The Silver Dark Sea

by Susan Fletcher

The youngest Bright daughter – in her mid-sixties – remembers the single wave that rose up against the lighthouse one winter, when she was a girl. It smacked against the lantern’s glass. It struck the tower with such a deep, thundering boom that she had felt it inside her – under her ribs. She’d held the wall, in fear. It woke something in her, that shuddering wave – a womanly knowledge that she both wanted and was scared of, but had no name for. She knows it all much better, now.

  Maybe that’s the sea telling stories of its own. Like me it has a lust for them; it cannot stop saying listen to this … Listen to me … After all, think of the tales it has – the deaths, the near-deaths, the curious lives. Even now, as I am telling this, there is the handclap of a wave that falls back into itself and the gentle hiss that follows. Soon, a sprawled, moon-blue jellyfish will rise to the surface and give two slow clenches. Against the black water, it will glow.

  Before he died, Tom Bundy said I have never known silence. Never. He had been born in the fields at Wind Rising. Each hour of his life had had the sea in it. His early death did, too.

  * * *

  Can you hear it? The water? It breathes, as you breathe.

  I want you to hear the whole island – as it is now, at this very moment. There is the sea’s stirring, always. But also, there are many sounds on Parla which are more than the waves, more than stones being moved by them. The sheep bleat, throatily. A wooden gate squeaks open. There are tiny bells on a piece of string which dance, and call out sing-sing-sing. In a house with herbs on its windowsill a kettle is boiling – its metal lid is starting to rattle, and there are footsteps coming to it and a woman is saying I’m here, I’m here … to the kettle, as if the kettle understands her. She lifts it up with a tea-towel; there is the sound of a mug filling up. Elsewhere, a dog scratches its ear. On the quayside, a child crouches; she watches a crab creep in a red plastic bucket, tapping the sides with its claws. The old pig farm, empty now, creaks in the late afternoon sun. There is also washing on a clothesline – four pillowcases which snap at themselves, and a pair of striped socks. The line itself bounces in the breeze – up and down.

  There is the tick-tick of computer keys.

  A mobile phone lights up and thrums across a table, before dropping to the floor.

  There is a man in his bathroom, cleaning his ears of sand with a flannel’s tip. He hums, as he does so – dum-di-dum …

  And there is a mother telling a story. She has her child in front of her, in his dinosaur pyjamas. He sucks the end of a white cloth, holding the cloth with both hands and he listens to her with eyes like the world. Have I told you the story of the silver in the fields? She is Hester – a true Bundy, with the dark Bundy eyes – and she knows her stories. She has the voice for telling them. She is Parlan, after all.

  Can you hear these things? Each of them?

  A gull is calling out – ark ark ark! It stands on the chimney of a cream-walled house.

  And can you hear this: the brush of legs through long grass? At this moment, a young man is walking. He wears jeans which are damp and frayed at the hem. The lace on his left boot is undone, and its plastic ends tap against rocks as he goes. There is sheep dung pressed underneath this same boot; he feels it with each footstep so when he comes to a stile he puts this boot on the step and scrapes his sole against it. He twists his leg, checks. Then he climbs over the stile and briefly, as he climbs, he looks over to the house with the washing line. He narrows his eyes to see it – the striped socks, the yellow front door. He sniffs, steps down.

  Brush brush. Through the grass.

  It is early evening. This young man is fair-haired, freckled. He has caught the sun today – his cheekbones are pink, and his scalp feels sore. It has been the first day of sun in a long, long time and he’d not expected it. None of them had. He knows, in time, his skin will peel.

  He is Sam Lovegrove, and he is twenty-two, and when he reaches the coast path he heads west.

  The sea glints. In the distance, he sees Bundy Head.

  To his right, the cove called Sye appears. It starts to show itself. As he walks, the cove widens and he looks down into it. It is a fleeting glance, nothing more, for he does not expect to see anything. Nobody goes to Sye – it is a small beach, with no sand to speak of; its high cliffs make it shaded and cool. Who might go there, and so late in the day? No-one. And so he glances, that’s all. A sweep of the eyes. But there is something down there today.

  He stops. He stops so sharply that his right foot slips.

  Sam takes two small steps towards the edge. What is …?

  Then he says oh shit. Oh God. Oh my God …

  * * *

  Me, the forager. Or the salvager, perhaps – crouching in the wet sand to gather what is left. Is that what stories are? The debris of a life? The remains that can be dried, passed on so that a little of that life is passed on too, in its way? I have lost so much. So much I have never had, and so much of Parla I have looked for meaning in. And I miss it – I miss the island. I miss its pebbled strands, its button-eyed voles, and the weightless bones of cuttlefish that fitted the palms of my hands. I miss the people who I called family, or tried to; I miss how magical a winter’s night sky could be for I’d never seen a falling star until I stood on that island, and I’ve not seen one since. And I miss him above all others – how I miss that one man. But at least I have my stories, sand-covered. A well-told story takes me back to Lock-and-Key.

  Oh, the stories. So many.

  A thousand strange things have been washed up on Parla’s shores – loo seats, dolphins, a list of dreams in a sealed plastic bag. But it has never had a story which begins with Sam Lovegrove saying oh shit, oh God on a Wednesday evening as he runs down to the beach with his sunburnt shoulders and his left bootlace slapping back and forth, back and forth.

  And it’s never had this: a man, half-naked. He is lying on his front, his face against the shingle. He is dead-looking – still, white-skinned.

  I know some wonderful stories – but this is the beginning of the best of all.

  Two

  He stumbles down to the beach. A steep path through gorse leads him there. He jumps onto the stones and the noise is sudden – the crunch of his heels, the clatter of rock against rock. He staggers, and then falls. Sam lands on all fours. The stones are powdery and the dark cracks between them are darker with old weed. He stares for a moment. Then he rights himself.

  On, towards the shoreline. Over brownish wrack.

  Oh God, he says. Oh …

  It is not plastic, or sacking.

  It is a human body. It lies at the water’s edge. Its upper half is out of the water; its legs are still being lapped at by the tide. It lies on its front and the head is turned so that the man’s right cheek (it is definitely a man) is pressed into the stones, and his right arm is raised above his head. He wears a white vest, or part of one. Sodden, dark-grey shorts.

  Black hair. A black beard.

  Shit …

  Sam looks away. He breathes heavily through pursed lips. He tries to steady himself, puts his hand on his chest. Could he turn, go? No-one need know. No-one has seen me coming here. And wouldn’t the sea come back and take it? Carry it out? Sam shakes. His hands are shaking and he thinks, a dead body … He has not seen one before.

  But he cannot turn and go. He must stay; he knows he must.

  He looks back. The man’s skin is white. It is perfectly white, like fish meat. The arms are thick, muscled. His back, too, is strong-looking – there is a deep groove where his spine is.

  He is tall. Was. Was tall.

  Oh … His stomach clenches. He half-bends, as if he will vomit, and he expects this – he braces, locks his jaw. But nothing comes.

  The body lies ahead of Sam. He tries to calm himself for he knows what he must do. He knows what needs to be done, right now, and so he lifts his left foot and steps towards it. He brings his right foot to join his left.

  No smell. Would there not be a smell?

  And fli
es, he thinks. There are no flies.

  Carefully, Sam comes in. He draws level with the body and starts to lower down. He is tentative, scared of falling or getting too close. The stones shift, as his weight does, and he thinks and what about the eyes? He has found dead sheep before. They lose their eyes to gulls – the soft, jellied flesh is the first part to be eaten – and Sam feels nauseous again. His tongue tightens. But he has no choice: he has to see the face. He knows this but he does not want to and he is shaking as he crouches down. His breath is fast and his heart is thumping against his ribs so that they hurt and he does not want the eyes to have been pecked away or sucked out by fish. He does not want the mouth to be open, as if still fighting for breath.

  Oh God oh God …

  Sam puts his palms down on the stones. He brings his face alongside the dead man’s face. Nose to nose.

  The man opens his eyes. Not fully, not wide – but his eyelids flicker and there are two black crescent moons of eye.

  Sam yells. Falls.

  He scrambles backwards, crab-like, shouting holy fuck oh my God, and as he tries to stand his left foot slips and the stones give way so he turns onto his front and crawls frantically on his hands and knees, and then he finally clambers up the beach and turns around.

  There is the sea, and a gull’s screaming, and there is a sound which is coming from Sam – a whimpering, a half-sob. His grips his hair with both his hands. Not dead is what he thinks. Not dead not dead, oh Jesus. He looks at the skin, the beard, the mouth which is moving now as if trying to speak or trying to clear itself of salt or sand or pebbles and the eyelids still flicker, and the right hand flinches. The fingers find a stone and try to close upon it.

  Shit. Listen. I’m going to get help, Sam tells him. I am. I’ll come back.

  He sees a whorl in the man’s beard, as if a thumb has been pressed there – familiar, in its way. A shell, or a rose.

  Sam stumbles through the grass. His feet snag on roots and old wire; the sheep lift up from their resting places and bleat at him, and move. His breathing is loud as he runs towards the lane. He knows the house with the striped socks on the line is to his left and that a woman will be inside it, but he cannot go to her. Not her, of all people. He does not look across.

  Down the hill. Past the ragwort, and the rusting tractor.

  Past the sheet of corrugated iron that is half-lost in grass.

  He turns right at the sign that says Wind Rising. He runs up the drive and the dog barks as she sees him, and the rooster stretches up and flaps his wings. Sam bangs on the back door which swings open on its own so he hurries inside saying Ian? Ian? The kitchen smells of casserole and coffee and dog hair and Ian is standing there, very still, with the kettle in his hand.

  * * *

  A man?

  A man.

  Dead?

  No. I thought he was, but he’s alive. He opened his eyes.

  Washed up? Are you sure he’s not just … Ian shrugs. I don’t know … Lying there? Sunbathing, or …

  No, he’s washed up. Sam’s hands grip the back of a chair.

  Is he hurt?

  Don’t know. Probably. He is pale, Ian – properly white. I really thought he was dead. Oh God …

  Ian sighs, holds up a hand to stop the boy talking. OK. Fine. I’ll get Jonny. And Nathan’s in the barn. He’s big, you say?

  Looks it. And heavy. Arms like … He holds his hands apart, showing him.

  Ian takes a sip of coffee. He holds it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. He takes a second sip, puts the mug down. Then he pulls on a jumper and walks towards the door, talking under his breath, but as he reaches it he turns to see Sam’s still standing there, holding the chair. Coming?

  Ian, listen …

  The older man pauses.

  He’s dark-haired. There’s a mark in his beard – like a whorl. I didn’t look too closely –

  Ian’s eyes are hard. Let’s just get there. OK?

  * * *

  Four men make their way across the fields as the sun starts to dip. They move quickly, without talking. The sheep move away from them, find a safe place and then glance back.

  The Lovegrove boy leads the way. His shirt is darker under the arms; his forehead is lined for his age. He looks over his shoulder once or twice to check he is still being followed. The farmer from Wind Rising is next – greying at the temples, breathing through his mouth. He is Ian Bundy and he has the family build – stocky, short-legged. His son, too, has it. And they both have the family colouring – brown eyes, sallow skin, hair that is almost black. Jonny chews as he jogs – gum, which he snaps in his mouth with his tongue until his father says get rid of that. The younger man scowls, throws the gum into grass. The fourth man sees him do it. He is Nathan Bundy. He, too, is dark-eyed, but the summer has lightened his hair and it is long so that it brushes his collar and curls by his ears. He’s the tallest of them. He has marks on his arms from barbed wire; he hasn’t shaven for days. Nathan says nothing as they make their way to the cove called Sye.

  Brush-brush – their legs through the grass.

  They all have their thoughts, their worries.

  A ewe watches them. The men crest the hill so that they are, briefly, four dark shapes against the sky, four silhouettes – and the ewe sees this. She shakes her ears, lowers her head. She tears, steadily, at the grass.

  There, says Sam. He does not need to point.

  Ian squints.

  The man is still lying there. His right arm is still raised and his legs are parted. Christ. He’s big.

  Told you.

  The tide is lower now. There is a metre or more of shingle between the sea and the man’s bare feet. Ian makes his way down through the gorse, onto the stones which are dry, chalky to touch. He says, steady – talking to himself as if he were a horse or a dog. He holds his arms out for balance; his feet slip between the stones as he goes. He wonders when he was last at Sye and doesn’t know. He is never on beaches. He hates finding sand between his toes or in his mouth.

  Ian sees the black hair. The beard.

  He kneels, presses his thumb against the man’s cold neck. Can you hear me? Hey?

  Is there a pulse? Jonny stands over him.

  A moment. Then, yep.

  Sure?

  Yes – got one. Let’s roll him over.

  All four of them crouch, put their hands on his body. After three?

  Ian counts.

  As they roll the man over he makes a sound – a groan, as if in pain. There is a creak, too, as if his ribs are being released or a bone which was pressed upon can return to its right place. Grit sticks to his cheek. There is weed splayed on his chest, like a hand.

  Ian stares for a moment. Then he reaches, takes the weed away. We need to get him to Tabitha’s. We’ll carry him.

  Can we? I mean – Sam shrugs – he’s huge.

  He is, but there are four of us. We’ll manage – have to. Ian taps the man’s face twice, calls hey! Hello? As he does this he sees the twirl of hair in his beard, the rosette, and he rests back on his heels, wipes his nose with the back of his hand so that Nathan puts his hand on his brother’s arm. Ian?

  Let’s get going.

  They take hold of the stranger and lift him into the air.

  It is as if they carry an upturned boat. The man is on his back, being moved head-first, with Ian and Sam beneath his shoulders. Their hands take care of his head, arms and neck. Behind them, his right thigh is resting on Jonny’s shoulder and his left thigh is pressed against Nathan’s ear. The men all move slowly, saying careful and easy, now.

  When they reach the coastal path they move faster.

  Nathan thinks, I was in the barn … An hour ago, he’d been sitting on the spare tractor wheel in the barn at Wind Rising, filling the last few sacks with fleece. He’d been on his own, thinking of his wife. The farm cat had padded by, and the beams had creaked, and he’d been inhaling the smells he had known all his life – wood-dust, hay, diesel, sweat – when his br
other had marched in saying a man’s been found. Washed up. At Sye. Ian said it as if it happened all the time – like the ferry arriving or fences blowing down. An hour ago Nathan had been alone in the barn and now he is carrying a half-dead man who’s barely dressed, cold-skinned and fish-smelling.

  Things change quickly. But he has known that for years. Four years, or nearly.

  He can hear the man’s breath, as they carry him. His thigh is heavy, and his lower leg hangs from the knee and swings. His heel knocks gently against Nathan’s back.

  * * *

  In the garden at Crest, a woman stands. She is blonde, wearing denim shorts, and she has a clothes peg in her mouth. One by one she takes her washing down. She lifts off tea-towels, a bra, two striped socks. The sun is lowering, and it glints off the windows. She pauses, looks. There is still beauty, she thinks – the light on the water.

  Another woman – grey-haired, not blonde – makes her way past the island’s church, poking at the weeds with her walking stick. She glances to her left. There are the Bundy men and the boy from the harbour carrying something high in the air. What? A boat? Part of a machine? The sun is in her eyes so she cannot tell.

  The church glints, also. From inside, its windows are jewel-coloured – ruby, emerald, a deep royal blue. These colours lie down on the tiled floor.

  On the west coast, the sinking sun catches the row of single, rubber boots that stand upside down on fence-posts. None match; none are the same size. They shine in a line, looking wistful. They cast their strange shadows on the scrubby grass behind.

  And at the same time – at this exact, same moment as the stained-glass windows glow, unseen, and as the widow from Crest takes her washing inside – the men come to a stile. They stumble, hiss watch it! The man they carry hears this. His head lolls. He feels the rock of his body and the fingers pressing into him, and there is the brush of legs through the grass. He smells sweat, sheep, salty air.

  He says a word. It is sea, or a word like it.

  When he opens his eyes, all he can see is sky.

  Tabitha looks at the clock on her kitchen wall. It is past eight. This means, to her, that she can pour herself a small glass of sweet, pink wine so she goes to her fridge and opens it. She loves the sound of a cork coming out. She likes the cool bottle, and choosing the glass from her shelf – for none of her glasses are the same. Small rituals. Everybody has them. Her mother always tapped a wooden spoon twice against a saucepan, having stirred it; her father had names for the weight that would lower itself down the stairwell, and in doing so, turn the lamp.