A Dark Devotion

by Clare Francis

  I said hastily, ‘I should have spelt it out. I’m sorry. Yes…’ Slowing down again, getting it right, I recounted carefully, ‘Veronica said that you had married Grace with an eye to her money and had then gone and spent most of it.’

  Abandoning his food, Will put down his fork and pushed the plate away. ‘What was I meant to have spent it on?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think she would,’ he said scathingly. ‘She’d have difficulty in listing my extravagances.’ He sat back in his chair and fixed me with an open gaze. ‘Grace had something like a hundred thousand pounds when we married. It came from an aunt, I believe. She spent some of it on the house, on the redecorations and so on. I don’t know how much. She didn’t want to tell me.’ His mouth twitched slightly at the memory. ‘We agreed a budget and she overspent it. She wouldn’t say how far over she’d gone, but she used her own money to pay the difference. It was her idea. I mean, I didn’t ask her to.’ Another memory caught him and sent his gaze to the window. ‘What was left after that—well, I assume it’s still invested. But I really don’t know. It’s her money.’

  ‘Did the police ask you about your financial situation?’

  ‘Yup. Asked if we had money worries.’

  ‘And what did you tell them?’

  ‘I said we were managing.’ He grinned bleakly, without humour. ‘Which wasn’t strictly true.’

  ‘I should have said straight away that I know about the Gun Marshy and I’m very sorry. More sorry than I can say.’

  He gave a slow shrugs he dropped his eyes. ‘These things have to be done sometimes.’

  I searched his face, but if he felt bitter at losing the Gun he was hiding it well. Only a flickering muscle in his cheek betrayed the slightest tension.

  He glanced inside the coffee pot and, pushing back his chair, took it to the counter.

  I said, ‘There was no way to avoid selling the marsh?’

  He plopped the kettle onto the Aga. ‘Apparently not.’ And something in his tone told me he didn’t want to discuss it.

  I took the breakfast plates to the sink. It was impossible not to think of Grace standing where I was standing, talking to Will on a thousand sunnier days. In my imagination she looked immaculate even first thing in the morning.

  ‘So,’ Will declared with brittle amusement, ‘what other crimes am I supposed to have committed? I’m sure Veronica wouldn’t let me stop at lies and making Grace unhappy and running through her money. Hardly a start, really.’

  But he didn’t want to hear any more, he was tired of it all, I could see it in his face. I remembered Veronica’s final salvoes, the sinister hold Will was meant to have had over Grace, the freedom he was meant to have denied her, and as I put the plates in the dishwasher I said, ‘There was nothing else.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I should count myself lucky.’ He measured coffee into the pot, then, spoon in mid-air, halted suddenly. ‘No. Let’s go out.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Out.’ He chucked the spoon back into the coffee tin, jammed the lid on, and, already on the move, tipped his head towards the door. ‘Come on.’

  Caught up by his sense of urgency I didn’t ask where we were going, or why, but pulled on my jacket and followed him outside into the freshness of the morning. Pausing only to take some boots from the car, I fell into step beside him as he strode towards the marshes.

  The boat trickled across the creek towards me, gliding over a perfect unbroken mirror, carried forward by its own mysterious momentum. Will, standing in the stern, rotated the scull a degree and the nose swung gently round to bring the boat neatly alongside the two planks forming the narrow jetty on which I stood. Will grasped one of the piles to halt the last of the boat’s progress and, lowering the scull, reached his other hand to me. Taking it, I stepped down into the boat. I aimed for the centre line but my foot landed a few inches short. The boat lurched, and I with it.

  ‘Oops.’ I reached for the far gunwale.

  Will laughed, ‘Forgotten it all, Ali?’

  All.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  I settled myself on the thwart, facing forward, and this time I made sure I was dead on the centre line so that I didn’t unbalance the boat. The boat was longer than Pod and broader, a flat-bottomed oyster boat.

  Will pushed off and the boat began to sway gently to the rhythmic motion of his scull. Neither of us spoke. The only sounds were the chuckling of the water under the bow and the whispering of the wake and the occasional creak of the oar in the rowlock. The rain had stopped, leaving a mist that hung on the air in a heavy curtain, blotting out the horizon so that the greyness of the marsh merged imperceptibly with the greyness of the sky. As we travelled through this silent world, enclosed in a soft globe of land and water, I felt the extraordinary sense of space and distance that I had felt in this place as a child. It was as though we were sliding through a vast and mysterious universe which had no end.

  Reaching a bend, the surface of the water was corrugated by ripples, marking a stronger cur-rent, and Will had to work the scull a little harder. The gentle roll of the boat, the murmurings of the water, were like a lullaby, and I let them carry me forward in a kind of dream.

  A bank rose darkly out of the mist to our right: the embankment marking the edge of the Gun Marsh. We weren’t far from the sluice I had passed the other day, and I wondered if it was the sluice which had been damaged, or—Edward’s emphatic voice reverberated in my mind—opened deliberately.

  I saw the break in the bank firsts then the curving brickwork marking the tunnel, and above it the sturdy wooden frame with the slots that housed the guillotine-like gate. As we drew level I looked into the tunnel arch and saw the top of the gate with the tall threaded shaft above. I kept looking until we were past and the sluice was hidden again by the bank and the mist. Swinging my legs over the thwart to face Will, I found him staring back over his shoulder, the oar motionless in his hand. When he turned round again I asked lightly, ‘Was that the one which was damaged?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It’s all right now?’

  He nodded again and as he looked into the distance his eyes were unreadable. He began to scull again, moving his weight slightly from foot to foot as he wove the oar blade through the water in a flowing figure-of-eight motion.

  ‘How was it damaged exactly?’ In the silence my voice seemed too loud.

  ‘Oh, one of the slots gave way,’ he replied abstractedly.

  I absorbed this slowly. ‘There was no question of intentional damage?’

  Suddenly I had his full attention. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. Vandalism?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And it couldn’t have been opened deliberately?’

  The muscles in his cheeks began to work furiously, he threw me a violent stare. ‘Where did you get that idea from?’ When I didn’t reply he said just as forcefully, ‘Is that what people are saying?’

  ‘No. Not at all. No, just…’ Having got this far, I told him the rest. ‘It was Edward’s idea.’

  ‘Edward.’

  I was regretting having raised the subject. ‘He seemed to think—I’m not sure why exactly—that both gates had been opened deliberately.’

  ‘How could he say that?’ Will exclaimed, looking terribly upset. ‘How could he possibly have any idea of what really happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, it’s rubbish! He’s talking rubbish! It all happened at night. By morning I’d repaired the blasted thing. Of course he didn’t see the damage to the gate! No one saw the damage! He’s just making trouble, for God’s sake. Deliberate…?’ Words failed him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I should never have mentioned it. I’m sorry.’ And saying this, I was apologizing as much for Edward as myself.

  Will lowered the oar and, letting the boat drifts sank onto the aft thwart, his knees almost touching mine, and gave a sharp sigh.

  ‘Don’t t
ake any notice of Edward. You know how he is.’

  ‘But people believe these things, don’t they? It only takes a rumour or two. Has he been telling people this stuff? Has he been spreading it around?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can ask him.’

  ‘You can tell him from me that he’s talking absolute rubbish,’ he declared solemnly. ‘Rubbish. ‘

  ‘I’ll tell him.’ For the little good it was likely to do, though I didn’t say that.

  The boat drifted into the marsh with an imperceptible bump and stuck there. Still agitated, Will jammed his arms onto his knees. ‘Sometimes I think it’s all a bad dream, Ali. That I’ll wake up and she’ll be back. Other times…’ He fixed me with his dark passionate eyes. ‘Other times I think she’ll never be found.’

  ‘If it counts for anything, the majority of people missing in these sort of circumstances get found before too long.’

  He grasped doubtfully at this. ‘They do?’

  ‘Found,’ I repeated, meaning: one way or the other.

  He understood me and looked quickly away.

  ‘The people who aren’t found are generally the ones who don’t want to be found.’

  He gave a curious half-formed smile. ‘Not Grace. She’d never choose to be out of circulation for long.’

  A bird began to call, a wild goose. It couldn’t have been far away, but although the sky was brightening and the mist gradually dissolving I couldn’t see it. Another call came from further away, echoing eerily across the watery landscape, and then a great cacophony of screeches rose up, as though the entire flock were squabbling.

  I’d forgotten what a noise they make.’

  The boat rocked slightly as Will stood up. ‘Thousands of brent this year. Most farmers would say far too many. They’re all over the wheat. Some people are running their own private pest-control programmes.’ He raised his eyebrows conspiratorially. ‘During the shooting season, of course.’ He picked up the oar and offered it to me. ‘Want a go?’

  I laughed, ‘I think I’ve forgotten how.’

  He shook his head in mock disapproval, his eyes sparkled briefly. ‘City life. No good for you, Ali.’

  ‘No good for anyone.’

  He pushed the boat away from the bank and began to scull us further along the creek. After some time we passed the second sluice, lower built than the firsts with a smaller frame and less brickwork. This gate also appeared sturdy.

  I wondered if Will was making for anywhere in particular, if this trip was part of a preplanned search pattern. Whatever reason we were here, I was happy to drifts remembering a time when we had come this way in Pod, on the lookout for feathers and driftwood in the high summer heat of a scorching July. I must have been thirteen then, Will sixteen. It had been our last summer of unconditional contentment, the last summer I had lived under the illusion that such simple joys went on for ever. I had missed most of the following summer with glandular fever, and the beginning of the next too, when I was sent to France on a miserable exchange visit. Returning, I had found Will working his college vacation on the farm and spending his evenings in the pubs with people of his own age. When we walked the marshes we no longer talked about oyster-catchers and Pod, but the arms race and the economic benefits of vegetarianism. There had been moments of happiness then too, if one is ever really happy in the full nervousness of adolescence.

  The storm came the following winter: the relentless northerly wind and spring tide that inundated the four cottages at the edge of the marsh. After that, nothing was the same again, because it was then that I first dared to hope that I might not be too young for Will after all.

  The geese, having quietened down, put up one last noisy protest. Now I could see three or four heads above the reeds, swimming along a parallel but invisible stretch of water.

  ‘This place hasn’t changed a bit,’ I breathed aloud. ‘Do you bring Pod here still?’

  ‘In the summer. With Charlie.’

  I remembered the photograph in Will’s office, the little green boat, the child’s face. ‘And in winter?’

  ‘We walk. When we can.’

  ‘The winds,’ I murmured.

  ‘The wilder the better.’

  He laughed a little, and I laughed with him.

  ‘Charlie loves it too, when it’s wild?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said with pride. Then, as if to answer my unasked question, he added in a lower voice: ‘Grace isn’t so keen, of course.’

  ‘A summer person?’

  ‘An indoor person. Never liked the marshes.’ A pause. ‘You’ve never thought of living in the country?’ And he was changing the subject.

  ‘Not possible with my job.’

  ‘Don’t know how you can stand it in London.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad. There are compensations.’

  He grunted doubtfully.

  I asked, ‘You never go there?’

  ‘Not if I can possibly avoid it. All that noise. All those people. And the begging, and the young people living roughs and the old people standing in bus queues in midwinter. Not a place where I can ever feel that we’re making a good job of the world.’

  ‘But some people are stuck with it. They can’t escape.’

  ‘So you represent them, Ali. You try to get them off.’

  ‘Ah…I may try to get them off—and sometimes, of course, I do—but most of the time I don’t change anything, really. Just postpone it. Stop them from making things worse for themselves. They’re very good at that, being their own worst enemies.’

  He was quiet for a moment. ‘In what way?’

  Oh, saying they know nothing about a fight when they’re covered in someone else’s blood. That’s a favourite, despite a zero success rate. One guy even tried to argue that his victim’s broken cheekbone was self-inflicted.’

  Will made a sound of disbelief. ‘All a long way from here.’

  Looking up at him, I smiled. ‘A long way.’ After a moment I asked, ‘But Grace…she enjoys London?’ I was careful to use the present tense.

  His mood shifted, the life went out of his face. ‘She likes shopping, seeing people. But she hardly ever persuades me to go. I’m not a one for events and rushing about.’

  ‘But you have a busy social life here?’

  Will’s eyes flashed. ‘Well, I’d avoid that too, given half a chance. Same people, same gossips only the houses alternate a bit. Left to my own devices I’d probably be a recluse. So it’s good for me, really, to get dragged out now and then.’

  The creek had divided. We were heading away from the Gun embankment, along a narrower tributary which led into the wilderness of the salt-marshes. The mist had almost vanished, carried away on a gathering breeze, and now the horizon was somewhere on the edge of the world, beyond the dunes.

  Suddenly there was a splash and we were turning rapidly; Will was paddling the boat round in a tight circle. ‘Stupid to come. I don’t know why I thought—’ He was in a hurry, almost a panic. ‘Look, I’ve got to get back. I don’t know why I thought—’ Again he didn’t finish but began to scull vigorously back the way we had come, the boat surging forward until it seemed to skid across the surface of the water. After a while Will muttered, I’d forgotten. It’s coming up to high springs. The tide’s falling fast.’

  The water was still high and showing no sign of falling, but said, ‘Of course,’ and was careful not to interrupt his thoughts until we had reached the rickety jetty once more.

  Maggie had a visitor. A smart black four-wheel drive with high sides and fat corrugated wheels was parked beside her green Citroen in front of Reed Cottage. Ringing lightly on the bell, I heard voices stop abruptly. When Maggie appeared in the doorway she seemed startled, almost dazed.

  ‘Bad moment?’ I asked.

  ‘No. No, come in, Alex.’ She accepted my kiss impassively then stood back to let me in with the same slightly bemused expression on her face.

  I had never been inside the cottage before, but the combination of plain wall
s and old scrubbed furniture and bright ceramics made it instantly identifiable as Maggie’s: the Marsh House of old transcribed onto a minor scale. To the left was a low-ceilinged dining room, the table cluttered with papers and plants and a grooming cat, while straight ahead at the end of a short passage was a glimpse of Maggie’s bright blue handpainted china arranged over kitchen shelves, and to the right a sitting room containing the familiar blend of faded rugs and wine-coloured sofas. Maggie stepped towards the sitting room and said vaguely, ‘I wonder if you remember…’

  Maggie’s visitor was standing by the hearth. A well-built man in his thirties with a round face and confident eyes, wearing a beige cashmere sweater and matching trousers, he had the look of a successful businessman on his day off. I had no sense of recognition.

  He reached out a hand. ‘Barry Holland.’

  My memory did strange tricks, trying to marry this affluent well-fed figure with the scrawny teenager who used to hang around the village in tatty ill-fitting clothes.

  ‘Good Lord,’ I said.

  He smiled easily. ‘Bit of a transformation.’

  I could only smile in agreement. ‘Life has treated you well, then?’

  ‘Oh, can’t complain. Got into trouble when I was twenty. Did twelve months inside,’ he announced, with the air of someone who liked to get this in the open right from the outset. ‘But then I got started in the promotion business—bands, groups, gigs of all sorts. And since then—yes—life has been good to me.’ He said it with consideration and thankfulness, and I found myself warming to him. ‘Always travelling, that’s the only problem. But I try to get back when I can. I’ve just bought a place up Salterns Lane here.’

  The more I recalled of Barry Holland, the more extraordinary his metamorphosis became. He had been what my mother called an unprepossessing youths watchful and sullen, with nothing to say for himself and what was generally acknowledged to be a large chip on his shoulder. I seemed to remember that his father had been unemployed for many years while his mother had been a barmaid at the Deepwell Arms. Something had happened, a separation, a divorce, something that had taken Barry’s father away. Recalling this, more fragments surfaced, of Barry’s lanky figure hanging around the edges of the marshes, of people branding him a truant and no-goods of early brushes with the law. And now, twenty years later, he stood before me, a great rock of a man, assured, well-groomed, shining with the vigour that money can bring.