The Visitor (8 page)

‘It's not the same. The taste of them, they were so rich. And the sight of them coming into the bay was like nothing else. All that colour beneath the water, rippling and racing towards us. There was always the worry they'd get away. Nicholas used to…'

Eileen was waiting for her to finish but Pearl couldn't. That was the first time she'd said his name aloud in such a long time that it was like one of Aunt Lilly's charms: Pearl's lips were stitched together by it.

‘It wasn't all good though, was it, when the fish were here?' Eileen said. She straightened some boxes on the shelf nearest the counter. ‘I heard from my Simon how little food there was, that last summer. And it's harder now than it was then. Your George is out in all weathers fishing and barely gets by.'

Pearl bristled. ‘He does all right.'

‘Now don't pretend,' Eileen said. ‘I know you worry about him. If he'd just take visitors out in his boat like my David does he'd make far more, and he wouldn't be going out to lay his lines at night and in weather he shouldn't risk.'

‘He won't stop fishing,' Pearl said. And part of her was glad, even though she knew Eileen meant well, and that she was right, Pearl did worry about George when the weather was bad. But he was a fisherman. That was what he did. There had always been fishermen in Morlanow.

Eileen made a show of straightening a box that was already straight. ‘That man you mentioned, Nicholas. I've heard his name before, but not from you.' There was a sly look in her eye, a devilishness that reminded Pearl of Mrs Tiddy.

‘Have you?' Pearl said. ‘I thought everyone wanted to forget it.' Her breath was thickening and she knew she had to stop it or she'd never get back up the hill. ‘Do you believe in keygrims, Eileen?'

Eileen snorted. ‘That nonsense? No I don't. You're just trying to stop me asking about things you don't want me to. I know you.' She waggled a finger at Pearl, pretending to tell her off. ‘You like your secrets, Pearl, and I'll let you keep them. None of my business and all so long ago it hardly matters now.'

‘No,' Pearl said, ‘it doesn't matter.'

Eileen opened her till and poked the coins around, checking the change. Each little compartment was so full of coins that Eileen could barely close the till again. ‘It's all the railway company anyway, isn't it?' she said.

‘What is?'

‘Keygrims,' Eileen said, ‘and mermaids and all that talk. Though why anyone would want to come on holiday to find a keygrim is beyond me. Isn't the beach enough? And it frightens the children. My Simon was just as bad as the railway company. He'd tell my David and Margaret all sorts of things and they had terrible dreams. Margaret used to wake up screaming there was something in the room with her.'

‘That's how they come for you,' Pearl said. ‘And then they call you by your name.' But Eileen wasn't listening. A family had come into the shop and she was nodding and smiling as they asked about ice creams.

There were people on the beach below the drying field today, sunning themselves on bright towels, so Pearl went right to the end. Cliff falls had left huge rocks on the beach which offered some privacy. The water came in close. She could take off her dress and get into the sea in an instant.

As she hunkered down behind a rock she saw another cairn. At first it looked like one of the rough heaps of pebbles the sea sometimes left, but then she saw it was a careful pile, just as the last had been. There were flowers poked through this one too. It was in a different place than before, much closer to the cliff, but it was the same.

The cold was such that she gasped but kept on ploughing through the waves. It both soothed and shocked her skin and she realised she'd been sunburnt on her way down to Eileen's. She pushed off the stony bottom and kicked her legs, finding more strength the more she kicked. The years fell away when she swam, as if the effort of each stroke took her further back in time. Perhaps if she swam for long enough she could find the young girl watching Nicholas launch a model boat with a white handkerchief sail, find the fish salted in the palace and her mother singing them to sleep. But there was always Jack to worry about. She never got far enough.

She turned back to look at the shore, bobbing in the water. Jack rarely came to this beach. The retired fishermen liked to cluster by the lifeboat house, all still wearing their jerseys, watched by the holiday visitors. The nets were empty though. The fishermen had nothing to show the visitors. George would be out, far beyond the harbour, on his own on the swell.

She liked to let herself drop every now and then, the water surging round her ears and slopping over her head. She licked the salt from her lips. She couldn't touch the bottom. There were miles and miles of water below her now, she liked to pretend. All that space, dark and cold. And on the sea floor were the wrecks, and with wrecks came the Bucca. Pearl could tell Eileen's Margaret a few more things to scare her.

Five

After supper the lamp is lit. Polly washes the plates in the bucket Pearl has filled from the pump. Polly's plaits keep falling in the water. When she tosses them over her shoulders her shadow on the wall jerks like a fish on a hook.

Her father sits by the hearth and tells them about his day. He has a big beard, which is mostly brown but has red patches, and his face is deeply lined though he's not very old. He smells of tobacco and the sea. His voice is soft – he never shouts. Her mother is the one for shouting. Her father is best at telling stories. On nights he's not at sea she gets one before bedtime prayers. Tonight's story is one she's heard many times before.

‘When we're out in deeper water, past the harbour wall,' her father says, ‘we know the Bucca's likely to be about. He's a spirit so he's tricky to catch sight of, but if the wind's blowing the right way and you listen very hard, you can hear him coming, crashing around on the seabed beneath you.'

He slaps his hands across his knees to make the noise of the Bucca's lolloping then stops all of a sudden and leans down so that his face is close to Pearl's. The deep lines around his eyes are there even when he's not smiling.

‘The Bucca's waiting for the clothes on your back. That's what he wants, see, the things the drowned have no more need for. He's got fancy tastes though, the Bucca. He likes to look fine, even though the only living creatures who clap eyes on him are the fish and the crabs.' Here her father pretends to preen himself, batting his eyelashes and smoothing his coarse hair. Polly looks up from the bucket and laughs. ‘He decks himself out in velvet and gems,' her father says, ‘with a ruby for one eye and a sovereign for another, and he pulls along a seaweed net full of china teapots and silver spoons that went down with Spanish galleons.'

Lying on the floor Pearl looks at her father's beard that's scratchy against her face when he kisses her and wonders if the Bucca has a beard. Another question troubles her too. ‘If there's no wind,' she says, ‘how do you know the Bucca's there if you can't see him
or
hear him?' The bottom of the sea is a long way down; a dark, cold place littered with broken boats and bones.

Her mother looks up from her darning. ‘That's a foolish question, Pearl. We know the Lord is there even though we can't see him, don't we? Some things you have to trust and believe without seeing.'

Pearl goes to bed that night and dreams of the Bucca traipsing along with no company but his trinkets and thinks how lonely he must be.

The next morning she sits on the harbour wall with Nicholas and Jack. The sky is overcast and it's hot. There have been distant rumbles of thunder but no rain.

‘There's a new lugger left at Skommow Bay,' Nicholas says.

Jack kicks his feet against the wall. Alice is below them on the sand, as she is most days, chopping dogfish. He has a small pebble in his hand and raises it above his head. Pearl and Nicholas watch him, both silent. He whips his arm down and Pearl waits for the pebble to fly towards Alice, her stomach clenched at the thought of Alice being hit and blood coming from her cut head. But the pebble doesn't fly. Jack is pretending. His lifts his arm again and again, each time practising a different shot at Alice who carries on chopping fish into wet chunks.

‘Don't,' Nicholas says.

Jack scowls at him, weighing the pebble in each hand. ‘She deserves it,' Jack says.

Pearl doesn't want to go to Skommow Bay and she doesn't want them to fight either, but she knows if she doesn't think of a game there might be a row, or something might happen to Alice. Pearl knows that Jack likes stories. His father doesn't tell him any. She's lucky to have a father who loves her and who will tell her stories, so she tells Jack about the Bucca because it's a kindness.

‘Where does it live?' he says.

‘He's a he,' she says, ‘and he lives on wrecks. He sleeps in a proper bed with long curtains that he draws to keep the fish from bothering him.'

‘He'll be friends with the mermaids then,' Jack says. ‘Maybe they give him things, from the wrecks. I know a story…'

Nicholas sniggers. Jack doesn't tell them about the mermaids, only blushes and fiddles with the pebble in his hand. Nicholas prefers stories about ships, real ones he can learn and list. At school he's good at knowing where countries lie on the map. But he believes in keygrims, or at least pretends he does to scare her and Jack. It's the story she likes least of all.

‘The Bucca's not real,' Nicholas says. ‘Your father's spinning you a tale, Pearl.'

‘My father doesn't tell tales!' she says.

‘He does, because there's no such thing as Buccas, or mermaids.' He sees she's growing angry and softens his voice. ‘Come on, limpet-legs. They're only stories.'

They watch Alice heaping the bloodied bits of fish into a basket. She looks up, but not at them on the harbour wall. Someone, a man, is walking towards her across the sand. It's Mr Michaels, the artist from the north. He speaks to Alice, though Pearl can't hear what he's saying. Alice nods and then Mr Michaels points towards a building on the seafront. It used to be a loft for keeping nets dry in the winter but now it's loaned as a studio. Miss Charles from the art school uses it for her pupils. Alice wipes her hands on her apron and leans against a rock to rest her bad leg. She's nodding again. Mr Michaels leaves her then and Alice goes back to chopping fish.

‘Are we going to Skommow Bay?' Jack asks.

When Pearl goes home for dinner Jack comes with her. Her mother has set a place for him at the table, as she often does. Jack's father is out at sea today, as her own father is, and Nicholas's, but Jack has no mother at home to make his dinner. Pearl's mother does all the cooking in their house, helped by Polly. There are often potatoes and turnips, and eggs from the chickens that live in the yard. Before they eat they say a prayer for full nets and to keep the men safe at sea. Today they have mackerel left from the morning's catch.

Her mother and Polly have been out selling the fish. When her father has unloaded the catch and most has been given to the Master to sell on the seafront, her mother and Polly pack as much as they can carry of what remains into their willow cowals. These baskets sit high on their backs, with shiny leather straps that go on top of their hats to keep each cowal steady. Her mother and Polly sometimes have to walk miles to sell the mackerel; to Govenek, the next village down the cliff path, and the hamlets on its other side, even to Pentreath if no one buys closer to home. On those days each of them returns home with a red band across their forehead, like an angry halo. Today they must have sold well in Morlanow because they're back for dinner. Mackerel sometimes shy away from her father's nets and there is nothing to put in the cowals. The earthenware bussas of pilchards then have to stand many a meal in Pearl's house and in most of Morlanow's. These fish keep everyone fed through the winter and are so important they have two names: Pearl has heard pilchards called ‘fair maids'. Other fish are neither boys nor girls, but pilchards are special, and more beautiful. That's why her father's seine boat has the same name.

There are no salted pilchards left from last year's season but the fish from the early catch are nearly ready to be woken from their salted sleep and Pearl's mouth waters at the thought.

After they've eaten Pearl and Jack go to the yard behind her house. Jack's house has the same yard but he doesn't have any chickens. He hangs back while Pearl reaches into the warm straw for eggs.

‘You can get them too,' she says. He shakes his head. A chicken comes close to his feet to peck the ground. He gives a shriek and presses himself against the wall.

‘They won't hurt you,' she says. ‘Watch.' She picks up one of the wriggling, fluttery bodies and puts her arm around its side so that the chicken doesn't mind being held. She loves to feel its heart beating against her own chest. If she had two hearts she might be stronger and allowed to swim more often. After a moment watching to make sure nothing terrible happens, Jack inches forwards and cautiously reaches out a hand. His fingertips graze the chicken's soft, creamy-red feathers. He manages a small smile.

‘Jack!' a man's voice shouts, startling the chicken so it squawks and flaps free of Pearl's arms. Its wings are in her face and she cries out, trying to protect herself, unable to see. She's aware of Jack near her, similarly frightened, and when the voice shouts his name again she realises it's not the chicken that scares him. It's his father.