‘No. The danger to Edwin’s ravens would be human. The man’s a fool to himself and the birds if he believes that no one else has seen them. Edwin stays blind, most of the time, to other people on the cliffs, because he’d rather they weren’t there. He shoves them aside and ignores them. He’d kid himself that no one else went off the path, except me. It’s usually human danger. Anything rare is in danger. Rare birds in the wrong place attract collectors and murderers. There’s a market for ravens. And by now the young are ready to leave. They only need a few more days. He’s done well.’
He looked at his feet rather than the sky. In his garden, the daffodils had turned rusty and brown at the edges. Their optimism was repeated up here where the celandines exhibited bright chrome-yellow petals that shone in among the still-low grass as if they were glazed with wax, looking like flashes of gold, glistening wetly in the sun. He kept to the path to avoid them, and had a brief moment of not wanting to be anywhere else. The premonition of what he might find, further down the path, made no difference. Sarah was tiny, but she made him feel safe.
‘What about the chough? Could Richard really not have seen it?’
‘No chance, I told you. Not this century. They thrived here once, and they’ve started grazing sheep again on the headland on the other side of the port, which might provide the right kind of habitat in time. There was talk of a scheme to lure them back, but . . . no,’ he said, roughly. ‘He saw a baby raven, covered in blood.’
‘You sound as if you hate the poor ravens.’
‘I do. I hate what they did.’
‘They did what was natural to them.’
‘They savaged her. They took away something that might identify her. Yes, I hate them.’
‘And this man, Edwin, loves them.’
‘Oh, you bet, better than life. He’d kill for them.’
‘I think a passion as strong as that has to be admirable, doesn’t it?’
‘You can admire it, I don’t. Not any more. ‘
She had the medallion in her pocket, safely concealed, and as yet unmentioned. Nor had she told him anything at all about Minty. She had to see first. Had to know how it all fitted into the landscape and where all the connecting paths were.
‘I never asked you, Sarah. Why exactly did you come here? Are you being kind to me?’
She was pretending to be out of breath and he knew she was pretending.
‘I came because I lead a shallow life and I need to be needed, sometimes. Because of the painting. Because you inspired a bit of pity for a poor girl. Who could have been me. Because I feel responsible for the painting being stolen. And because I have a theory, and I want to see if it’s a possible theory before I explain it.’
He stopped.
‘You know who she was?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not yet. Only a theory, built on pathways between places. I’m here because I want to know what she felt like.’
‘Share the pain?’ he asked ironically.
‘Somebody must,’ she said, lightly. ‘If she’s to find her way.’
They soon reached the point where Richard had sat. John pointed out the precipitous path, winding below the overhang.
‘That’s where he went. God knows how. This white clay mud’s as slippy as ice. Come back, Sarah, come back . . .’
She was gone, sure-footed as a goat, slipping away out of sight. He waited, heart in mouth, utterly unable to follow. He was wrong about those townie boots. She did not falter. He sat down weakly and waited.
Then she was back, wiping her hands on her cords, leaving streaks of clay.
‘I can see what tempted him,’ she said. ‘It feels like being inside the cliff. You can see the whole world.’
‘He didn’t know it was there,’ John said. ‘He has vertigo. He’d only have gone there to hide. Why aren’t you afraid of the height?’
She squatted next to him.
‘John, I’ve had two or three episodes of quite exquisite pain in my life. They made me rather nerveless. I don’t have fear. Not that kind, anyway.’
‘There’s a medical condition of not feeling pain, you know. It means the patient doesn’t know when something’s wrong. They can walk round with a nail in the foot. It’s a dangerous condition, not feeling pain.’
‘I didn’t say pain, John. I said fear.’
He stared ahead at the sea.
‘If you don’t have fear, it means you don’t care if you live or die, doesn’t it?’
‘Don’t suppose I do, much of the time, although usually I have a preference. And I did once learn to climb, like my brother. We both believed we could fly. Why did you want me here, John?’
He took a deep breath.
‘Because you’re a psychic witch. A lovable stranger. Because you’ll see things that I can’t. And because I’m afraid.’
She seemed reluctant to move, looked back down the path they had traversed so far, lost in thought, nodding her head, slowly.
‘I can see her running up here. It’s marvellous, up here.’
He felt perversely proud of it.
‘Running towards someone or running away. Running with a purpose. She might have thrown off a coat, if it was warm like this. You could get high as a kite on a day like this. Want to yell. Feel you could fly. Want to plunge into the sea. Suicide could seem glorious on a day like this. Which is better? Jumping, or being pushed? It could have been a delirium of hope.’
‘I wish so, but she left nothing behind, Sarah. Somebody tidied her away.’
She picked up the black and red rainproof and jumped to her feet.
‘The ravens’ nest. Next. Show me.’
‘It’s two miles to Cable Bay, then a climb, and we might meet Edwin.’
‘I thought that was the whole idea.’
‘I’m terrified of Edwin,’ John said.
‘Yes, I know you are, dear, but I’m not. He’s just a man.’
‘You’re a very dear stranger,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t Richard hold on to you instead of getting himself that brittle, skinny wife?’
‘I never want to be held on to, not even by the ankles. I’m the in-between woman. The path to someone else.’
They drove to Cable Bay. It was deserted. Maybe he was wrong about the cliffs being such hiding places for people, because no one ever seemed to come here. No fresh tyre tracks. The notices about the danger of crumbling clay, the threat of more movement, repelled the cautious, but it would not have repelled everyone, even with Edwin as guardian. Not everyone kept to the paths. Children would not keep to the paths; they never did. John could see his own daughter, skipping away from him, unconscious of danger, but even the intrepid did not bring tiny, uninhibited children more than once, just as he had never again brought a dog. Here the path made an obvious deviation, and the sign directing it had all the authority of an order. Sarah did not glance at it.
‘How do I see the nest?’
He hesitated.
‘Another overhang. I crawled to it. I can’t do it again. I never actually saw it. I saw them, feeding on the second body. The dog. Then I was sick. You’d have to hang over to see, and I can’t do that. Do you have to?’
She looked small enough to break, with a backbone of flexible steel.
‘A nest is a home, isn’t it? I’ve always been curious about homes. Show me. I shan’t fall.’
He led her up the slope, looking all the time for Edwin. Directed her, feeling feeble and foolish. You go right to the edge, you lean over, and even then you might not see it. While he showed her the way, he went on talking, realising he was less than coherent. He was using her, and it felt wrong, even though he did not know what it was he was using her for. He was babbling.
‘The nests can be large and bulky. The parents build them in stages, starting with large twigs or small branches. They interline with smaller twigs, other stuff, earth sometimes, and line them with wool. There must have been a source of wool, to bring them here. They like to use the same nest again next year,
although if they have the chance they alternate, to keep the bugs out. The nests get bigger with time, but this one’s new. God alone knows what’s in it. Old nests have treasures from other years. Stuff they brought back and hoarded. Not always useful.’
‘Bits of wool coat, or dress material, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps.’
She walked up to the edge as if she was crossing a clear road. Dropped on her knees only for the last yard. Shuffled forward on her elbows in the damp windbeaten grass, while he sat shivering. He could see nothing but her feet while he waited, twenty yards back. Waited for a long time, thinking, in a minute I’ll grab her by the legs. I’ll be able to do it, I shall, I shall. I don’t want to be held on to, not even by the ankles. Then, to his relief, she reappeared, sat, facing inland, carelessly, then rolled herself into a ball, head between legs, and rolled towards him in a series of small, roly-poly somersaults until, breathless, she was at his feet, laughing and soaking wet. He felt as if his smile would crack his face.
She sat, reaching into the rainproof pocket for a cigarette. A crushed packet emerged. He shook his head at the offer and lit hers.
‘Haven’t done that in a while,’ she said.
She puffed. He watched. Cigarettes somehow belonged indoors.
‘I could see it. Just. You’re right, Doc. It would be bloody difficult to see from land, well guarded, but your man Edwin misses the point. He’s been guarding it on the land side, but you could always see it from the sea. And if it gets built over time, then someone would have seen. A boy, a fisherman, someone. The birds would be black against white: they’d be clear as daylight from the sea. I wonder if Edwin thought of that. No one could guard them from the sea.’
Then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘I think this was where they came in. Down there, you could get a boat in, down there.’
She ground out the cigarette, making him wince. No litter on cliffs, please.
Close by the other landmark, he had pointed out the small fishing boats, bobbing optimistically, minnows against the ferry and its wake, like a plume of feathers cutting a white swathe across the water, a flotilla of birds surrounding it. It was she who had observed how awful to be on a fishing boat, constantly bombarded by hungry seagulls, desperate for the catch. She saw what he had never noticed.
Then came the sound of the hovercraft, a droning, mysterious echo, cutting in and cutting out, invisible, mysterious, forlorn. It died away, leaving a strange, maddening vibration.
‘She wanted to go home,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine it, being here, looking for a way home. Listening to that sound. Knowing your way home began here. You’ve nothing and no one, except some stranger you’ve found, or thought you’d found. A little help: not enough. And you hear that noise. Homecoming noise. Homegoing noise. You want to go home. You see someone you’ve seen before. Someone who brought you in. And can take you out. And with that noise in your ears, you run towards him.’
John could not follow what she was talking about, although he listened.
‘Did you see the ravens?’
She roused herself and shivered.
‘I saw the nest. But it’s no home. It’s empty. They’re dead or flown. And your man, Edwin, is down on the rocks. Doesn’t look dangerous to me. Go and look.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Yes, you can. You must.’
He crawled towards the overhang; she held his feet. Go on, go on. Looked over further than he had before. Saw an empty nest, and down on the plateau where he had seen the ravens feed, Edwin, half naked, still with the scarf round his neck. Without the sound of the sea, his howls of despair could have reached the moon.
‘Come on,’ Sarah said. ‘We’d better go. There’s a man who needs company. He might not want it, but he needs it.’
Looking back, it seemed to have taken breath-filled hours to reach him.
John would never understood how Sarah found the way, as if she knew it all the time. As if she had an instinct for the path.
The tide was low, exposing dark grey rocks, constantly damp with water. Shapeless boulders, not yet worn smooth, the untidy detritus of the fallen cliff, the furthest away of them interspersed with pools. Edwin sat among the grey, looking to John as if he might be waiting for the tide to come back and carry him off. Sarah was scrambling around the jagged clumps adroitly, while he foolishly tried to climb over, until he followed her example, marvelling how easy it was. The view from above was deceptive. Then, as they drew closer, John saw Edwin stand, and, in a gentle but powerful underhand throw, lob a black bundle far over the spreadeagled rocks, into the sea. The black bundle sailed serenely, with a brief spreading of wings, as if it was flying, then landed in the distant water, silently.
Edwin’s bare torso was streaked with brown mud, water and white clay. He wiped his arm across his face. The arm was raw with grazes and covered in bird faeces: John could imagine the smell of him. Then Edwin leant back against the rock, where his shirt hung, surprisingly tidily, as if to dry, while the rest of him was soaked. He scratched at the grazes on his arms, making them bleed. The sun gave pale warmth: John thought of hypothermia and shock. Sarah reached him first.
So much for wanting company. He seemed impervious to the presence of anyone else, unsurprised, careless, sobbing steadily. A dead raven chick with open beak and soaked feathers lay at his feet, enmeshed in a piece of net.
Sarah stood back, gazing at the scarf round Edwin’s neck, balancing her dancer’s feet on a rock, so she stood higher than they.
John was right, Edwin smelled like a sewer. He had slumped, raised his pale blue eyes to John’s face, registered his presence, stared vacantly and then looked away, wiping mucus from his nose. John waited for him to speak.
‘Fucking eejit,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Fucking, fucking eejit. Never thought they’d come in by the sea. Should’ve known, me more than anybody. You can land here. Robbers, with a fucking net. Climb like monkeys.’ His voice broke. ‘They’ve gone, Doc, they’ve gone. Two dead, they got caught in the net, and the others will die. The chicks’ll die . . . they needed a few more days, that’s all. Even a day. Was it you, Doc, was it you?’ John shook his head.
‘Course it wasn’t you. You never do nothing, you. Sad bastard you.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone, Edwin. When did it happen?’
‘Dunno. Last night, this morning. Came here at midday, brought food. Looked for hours, waded out. Found the net, and the parents. Choked in the net. Stupid. All dead and gone. They’ll never come back.’
He was shivering uncontrollably. Sarah’s voice came clear from behind them.
‘You should have known, shouldn’t you? That someone might come by sea. You lead them in, don’t you?’
He looked at her with complete indifference. She simply did not matter. A voice, not a presence, puzzling him with irrelevancies.
‘Yes I did, but it wasn’t them. Who cares about a boatload of fucking foreigners if they give you money? Easy to get in here, if you’re careful. But I signalled them to stop. What would they want with ravens?’
‘You’re getting cold, Edwin,’ John said as gently as he could. He was not feeling kind, felt cold and determined and revolted. He could have been in the prison cells, facing a man who had murdered and eaten the body, someone who stared at him with these livid pale eyes, full of self-inflicted damage, murderous sinner. I think this is where they came in. What had she said?
Hypothermia. Edwin had been out in the rock pools, looking for the corpses he had found, no doubt. Stripped to the waist and soaked to the buttocks, for hours, covered in bruises. The water was freezing. Peed in his trousers. In a bad way, but John could not feel pity.
‘You had something for me, Edwin. Something you promised you’d give me. Remember?’
Edwin fished in the pocket of his trousers, wet against his thighs and tight to his shivering skin. His fingers seemed numb. Then both hands went uncertainly to the scarf round his neck. He fumbled to untie it. The twist of the thing was e
laborate, but he managed, with his fumbling fingers. Got out a small chain with a small medallion from deep within the wet cloth, handed it across. John took it, and clasped it in his palm. It was warm and wet, felt like a talisman.
‘They took it off her,’ Edwin said. ‘The ravens took it. Dropped it down here. Found it. Must’ve wanted it for the nest.’
Then he began to sob again, racked with weeping, his thin, tensile body bent against it, his eyes on the dead chick, his callused fingers with their long nails scratching at his face.
John clutched warm, wet metal. He did not give a shit about Edwin. The smell in his nostrils was foul; he could see Edwin’s long fingers, playing with the scarf. Ligature, hiding place, ornament, rope. He hated Edwin with every ounce of his own bone marrow, wanted to leave him to be reached by the tide. Washed away, obliterated, cleaned of the ordure from the dead birds he had cradled, cleansed of the burden of identity he had worn round his neck. Something he had found, and kept, the bastard.
Sarah had climbed down off her rock. John clasped his talisman, watched her pick up Edwin’s shirt, take the phone out of the pocket, look at it, stick in her own back pocket and fold up the shirt, as if she was at home doing laundry. Her auburn hair had come free of the band that tied it back and frizzed round her head like an angry halo. Edwin’s sobbing went back to howling. His feet were immersed in cold, cold water. The tide was coming back. He looked immovable and deathly pale.
John loathed him at that moment. A violent hatred that made him want to strike, mixed with a terrible, physical repugnance that made him want to vomit.
You stinking bastard. You knew. You had her necklace, the one in the picture, all the time. You had it, they had it. Stuff for the nest.
He opened his palm and looked at the medallion held on the cheap chain. 15 Cram Mans W1 0207 . . . On the back, the letter M was scratched. He felt a great gulp of disappointment. He had wanted a name. Like there had been on his dog when it went over the cliff. Wanted, wanted, something more, looked again. Salt spray hit his face: breeze was beginning, propelled by the tide. Conditions changed rapidly here. He read the inscription on the medallion again, feeling his own blood run cold. Richard’s address, pressed into his palm on a card; Sarah’s also, again delivered on a card. They had both given him cards, with that address. 15 Cram Mans W1. Home.
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