The Visitor (39 page)

The sea was calling. She looked down and saw its efforts to reach her. The waves were high, higher than she could ever remember. And the noise – a thousand doors banging shut, a life's worth of thunderclaps beating the cliff. How the sea had hidden from her, pretending peace when this storm had been in the water all the time, waiting to bring Nicholas back.

The waves stretched up to the new house, heads of smashed china, backs black with rage. Yet within the darkness there was another colour. It was still a way off, where the seabed dropped into deeper water at the edge of the bay. Pearl stepped from the shelter of the house and the wind whipped her long, knotted hair, playing it across her face. The colour in the sea danced in and out of her vision, a spread of red and purple, moving closer to shore.

Pearl laughed and clapped her hands. Rain drops spun off her, shook from her hair. She hurried to the cliff path.

‘Pearl?'

A sound picked up and thrown by the wind. Just audible, she heard her name again and turned round. Mrs Tiddy was huddled in her own doorway, her skirt blown by the wind, revealing her shift and thick brown stockings. She came towards Pearl.

‘What in Heaven's name are you doing out here?' Mrs Tiddy's words were all but lost in the wind and she blinked hard against the rain. ‘You'll be pulled off the cliff by this gale!'

‘He's come back. I have to go.'

‘Let's get inside, out of this rain. I'll fetch Jack. These clothes you've got on.'

‘No! Nicholas is waiting.' Pearl pulled away and fell. The ground was more water than earth and she sank into mud.

Mrs Tiddy bent over Pearl. Her mouth hung in a circle of disbelief. The rain trickled down her cheeks.

‘What did you say?' Mrs Tiddy shouted.

‘Nicholas is here.'

Mrs Tiddy shook her head. ‘Come on, up you get.'

Pearl scrabbled from her on hands and knees. Her chest was heaving, pushing her lungs as high as the strange waves, but the feeling was good and raw. The pressure was coming to her temples again. She couldn't keep her thoughts fixed when her body pulled towards the sea. Her head was hot with the effort of trying to stay here, in this moment. She closed her eyes against it.

When she opened them an old woman stood before her, shivering and clutching at her soaked clothes. Pearl wasn't sure who she was. She looked familiar but there wasn't time to talk now.

The woman looked as if she was going to speak. Something in her expression, her eyes drooping with pity, made Pearl remember: it was her fault that Nicholas had gone. This woman had said the words, had made it real.

‘You should have stopped him,' Pearl screamed over the wind.

The woman swallowed and reached to grasp Pearl's hands. ‘Come inside.'

The sky split and shot thunderclaps. Waves smashed against the cliff, spray filling Pearl's lungs with salt. They stood together. Pearl knew this memory and yet it was shifting as she tried to follow its course. She was on the cliff top in the rain but at the same time she was on the seafront, surrounded by broken wood. She was full of ache and cold, sinking into mud, but she was high above it all as well, watching two women holding hands. She was with a stranger and yet Sarah was going to tell her that Nicholas had gone. She braced herself for the pain she knew must come but Sarah was saying the wrong words. She was forgetting her part.

‘I wasn't there when he left, Pearl. I didn't see Nicholas go. Jack told me.'

Pearl was running, running from the lies and the cough that couldn't be left behind. It gnashed her throat, drawing blood and chasing away air. There was a terrible booming and the ground swayed beneath her feet. The huer's hut clung to the cliff edge as the wind shrieked through its open windows. Below her, the sea boiled fury. The waves were racing into land, giants of dark, fierce water. She had never seen waves like them. This tide was too high, too strong. It would wash Morlanow away.

She stared out into the bay, searching for the packet ship, and there was the cloud of purple beneath the water. Even though the rain pelted her and the wind raked her eyes, she could see pinprick flashes of silver amongst the foam. The shoal woman had swum back. But there were no seine boats and no great nets to shoot, no maids to tend the fish and no palace to keep them safe and salted. There was nothing but forgetfulness in Morlanow.

As the shoal woman danced her way into shore, whirled along by this strange high tide, Pearl danced down the cliff path, slithering on the wet soil, ensnared by the prickle arms of gorse. The rain made everything turn back to front. The cliff fell away on her right and as she tumbled on a jutting ledge of rock the angle flipped, making the sea the sky. A gull whisked past, close to her face; the wind tossed its body as if it was no more than a scrap of paper. Down and down Pearl went, sometimes on her feet and often on her hip, her backside.

The sea had claimed the front. Waves reached over the road, breaking against the buildings lining it. Murky water, curdled grey and blue, flowed into town, still surging.

Rubbish floated past: newspapers, an umbrella twisted beyond use, a child's boot. Leaves were plastered to everything. Scum lay on the surface of the water where it slowed and she wrinkled her nose at a ripe smell.

There was no one else to be seen. The wind drove the rain into the mouths of the streets and each drop struck Pearl's skin with the sharpness of flint. Her breath came in shorter and shorter rasps. She had to be quick – if Nicholas couldn't find her, he might go without her. He had told her to wait at the drying field. She must go back there. Why had she left it? Snatches of thoughts wheeled and dropped away – whistles, a dark-haired woman telling lies – but she couldn't shape them into sense, into a reason for not being with Nicholas. That was all there was.

The bright light was in her eyes again, inside her head. She couldn't see. She was falling from the cliff. Pearl put out her hands to save herself and caught wood. The darkness eased to broken masts and hulls, rotten fingers reaching to catch her on their nails. Skommow Bay had lured her again. She tried to remember the steps that had brought her there but could only think of water. The sea had reached inside her thoughts and flooded them.

She was lying on the ledge of rock and could hear loud banging. She forced herself to sit up and a cry loosened from her lips. A ghost fleet sailed before her. The high tide had lifted the broken remains and set them on its back, floating pieces of shattered spars and planks. They knocked into one another, crowded into the new, narrow bay. Wood scraped against metal. Wrecks were wrecked again. Splintered timber covered the water.

The sea grabbed at her ankles. She went slowly so as not to slip. Every inch of her wanted to run across the ledge, to get to the field and to Nicholas. The broken boats loomed close as the waves battered them up and down. Once she had to crouch and nearly fell into the seething foam as a prow lurched towards her.

The grass appeared on her right, slick with rain. Nearly there. Only a few feet more to the foot of the hill. Just ahead was the upturned deck of a large wooden boat. It was so big and had been driven so hard onto the rocks that the sea hadn't yet managed to re-float it. The boat was half-raised, sucking water. In the swirling dirt around the wood there was movement.

The handkerchief sail that closed up like a jellyfish after Jack threw a stone. There it was, bobbing out from under the wreck, but it was so much bigger than she remembered. The rain forced her to keep shutting her eyes. As she blinked through the streaming, shifting curtain, the sail grew, climbing from the water. The handkerchief stretched to a shirt. A shirt domed with air, or something firmer. She was sure it was pulled over angles, some kind of frame. Her hair slipped across her face and all was broken again.

The cloth drifted closer.

It was a shirt. It was torn and yellowed, needing a good scrub. Washday tomorrow. She would take hold of its sandy seams, its salt-stiff sleeves, and rub it clean of its hidden years. And the chest beneath it would need care too. She would soap his collarbone, clear the mud from his ribs. She would make him better, hold a compress to his forehead, wipe away the blood.

He had been waiting for her and she had kept away. She had been too afraid to see what Skommow Bay was keeping safe. But it didn't matter anymore because at last she had found him.

Fins of bubbles crossed one another as currents fought for control. Nicholas rolled his shoulders and the shirt pulled in the water. He was waking up, ready to leave.

A wave crashed over her and she let it take her. Her vision dipped in and out. Each time she looked for Nicholas he seemed further away. But not gone.

She was in water up to her neck. She pushed out and kicked, needing to swim. Her breath was still short but she felt so well. Each muscle softened as she flexed her toes, curled her fingers in the water. Her feet couldn't find the ground.

The pain in her chest became warm and not unpleasant. She knew Nicholas was smiling at her from beneath the surface. His back rippled a laugh and she laughed too. Salt water slopped into her mouth and she swallowed its goodness, feeling it wash away her aches.

The stuck boat began to lift; there was groaning as it wrenched clear of the ground. Nicholas broke from its grip and skewed away, towards the open sea. Pearl held out her arms to catch him. The water pulled her back against the rocks, pinning her there as Nicholas disappeared from view.

Twenty-Five

A bird was trilling in her ear, pecking at her. It wouldn't leave her alone. All she wanted was to sleep. She tried to bat the bird away but it caught her hand.

‘Thank the Lord!' the bird said.

Pearl opened her eyes. Jack was kneeling by her. She eased herself into a sitting position, her hands knocking over a little tower of stones. This memorial was in the right place.

Jack was speaking. She watched his lips move but heard nothing. He seemed to be waiting for an answer.

‘What?' she said.

‘Are you hurt?'

A wan light gleamed between the scraps of cloud left in the sky. The wind had dropped but Pearl shivered as it stirred her sodden clothes. She glanced over her shoulder; the tide had retreated, putting the broken boats back on the ground.

‘Pearl?' Jack's face was blotched and ashen all at once. He tried to hold her hand and she pulled it away, letting it rest on one of the stones near her. She watched his features darken, the care drawn back inside him.

Pearl rolled the stone from palm to palm; the weight of a bag of sugar. She kept her voice flat. ‘I was in the water. It nearly had me. The boats were floating, bits sailing round. You should have seen it.'

He was going to speak but hesitated. The wind lifted his thinning white hair. Gulls looped above. They were the only two people in the world, together on this ledge, the air between them thick with static.

She inclined her head to the muddy sand below, where the broken boats lay back at rest, and Jack's restraint broke. He grabbed her elbow and hauled her to her feet. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘We're going home.'

She wrenched herself free in one swift jerk. ‘No more hiding, Jack. I've found you. You've got to come out now.'

His shoulders sagged. Pearl braced herself for anger, ready to hold off his rage, but the man who faced her was just the motherless boy who had sat in her yard, tearing at his hair.

‘I can't reason with you, but we can't carry on like this,' he said. ‘If you've got to go and stay somewhere to be looked after, then so be it.'

‘Where can I go? The packet didn't come.' She pressed her hand across her mouth to keep the cry inside but sobs escaped and she was coughing. The stone banged against her thigh with the drum of a pulse.

‘Shh now,' Jack said gently. ‘Stop this. You'll make yourself ill.'

‘What did you do to him?'

‘Please, Pearl. I only want to help you. Stop.' He tried to catch her arms and hold her still but she stepped back, onto the edge of the rock. He raised a rigid hand. She closed her eyes but he merely brushed the hair from her face.

‘Nicholas wouldn't have looked after you,' Jack said.

She shook her head and the sky jumped up and down and wouldn't stop jumping. The stone in her hand felt bigger, or was her hand shrinking? There was a ringing sound and it was getting louder. She had to shout over it.

‘You're a liar!'

‘He left, Pearl. I thought if we married you'd forget him but he's always been here, hasn't he?'

‘He loved me. And I loved him.'

The stone fell to the ground with a crack. Jack staggered then slowly dropped to his knees. He let go of her hand. She waited but he didn't move again.

What was this mess all up her sleeves, on her hands? It was everywhere, sticky and warm. She wanted to wash it off, wash her whole body clean. Swimming was the best bath in Morlanow. No need to lug pails of water from the pump.

The sea had been careful where it set down the scrapped boats, leaving Pearl a safe path between them to reach the water's edge. She took off her boots and hitched up her skirt as if she was working in the palace. She walked towards the sea but there was no sound other than the waves and the seagulls. There was no keygrim whispering her name.