The Visitor (23 page)

‘What meeting?' Pearl asks him.

‘In the Council rooms,' Jack says. ‘All fishermen are going. All those that go to sea.' He says these last words carefully, looking over at Nicholas who tosses his head back and looks at the sky.

‘I've spoken to as many people as I can. There's been word the east coast drifters are breaking up pilchard shoals. I know your father's still out, Pearl. When he gets back, you'll tell him? Eight o'clock. Important he's there. Council are dithering about what to do.' He and Nicholas lock gazes. ‘Some are forgetting themselves,' Jack says.

‘There's no reasoning…' Nicholas sighs. ‘Pearl – I'll see you later.' He drops back into his yard.

She shakes out an apron and hangs it on the line. ‘He doesn't mean it.'

‘It's no good trying to wish it away,' Jack says. ‘Nicholas has strayed. I don't want to see him take you with him. I want…' He pulls the weed out of the brick and hurls it to the floor.

She's glad he doesn't finish the sentence but him standing over her without speaking is unnerving. ‘How's Samuel?' she says. Anything to stop his brooding. But asking about Samuel is a mistake. Jack's face clouds.

‘We have to keep to God's law,' he says. ‘It's the Lord that keeps us strong in the face of sin. Samuel needs our prayers as much as anyone. Don't let Nicholas tell you otherwise.'

‘Jack, please. I was only asking if Samuel was well.'

‘Tell your father,' Jack says. ‘Eight o'clock.' He disappears from view. She hears the door slam as he goes inside, followed by the usual shouting from the house. She rummages in the washing basket. Still two shirts and a sheet to fit on the line and no room left. How does her mother do it? The back door in the Tremain house opens and closes, this time more gently. Alice begins to sing and after a few lines Samuel's thin little voice joins in. Pearl feels her mood lift. The washing will dry eventually, somehow, even if it means her mother chiding her when she has to sort it out. Upturning an old pail, Pearl stands to look over the wall.

Alice is sitting on a battered cane chair, Samuel on her lap. They are playing some sort of game where Alice makes different shapes with her hands and Samuel has to tap them at certain shapes, before they change. He chirps and giggles when he misses his tap. Alice has her face buried in his soft blond hair. She's a different woman to the one dragged from the net loft. Her limp is still bad but she has a stick now, and her clothes are clean, cleaner than Pearl's in fact. She pins her hair and has lost the thinness in her face that made her look so ill in the weak light of the palace. She never smells of drink, though Mr Tremain is known to. Alice looks up then, as if hearing Pearl's mind turning over these changes, and smiles.

Pearl is cleaning the plates when her father comes home from the meeting. The supper was small and she's listless, tired. Her mother sits by the cold hearth, darning endless piles of clothes. Some are more seams than fabric. Polly is lying down upstairs, the advertisement hidden under the mattress.

‘They won't listen, the men from Yarmouth,' her father says, slamming the door shut. ‘They're determined to break faith with us.' He rattles the poker in the empty grate, seeming to enjoy the noise. ‘People will buy from them once they've come ashore with their Sabbath fish,' he says, ‘low prices they're asking, and that makes our Saturday fish hardly worth catching to sell on Mondays. And the east coast men are only here because landing's so poor at Govenek and we have the train.' He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, as if making sure God is listening to him as well.

Her mother's hands lie idle on her darning, her forehead puckered. ‘But they'll not be allowed to carry on, surely?' she says. ‘I know they've been at this trick for years, on and off, but not like this, so openly, and so many. They'll be stopped. We'll have to stop them now.'

‘Of course we will,' her father says. ‘Everything put to the Council tonight was reported from our own men, heard in Yarmouth when they put in during that week of strong wind last month. Council are going to sort it out, so says that lummock in charge, Trevisco, though I don't trust those men any more than I trust the east coasters. Council seem more interested in the train than boats these days. Railway men are coming again next week.'

Pearl moves the cloth slowly over the same plate she has held for some time. The water in the pail has gone cold and a layer of grease clouds its surface. It isn't right for her to speak now, to question her father, even if she felt she could unlock her lips. Nicholas's words from the yard sit heavily on her.

Her father drops the poker and leans back in his chair. ‘There were some hotheads there tonight,' he says, ‘trying to stir things up. Think we should nip this in the bud now, before these crews get a grip here and turn our men like those of Govenek.'

‘It grieves my heart to see Govenek lost. That it should come to this,' her mother says.

Her father humphs in agreement. ‘I didn't like the way some were talking, but if the Council don't want to take a lead.'

‘Who was stirring?' asks her mother.

‘Mostly youngsters,' her father says. ‘The Pengelley brothers. That lad Timothy Wills. Some I didn't recognise. And Jack-next-door. He was the worst of them.'

Her mother tuts to herself. ‘Alice does a poor job of keeping him in check but it's not her place, is it? Samuel is enough for a woman of her capabilities. And as for that father of his…' Her mother stops before she says something uncharitable. ‘You should speak to Jack,' Pearl's mother says to her. ‘Make sure he doesn't do anything foolish. He's been out of sorts for a long while. Not right since Peter and Alice…'

Her father gets up and stretches his back. It's almost time for him to go to sea again. ‘Yes Pearl, you should speak to him. He'd listen to you.' Both her parents look at her but she concentrates on the plates. ‘The last thing we want is any trouble,' her father says, reaching for his oilskin. ‘Jack caught me on the way home. Told me about a snake in our midst, one of our own taking up with the east coast men and sabotaging the pilchard catch.'

Pearl drops the plate into the pail with a splash. Her mother eyes an empty pail near the hearth.

‘Kettle's dry,' she says to Pearl. ‘There's just enough light left if you go for water now.'

Pearl nods and picks up the empty pail, glad to be able to leave the room. Pulling the front door almost closed behind her she puts her ear to the crack.

‘I don't know when Nicholas got so certain of himself,' she hears her mother say. ‘Such an upstart these days.' The noise of feet across the floor; her mother always paces when she's cross. ‘Look at his father, desperate for his boy to go to sea, to fish like the rest of his family. He's got a good home, not like poor Jack. Nicholas's grandfather is the best huer this village has ever had. I saw Sarah Dray this morning and she told me she'd seen Annie Polance scritching. Bad enough Nicholas sides with the back-sliders but to harm everything this village has, I can't credit it. Sarah says his father's ready to send him on his way.'

And then her father's voice. ‘Nicholas has been taken off the lifeboat too. When the next flare goes up he'll not be going out. Men don't trust him anymore. Too unpredictable to risk in bad weather.'

The thud of her mother's feet nears the front door. Pearl picks up the pail and quickly moves away.

At the pump she turns over these words. It isn't the actions of the east coast crews that worry her so much – it's against the way of things in Morlanow which means somehow it will be stopped, some solution found – it's more that Nicholas should be talked of like this, and to be taken off the lifeboat as well. Others have bound his opinions to his ability to save a life, as if supporting the east coast fishermen is as good as turning his back on a drowning man.

Her fingers toy with the pump handle. Nicholas isn't afraid to speak up when he can't fit parts of life together. It's his cleverness, his way of seeing things. He seeks points of roughness and tries to smooth them out. Not everyone can see his goodness though, his desire to aid a trouble rather than worsen it. Some people, like Jack and Sarah Dray, don't want to see it. But Pearl understands him like no one else and as she works the pump handle, sluicing fresh water into the tarnished old pail, she trusts that others will learn to see his goodness too. She'll make them see.

Eight

Now she knew. Gossip was still nipping at her heels. Mrs Tiddy had been watching and telling tales to Jack, and at it again only this morning – was it this morning? No, the morning was a long time ago. She had just turned round and heard them talking, surely. They were still outside, weren't they?

Mrs Tiddy must have waited for Jack, got up early. Perhaps she had been outside the front door all night, hanging on for her chance to pounce. Pearl heard them talking, the window just ajar.

‘It's not that I'm prying,' Mrs Tiddy said. ‘We're all worried.'

Pearl heard Jack's foot scrape along the bare dirt, then his cough, awkward and full of his need to get away. ‘Pearl has been a bit wisht these last few weeks,' he said. ‘Nothing serious mind. Just the move and then bit of a chill that won't leave her go.'

‘Dearie me.'

‘It's laid her low and you know how her chest is,' Jack said. ‘She won't slow down. Always liked her walks, hasn't she? But I've told her, she's to stay inside and rest.'

There was a pause and Pearl thought Mrs Tiddy had gone indoors but then her voice came again. ‘If you're not managing, you've only to say. Eileen and I would be glad to— '

Jack cut her short. ‘We're fine, Sarah.' Then, softening slightly, ‘thank you. You're very kind, but really – there's nothing wrong.'

‘But Eileen saw her out in just her nightdress and no shoes, only yesterday. She was hauling stones about. Jack— '

‘I said we're fine.'

Pearl heard Jack's boots marching off down the hill and imagined her neighbour shaking her head, no doubt annoyed at Jack's apparent loyalty. Pearl turned away from the window and sat down cross-legged. She began to trace waves in the dust settled on the bare boards, like salt spread on the palace's cobbles. Up and down. Up and down.
And the lad I loved was with them and he came not back again.

Her going needed to be a secret but Jack seemed always one step ahead. He hadn't decided to stay in the house during the day yet, to watch her, but she didn't doubt he was talking to people about her while he was at the seafront. He was checking on her movements, which was almost as bad as having him under her feet. Great stretches of each day were slipping past her.

The house was closing in, the ceilings lowering as water pooled from the leaking roof and the walls inching towards the centre of each room while she slept. Every day
Wave Crest
became heavier with dust. Pearl found herself constantly in corners pulling the skin off her fingers, her nails blackened with dirt. She needed to be closer to the sea and she wanted to see the palace but not when there were still so many visitors crowding the seafront. She would have to go at night.

It wasn't love that first led Pearl to brew the sleeping tea for Jack, it was pity that she would feel towards any animal in pain. His nights were disturbed by dreams he wouldn't speak of – his time in the reserves she supposed – and he was fretful after any run-ins with George. Most Sunday evenings in their old house on Carew Street she would make a pot for him, occasionally taking a cup herself.

To begin with, Jack wouldn't accept the tea willingly, doubtful of a concoction that smacked of Aunt Lilly, even though he had been born into a world that relied on her abilities. To convince him, Pearl said her tea would ease the swollen joints of his hands and that was what it did, amongst other things. Three nips of wild thyme, the purple petals finely torn, four saffron hairs – if they could be spared, dear as it was – and a bud of yellow gorse flowers, all brewed with rainwater. The tea carried the scent of the cliff path and the freshness found after a storm. These days Jack even asked for it himself, not needing her careful prompting, saying that the heat in his hands was soothed, as she had promised. Tonight though, Pearl was brewing the tea for her own ends, and those of Nicholas.

Jack drained his cup and lay down in bed without a word to Pearl. Since she had told him about hearing her mother on the seafront he had been quiet with her. It was as if he was afraid of what else Pearl might say. She waited an hour, just to be sure. When his breath stammered from his open mouth, regular and deep, Pearl crept from the room.

The night was warm. Still this strange weather, days holding a constant heat, so dry and still. Perfect for the remaining visitors, who would tell their friends that the claims of the railway posters were right. Eileen's shop would be busy. Pascoe's new hotel would be full. But where was autumn?

The only noises were those of the sea and a door banging shut as she made her way down the winding road. She didn't trust herself to manage the cliff path by night and chose the road to reach the village proper; she continued to refer to it as that rather than a town even though she wasn't sure where the boundaries were anymore. Perhaps there were no lines to shape Morlanow and it simply kept unfolding, reaching further with every day that passed.