Sea Hearts (14 page)

‘Of course he is. Why would he want to come home to your miseries? Get home and calm yourself, girl, and prepare to greet him with some cheer for a change. What’s that?’

‘He wouldn’t notice,’ Sophie said more strongly. ‘He’s been so wrapped up in himself lately. I dare say he’s worried about money, as everyone is.’

There was a little silence, then, before Mam started in again. ‘Go on home, I tell you. He’ll come to you in time. Just getting a breath of air from that house, no doubt. Go on, Sophie.’

She all but shut the door in Sophie’s face, and then she stood with her back to it, as if she was worried Sophie would push it open and ask again,
Is he here? Is he here?
Snell turned to look at her and Byrne lifted his face dewy-eyed and hilarious from his hands. You can hear when Mam has a thought. She is such a bustler that when she falls still, everything falls still with her and you need to know why.

‘What?’ said Snell.

‘Do you know where he is?’ said Byrne.

‘Were you
lying
to her?’ said Snell.

‘Mam?’ I said.

But she was off in her own thoughts. Her face went faraway and stony. I was suddenly frightened of her.

Dad came to the hallway door. ‘Sophie again?’

Mam did not seem to see him.

‘That’s three nights running,’ he said.

‘Do I not know that.’ But there was no heat in her words.

‘What’s he up to?’ said Dad — not as if he cared, but as if he might soothe her by speaking what he took to be her mind.

‘Has he been borrowing money from you?’ she said suddenly, coming out of her calculating.

He took a shocked step back into the hallway. ‘No! Why would you think that? Why would I give him money and not say?’

‘I don’t know. Why would you? What was it for?’

‘I swear I never. I
swear
.’

Snell and Byrne were all eyes and no laughing now, trying like me to read this.

Dad looked as if he was telling the truth,
sounded
like it, but Mam was making that mouth at him, pulled in at the corners.

She took her coat from the back of the door. Fear jumped up my throat — was she leaving us, the way Frog Davven’s mam walked out on them? I was on my feet.

‘Where are you off?’ said Dad accusingly.

‘To fetch that boy and haul him home.’

‘He’s always had friends.’ Dad stepped out of the hallway again. ‘He used to go up Fernly’s for a session, Fernly with his fiddle and Nase singing. What’s wrong if he goes back to that?’

I edged towards the door, looking from one to the other.

Mam put the coat-collar up with sharp tugs; she might take her own head off with it. ‘Nothing. Except he’s not
at
Fernly’s.’

‘And you so sure.’

‘Yes,’ she said hard at him. ‘And me so sure.’ And she was out the door.

‘How? He told you?’ But she slammed it behind her. He swayed back as if she had struck him.

I leaped for my coat while he was still recoiling.

‘She’s taken leave of her senses,’ he said.

I pulled open the door. ‘I’ll bring her back,’ I said, to their three faces, Snell and Byrne’s echoing Dad’s on the other side of the room. Then they were gone, and I was out in the night and running.

Mam was already far up the main street. She heard me coming, turned and saw me, made an exasperated movement, hurried on.

I caught up. Her mouth was closed up tight and she stared ahead as if I were not there. I ran-walked along, panting, pulling the coat on, for the cold bit right through my blouse and woolly, my skirt and stockings. I kept up and kept up, and she kept striding along as if she were quite alone, until finally, up by Nickels’ place, she said, ‘You won’t like where we’re going.’

‘I don’t care,’ I said.

‘You’ll care when you see.’ And she swung right, along Marksman Road.

I followed, afraid already. ‘I’ll not fuss,’ I said. ‘I won’t get in your way.’

‘I won’t even see you if you do, girl. I’m as wild as that.’

The last house reared up, the tallest and finest in the town, and the most frightful. Its gardens lay around it in ponds and rows and mazes of moonlight. The house was mostly dark, but some low windows at the back glowed alive.

When Mam drew up at the gate, I had to stifle a whimper. This was the only moment in which I could choose; I could turn back now or I must go right in with her. But when she was through the gate and on the path, she didn’t even check to see if I was following, and that, more than anything — that she might
expect no better
of me than to be such a coward — drove me after her. I closed the gate behind us, just as if we were visiting a person of manners. I followed her up. Some waxy flowers beside the path swayed in the breeze of Mam’s passing; they looked as if they ought to have some strong, strange scent, but it was too cold for them to give it up. Then we were mounting the broad steps, with their sweeping balustrades like the welcoming arms of some aunt I didn’t want to kiss. Mam lifted the doorknocker, and rapped five times firmly.

I restrained myself from slipping my hand into hers — I was
thirteen,
after all. And I had promised not to get in the way. Instead I stood as far to one side as the balustrade would let me. Mam would want to flee, and I must not stand behind her and obstruct her. Or perhaps, if the witch pounced, I could fling myself over into that nicely clipped shrubbery there. I could not believe we were standing on this step. I could not tell what was my heart-thumps and what was the footsteps of Misskaella, coming towards us up the hall of her house.

Her lamp lit the glass in the door; her shadowy figure could have been any harmless person’s. The key ground in the lock, but I felt as if it turned in my stomach; soon I would be face to face with that dreadful woman, so ugly and so angry. I had never spoken to her, never even looked her in the eye — I had only ever seen her stalk up the street preceding another cartload of goods and gewgaws from Cordlin. Like the other people watching, I hadn’t known whether to fall away in fear or stand and stare in fascination.

Now the latch was lifted, and Misskaella opened the door and shone her lamp on us. Look at her; she was just a person. Perhaps Mam could deal with her as she dealt with any other person, Fisher down the shop or that craven parson, or Hatty Threading and her ravings in the street.

Sweet-spicy smoke curled thickly from the long-stemmed pipe the witch held, and fumed from her skirts and hair; she must have been sitting in a cloud of it. She was dressed darkly and finely, as she always was; her skirts swung clear of the floor and showed a pair of shiny little black boots, buttons all up them as if they were nailed to her shins. Stout, she was, but her dress was tailored to her stoutness; a deal of lacework lay on her bosom to distract the eye from the absence of waist below. Her hands were like a child’s, but the nails were better kept than any child’s; her hair was piled up and pinned into a soft crown. But for all this she was the witch, and her face was a witch’s face, ugly, suspicious, and with a witch’s mind behind it, thinking who knew what?

‘What is it?’ She shone her lamp at me, dismissed me and returned to Mam simmering on her step.

‘My name is Nance Winch. I’m wondering if you’ve had any dealings with my son Naseby.’

‘Why would I have?’ She looked Mam up and down as if any children of hers must be well beneath contempt.

‘He has gone missing from his wife and children, three nights running, at full moon. That sounds like your work.’

‘Ah,
sounds
like it. Which is Naseby Winch?’

‘Very tall,’ said Mam. ‘Thin. His hair is nearly golden.’

Misskaella thought on that, but only to tease us, I felt. She touched her chin with two fingers of her pipe-hand. ‘So many come, you see. It is not easy for me to keep account of them all.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you never forget to take their money.’ Mam looked pointedly up at the mouldings over the doorway, and at the lace bosom-trimmings. ‘Just think — is he one of the one’s who’s paid you, or one who still owes half his family’s livelihood for the favour you’ve done him?’

As Mam flung all this, the witch’s face, far from reddening and enraging as I’d feared, broke open, open and opener, into a kind of pleasure. She leaned against the doorpost, took a pull of her pipe, swung the lamp a little. ‘Let me consider now, your golden-haired boy, tall, slim, wife and children — though of course he wouldn’t mention those to
me
, for I might turn out to have scruples.’ The smoke popped and puffed out with her words and then rose free and hovered over her forehead. ‘Hmm,’ she said and smoke streamed from her nostrils. ‘I cannot say, really, that I remember a golden Naseby. No, I really cannot say.’

‘Can you say — ’ Mam leaned closer into the lamp-light, ‘that without doubt you do
not
remember him?’ I would have found her dangerous in that stance, in that light.

But the witch didn’t. She began a laugh, which then caused her to cough. She finished the cough smiling. ‘You know? I cannot exactly
not
remember him, either. But this is a small town, Missus Winch, Naseby’s mother,’ she said as if she found the names delicious. ‘I would have seen him about the place, without a doubt. Only I can just not quite put my finger on whether he has appeared on this step as you and…’ She waved a smoky hand towards me. ‘Your daughter?’

‘My daughter.’ I saw Mam try to be rude and withhold my name, but Misskaella looked so expectant there, perched curious above her neat boots like a fat thrush on a fencepost. ‘Bet. Elizabeth.’

‘Just the way you and
Elizabeth
Winch here have appeared. Or perhaps he was less polite, coming to the back door, if he felt he had something to hide? I cannot recall. I just…cannot…’ And she grasped after the memory with her few free fingers in the smoke.

‘And such a
pretty
daughter, Nance,’ she said over Mam’s next question. She cast me a dark look, as if prettiness were something regrettable. She might well reach out the doorway, I thought, and peel off my prettiness like a mask.

She turned back to Mam, spoke very softly suddenly, almost in a whisper. ‘Just as you were pretty yourself, when you married… Who is your good-man?’

Again I could tell that Mam did not want to give her the name. ‘Odger.’

‘Odger, of course. Odger Winch,’ she said in a breathy rush, and I thought of my old dad, his face after Mam slammed the door, and I felt for his defencelessness, and Naseby’s and Snell’s and Byrne’s — and even Mam’s standing there, with the witch extracting humiliation after tiny humiliation from her, the pair of us at her mercy in the night, her whole house behind her, her whole beautiful garden around, calculated, laid out, paid for. ‘Do give my regards to Mister Winch.’ She rocked as if that idea were so funny that it
hurt
. She might be a little drunk, I thought.

Mam turned to me. ‘Come, Bet.’ She started down the steps.

Misskaella pushed herself off the doorpost, raised the lamp, and made a grotesque face of wounded innocence at me. I swung away from the insult and started after Mam.

‘Goodnight, Nance Winch! Goodnight, Elizabeth!’ There were many humiliating notes in that farewell, but the overriding one was of great satisfaction.

By the time I had closed the gate — Misskaella still at her door, rocking, smoking, watching, very possibly laughing — Mam was well along the street. I had to run to catch her. ‘Where are you going now?’ I muttered as we crossed the top of the main way.

‘Only out of sight of her, to collect myself. Don’t look back.’

But I already had. The witch bowed this way and that in the lamp-lit doorway.

Out we went along the top road. At the first stile, Mam sat, head bent.

We caught our breath. When we were recovered, still she sat and thought.

‘You really think Naseby would go to her?’ I ventured to ask.

‘We should have left. The minute Able Marten bought his Ivy, we should have gone as the Summerses did.’

‘But perhaps he is just like Dad said, musicking. How can you know?’

‘Money, is how I can know. Worrying about money. Sophie is worrying, Odge is making noise. But is Misskaella? And is Floss Granger, down at Fisher’s this morning, ordering up a pair of new shoes for herself?
Something a bit pretty,
she says over that book of Fisher’s. Floss Granger wears shoes down to her
footbones
. And those Mace daughters, all of them in new dresses. Naseby’s keeping money from Sophie, and Odge is helping him, in whatever enterprise. What else could it be?’

‘A musical instrument?’ I said. ‘A fiddle, like Fernly’s. Or a cow? He’s talked about farming before. A piece of land to till?’

‘I’d know. He’d tell me. He’d not be so secretive. He’s pulled the wool somehow over your father’s eyes. But where is he right now?’

‘He might be home by now, sitting at his own table with Sophie.’

‘Some old barn or shed, out of people’s sight and hearing. Think about it, Bet.’

‘Don’t be daft, Mam — this is
Naseby
! Don’t you remember their wedding day, both of them so happy? He said it was all his dreams, ever since he played at house with us, out above Six-Mile — ’

I stopped, and we stared at each other.

‘Stony Cottage,’ said Mam, and we both knew it was true.

We cut across to the Crescent road, all but tumbling slantwise down the field; the cows were like islands and we ran across the grassy sea between them, the stony. Once on the road we put our heads down and strode, not speaking. I didn’t want to believe it, but if Mam did, how could it not be true? But Naseby, my big sweet-tempered brother? ‘How could he bring himself to be so cruel to Sophie, and little Tom and Myrtle?’

She put her hand on my arm. ‘We don’t know yet. We don’t know
exactly
and for certain. Wait and see.’

The north road swung up over the cliff almost gaily, and we walked it up into the teeth of the wind, and it battered our hair and flapped our coat-collars. The sea on our left tossed moon-twinkles about, rushed and smashed at the cliffs, drummed in the road underfoot. The hill to the right was a different sea, charcoal-grey; all its sproutings blew against the stones; the two hawthorns on its top leaned worried by the wind. Then the road dropped away and Crescent Corner lay like a fallen moon eating up its own light, and beyond was the smaller, messier cove, where the caves were.