The Visitor (33 page)

It was only ever for his own good but now George's face was red and his eyes screwed with tears. She had to give him something.

‘They would have taken you away,' she whispered.

‘Why? Why would they?'

But still she couldn't free what had long been hidden. ‘You were such a bonny little scrap.' Her words came easily and her voice held. ‘They wanted to get a look at you, that was all. I was forever handing you to someone else for a hold.'

He dropped his hands to his side and shook his head. Her chest began to tighten but her mind was clear.

‘And you'll go out and play now, my sweet? You'll go and find me some pretty shells to brighten up the garden, won't you, Georgie?'

And he came back to her, falling to his knees and resting his head in her lap. Pearl stroked his dark hair, relieved he couldn't see her face.

‘Oh, Mother. What will we do with you?' He lifted his head. ‘You'll have to see Dr Adamson.'

‘I don't need to see him, my love. It won't do any good.'

‘Father can't care for you,' George said, ‘not with his hands the way they are, and not with his temper. You're not well. You can see that, can't you?'

She could see so much, more than she could ever explain. Looking at George, she could see Nicholas. He had walked with her again on Skommow Bay. He was coming for her.

‘Look at the state of you.' George toyed with the filthy hem of her blouse. ‘When I found you trying to get into the old house… do you even know where you'd been?'

Pearl pushed him away and he toppled onto the floor. ‘Don't you cheek me, my lad!' She got to her feet; they were unsteady though she wouldn't let George see. ‘I don't have to explain myself to you,' she shouted. ‘Where have
you
been, eh? Seeing you only some Sundays and then there's rows. That new house is eating me up. Being stuck on the hill, with Jack – and nothing staying where it should.' The shake in her legs rattled to her hips and up her back. ‘There's some things I don't want to see again, George. Awful things. But they come over me and I can't look away because they're happening inside my head.' She banged her fist against her temple and the dull pain felt good. She would knock it all out of her.

Her little boy was on the floor, drawing his long legs under him. This was how he sat when he was reading, tucked into a corner so as to be safe from Jack's notice. But her boy was getting to his feet and as he shook his head, a man appeared. She had sent the boy away with her frightening tales. Telling truths did no good to anyone.

George didn't come back towards her. He was wary and skulked by the door. ‘You must see the doctor, Mother. You must.'

He was the same as everyone else, always telling her what she must do, for she couldn't decide for herself. No swimming. No Nicholas.

‘I don't need the doctor,' she said, trying to sound kind. ‘I've got you, George.'

They stood and faced one another across the loft floor. George sighed and put his hands behind his head. ‘That's just it. When I found you today I was on my way to
Wave Crest.
There's something I have to tell you.' He paused.

Pearl's heart quickened. ‘Well, come on then. Out with it.' Perhaps it was a baby.

‘I'm leaving, with Elizabeth. We're leaving Morlanow.'

Pearl didn't speak. Couldn't. George was leaving as Nicholas had left and as Polly had too. Pearl felt her head nodding and then there was salt on her lips. People, places, things – they all went on being lost. Pearl was the slate on which to chalk them up. She was only the keeper of their going and their staying gone.

George wrapped her in his arms. ‘We can't get by on the fishing anymore. My boat's barely afloat and I can't afford to patch her up, let alone buy a new one. We've been putting off thinking about it. We don't want to leave.'

‘I've a little bit of money put away. You can have it, for your boat. You can have it all, only don't go. Please, don't go.'

He stroked the hair from her face and it was another's hand as he did so. It was Nicholas, if she only closed her eyes.

‘It's no good,' George said. ‘I had a letter last night. Mr James has sold this loft, all this street, to the railway company. Pascoe's going to do them up, like the Carew Street houses, for visitors. We've got to be out by Christmas. There doesn't seem much use in hanging on until then.'

‘Where will you go?'

‘Matthew Tiddy said they're looking for men at Southampton. I'm good with my hands and can turn to. I'd be building boats instead of sailing them. Well, ships.'

‘Southampton.' It didn't sound any more real when she said it aloud.

‘Come with us.' George managed a smile, though she could see it was an effort. ‘Elizabeth wants it too.'

‘And what about Jack?' Pearl said.

George hesitated and looked at the floor. ‘He's welcome.'

Pearl patted his hand. ‘As welcome as all that?' George looked as if he were about to protest and she shook her head to stop him. ‘I can't leave just yet,' she told him. ‘But it's not Jack I'll stay for.'

‘Then why?' George said. ‘Morlanow's changed. I know you don't like the building work, the palace coming down. And that new house is bad for your chest.'

‘I have to be here when he comes back.'

She felt George stiffen. ‘Who?' he said. ‘Who's coming back?'

But George was no good with secrets. He wanted to know everything, even when it caused hurt. It wasn't that he was tricksy like Jack, but he didn't understand why some things needed to be kept safe.

‘Have you got a drop of water for a poor old fool like me, Georgie?'

He looked at her for a moment, as if weighing her up. ‘Course I have,' he said. ‘We'll have a good talk. You can tell me all about it, and then I'll walk you home and drop in on Dr Adamson on my way back.'

George stood and went to the little kitchen at the far end of the loft, tucked into an alcove. Pearl waited until he was hidden from view, clinking cups together, and then moved to the door.

A pebble lay in her palm, hard and cool. Where had it come from? She had been with Nicholas – no, she had run away from him, because he was going. It was a game. They were playing hide and seek and had both been looking for a place to disappear but she hadn't seen where he had gone and here she was still in the open.

She cast about for him and saw, on the ground nearby, a little tower of stones. The pebble she held was similar to those arranged in the tower but smaller. A white line wove across its back.
It had to go on top
– the thought came to her as if a voice had just whispered in her ear. She spun round. There was no one nearby. The beach was empty except for a few people in the distance, lounging on the sand.

She laid the pebble on the top of the tower. The action felt familiar, as if she was working pastry or pulling the pump handle. It felt right, as so little did any more.

An arm around her. A hand in hers. Gentle words as she was steered away from the cairn, back along the beach towards the harbour wall.

‘Here we are, now. I'll get you home. Come along, Pearl.'

Pearl looked into Polly's kind eyes, her fair face creased with care. Her sister looked older.

‘Is it time for supper?'

But Polly only sighed and patted Pearl's arm. She shook her head and said, so quietly that Pearl could barely hear her, ‘George'll have to do something. This can't go on.'

‘You mean Gerald?' Pearl said. ‘It's Gerald you're stepping out with, Polly. He's a nice boy, even if he is from Govenek.'

And Polly smiled. ‘Yes. Yes, Pearl.'

Nineteen

Pilchards flooded into the room. They swam from shadow-corners, lifting out of the skirting boards and breaking from the paintwork. A colossal shoal of strong, smooth bodies, too alive to wreck themselves on a beach.

Riding the room's warm air as if it were a tide, the fish coursed over the top of the wardrobe, under the bed and out the other side, then across the window. Their rushing threw coins of light that revealed, for a flickering moment, the whorls of damp and the blistered paint. Water gleamed on every surface.

The room had become the belly of a ship. It was heavily laden with a cargo that had escaped the confines of hogsheads, finding sparks of life to move pressed scales. This dripping, tilting ship was low in the sea. Waves pressed in on all sides, desperate to find a crack to breach. Walls creaked; taut planks instead of bricks. Pearl heard timber groan and drag, buffeted by an invisible tide. The sound clustered at her temples and pressed against her skull.

The moon had reached half its grace and sent choppy rays through the curtains as clouds passed across it. More and more fish poured into view. Their dancing made the shape Pearl had seen so often in the moments before the great seine net was shot. The shoal woman rolled her hips and shook her hair of tails, constantly breaking and mending her glittering form so that she was many women. Her mother. Polly. Aunt Lilly. Clara. Alice. Pearl saw herself as a child and longed to plunge her hands into the twisting silver to get hold of the untucked little girl but the fish were too quick, darting out of her reach.

She had only ever touched pilchards when they were dead. How she had burned to go with the men in the dipper boats and drop a basket into the circle of seething water then tip the twitching flesh into her lap. She imagined feeling the pulse of the great shoal beat against hers. Or, even better, to swim into the enclosed net and be surrounded by the still thrashing fish. To be part of such a mass of living that was desperate to escape its end.

It had never been allowed. Tonight, as so many nights, Pearl was still waiting for what she wanted. Propped up in bed, more awake than she had felt in weeks, though her eyes were closing. That didn't matter. She could see in darkness and when sleep crept into her mind and fogged her it was all right, because that was how Nicholas came.

Waiting, waiting. The pilchards danced on, always just beyond her grasp. A passing ship brought news. A finger traced the coastline, winding in and out of coves. He was coming back. He was coming back for her.

From far below the bedroom of the new house a single wave broke louder than its fellows, and Pearl knew Nicholas had returned.

The room's creaking increased. There was the drag of ropes. A door banging. In bed next to her, Jack lay as stone. The pilchards surged in front of the window and circled there, weaving a live mesh between the bed and the glass. Pearl's chest began to tighten as she made out a familiar shape forming behind the fish. She gripped the blanket and pulled it towards her, tempted to bury her face and hide. Seeing Nicholas was all she had ever wanted but she couldn't be sure of him, even now. How could she trust the fleeting glimpses? How could she trust a person she didn't know anymore, and perhaps never had? The man she loved had left her, after they had lain together in Morlanow's hiding places.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Nicholas was supposed to come for her in the open, in unflinching daylight, so that all the world could see she was worth coming back for, that she was wanted, more than anything. This creeping, never showing himself, drifting away again – it was all wrong. Pearl needed to see him properly, to be sure. She wouldn't be taken for a fool any longer.

Behind the moving wall of fish his body was coming clear. She made out a shoulder. Then an arm. A hand. It was like watching Miss Charles painting at great speed. Nicholas was going to show himself to her. He was going to give her what she wanted. Fingers swelled from the hand. The jut of his hip. He was so close. If she reached out she could touch him through the shimmer of silver. But she couldn't find the strength.

There was the too familiar flutter in her chest. Her breath furred into rasps. She tried desperately to quieten it so as not to wake Jack because this visit was important; she could feel it in every crumb of air, every drop of damp. The whole room was charged.

Already this Nicholas was firmer than the shape that led her from Skommow Bay. Through the silver curtain Pearl saw the white of his face, the colour of his lips. He was moving, coming towards her. She pulled the blanket closer to her face.

He broke though the shoal. The barrier shattered. The fish thinned back to the unlit corners of the room. All sound ceased.

Nicholas remained still. The room was darker without the pilchards. Partial shadow covered him. She couldn't see him fully. The thought of keygrims weighed her down. If Nicholas had become one of the walking dead, of salt and shells, he wouldn't take her to the seabed with him, would he? Please God he wouldn't say her name.

She struggled for every scrap of air. Her heart was quicker than she had known it in a long while. She was going to die, with Nicholas so close. She would die before she saw him, a beached fish drowning in air.
Come closer.
No sound came from her but dry, brittle gasps.
Come closer, please
. Tears rolled down her cheeks onto the clutched blanket.