Collector of Lost Things (7 page)

‘You were hiding from them.’

‘Was I?’ I tried, attempting to deny it. I could see she wasn’t going to be fooled. ‘Yes. I suppose I was.’

Bletchley appeared, trotting up in a fine jacket and fashionable trousers. ‘Shouldn’t wander the deck at night, Eliot, you might fall in!’ he said, looking as if he wished to be a part of the conversation as quickly as possible. He laughed loudly at his joke, underlining it with an impression of a drowning man.

‘Quite,’ I replied.

I was distinctly aware of two things: first Bletchley, nervously rocking on his heels, excitable and not trusting himself and inexplicably anxious, and secondly, a renewed stiffness in Celeste’s posture. She put on her gloves and adjusted their fit. Bletchley waited for her, then held her wrist, rubbing the bare skin with a vigorous finger, a strange gesture which was unduly intimate. She bent towards him, compliant to his touch. Her expression clouded, as if a veil had been drawn across her face. When he addressed her, it was rather more for my benefit than hers. ‘We must give you medicine,’ he said.

She nodded, chastised. Urged to respond, I asked her whether she had been unwell. She considered the question. ‘I am always unwell.’

‘But we shall get you better,’ Bletchley bleated, anxious now to take charge and lead her away. I suspected complexities to their relationship that would be difficult to determine.

‘Let us go,’ she said. ‘I feel tired.’

‘Yes, dearest. You are. You are tired,’ Bletchley continued, adopting her tone, both of them seeming to address me more than each other.

He clicked his heels in parting, and guided her towards the cabins. I noticed how she barely lifted her feet from the deck, and how pliant she was in his hold. I was struck by a deep sense of unease, of an atmosphere that felt charged and thorny, and effortlessly I remembered how she used to be led along the brick path across that autumnal lawn, her mother’s grip a manacle around her hand.

Before she reached the companionway, she resisted Bletchley and turned back once more. ‘Forgive me,’ she said, smiling wanly, ‘I failed to introduce myself, and it has been good to talk with you. My name is Clara.’

In my confusion, all I could think was that I must seek my cabin immediately. Close a door. There, sitting on the edge of my bunk, I wondered what had occurred. She had called herself
Clara
. It was unfathomable. Her name was Celeste! We had spoken for several minutes, without her giving the slightest hint that she knew me. Either she was pretending to be a stranger, or I had truly not been recognised. After all, much can happen in ten years, and the autumn months when I had known her had been far from ordinary.

The Norfolk manor house where she lived had been a shadowy and isolated environment. For the most part I had been left alone, in the chilly conservatory, restoring and cataloguing the collection, wearing fingerless gloves so I might handle the eggs safely. Each morning, I would see her through the panes of the conservatory windows, her outline rippled and made uncertain by the age of the glass, as she was led along the path by her mother. The mother was a thickened, severe figure next to Celeste’s slender frame, but they had shared similarities—the length of their stride, the slope of their shoulders, the way they both looked up when the rooks called. In the tightness of her grip it had seemed, some mornings, as if the mother was holding onto a youthful version of herself, and was unable to let go. And Celeste, in turn, appeared held by the darkened presence of a future she wished to be no part of. I had had time to think these things. Celeste was young, no more than sixteen, and I had been twenty-two, I had been excited by the mystery of who she might be and the possibility that I might get to know her. Struck too by her beauty, her ghostly fragility, the dreamlike lift of her feet from the brick path, the thin soles of her shoes, the pearl whiteness of her gown against the deep wet softness of the lawn. She was graceful, almost transparent, it appeared, her figure almost floating. I had been mesmerised. Yet her presence in the house was never mentioned. In the three months I was there, my employer adamantly refused to acknowledge even the
existence
of his daughter. During the times when he was in the conservatory—while she was being led across the lawn—he would look anywhere but in her direction. Instead, he would pace the cold tiled floor, or drum his fingers on one of the shelves, daring me to glance at the girl beyond the glass. I had been certain I would be sacked if I asked about her, or even looked in her direction.

Clara joined us for supper that evening, for the first time since leaving Liverpool. She had prepared for dinner, and wore a dress of pale gold brocaded silk, trimmed with lacing and embroidered net mittens. But it was apparent from the way she sat, quietly and not wishing to look anyone in the eye, that she was far from comfortable. Bletchley was undaunted, mentioning several times that it was good to see her out of her cabin, getting better, getting stronger. Fit as a fiddle in no time. He kept patting her on the back of her hand, neither noticing the obvious flinch when he did so, nor the fact that she did not eat or drink.

Sykes was intrigued. ‘It is a real pleasure to have a lady travelling with us,’ he said, encouraging her to take part. ‘As rare as one of Mr Saxby’s birds, I believe. I do hope the rudimentary nature of life upon the sea is not a burden to you?’

‘My cabin is perfectly comfortable,’ she said, in a clipped and formal voice. Once again, she had been introduced to us as Clara.

‘The men for’ard of the mast can be an uncouth and ill-bred rabble at times. You must excuse them if they tend to stare at the sight of a lady. They have their superstitions and the like, it is most annoying. I have noted it before.’

‘Then I shall do my utmost not to be an object of fascination for your men, Captain Sykes.’

I tried not to look at her. But I wanted to study her face—the face that I had longed to see for so many years. The thin delicate nose, the fine bone of her forehead, the slender chin which was set, revealing nothing. She was so beautiful, so radiant. Celeste had grown into an elegant woman. If she had looked up at me and smiled I think I might have cried out.

‘Of course,’ Sykes continued, ‘Mrs Sykes has been known to venture upon the
Amethyst
once in a while, but that is rather like having a heavy and shifting cargo in the hold. It makes me clumsy at the helm, irritable with the men and is no good on many accounts.’

‘You seem very fond of her,’ Bletchley exclaimed.

‘Familiar, rather than fond, I would say. As one is familiar with a running nose in winter. Do you recollect that time, Mr French, when Mrs Sykes had us dig the ballast out?’

‘I think of it often,’ French replied. ‘And also the occasion when she made the men brush their teeth.’ Sitting at the opposite end of the table from the captain, he spoke with a modicum of effort. He had been quiet and distracted all evening.

‘It is her duty to open my nostrils to the stinks it no longer registers,’ Sykes said, enthusiastically. ‘We must remind the men their yearly brushing is due once more, what do you think? But tell me,’ he continued, not yet finished with Clara, ‘why a lady such as yourself should be on a voyage to the Arctic, where it is nothing but cold and draughty and quite thoroughly miserable?’

Bletchley stepped in, keen to reply: ‘I have dragged her along, sir, that is the short of it—’

‘Thank you, Edward,’ she interrupted. ‘I am quite able to answer for myself.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he replied, hasty to backtrack, ‘and your voice is so pretty, too, my pippin. You talk so very eloquently, also. I was merely saving you the effort.’

The look that she gave Bletchley was remarkable. It was piercing, as a heron’s is piercing when it stares into the water ready to strike. Bletchley recoiled as if seared, his hands raised melodramatically in apology.

‘I am on this ship,’ she explained, ‘for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes you can be at a place only because you can be at no other place. Will that suffice for an answer?’

Sykes seemed unsure how to reply.

‘You might consider me as you did that finch this afternoon,’ she continued, coming to the point. ‘It landed upon this plank only because it could land nowhere else.’

She had momentarily silenced the room. Again Bletchley felt he needed to step in: ‘It has also been generally agreed that clean cold air will greatly improve her health.’

‘Strange. It’s been the ruin of mine,’ Sykes replied, glad of the opportunity to joke. ‘Will you hunt?’

Clara regarded at him with a dark expression, wishing to be left alone. ‘I abhor violence of any kind, Captain Sykes.’

‘Very well said,’ he replied, picking at his teeth with a fingernail. ‘We will benefit from having a woman on board, it will civilise us, for men are very simple and brutish animals.’

Bletchley complimented at the captain, amused and excited, not knowing whether to take him seriously or not. ‘I believe you are making a joke,’ he said.

‘Half,’ Sykes replied, giving him a wink, but that too felt inconclusive. Clara sighed and Bletchley reached for her hand, but missed, patting the table instead.

She looked up, not at her cousin, but directly across the table at me. For a second she held my gaze—an expression in her eyes that was liquid and surprising, as if she was trying to figure out something I had said. In my confusion, which felt overwhelming, I heard her speak.
Save me from this place,
she said, and even as I heard her words, I knew that her lips had not moved and she had not spoken. I looked down at my plate, startled.
Not here,
I thought.
Be calm. Be focused.

‘Quinlan French!’ the captain called out. ‘For God’s sake man, get your eyes off that candle!’

The first mate visibly jolted in his chair. I realised he had been intently gazing at one of the dining candles before him. ‘I need your eyes to be good!’ Sykes added.

French slid his plate away, before standing. ‘I shall prepare for my watch now, sir. Gentlemen, Miss Gould, if you will forgive me.’

Sykes waved him off as he would a fly, waiting for him to leave the room, then saying in a conspiratorial tone, The navy won’t have the fellow, so he is left with us. It is our burden but we do our best.’

We listened to French’s footsteps crossing the deck above us as he went to the helm. Almost immediately he must have turned, for we heard the same steps returning, rather more quickly. He came down the companionway and leant into the room.

‘Captain, we are in sight of the Rock,’ he said.

Sykes raised an eyebrow and consulted his watch. ‘Very good, we shall come up on deck.’

The sight that awaited us was one of the most unforgettable of my life. Amid an almost totally tranquil sea, whose water was as smooth and reflective as polished steel, was the dark and foreboding profile of a single rock. It rose, as bold and as jagged as a dog’s tooth, perhaps a hundred feet tall, but little more than the girth of a large house at its base.

‘What is this thing?’ I asked Mr French, as we stood at the rail to admire it.

‘Rockall,’ he replied. ‘It is the furthest extremity of the British Isles. Beyond this point it is merely water.’

Sykes went to the wheel. ‘Keep her to larboard, helmsman,’ he said. ‘Have you sighted the Hasselwood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very good. Keep your eye on the overfall.’

Such a blunt finger of solid crag in all this ocean was extraordinary. And even at this distance, of perhaps half a mile or so, the outline of the rock seemed to shimmer. I realised, by shielding my eyes against the setting sun, that its shifting profile was due to the many hundreds of birds that were flying from it, collecting almost in a haze above the isle as if their bodies had formed a smoke.

‘Has man ever landed on this rock?’ I asked Mr French.

‘Certainly not,’ he stressed. ‘He would die in the attempt. The surge would destroy the tender and there is no purchase of any kind. A single ledge, I believe, that not even the birds use. It has no water and no other shelter. He would be mercilessly pecked at, blown off by the wind and swept away by waves.’ He laughed. ‘But the captain is fond of it. He always steers by the Rock. Is that not right, sir—you love this unholy spike of dry land?’

Sykes smiled broadly. ‘She has a special place in my heart,’ he said, patting his chest. ‘I am attracted to the lost and the lonesome.’

Across the water, the eerie cries of the kittiwakes could be heard, alongside the rough barks of the fulmars and gannets. Several cormorants were lined along the top, their wings outstretched in cruciform shape.

I thought of the great auks that may have once sought out such a barren perch as this. A single rock several hundred miles from the mainland and surrounded by countless acres of empty ocean, yet even here they had been hunted down and destroyed. If they could not be safe in this most remote of places on the earth, then it was no wonder they were extinct.

Further along the ship’s rail, I noticed Clara staring intently at the isle, her lips silently mouthing a prayer. A strange shine emanated from the pale gold of her dress, a flower grown where there could be no root. So, too, her skin, which was lit up by the evening sunlight.

‘You seem enchanted by the sight,’ I said, approaching her.

‘Have you ever felt that you have seen a place before—but it’s a place that you cannot possibly have been to?’ She nodded towards the rock. ‘Even though it is at the end of the world. Is it possible that I have seen this thing in my dreams?’

‘I have felt such a thing, too.’

‘You have? Yes, I can see you have.’

‘You’ve seen this island before?’ I asked.

‘In dreams.’

‘Then you’re not just on the ship for all the wrong reasons.’

She smiled, quite wonderfully. ‘I think you will be my only friend on this journey,’ she said. ‘Would you be my friend?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She turned back to gaze at the rock. I studied her, closely. At that moment I really believe she saw something that no one else on board was able to perceive.

W
E TURNED DUE NORTH,
and for the next few days saw nothing but ocean. Occasionally, lines of birds would stream past us, so fast their wings were blurred. I made sketches as they raced by, noticing how their wingtips would touch the water at speed as the flocks repeatedly rearranged formation. The only other birds we saw were the deep ocean species that were able to live out here, rafting and diving, away from land. They were wild and spear shaped, barbarous skuas and petrels, passing the ship in sweeping glides, a cruel eye cast across the deck as if in their glance they weighed a man’s soul.