The Visitor (7 page)

‘It's a good one, my girls!' he says. ‘It'll be a long night ahead.'

Pearl stumbles up the steps and into the daylight, the women behind pushing her forwards in their hurry to get out. In a flap of aprons and skirts they run shrieking to their stations in the palace. Already, piles of pilchards wait to be bulked: laid into their salted beds before they lose their freshness. Pearl's eyes water with the glare. As they clear, a shape stoops towards her. It's Nicholas, his dark hair lit by the sun and his face glowing with the warmth of his smile.

‘Not crying, limpet-legs?'

Pearl shakes her head, wrinkles her nose and blinks hard to dry out his still blurred form.

‘I'd guess there's at least fifty hogsheads-worth been enclosed in
Fair Maid
's net,' he says, ‘so nothing to cry about today.'

All around them people hurry, running backwards and forwards, shouting but laughing too. They are smudged to Pearl. Nicholas is the only clear sight.

Her mother calls to her from the spot she has chosen near the rinsing troughs. Reluctantly Pearl leaves Nicholas and joins her, and Polly who's on her hands and knees, spreading salt across the floor. It's Pearl's job to go to and fro between them and the stone tubs of salt that stand near the doorway of the palace. Her mother and Polly mustn't run short of salt, but Pearl mustn't make her chest tight carrying it to them either. As she lugs back her first bucket of the gleaming white grains, she sees Nicholas on the other side of the courtyard, carrying two buckets at a time to where his mother is bent over. Jack is just behind him, struggling to match Nicholas's load, having to drag one bucket forward at a time. He has no mother to keep stocked with salt so he goes wherever he's needed, answering to shouts and waves across the courtyard. When he's not quick enough getting to Sarah Dray she hurls a pilchard at him and it glances off his cheek. Pearl's mother sighs and shakes her head but everyone else laughs, and Aunt Lilly aims another fish at Jack, making him run to her with his salt bucket.

More and more pilchards are brought inside the palace. As fast as the women can pack them in salt a fresh load arrives. The sea-pebbled floor is soon covered in a scummy soup of brine and scales. Pearl's feet and hems are soaked through even though she tries to avoid the channels that collect the liquid. The farmers will want it to make their crops taller with the goodness of the fish.

The fish themselves are much prettier than their slops, coin-bright. Today's is a good tuck, an unexpected gift, and her mother is up to her arms in the glittering fish, the scales sticking to her skin. The women will work until there are no more, but still pairs of men bring the gurries, gripping the slippery handles front and back, pilchards piled in the trough between them.

Pearl can never believe that the walls of pilchards will grow so high. Her mother and Polly are working opposite old Mrs Pendeen, who is so old her skin is more wrinkles than smooth bits and her hair is whiter than the salt. Her daughter-in-law is called young Mrs Pendeen so people know the difference. Old Mrs Pendeen usually has to be helped to her feet when she's finished in the palace, but her hands are still quick at bulking the fish. She's worked in the palace since Pearl's mother was a child. For a few hours old Mrs Pendeen is there, spreading her salt and talking to Pearl's mother about a Sunday school treat which will happen soon. There's baking to do and old Mrs Pendeen wants Pearl's mother to make hevva cake to celebrate the catch: criss-crossed on top, like a net, but with raisins inside, not pilchards. The layers of fish build up around them. They begin small, a layer of fish laid out on the salted floor in a neat path, one fish deep and three feet wide. Then more layers are built on top, with the outermost layer all fish heads and no tails, so that the palace is full of eyes. Fish and salt. Fish and salt. Pearl goes back and forth between her mother and the salt tubs, winding in and out of the growing walls built by other pairs of women. Her mother and old Mrs Pendeen keep talking but now there's a wall of fish between them so they can't see each other. Their conversation has changed. They're talking about Alice. Even though they don't say her name, Pearl knows it's her.

‘Drinking again,' old Mrs Pendeen says.

‘I could smell it on her in the cellar,' Pearl's mother says. ‘May the Lord lead her back to the one true path.'

Old Mrs Pendeen snorts and packs a handful of salt more firmly than before.

Alice is working in a little patch of her own, as usual. She even has to fetch her own salt. Pearl would like to get some for her but somehow she knows, without it ever being said, that that isn't allowed. Alice must do for herself for the same reason she guts the dogfish. She's not pretty like Sarah Dray, or Aunt Lilly with her small waist and pink cheeks. Alice is short and has a limp from being ill as a child. She can't help that, like Pearl can't help her bad chest, but Alice has no family in Morlanow to care for her. She's not from the village, though no one knows where she came from and why she left there to live in Morlanow. She had a daughter but she died and the preacher wouldn't let her be buried behind chapel with the other graves. Pearl doesn't know where she went. Maybe Alice raised a cairn somewhere. There has to be some kind of stone when you die.

As Alice stoops to and from her bucket of salt Pearl sees the thinness of her arms and the lines of dirt that cross her skin. Alice stops and looks up, seeing Pearl watching her. Pearl knows she shouldn't be staring. She runs back to her mother and Polly, lumping along her bucket.

At dusk the Master hands round bread and cheese, and everyone in the palace rests for a brief while. The lamps are lit and the fish shine in the flicker. They blink at Pearl. In the lull, she goes outside to clean her lungs of the foul air. She can feel the telltale tightening in her chest, and this is what her mother has told her to do when she's taken bad.

Lamps are lit to mark the way from the palace to the boats and silhouettes dance in and out of the glow. Only the palace women and the children go inside its open ring. She hears her father's voice, and that of Mr Tremain and Mr Polance, Jack and Nicholas's fathers. The seine men have come ashore, the early catch safely in. A crowd has gathered to watch the fish being unloaded. There are artists in their paint-covered clothes, their trousers that stop at their knees, and she recognises Mr Michaels. He is with three other men, some of whom are making sketches, as she has seen them do often all over the village. Miss Charles is talking with the Master, arranging for some fish for the art school, but for drawing rather than eating. The preacher, Mr Taylor, is watching the coming and going of the fish and the men, smiling and nodding his head. There will be a thanksgiving service soon, she knows, once all the fish have been put to bed in the palace. Mr Taylor looks like a fish himself, his face wide and flat as a ray. It looks like his stretched glasses will pop off his nose at any moment.

There are also the few local people who don't work for the Tillotsons, and strangers too – men with pocketbooks and pencils stand near the doorway. The Master goes to talk with them, all smiles now that the catch is his. He speaks to the strangers. Pearl is too far away to hear what is said but the strangers keep nodding and writing things in their pocketbooks. One man, who carries a walking stick even though he is young and doesn't have a limp like Alice, leaves the others and peers into the palace. Instantly Aunt Lilly is in front of him, blocking the way.

‘A penny gazey-money, sir? A penny for us fair maids if you want to come in.'

The man looks Lilly up and down, tucking away his pocketbook inside his coat. ‘My dear,' he says, ‘I have no intention of paying you anything to see inside this filthy place. Kindly move aside.'

Aunt Lilly calls behind her. ‘This gentleman's not paid, ladies.' Then she smiles and does as he asks. The man takes a last gulp of clean air and steps forward. A pilchard slaps him square across the jaw. The man with the stick splutters and swears, while his friends roar with laughter. More fish follow before the man has time to retreat. Aunt Lilly sways back inside the palace to hoots and cheers from the women.

There's the sound of them getting to their feet, the rest over. From inside comes a sad song, soft and low, about a boy in a seine boat who is lost.

The corn was in the shock,

And the fish were on the rock,

When the boats went out from Sennen with the pilchard seine;

But the morning broke so fair,

And not a boat was there,

And the lad I loved was with them and he came not back again.

All the women know it and sing to ease the work. Pearl looks for Nicholas in the clumps of people still gathered outside the palace's thick granite walls but she can't see him.

Inside her mother is back on the floor, fixed rigid apart from her hands which dip and dip into the salt. She is cast in a net of gold from the lamp behind her, her face a shadow. Voices float through the ripe air, weaving dark and light across the cobbled floor. They catch the silver and ring off the granite, floating up to the stars through the open roof.

Four

‘What on earth's kept you?' Eileen said. ‘I was beginning to think you were glad to be rid of me when you moved up the hill.' Eileen steered Pearl to a chair by the shop's counter, which was covered in tins.

‘It hasn't been that long, surely,' Pearl said. She sat down and was grateful for the chance to catch her breath. ‘We had to unpack, and then there was all that business with Pascoe and the house.'

‘I've not see you for weeks,' Eileen said. ‘A month, actually.' Pearl was about to protest but Eileen was already bustling about as she usually did, not waiting for a response. ‘You sit there. I've got to put these out though why anybody would want to eat them is beyond me. Then we'll have a chat.'

Pearl looked at the tins. Pilchards. The beautiful silver fish squashed into a tiny little box and sealed up. And they'd come from so far away. Africa, it said on the label. The palace was empty. There were no walls of fish. Her mother was dead. And yet the past seemed so real when she remembered, when she let herself remember.

It was cool in the shop and quite pleasant to sit behind the counter and watch the people in the street as they made their way down to the beach. As a little girl she had wanted to work in Pendeen's, to arrange all the hooks and corks, to feel the softness of the cloth piled in bolts to the ceiling. Eileen's shop sold games for the beach and things to put in a picnic hamper. Her grandson pushed an ice cream cart along the seafront in the afternoons. The shop was busy today and several customers interrupted Eileen putting out the tins. A woman came in asking for a guidebook and she and Eileen disappeared to the back of the shop.

Near the door there was a rack of picture postcards. Some were views of Morlanow from the cliff path near the new house and there was a lovely one of the Tregurtha Hotel. Pearl couldn't see any postcards of the fishing boats and certainly none of the palace which was a very ordinary building to look at from the outside – inside was a different world: women, silver, and salt.

A brightly coloured postcard caught her eye. It was printed by the railway company. She recognised the brown and cream. Pearl got up to look at it. ‘Morlanow' was written in big, curling letters across the top and underneath, in smaller writing, was ‘timeless Cornwall'. The main space of the picture was taken up with a map of the county, with Morlanow and Pentreath marked very clearly, so that their names seemed to fill all the land, and, now that she looked properly, there weren't any more names marked on. The rest of Cornwall was empty. But there were other things on the map. King Arthur was at the top, near the border, clutching a sword and looking stern, and in the sea just off Morlanow there was a mermaid. She had long blonde hair and a silly little smile, perching on a rock and admiring herself in a mirror. A grizzled-looking fisherman beamed at Pearl from one corner of the postcard, his bearded face fat and red. By his side was a full bussa jar of pilchards.

‘You can have that one if you like,' Eileen said, coming up behind her.

Pearl shook her head. ‘No, thanks.' She moved closer to the doorway and looked out onto the street, her face quickly hot in the sun. She closed her eyes to let that blinding white light come again. She would give in. ‘Do you miss the old days, Eileen?' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

Pearl heard the rustling of Eileen's skirt and the tins clinking together, but she didn't open her eyes. ‘The fishing,' Pearl said. ‘When the pilchards came.'

‘That was before my time.'

‘Was it? It doesn't seem that long ago.'

A hand on her arm, the smell of dust and newness that fought through the shop. ‘Come and sit down,' Eileen said, brusque as ever. ‘I've made us some lunch.'

They sat behind the counter and shared some smoked fish and bread. Pearl tried to seem keen but she wasn't hungry. In the street the holiday visitors continued to stream past.

‘By the time I got here there weren't any pilchards,' Eileen said. ‘They'd gone.'

‘You've not eaten a fresh one then?'

Eileen shook her head, her mouth full. She swallowed and then said, ‘This is good though, this mackerel. And I like the ling your George catches.'