The Visitor (10 page)

She can see someone's back, a brown jacket. The figure turns round: it's Mr Michaels. She ducks. When she dares to look again he's only picked up some paint; he didn't see her. He moves forward, towards something, but she can't see what as he's blocking her view. Then he disappears beyond the window and she sees Alice sitting on a chair without a stitch on.

Alice is very still, almost as if she doesn't know Mr Michaels is there. Her thin hair is combed out and sits on her shoulders very prettily, somehow looking more reddish than it usually does. Her cheeks have lost their sallowness and have a flush instead. There's a stove in the corner of the room. Pearl thinks how kind Mr Michaels is to keep Alice warm and then remembers that it's sinful. Alice doesn't have any clothes on and he's looking right at her, all over her. He stands before a big canvas and adds paint to the image of Alice already there, putting shadows across her chest and shoulders. Pearl looks at the real Alice and sees that there
are
shadows there, because she's so thin, but she's not thin all over. Her stomach is very round. She's having a baby.

There's a flash of green movement on the other side of the loft. Pearl angles her head to see better and the green turns out to be Miss Charles' dress. She's standing by her own canvas, painting Alice too, so there are three Alices in the loft. No, more than that. Beyond Miss Charles, at the far end of the loft, are many other pictures of Alice. Alice standing, Alice holding a dogfish, Alice in a tin bath. All these Alices look at Pearl in a way the real Alice doesn't: right in the eye.

‘I'm going to tell,' Sarah Dray whispers. Her mouth is set firm but her hands are trembling a little.

Nicholas looks away from the glass for the first time. ‘No,' he says. ‘You mustn't.'

Jack takes a step forward, as if protecting Sarah from Nicholas' words. ‘I'm going to tell, too. It's wicked.'

Timothy and James give great whoops and jump down the steps as if some signal's been given that it's all right to make noise now, that the spell is broken. Jack and Sarah follow them and all four run in the direction of the palace. Pearl wants to stop them but she can't move her feet.

It's only Nicholas and Pearl left on the platform. ‘Come on, they'll have heard us,' he says. They go down the steps and into the alley that leads to the seafront. It smells of fish and muck, like the archway under the harbour wall but not as bad. As she thinks this she realises that's where she wants to be. She wants to hide, to get away from the sail loft and the sharp taste in her mouth when she thinks of Alice, and of Sarah Dray going off to tell. She starts walking and Nicholas follows her. They go down the slipway and onto the sand. Under the arch neither of them says anything. They're both waiting. Presently they hear the shouts and the many running feet.

Eight

It was Sunday. She knew where she was. Sunday gave a fixed point in the week with its own rules. She would get straight after today, be more on top of things. She wouldn't let herself get upset again. It did no good. She'd let all this lie a long time ago. Thinking about it, going back – it made her ill. Jack had said so and maybe he was right. She didn't feel herself.

After a sparse breakfast she cleared the table and joined Jack in the room next to the kitchen. He sat opposite her with the Bible open on the table. It was a family copy, passed down through his father's side, the only thing Jack possessed from him. It was bound in black leather, which had split several times across the front. Inside was pasted a tangled list of names and dates. The Tremain record of grief. His father's death was unrecorded.

Usually Jack read aloud but since the other night he'd been sullen with her, though she'd tried her best to be soft with him. The day stretched ahead, long and dull. She couldn't even get on with darning. Any kind of occupation, except preparing the most basic meals, wasn't allowed. He was punishing her today by making her idleness silent. At least George was coming for his supper.

Sundays had been difficult since she and Jack were married. Though she had resented chapel it had made the empty time easier to bear. The morning and evening services framed the slow hours and Jack was better out of the house. Now there was nowhere to go.

Not long after George had left home the chapel was found to need a new roof. She remembered the dampness of the back room from when she was a child, attending Sunday school, and how the clamminess gradually worked its way through the whole building. When she had prayed – a long time ago now – the words always came with that smell: old, fusty, wet. Once the rain had poured through the ceiling in the middle of a service the problem could be ignored no longer. But there hadn't been the money for a new roof. The congregation was too small. So many people had left Morlanow. Those who remained had lost the zealousness that made the building ring with prayer when she was a child. After what happened, the event that even now she shied away from remembering, getting up to get a drink of water rather than think about it, the fire of faith cooled then went out. The chapel was sold to a man from London and only a little fuss was made. In a way it was a relief. Any sense of guilt was gone. The roof was mended but the benches were taken out, new lights went in, and now paintings hung on the walls. You could go in and look, buy something if you had what they were asking. Some of Mr Michaels' pictures appeared from time to time, though never any of Alice. His paintings of the sea were worth a great deal, she'd heard, but she never went to see them.

Jack's hand slipped on the page. He'd fallen into a fretful doze. Pearl went to the window. She breathed on the glass and traced waves in the condensation.

The clock struck three, making her jump. Her hand was on the window, her hip full of ache. She must have been standing there a good while. She left Jack where he was, still sleeping, and went upstairs to get the second best tablecloth from the linen drawer in the box room. She wanted everything ready when George arrived.

Her son had married late, though he was a fine-looking lad. His wife Elizabeth was a Govenek girl who had come down the cliff path one day, looking for work, and had found George at the bottom, sorting his fishing gear, as if he was waiting for her. She had a wan look to her and kept indoors whenever there was hint of a chill. There wasn't enough flesh on her, that was why. She was taller than George and had a kind of childish lankiness to her. She dipped her head when she spoke, like some kind of wading bird, and wore long, baggy dresses Pearl couldn't abide. There were no children yet, but Pearl was still hopeful. Elizabeth was a few years younger than George. On Sundays the couple went to their separate families for supper, if Elizabeth could manage the walk to Govenek. If she was taken bad, George would stay with her at home.

When George did come to supper, both he and Jack made an effort, gripping their knives and forks, and passing the salt and butter a little too quickly. Some meals went well and George would even stay after the table had been cleared. Other times there would be a row and a slammed door before the food was finished.

She took the cloth down to the kitchen and left it on the chair, ready to spread once all the food was prepared. When she opened the drawer to get the boning knife for the fish George would bring, the knife wasn't there. She roused Jack in the other room.

‘Have you had the boning knife for something?' she said.

He stretched himself awake. The Bible slipped to the floor. ‘No. Why?'

‘I can't find it and I'll need it for the fish. You must have had it,' she said.

‘Why must I?'

‘You know.' The reason had slipped from her but there it was, just slightly tucked away. ‘For making the little boat,' she said.

Jack paused as he reached for the fallen book, his head tilted on one side. ‘Little boat?' he said. ‘What are you on about? The knife must be there, probably right in front of you.' He got to his feet, rolled his shoulders and said, ‘I'm going to have a lie down before supper.'

When he had gone, Pearl went to the window again. The sea was just audible, at the very edge of her hearing, and as she listened for it Nicholas was there before her, unbidden and unwanted.

A cry came from above and then Jack's feet were thumping down the stairs. He flew into the front room, clutching the boning knife.

‘It was in the bed! And I found
this
—' he thrust the kettle, which was in his other hand, at her face, ‘in the wardrobe.'

‘Why on earth did you put them there?' she asked him.

Jack stared at her. ‘You think I put a knife in the bed? I'm not the one who's been sitting staring out of the window since we got up here, paying no heed to anyone.'

‘It wasn't me, Jack!'

‘Well, if I didn't do it and neither did you, who did?' He threw the knife and the kettle on to the chair. ‘I need to get some air.'

The potatoes were ready to be put on to boil. Pearl furiously pared some green beans to go in another pot. Why would she have taken the knife and the kettle upstairs and hidden them like that? It was ridiculous.

The beans rubbed their coarseness against her palms. She knew she had to slow herself down and be careful with the vegetables, wanting to get them just how George liked. Had to make sure he got a plate that wasn't chipped, as well. Anything to keep him coming to visit now they were away from town, though the mood Jack was in it would hardly be a relaxed evening.

George was born at high tide beneath a full moon, and cried from his first breath as if he knew he had come into the world having already lost something. Pearl gave him enough love to do for her and Jack, who couldn't bear the noise and the steaming piles of washing that soon filled the house on Carew Street, but it was no good. The tears had dried and smiles had come, but George could do no right for Jack.

Jack looked after George though, in his fashion. There was food on the table and Jack taught him to fish as soon as he could hold a line, and later got him a skiff so that he could scull out to deeper water for a bigger catch. Jack lent him his passion too, his comfort on the waves and feeling for the tides. But they often clashed, whether it was to do with the state of a hull or the chance of rain.

Pearl laid the tablecloth and smoothed a ruck. In the first days of their marriage she'd tried her best with Jack. She managed to hold back her tears until he'd put to sea for the day and she could conjure a smile when people in the street asked how she was finding married life. When the baby that followed George passed on, she knew the marriage was only a means of tying her and Jack together. The child didn't see out his first week, and somehow she had known he wouldn't. He came from disappointment and his body was thin with it.

Jack didn't speak of the child after he was buried and George was too young to remember. The lost baby slipped back into the dim gloom he had emerged from, and Pearl was relieved that no more came.

From then on she learned to live with Jack rather than love him. She held him when his sleep was dark with dreams. She folded and put away his clothes. She saw that love couldn't be worked at, but living could. Living aged well, adapting over time, but love left a sting.

George brought a large ling wrapped in newspaper. He sat in the kitchen while Pearl boned the fish. She had readied so many she felt as if half the contents of the sea had passed through her hands. She laid this body down on the scarred wooden board with the tail towards her. It was a large fish and would do for all three of them. One fillet for George and another shared between her and Jack.

George stretched his long legs. ‘Keeping all right then, Mother?'

Just the two of them. Sometimes she wondered what life would have been like if she had kept to that, but there was no use wishing.

‘Can't complain,' she said. ‘How's Elizabeth?'

‘She's well. Going to stay with her sister tonight so I'm seeing Matthew later.'

‘Oh yes?'

‘He's low about that girl he'd taken up with. You know, I told you – the one who's been painting him. Well, she's going home as her lessons at the art school are done.'

Pearl ran the knife behind the ling's head and felt the resistance from the backbone as she sliced through. You had to do it firmly or blood would run everywhere. A clean chop was needed.

‘Matthew's always getting attached to those maids and he knows they won't stay,' she said.

‘I know but he won't learn. Can't resist a woman who asks to paint him.'

He was a rascally one, Matthew Tiddy. All that switching about and everyone knowing. She wondered what Mrs Tiddy thought of it. Things were that different now. The knife slid the length of the backbone, paring the cool damp body between her hands. Gently steamed, the flesh would fall away from the fork.

‘He's worried about his mother,' George said.

‘Hm?'

‘Have you seen much of her since you got up here?' he said.

‘Oh, around and about, you know. She keeps herself to herself and that's fine by me. Mind out while I get the plates. There isn't room to move in here.'

George brought his legs up and straightened on the chair, losing his easy grace in an instant. He was suddenly all angles and seriousness.