by James Long
Cumberlidge must have been content to submerge himself in naval discipline, though Ferney could just touch on the absent moods that would still capture him and get him into trouble. Only his voice made him popular with his fellows on board and though he hated the coarse tunes they wanted him to sing, those tunes were the price of his being left alone the rest of the time.
Sitting there undisturbed as the church clock ticked the day past him, Ferney could catch snatches of it – a wildly unsuitable life for this young man. Under ‘Black Dick’ Howe, he served in the flagship Queen Charlotte in the lackadaisical blockade of the French channel ports, rolling around at anchor in Torbay for much of the time. He fought in the battle that was finally joined with the demoralized navy of Villaret de Joyeuse. Ferney knew far more from the history books he’d read since then than he ever discovered by delving into the memories of this shadow creature. Cumberlidge’s perceptions had been dim at the best of times. The books said that the French officer corps had been decimated by the guillotine. Villaret de Joyeuse himself was a stripling lieutenant, promoted to admiral because he was one of the few to survive the purges. His response to his unskilled, poorly led crews in their ill-prepared ships was to have the decks painted red, blood-red, so that the inevitable carnage they would face in battle would show up less clearly. By this he hoped to avoid rapid demoralization.
In 1794 young James showed himself in his true useless colours. Large parts of France were in danger of starvation in the unruly aftermath of the Revolution and the French fleet was trying to bring a convoy of American grain through Howe’s blockade. Ferney could just recall disguising the fear in partly hysterical excitement on 28 May, when billowing sails first hardened through the early morning haze to show that they were closing on the French ships. They traded a few shots only, then darkness and bad weather stopped them. In a fully-remembered life, Ferney would have been scared in a wholly different way, he thought, terrified at the prospect of death there, burial at sea far from any retaining, restoring stone – death with no prospect except slow dissolution in the dark bottom mud of the cold Atlantic. As it was, that hardly seemed to matter to this youth who had no great interest in whether he lived or where he died.
The first of June was a calm, clear day and Black Dick chose his moment for battle. The Queen Charlotte was one of the few ships that succeeded in following his order to cut through the French line, but even though the tactics went awry the battle was won. James Cumberlidge, typically, could claim no associated glory from his part, spending the last half of the battle below decks with a broken arm when, suddenly dreaming even at the height of danger, he was hit a glancing blow by the shattered debris of French cannon fire.
It was just the sort of contribution his commanding officer expected of him and it was received by him in just the same vacant way that drove his superior officers to despair. It was therefore the main reason why, a year later, he was detailed off for a hazardous return to the coast of France, being regarded as entirely expendable, and here Ferney’s memory was much more certain because the extremity of danger had forced even James Cumberlidge to a degree of awareness.
As plans go, that had been a truly ridiculous idea. Ferney had searched through the books to confirm it really had been the way he remembered it. The accounts were only sketchy but they all agreed that the ‘Screech Owls’ were real. Breton smugglers were fed up with the results of the French Revolution because they had no one to chase them any more. The upheavals had destroyed the French customs service. With no danger of being caught, any amateur could be a smuggler in such anarchic times and the bottom dropped out of the business. The smugglers formed themselves into a paramilitary rabble, named themselves the ‘Screech Owls’ and decided they wanted the old order restored. They were to join a small army of exiled royalists who had persuaded the English that if they could be landed on the Breton coast the people would flock to them. No military strategist would have given a fig for their chances of success but, despite that, the Royal Navy was given the job of landing the motley force.
Young James Cumberlidge went into the operation in the same fatalistic, half-aware trance in which he did everything else. It took him a moment or two to realize that the frigate’s captain really was ordering him to take command of the ship’s pulling boat.
‘There’s a group cut off just round the point, Cumberlidge. They’ve signalled for help. You’re to take this powder and tell them to hold out. Come straight back here to report.’
‘Sir.’
‘Repeat my orders.’
How well his captain knew him. How well, too, his captain had assessed the situation as probably hopeless. The defence force was too strong. Cumberlidge was dimly aware that his boat’s crew were the ship’s shirkers, but it took Ferney, riding piggy-back on those memories later on, to understand the cynical significance of that. It was always likely to be a one-way ticket and the boy made certain of that by reading the sea wrong, steering too far south, failing to spot the danger of the swirling current that carried the boat, against the frantic, uncoordinated efforts of the seamen manning the sweeps, in under the headland and into the enfilading fire of the skilled marksmen of Louis Lazare Hoche’s defending force. Everyone in the boat was killed in seconds, excepting only young James himself, who, clipped across the temple by the first bullet, fell into the bottom of the boat unconscious and was missed by the volleys that followed.
He woke to the reek of blood, stiff and frozen in the evening light in a boat holed and half filled with a nightmare soup of red seawater and dead flesh. It lay, rolling in the slight swell, drifting towards a beach and he sat up, blinking blood-encrusted eyes to see avenues of grey stones beckoning to him from the shore. The boat, inert and disregarded, had drifted down the length of the Quiberon peninsula into the bay of Carnac. The great, grey, innumerable stones in their ordered lines called him and it seemed to him that there, standing between them, holding a bundle of firewood in her arms, staring towards him with the love that was all he had wanted in his short, cold life, was the girl in the brown smock. He slipped over the gunwale of the boat, trying to walk to her as he sank through the surprising water and drowned in one deep liquid breath.
Ferney groaned aloud at the sudden and vivid memory of surrendering his lungs to the heavy, choking water and a voice from a long way away said something insistent.
‘Are you all right? I said, are you all right, Mr Miller? Mr Miller?’
He came back to the church in the here and now and the vicar, who was standing over him with an expression somewhere between concern and exasperation. Caught out, he stumbled for words and said too much.
‘I was thinking about war.’
‘War? I thought you might be ill. I don’t often see you in the church.’
‘I’m all right. I like to sit here quietly sometimes.’
‘You should try our services. Were you in the war?’
‘Everyone was in the war.’
‘I meant were you in the services?’
Ferney looked up at him. ‘Funny that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The same word twice in a row. Services. Like they’re something to do with each other. Killing and God.’
The vicar looked slightly affronted. ‘That’s just words. I expect we’ll see you on Remembrance Day at least?’
Ferney could just have left it there, but he looked down again at the marble tablet which so completely failed to tell anything of the reality of that death and felt a question rising.
‘What do you tell them about war?’
‘On Armistice Day?’ The vicar was too young to have known even the Second World War. ‘I tell them we have to remember and give thanks for the sacrifices made in a just war. I say a prayer for the United Nations and for the wisdom not to fight again.’
‘There have always been people you couldn’t trust with a sword,’ said Ferney, suddenly vehement, ‘so there’s always been a call for a few people around you could trust, with sharper swords. Then it was cannons and mach
ine guns. Now it’s jet planes and missiles. It’s the same people, you know. You still can’t trust them, so you just end up putting tighter and tighter controls round them and they still keep busting out – and every time they do, the mess gets bigger.’
‘My goodness,’ said the vicar, startled, ‘that’s a gloomy way of looking at it. We do try to teach people something about morality.’
‘You’ll have to try a lot harder. You can’t change people,’ said Ferney, dissatisfied with the argument and feeling a sudden yearning for Gally’s company. Annoyed that his journey had been interrupted before he reached the crucial part, he flapped a hand in farewell and made for the porch’s tunnel of sunlight, leaving the vicar relieved to be alone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mike asked Gally to come for a walk that morning and it was clear he had something to say. Mike was not a natural wanderer and his walks, unlike hers, always needed to have a destination in mind.
‘Let’s go to the Pen Pits,’ he said.
‘If you want to.’ He’d mentioned them before, but the name held no great interest for her. ‘What are they?’
‘They’re one of those wonderful red herrings which gave people daft ideas in the old days. I’ll show you.’
The walk took them up the eastern side of the scattered village with Mike in one of his lecturing moods. ‘You know this is called Bleak Street?’ he asked. Of course she knew. ‘It’s not exactly a street, is it? More of a lane, but “street” usually shows there’s a Roman origin.’
His voice got between her and her surroundings so that they all seemed unknown to her. They came to a meeting of two lanes where the left fork would have led them to the church and then past it up the long ridge to Kenny Wilkins’ Castle. He took the smaller right fork.
‘They used to be all over the place, these pits,’ he said. ‘They’re still there in the woods, but the ones in the fields got ploughed up. Thousands and thousands of them. Back in the last century there was one of those strange crazes about them. Every antiquarian under the sun had a theory. A gigantic prehistoric village was the favourite for a long time, then they decided it was a necropolis, some massive burial centre. Completely potty, of course.’
She guessed that he’d been going through the library at the faculty to find bits and pieces to interest her, but it brought nothing to her and she wondered at the deadness of her response. If Ferney had been telling her, would she have found some echo of personal memory within her? Was it that Ferney’s voice could reach into layers of her that Mike’s simply never reached? She felt instant, deep disquiet at that thought and as if he could smell it, Mike twisted the knife.
‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ he said.
‘Good. What about?’
‘A few things, really.’
His voice showed it was difficult.
‘All right.’
‘You’ve started having the nightmares again.’
‘Not often.’
He sighed, ‘I thought . . . I sort of hoped they’d stopped since we came down here.’
‘I think they’ll be all right soon.’
‘Why?’ His voice showed sharp surprise.
What could she say? Because Ferney’s told me he can explain them? That would be twisting the knife.
‘I think I can cope more down here. I’ll be able to deal with them.’
‘Gally, the best therapist we could find couldn’t make the tiniest bit of difference to them.’
‘I know, Mike, but that was before we came here. Everything feels more hopeful now.’
‘I can feel the difference,’ he said miserably, ‘but I can’t get anywhere near understanding it. There always seems to be something you’re not saying.’
‘Maybe it’s the baby,’ she offered, dwelling on the weasel word ‘maybe’ to stop short of a lie.
There was a longer silence and Gally knew Mike was searching for a way to get to the main point. He scratched the back of his neck and spoke abruptly, as though the words had been piling up behind a blockage. ‘About the old man.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘I know you like him a lot.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’m just not sure he’s good for you.’
How much better it would have been if he’d said anything else – ‘I’m jealous’, perhaps, or ‘I want you to myself ’, or even ‘I’m frightened’. Instead he tried to take control of her feelings, her decisions, and by doing so took a further step in the wrong direction.
‘I can think for myself, Mike.’
‘He seems to be thinking for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He’s using you for some reason. He’s got you chasing all kinds of ridiculous ideas. I’m starting to wish we’d never come down here. When we were in Greece and it was just us it felt great, then he pops up as soon as we get back and it all goes weird again.’
She said nothing because there was too much to say and he took that for an invitation to go on. ‘It’s absurd, really, when you think about it. I mean, it was random chance that we ever came here. You have to admit it’s a pretty stupid idea that there should be some sort of special connection.’
Why couldn’t he sense her dilemma? Why couldn’t he give a little space to the tearing, testing, thrilling process she was going through?
‘It wasn’t random chance,’ she said shortly. ‘Whatever you might think. I wanted to come here.’
‘You’ve wanted to go to a lot of other places. There could have been a crazy old man in every one of them.’
Mike fell silent because a woman, with a small terrier on an unnecessary lead, came round the next bend towards them and Mike could never bear any semblance of hanging out his dirty washing in public. Gally, recognizing it as unfair even as she did it, took the opportunity to press her point. Her only concession was to make sure her voice was even and reasonable.
‘It’s something I have to get through and I’d like you to help me if you can. It’s not craziness, you know. There is something to it. I’m not nearly so impressionable as you seem to think. I’m sorry if it’s difficult for you, but it would be much easier if I felt you were on my side.’
Mike didn’t answer for a moment. He nodded a distracted acknowledgement instead to the woman as she passed. She was fiftyish, with tight town clothes and make-up that spoke of a tremendous need to fortify herself against even these natural surroundings. Either that or she was on her way to deliver a WI lecture. He let five more seconds elapse then could restrain himself no more.
‘He wants you to himself. He’d like me out of the way and he’s spinning you some stupid line to justify it. I don’t see how you can let him do it. You’re encouraging him. It’s completely daft.’
‘Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. Can’t you see I need to find out?’
‘You need to remember we’re married.’ She just looked at him and he couldn’t restrain himself. ‘All right, I am bloody jealous, but you’re making me jealous.’ It was much, much louder than he intended and he looked round to see the woman with the terrier had stopped and was staring back at them. He flushed, pulled his head down into his shoulders and speeded up his pace.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You hate that, don’t you?’
‘Right through my childhood,’ he said miserably, ‘my parents would have fights in public. They’d get so carried away they wouldn’t notice everyone looking, but I did. I always did.’
She felt keenly sorry for him then, took his arm and hugged it to her. ‘Come on, love. We’ll talk about it another time. I’m here and I’m staying here. You don’t need to worry.’
‘Of course I need to worry. You’re always thinking about him and I’m cut out of it.’
‘No, you’re not. What about the oats business?’
‘A crumb from his table. He decided to take just enough notice to keep me in line. Look, I know he’s doing you some good. I’m not blind, I can see that. You seem less . . . less bothere
d.’ He looked at her bare hand. ‘Though I see you’ve stopped wearing my ring again.’
‘I just didn’t put it on this morning, that’s all.’ Was that somehow linked to the return of the Burnman nightmare? She wasn’t sure. Forgetfulness was an easy answer.
‘There is something else, though – something I really have to tell you. Will you promise to listen?’
‘It depends what it is.’
‘I’m not just being fanciful. I was talking to one of the builders, John, the one with the headband?’
‘I know John.’
‘His father’s a policeman in Wincanton. You know when we were coming back and we saw all that business going on down at the roadworks? Well, he says Ferney told the police that was his wife buried down there. They’re taking it very seriously. She was reported missing years ago, apparently.’
Gally felt helpless. What could she say? Yes, he’s told me – that was me? ‘Poor man,’ was all she could find to say.
‘Supposing it’s not poor man at all? Maybe he did away with her. I don’t know what to make of it all.’
‘Oh come off it, he’d hardly go and tell the police then, would he? Surely you don’t really think he’s a murderer?’
‘He may not seem like one to you, but he’s after you and it bothers me.’
‘ “After me?” What does that mean? Mike, I hear what you say but he does mean well, I promise.’ She sighed and used the argument she hated to use. ‘He’s not very well. He won’t be a problem soon, you know. If I can help him for just a while, surely that’s not so bad?’ He gave no answer. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘forget it. Tell me about the pits.’