And she knows about his childhood, too. She knows what Jack endured. What Abigail and Thomasina went through.
Emmeline sips her coffee. No, she does not hate him. She hates what he did and she hates plenty more besides, including the concern that came from others who may, perhaps, have wondered about a certain bruise or an odd-shaped cut. How Emmeline hated that. What business was it of theirs? Even now she narrows her eyes, and even now she hates Old Man Bundy who might have kicked the dog but he did far worse to his children. Jack never did that. He never turned to his children except to teach them how to tie knots or castrate the rams. To lift them onto bales of hay.
And the truth – Emmeline’s truth which she has never spoken of – is that after each time that her husband had struck her, as she sat on the edge of that bath and dabbed at her bloodied places, she felt relief. She was relieved – more than anything else. Like a cloudburst, it cleared the air for a week or so. But also, she was relieved because as she bled, she would hear her children out in the fields, trying to catch a sheep to ride or blowing grass between their thumbs. She’d hear their laughter or how they’d call each other’s names – Nay-thaan … And yes, she felt relief. She felt gratitude that it was her, not them. And she felt sorry for her husband, who had spent his own childhood hiding in strange places with his frightened sisters. Who had found one of those sisters, floating like a glove – four limbs, and one long twist of hair.
Be strong is what she told herself. Be the warrior. And if it meant she was quiet or stern, then that’s what it meant. If it meant being sharp-tongued then that’s what she became. We all have our forms of survival. She never thought of her own sake. Perhaps she did a little – she had her secret drawer of flesh-coloured creams and powders that she’d pat on with her fingertips and so much could be hidden by good woollen tights. But she was fifth on her list of concerns. She was fifth – for when you bring a life into the world it is that life that matters far more than your own. When you have four precious lives, you would endure far more than the odd thrown saucepan or having your hair grasped so tightly that you find a bald patch there, later. You endure bitch, and far worse. These things are easy. These things are light as air and barely a trouble if you can then walk downstairs and see Hester licking the jam spoon, or Ian lying on his front by the fire with his football sticker album or Nathan using a ruler as a sword saying take that! And that! Or Tom in his red swimming trunks when it was too late to swim, or too cold.
She became wise on the day she gave birth for the first time. She thought then, at that moment, what she thinks now. I would endure every pain, every fist, every slung word, and I would be pummelled into the sand or held underwater or thrown on the fire or be torn apart or all these things if it meant my child was safe and well. She’d give her own life – unquestionably – if she had to. If it would do any good.
Those red swimming trunks.
She remembers how he dived off the jetty once, at high tide, and those trunks had somehow freed themselves, surfaced before him. He’d spouted like a whale, widened his eyes. My shorts! Mum! Laughing and laughing.
Emmeline sniffs.
She knows the islanders think she is cold. They think she is bitter, as tight as an oyster and perhaps she is. How she spoke in church hardly helped, in that. But how could she be any other way? She had no choice. A boat can only float for so long unless it’s well-sealed, and she’s known some stormy weather. She’s known the pitch and toss, how you hold on for your life and pray for dawn to come. She stayed afloat but not without its costs.
* * *
At Wind Rising, an orange Calor gas bottle tilts to its left. Softly, it clunks against the bottle next to it. The dog sees this. Her ears prick.
Nan, in turn, sees the dog. She also sees sheep mess and bugs because she is in the long grass, but she does not mind these things. She lies on her front. There is a big blue sky, and skylarks are singing, and she can see the crossroads beneath her.
These grasses are Wind Rising’s grasses. When an ant hurries over her hand, she knows the ant belongs to Wind Rising. She also knows the story of silver in these fields and she wonders if this ant has seen any on his walks – a flake of it, like a moth’s wing.
She waits.
I am an explorer, she tells herself. With her chin on the soil, the grass is like trees. I am in the jungle …
Then she sees him. The Fishman is walking up the lane.
Nancy was two and a half when Maggie’s husband dived off his boat to help someone from drowning, and then drowned himself. She does not remember him at all. So as she watches this tall, bearded man walking past the rusting tractor with his eyes on the blue sky and the birds that sing down to him, she does not think of anybody else. She does not think of Maggie, or the three other Bundy children who are grown-ups now.
She thinks, it must be hard – to walk. When all you’ve known is a fish’s tail.
The tabby cat emerges from her sunny spot, tail up. Nan hears her mewing – a noisy, broken, demanding sound – and the man bends down to speak to her. How he touches the cat is nervous, at first; he holds his fingers above her head, not sure how to stroke her. But the cat pushes herself up onto her back legs to reach his hand, and she drops back down into the dust with a thud. Mew!
He is very tall. His legs are long, so his tail would have been.
And now the man who was found at Sye begins to walk to the north. He puts his hands in his pockets as he does so, and twice he turns round to glance behind him for the cat from High Haven is following him, trotting beside the stone wall, and it is only after he has spoken to her again – bending down, hands still in pockets – that she stops, and lowers her tail.
He leaves.
The cat watches for a moment, as if forlorn. Then she settles and begins to clean herself; she investigates her lower half, one leg stretched up in the air.
* * *
Maggie puts the car into second gear, rises away from the harbour. She passes the picnic table, where two tourists are sitting. They do not notice Maggie, or her car. The view is too good, here. The sunshine.
She bears right at the crossroads, heads for home.
The car smells of seawater – cold, fishy. She wonders how much those lobsters will fetch her and she imagines the restaurant with white cloths, the long forks for spearing the deepest meat in their claws. Neat italic script on a stiff menu that reads Parlan lobster.
And she sees him.
It is the man from Sye. He is walking ahead of her, along the lane. He hears the car and steps to the side, into the verge, to let her pass.
Briefly, she thinks keep driving; briefly, she is afraid and thinks carry on, don’t stop. But part of her, too – the stronger, hidden part – says it’s him: stop … as she approaches him. And this is the part she listens to.
Thank you.
I was passing. Seems wrong not to offer a lift, at least. Where to?
She is aware of his size, of the space he is taking up in the car. She wonders, also, if he is noticing the empty cola can at his feet, or the blankets and rope on the back seat. The cove called Sye.
Sye? Really?
I’ve not seen it yet. Or at least, not since I was found. I thought if I went and sat there a while …
Maggie says nothing.
She grinds the gears as they climb higher. The harbour, the old pig farm, the crossroads and most of the homes are behind them. Ahead, it’s wilder country. More sheep and fewer people. She can see Crest on the hill. It looks so small from here. She can see her jacket on the washing line, and the wheelbarrow resting by the gate.
There’s no road to Sye, she says. It’s a footpath. I’ll drop you there.
It’s not out of your way?
No. I live near it. See that house? The washing? That’s Crest.
He leans forwards. Good spot.
It is.
The car windows are down. The sound of the sheep comes in. She sees how they hurry away from them – a fast, clumsy walk, with
their swinging tails. Or they stand as they are, and stare.
Here. She slows the car in a gateway. Cross the stile. Keep walking.
Thank you. He climbs out, shuts it. And before Maggie drives off she leans across to the open window and says listen, if you want a glass of water, or a cup of tea … There’s nowhere else but the lighthouse up here, and Rona will charge you for them.
Your water is free? A smile.
Maggie pushes the car into gear, drives up the lane.
* * *
She had the same scent as before – salt, lotion, fabric conditioner, something almost floral which he can still smell, now. The backs of her hands, as she’d driven, had looked older than the rest of her. He knows that will be the life she lives – outdoors, seafaring, cold water and soil. He looks at his own hands. The round, brown scar.
He walks along the sheep track until he finds the coast. The path drops through gorse. On Sye, the Fishman finds a dry place amongst the larger stones and lowers himself down. He brings his knees towards his chest, loops his arms around them. And like this, he looks out. He looks out and sees far more than sea – more than waves and a gull, flying.
I did not expect this. Want this.
He thinks of her tiny, sideways smile. Her hair, by her temples, is almost feather-like.
* * *
Tabitha is fastening three bamboo canes. She has twine in her mouth, pliers in one hand. It is the season for runner beans and so she needs a frame for them – a tall, bamboo pyramid that they can climb upon. Her vegetable garden is untidy, she thinks. Ragwort and dandelions.
He has gone walking. Her guest, her patient. Her imaginary son.
The house is different in ways she can’t define. There are the obvious signs of his presence: the boots in the porch, the new toothbrush that she bought from the shop beside her own. But there is also a feeling to Lowfield – she feels he is there, or has been. She can’t describe it further, and can only add that she likes it: this extra, passing life.
She is thinking of him – the man they’re calling the Fishman, now.
And so when she hears the steady footsteps of a man on her gravel path, she expects to see him there. But it is not him.
Ed sees the nurse before she sees him. Tab – who is kneeling in her vegetable patch, frowning over the top of her spectacles at a knot that she’s just tied. Her hair is white, now; her figure has thickened as Ed’s own has – but she is still the Tabitha Bright he knew, as a boy. Long ago.
She sees him, rises. Hello, Eddie.
Inside, as she cuts a slice of cake for him, Tabitha says he’s out walking. If you wanted to see him.
Our mystery man? Not as such. Wanted to know how he was, I suppose.
The grazes on his hands are much better.
Memory?
Haven’t asked. But it will come back, in time.
How much time?
Could be anything … Have patience. Tabitha smiles.
He takes the slice of cake. Your sister wasn’t too pleased.
In church? Ha! A quick, dismissive laugh. When is she ever?
It must be tricky for her, when this man looks –
I know. I know, Ed. But this man can’t help being who he is.
Or who he isn’t.
She nods. Quite.
There are eight years between them, in age. It hardly matters, now; now, Tabitha is a close friend, a fellow islander, the first person to hold all of Ed’s five children as they slipped into her arms. She is sixty-five and Ed is fifty-seven and it makes no difference – age is nothing, these days. But it mattered when he was eleven years old. Oh, it had mattered then.
No more from the coastguards?
Mac? No. He said he’d let me know if he heard of missing boats, or crew.
Her hair had been so blonde that summer. It had been like no other hair he’d seen – in colour, or thickness. He’d wanted to touch it – to feel the downy whiteness at the nape of her neck or the down on her arms that matched it. His friends would whisper they’d seen her undress, once, or touched her bra on the washing line, and her name was the name to Parlan boys – the shiniest coin, the starriest night. The beautiful girl from the lighthouse: Tabitha Bright.
And Sam?
Ed chews, swallows. He seems to be coping. He walks a lot. Works on the ferry, still. I think he thought this man was Tom, at first. Just for a second or two.
He is sleeping?
Not sure. He says so.
And she’d had a scarlet bikini. He’d watched her swim, once, and afterwards she’d walked over to him whilst towelling her hair and said not coming in, Eddie? She’d paused, brushed a pebble from the sole of her foot; she’d untwisted the side of her bikini top. She’d had no idea – and that, perhaps, had been Tabitha’s real beauty; the fact she’d never known, for a second, that she was beautiful at all.
They go outside, into the light. They talk of the weather, of Rona’s café, how Nan is spending her time at the Old Fish Store, asking for stories about this half-fish. The nurse asks his advice on her strawberry plants which haven’t done well this year.
Tabitha?
She looks up.
Have we done the right thing? About the police?
She was off the island for nearly fourteen years. When she’d returned – browned from a fierce, African sun, thinner and with wiser eyes – Ed had been in his twenties and perhaps, perhaps … But it was gone. Done. That deep boyhood love for her had faded. And maybe it hadn’t been love at all but an adoration – lust, but nothing more. Love is what he has, now.
Love, he thinks, is Dee.
Yes. We have done. And she has more lines by her eyes when she smiles, but it is still the same smile.
* * *
Nathan and Ian move a length of electric fence, widening a field. They look alike in how they move, in how they call to each other. The dog from Wind Rising is with them; she crouches, tongue lolling.
It is the dog that sees the Fishman first. Her ears prick, and she whines. It is enough for Ian to straighten up so that he, too, sees the Fishman walking through the longer grass.
Nathe. Look.
They stand side by side.
The Fishman crosses the stile. He is a shape, for a moment – a dark shape against the sky. Then he steps down, makes his way up the lane to the house with the shed, a porch filled with tomato plants. The house with the yellow front door.
Maggie has washed plates; she’s cleared the kitchen table of newspapers and envelopes; she’s raked her fingers through her hair.
He is a fish. He is not human.
She stares at the bathroom mirror. Turns her head from side to side.
Three knocks. Tap tap tap.
Maggie walks along the hallway, opens the door.
Are you sure you don’t mind? he says.
In the kitchen she makes a pot of coffee. He is warm, from his walk – she can feel his warmth, as she moves behind him to take the mugs from their hooks. She puts sugar on the table, and milk. So – how was Sye?
I remember it, I think. The stones.
You like it?
He shifts, not knowing. It felt cold, almost.
I know. Those high cliffs. The lighthouse doesn’t find it. They say smugglers used it – a long time ago. His hair is incredibly thick. It could be gathered between two hands as her own hair can be.
There are stories here, he says. Not a question.
Of course. It’s an island. It’s how they spent the evenings before the radio, the TV … Maggie moves, opens a drawer. And who are we to say they aren’t true? We weren’t there.
The Fishman?
You’ve heard? I know how it sounds. But there’s a man on Parla who swears he saw him, as a boy. A shrug. And I’m not going to doubt him. Jim and Abigail have been good to me.
She knows he is watching her. She feels his eyes on her back.
See anything? At Sye?
I tried to find exactly where I came ashore, but …
How about mem
ories? Find any of them?
It is a sharp tone. She hears it and regrets it.
He likes her kitchen. He likes the wood – driftwood, he assumes – and the fact that the table seems to be part of a boat. He likes the light which comes through the south-east-facing window; he has noticed how much he is craving the light.
It brims, this room. There are notes and timetables pinned to the fridge. Dried flowers hang from the ceiling amongst the ladles and copper pans. On the wall beside him there is a line of knives held on a magnet, and a small chalkboard on which she has written milk and stamps; a third word has been crossed out. There is wine, unopened. An apron hangs on the back of a chair. The oven gloves have polka dots and there’s a bowl filled with tomatoes and he thinks these things are hers. She owns them.
Also, there are shells. The Fishman sees one at first, and then he sees many – on shelves, on the draining board and the windowsill. Periwinkles, cockles, a huge conch shell that could not have come from these waters. And there is a glass vase in which she has put feathers – dozens of feathers that are split, sandy, damaged. Mostly grey or white.
You like feathers?
She follows his gaze. Yes. Shells. Stones that have been rolled into balls.
Does much come ashore?
Depends on the weather, and tides. But yes. There are always whelks, mussels … Bottle tops. Hubcaps, sometimes. A typewriter, once … She hands him a coffee, picks up her own. Ian found a message in a bottle, years ago. Before I came.
No men?
Bearded? Tall? Memory loss? She brings her mug up to her lips. No, we’ve had none of those.
Perhaps it is the feathers in the vase. But she makes him think of birds. She is wearing a white shirt with long, linen trousers – too long, so that the hem is dark – and yet there is a grace to her, a movement to her arms as a bird may tuck its wings.
You’re not an islander?
A shake of her head. No. I came on the boat. I was born inland, lived there. I’d never heard of Parla till I was thirty-four. Maybe that’s why I have these shells …
And feathers?
Maggie shrugs. They aren’t from pigeons. That makes them new to me.
The Silver Dark Sea Page 15