Sophie leaps to her feet. ‘That’s not fair, Florie,’ she says, her voice rising. ‘You’re the one being selfish.’
‘Oh, am I? How do you figger that?’
‘How many steps is it to get up to Kittiwake? Thirty-four. And two of them are so rotten you have to watch where you step or you’d go right through. Thirty-four steps is a lot for someone who’s about to turn eighty-nine. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘Ellie’s tough as old boots. Isn’t that right, Ellie?’
Ellie looks at Florie. She shakes her head, her fine white hair fanning across her thin cheeks. ‘No. No, Sophie’s right. It’s not as easy as it used to be.’
Florie’s eyes widen. ‘What’re you saying, love? You never said a word before.’
Ellie shrugs. ‘I know. Sophie’s right, Florie. It isn’t that easy anymore.’
‘I’d make sure they’d pay you over market value for your house, Aunt Ellie,’ Sophie says. ‘You and Florie could buy a lovely place wherever you like.’
Florie crosses her arms. ‘I likes it fine enough here.’ Another murmur ripples through the crowd. Someone stamps their feet.
Sophie scans the faces, resting her gaze on Sam. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard.’ She looks back at the crowd of locals. ‘Please, let me tell you what’s being proposed. Then, why don’t you go away tonight and think about it? We can meet here again tomorrow at the same time and put it to a vote. If you decide you don’t want the hotel here, I’ll tell that to the consortium. And that’s the last you’ll hear from me.’
The room erupts into life. Sophie watches Sam shake his head. He skirts around the chairs and heads out the door.
***
Sophie flops onto the large iron bed in the attic room. She pulls the quilt, one of Becca’s hand-made designs – a triumph of orange and pink floral pieces arranged in an intricate knot design – over her head, and shuts her eyes. The swoosh of waves surging against the rocky cliff below the house beats a rhythm outside her open window, like a symphony building to a climax. The first wave piano, washing softly against the cliff; diminuendo as the water quietens as it recedes; then the second wave, crescendo, growing louder; followed by another diminuendo, lingering as the ocean pulls itself into the final thundering wave; fortissimo.
Sophie laughs to herself. The legacy of a pianist mother. The flip-top piano bench in their Norwich home had been stuffed with yellowing musical scores, annotated in her mother’s impatient hand. Piano. Diminuendo. Crescendo. Fortissimo. Funny how she remembered that after all these years. Funny the things that bury themselves in your mind.
She tosses off the quilt and kicks it to the floor. She fans her face with her hand. The air is heavy with humidity, pressing down on her chest like a weight. She sits up and walks over to the small desk in front of the window. Switching on the old brass desk lamp, she opens her laptop and switches it on. She opens a Word document. Her fingers hover over the keyboard as she stares at the flashing cursor. Bending her head over the keyboard, she writes.
Chapter 64
Tippy’s Tickle – 14 June 1953
The iceberg sits like a moored boat at the mouth of the tickle, its triangular shape like a clipper ship in full sail. The wooden houses along the shore look as small as boxes from the cliff, and as the sun rises and sets, the iceberg’s shadow spreads democratically over the outport, first darkening the wooden turrets on the Parsons’ house on the cliff, then moving over Jim Boyd’s general store and Rod Fizzard’s stage with its wharf and store, and the one-storey fishermen’s houses clustered along the tickle. Then, if it’s a rare cloudless day, the berg swallows its shadow until the late afternoon, when the triangular greyness once again reaches out over the tickle to the aluminium steeple of St Stephen’s Church on its rocky spit of land, until the shadow settles on the round hill of the cemetery.
On this day, there is the suggestion that summer has finally arrived for its brief stay on the island. The sky is a vivid blue and the sun sits high above the floating clouds. Ellie sets down her charcoal drawing pencil on a spongy mound of moss under the twisted fir near the house, and lifts her face up to the sun. The warmth tickles her skin and turns the world underneath her eyelids red. The baby bounces in her stomach and she rests her hand over her blossoming belly.
Not long now, little one. Clever you to come in the summertime. We’ll go for walks amongst the summer flowers – the wild lupins and buttercups, the tiny blue irises and cloudbanks of the purple-pink fireweed – and in the autumn we’ll pick blueberries and partridgeberries and bakeapples for all the cobblers and crumbles I’ll make. I’ll take you down to the beach and we’ll search for winkles in the shallow tide pools to steam up for Daddy’s supper.
A movement from the direction of the house draws her eye, and she sees Emmett heading through the tufts of long grass sprinkled with yellow buttercups in her direction. He’s grown so tall. Nine years old in August, and already up to her shoulders and as skinny as a reed no matter how much she feeds him.
Emmett flops down on the grass, and she runs her hand over his newly cut hair. ‘You finished your chores, Emmy?’
He nods and reaches into the pocket of his corduroys, pulling out a white envelope. ‘Mr Boyd brought it over. Came in the post from St John’s.’
‘From St John’s? Whoever could that be?’
‘It’s not a Newfoundland stamp.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘Could I have it, Mam?’
Ellie looks at the careful vertical handwriting. She’s knows that hand. An English stamp. She turns over the letter. An address in Norwich.
‘Could I have the stamp, Mam? I can add it to the others from Mr Boyd.’
‘Of course, Emmy. Hold on a minute.’ Ellie runs her finger under the envelope flap and carefully tears off the stamp. ‘Here you go. Ask Nanny to soak it in some warm water for you so you can stick it in your scrapbook.’
Emmett holds the stamp between his thumb and forefinger like it’s a delicate butterfly. ‘Thank you, Mam.’ He rises to his feet, unfolding his lanky frame like an expanding accordion, and makes his way back down the slope to the house.
Ellie pulls out the letter.
Pleasantview
Newmarket Road
Norwich
15th May, 1953
Dear Ellie,
I hope you and Thomas are well, and I expect Emmett is quite a young man by now. You’re probably surprised to receive this letter, after all this time, but I do want to thank you for the Christmas cards and the yearly update on your life over in Newfoundland. I’m sorry I have been such a poor correspondent, but it was difficult for me after you married Thomas. I have thought of you often, though, and hope you have found the life you were looking for.
I’m still at Mcklintock’s, but I was made assistant manager last year and I’ve just overseen the reopening of the factory after the bomb damage from the Baedeker raids. It’s nice to have it up and running properly again. We’re launching a whole range of new sweets – Bingos, Whippets and Choccos. It seems everyone wants chocolate now after all the war years with so little.
But I don’t imagine you’re all that interested in the state of chocolate in Norwich. Since your father passed away, I know your sister hasn’t kept in touch. She still seems to harbour some kind of grudge over some imagined slight, though I’m sure she’ll come around one day. You are sisters after all.
There have been developments and I felt someone should let you know what has been happening.
After your father died, Dottie took a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She said there was no reason for her to stay in Norwich with everyone gone, and she was quite right too. She’s done so very well with her career as a pianist, and I saw her in Norwich recently when she was here as the guest pianist with the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra for the winter season.
We ended up spending a great deal of time together. You wouldn’t recognise Dottie, Ellie. London turned her into quite a
sophisticated young woman. She’s so self-assured and—
Ellie, we’ve married. It seems I was meant to be part of your family one way or another! Your sister is now Dottie Burgess. She prefers Dorothy now. And there’s more news. Dottie’s expecting. Emmett will soon have cousins! Yes, cousins plural. Dottie’s expecting twins in November. I’m only sorry your parents aren’t here to be a part of this.
There it is. The news from Norwich. Do take care. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have as a sister-in-law.
Fondly,
George
PS: I’ve often wondered why you gave Emmett my middle name. You would have told me, wouldn’t you, Ellie? Wouldn’t you?
Ellie folds the letter and slips it back in its envelope. There was nothing to tell. Yes, she’d known Emmett was George’s middle name. She liked the name. And it connected her to the life she was leaving behind in Norwich. Emmett was Thomas’s boy. Hers and Thomas’s.
Her eyes scan over the blue-inked writing. Dottie and George. She couldn’t quite believe it. Of course, Dottie had had a crush on George for as long as she could remember. But a schoolgirl crush and a marriage were entirely different things. How on earth had that happened?
Is she so shocked because she’d always seen George as hers? She’d been engaged to him for ages before she’d met Thomas. But that’s ridiculous. She’s a happily married woman now. At least as happy as one could reasonably expect to be, considering … Well, all the men drank in Tippy’s Tickle.
The life she’d found herself living in this remote corner of the world was so much harder than she’d imagined. The fishing money only went so far, and when the sea froze over in the long winter, the men turned to the seal hunt. She hated that. The ice floes were dangerous – men drowned every year. Agnes thought she was a fool when she’d refuse to cook the bloody seal flippers Ephraim and Thomas brought home. Would you have us starve? Agnes would admonish her. So, she’d cook them, but she refused to eat them. She’d had more than one supper of bread and margarine.
They’d only just got the electricity connected in the spring, though indoor plumbing was still a distant dream. And finding a book to read in Tippy’s Tickle was like searching for a diamond in a mountain of coal. It’d been a shock when she’d discovered that most of the locals were illiterate. Though, now that money was coming in from the Canadian government there was talk of a new regional high school down the coast in Wesleyville. Ellie had managed to lobby the village council to ask for Canadian money to sponsor Bertha Perkins, up from Grand Falls, to teach the younger children in the church hall basement, though, admittedly, she’d done that more for Emmett’s benefit than from any altruistic impulse. So, things were improving, but it was a slow road. Newfoundland was hardly the romantic idyll she’d imagined.
And now Dottie had married George. She should be happy for them. She would be happy for them. She’d made her choice. Her life was in Newfoundland with Thomas and Emmy and the new baby. She’d likely never see Norwich or her sister or George again.
Chapter 65
Tippy’s Tickle – 15 September 2011
They turned up in the middle of the night, beaching themselves on the sandy shore below Bufflehead Cottage. Over one hundred of them. Pilot whales. All female. Most of them pregnant.
***
‘Grab the flukes, Becca! Pull them with me!’
Becca looks at Sophie, hesitating as the blood-laced waves beat against her rubber boots.
‘Please, Becca! Please!’
Becca splashes into the water between the whales’ writhing, sleek grey bodies, and grabs hold of the flailing flukes with Sophie. They tug, grinding their booted feet into the shifting sand, but every centimetre of success is countered by the whale thrusting its huge body back onto the shore.
‘Again! Again, Becca!’
‘Over here, Sophie!’ Toby Molloy, his too-long hair plastered back over his head with saltwater, throws Sophie the end of a rope he’s tied to the seat of the rowboat he and Thor are rowing in the pinkening water. ‘Tie this to the flukes. We’ll haul it out into the sea.’
Sophie ties the rope into the slipknot her father had taught her for her school tie and pulls the loop wide. She tosses the looped rope to Becca. ‘Take hold of it, Becca. We’ll loop it over her flukes together.’ She pulls the knot tight and gives Toby a thumbs up. He and Thor thrust the oars into the churning ocean and drag the whale away from the beach.
A roar of motorcycles. Sophie looks up to see the bikes of the Chrome Warriors bounce down the rocky path towards the beach. After parking the bikes in the scrubby grass along the sand, the bikers charge like a leather-clad army down the beach to the floundering whales. Sam splashes through the pink foam towards them.
‘It’s awful, Sam. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I know. I’ve called the whale release group over in Portugal Cove. They’re sending a team to help. They’ll be here this afternoon. I put a call out to the Warriors in the meantime.’
‘Emmett’s out there in the motorboat with Florie. Everyone’s here. The fishermen have been hauling the whales out into the ocean all morning. We’ve managed to get about half of the whales back out there.’
Ace stamps through the water and claps Sam on his shoulder. ‘What next, b’y?’
‘Grab as many of their flukes as you can, and haul them out. Get one of the guys to help Becca.’
‘Right, b’y.’ Ace tips his hand to his forehead in a salute. ‘Consider it done.’ He turns and strides down the beach to the others. ‘Get your hands outta your trousers, b’ys, and grab yourself some tail. Show us what you’re made of.’
Sophie holds up her phone and records the scene, spotting Becca on the screen cradling the bull-like head of a whale in her lap further down the beach. ‘Why are they doing this?’
Sam surveys the writhing bodies of the exhausted whales. ‘Some say it’s radar affecting their homing abilities, some say it’s pollution, oil in the water … How would your hotel guests like waking up to see this out of their windows? Not quite what the consortium has in mind, is it?’ He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Sorry. Thanks for coming out.’
Sophie pockets her phone. ‘I’m not all bad.’
Sam nods. ‘Come on, Princess Grace. Let’s do this.’
***
Sophie stands on top of a rock by the beach and wipes her wet face with her hand. ‘We’re getting there, Sam. There’s only thirty-five still on the beach.’
Sam leaps onto the rock beside her, waving at Becca who is in the boat with Toby and Thor. ‘I saw you and Becca working with each other earlier.’
‘Yeah. The whales, you know. I don’t imagine she’s forgiven me.’ Sophie waves at the boat. ‘Toby’s been doing a great job. He’s been back and forth all day pulling the whales away from the beach.’
Sam holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and squints at the boat. ‘He’s still a distraction for Becca if she wants to pass her exams.’
‘Sam, have you ever thought that maybe she’s only taking these exams to please you? Maybe that’s why she’s procrastinating. Maybe she doesn’t want to be a doctor. Maybe she wants to do something more creative. She does amazing work with textiles and she can embroider like a dream.’
‘Are you saying I don’t know my own daughter?’
‘No, of course not. But why not just talk to her? You keep blaming Toby, but maybe it’s not all his fault. Just communicate.’
Sam’s eyes cloud over. ‘Look who’s talking. You should have been honest about the hotel.’
Sophie bites her lip. ‘I know.’
‘Look, Sophie, I know we have to move with the times. There’s a lot of people out of work. The outports are dying. Kids moving out to the cities. But, you know, we’ve got something special here in this place. It’s harsh and it’s wild, and things like this …’ he waves towards the beach ‘… things like this happen sometimes. But it’s beautiful here. I’ve never been anywhere like it. I don’t
want to see Tippy’s Tickle ruined by people who just want to exploit it for their own profit.’ Sam frowns. ‘I can’t support you. I’ll do everything I can to stop it.’
Sophie nods. ‘I guess that makes us enemies.’
‘Not enemies. Adversaries, maybe.’ Sam wipes a trail of salt water from his face with the back of his hand. ‘You need to figure out want you want, Sophie.’
‘I’m not the only one, Sam.’ She shivers as a gust of wind whips across the shore. ‘Do you remember when you dropped me off at the airport last time?’
‘I remember.’
‘I wanted … I wanted you to say something, do something, to make me think we might have a chance together. I wanted it more than anything.’
Sam stares at Sophie. ‘You could have fooled me. I thought you couldn’t wait to see the back of me.’
Sophie looks out at the boats bobbing in the waves. Her heart judders. She’d been an idiot. They both had. Now, it was too late.
Something catches her eye out in the water. Dorsal fins. But they were pointing in the wrong direction, skimming through the sea towards the shore. Two, four, five, then more of the sleek grey bodies of the whales plough through the waves towards the beach.
‘They’re swimming back! Oh, my God. Sam, they’re swimming back!’
The whales thrust themselves onto the beach, one after the other, churning up the sand with their flippers and their flukes as they attempt to swim forwards in a waterless ocean.
***
That evening, later than planned, after the marine biologists of the whale release group have confirmed the deaths of one hundred and thirty-seven female pilot whales on the beach at Tippy’s Tickle, the villagers reconvene in Florie’s store. The mood is sombre, the vote unanimous.
***
‘Sam? There you are.’
Sam turns away from the view of the beach below Bufflehead Cottage. ‘Ellie?’
The English Wife Page 28