by Sophia Tobin
‘Our supper will be ruined if you insist on hacking up the vegetables,’ Delphine said. ‘Come now, dear Martha. I see the sense in what you say. But this boy was not worth it – you must believe me. Not worth it at all.’
‘He would not even look at me, at the pier,’ the girl said. Now she was slicing carefully, the tears from the onion pouring from her red eyes. ‘He let them say their insults to me.’
‘Then he is a coward too,’ Delphine said, feeling hot anger rising in her. She remembered the icy restraint of her own mother, the serenity of her grandfather, and wondered if it was her father who had given her anger, and the doubtful gift of forgetting restraint. It was Delphine’s turn to move away, but Martha had already seen her face. She put down her knife and wiped her eyes on her arm.
‘Why, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Are you angry for me?’
Delphine half-turned back. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’
The words seemed to break over the girl, and her face was illuminated with joy. ‘I am grateful,’ she said. ‘To have such a mistress! I could almost kiss your feet.’
‘It is unjust, that is all,’ said Delphine. ‘There will be a husband for you, Martha, a good and kind and truthful husband.’ She said it with a rush of fervour, though she did not quite believe it. The local population was limited; the girls at the harbour would take whatever men there were. Although there were villas on the cliffs . . . villas with menservants.
‘Would you like us to train you a little more?’ she asked. ‘You said you wished to learn to be fit for a larger household. Both my cousin and I have lived in such houses – we could educate you in their ways.’
Martha had stopped preparing the food. She bit her lip. ‘It’s a great honour,’ she replied. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer such a thing. But I am not sure if I am made for a big house. It seems to me that I should be always bowing and scraping, and I am not sure if I could, madam, whether my pride could take it. For I should want to be thanked – the way you and Miss Julia, and Mr Hallam thank me – and I should want to go here and there when I pleased.’
‘You must think on it, then,’ Delphine said.
‘I used to think I would never wish to leave here,’ said Martha. ‘But now I think I would go to somewhere bigger – like London.’
‘There are certainly more men to choose from,’ said Delphine. Martha’s eyes widened, and Delphine sensed her disapproval, remembering her in her Sunday finery; the blank, straight-backed respectability of her family.
‘What troubles you?’ she said. Martha looked down, and there was something about her mute censure that made Delphine say, ‘Answer me!’
‘Nothing,’ Martha said. ‘I do not wish to offend you, ma’am. My mother’s told me things are different in America.’
There was a prudishness in her face which enraged Delphine. She felt it, again: anger, too sudden and complete, as though a tight knot had been tied beneath her breastbone. ‘If you do not wish for my help,’ she said, ‘you should stay quiet and do the cooking, as you are paid to do.’
Delphine left the room and ran upstairs, to her bedroom with its lantern turret. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and Martha’s sudden disapproval had pressed on some sore point and hurt her savagely. She sat down on her bed, unable to take any pleasure from the view.
She knew if she closed her eyes she would be surrounded by the darkness of a New York night, by the lights of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The taste of champagne was sour on her tongue. The knowledge that her life was over struck through her like a physical pain, making her bow her head with it. But no, it was not then that you knew, she thought: it was the morning afterwards. Breathe, she thought: only breathe. You must keep breathing. You must put one foot in front of the other. These memories are not real, now; they can no longer touch you.
She knew she would weather it, the terrible diffuse pain, the many strands of it. There were so many different details, so many different wounds, if you chose to remember them. She decided she would not think on them – not now, not ever – aware that she had made the same decision many times before. She must only weather it, and by teatime she would be able to eat scones, and talk of whether Mrs Quillian’s salon by the sea would ever be reconstructed. But in that moment, she was only angry. Later, it would frighten her: how much she had wanted to take hold of Martha’s hair, and smash her head against the wall.
CHAPTER TWELVE
What I remember most of that summer – if I take the people away, as I often try to do – is the weather, the air, the colour and smell of the place. The freshness of the air, so pure, so liquid as though it was a drug, made to knock you out each night at nine, made to make you sleep and forget. The smell of the salt wind, and the smell of the seaweed, that deep, dense, rotting vegetation, that was somehow part of it all. How quickly the weather would change: from heavy heat to thunder and lightning; from clear blue sky to a sea mist so dense it was best you should stay inside and not think of the ghosts of smugglers. We could hear the sea from Victory Cottage, hear the breaking of the waves, its roar and rush on stormy nights. It was the taker of lives, that sea. But how I loved it; how I loved to catch sight of its broken waves from the lantern turret.
The first Delphine and Julia knew of the storm that came to the town several days later was the gathering wind, the casements rattling throughout Victory Cottage.
It was the kind of day that made a jacket and stock seem unbearable, the air was so dense with heat. Edmund decided that he would stay in his room and rest. He did not wish to be out in the blistering heat nor fight the crowds who gathered near the house of Mr Dickens, nor even to speak with some of the old hovellers on the pier.
He slept. On waking, suddenly, he checked his pocket-watch; it was a quarter to six in the evening. Sitting up in bed, he became aware that the house was silent. The heat was still heavy and thick in the air. He went to his window and drew back the drapes. The white sunlight of the day was gone, its harshness softened in the early evening, but the light was luminous in such a startling way that it seemed unnatural, the sky more violet than grey.
At that moment he saw lightning shiver across the sky; it too had a violet tinge. Then the thunder came – low, primal, awakening fear in the depths of his belly.
He went downstairs. The house was empty – no Martha in the kitchen. He supposed she was seeing to the American ladies. From the drawing-room window he saw a faint glow from within the church; Evening Prayer. He decided not to go, and fought the urge to pour himself a strong drink. Instead, he stood before the window and watched as it began to rain. Heavy, sheeting, so thick it veiled everything: nothing could be seen from the window. Again the lightning came – a vein of light, ending in a scythe-like curve. The thunder was so loud that he felt it tremble through him, and he had to pretend to himself that he was not afraid. Then, similar but different – came a second boom. He had been warned of it: the signal that there was a wreck on the Goodwin Sands.
The heat of the day had been dispatched, cut through by the storm. He tried not to think of what was happening at sea. Instead, he made up the fire. As a bachelor, he had done it often. His mother had taught him how to do so as a child, with the same quiet persistence she had applied to teaching him to read. She had filled his young life with so many similar lessons, anxious that he should grasp the practicalities of living, as though she was afraid he would be alone in a room his whole life. She said once that she had learned early the habit of dependence, and that it was something she had had to unlearn, under the influence of love. As he watched the fire beginning to catch light, he thought of his parents. So often, his thoughts rested on them now. I am an old man, he thought, and I am falling in love, Father, as you promised – but not with the woman I should love.
The silence was broken when Theo entered the front door with a clatter and a crash. Edmund ran out into the tiled hallway. Martha was tucked under Theo’s arm, limp as an injured animal. ‘Mr Steele,’ said Theo breathlessly, obser
ving the proprieties even in this moment of emergency, ‘a boat went out to the Goodwin Sands, to help some foolish excursionists; it has not come back. Martha’s brother is on board. I must go to the pier where his wife waits. Please, will you look after Martha? She is too shocked to come with me.’ He handed the woman over to him. The rain was dripping from his hat brim. He held Edmund’s gaze, and for the first time – from that unblinking gaze – a confidence moved between them.
Edmund accepted Martha as he would accept a fragile package, half-carried her, heavy as she was, into the drawing room as he heard the front door bang shut. She didn’t seem to feel his arms around her sodden sides, and against the conventions of all of her previous behaviour, she sat down on the sofa, her wet dress creating an aura of damp on the fine silken covering.
Time passed slowly that evening, as the storm raged outside. Out of decency, Edmund pulled the drapes closed, so that Martha did not have to see the ferocity of the lightning and the pouring rain, rain landing on water now as it flooded the gutters. He offered her food, and wine, but she would not accept them; in the end, he poured a large glass of wine and held it to her lips. She sipped from it, gazing at him with strained black eyes. Kept sipping, until the glass was drained.
‘No more,’ she said, when he stood to fetch some. He went anyway, poured it, and put it in front of her.
‘God bless Mr Hallam for going out there,’ she said, and the words seemed all the more poignant for being said in her rough voice. ‘He does not have to, and I know it.’
‘He is a good man,’ said Edmund. Despite the closed drapes, there was a vibration through the room, a shiver of light which hinted at the lightning tearing at the sky, then, within moments, the thunder falling like an axe upon the land, and the very foundations of the house seemed to shake.
‘He is called by God,’ she said. ‘That is how he does all that he does. It is what brought him here from Ceylon, what took him to Ceylon in his younger days.’ Her gaze flashed to the ceiling, as though it might find something there, then down again. ‘He is led by the Almighty.’
Ceylon, thought Edmund. A missionary life had been hinted at by Charles, but never explained or mentioned by Theo, only references to the heat which had once scarred him and occupied his mind. It did not seem the time to question Martha any further. Instead, he pushed the glass towards her, but she shook her head. Then, suddenly, she lowered her head into her hands, and the movement of her shoulders showed that she was weeping. He did not know what to do; only sat there. When she looked up, her eyes were red in the candlelight, her face wet with tears.
‘He went out there on the boat,’ she said, ‘my brother, to help some foolish people out on the Goodwin Sands. Incomers.’ She shook her head. ‘My mother says the incomers bring bad luck. To you, the people that wait down on the pier are just strangers, but I know every one of them, have their stories up here.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘I know them in my bones. I like you, sir, I like the misses at the cottage, too, but my mother says you bring bad luck.’
It was past eight o’clock when Theo emerged from the storm. Edmund and Martha heard the bang of the door, then his footsteps moving quickly along the tiled floor. Martha raised her head, like a cowed animal waiting to be struck.
Theo’s clothes were soaked through. He took off his hat and threw it on the table, with no thought for the rug he dripped upon. ‘They are home safe,’ he said. ‘Safe, thank God.’ And he laughed with an exhilaration Edmund had never seen before, light in his eyes.
‘Safe?’ said Martha.
‘Yes,’ said Theo, kneeling beside her and taking her hands. ‘All of them. Go home, go and see him.’
For a moment Edmund thought she would say no; that she would gather herself and become dutiful Martha, and offer to make some tea. Instead, she burst into tears. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I quarrelled with him last week. I must see him.’ And she ran from the room and they heard the front door shut, as she went out into the storm.
Theo rose to his feet. Edmund saw him gradually becoming more aware of his surroundings, a filtering awareness that made him uncomfortable with the emotion he had witnessed and participated in. He went to the window. ‘She has gone without her bonnet,’ he said. ‘Into the rain.’ And he shook his head.
‘My dear boy,’ said Edmund. ‘You are shivering. You should go and change, lest you catch a chill.’
Theo went slowly upstairs and Edmund went to the kitchen. He found a chunk of cheese and cut some bread with the large knife. The size of it made him chuckle, imagining Martha sawing away with it, for it was as blunt as a butter-knife, though twenty times as large.
He took a blue and white plate from the dresser and carried the bread and cheese to the drawing room. In the dining room, by the light of his candle he found a full decanter of Madeira and took it, and two glasses, in. By the time he had arranged this feast Theo had come down. He stood awkwardly, near the door, rubbing his hands together. ‘You must be chilled to the bone,’ Edmund said. ‘Please, sit down by the fire, and stay there until you feel you might melt, for you must be warmed through.’
Theo smiled weakly, and thanked him for the food. He had recovered his composure and ate like a church mouse, delicately, without seeming to savour the meal. He sipped his wine, and Edmund gulped it.
‘We are in need of good news, after the past few weeks,’ said Theo. ‘I should not wish to associate this beautiful bay with death again so soon.’
Edmund nodded, and let him eat.
‘You have seen the drama of life and death tonight,’ he said eventually.
‘There are such moments in all places,’ Theo said. ‘Suffering, joy. God is needed in every nook of human existence, and is wanted here as much as anywhere.’ He chewed a mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘When I heard the boat had not returned, I could imagine the women waiting for them, staring at the terrible, thrashing water – and it did not sit well with me to be safe and dry when they were terrified and in trouble. I led them in prayer on the pier,’ he said. ‘They are such strong women, yet the blessed words reached them even in the midst of the storm. Some sobbed, some were still, but I could see how it touched them. It is grace. The prayer book gives us the poetry to pierce their hearts, to peel back all those layers. They never come to church, some of them. Ordinarily they would turn away from it. But it is needed, and never so much as then, and if they remember that God was here for them in their hour of need, then it is a good thing.’ He looked up from the plate, and Edmund was struck by the unblinking intensity of his gaze. ‘The Virgin appeared here once, on Harbour Street, in the twelfth century. And ever since, the sailors lower their sails as they pass the headland, in honour of the Blessed Virgin. And though they sometimes forget it, the faith is always there really – they know its worth.’
Edmund knocked back his wine, and filled the glass again. He topped Theo’s up, but the priest did not seem to notice it.
‘I was asking for God’s mercy,’ he said, ‘when someone said “I see them, I see a light”. And they all let go of each other’s hands, in the cold and the rain, and ran to the edge, and strained to see, and one of them shrieked. When the first man came up, his wife clung to him like a mother with a child. She would not let go of him.’
‘It is holy, such love,’ said Edmund. He did not know if it was the wine, but he heard his own voice break on the words. ‘It is the best of us.’
Theo held his gaze for a moment, but he said nothing. When he began to speak, it was about the Sunday service – the choice of hymns. Their moment of honesty had passed.
Edmund felt sadness roll over him, submerge him, like the turning over of a wave on a beach. He felt homesick for London, and the friendship with Charles Venning, and sorry for writing so harshly to his friend a few days before.
My dear Charles, he wrote later, I had begun to think myself Theo’s friend – but now I know I am not. You would not have done such a thing. If you could not speak openly, we would have sat in the silence, list
ening to the rain outside, and draining the decanter as the clock ticked. After he had written the words, he sat for some time, and thought of the unbending quality of Theo’s gaze, the picture of St Sebastian hung on the wall in the study – the study he had never been allowed into since his first day in Broadstairs – of the saint’s body all pierced with arrows, and his face the picture of suffering.
When Edmund rose the next morning, all was calm and verdant beyond his window, as if the storm had never been. He dressed quickly, and went down to find Theo sitting at the dining-room table, eating his breakfast. He wished him good morning cordially. Martha appeared to serve them. ‘How is your brother?’ asked Edmund, but she only bobbed him a curtsey and said, ‘Very well, sir,’ with a studied subservience. Theo continued reading the paper.
Edmund was toying with his eggs when there was a sharp double knock at the front door. He saw Martha pass the doorway, hurriedly wiping her hands on her apron. A double knock had to be answered, for it might be a telegram. ‘Message from the Albion Hotel, Mr Hallam,’ she said, putting an envelope on the table.
‘It is my aunt’s handwriting,’ said Theo, with a quick smile. ‘Perhaps she is planning another excursion for us. There has been talk of the Shell Grotto in Margate.’ He opened the envelope and as he began to read, all the pleasure drained from his face.
‘What is wrong?’ said Edmund. And when there was no response: ‘Theo?’
Theo’s eyes met Edmund’s. He was pale.
‘They have found another body,’ he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mr Steele has told me that every man admired me, that summer. If it is true – and my vanity does not seek it, believe me, for men’s desire always was a poor amusement to me – I was not aware of it. I had moved invisibly through crowds for so long, that I still thought of myself as invisible, even as I spoke to people, even as I boarded Mrs Quillian’s hired carriage. I thought I could step amongst the crowd, observe and withdraw, like a ghost. That is also why I identified with those little ghosts, that summer.