Big Low Tide

by Candy Neubert

  Seren is the book imprint of

  Poetry Wales Press Ltd

  57 Nolton Street, Bridgend,Wales, CF31 3AE www.serenbooks.com

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  © Candy Neubert 2012 ISBN 978-1-85411-583-6

  The right of Candy Neubert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This book is a work of fiction. Like most fiction it is taken from life; for this reason names and details of characters have been altered to protect actual persons.

  Inner design and typesetting by books@lloydrobson.com

  Printed by Akcent Media Ltd, Czech Republic.

  Ebook conversion by Flo Reynolds.

  The publisher works with the financial assistance of theWelsh Books Council.

  part one

  one

  Brenda will not stir for a while. She works lunchtimes and at night behind the bar at The Navigator and afterwards she lets her mind process the voices of drunken men. As she sleeps, the latch drops at Number 7 next door and Mrs Pickery emerges, straightening her headscarf.

  Mrs Pickery has a determined walk for such a little woman. She is as tough as a hawser. She is going to work in the fields, never mind that she was sixty, July gone. That is how she says it: July gone. She has her flask and a sandwich in a plastic bag and she looks straight ahead as she passes Chandra’s Superette.

  Mr Chandramohan sees her out of the corner of his eye. She has never bought a thing in his shop and he knows she never will. He is the infidel. On account of his name and the little red circle on the forehead of his wife and the fathomless look in his eyes.

  Mrs Pickery knows for an absolute fact that Mr Chandramohan displays girlie magazines on his counter next to the till, right where old ladies have to pick up their change. She is not a prude, but what’s not right is not right. She shops carefully every Saturday with her daughter and if she runs out of something midweek, it’s too bad. Chandra’s may be open from six until nine every day but there is nothing a body can’t do without.

  Mr Chandramohan lifts his eyes again as a man steps up from the pavement into his shop.

  – good morning, Mr Hamon. What can we do for you this fine morning?

  – twenty Bensons, mate.

  Mr Chandramohan slides the packet across the glossy smile of a girl in red underwear. Franklin Hamon pulls off the wrapper and lets it spiral to the floor.

  – gis a light, then.

  He takes the offered matches, lights up, pulls a mouthful of smoke into his lungs and thumps his chest appreciatively.

  – nice win, that Prince of Simla. Little darlin’. Had a fiver both ways.

  – indeed, I remember. Your luck is changing, Mr Hamon. Your ship has come in, you might say.

  – ha, ha, very funny. Chalk it up, mate.

  Franklin steps out into the street again, unshaven, woollen-hatted and newly charged with tobacco. He takes the same route as Mrs Pickery, but she is already at the bus stop and seated at the front of a number eleven. Franklin crosses the square, not bothering to look out for traffic, for there is none yet, and lopes off along the harbour embankment to wait for the boat.

  _____

  It would be fine to say that the island is volcanic, and had a dramatic beginning. The truth is that it was once a large hill, the butt end of an escarpment. Or maybe I am muddling the facts, for now I remember finding shells deep in the soil of a field and being told that the sea had once covered that very spot. Perhaps the earth heaved the island up like a blister.

  It stands in the Channel, worn by the tides running this way and that over the Swinge, night and day.

  We’ve approached from the sea like seagulls, coming in after breakfasting at sunrise with the boats. Morning Cloud and Island Beauty – they are still out there somewhere, chugging around the reefs with the light slick on their oily wakes. Who would look twice at the gulls, squawking into the air and heading for land? To be as anonymous as a seagull is a fine and rare thing to be, in island terms.

  The seven o’clock flight from the mainland is also cruising in, but it has further to descend and much circling to do above the airport. We have landed first.

  Here is the harbour, Port Victoria. The whole island shares its name, for the harbour is the heart and soul and the mouth. The land is fed by way of this harbour mouth, men and provender travel this way and the streets of the town digest them. The fishermen slap the flabby spoils of the sea into crates and those spoils are lifted out, packed with ice, into the market stalls. Coins rattle into the pockets of the fishmonger and tonight into the purse of his wife. Tomorrow, into the till at the grocery.

  The island is an amoeba with one mouth sucking at the nutrients outside itself.

  The harbour master stands in his office, glassed in on three sides as on the bridge of a ship. The water smacks the great walls down there so that at times he thinks himself at sea again, not anchored to this solid buttress at all.

  We have passed the harbour master, drinking his coffee thoughtfully and gazing into space; passed the lighthouse and the old castle and the statue of Queen Victoria bearing her sceptre and crown and her heavy stone cheeks. We have passed above the market square and Chandra’s and the bakery, up Turkenwell and The Steps and here we have paused. We can see straight into Flat 5, where a net curtain is blowing sideways from the open window and Brenda Duncan is lying fast asleep.

  Her face is pretty but we are not seeing her at her best. Her mouth vibrates with a little snore. Her brown hair is thrown out behind her and the skin of her arm glows in the yellow light filling the room. The light centres on a goldfish bowl on the dresser; between the pots and creams there is bowl of dusty water and a fish with protruding eyes swims around and round.

  two

  There goes the number eleven bus, cresting the hill. It is barely seven fifteen, a time of deliveries from the bakery, an opening of garage doors and a moving of cows back to pasture after milking. A May morning full of promise, even the little cloud resting briefly on the airport.

  In the parish of St Stephen’s three miles away, where the land dips west again into the Atlantic, a farmhouse sits in its grey granite walls; Les Puits, home of the Duncans. Except for the Long Meadow, the surrounding acres are all leased out now to the neighbours. The driveway is tangled with weed; the garden straggles across the yard.

  Peter Duncan has kissed his sons and reminded them to clean their teeth. He has wheeled his bicycle out of the potting shed and set off towards the Vine Farm. He skims round the corner and stands on the pedals to clear the rise on the other side. The bay mare from the Corbin stables barrels through a gap in the hedge, alarmed by man and bicycle as she is every morning, breaking into a skitter across the field.

  Peter hasn’t a thought in his head. He swings into the yard ahead of Mrs Pickery, who will hang her coat on a nail and have her overall buttoned up smack on half past seven. Jack Vine rattles towards them on a tractor, mud flaking in all directions with the turning of the wheels. Jack is in a hurry; he’s a farmer. The morning is halfway over.

  – morning, Mrs Pickery. Morning, Peter. Carrots to lift in number four; load the bins on the trailers, will you? Wait a minute. Clean up some of that lettuce in the cooler, Mrs Pickery, please. Chap coming at nine for six trays. Make it eight. Hitch up the trailer, Peter. We’ll load up at the corner.

  His last words dis
appear as he revs the engine into life. Mrs Pickery takes a knife from the pocket of her overall, the bone handle snug into her palm, the blade honed paper thin. She shakes a head of lettuce, slices the muddy end to the ground with the outer leaves, and tucks it into the corner of a tray. Her brown eyes shine as her fingers shake the leaves, slice and tuck. She is thinking about the first week of her annual leave, due Monday next.

  _____

  Back at Les Puits, the kitchen is dim and cool. The clock on the wall clicks softly like a tongue in a mouth, and the cold tap over the sink drips a little slower than that. It has dripped for years and the stone sink is stained green on that side. Patrick Duncan, aged seven, stands quietly for a moment. It’s a short moment but it’s big. When he goes to bed tonight he’ll be quiet again but the night quiet is different.

  He can hear the doves up in the roof; their throats wobble. His throat won’t wobble. The doves aren’t fed any more but they still live there. Patrick runs his hand over his hair to smooth it down. It is curly and thick like his father’s and wet enough to push flat. He wishes his hair was straight like Danny’s; Danny is lucky.

  He takes the cornflakes out of the bottom cupboard and the bowls and spoons and the milk from the fridge, carefully. He doesn’t want his aunt to wake up but she never does at breakfast time. He hisses up the stairs for Danny to hurry, pours cereal into Danny’s bowl and some into his own.

  – come on.

  – I’m coming.

  – what’s up?

  – no towel.

  – doesn’t matter. Eat, eat.

  – there’s too much milk on.

  Danny squirms in his chair. He is four and undersized for his age and he has a small dark face like a fox. His brother has a face which is open and freckled but his is pointy and shut.The boys wash, dress, breakfast and leave the house every day without a grown-up. Their father is lifting carrots for Jack Vine and their mother is fast asleep in Flat 5, The Steps, in town. Aunt Elsa is asleep at the end of the corridor, in the room with the funny air in it.

  – give us the bowls. The milk.

  – can’t. I spill it.

  – give it here. Get the coats.

  – won’t, so.

  Patrick runs water into the bowls as his dad said. He takes his coat off the rack by the Aga where it hangs dry now and warm and slightly smelly. He looks for Danny’s. It’s behind the couch on the newspapers. The pile is as high as his knees; he checked two days ago. When it’s up to his tummy button something will happen. He picks up his satchel and both coats and steps from the kitchen straight into the yard, closing the door carefully.

  Danny has gone. His blue shirt is vanishing behind the last tree and Patrick has to run to grab him before he gets to the road.

  – lay off.

  – keep still, silly. There’s cars. They’ll mash you into red puddles and that’ll be your blood.

  – lay off me.

  – stop it. Mrs Vauquier’s coming and she’ll see your face blubby. Where’s your shoes? Oh shit.

  – shit, shit, shit.

  – don’t say that, it’s bad. Where’s your shoes?

  – don’t know, so.

  Patrick hesitates. He is gripping Danny’s shoulder in one hand and two coats in the other. He ought to find Danny’s shoes; Danny will catch a chill and die, probably. But Mrs Vauquier is coming to fetch him for nursery school and he must wait with him here at the corner in case a car comes. A car is coming. A green Ford; it’s her.

  – hello, boys. Hop in, Daniel.

  – Mrs Vauquier, he’s got no shoes.

  – I know. He left them in my car yesterday. Here they are. Lift your foot, Daniel. This one.

  Patrick watches her take Danny’s feet one by one into her lap and work the shoes into place and tie the laces. Mrs Vauquier is an angel from heaven. Mr Vauquier is the church warden and that’s why. Danny doesn’t know how lucky he is to go in her car; it’s like having straight hair. He doesn’t know he’s lucky, so it’s wasted.

  When the green Ford starts up again, Patrick heaves on his satchel and puts his head down and runs. He’s a commando running from tree to tree, dodging the bullets. Dodging his aunt’s eyes which might be following him from the upstairs windows.

  Long Meadow is behind the elms but she could see him through the branches so he keeps running. Over the bank he drops into the lane, safe. The bank is solid earth with grass and brambles and roots and worms and stones and she can’t see through it, no one can. He has barely a mile to walk to school. It’s far but its safe until after the pine trees, and then he has to look out for Melissa Corbin.

  three

  We’ve spent a long time with Patrick. His mother is asleep and she was meant to be the main character in the story, but maybe Patrick is, after all. It happens like that sometimes. Negligible things wrestle up to the surface and catch the light, and the things that seem important sink out of view.

  But Brenda is stirring. She’s half awake and planning things. Two ideas play in her thoughts out of long habit and each one depends upon the other.

  One is getting the children back. Not that they were ever taken away but she knows Peter will be sticky about it after all this time. The little dark one is not so bad now; she rather likes him. He looks like her. After all that trouble getting him born, she ought to have him.

  She needs money and a big house. That sister-in-law of hers is still living at Les Puits while she herself has this bedsit. The thought of it annoys her like an itch she can’t reach. Money and a big house. She may have the solution. Gerry Vine was in the bar last night and he could hardly keep his eyes off her.

  _____

  Franklin Hamon has been busy for the past hour and his digestive system is much restored. The Mary-Ann is berthed in the old marina and he helped his two brothers, who have worked the south coast right round to the tower since before dawn, to load up the crates. Michael and Johnny Hamon are wet to the skin under their yellow oilskins and they stink, but Franklin stinks more. He was too busy snoring off yesterday’s win to get up this morning and they have nothing to say to him. There was a good mackerel run, anyway. Should fetch a few quid.

  The crates are delivered to market, the lines are loosed and the Mary-Ann puttered back to her mooring. Decks cleared and lines coiled, just so. Not a man in the harbour would leave his boat in a mess. Fishermen anyway; yachties maybe.

  Franklin is rowing them back to the quay in the dinghy. He wants to row; it clears his head. Johnny has a wicker pot on his knee.

  – got lobster, eh?

  – yup.

  – big ’un?

  – yup.

  – sellin’ ’im?

  – nope. Givin’ ’im for the draw.

  – ah, yes.

  Michael holds a rung of the ladder while they climb out. Johnny slips the pot back into the sea under the dinghy and secures it with a rope. The lower rungs of the ladder are rusted and barnacled and water slops up behind them, shifting the green weed. At the end of the slipway the two of them shuck off their oilskins while Franklin slips a bowline through a ring. Then they head for the Yellow Box.

  Leaning against the walls at the top of the wharf, the café is a construction of wood and corrugated iron entirely painted yellow. Painted some while ago now, and peeled and faded, but nonetheless box-shaped and yellow. In the inner sanctum Mac the Knife stands in the ten-foot square from which he creates vast breakfasts for men of the sea and the occasional landlubber curious or lost.

  On this side of the hatch, large men sit at small tables. Every head is covered, flat caps or woollen. Gnarled hands grapple with knives and forks, beards are wiped, smoke exhaled companionably across the plates. Johnny Hamon pulls an extra chair forward and thumps Franklin on the back.

  – your shout, you lazy sod. Mine’s a special with two eggs.

  – an’ mine. An’ chips.

  – greedy bastards. Okay. ‘’Ere, Mac! Three specials double eggs one chips and three teas, strong.’

&
nbsp; – my tea ever weak? Eh?

  – keep yer ’air on. Sorry, mate – I forgot.

  Mac turns his bald head back to the fryer and grins. Franklin weaves back to the table, taking a circular route.

  – awroight, mon vieux?

  – awroight. Et tu bion?

  – weh.

  The Hamons sit back, light cigarettes, crossing their feet under the table, one over the other.

  – seein’ that Louise tonight, you?

  – might.

  – oh- ho.

  – might not.

  – mn.

  – know that lobster?

  – mm.

  – old Hen’ll be right chuffed, him.

  – ah. Worth a bit.

  – he’ll only give a fuckin’ ploughman’s for it, tho’.

  – ploughman’s hell. ’S worth four pints.

  – Brenda’ll get ’em.

  – ah.

  – know what?

  – eh?

  – Brenda don’t like ’em. Scairt of ’em.

  – so?

  – so what say we give her a surprise. Little present.

  – nice one. Yeh, tea’s ’ere. Push up. Chips, thank Christ. I’m starved.

  _____

  Up in Flat 5 the light has brightened and strengthened and lost its granular appearance. Brenda is stubbing out a cigarette as she gets out of bed. She pulls a dress off the rail and holds it against her nightie and then throws it down. She leans across the dressing table and peers into the mirror and pulls the skin at the edge of her eyes outwards, baring her teeth. She smiles a wide smile and then a little one. She narrows her eyes which are narrow anyway, and this gives her a knowing, feline expression.

  She sits and thinks into some place in the future.

  There’s a tramp on the steps and a knock on the door.

  – who is it?

  – us, Brend. Open up.