The Visitor (5 page)

‘You've no water?' he said.

‘Oh, we've plenty,' she said. She told him about the leaks, and the chimney, and the measuring men. She was tired listing it all off.

‘Has Pascoe said when he'll fix it?' George said.

She shook her head, but the movement seemed to hurt. There was that warmth at her temples again.

‘I'd do it myself if I wasn't going out,' he said. ‘I've not caught much this week and the rent's due. I can only stop for a bit. Wanted to see how you were keeping.'

She tried not to move her head when she spoke. ‘I'm not too bad.'

‘It's not like you to be shut in like this. It'd do you good, Mother, getting some fresh air.'

‘I don't know.'

‘Just an hour, get your blood moving.'

George was right. Since the move she had felt a little off-colour, a little wisht. When he said goodbye she told him that she would try and go for a walk, for him.

The next day she wrapped her hair in a scarf, buttoned her coat, and set off. After so long indoors the air was potent; breathing felt like drinking river-fresh water, so crisp it made her head light but without the persistent ache of the last few days.

She chose to walk into town by the cliff path that ran past the back of the house. It was only a clearing in the grass, worn to dust by successive generations of feet. She didn't want to brave the road. Cars came down the winding hill so fast and there was no pavement. The cliff path was steep but she could go at her own pace, standing aside for the visitors out for a walk. They were polite, most of them thanking her for not being in the way, saying what a nice day it was, how lucky she was to live here. She didn't say anything back. She didn't want a conversation. She had one thing clear in her mind today.

The path wound down to the base of the cliff and joined the seafront where she turned away from the sea and into the stuffy maze of back streets. Each time she met a workman or a piece of scaffolding she chose another narrow alley, slipping into the passageways still to be opened up to the light. It took her a while but she managed to criss-cross the centre of town. Finally she stood outside the old house on Carew Street. Standing so close she longed to see her kitchen's cool, dark corners. If she could just get inside, she would be right again. All these thoughts catching at her would be gone, back to the past where they belonged.

She moved towards the front door but there were several pairs of boots lying any old which way on the doorstep. Her flower pots had gone. She had expected the house to be empty. She and Jack had only just left, she was sure. There hadn't been time for others to come into her house. Her house. There was some mistake.

The front door opened and a tall, thin man wearing a smart jersey and tiny spectacles looked at her.

‘Can I help you?' he asked.

Pearl looked at the ground and shook her head. The thin man stayed watching her from the doorway. She felt his eyes on her back all the way down the street.

She went to see Eileen but the shop was too busy. There were people queuing outside. That was good for Eileen, and her son David too. Another day would do for a visit.

Her chest was tight but she didn't want to wait for it to ease. She wanted to get away from Morlanow and the only place to go was back up the hill. She began to climb the cliff path. Herring gulls jeered overhead. She didn't let herself look out to sea.

There was a letter waiting for her when she got back. Perhaps this would say when they could return to Carew Street, and what that man was doing in her house. She didn't pause to get a drink of water, just ripped open the envelope, her pulse loud in her ears.

It was from Pascoe.
Wave Crest
was sliding towards the cliff edge, their house on the end worst of all. The men in overalls had found subsidence from the mine workings inside the cliff, from back when there was still tin to be prised from the rock. Miles and miles beneath the cliff the miners had gone, out below the sea. But Pascoe with his papers and plans hadn't thought about the shafts, and neither had the railway company.

In the letter Pascoe promised that the problems in the new houses would be put right, but what with the work on the palace hotel he couldn't say when exactly. It was too late to move back to Carew Street. The visitors were there. She was stuck up the hill and she wouldn't be able to keep Nicholas from her thoughts any longer.

Her hand was shaking. She let the letter drop to the floor and then felt her legs give way. She slumped against the wall, dust and sand rough on her bare calves. Here he was, pushing through, his hand reaching for hers. He whispered her name in her ear. There was heat at her temples again but this time rushing, bringing a wave of darkness, then the white sail again. All whiteness as the sail wrapped itself round her and covered her face.

PA
RT TWO

1880 and 1936

One

It's so sunny that when she looks up from the water all she can see is white light. The sun is high overhead. It must be midday. She knows the time of day by the tide and the light rather than numbers, and she knows the season by the fishing. Everything follows a pattern and patterns must be learnt. School will end soon as pilchards are expected which means it must be summer. It is 1880 and hopes are high for another good season of fishing. The last few have been the best anyone can remember. The sea is full and their nets the same. When this year's fish come, all hands will be needed in the palace, however small they may be. Until then she spends each afternoon on the seafront or on the beach, with Jack who is twelve and Nicholas who is fourteen.

The three of them live on the same street, three houses all in a line and Pearl's house in the middle. The three fathers go out in the lifeboat when the flare goes up, and everyone goes to chapel. Each family works together in pilchard season. The men go out in the same seine team to catch them; Pearl's mother and Nicholas's mother, Annie, bulk the fish in the palace, packing the hard shining fish in salt. Jack doesn't have a mother but Pearl knows she's not supposed to talk to him about it. If she does, his very blue eyes get bluer as he cries and he bites his thick bottom lip.

The boys like to roam Morlanow and their games are much better than those of the girls she goes to school with. Pearl likes to climb things, and to pretend sometimes too. Nicholas is good at those kinds of games. She often forgets where she really is, lost in the things he can make her believe. She falls over then, or gets caught on gorse, or wipes her muddy hands down her dress without thinking. She's as untidy as a seagull.

‘Can't you keep your skirts clean at least?' her mother said last night. Pearl came home dripping seawater and with dirt rubbed deep into her hems. ‘That dress has got to last you. You're twelve, not a child anymore. I'm not chasing after you with a scrubbing brush only for you to go clambering with those boys.'

Even when she tries, Pearl can't seem to look as nice as her older sister Polly. Polly has lovely pale skin and long brown hair she keeps neat in plaits that never fall out. Pearl's hair is somewhere between blonde and brown but so full of knots she can't work her fingers through it for plaits. Her face is tanned. Her fingernails are bitten to the quick and permanently lined with dirt. Polly somehow keeps her hands clean and smooth, despite being old enough to salt the fish in the palace when they come in. It must be something to do with being friends with Sarah Dray.

Sarah is Polly's best friend. She has long, thick hair as black as coal. Her mouth is usually set in such a way that it seems she's sneering, or that she has a secret about you she won't tell. She's beautiful though, and never gets dirty. Polly becomes even more beautiful and clean when she works with Sarah Dray in the palace. It must be catching. Some of the artists have asked Sarah to pose for them and they offered good money too. The one from the north, Mr Michaels, wanted her on the beach with a creel of fish, looking out to sea as if waiting for something. But when Sarah's father found out he was livid and shouted at Mr Michaels on the seafront, in front of Miss Charles, the teacher from the art school. There was a sermon about it at chapel. Pearl hasn't seen much of Mr Michaels in the fishing quarter since, but Sarah has a new smugness about her, tossing her black hair even more, which makes Pearl less inclined than ever to spend time with her. She follows Nicholas and Jack comes too. Morlanow has many places for games and for hiding.

On the beach they have to dodge the stinking dogfish innards that litter the sand and the diving gulls that fight for them. When the tide begins to slink back in between the harbour wall and the cliff, the three of them retreat to the streets, or the drying field as long as it isn't washday. There's hellish fuss if the children clamber over the whites laid out in the sun. Sometimes the boys go to a place she doesn't like called Skommow Bay. She plays by herself then, or sits in the backyard talking to the chickens until she hears the boys come home.

Skommow Bay is a cold place. It's not a bay at all but a rocky shelf on the other side of Morlanow, where wrecks are left to rot. The broken ships and boats frighten Pearl so she stays away, but there's rich plunder if you scrabble around the tilting hulks and are brave enough to climb the ruined hulls. That's where the boys get scraps to make their little boats. They are making a grand one today.

‘No, Jack. Like this.' Nicholas takes the knife from Jack's podgy fingers. Nicholas has long, thin fingers, what Miss Charles from the art school calls ‘elegant'. Not everything about Nicholas is elegant though. He is tall, towering over her and Jack. His knees seem huge in his legs. ‘The keel needs be sharper or she won't turn,' Nicholas says.

Jack scowls, folds his arms and looks away. The three of them are sitting on the seafront wall, their legs dangling over the edge. There's the chop of thick knives cleaving dogfish and the prattle of Alice Trelawn on the sand below them. She's a fallen woman, Pearl's mother says, which is why she'll see to foul fish that's only good for bait.

Jack's mouth is screwed up. He looks as if he's trying not to cry and the effort is turning his face red. Nicholas grips the crude model boat between his knees and planes the bottom.

‘There!' He holds up the boat and turns it round for Pearl and Jack to admire. Jack still looks grumpy. ‘Let's go and launch her,' Nicholas says.

The three of them walk down the slipway to trek to the other side of the bay where the rock pools wink to them in the sun. The sand crunches under her bare feet. As they go, her mother calls down from the harbour wall where she's mending nets.

‘You be sure to tuck your dress into your knickers if you're for wading.' And to Nicholas, as the oldest and in charge, ‘Go steady now, you know she's not to run. Doctor said.'

The doctor's always saying, according to her mother, though Pearl doesn't remember ever having seen him. It was when she was a baby. He put his ear to her chest to hear her breath catch.

Pearl walks and looks at the sea lying asleep beyond the harbour wall. It's green today, no blue or grey, and no waves either. Calm as stone. This is a different sea to the one that throws ships onto rocks and swallows people.

Nicholas takes one of her hands. ‘Day-dreaming again, limpet-legs? Come on.'

She trots along beside him. Jack, hands in his pockets, kicks a stick of driftwood along the beach. Nicholas and Pearl reach the spread of rocks at the bottom of the cliff first. He helps her climb onto the nearest one from which she is able to cross the others unaided, but she pretends she can't so that she gets to keep hold of his hand for longer. The rocks have sharply rippled surfaces that dig into the soles of her feet making her lurch about, unbalanced. Nicholas laughs and helps her steady herself. They come to a stop at the deepest pool and look in.

If Pearl stood on the bottom the water would be over her head, but it's so narrow that she wouldn't be able to stretch out her arms. The walls are the colour of the undersides of mussel shells, dotted with green furry plants that feel soft underwater but slimy out of it. Tiny crabs scuttle from the shadow she and Nicholas cast over them. The smell of seaweed is everywhere, salty and old.

Jack slopes up. Nicholas lets go of Pearl to hold the boat in both his hands, the sun gilding its edges.

‘What shall we name her?' he asks as he sets the boat oh so gently on the water. There's a terrible moment when Pearl thinks it might sink. The boat quivers, tilts and dips forward.

Jack reaches out to grab it. ‘The keel's too sharp.'

Nicholas slaps his hand away. ‘Give her a minute. She'll right.'

And she does, settling in the water. The sail, made from a white handkerchief belonging to Nicholas, stretches out when he gets behind the boat and blows. He's like the north wind in the picture book at school; his brown curls slip over his eyes, which are as dark as the rocks. Pearl claps her hands as the little boat moves forward on waves stirred by Nicholas's breath. She knows what the boat should be called.

‘Let's name her
Fair Maid
,' she says.

Nicholas purses his lips and looks up, considering the matter. ‘That's only a seine boat.'

‘What's wrong with that?' asks Jack.