The Visitor (17 page)

He was enough to mend her. She didn't need to keep walking the tideline waiting for a ship that would never come. He was here now and that was what mattered, especially as the season was approaching. It was nearly time for the pilchards and Nicholas would come to meet her at the palace when the fish were in their walls, and they would walk up the cliff path, her arm tucked into his, and she would tell him the silly things the palace girls had been on about that day, who was stepping out with who or the famous artist who had arrived that evening on the train.

The kettle began to whistle. The cliff path faded even as Pearl tried to hold onto the image and the feeling of the arm in hers. George reached for a cloth to lift the kettle from the stove. She must be cautious with him here. He wanted something from her and she mustn't let it out.

He poured the water into the pot then left it to brew, sitting back down and fiddling with the corner of the cloth, a worn thing stained with years. He cleared his throat and she braced herself for what might come.

‘Pascoe's started on the palace,' he said.

‘I saw. Went down to have a look.'

‘Did you? When?'

Pearl opened her mouth but she couldn't find the words. When did she go to the palace? She remembered looking at the tarpaulin and then her mother's voice, singing. It was so far away.

George was carrying on. ‘Pascoe's short of help though. Got men in from Govenek as he can't find enough labour here to get it down in time, before winter.'

Pearl dug her nails into the back of her hand and the pain loosened her tongue, fixed her thoughts. ‘You'll not sign up for a few days?' she said. ‘Might be good pay, if Pascoe's short. I saw Matthew was working for him.'

‘Get on,' George said. ‘I may not have filled any seine nets—'

‘There wasn't anything to fill them with,' Pearl said quietly.

‘But I know it isn't right.'

‘Causing a row won't keep the palace standing and it won't help you. Never does. Same with the east coast boats.' She had let it out. He would get her now. Her breath began to shorten and a shadow played in the corner of the room.

‘Won't be like that,' George said. ‘There's not many that care about the palace, and the trouble with the east coast men was a long time ago. I know you don't like to talk about it but…'

He had his hands round the lid she had so carefully sealed. He was going to force it off.

‘Since… since Pascoe said he was going to make the palace a hotel, I've heard… Well, there's been more talk, about the east coast men, and what happened. And then Eileen said the other day that she'd heard you mention someone.'

Pearl had known it was a risk, that it was only a matter of time. A chance remark, that was all it would take. Even Eileen was talking about her.

‘His name keeps coming up.' George paused and looked at Pearl. ‘You know who I mean, don't you?'

Was it time to let it out now? He had had such a time growing up, with Jack the way he was. George deserved at least some truth.

‘He was my friend,' she said, avoiding George's eye.

‘Tell me, please.'

‘There's nothing else to tell. He left. You know that, don't you?' Her voice was hard in her own ears. ‘He left here without a goodbye. No note, nothing. He left, that's all you need to know.'

George dropped his shoulders and stared at the table. Pearl wanted to gather him into her arms and coo him better like she did when he was a baby, to love him enough that he didn't need to know. She didn't want him to spend his life as she had spent hers, waiting.

She patted her son's hand. ‘I should think that tea's about ready now.'

Seventeen

When had it last rained?

Pearl stepped over an exposed gorse root that lay in her way, the loose earth scattering. The air was thick and charged. The weather needed to break. She needed it to break. This hot spell, this late in the year, it wasn't right. Morlanow needed its storms. Being jammed in an exposed knot of the coast left the village open to squalls that seemed sharp enough to break windows, but that was the cost of living by what had once been the site of riches.

Storms were part of Morlanow's history. They made certain years stand out among their fellows, giving shape to the mass of the past. They were the reason for its name. Morlanow was ‘high tide' in Cornish, not that many realised. From the first settlers on, the community saw odd tidal patterns: surges that drove water into the streets and sudden drags when the water dropped far below everyday levels. Morlanow was fashioned by the water patterns that put it together.

A proper storm would help clear her head, get rid of this fug that had settled since the move; and after all, she had read the white hare as a sign that a rage would come over the water. Pilchards followed the wake of a gale. She stopped walking to look out across the sea, remembering the shape the pilchard shoal made just below the surface of the water. It looked like a burnt-red cloud with ragged edges as it pulled into the bay, as if seaweed had sprung to life and was racing across the bed.

Nicholas was with her then, at her side, his thin fingers looped in hers. She walked him away. Keep walking, keep on the path and you won't stray. The Lord is my shepherd.
The lad I loved was with them and he came not back again.
Her mother would tell her to sharpen her wits, to shake off this nonsense.

The path was uneven. Pearl's boots were powdered with pale dust. She knew where to duck and where to bend her frame round a prickly outcrop of bare gorse. Some stretches of the path ran at the edge of the cliff and there was only good grace between the walker and the sea.

She reached Keeper's Point, a spinning drop to where the rocks snagged and sucked at the passing current, about a mile from Morlanow. Even on a calm day the sea was anxious here. A little further along was Witch Cove, so called for the great numbers of witch sole that were once caught there, but had disappeared even before Pearl's time. The cove couldn't be seen from the cliff path and it was a good place to swim and be hidden from the rest of the world. She hadn't been down there for years.

She looked to the horizon line. It made her burn with anger at her own folly for still searching for Nicholas there, but the past was bottled in the cleft Morlanow filled and it continued to reverberate through the soil and the waves, no matter what she did. Nicholas was everywhere and nowhere. He was hers, but he had gone.

They had walked here together and she was still in his footsteps. No matter who trod over them, Nicholas's tracks were there. No one could remove what had been. The way back was always open.

She coughed. The sound made her aware that everything else – the sea, the gulls, the breeze through the gorse – had grown silent. Slowly, the tune of the cliff top came back to her ears. Things seemed as they should be, though there was the warmth at her temples again.

She was halfway back to the house, Keeper's Point several hundred yards behind her. Another cairn stood on the path. This time there were no blue bugloss flowers poked between the stones. Instead there was a crooked stem of knapweed, its purple thistle head pointing directly towards her. Aunt Lilly used knapweed's tricks because it knew of future lovers and who a girl would take. It was crafty though, old knapweed. You had to read it sideways to learn its truth. It could tell of a husband to be, or a boy who loved you in secret. It might mean someone you loved but who didn't care for you, or a boy to watch out for – a surprise suitor.

Who was raising these cairns, Pearl wondered, and why mark this one with knapweed? Bugloss, with its tie to sadness, was right, but knapweed with a cairn – Pearl's chest contracted and she was pulled up short as she struggled to find her next breath. The cairn and knapweed together meant a lost lover, a soul returned.

She fought for breath and clutched the gorse beside her. The pain from its thorns brought her back to herself and gradually freed her chest from its constrictions.

She'd walked this way earlier, going towards Keeper's Point. There had been nothing here then. There could have been another walker behind her, coming from the direction of the houses at
Wave Crest
,
but she hadn't heard anyone. Someone could have come up the path from Morlanow, or even from Witch Cove, but knapweed didn't grow by the sea; it liked deeper earth. Pearl thought she had seen some growing in the drying field but couldn't be sure when she tried to picture it there. She stepped round the cairn, careful not to knock any of the piled stones. Pearl moved to the edge of the cliff. Her eyes sought the horizon. It was an illness, this need to look. Nicholas could come back, he might. The signs were there. She couldn't ignore them.

The sun emerged from behind scraps of cloud and as its light reclaimed its grip on the sea, a stain appeared. Red and purple and for a moment, silver. Then it was gone. A wave broke. The sea was itself again. But she'd seen it, as she'd seen the white hare and the knapweed cairn. She knew what was coming now.

Eighteen

The seine boats have been waiting to put to sea for weeks, pulled up on the sand near the rock pools. Their crews stay close by, listening for the huer's trumpet call and the ringing of the bell. Pilchards are creatures of habit, like all living things, though one of their habits is to break their pattern and keep Morlanow waiting all year. When they do come, they never come close enough to Morlanow's shores to be caught in the seine nets until September, though Pearl knows that further up the coast of Cornwall they are caught a month or so earlier. Then there are only a couple of months when the fish keep coming to the shallows, before they leave to light other waters.

The first Sunday of September has been and gone, but no pilchards have been sighted off Morlanow yet.

There's talk of the early catch, when the Master locked the women in the cellar to keep his luck safe. The fish broke all customs to come into the bay for that single day in July, before disappearing. As days pass with no call from the huer's hut the early shoal becomes more and more of a bad omen for the rest of the season.

There's a hum in the village when the pilchards are expected. The seine men, including her father, Mr Polance and Mr Tremain, are strung tight as withy frames, desperate for the cry to be given and the torture of waiting to be over. Jack keeps away from home and eats supper at Pearl's house, sometimes falling asleep and spending the night. Life is turned topsy-turvy when the wait goes on. It will be worth it in the end, Pearl thinks. But still the pilchards don't come.

The weather doesn't break. The sky is cloudless, day after day, and the sea is still. It's a lake of layered colour; the pale grey of the shallows runs to slate to blue to green then dark purple where the seabed drops away. Everyone yearns for clouds, for the stirring of a breeze and the smell of rain. The pilchards follow bad weather, darting along on storm swells and chasing the winds.

Mr Taylor says special prayers at chapel, frowning at the fidgeting hands and the tapping boots. On Sunday the nervousness is worse. The fish can't tell what day it is but if they choose the Sabbath to flood Morlanow with their wealth then no one will be able to bring them in. Even pilchards are not allowed to change the rules on Sunday. The seine men will simply have to stand on the seafront and watch the Govenek men take their fish. Pearl prays every night for the pilchards to come as long as they don't choose a Sunday.

Days of sun tick on. People are listless, unable to rouse themselves much beyond hoping and watching the sea. Nets are checked and checked again. Bussa jars are scrubbed. On a morning the same as many others that have come before it, hot and empty and charged with frustration, Nicholas and Jack have a fight. It's been coming for weeks. She could feel it whenever it was just the three of them. When Polly and Sarah Dray are around, or Timothy and the Pengelley boys, Jack and Nicholas have space between them, other voices to listen to. But when it's only Pearl there's no such peace.

They're in the shade of the sheds that circle the palace's open centre. Dusty hogsheads line the walls, tubs of salt stand ready, but there's no one else there. All eyes are on the sea. She has no stories to tell today. She doesn't want to hear about mermaids eating their babies, or Nicholas' only story, that of keygrims. In the shadows of the sheds it's easy to see boney shapes slipping between the barrels, to hear a name spoken in sour breath.

Nicholas is poking about in the nets and gurries but listlessly, with no purpose other than having something to do.

‘There are rats in there,' she says. Did she hear one, its screech?

‘I can fight rats,' he says, pulling a small knife from amongst the fishing gear that's used to cut flotsam from the nets. ‘I can fight anything, even Jack Tremain.' He wields it, pretending to slay the armies of rats that she now imagines teeming from the dark corners. Crashing about, he slashes and cuts, lunges and half dances across the palace's floor. She's laughing but then Nicholas knocks into Jack where he stands by one of the great stone pillars, pulling at a splinter on a hogshead.

‘Oi!' Jack shouts, pushing Nicholas onto the floor. Nicholas lands awkwardly on his wrist and winces. The knife clatters away from him. ‘Can't you leave me alone?' Jack says. He kicks Nicholas, still on the floor.