Coincidence: A Novel (4 page)

5

January 1978–January 1984

A
zalea Lewis, the girl who was almost christened Azaliah Yves, owed her life to a seagull. The situation arose because Marion Yves was all set to become an unmarried mother. We should remember that in 1978, in villages like the one where Marion was born and raised, single motherhood wasn't the lifestyle choice it is today. Perhaps, in a city, Marion might have registered as just another statistic, and on city streets she might have pushed a pram unnoticed. But this wasn't Dublin or London. It wasn't even Douglas. This was the village of Port St Menfre, a clutch of whitewashed stone cottages that jostled down a precipitous hillside towards a small shallow harbour on the coast of the Isle of Man. Here, when Marion took to the street with baby and pram, heads would turn and tongues would wag, and this would be the only way that it ever could be, for her business was the business of the village, just as their business was hers. In Port St Menfre, every face was familiar. If a girl walked out with a man, people would know it from the top of Haven Hill to the far corner of the bay before the couple could even make it home. When Gideon Robertson, the fisherman, moved out of his dockside rooms in 1976 and moved into 4 Briny Hill Walk, where Marion had previously lived alone, this was the main subject of conversation for almost a week. When the community could bear it no longer, the Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Lender was dispatched to seek assurances from the couple that their living arrangements were purely commercial; a case perhaps of landlady and tenant rather than a matter of sinful cohabitation. The Reverend emerged from the cottage looking grim. Had excommunication been an option, then perhaps he would have exercised it.

But this, let us remember, was some years after the decade of free love, and now, even in Port St Menfre, a woman like Marion Yves could hold up a metaphorical finger to the world and do her own thing without fear of the ducking stool, even in the face of the disapprobation of the whole community. This, it seems, is exactly what she did.

Gideon Robertson moved
out
of the cottage on Briny Hill Walk in December 1977, around the time when Marion's periods stopped. He might well have been Azalea's father. But then again, that honour might have belonged to the young English barman Peter, who walked Marion home from work on dark evenings when Gideon was at sea. And equally possibly, Azalea's father might have been John Hall, a washed-up military man, retired from soldiering, now the landlord of the Bell Inn where Marion and Peter both worked; a man with a loud laugh, an overbearing manner and rather too much of a taste for his own ale.

When Marion Yves discovered she was pregnant, she was immediately aware of the dilemma she would have to resolve with respect to the paternity of the child. She checked back through the calendar and tried to work out possible dates, the who and when and where, but no clear answer emerged. She had never written these things down, so might it have been four weeks ago . . . or five . . . when she and Peter, or when she and John, or when she and Gideon . . . ? Was that the Sunday when the tide was early, or the Sunday when the tide was late? There were no answers to these questions. She walked down to the bakery with her basket over her arm, and then she took the little cobbled street to the Parish Church of St Menfre and, alone at the back of the nave, she bowed her head and prayed to God for guidance.

Despite what we may have learned about Marion from the story of the christening service, she was a pious soul, the product of a fiercely pious community. Those who didn't visit the Anglican Parish Church of St Menfre could always attend the Hope and Faith Baptist Church in Port Erin, or the Elim Pentecostal Church, or the Isle of Man Methodist Church, or the Christadelphia Ecclesia in Dalby Patrick, or the Roman Catholic Church of St Columba in Port St Mary. The options for religious worship were wide and varied; it only really mattered that some level of observance should be seen to be made. The Anglican Communion was Marion's destination of choice. She had visited this church twice every Sunday for most of her life, and it was natural that she would turn to God here for advice on her predicament. She asked Him, as plainly as she could, to help her out. Her options seemed reasonably clear. Should she take the bus into Douglas and buy a ticket for the Isle of Man Steam Packet ferry service? This would secure a four-hour crossing to Liverpool over the unpredictable waters of the Irish Sea. Once in England, she could consult with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service; an agency whose principal, and enlightened, purpose was to secure for young women the services now permitted by the 1967 Abortion Act. She would need to establish an English residential address to qualify for an English abortion, but this should present little difficulty. It could all be done without anyone from Port St Menfre learning that a baby had even been conceived, let alone aborted.

Or should she, perhaps, confront Gideon when he next came ashore and tell him that the baby was his? It would probably lead to a resumption of their relationship, which was not something Marion particularly sought. But it was an outcome that might best suit the unborn child. It would at least provide him or her with a father and a household income somewhere above that of a barmaid.

She could try the same approach with Peter, the barman but he was too young and too impecunious to be a sound candidate for long-term fatherhood. He was from England, and planned to return soon to his native Cumbria. He wanted to join the navy. He longed to see the world. What life would that be for the wife left behind? Worse, even, than being married to a fisherman; at least a fisherman comes home with the tide. Nonetheless, she presented God with the option. John Hall was wealthy enough, and old enough to accept the responsibility, but his wife might have objections; and besides, he had a tendency to turn cantankerous when drunk. Marion considered excluding this option, but concluded that God was probably already aware of it, so she placed it squarely before Him along with the other choices. Should she raise the baby alone with no father in the picture at all? That was a real option too. Or should she demand that all three candidates submit to a blood test? Then the real biological father could be identified and perhaps persuaded to marry her and help her raise the baby.

There were altogether too many choices for Marion to make a decision herself, so she delivered the alternatives to God from her pew in St Menfre's church on a January day in 1978.

Little is known about Saint Menfre, who gave her name to the parish church and to the village in which it stood. She is believed to have been not Manx, but a Cornish saint – or perhaps even a Welsh saint, or possibly even Irish, depending on how far back you chose to go. She was one of the twenty-four children (by three wives) of the fifth-century Irish saint St Brychan, who married into the Welsh kingdom of Breckonshire. Unfulfilled by his life in Wales, and the county that now bears his name, Brychan travelled south into Cornwall to spread the Christian gospel. How, or why, or when his daughter came to the Isle of Man is not known. Menfre's claim to fame, if we can call it that, came when she threw her comb at the Devil. He had come upon her while she was combing her long red hair – Irish hair, no doubt. The Devil's intentions, it seems, were dishonourable. The throwing of the comb was a riposte that would have commended itself to Marion. From what we know of Marion Yves, we might well imagine her doing the same thing. She too was a redhead, as was her daughter Azalea.

So Marion prayed, but neither God nor St Menfre was forthcoming with advice. Leaving the church, she came upon the vicar arriving through the churchyard gate. He eyed Marion with a hint of suspicion as if, perhaps, she had been stealing the silver. The relationship between the two, pastor and parishioner, had not recovered from the visit that he had made to her cottage a year or so earlier, after Gideon moved in. Neither could the vicar bring himself to forget the frank, even
intimate
, revelations that Marion had felt obliged to share on that occasion. Nonetheless, because he was a holy man in a holy profession, he summoned a warm smile and wished her a good day.

‘I wish it was a good day, Father,' Marion said.

‘Is something troubling you, my child? Would you like us to pray together?'

‘If you want.'

‘It isn't what I want that matters,' said the vicar. ‘What do
you
want?'

They sat together on a small bench that overlooked a knot of graves. Beyond the churchyard lay the slate rooftops of the fishermen's cottages on Menfre Hill, and beyond these the blue sweep of the bay flecked with the foam curlers of the incoming tide; and out on the bay, lost in the haze, were the lobster boats, and beyond them, smacks fishing for mackerel, and further still, beyond sight, the trawlermen and the pilchard ships. There you might find Gideon Robertson in his yellow rubbers and his striders, hauling on ropes until the salt burned his skin, slopping fish across the decks, packing down ice with his big hands, buried behind his beard, toiling against the waves and the wind like some creature who had been born upon the sea. For such men no other life existed; their brief spell on land, sleeping and waiting for the tide, were mere interludes in a life spent at sea. Could this big, silent man ever be a real father to her child?

Marion told the whole story to the Reverend Lender, sparing him none of the details. She pointed out to the sharp rocks beyond Haven Point, where the mist and the horizon were one, where Gideon might be with his fish and his buckets, his ropes and his nets. ‘What if he's out there when my baby is born?' she asked. ‘What if he doesn't come back?'

‘I see,' said the vicar. They sat and looked out at the ocean. ‘In my years here,' he said, ‘and there have been many years, only four men have never come back.'

‘One of them was my grandfather,' said Marion quietly, ‘and another was my father.'

‘That they were,' said the vicar. ‘That they were.' They sat for a while in silence. ‘So what are we to do, then?' he asked her. ‘Are we never to fish?'

‘Not if we want to be part of a family,' replied Marion. She said it quickly, as if it was something she had said many times before.

‘I see.' The vicar took Marion's hand and held it gently. ‘Gideon is a good man. He will take care of you – and your baby.'

‘Is that God's answer, then? I tell Gideon he's the father and we settle down and play happy families for the rest of our lives? Until the sea takes him?'

‘It seems the kindest answer. You said yourself that Gideon is probably the father.'

‘But he might not be.'

‘But even so . . . the baby needs a father. Every child needs a father.'

Marion turned to look the Reverend in the eye. ‘I never had one. And my mother never had one.'

Above them the herring gulls wheeled and shrieked in the cold January sky. Marion released the vicar's hand and reached into her basket.

‘Why don't we let God decide,' she said firmly.

‘That's good, my child,' said the vicar. ‘Put this matter into the hands of God.'

Marion drew out a loaf of bread from her basket and began, with some force, to break off small chunks. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘I'll give God the problem. Does God control the seagulls?'

‘The seagulls?' The Reverend Lender looked puzzled.

‘Of course he does. God controls everything.' She tossed a piece of bread onto the path. ‘Let's see which bit of bread the gulls take first.'

‘Look, I really don't think this is a good idea,' said the vicar, getting a sense of her intentions.

But Marion was not in a mood to be swayed. ‘If they take that piece first,' she declared, ‘then I'm having an abortion.'

Lender recoiled at the word. ‘Look . . . Please. Don't do this.'

She threw another chunk. ‘If they take this one, then I'll raise the baby on my own, just like my mother had to do with me.' A third piece: ‘And this one, God, is if Gideon is the father and you want him to move back in.' A fourth: ‘And this is Peter. Peter the barman, Peter the Englishman, Peter the poet who wants to be a sailor.' A fifth: ‘And this is John. John the landlord, John the husband already.' She clapped her hands in triumph. ‘Come on, God,' she called to the sky. ‘Give me your answer.'

‘Marion, look, this makes no sense. This is no way to solve your problems.' The priest was clearly anxious now. ‘You can't mean this.'

‘Oh, I can,' said Marion, ‘I absolutely can. If God can read my mind then he'll know I mean it. Otherwise what would be the point?'

Above them, the gulls were circling closer.

‘This isn't the way to put your troubles before God,' said Lender. He was rising to his feet to scare the birds away from the bread.

Marion took hold of his arm. ‘Wait,' she said.

A large gull all a-flap had landed on one of the gravestones. It hawked at Marion and Lender with its great yellow beak, tacking cautiously towards the trail of bread.

‘This isn't a fair test,' protested the priest.

‘Let God decide,' said Marion. A second gull dropped from the sky. A third.

‘Stop this!' The vicar's voice drove the birds back, but only for a moment.

A fourth gull landed. A fifth. The priest was struggling to escape Marion's grasp. And then, of course, it was too late. With a flash of grey wings a bird swept in without landing and carried off a piece of bread. Emboldened, the flock surged forward, and soon all the bread was gone, carried aloft by the gulls.

Marion released the vicar and rose to her feet.

‘Which one was it?' the priest asked weakly.

Marion gave him a twisted smile. ‘It wasn't Gideon,' she said, collecting up her basket. She gave a rueful smile. ‘And you'll be pleased to know it wasn't John. John the master of wandering hands. Maybe God does move in a mysterious way after all. Maybe He does.' And without looking back, she set off down the hill towards the village.