Turning the Stones (6 page)

Their mirth nettles me and I shout, ‘Give me the name of a likely tavern and I will hound him down myself and be damned!’

My outburst further piques their amusement. ‘You will be wanting the Breeze and Feather, I warrant.’ The front-man grins. ‘That’s a place kept by Irish people and attracts a lad with more money than sense.’

The hind chairman calls, ‘We are going that way and you may trot behind.’ The chair is wheeled about and the men set off without further ado. I assume that they are trifling with me, but no alternative presents itself, and so I scurry to catch up to them.

We rush through a tangle of streets and arrive in short order at the head of an oppressive thoroughfare, where houses with protruding gables lean over a row of shops and alehouses. The cluster of black chairs at the corner of the street reminds me of the crows that I saw on our way to Weever Hall last summer. It was a golden afternoon and we stopped to dine alfresco. I see Eliza dozing under a walnut tree with one arm draped across her face, unconcerned that her marriage prospects were dimming by the day.

Oh, Eliza, do not think ill of me. I should like to believe that sympathy and loyalty do obtain as a result of a long connection, but I have been proved grievously mistaken about people’s characters. I wanted things – people – to be true that weren’t true. The thought of Mrs Waterland pricks my heart.

Have you ever had the experience of being blasted by blandishments? It is elating to be the object of flatteries, but they level your defences and leave you exposed to devastation when betrayal strikes. I want to say more, I own a powerful desire to purge myself of this story, but I am afraid that dwelling on the past is likely to keep offences alive.

Thank heavens, we have come to a stop. I must recover my breath, but the chairmen, having set down their conveyance among the others at the rank, are flexing their arms with little sign of exertion.

One of them jerks his thumb at the street. ‘There’s your mark, down there on the right.’

I set off diffidently, pressing against the walls of the buildings to avoid a couple of drunks. But the berserkers swerve into my path, making a what-have-we-here clutch at me. A roar sounds from the rank of chairs: ‘Another step nearer her, lads, and
you’ll be in danger of a slap!’ The sots leave me alone then, and I cast a backward look at the chairmen with a pang of regret. I wish I were not passing out of the orbit of their protection – but onward I must go.

The Breeze and Feather is a low, smoky tavern with patrons to match and a note of threat humming in the background. A ship’s wheel fastened to the chimney piece and rigging that droops from the dark beams bespeak a nautical theme, which is not entirely jaunty. There is a hint of wrecks and drowned sailors in the rusted anchor, the crumbling cork life-preservers and the solitary oar fixed to a wall. At the pewter counter a sandy-complexioned publican in soiled shirtsleeves is filling mugs with a dipper from an anker whose fumes cause my eyes to water. Or perhaps the miasma produced by the patrons’ pipes is responsible. I dash the tears away with the heel of my hand. The atmosphere, however, remains misty and unreal.

The publican flicks a dead-eyed glance at me and continues his laborious transfer of liquor from one container to another. There is a blurry chequerboard pattern inked on one of his forearms and a constellation of stars on the other. He offers no response to my salutation, but I launch into a tale, regardless, claiming to be a relation of a ship’s boy called Terry Madden, whom I describe in great detail. The publican hands mugs to a barmaid who bears them away. Without any acknowledgement of my presence, he turns to a customer and I am jostled out of place.

I battle through the crush to a far reach of the room, where I must puzzle out my next move. No doubt I look ripe for some offensive by one of the voluptuaries of this tavern. Boozy laughter erupts from the drinkers huddled over their cups and
a wench insists on singing to her swain while making the most of her bosom.

The barmaid approaches and plonks a platter of crimson salt beef in front of a trio of balladeers. Turning away, she says to me out of the side of her mouth, ‘People will not talk to you here. They do not know you.’

‘I am looking for a ship’s boy called Terry Madden,’ I blurt. ‘He is about thirteen or fourteen years of age.’

‘You his mother?’

‘No. His sister.’

She pulls in her chin with a curled lip to indicate that she does not believe me.

‘He is on a cutter called the
Seal
, but I do not know where it is berthed.’

‘The
Seal
?’ The barmaid’s eyes widen.

‘Do you know it?’

Her expression becomes guarded. I am about to relate a long and winding lie-story about why I must find my brother, but I am exhausted by the thought of it. Instead I say, ‘The boy of that ship robbed me and I wish to speak to him about the matter.’

The barmaid lets loose a shout of laughter and claps me on the shoulder. ‘Hah! I am always happy to inconvenience a plaguey rogue, although I have no argument with the master of the
Seal
. He is a man of repute, you know, among certain circles.’ She flashes an impish eye and seems to expect me to understand her meaning. ‘The berth is not close by and it is difficult to tell the way, but if you give me sixpence I will call a lad to lead you.’

‘There I am stuck, since I am bereft of funds.’

‘I will give you sixpence for that pretty necklace.’

My hand flies to the little string of pearls at my throat. I had forgotten that I was wearing Eliza’s necklace. I am surprised Madden did not pilfer it, but as it did not come easy I dare say that is why he left it behind.

‘These pearls cost fifty pounds!’ I cry. In fact I do not know what Mrs Waterland paid for them, but they are certainly worth a great deal more than sixpence – I would be a fool to give up too cheaply this unexpected resource.

The barmaid shrugs. ‘Fifty pounds? I think not. They are only seed pearls.’

Her eye catches the upraised hand of a patron and suddenly she is wading through the crowd to take his order, leaving me marooned. Might I find a pawnbroker who will give me a better price for the necklace and more than cover the loss of the moneybag? But that is an outcome by no means certain and, moreover, I quail at chancing my arm in the alarming streets of this town. I decide to try the barmaid again. I offer the pearls to her for the sum of five pounds. A wretched break in my voice betrays my desperation.

She enjoys a rueful chuckle at my expense. ‘Sixpence,’ she says, ‘and there’s an end to it.’

‘All right then, I will let you have them for half a crown.’

The barmaid winks. ‘They are worth what they are worth in the circumstances, lovey. I will give you sixpence and you may bestow it upon Billy.’

She holds the upper hand and I have no other card to play. I sigh my agreement, and with a furtive look at the publican, who is probably her father – the freckles and the powerful forearms betray a family resemblance – the barmaid shows me
into a narrow passage punctuated by several doorways – the tavern is a hive of rooms. She brings from her pocket a coin and displays it in the palm of her hand, although in the gloom I cannot make out its authenticity. Since I have no choice, I give over the pearls, expecting to emerge from this exchange the dupe, but she whistles up a lad of perhaps ten years with a frizz of yellow hair and a wiry frame and briefs him from behind her stubby hand.

*

I hasten to keep up with the boy and his bobbing torch as we lope through the docklands. In these dark, greasy lanes I fall prey to the terrors of a dozen different possibilities of kidnapping, rape and murder. Bristol is famously thick with slavers and I fear they trade in women as well as Negroes. Surely it was a snare at the Breeze and Feather that I walked into, laid by the chairmen who directed me there and the barmaid … Won’t this boy get a great deal more than sixpence if he brings me to a lair? How long can my poor heart pound at this rate before it bursts with fright? I would turn and run, but we are crossing a long bridge and at my back there comes a handcart, which traps me into moving forward.

We are free of the bridge now, and the cart has gone. The boy has come to a halt and I look around suspiciously, but no one else appears. It seems this is our destination.

It is a quay on a narrow, sequestered stretch of waterway where few vessels are moored. I can make out in the distance two or three men in smocks who are coiling ropes. One of them looks our way, but they go on with their work. The boy wordlessly palms the sixpence and I watch him leave with a familiar feeling of abandonment and anxiety.

There are two small cutters moored upstream on the other side of the quay. I will have to find another bridge in order to reach them.

As I walk along the quay’s edge I notice that the slop of the water begins to sound more insistent. A boat is approaching.

Voices carry through the air together with the creaking of ropes and the
crump
of canvas. Sails show rust-red in the twilight as a vessel glides towards me. The fore-and-aft rig and single mast, and the rakish lines, define her as a cutter. We see many of these economical vessels at Parkgate.

The long bowsprit draws level, giving me a close view of a side-whiskered seaman on the foredeck unlashing the jib. The depth of tide has brought the cutter nearly flush with the quay. The gunwales are hardly six feet from where I stand. As the cutter slinks by, a lean fifty or sixty feet in length, I note the swivel guns mounted on the deck railings. The boat is so near I can make out the detail of the helmsman’s appearance, his dark hair curled all around, the red-and-white checked shirt under his short jacket, his tarpaulin trousers and low shoes. A rowboat dangles from curved davits beneath the vessel’s high transom stern – and underneath the rowboat the name of the cutter is picked out in white on the black hull.

It is the
Seal
.

‘Wait!’

At my cry the helmsman looks up. He sees nothing but a girl diminishing on the quay. He turns away and attends once more to his course.

I begin to run then, gathering momentum. Without pausing to argue with myself about it, I spring from the very edge of the coping.

I rise into space, and time slows, allowing me to come at my leisure to the realisation that my jumping stratagem will not succeed a second time – and why should it? To do so would offend the laws of chance. As I float aloft, feet pedalling the air, watching my target of the cutter’s deck slipping away beneath, I recall in fitful flashes a bargeman at Parkgate …

He misses his footing and pitches seaward.

The master’s cargo sinks in the beer-house hole.

A skiff sails away on the horizon.

I am grieved to find this body of mine plunging towards the sombre surface of the water, but I hold no reproach against myself for trying so very desperately to prevail.

The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara
April, 1766

I have lost sight of the child, Nora, but do not fret. Since I turned the stones I sense their mighty influence within me and I do not doubt I have the strength in it, the ferocity of will, in fact, to bring her back now before my days on earth pass for ever. My face I have turned to the past, friend. That is where our girl was left – I will even go so far as to say that the past is where she has been imprisoned. But the turn of the stones has opened that portal. All kinds of scenes are floating towards me now.

I can see Josey O’Halloran as large as life saluting into the house of the Mulkerrins. And the coat being taken off and himself being offered the chair. And your brother Colman watching with arms folded high on the chest in that spurning way of his, and a curdled face on him. They brought in the writing apparatus then, didn’t they? And Josey drew in a mighty shuddering breath as though the Holy Ghost itself had inspired him and next thing he had a sentence sprinting across the paper like a hound after a hare. There was not a hint of hesitation in it. A tremendous hush fell on the crowd while Josey worked the pen. And yourself could not take your eyes off him. Very moonstruck by him you were then and always.

And do you recall Martin Lee, God rest his soul? You can’t imagine the number of times I have gone over that night when he came to your house. Don’t I wish we had listened to him. But he was as old as a field and well known for rambling talk that did not add up to much. And strong was his inclination for drink. Sure, as soon as he stopped in that night he asked if there was a drop in the place at all. You were bound to bring out the jar and invite him to pull into the fire, but you were not glad about it. You thought Martin took advantage of Josey’s generosity. It means the food and drink out of your own mouth, you would say to Josey. But Josey used to say he wouldn’t recognise himself if he refused a guest.

I can see Josey pressing Martin to take a drop and Martin saying, I will do the same so, Josey, right. He said that his own jar had been taken and he knew who was to blame for that. It was the good people up to their mischief. It’s well known, he said, that they like a drop. They come down from Sligo, so they do, and steal my drink. People say you see them strolling around as if they owned the place.

And then he warned us not to stay at home on the following day. Everyone was going to the saint’s island to pray at the well, which had begun to flow for the first time since ages past.

Nor will I forget this: as you were seeing me out that night, we noticed a queer little breeze swirl under the covering of the doorway and nudge it a little. A thickening of the air like that was supposed to be a sign. It meant that the other crowd was near at hand. We ought to have stayed out of their way, Nora. We ought to have gone to the saint’s island.

PART TWO

Sedge Court, Cheshire
February, 1758

I think of Mrs Waterland as a fateful figure. In fact the idea of fate weighs on me. You must think me quite a blasphemer, but when I compare the powers of our Christian God to those of the Fates, I find him less compelling. Is he capable of putting events into play or of altering their course? It seems to me that he only watches, and judges, and punishes. It is fate that makes things happen. Certainly it seems to have played a primary role in the story of the Waterlands – the family that reared me. I am not the only one to believe that.