The Silver Dark Sea

by Susan Fletcher

  It was a good hiding place … Always sadly said. But one summer’s afternoon Thomasina didn’t think so and she ran to Tap Hole instead. Her twin and her brother crouched amongst the pigs, wiping their noses, and thought where is she? Why hasn’t she followed us?

  He hears her behind him. She comes into the garden, and her pace is slow so that he knows she carries something – a tray, he thinks. There is the chink of cups.

  He says Abigail?

  I’m here. There is the sound of the tray being lowered.

  Jim reaches. He finds her sleeve, and then travels down it until he finds her hand and squeezes it. How are you?

  How am I?

  About Tavey? The pig farm? About the Fishman mending it?

  Oh! She settles down. I don’t mind it at all. He’ll take those shelters away, I should think. The troughs, too. It’ll be a better place for it – and she pats the hand he holds her with.

  Maggie sits, hunched. Her arms are rigid so that her shoulders are pressed against her ears, and she looks at the floor. Silence. Except for a distant bee that is knocking against the glass.

  The smell of polish and candlewax. Dust.

  She is not alone. There is this bee that flew into the church when its door was propped open by Hester, as she watered the flowers – but there is the minister, too. He carries an armful of hymn books. He sings, as he walks. Dum-de-doo …

  Then he sees Maggie. I’m so sorry … He walks a little slower, treading quietly.

  It’s OK. I wasn’t praying.

  I didn’t hear you come in.

  It’s fine. She puts her hands in her lap. How are you?

  Me? Oh, I’m as well as I can be.

  Back pain?

  Always a little of that but there are worse things. He tilts his head, eyes her. And Maggie, how are you?

  How is she? She gives a smile, shakes her head. Confused. Scared, a bit.

  Can I help?

  She’s not sure if she should talk. But then she asks Lorcan, do you think there is one great love?

  Human love?

  Yes.

  Romantic?

  Yes.

  He lowers the rest of his books. I think love changes. I think how we love when we are young is different to how we love in our later years. But it does not grow less.

  He will know; she is sure that he knows. He has ears and eyes and a heart that has seen more of the world than she ever has. Tabitha comes to him with codeine for his back, and they will have talked of the Fishman and her. He must know who she’s thinking of.

  Maggie. Lorcan settles next to her. The pew creaks, and she feels it sink a little. I don’t know much. But I know that love is infinite. Love for one person does not lessen because you might start to love another, too. Look at families – do you think a parent’s love gets watered down, the more children they have? It keeps on going. What a wonderful thing! It grows and grows … I know you are not talking of children, Maggie. And I know the vows you took – I helped you to say them. after all. But …

  The bee knocks, high up.

  It is – he says this slowly – a short life. A remarkable life, and rich – but our earthly life is not long. I think there should be as much honest love as possible.

  She sniffs. And loyalty?

  Ah. Loyalty. I cannot tell you what to do, Maggie. But you are the living one – you are the one with the bodily life. What – he asks – would you have hoped for Tom? What would Tom have hoped for you?

  She swallows and looks at her hand. There it is – smooth and gold. The hand itself has weathered – it is lined, thinner-skinned, and it has its marks from lobstering, from kitchen burns and barbed wire. But her wedding ring is just the same. It has not changed from the day he pushed it on her finger in this church, by this altar.

  You will never stop loving Tom, I know.

  I still miss him.

  I know. And I can only advise. I can only tell you that nothing will change your love for him – not death, not another love …

  She looks across. Thank you.

  They never truly leave us. We carry them in us – you know that, don’t you? And he stands, touches Maggie’s shoulder – awkwardly but meaning it, as a father might.

  We carry them in us and nothing will change your love – and I lit a candle in the church, afterwards. I stared at its little yellow flame. It was the only candle and yet it lit the walls and the umbrella stand.

  You are the one with the bodily life and I knew he was right. I understood, now, that I was the one who was left behind and so it was me and me alone who could enjoy the things that Tom had loved – the house martins’ nests at Wind Rising, the taste of our tomatoes. It was me who was still here, and so I looked – studied – all the things that he was no longer there to see. I spent a night by the nettles, listening to the voles rustle through the stalks. Once, when I dug for radishes I found an earthworm and held it in my palm, stared at its ribbed collar and its blind pink head, twisting for the dark, and I ran my hands along Pigeon’s sides because he used to do this before every voyage and he no longer could. Live. I saw the word in a newspaper six months after he died and I didn’t understand it – how could I live? The word offended me. It seemed cheap and shallow, and I turned the page. But later I would sit by the fire with a glass of wine and wonder how I could describe its taste for him – smoke, plums, damp straw? I used my body for him. I did the things that he could not because his body was gone.

  Live. I had to try. I knew I had to, and that he would want me to.

  She makes up her mind as she steps out of the church.

  At Crest, she runs a bath. In the wardrobe, Maggie finds a dress in peacock-blue.

  * * *

  The bee in the church grows tired. For nearly two days it had knocked, and knocked. It lies on the windowsill. It does not move.

  An old, tired bee – its furry head lies down on the paintwork; if it was to be prodded it would give a single, weary buzz.

  It nearly dies, on that sill.

  But then, a piece of paper – an old till receipt – is pushed up against it, and a finger nudges it whilst a voice says on you go, and then the bee is lifted up on his white flying carpet, and it is carried outside – out into the late-evening air. It is popped onto a dandelion leaf.

  Lorcan, of course. A life is a life, in his eyes. All have been made by the same kind hands – and if he can help a widow who is newly in love, and happy, then he can also help an elderly bee find its way outside.

  Gardenia on her collarbone. Lotion on her shins and hands.

  Her necklace that shines out – M.

  She walks over the fields. She carries a blanket. She hears the wings of insects rising from the grass as she goes. The lighthouse finds her, passes on.

  Candles at Tavey. The smell of sanded wood.

  Two knocks.

  He opens the door. It is Maggie, and she wears a dress of deepest blue – the shimmering blue of a dragonfly. She has caught the sun. A freckled nose, paler hair.

  He does not smile. They look at each other.

  She steps in. She swallows as if she is nervous and she looks at his mouth as if it’s that, his mouth, that she is wanting. Maggie drops the blanket to the floor. And then she puts her hands on his chest and she pushes him back into the house so that he’s walking backwards. She follows him in.

  She closes the door behind her with her foot.

  * * *

  This is how he kisses her.

  Firstly, he takes his hand and runs it into her hair. His fingers close upon her scalp – not too hard, but enough to show his purpose, what he also wants. His head is angled slightly, so that when his mouth comes down onto Maggie’s mouth their lips are not perfectly matched, or even. He partly kisses the skin beyond her lips, the corners of them. The shadow where her chin begins.

  A sound, as her mouth opens. There is the damp click of their tongues.

  This is how she kisses him back: with her hands and forearms pressed against his body and p
ushing up onto her toes so that he needn’t stoop so far. She pulls back for a moment, then re-enters. She opens her eyes as she is kissing and sees that he, also, is looking: she sees herself in his polished eyes.

  Later she says I will always love him. Always.

  I know.

  She takes one strap of her dress, unties it. Then she unties the other one.

  The Fishman stares. He touches what he sees with his fingertips. Then he turns his hands over, feels her body with the backs of them.

  Maggie? Are you sure?

  She smiles – a little sadly. She studies the top of his trousers – the silver button, the zip, the belt-loop that has broken. They both watch as, slowly, she takes the zip and pulls.

  The Silvered Nights

  The light caught us, I remember that. Every minute there were five half-second flashes, and so five times a minute I saw him – muscular, bare. In one flash, he was over me; in the next his face was coming down. We were in darkness, then we were lit. Then we were in darkness.

  It must have seen so much – that lighthouse. Over the years of being here, it must have flooded so many tiny moments with its light: bodies moving together; boats being pulled up into a night-time cove; a ewe giving birth so that she blinked when the light passed over her. It finds the rooftops and the blackthorn trees and the stone walls which look, somehow, more textured by night, more shadowed and strange. It turns over the gravestones, one by one. For a second, it makes each bedroom white.

  There are hundreds of stories about it: ghosts, shipwrecks, the dreams the light can bring when it sweeps a room, the moths that come to the lantern room’s glass.

  Tom told me about the silvered nights. He had learnt about them from Nathan, many years before. In winter, in the shortest days, the light would start turning whilst they were still awake; they’d put down their homework, go to their window and watch it glint off coils of wire, wing mirrors, the sleeping farm machines. And if the moon was full, then it, too, would glint off metal – the dog’s chain, the gas canisters, pennies on their windowsill, tools left in the fields. It caught the backs of beetles as they crept up stalks of grass. So much light, flashing, that Nathan called them silvery. Look – it’s one of those nice silvery nights …

  And the story is this: that these nights are magic. That on such nights – a full moon, a turning light, a sparkling sea that crashes – flakes of silver are made. Who knows how? They drift down, to the ground.

  All those shiny things. The metal rim of spectacles, as they rest at a bedside. The crescent of light in the mare’s brown eye.

  The ring in the nose of Tavey’s old boar – long ago.

  You know these nights. You feel them, as you sleep. And when the morning comes, you must rise and dress and walk out to the fields at Wind Rising for it’s said that these are where the flakes fall – here, in this grass alone. I don’t know why. Why not in the graveyard, or on the tarpaulins of boats? No – it is always Wind Rising. And I have looked out of my window on a moon-white night, seen the lighthouse turning, and imagined those silver flakes, as they’re falling. Settling like fish scales into its midnight grass.

  * * *

  Sam knows it. Like all children who grew up on the isle, he knows that story of silver in the fields. His mother whispered it. She tells it to Nan, now; he has heard her, through the bedroom wall. When the moon is full and silvery …

  He cannot remember if he ever believed in the story or not. Perhaps he did what most boys do – openly mock it, wrinkle his nose and say that’s rubbish – whilst secretly glancing down in the grass as he passed by Wind Rising. He isn’t sure. But he knows that Leah believed it, for a time. How old had they been? Ten, maybe. She’d been standing there, as if waiting for him – dungarees with one button missing so that the bib was half-unfolded. Are you looking for silver?

  No.

  It’s here. If you look. I found some.

  You did?

  A flake of it. Hands behind her back.

  That was Leah, before the fade came. Before the sea mist of depression rolled in without much warning and dampened her, softened her so that she had less strength. She had always been sensitive – that was the word he’d heard for her and it was the right word. She saddened at the lobsters that Tom hauled ashore; she bruised, as ripe fruits do. And one day, as Sam lay in the grass beside her, he glanced across and saw her pulse beneath her skin, as if her skin was so thin her heart might break it.

  Still. There is something in Leah. A flash of metal. A piece of grit in the pearl.

  When Tom died, she came to Sam. When everyone else was wandering beaches, scanning the water, calling out Tom, Tom, Leah came down to the harbourmaster’s house, pushed the door open, walked up the stairs past Dee who was saying Leah? What the …? and she’d opened the hatch into his attic bedroom, throwing up dust and light and old cat hair and she’d sat down on the edge of his bed. No words. She’d just sat there beside him. In time, she took his hand.

  Sam smokes, at this moment.

  They used to do that, too, in the fields – share a cigarette. She’d return it to him with a moistened end, where her mouth and tongue had been.

  Now she works at Tavey. Leah who has lived through books for so long – poetry, or romance fiction. Did she think she could never be happy? Or never be worth happiness? Yesterday Sam saw her pause from her sweeping and drink from a bottle of water, and some of that water ran down her chin and onto her collarbone and Sam could not imagine a book containing that sort of beauty, that brightness or that life. Could he ever tell her? Like the silvered nights, it has to be seen to be fully believed in. He watches the moon’s cycles; Sam watches the tides and he knows when there might be the next night of silver – magic, milk-white.

  Twelve days until the full moon.

  Twelve days until the sly tide comes.

  There is a flash of blue, not silver. Did Leah sense his thoughts, or share them?

  He looks down at his phone, presses read.

  A message from her: goodnight xxx

  Eleven

  Maggie wakes before he does. The room is barely light – grey, soft-coloured. It is cold, too, and so she takes hold of the blanket, pulls it up around her shoulders. Not yet five. She shivers once, turns.

  He sleeps on his side, facing her.

  Maggie looks. She looks at his sleeping face – the eyelids, the slightly parted lips. He is resting his left cheek against the back of his right hand.

  Last night he’d asked her, are you sure?

  And all she could know was that as she’d walked towards him, through the evening fields, she’d felt her heart beating. When she’d glanced up at the moon, she’d only thought of him. I never asked for this … And yet she’d smiled, as she was walking. She’d smiled, passing the gorse.

  His face, Maggie thinks, is a beautiful face.

  Yes. Yes, I am sure.

  Tavey, where no human has slept for many months. Mice have, and spiders; rabbits; birds. But it has been years, even, since a single human life slept beneath those rafters and longer, far longer, since two humans – a man and a woman – have shared a blanket in this house, or their breath, or their own heat.

  He opens his eyes, now. He opens them onto her profile, the curved shell of her ears.

  Hey.

  She turns. She blinks, as if focusing. And he suddenly loves how she looks at this moment – her knotted hair, how she rubs her eyes with the backs of her hands, how she mouths hey … back to him, as if scared of saying it. This coy, embarrassed, sideways smile.

  Day. A day like every day before it and yet brand-new.

  The bed in the mending room has not been slept in. It is white, smooth. There is no glass of water beside it, no sleeping body in its depths. Tabitha stands in the doorway: she knows exactly where he’s slept.

  And so she gives a soft nod, pads into the kitchen. She turns on the kettle and reaches for a mug. And Tabitha imagines how it must be for Maggie and him, at that moment – waking together fo
r the first time. Are they looking at each other, with no need for words? Are they amazed, and grateful? Are they smiling nervous smiles?

  They will remember it for always, Tabitha is certain – a room with no curtains, skin on skin, and a sea-cool dawn.

  * * *

  Sun climbs; the chestnut mare stamps a hind leg once to rid herself of a fly.

  The man from Sye watches Maggie go. She looks young in that blue dress, and she walks through the fields with her arms by her sides. When she reaches the crossroads she pauses, looks back.

  He is not the only one who sees Maggie, of course. It is a small island; most of the windows and doors look onto other windows and doors and Emmeline has woken to find that her runner beans have drooped down their frame, sunk to the ground, so she is in her vegetable patch with garden string and her reading glasses pushed up into her hair. She binds the plant back to its wooden frame, frowns.

  And she looks up. Emmeline glances up at movement in the fields and thinks Maggie? At this hour? And in a sun-dress when the sun is barely up?

  Then she knows. The thought settles like dust, covers everything.

  Unlike her sister, it is not calmness that she feels.

  * * *

  I have slept with … Maggie walks through the rooms of the house, turning her wedding ring. She is frantic, for a while – hauling out the box in which she keeps Tom’s letters, his gifts, the order of service from their wedding and saying sorry, sorry, sorry … and bringing old photographs of him to her chest. But this passes. This angst, this self-retribution leads to a deep sleep. Maggie sleeps on the sofa, the box by her feet, and the dream she has is of feathers, falling down around her. She dreams, too, of a beard, and a whorl in it. It looks like a star. It looks like the place where a thumb has been pressed and turned, as if to say this is one of the good ones. This one. This one, here.

  In the afternoon, she goes to Sye. She remembers her husband on this beach – the slight grey at his temples, the groove beneath his nose where no beard could grow. The sea sucks the shingle. And Maggie thinks of the day she found a crab’s claw here. She’d held it up. Tom?