched the tumbling stream, hallucinating a pale hand raised from the depths, a goodbye wave from a goodbye waif. When he turned away he saw her sitting on a bench with a bearded giant. The man wore a threadbare coat and huge trainers without laces and he had two plastic carriers overflowing with empty bottles. The girl had a cigarette between her lips and the man was leaning over her with the fag-end of another, passing on the light.
    False alarm, Sam said to himself. He glanced again at the girl and her giant. The big man was accosting passers-by now, out of Sam’s earshot but gesticulating histrionically. Looked like he was reciting poetry or passing on the achieved wisdom of his years.
    I’m back, Sam said to himself. This is the place. My home town.
    He took the steps up to the office two at a time. As he walked in Geordie, one of his assistants, got to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Good to see you, boss,’ he said. Geordie was in his early-twenties. Recently he’d let his hair grow and it turned up on his collar. He had a scraggy moustache seemingly painted on to the face of innocence. Geordie had been orphaned and had spent time on the streets before Sam had taken him on, but to look at him now you would think he had never left the maternal nest.
    Sam took his hand and placed an arm around his shoulder. ‘Everything all right? We still solvent?’
    ‘You are,’ Geordie told him. ‘Me and the rest of the wage-slaves can’t make ends meet, but that’s not for you to worry about.’
    ‘Yeah, it was great in Nottingham, Geordie. Like Amsterdam or Venice, really. No, I’ll tell you what, it reminded me of the time I was in Florida. So hot you can’t sleep. I spent every day on the beach.’
    ‘I’ve been to Nottingham,’ Geordie said. ‘Never saw a beach when I was there.’
    Sam cocked his head. ‘There’s this street with palm trees. All the guys there are Cuban exiles, they’re selling girls, dope, aloha shirts, anything you want. Nottingham rock. Pie and chips. Anyway, you go to the end and take a right and there’s the ocean. Bright blue. Everybody’s stretched out half-naked, they have beach umbrellas to keep the sun off. Thongs, know what I mean?’
    ‘Fuck off, Sam.’
    ‘It’s true. The hotel I stayed in had a swimming pool and I got propositioned every morning by a different rich widow.’
    ‘You