The Travellers

by Ann Swinfen

  When they were all seated indoors with coffee (not one of Sofia’s curious herbal tisanes, as Kate had feared) Ákos flung himself down at Chris’s feet, with his chin on Chris’s trainers, damp as they were from crossing the beach. Beccy was trying to persuade Midnight, one of the cats, to jump on to her lap, but he was reserving judgement.

  ‘You understand dogs, Mr Harding, I can see,’ said Sofia. ‘But are you are happy in the company of chickens and goats?’

  ‘Please call me Chris.’ He smiled at her as he fondled Ákos’s ears. ‘At home I had my own laying hens from the age of five. But I’ve never kept a goat. You’ll need to show me exactly how to milk her and what other care she needs. Most animals seem to like me, though.’

  As if to prove this, Midnight turned his back on Beccy’s blandishments and leapt into Chris’s lap. He turned around two or three times, then settled himself. A steady purring rumbled across the room.

  Beccy laughed. ‘Totally rejected!’ She spread her hands in mock despair. ‘I yield to your greater charms.’

  Sofia and Chris began to discuss the care of the animals and the garden, and Kate leaned back a little sleepily in her chair. The cottage was warm after the cool breeze off the sea as they had come along the beach. She had slept little during the last few nights, since the quarrel with Tom. Beccy joined in the conversation from time to time, but Kate was content to let it flow around her, wondering with a curious, floating detachment what she would be doing a week from now, what scenes would be lying before her, what voices sounding around her.

  ‘Come,’ said Sofia, ‘I will show you around the cottage now, and then tomorrow afternoon, if you are free, you shall come and have a lesson in milking the goat.’

  ‘I’ll come for the morning milking as well, if I may,’ said Chris, getting up slowly and lifting Midnight with great gentleness down into the chair.

  ‘At five o’clock?’

  ‘I’m farm born and bred.’ He laughed. ‘No problem.’

  Beccy and Kate followed them out of the sitting room. They went first into the kitchen, the only other room Kate had seen. Sofia pointed out the stop-cock and explained the Calor gas appliances.

  ‘I am afraid there is no electricity, although there is mains water and drains,’ said Sofia. ‘Two years ago they tried to persuade me again to have the electricity, but it was going to cost me far too much. There is no other house nearby, you see, so I would have had to pay for the cable to be run out from the end of Castle Terrace. But I manage very well with oil lamps.’

  ‘I think they’re lovely,’ said Beccy. ‘It’s such a soft light, it makes you realise how harsh electric light bulbs really are.’

  ‘The oil for the lamps is kept here.’ Sofia opened the door to her large, walk-in larder. ‘Most things are stored here, except for garden tools and animal feed, which I keep in the lean-to at the back of the goat’s shed. This is the bathroom, behind the kitchen. That’s everything on the ground floor.’

  Upstairs under sloping ceilings were two bedrooms – one clearly Sofia’s, one unoccupied, with the bed not made up. This must have been her mother’s bedroom, Kate thought.

  ‘I will put sheets on the bed here,’ Sofia said to Chris. ‘Then you will have plenty of room to spread your belongings about without my things getting in your way. Be sure to keep this skylight over the stairs closed. If you open it, it never seems to shut again properly, and the rain comes in.’

  As the others started back down the stairs again, Kate went to the window of the empty bedroom. The two upstairs rooms each had a dormer window facing east, towards the sea. Here you were high enough to see over the garden wall, and looking out from the darkened room, now that Sofia had carried the oil lamp downstairs, Kate could see the water lying like a scarf of pale grey silk beyond the rocks of the headland. A ship was making its stately way back from the sea, heading in to the Dun. Its lights laid shimmering bands of gold on the water, but the night was so still that it seemed to glide as effortlessly as a swan up the river. Two booming hoots sounded out, and Kate suddenly remembered how she would kneel up in bed as a child, in the house in Castle Terrace, and watch the ships moving on the water, and listen to the cry of the gulls, like lost ghosts at twilight.

  All that time Sofia must have been living here, she thought, and sometimes looking out at the same ships passing and hearing the same gulls. How strange that so many years should pass before we met, and now I feel as though I have known her all my life.

  ‘Kate,’ Sofia called from below, ‘why are you hiding in the dark? Come. I am going to make more coffee.’

  Later, when they had left the cottage and walked back along the beach which felt so much longer in the dark, Chris said, ‘She is, isn’t she?’

  ‘Is what?’

  ‘Sofia Tabor, the poet.’

  ‘You’ve never told us the poet’s name, you know, Chris,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, he has, Mum.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t told me anyway.’

  ‘An oversight,’ said Chris apologetically. ‘But of course Sofia Niklai must be Sofia Tabor. Perhaps Tabor was her maiden name.’

  ‘She’s never been married,’ said Kate. ‘But I’m sure that you’re right. It must be her pen-name. I’ve never asked her straight out, but she hasn’t exactly denied it.’

  ‘I won’t rush things with her, Mrs Milburn, I promise. After you come back from your holiday, if she will let me do an interview, fine. If not... Well, I’ll just have to wait a little longer.’

  ‘She’s a wonderful person, isn’t she?’ said Beccy. ‘The more I see of her, the more I realise why you like her so much, Mum. It’s difficult to put your finger on exactly, but I think it’s her dignity and her humour. It’s an unusual combination.’

  As they began the long climb up the hill to Craigfast House, they stopped talking, saving their breath. Something that had been said niggled at the back of Kate’s mind, but she could not think what it was.

  The house was in darkness when they reached it. As none of them had eaten since lunchtime, Kate proposed pasta, and the other two agreed hungrily. While she chopped onions and Beccy laid the table, Chris told them about more of his discoveries in the archives.

  ‘You know how it is – if you meet an unfamiliar word, suddenly you see it everywhere. It’s the same with this. Once you find something curious in the archives, you keep coming across related items. That cottage is one of the oldest in Dunmouth. There used to be a whole cluster of cottages there, almost a separate hamlet, mostly built in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Then in the 1840s, the cottagers were forced out to make way for the new railway. The cottages were all pulled down except that one, because it stood on the other side of the road, nearer the sea.’

  ‘Is that why the road is there, then?’ asked Kate, interested. ‘I’ve always wondered. It used to curve inland and then peter out. The bit that goes on along the coast and joins up with the main road was only built after the railway was shut down in the sixties.’

  ‘Yes, odd, isn’t it? They pulled down all those houses, some of which had stood for four hundred years, and built a railway which lasted barely a hundred.’

  ‘They probably thought they were building something that would last for ever,’ said Beccy. ‘The railway, I mean.’

  ‘Scary, that’s what it is.’

  ‘A bit like the Russian Revolution,’ said Kate.

  They looked at her blankly.

  ‘Well, the Bolsheviks thought they were setting up a new world order. And a few years ago we would never have believed it could collapse so soon. Yet it barely lasted a single lifetime.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Chris. ‘As I said, scary. I mean, it makes you feel as if nothing is safe, nothing will endure. When I was a kid, I thought everything just went on the same for ever. I might grow up and do things and come home like a conquering hero, but home would always be there, and my mum and dad would always be there, and my old dog. I suppose the first time I realised that you
can’t hold on to the world was when my dog died.’

  Kate thought of Stephen and Benjy. How fragile that safe childhood world is, she thought. Yet she could remember so little of her own childhood. It lay shrouded behind more recent memories, except when something leapt out at her, as the memory of watching the ships had done this evening, or that strange sensation of fear she had felt the very first time she had walked near the headland, the day she had met Sofia.

  ‘I found something else about the cottage,’ said Chris. ‘Much more recent. In the late fifties – I think it was 1958 – there was a fire there. The article said that arson was suspected, but no one was charged. It makes you wonder.’

  ‘Wonder what?’ asked Beccy.

  ‘Whether the locals were still harassing her, more than ten years after the war. Of course I didn’t mention anything while we were there. I didn’t want to upset her. It wasn’t the cottage itself that was burnt, but some outbuilding. Do you remember anything about it, Mrs Milburn? Or were you too young?’

  Fire.

  ‘No,’ said Kate shortly. ‘As you say, I was far too young. Come on, this is ready. Let’s eat it before it goes cold. There’s more white wine in the fridge, Beccy.’

  * * *

  Fire.

  There is so little at first. Just a golden thread running along the edge of a plank. Pretty, like the spangles on the dress of a circus acrobat. Sparks fall from this golden thread in ones and twos, slowly arcing down to the ground, gleaming for a moment and then winking out. Innocent as sparklers at a Guy Fawkes party. Then the thread of fire widens to a ribbon, and the sparks fall in clusters, and linger amongst the tufts of grass. There is a smell like Daddy’s bonfire – sharp and smoky and exciting.

  She realises that the boy has let go of her arm and she rubs it tenderly with the other hand. The pain runs up from her bruised wrist, where she can see red marks on her skin lit up by the fire, and there are stabs in her elbow and her shoulder. He has twisted it so badly, it feels as though her shoulder has come out of its socket. Staring hypnotised at the fire, she rubs and rubs at the pain.

  The flames have run up other planks now and are reaching across to join up with each other in a wide curtain of red and yellow and orange. If she closes her eyes she can see the pattern of the flames dancing on the inside of her eyelids. She realises that the others have run off, and that before they did there was a shout from somewhere.

  Suddenly there is a terrible howl, a cry of pure terror.

  It is a dog. It must be a dog, and it is on the other side of the sheet of flame. The howls come again, rising in pitch.

  * * *

  ‘Mum, I said, “Shall I get the phone?”‘ said Beccy.

  ‘What? Oh, sorry, no. I’ll go. Linda said she would ring me this evening. She was going to try to get me some guidebooks for Hungary.’

  ‘That’s right, she was waiting for the supplier to ring her back when I left this afternoon.’ Beccy looked at her mother. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Kate. ‘Just not concentrating.’

  * * *

  The evening before they were due to leave for Hungary, Kate carried a large empty suitcase down to the cottage. They had realised at the last moment that Sofia possessed nothing suitable to hold her clothes for three weeks’ holiday. On her short trip to Paris she had managed with an overnight case. The other luggage stored away under the roof beams in the attic of the cottage consisted of ancient pigskin suitcases, almost impossible to lift when empty and smelling of mustiness. Kate had found a large lightweight case which could be towed on its own wheels if necessary. Chris had promised to carry it along to the bookshop the next day after morning milking. Kate would collect both Sofia and the case there at ten, and drive to Edinburgh airport in time for the plane to Amsterdam.

  Chris had moved into the spare room of the cottage the day before and seemed to be in his element, so much so that Kate wondered whether his professed plan to work on a London newspaper would really suit him. Sofia had greeted him with a meal of mussel soup followed by devilled crab and a dessert of raspberries with goat’s milk yoghurt. Compared with the grey flannel meat and frozen chips he was allegedly served at his digs, he had declared this to be ambrosial fare. Kate could see him already calculating how he might move in permanently.

  When she delivered the suitcase she found Sofia agitated about the following day’s journey. She had every reason to be, thought Kate. After escaping as a young woman from Fascist search parties on the eve of war, to be returning as an elderly exile after so many years must be disturbing. However, Chris was very good with her, chattering away and bullying her gently to get on with her packing.

  When she reached the village again, Kate did not at once turn up the hill towards home. Instead she walked along the harbour front, where the men were getting ready to put to sea, loading empty fish-boxes into seven boats. Six of these had ‘Dunmouth’ painted on their sterns and on either side of their bows. One came from a home-port about twenty miles south along the coast. She recalled that one of the fishing families had another branch there. The men must have called in at Dunmouth and would be going out tonight with the rest of the local fleet. She spoke to one or two of the fishermen she knew, and they responded with a nod and an ‘Evening, missus.’

  The smell of the fish which never left the harbour, the tarred ropes, the rhythmic tinny ring of metal rigging slapping in the wind, the bulky figures moving under the dim harbour lamps in their thick jerseys and bright orange dungarees – all these were part of the real Dunmouth which, in spite of everything, she realised she loved. She remembered how she and Linda had hung about when the fishing fleet was putting to sea – twenty or thirty boats in those days. They would perch on a pair of mooring bollards, perilously near the steep drop into the harbour but quite unconcerned, swinging their legs and watching critically. As a shipwright’s daughter, Linda considered herself an expert and would point out the weak points in those built elsewhere. Dan Wilson’s boats had always had a little more elegance, a combination of strength and grace, that even Kate could spot. There were two of them here still, for a good fishing vessel lasts many years, and the men of Dunmouth could not afford fancy new boats with unnecessary luxuries, although even the old ones were fitted up with better communications and safety devices than in her childhood. One boat, the Merry Day, a sad grey vessel with peeling paint and sagging decks, lay in darkness at the far end of the harbour breakwater. No one was taking the Merry Day to sea tonight, perhaps never again.

  From the fishermen’s church, just beyond the lifeboat station and Barometer Cottage, the bell for evening service began to ring. The men climbed out of their boats, not hurrying, and made their way along Harbour Walk towards it. They were not particularly reverent. One or two spat in the gutter. Another group was arguing raucously about the availability of a certain barmaid in Charlborough. But as they crossed the threshold into the church they wiped their clumsy boots on the mat, and those wearing greasy knitted hats pulled them off.

  On an impulse, Kate followed them and slipped in at the back. The service was quite short, as busy fishermen expected. The hymns all had a nautical theme and safe, familiar tunes that did not require any vocal gymnastics. There was the same sort of congregation as Kate remembered from the past. The men standing together to the right of the aisle. To the left, their womenfolk. It was a tiny congregation nowadays, but the men wore the same expression. Not self-confident. Men whose daily lives were spent at the mercy of sea and storms knew their limitations. It was more a look of acceptance, a fatalism, perhaps, that they would be ready when their time came, but until then they would give the old sea as good as they got. The women – the wives, mothers, girlfriends – wore a different look. They were less resigned. How terrible it must be, Kate thought, to send your man out week after week, never knowing if he will come home at the end of it.

  The rector spoke the final prayer, for the safe return of the fleet, and for all ships on the sea, and they filed
out to the sound of the same old wheezy organ. Kate was surprised to see, amongst the men, the old man from Barometer Cottage who had spoken to her so rudely some weeks ago. He had not struck her as a churchgoer. But then, he was one who had survived to enjoy a quiet retirement. Perhaps he had something to give thanks for after all.

  Out in the street people became talkative again. A few of the women greeted Kate by name. She noticed a very pretty girl, not more than eighteen and heavily pregnant, clinging to the arm of one of the young fishermen. Her face was tight with apprehension, but he was embarrassed by her and tried to shrug her off. It would not do to be seen going soft with his wife in front of his mates.

  As the families dispersed to their houses for an evening meal before the men set out, Kate walked further along the road past the church, to a group of three houses, a little larger than the others on the harbour front. She had always liked these houses and she realised now – never having thought about it before – that they were Georgian. Well-proportioned if small, with their high ceilings and pretty bow windows. Probably these had belonged to the aristocracy of the old fishing village, the families who owned more than one boat and employed other men, or who were fish-merchants trading inland. A narrow, cobbled lane ran behind these houses, called Fish Lane, and there were old fish-sheds there, where the boxes and barrels had once been loaded on to horse-drawn carts from the stables which opened into the same lane. From here the fish would be hauled to Charlborough, Welbank and even further afield, perhaps as far away as Banford. When the railway came, the fish-carts only needed to make the journey to Dunmouth station. Now the station was gone, and so were the working horses. The small catch now landed at Dunmouth was loaded on to refrigerated vans and whisked away almost as soon as it had been unloaded from the boats.

  For a time when Kate was younger someone had tried to run the old working stable in Fish Lane as a riding school. She had had lessons there herself, and remembered riding on the hill above Craigfast House, where the gardens petered out into rough grass and scrub. The riding school must have failed after she had gone away, because the old stables had been standing empty and derelict for years now.