by Sarah Winman
Beads of sweat glistened at his forehead. He wiped his hands on his trousers, began to feel dizzy, feel unwell. He noticed his hand had begun to shake again. He fucking hated the hymn, but he’d do anything for her.
Keep singing! she shouted.
So Freddy kept singing.
Take from our souls the strain and stress . . .
And Freddy noticed as he sang, that where the sound of a train should have been, where the sound of a river lapping at a shore should have been or where the sound of footsteps on pebbles should have been, was now just silence. A heavy impenetrable silence.
The beauty of Thy peace.
No, it wasn’t the sound of silence pressing against his ears, but something different, something else. Something that made his guts stir, made them twist. What was it? Eh? What was it? He felt his heart lurch. Oh Jesus God no. He stumbled as he turned. It wasn’t the sound of silence, but the sound of absence.
Oh fuck, Missy. No!
And Missy’s head went under just as he reached the water’s edge. And then there was nothing. And the sound came back and it was loud because it was him and he was screaming, but there was no one else around.
And overhead, a linnet flew free with a chest full of song.
13
Marvellous awoke suddenly. She couldn’t breathe. Outside, the wind chimes were tinkling, the wind picking up. She fumbled with the matches, managed to light a candle. She slid from her bed and looked out. The sun was failing and clouds were racing; the light dark light of an angry whiplashed sky. She put on her oilskin and left the caravan. Strong smell of decomposing weed full on the nose, silage too from across the valley. She heard the beat of wood; saw the boathouse door flapping in the wind. She stood on the riverbank, her crabber jigging high on the spume. Something was beginning. A crow crowed from the opposite bank. The end was beginning.
III
14
Drake opened his eyes. Dusk or dawn, he wasn’t sure which, the birds were giddy. Leaves were pressed close to his face and he felt the crawl of damp and insects. He could smell sick, the faint whiff of faeces. He had a body that couldn’t move, his breathing was shallow. He didn’t know why he was crying and could only think that it was because he was still alive.
There was no strength in his arms. Wondered if his bones were broken, the ones in his legs, too. His throat sore, his arse sticky but he felt no shame. The temperature was dropping. He would feel warm soon – that’s what happens with the deepest cold – he would feel warm and then there would be nothing and he would dissolve into mulch and maybe from his remains a tree would grow. A willow. Something good. The wind gathered and moved through the branches and it sounded like the sea. He drifted off with the rise and fall of waves.
He had come silently in the end. There were no starfish, no rumour, no birdcall, no footfall, his pain had made him invisible. But Marvellous had heard his trespass through the bare prongs of trees and had found him conversing with Death. She had held him and rocked him and had given him her breath. She had dragged him down to an elder bush to shelter him from the gathering wind, and so exhausted was she now that she could do little more than sit in her caravan and stare at the door, wondering about the fractured life that lay outside. She buttoned up her oilskin and pulled her hat down low. She took a swig of sloe gin and held a flame to the wick of a hurricane lamp. Her caravan flared with light.
Darkness now. So it had been dusk. Drake listened to the screech of an owl, relentless in its call. He called back but the effort made him cough again and he held his hand against his neck. It was the light he saw first. Saw the creature coming towards him with a lantern. Big eyes like an owl, and yellow feathers, that’s what he saw: an owl in a hat. He thought he was laughing but felt as if he was dying.
Hello, Mrs Owl, he said weakly.
The old woman put down the lamp and helped him to sit up.
I’ve been waiting for you, she said quietly. Waiting a long time now.
Sorry, owl.
The owl went ahead with the lamp, she gave him her stick and it took his weight and led him through the woods, until the ground fell away to a river. The shallows flickered like a million stars and he had to shield his eyes because of a majesty he simply thought was bright. The owl put down her lamp on the mooring stone. Stand still, she said. She began to unbutton his shirt. Arms, she whispered. She dropped the shirt on to the ground. She unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his fly and helped him to slip out of his trousers, out of his underpants. The smell of shit hit his nose. Owl didn’t flinch. He kept his head down so she couldn’t see his tears. His penis looked small and frightened and wormlike against his thigh. He cupped his hand around it, didn’t want owl to see it.
Owl took off her yellow coat. She had long waders that came up to her breast. Clever owl, he thought. Come, she said, and took his hand and led him down into the sandy shallows. He shivered. He stopped as the water lapped his ankles. No more, he said. A bit further, she said. But he would go no further than his knees. He stood, shaking, terrified, one hand tight under his armpit, the other holding his shrunken balls.
Fear rose as bile and sick burned his throat as he retched and spat what he could into the river. His chin and chest glistened with pukefilth. Owl handed him a bar of soap. He took it without looking at her and wet it. He crouched down into the water and rubbed the soap hard between his hands and soon it lathered and the smell dug into him and he couldn’t remember the name of the smell – it was violet – but it was too good for him, that he knew. He washed himself all over once, all over twice, rubbed that lather into his hair, into his mouth and spat. He rinsed the soap and handed it back to owl.
He crouched down up to his chest, and watched the soap scum float downstream. Come here, said owl. He waded carefully over to her and held on tightly to the grass bank. Lean forward, she said and he did. She cupped her hands and poured water over his head. Rinsed his hair. He took his hands away from the bank to cover his eyes.
The blanket felt rough but was warm upon his skin. Owl led the way, lantern aloft. He heard her wheezing. Old owl, he thought. They stumbled along the riverbank following the scent of wood smoke until a boathouse blocked their path. They climbed up and around it until the ground leant towards an open doorway lit by a second oil lamp.
In, said owl.
In the hearth a fire burned steadily, a cooking pot suspended over the flames. Firelight settled on his skin. There was a bed made up and on the bed there was a pile of clothes: heavy woollen trousers – like sailors’ trousers – socks, linen shirt, jumpers smelling of salt and lanolin. A pair of leather boots, newly polished. Pyjamas. Underpants.
They belonged to a friend. Similar size, said owl, untying the ragged bandage that had held her hat in place. She placed the hat on a chair. He saw newspaper stuffed around the rim, and some of the print had come off on her forehead, words like war, waste, peace, health. He lay on the bed and drifted off.
The sound of cooking brought him back to the room and he watched her by the hearth ladling soup. She carried a bowl over to the bed.
Kiddley broth, she said. Eat, she said.
She helped him sit up, placed a pillow behind his back, said, There, that’s better. She sat on the bed and spooned the liquid into his mouth and he ate quickly. Near the end he lifted the bowl by himself and drank the buttery, peppery dregs. He lowered the bowl and handed it to her. Rivulets of broth streamed from his chin down to his neck. She took a rag and wiped carefully around the bruising that was now encircling. He didn’t look at her. She took the bowl and shuffled back over to the fire. She came back and handed him an earthenware mug. Warm ale. She noticed the shake in his hand. She made one for herself, too, and they drank in silence.
He could taste the rum hiding at the bottom of the ale. His stomach settled, and there was a coating of sweat upon his skin. The old woman knew that was the fear com
ing out.
It’s my job now to take care of you, she said. Don’t do that again.
Do what? said Drake.
And the old owl stared at him. He couldn’t see her eyes, her eyes were alight with the reflection of the fire. And she stopped to think because she wanted to choose her words carefully. It took a little while because her mind was leaky.
It’s precious, she said. And it’s all you have.
He couldn’t look at her because he was ashamed, and he lay back down and turned away as the fire and the old woman kept good watch over him. She didn’t take her eyes away from him, couldn’t take her eyes away from him. She guarded him like a treasured egg.
15
For days Drake drifted in and out of sleep, the change of light the only sense of time passing.
Sometimes he would wake and feel the old woman’s hand across his brow, sometimes he felt the spoon upon his lips and he imagined himself a mouth, feeding, never talking, just a great big mouth.
And sometimes he awoke to murmurs throughout the night. Not the flight of birds or the language of insects, but words, as prayers, racing across the landscape like waves longing to break. The old woman said it was the chatter of saints rising from the earth.
What do they talk about? he asked.
This and that, said the old woman. Mostly the weather.
And sometimes in the cracks of loneliness that appeared between the old woman’s coming and going, he gave into the spasms that took hold of his legs, the icy fear that gripped his guts the moment Missy’s head went under the water. He’d tried to save her, by God he’d tried. Had reached out to her, water up to his waist and he’d half expected her to rise again, shoot up like one of them dolphins at a show and laugh at him, saying, Fooled you! Didn’t think I’d really do it, did you?! And he would have screamed at her, called her stuff, might even have hit her, and that would have been it for them, but at least she would have been alive. But she didn’t rise. And the ripples that splayed out from her head were like the last of her thoughts, pulsing weakly, until there was nothing left of her except a pair of shoes placed neatly by the shoreline. Oh Missy, why’d you do it?
No answer, but sleep.
16
Come twilight, calm. Attempts to piece together the jagged puzzle of Time Lost between London and the boathouse.
He’d been so boozed he could barely remember crossing the wide estuary, the jolting movement of the train, leaving the destruction of Plymouth for swathes of green on the other side. How they’d let him on the train, God only knew, but he’d always been a trouble-free drunk, at least he had that going for him.
He’d hid inside the lavatory to drink. Nice. Came out only when visions of Missy had been coerced into oblivion, and then he took to standing in the corridor smoking cigarette after cigarette to dispel the stink that had lodged in his nose. He remembered a card game but doubted he would have played, he wasn’t that lucky any more. Not since war had made cards dirty.
He got off the train a stop too early and couldn’t find his hat; the beautiful French hat that made him look so handsome and a cut above what he knew himself to be. But when the train pulled away, there it was: waving from a window amidst a torrent of jeers.
And then he was walking, fields either side of him, with a vast horizon of nothingness ahead of him. And he begged for a sign and he was given a sign and the sign said: STOP HERE. So that’s what he did. And then there was silence. A drowning silence that poured through his ears and fell into his lungs. The sound of a heartbeat – his – distant and fading, until everything went dark and he had woken up in a wood. Being cared for by an old woman who he thought was an owl.
Marvellous slipped out into the rare dry night and left the young man sleeping. Instructions to take a glass of bitters had been left on the table next to his bed. She stripped at the mooring stone and glided over to the island. Pulled herself up the muddy bank and rested against a gravestone. Clouds raced east, driven by the briny Atlantic breath, and under a glimmer of stars her body glowed, as if she was a ghost rising for a last look – just one last look – to see what it had all been about. She stood up and brushed leaves from her bottom. She padded gently into the church, the matches already on the altar waiting. She cupped her hand around the flame as a gust blew through the broken window. She lowered the glass guard around the candle only when she was sure that light had taken hold.
She looked out towards the boathouse. Saw the shifting smudge of his shadow against the flickering orange fire-lit walls. Up at last. She felt anxious. She walked out into the heavy night, dived into the river, unsure who she was any more.
Drake sat up in the chill fug and pulled a sweater over his clothes. Orange embers pulsed faintly in the hearth. He rolled his legs slowly from the bed, the pain in his side not sharp but still there. On the table was the small glass of bitters the old woman had told him to take. He drank it and grimaced.
He held on to the wall and pulled himself upright. He felt dizzy immediately and clung to the plaster, clammy handprints marking his journey to the double doors that led to the balcony beyond. He peeled back the shutters. The joints were stuffed with paper to stop the rattling, and he pulled the scraps away and opened the doors on to a star-filled midnight sky. An owl hooted.
The smell of salt was strong and the water was high, lapping confidently against the pylons below. He noticed the flicker of candlelight in the church opposite. He thought he saw a shadow move past the window but realised it could only be the movement of the trees, no one could get over there now. Somewhere overhead a robin sang. Not that he knew it was a robin because to him it was just a bird, just as he didn’t know it was the old woman at first because she carved through the water like a creature. Only when the moonlight caught the white of her hair did he realise it was her. He crouched down and pressed his face to the rail. He watched her pass in front of the island, saw the pale shadow below the surface. She could have been a seal, there was a splash – like the whip of a tail – before she disappeared. He began to panic and stood up to see her better. He counted the seconds and thought of Missy. No, there she was. She had surfaced next to a boat wreck further downriver by a sandbar, now rested her head against its wooden side.
She swam back and rose in the shallows and that was when he saw she was naked. She pulled herself up on to the shore into the lamplight that bled upon the mooring stone. He didn’t look away. He studied her because he had never seen a body that old before with all its creases, all its wounds, all its flesh. He felt embarrassed, felt leery, but he couldn’t look away. He watched her raise her arms, dry her breasts, between her legs. She stopped, stood quite still in the cold night air as if she could smell his gaze. He wondered how many memories and years had nestled down in that flesh. Wondered who and what it had loved. Who had loved it? Wondered why she had never given up like he had. Why he had given up so readily. So fucking easily. His shame burned.
17
Rain hadn’t stopped for days and nights and the boathouse stank of salt and damp and Drake couldn’t get warm. He awoke to sounds: a crackling fire, a pan busy on its chain, an old woman’s night-time shuffle. He watched her cook but he didn’t move. The pot looked heavy and once he thought she might drop it on to the iron rest, but he didn’t move. He watched her ladle out the stew. Fucking stew again. She came towards him, a bowl of fragrant steam cradled in her knotty hands.
Here, she said, and took a spoon out from her jacket pocket. She sat on the stool next to his bed. You look better, she said.
He nodded and continued to eat. And you? he said, between mouthfuls.
Me? she said.
Yes.
I’m well.
Where am I? asked Drake.
In the boathouse.
What boathouse?
My boathouse.
And who are you? he said.
I’
m no one, she said, quietly: a voice more breeze than voice.
What’s your name? he said, and she told him.
Marvellous what? he asked.
Ways.
Drake spooned a large dollop of stew into his mouth. That’s quite unusual, he said.
Apparently, she said.
I once knew someone called Banjo.
And could he play?
Not really, said Drake.
That’s even more unusual, said Marvellous.
That’s what I thought.
And he carried on eating and they fell back into a shared silence.
My name’s Francis Drake. People usually call me Drake.
Fancy that, said Marvellous.
I’ve heard the jokes.
What jokes? said Marvellous.
That I’ve never gone far and I hate water.
I don’t think that’s very funny, I think that’s a pity, quite frankly, said Marvellous. You know, it’s a dying art, naming well. My father gave me my name. He travelled far, and he travelled to places where names mattered and he brought my name back from across the sea and put my name in this shell box together with my calling.
And she lifted a small box away from her chest for him to see. Here, she said. It was my mother’s. My mother was a mermaid.
Drake stopped eating. Oh Jesus, here we go, he thought, his ears suddenly alive to the wind outside hurling the rain against the smooth slats. He rested the empty bowl on his lap. He was deliberate with his actions, anything so as not to look at the old girl’s face. He reached for his cigarettes and lighter, he blew a stream of smoke towards the ceiling, aware that the old woman’s eyes were locked on to his. A mermaid, eh? he eventually said.
Yes, said Marvellous. Apparently she was so beautiful that even waves drew back to look at her, and Marvellous got up and took his bowl back to the hearth.