‘Don’t forget your line,’ says old Skip. He’s tied one end to the boat; Ben’s supposed to clip the other to his belt, and tug on it if he gets into trouble. He’s planning to tie it around the kist if he finds it, then fin to the surface and help Skip haul it onto the dinghy.
As soon as he’s in the water, he can feel his heart going, so he snorkels for a bit doing his relaxation exercises until it slows down. Then he unclips his torch and dives.
Once he’s down to five metres there’s kelp all around, like being in a jungle with the wind in the trees, only in slow motion; or one of those shampoo adverts with swirly brown hair filling the screen in slippery waves. He keeps putting his hand out behind to feel for the line, because actually it’s quite scary, being totally surrounded by the weed and walls of rock, so it’s nice to think of old Skip up in the dinghy in the sunshine, sipping tea and lighting a rollie-up.
He checks his watch and he’s been down for two minutes, and he really wants to take a breath – probably because feeling scared has used up his oxygen. So even though he hasn’t really started searching, he fins up to the surface.
Next time he goes down, he pays more attention to the Aquapulse, finning gently along trying to hear when the beeps quicken up. He’s decided it’s better to stay near to the surface, so he doesn’t have to hold his breath for too long. Then if he gets a good signal, he’ll go down properly.
The first time it happens, he gets so excited he has to float for ages getting his breathing under control. But it’s just an old anchor, wedged in a crevasse: all gnarled and rusted up, covered with weed. Next time it’s a bucket, one of those old-fashioned metal ones, except there’s only half of it left, like rusty lace held together by kelp and mussels.
After half an hour he’s beginning to get the hang of it: finning along, listening, diving when he hears something, then coming up to check where the boat is, so he doesn’t keep searching the same bit of reef. He even thinks he’s beginning to hear the difference between a big object, like an anchor, and a piddly little bit of chain or something. Which means he doesn’t have to check every single little bleep-bleep-bleep any more, though he’s getting a bit fed up of anchors – how many are there down here?
Skip calls him over next time he surfaces and insists he gets out for a cup of tea. ‘I don’t want you freezing to death on me,’ he says, making Ben take off his gloves and fins so he can check his hands and feet, and touching Ben’s cheeks with the back of his freckly old hand. The hand smells of tabs; it reminds him of the doc.
Next time the Aquapulse speeds up it sounds different. He dives down and fins around for ages, but he can’t see anything, even though the beeping is really loud, so there must be something there. He comes up for a breath, then goes down again and this time he gets his knife out and starts hacking at the weed, where he thinks the object must be, which uses up his oxygen really fast, so he has to come up for air.
But next time he goes down, he knows what he’s doing, which is scraping away at this one flat bit of rock; except now he’s cleared away some of the weed and coral and that, he can see that it’s not a rock. So now he’s really focused – really focused – because he’s found an edge, and it’s straight, with a bit of a ridge along it, like you’d find on a lid. So he’s certain this must be the kist. What else could it be?
It’s driving him bananas, going up and down all the time. So next time he comes up, he does a bit of overbreathing so he can stay down longer – and it’s brilliant; he gets another twenty seconds and manages to clear away another load of weed. It freaks Skip out a bit, though, and he’s waving and shouting when he comes to the surface. So Ben shouts out that he’s found something, that’s why he’s staying down, and he’s going to try and tie the line around it.
He overbreathes again, a bit more this time, and scrapes at the weed until he can reach an arm right under the kist – though even with the weed hacked away it looks nothing like a metal trunk, more like a mossy old rock. When he checks his watch he’s been down ages, much longer than he realized, so he fins up for more air and floats on the surface a bit longer this time before overbreathing and going down again.
This time he unhooks the line from his belt and passes it under the kist, and again at a slightly different angle, so the kist’s tied up like a Christmas parcel. It’s tricky work, holding the torch and tying the rope at the same time, and he starts wanting to take a breath, but he goes through his colours, trying to relax, and it works – though by the end the water’s started looking murky, as though the rope’s scraped lots of little floaty bits off the kist making it so he can’t see properly.
So anyway, he tugs on the line, to let old Skip know he’s tied on the rope, and looks at his watch to see how long he’s been down. But he can’t see the numbers because of the fog, so he thinks he’d better go up anyway, because now everything looks grey, probably because his torch battery’s low.
He tries to move his legs, to fin to the surface, but it’s like his fins are caught on something, and his legs feel really heavy, so he decides to unclip his weight belt, but it’s so murky and dark it’s as though the fog’s inside his head and he can’t remember what to do with his fingers, and now the torch has gone out and everything’s so blue, so blue and foggy…
Chapter Sixty
1898
A fog’s been lying on the river these past two days. The skippers curse it, for a fog means a flat sea and a tug all the way to the herring grounds. But I like the blunt dank greyness of these days, when you can’t see the river, or the boats coming home without him; and lose sight of the bottom of any stairs and what might lie down there.
On days like this your life shrinks in to what’s close by, and your plans to setting one foot down after another, and not caring where you’re going, for where’s the place that’s worth going to if he’s not with you?
Still, my feet have been walking without me telling them, walking because I can’t be still, for to be still is to know that he’s gone and never coming back. So though the days find me gipping where I should be, come the evening when our tea’s eaten and the pots done, and Flo and Mam are on at me to please, pet, take the chair by the grate, and I can’t bear their kind eyes a minute longer, I have to snatch up my shawl and run out the house into the fog and let my feet take me where they will.
It’s the muddy lane to the trysting hill that calls them, and the rabbit trails winding between the wyn banks, where spiders’ webs cling in the misty gloaming, loaded with fog dew. There’s a hollow I’ve found, that sweethearts shun, for it’s too small to lie down in, and too perilous, being perched on the edge of a sheer drop above the river’s mouth. And it’s here I wait for night to come, and listen to the night’s noises: the wet grazing of rabbits, the little squeaks of their kittens; the quiet lapping of the river’s tongue on the rocks below. And further out, the warning bells of ’longshore cobles back from checking their pots, the growls and coughs of the old lads, the plash of oars in the darkness.
If Mam hadn’t come to fetch me last night, I’d be there still. I was thinking of the wet earth under me, of worms swimming slowly though it; of the cold black river, and how easy it would be to fill my pockets with stones, and let my feet carry me down into the water.
Mam took me home, and filled the hot bottle, and wrapped her arms round me till my shivering quietened, and my weeping started, then quietened too, and I was yawning – then sleeping, I suppose, for next thing I know it’s morning and she’s bringing me a cup of tea and saying I’m to stay back from work today because there’s a task I’ve to do.
I’ve been keeping Sam’s ditty box by my pillow, and hug it close, and fancy I catch the ghost of the scent of him; but it’s vain really, for it’s just a cold little tin, and its only smell is of rust and herring oil. So today Mam says I’ve to take it to his mam, for it’s hers by rights, and might hold something she needs.
By, but it pains me to walk these poor lanes again and linger with tears in my ey
es to see the row of mean wooden houses, with the fresh-creosoted one at the end.
I hear his mam’s keening before I get there: that same seagull mew that comes from my mouth, that’s sometimes the only sound a body can make on account of the wringing of its innards and the strangling of its soul.
Jessie’s outside with the bairns, sat with hunks of bread and a bowl of broth. When she sees me her glad smile fairly breaks my heart – I’ve been so caught up with my own grief I never thought of this poor brave lass and the load she’d be carrying.
‘I’ve bought his box,’ I’m saying. ‘From the boat. I think the key might still be in the pocket of his kecks.’
And she’s saying, ‘Thank you,’ and, ‘His body’s inside, but Mam won’t let anyone get him ready, and I’m that afraid of him turning—’ She looks at me, a pleading look that says she’s at the end of her tether. ‘We’ve got him on ice. She did let me do that. But fast as we can bring it, so it’s melting. The room’s awash.’
I ask, is there a coffin, and Jess says the church folk are bringing one today, for of course they’ve no savings. ‘But we can’t put him in the ground the state he’s in.’
And while we’re speaking, a group of giggling bairns gathers near and asks to see ‘the drowned lad’, and all at once here’s Sam’s mam roaring out through the doorway with a broom and her hair all loose, and screams at them to be gone.
‘They keep coming,’ says Jess. ‘Every hour, different bairns. Mam can’t stand it.’
And before I can think what I’m doing, I’m following his mam back into that dim room, and taking her two hands in the two of mine, to hold her steady like – for didn’t Sam tell me that’s what his mam was always needing: a steady hand on her tiller? And I’m staring into her wild eyes, that are the exact same shape and colour as his, and telling her I loved him, and we were going to be wed, and I’m sorry. Then, when her wild look abates a bit, saying: howay, let’s prepare him together.
I know what to do, for it’s not long since I helped Mam lay out my other nana. So I send the bairns off for cotton wool, and Jessie sets out his go-ashores – for she’s washed and ironed them all ready, bless her – and braids up her mam’s hair to be more decent, and ties on her pinny. Then, when we’re set, Jess sends the bairns outside and lights the lamp and I push the door closed.
They’ve laid him in the tarpaulin from the beach, with its edges flapped over to cover him, in a nest of melting ice, on planks resting on stools. There’s a tin bath beneath to catch most of the melt; and a puddle for the rest, seeping out over the oilcloth, with a line of rags to contain it, and a pail to wring them into. And there’s a smell – Oh sweet Jesus, keep me strong! But how could there not be, after so many days?
So we kneel on the wet oilcloth, the three of us, and say a prayer; then I lift the flaps and there he is, my lovely lad, greyer and duller than before, and sunken somehow, as a fish goes when it loses its freshness. And I look at Jess and we both look at her mam, who’s staring and staring at the body, and shaking her head; and I know what she’s thinking, for it’s what I’m thinking too – that it’s not Sam any more, that’s he’s gone, and all that’s left is the flesh and bones his soul wore.
And that knowing makes it easier, somehow, to lift him onto the table and take his clothes off and comb out his hair; then wash his body – oh, all the tender parts I’ve never seen, that are greenish now, like a body under water; and cold, oh so cold, cold as a fish in a farlane.
I’ve two pennies in my pocket, which I lay over the place where his eyes were, and make plugs of cotton wool for the mouth and nose. But the other parts that need cleaning, his mam cleans, with the tenderness of a mother with her baby, and pushes in the plug, and rests her bony hands on his flat belly a moment, then pulls on his good kecks.
Now we’re finishing, tying up the black silk to hold his jaws closed, settling his dark curls around the sad mess that’s his face. And I would hold his hand and kiss him goodbye, except he’s already long gone.
Now I’m opening the door, and the bairns are pushing in and whingeing for their tea – for the light’s going and it’s late. The fog’s thickened, and billows in with them, stinking of brown river sludge and coal smoke. Plunging out into it, I tug my shawl up over my nose, and step carefully on the greasy boards, from one seep of mean candlelight to another, for there’s no street lamps in these poor alleys.
Now what’s this? Quick footsteps behind me, and Jessie calling me to wait and saying to come with her round the back to Sam’s room. ‘I didn’t want to say in front of Mam, for she’d fuss,’ she says. But it seems the day before he drowned Sam gave Jess a guinea to buy ‘a travelling kist for Annie’.
‘He said I was to choose it,’ says Jessie, ‘for I’d know better what a lass would like. He said it was his promise that you’d be together.’
I can’t see her face clearly, the light’s that thin, but I can hear from her voice that she’s crying. And I want to say thank you, but I can’t trust my voice neither; so I let her take my hand and lead me to Sam’s low door, and unlock it, and duck down to feel for the candle.
The sight of his little room, flickering before me, is nearly more than I can bear – though it’s as empty of him now as his body is, with the bricks stacked and the planks gone, to the kitchen I suppose, and his ticking emptied and hanging on a hook.
‘The shop was cram full of Scots lasses,’ Jessie’s saying, ‘so I asked them which one to pick. I was going to get one of them wooden ones with metal bars, like they all have, but they said the new steel ones are lighter and never rust nor get worm and last a lifetime. A lifetime, Annie, that’s what they were saying. So I knew that’s the one he’d want for you.’
It’s painted green, with black handles and a brass padlock on the hasp. It’s the nicest kist I ever saw, and I tell her so, and give her a hug, which is something folk round here hardly ever do – except she’s so small and good and brave, and must be needing one so much, for her arms are round me in a trice and cling so hard I’ve not the heart to push her away. I can feel her little shoulders shaking with sobs, and hot tears soaking into my blouse. And through my tears I’m making a secret promise: that I’ll be a sister to Jess, just as I would be if Sam were alive; and it will please him, and make his soul smile, and keep him with me.
Now she’s pulling away and saying sorry, sorry, and wiping her eyes and asking, will I go to Yarmouth with the Scots lasses when they leave? And I’m saying no, not this year, for there’s folk here that need me, and I can’t think of leaving them yet. And I never say, and she never asks, but she knows the folk I’m speaking about.
I should go home, I know, for Mam will be worriting, but my feet want to wander, taking me along Clive Street and Liddell Street into Bell Street, where the fog’s thicker than ever, blurring the street lamps, though I can’t tell if it’s the fog causing the blurring or my tears, which keep welling up and will not be staunched.
It must be Saturday, for the streets are packed with folk in their good clothes: the lads striding out and the lasses swaying, all full of life and laughingness, and that ginger-beer fizzing I felt once and can’t believe I will ever feel again. And sneaking into the dark alleys, with quick glances back to see if they’re noticed, there go the sweethearts – and them that’s not so sweet, but still want a wide coat and a dark doorway. And here are the drunks stotting along the walls with their kecks unbuttoned, pissing in the gutters and not caring who sees.
Now here’s one swaying towards me with a wet stain down his leg, and he’s lunging out to touch me, for my arms are up holding the kist on my head and cannot push him off, so I have to kick out – so I do, and hard, and catch him where it hurts, and see him fall to his knees, and am glad, oh suddenly so very glad, to see him go down. And would kick them all if I could, Tom and the all rest of them, and see them buckle, and kick them again: for all the ugly manliness in them, the mucky graspingness that has no respect, and can’t see when a lass is grieving, or can
see it but doesn’t care, and wants her anyway. Then kick them again, for their stinking breath and minging sweat, for their hot blood and beating hearts, for being so alive when my Sam is so dead.
So I’m walking faster now and fair spitting at any lad who’d stop me for a stupid blether – for they’ve all had a skinful – or make a grab for my shawl, or my boobies.
Now here I am down on Union Quay, where the fog swirls thick as a blanket, with drunken ghosts stumbling through it with their arms out. The boats are moored three deep, but I can barely see past the first, only the odd few deck lamps glimmering like pale halos in the fog, only hear the flat river slapping at their hulls.
Now this looks like the Osprey’s warp, tied to a mooring post, with its red and black bindings, so I set down the kist and look closer. But it’s not; the patterning’s wrong. But the sight makes me want to search her out, and go aboard and look for Sam.
I know, I know I won’t find him, but maybes I can find the place he slept? And lie down there and close my eyes and feel close to him.
It’s like skirting the edge of a wild wood, with the masts creaking and the hulls scraping together all along Union Quay, and wet fog tangled in the rigging, a forest of saplings clustered together, dripping and swaying on the water.
I find the Osprey’s out at the end of the fish quay, past Clifford’s Fort, so I set down the kist and kick off my clogs and I’ve clambered aboard in a minute. The fo’c’sle hatch is closed, of course, and won’t yield when I pull on the handle, but the hasp’s hanging so it can’t be locked. So I pull again, and again another way, and then again, then harder; then punch it and curse my lass’s weakness, for it seems this is all I have left of Sam, this chance to touch the place he lay before he died, but I can’t get to it.
I suppose I’m weeping again, but quietly, though it’s hard to know, for my cheeks are damp with the fog and the rigging’s dripping all around. But here’s someone swinging aboard, calling, ‘Who’s there?’ then, ‘Annie, is that you?’, for I suppose he’s heard me sobbing.
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