The Visitor (34 page)

The clouds cleared and a beam of moonlight shone into the room, unpeeling the shadows. Nicholas stood before her.

Air poured into her throat. It was all right. It was all right. He was no keygrim. He was her own Nicholas, as he had stayed in her memory. His skin was wan but clung to his bones. The familiar, enticing dark hair curled over his face and her fingers itched to stroke it. He wore clothes she knew; a coarse white shirt half tucked into blue worsted trousers and heavy black boots. This Nicholas, standing before her in a different Morlanow than he had left all those years since that terrible day, was everything she had longed for. It didn't matter that she had grown older and he looked still a young man. Nothing mattered except that he was there. She had believed in him, had read the signs Morlanow had given her, and he had come. But something was wrong.

The room seemed suddenly soaked. Wherever Pearl looked more water glistened. It dripped from Nicholas's clothes, pooling on the floor. His mouth opened. He moved as if to speak but no words came. Water spluttered up from his throat and ran down his chin onto his chest. Pearl smelt the sea but not freshly broken waves. The water still emptying from Nicholas's mouth was dank and old.

He spread his hands – those smooth, soft hands that had travelled the length of Pearl – then tried to step forward. He seemed to struggle. There was a broad mark on the side of his head. The moonlight shifted again and she saw that it was a cut. Half his forehead was split open, the gash stretching back and lost within his hair.

Pearl couldn't move. She was pinned to the bed by the ache in her own head. So close to Nicholas and unable to hold him – it was cruelty. She was a sinner and she was being punished.

Nicholas looked as if he was trying to come towards her again but he stumbled, falling to the floor. She couldn't see him at the end of the bed. Sadness overwhelmed the little room. Inside her locked frame Pearl screamed. It was time to go. Time to leave Morlanow on the packet. The pain at her temples flashed around the back of her head. The clouds returned to the moon and the room was filled with darkness.

Twenty

The fog doesn't lift. The night's rain-storm has moved on but as the morning passes, the white veil thickens. No sun comes to burn it off. Scarves of mist roll past, twisting to blankets heavy with damp. Whole houses disappear. The small harbour is crowded with masts and men. Somewhere amongst the tangled wood is the packet ship from Naples, the
Isabella
, but Pearl can't think of her now. She can't think beyond the fish.

The squalling joy of gulls drowns all other sound. The beach is a mess of feathers and scales; dirty white and silver. The catch was missed. And now, when it lies on the sand, huge and dead, there aren't enough women to build walls from the bodies before the fish perish. Too many have left. Catching and bulking pilchards is what this village is meant to do. It's why the first houses were built against the cliff. Yet Morlanow's people have forgotten their talents. The past, parcelled together by fish, by catches, by stories shared then shared again – is fading.

Her father, whose usual part in the catch keeps him on the water, is now land-bound, filling a gurry. His hands move slowly. Each time he lifts a pilchard from the sand he stares at it, as if he has never seen one before. And then, when he lays each one in the barrow, he gazes along the length of the silver beach, at the piles and piles of fish, before he bends to those lying near him again.

Others rush, their movements feverish. Aunt Lilly runs along the seafront, grabbing hold of every woman she meets. ‘Come to the palace!' she shouts, though there's no need in the eerie quiet of the beach. ‘We must get as many as we can before they drop scales. Come on!'

But the women turn away, some crying, some only shaking their heads. The rising stench tells that most of the fish have already turned and are good only for enriching soil, not pockets.

Pearl is curled on the seafront. Her stomach still twists into gurgling knots every time she breathes a lungful of the foul air. She knows she should leave the front, get far away from the beach's flotsam, but she can't will life into her legs.

Everyone has come to see the catch. Artists stroll, looking down at the fish. One young man has taken out a sketchbook and squats unevenly on the drifts, pencilling the rigid features of a single pilchard onto his page. Most are silent, respectful. They have stayed for enough seasons to understand the loss.

Visiting fishermen, trapped in port by the fog, goggle at the shoal. They gather on the harbour wall where they talk in groups, watching the local men with a kind of fear at their grief. Until the fog burns off they are as stranded as the fish and there are many, many fishermen Pearl doesn't recognise.

Nicholas. She remembers him then as she sees the east coast men. He has gone to get her some water. How long has he been gone? How long has it been since they sheltered from the rain's onslaught in the palace, her skin frozen and burning all at once?

The thud of running feet. A pack of young men streaks into view, skids to a halt, and looks to the harbour wall. Boys from school – the Pengelleys, three lads from her father's crew, Timothy Wills – and others she recognises from chapel. They dance like horses brought up in mid-flight. One spits, another curses. Murmurings and sharp movements of hands. Timothy points and the herd careers in the direction of the main street. Someone crouches beside her.

‘You don't look well,' Jack says, marking a line in the dirt.

‘I'm not,' she says. ‘But I will be.'

‘You need looking after. Have you thought about what I said in chapel? Your father's keen, and what with this,' he waves at the mass of fish, taking in their many deaths with a flick of his wrist, ‘your house'll need more coming in.'

‘Jack, I…'

He lays his hand on the ground, very close to hers but not touching. ‘There mightn't be another shoal this year,' he says, sounding almost pleased at the thought. ‘It makes sense to put our needs together. I'd do for your parents too. You've only to say.'

Pearl looks him in the eye and makes certain not to blink. Lies are coming easier. ‘I have been thinking on it,' she says, ‘but I can't say for certain yet.' Her tongue is washed with sourness but still it moves. ‘Mother's been low since Polly left. I need more time.'

Jack smiles and his face is transformed. Pearl clenches her hands, rolls her toes – anything to stop him hoping like this. Yes, she needs time, but only for the packet to take her away. Only for an escape.

‘Well, as long as you don't make me wait too long.' Jack's finger brushes her hand and she feels no chill, no revulsion at his touch. She feels nothing at all. His finger might as well be driftwood and her hand a stone.

‘I care for you, Pearl,' he says. ‘More than you know. That's why—'

He's interrupted by a shout. They turn to see Stephen Pengelley on the other side of the road, waving to Jack.

‘I have to go.' Jack stands and peers down at her still seated. ‘Pearl, you'd better get yourself home.'

‘I'm all right, really. This smell—'

‘No, listen to me. You need to go home.' He says these words slowly, as if she is soft. ‘You need to be indoors with the door locked. Don't let anyone in. Stay upstairs.'

‘Why? What are you talking about?'

Stephen Pengelley whistles. Jack makes a frantic sign to him with his hands. ‘Just do as I say,' he says to Pearl. ‘Please.'

She reaches to grab Jack's shirt, to wring his riddles from him, but he's gone, running up Pendennis Street with Stephen.

The blood flows back to her feet with sharp tingles. She stamps the discomfort away. There's the noise of pounding boots again but their owners are hidden by the village's tangled lanes and short-cut passageways.

The bell from the huer's hut clangs mournfully and its sound makes her heart kick. The bell should have rung when the catch washed in but the men on the cliff top wouldn't have been able to see the shoal. Why is it ringing now? Local people begin to leave the front, filing silently into the streets. The artists melt away amongst them. On the harbour wall, the visiting fishermen watch people go. A hand closes over her shoulder.

‘What's wrong?' Nicholas asks. ‘I brought you the water.'

‘You've been gone so long. I waited. Why were you gone so long, Nicholas?'

He proffers the tin cup he has retrieved from somewhere. ‘Have a drop. Go on, it'll make you feel better.'

She makes to speak but again he offers the cup. She takes it and drinks a long mouthful. The sourness is sluiced away, the air in her throat feels cleaner, though the fish stench still hangs overhead.

‘There was trouble at the pump,' he says.

‘Trouble?'

His arm steals round her hip to rub her back. ‘Is that better? Do you feel better now?'

‘Yes. But stop – people might see. What happened at the pump?'

‘Oh, just a flare up,' Nicholas says. ‘Some men were trying to get a drink and they were stopped.'

‘What men? Who stopped them?'

‘The women stopped them,' he says. ‘Your mother, for one, and mine. She didn't look too pleased to see me with the men queuing, and would have seen me off with her rolling pin as well.'

‘As well as who?' She pushes the cup into his chest. ‘Just tell me.'

‘East coast men. Trying to get a drink, that was all.' He shakes his head and looks up at the sunless sky.

‘It's not long until the packet goes,' she says. ‘Don't get into trouble now, please.'

‘But the fog. The packet won't be able to leave, Pearl. And today…' The bell's last peal dies and with it his voice.

She puts her hand to his face and speaks gently, prompting, not wanting to sound afraid. ‘What will happen today?'

‘I can't tell for certain. But something must. Something must change. You feel it, don't you? If only the fog would lift.' Nicholas looks around him. ‘I can't see to save my own back.'

‘Then let's get to higher ground,' she says. ‘It'll be clearer. We can wait for the weather to turn.'

He smiles sadly at her, but nods. It doesn't matter that he doesn't believe the fog will clear today. Pearl's hope is enough for both of them. She knows that the packet must leave because the net they have cast is drawing tighter with each moment passing. Jack is caught there, and her mother and father, and Pearl too, because she has stood unclothed before Nicholas and knows the fate she has chosen.

‘You'll not be cold?' he says. ‘We could call at your house, get something warmer?'

‘No.'

He was lucky to leave the pump unscathed. She has to keep him close, safe. They have to be together when the packet is able to go.

‘I'm all right,' she says, though her clothes still hold the night's damp and aren't getting any dryer in the wet mouth of the fog.

Nicholas takes her arm and steers her in the direction of the cliff path to the huer's hut. She pulls back. The bell's late ring has set a cloud of doubt over the place.

‘Let's go to the drying field,' she suggests. ‘Look, it's clearer over that way.'

Nicholas peers up at the sky. ‘Is it? Well, your eyes are sharper than mine.'

They come to the harbour wall and the visiting fishermen eye them nervously from its other end, where the sea clings to their half-shrouded boats. One man raises his hand and Nicholas does the same in return.

‘Do you know him?' Pearl says.

‘Only to say good morning when they unload,' Nicholas says, nodding at several other men. ‘Friendly enough and he's seen a fair bit of the world. Been on whaling ships most of his life. Where are you going?'

Pearl is descending the slipway, banked by fish on either side. She points to the arch midway down the harbour wall. ‘So we can get onto the other beach and up to the field.'

‘But it's quicker to go through Skommow Bay,' he says.

The name is like a cold hand on her neck. She twitches against its grip and carries on, speaking to Nicholas over her shoulder.

‘I'm not going through there,' she says. ‘It's a rank old place.'

He follows her down the slipway, as she knew he would. ‘It's not that bad,' he says. ‘Just boats. They can't do you any harm. And would you really rather climb over these?'

Pearl's foot nudges a tail. Such a blue – the colour of the sea before rain; slate and heather blended with the hue of Polly's eyes. No artist can mix such a tone. And here it is, wasted, fading as Pearl stares.

‘It'll only be for a few paces,' she tells him, stepping forward and trying to seem certain. ‘The sand runs higher beyond the arch.'

The fish give under her weight, sliding away so that she sinks into their depth. She walks on, dragging her eyes from theirs, holding out her arms to steady herself.

She reaches the archway, Nicholas just behind. They pick their way through, the smell ripe in the low space. On the other side is a clear path between the top of the beach and the drying field, where the fish tide hasn't reached. She hurries, the fish sucking her feet deeper into their mass with every step. She tries to run but only ploughs in further, sinking to her knees, then her thighs. The fish pack against her skin, slippery and solid at the same time. They are granting her wish to swim with the trapped shoal – she is surrounded by them but they aren't moving. There is only the heavy weight of their death.