Читать книгу The Silver Dark Sea - Susan Fletcher - Страница 11

Can you see him now? Legs that seem to have no end? The dark matting of his hair that, if a hand was laid there, would cover that hand? His body was hard, too – harder than other bodies, as if he was not only skin and bones. Was he even human? He felt stronger than all the humans I’d known and it made me ache – this strength under my palms, this anchor.

But I do not touch him yet.

I have not even met him – but I will.

He is looking at the ceiling of the mending room. He looks without blinking – the white paint, the single hair-thin crack.

He can smell the sea. Also he can hear it, and he lifts his head. He tries to sit up, and in doing this there is the bed’s creak, and the dragging sound of his dry heels against the cotton sheets.

Curtains move; the window is open.

He can also hear footsteps. They grow louder. Pat, pat.

* * *

Tabitha knows he is awake before she comes into the room. A nurse’s intuition, perhaps, or a woman’s. She pushes the door and she is right – he is there, trying to sit up. His arms are bent and he is wincing. She puts down the water she is carrying and says careful! Careful! Here – let me help …

He has been sleeping for over thirty-six hours. In that time she has watched him turn, heard him murmur; she has held glasses of water to his lips, whispered drink – and he has drunk. So she knows that he is real enough. But seeing him now – awake, moving … He is even larger as he moves. His chest is defined as chests, on Parla, don’t tend to be so that a deep cleft runs down from his throat to his waist.

He exhales, as if pained.

Are you OK?

A thick, even beard. Hair like a thatch. There is sand, also. Last night, she’d cleaned sand from his skin, ears and nostrils but not from his hair – and it is on the pillow, in the crook of his elbow and in the creases of the sheets.

Do you understand me?

He gives a single nod.

Good. Tabitha blushes. The question seems childish. She hands him the glass of water. You need to keep drinking.

He takes the glass.

Where does she start? What can she say? Do you know where you are?

A flinch, which is no.

On an island called Parla. You were found on a beach the night before last. Do you remember the beach?

She watches him drink – the long draws of water and the movement of his throat. He drains the glass, lowers it. A beach?

Yes. A stony one. She takes the glass from him.

The man shakes his head.

I’m the nurse. Tabitha. Bright. My father kept a lighthouse so it’s a fitting surname. Her smile is quick. Your name?

For a moment he looks at her. Then he turns his stare away and looks out of the window, at the dark-green nettle patch and the sea beyond. He is thinking. He thinks for a long time and in that time Tabitha looks at his profile, the lines on his forehead. She hears the grandfather clock in the hall. I don’t know –

You don’t know your name? Really?

I’m sorry …

It’s alright. It will come, I’m sure. No headaches?

No. And he looks troubled, then. He looks lost, so that Tabitha lays her hand on his forearm. It is all she can think of doing. He has come from the sea like driftwood. He has no memory and marks on his hand that she cannot fathom, and this is like an old, old tale that is hard to have faith in, in modern times. She is sixty-five, and it’s the twenty-first century, and surely there are no mysteries left? Falling in love is serotonin. Phosphorescent water is not God’s light.

Yet here he is. Sea-smelling.

Do you remember anything?

Being in the water.

Good. That’s something. She pats his arm. How about food? You must be hungry.

No answer.

A drink, then? Tea?

He says tea … And he says it as if he does not know what tea could be, or perhaps he is agreeing to it – Tabitha can’t tell which. But he says tea … again, and he looks grateful, very tired.

Tea for two. She smiles. I’ll be back in a minute. You stay put.

She goes to the kitchen, feeling happy. She puts the kettle on.

The wind lifts a flake of rust from a car, at High Haven. The ivy that grows on the minister’s house taps against the wood.

Alfie Moss is by the primary school. It is closed for the summer but he stands in its playground all the same. He does a clumsy somersault on the fence and when he lands he wipes his nose on his bare arm.

The primary school is three rooms in a grey stone building. It has a single classroom with its desk, globe, and its stack of plastic drawers with the children’s names taped on them. It has a whiteboard at one end that squeaks when his mother writes on it. There is also a tiny kitchen and beside it there are two toilet cubicles – one with a pink door, and one with blue. Alfie uses the blue one, as do the three other boys that catch the boat from Utta. He doesn’t live on Utta; Alfie lives next door.

Alfie steps back from the fence. He is checking his palms for splinters when he hears footsteps, looks up. His mother is coming down the path; her hair is a cloud and the gold cross around her neck catches the light as she comes. She shouts Alfie! We’re late – into the car.

They drive down towards the harbour – past the viewpoint, and the airstrip. Alfie presses his nose to the glass. He squints at each person who passes. He has heard there is a new man on the island – he came from the sea and he has no name. He has heard, too, that he looks a bit like Uncle Tom. But Alfie is too young to really remember his uncle Tom.

* * *

Three times a week the ferry comes and goes. For nearly a century, a boat called the Morning Star has made its way across the sea, tilting left to right and followed by gulls. This ferry – the vessel that sits in the harbour now – is the third to be called this, so it has Morning Star III painted on its prow and perhaps it is larger than the Stars that came before. But it has the same blue bottom. The same white railings with lifebelts on.

On two days – Monday and Wednesday – it leaves Parla and sails directly to the mainland and back. It is nearly a two-hour journey in each direction when the weather is kind, or when Ed does not peel away from the usual route to follow a dolphin pod or a whale’s spray. In the summer, he often does this – for the passengers are mostly holidaymakers who live in cities, far from the coast. For them, a flash of back in the water is a gift, and he loves how they point, say look! There! In choppy sea the journey may take over three hours. In high winds or high water, the Star does not run at all.

On Fridays, it makes its way over via the other isles. For these other, smaller islands this is the only ferry service that they have – one boat every seven days. Parla is busy and easy to reach compared to these strangely shaped rocks: Utta, with its standing stones and cluster of salt-walled homes; Say, with the many sea stacks that gannets whiten; and Cantalay, where there is a single sheep farm and a ruined fort that the wind whistles through in winter. Merme is uninhabited, now. No boats go to it. Nothing does, except the puffins and they do not stay long.

Today it’s Friday. Today, the Star will go out to these islands. It will creep in and out of their harbours, carry lives and luggage elsewhere. The ferry is fuelled and ready. Its white railings are shining in the morning light. The metal gangplank which the passengers must walk upon is also white and when it is lowered down onto the quayside there is a sudden, hard chime which sends up the gulls, makes a black cat flinch down against the ground.

It is nine twenty in the morning. There is a slight glint of dew on the fields and there is already heat in the sun. Most of the islanders are at the harbour. The grass verge that leads down to it has their cars parked upon it – cars with no wing mirrors or hubcaps, and most have dents in their sides. Hester steps out of a hatchback, pulls open the door behind her seat saying out out out to Alfie.

As they walk down, they pass a purple car. Its passenger door is open and a small, denim-covered bottom is beside it; its owner’s head and body are still inside the car. There is the smell of baking, and ginger. Hester glances inside as she passes – she sees the dark butter icing of a chocolate cake. Alfie does too – Mum, look … They hurry down to the Morning Star.

Rona straightens herself, sees them go. In her arms she carries six plastic, airtight boxes. They are transparent – they hold scones, chocolate cake, iced gingerbread, a cheesecake with grated limes, flapjack with apricots, and a huge, powdered Victoria sponge that’s filled with homemade jam. She rests her chin on the uppermost box, shuts the car door with her foot.

On the quayside itself are the island’s men. Edward Lovegrove, of course. He wears a luminous jacket with matching trousers and a baseball cap with Skipper on it. He takes the cargo – suitcases, bicycles, cardboard boxes – and puts it in a crate that rests next to the boat. Anything else? He calls this out and Rona quickens her step. Yep, Dad! Her car keys are hanging from the back pocket of her jeans and they jangle as she hurries.

There are other men in bright-yellow clothing – the crew, the men who have worked on Morning Star for years, or all their adult lives in some cases. George Moss – late fifties and not yet greying – stands at the end of the gangway, a rolled cigarette between his thumb and forefinger as if throwing a dart. He sees his wife and son coming. Alfie waves cheerily. On you hop, George tells him. Hester’s hair is wild-looking, today – the curls are tight like springs and he loves it like this, wants to push his hands into it and grip those curls at their roots. He winks at his wife as she passes.

Sam Lovegrove and Jonny Bundy are also in fluorescent yellow. They are both on board, making the ferry’s final checks – securing lines, checking lists on clipboards, handing out brown paper bags just in case the water gets rough. Sam has not slept properly for two nights now and it shows in his face. There are shadows under his eyes; the sunburn has lessened against his pale skin. Jonny is by the winch. He leans over the side of the boat, watching Ed pack up the crate. Rona, he thinks, is looking good today. She always looks good – but those jeans are tight and when she peers over the side of the crate to make sure her cakes are packed well, and safely, he can see down her top for a moment. White lace – very nice. She has sunglasses pushed up into her hair.

Nine twenty-five. Ed shouts, last call! Kitty hears this and kisses Nathan. She carries an overnight bag, steps onto the gangplank. She pauses to say something to the skipper who laughs, touches her shoulder. Two tourists are the last ones on – clanking with binoculars, sour-breathed from the seasickness pills they have taken, sad to be leaving Parla for city life.

Sam lets them pass. Then, at that moment, puts a hand on either side of the gangplank and leans down from the deck. George?

The older man treads out his cigarette, looks up.

Has Maggie been? Haven’t seen her yet.

He nods. On the far side. Under the tarpaulin.

She must have come early.

She was waiting for us. Maybe seven thirty? She’s done herself proud, though. One of them is a monster.

Sam steps back. He goes to the far side of the ferry. Sure enough, he finds the black plastic crate with tarpaulin on it, and he crouches down beside it. Slowly, he peels the covering aside. The lobsters shift as he does this. Their smell is fishy and cold. They are midnight-coloured, their claws tied with elastic bands, and he wonders what time Maggie went out to get them this morning – first light? Maybe it was still dark when she went. Maybe, he thinks, she’s not sleeping either, and he imagines her, in that little boat – hat and gloves, setting out at dawn. The birds would still have been roosting. Perhaps the first sign of daylight was a pink glow in the east and she would have seen it – on her own, in that boat.

Everything about Maggie makes him sorry.

He covers the lobsters back over, secures the tarpaulin to keep them safe.

* * *

On Fridays, the boat doesn’t come back. It takes nearly three hours to dock at the three smaller islands, making the journey to the mainland nearly five hours long, in the end. It’s too much to return the same day. So tonight, the Morning Star and its crew will stay overnight in the mainland’s harbour with the stacked lobster pots and fishing fleet. That’s a pungent harbour, ten times bigger than Parla’s. It has the ferry office, a youth hostel, a small museum of fishing life, The Bounty Inn with its picnic tables and a trailer which sells cockles in paper cones. The gulls are bold, beady-eyed. Some will take a chip right out of your hand, and laugh as they eat it – ark-ark!

Nancy knows all this.

She sits cross-legged on the sea wall. She looks at the quayside, the dark sand and the Star.

Ferry day, in Nan’s head, is her day – or her family’s. Her father runs the boat. He runs the whole harbour and has to write down which boats come in and out, and he has to listen to the radio each night to hear what the weather will do. If it’s too rough to sail, he runs a red flag up a pole. Nan likes that flag. It is the same height as her bedroom window, and it goes snap in the gales as if it’s talking to her. He marks down sightings of whales, too, and rare birds. But Nan’s father spends most of his time caring for the ferry. He polishes the brass bits, scrubs down the deck, sponges the green mould from the life-rings that hang on her sides. Sometimes, the ferry is hauled out of the water and run up onto rails as if she were a train. This is the boat’s dry dock. Nan has stood beneath her as the Star’s rested there, and looked up. It feels like looking up a fat lady’s skirt.

The ferry will leave any minute.

She squints. The winch lifts the crate from the quayside. It swings a little so that her father puts his hands up against it, guides it across. Jonny operates the winch from the boat. Nan isn’t too keen on Jonny. He once called her a rat, as if she couldn’t hear, and Rona doesn’t like him much either. Creepy Jonny Bundy which sounds like a nursery rhyme.

Rona. Nan studies her. She can see a beaded chain on her sister’s left ankle and her toenails are painted bright pink. Rona is watching the crate because her cakes are in it. She makes cakes for her tea room at the lighthouse, but she also makes them for a café on the mainland – a café with dried starfish in its window and deckchairs outside. Nan has been there, with their mother. Last summer they went. They had banana bread and a coconut slice, both made by Rona two days before. In loud voices they said how good the cakes were, how they were the best they’d ever had in all their living days and everyone should try some so that the café would order more.

Nan’s favourite cake in the world is a chocolate brownie. Definitely. For her sixth birthday she had a plate of brownies, with actual cherries in. That was her best birthday yet.

Her father and brother are on the Morning Star.

Her mother and sister are on the quayside, watching it.

Ferry day is our day. The gangplank is pulled up, on board. The ferry begins to shudder, the water behind it starts to churn and very slowly the Star turns from the quay. She can see Alfie Moss, waving. She can see her brother Sam, too – his yellow hair which she is sometimes jealous of. Kitty is also on board – her skirt is blowing and she wears sunglasses so that Nan can’t tell what she is looking at. Perhaps she is looking at Nathan, but he is not looking at her. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s looking at the ground. Maybe there’s a shell, there? Or a beetle? He looks at the ground for a very long time.

* * *

There is a track which leads from Crest towards the most northerly part of the coast. At the cliff edge, there’s a fence – wire that sags, rotting posts. There is a sign by a break in this fence which reads Do Not Use In Wet Weather – but Maggie has often used these steps when the rain has been so heavy that it has bruised her. She’s used them in a thunderstorm. She’s used them at night.

They are slick, black steps cut into the rocks and which lead down to a small harbour. Uneven steps, and steep. Once, perhaps, they’d been used for smuggling since the lighthouse’s beam never reaches them and they can’t be seen from the sea; but they are not used for that now. They wind down into darkness and end, abruptly, on a slab of rock. This slab is the quayside. It is lost entirely at high tide and so it is both rough with barnacles and velvety with weed, and Maggie is careful when treading on it. She comes here three times a week, or more: Pigeon is kept here.

Pigeon. Named by Maggie herself, long ago.

So she can always find her way home.

Maggie started early today. She dressed in the half-dark, made a flask of tea, put a head-torch on and made her way down those steps. She looked east, as she readied the boat. She looked through the harbour’s narrow opening and saw the dawn – pink, grey, the last blue of night.

And she’d hauled on the cord to start the outboard motor, thrummed across the water, past Sye and Bundy Head. A cool, early morning. The smell, always, of fish and diesel fumes. She’d felt the motor’s vibration, heard the quiet slosh at her feet of water that had come aboard in various ways – off the pots, or rainwater – and it is the same every time. It does not change – how Pigeon smells, how the silence rushes in when she turns the engine off. There are the same rituals as there always were, and she finds a comfort in them. Pigeon is familiar. So are the orange fibreglass buoys, the sound of the sea against the boat’s sides, the gulls that follow hopefully, the ghostly loom of the lobster pots as she pulls them up from the dark.

Nothing changes on Parla. That’s what she was told, when she first came. It stays the same – just so you know … And Maggie had loved that. She’d loved the idea of a safe, strong, unchanging life. Just Tom, and her, and the water.

But then he died. And everything changed. Nothing changes here proved, in fact, to be the greatest of all lies. He died and so much died with him; countless more things were lost. She learnt this: that grief changes more than you ever thought it could. All certainty goes away. All strong things stop being strong. Tom was there and then he was not: and so what could be relied upon? Nothing felt safe any more: a lone sock felt symbolic; an embrace from a friend seemed like a trap; letters had no meaning or too many meanings so that sorry for your loss felt coded, impenetrable, too hard to understand. Maggie believed, for a time, that she was being lied to. She’d eyed others, looking for that lie. Nothing can be trusted – to be kind, or safe, or to stay with her.

I will not feel or care for anything. I will rely on nothing.

But no-one can live like that. Maggie tried to be self-reliant, and hard – but she could not fully. She had to give shape to her days. She had to hold her hand out or she’d sink, she knew that. And it was routines that Maggie turned to. Tentatively, she sought comfort in small, necessary, practical things – so she’d make proper coffee in a cafetiere, clean the bath, pluck tomatoes from her plants and inhale their bitter smell. She’d pull the cord on Pigeon as she used to when Tom was still living. She’d bind the claws of lobster with coloured elastic bands.

And this place. Coming here.

Maggie is walking, now. She has left the half-moon harbour; she is walking down the island’s western coast. The wild west, Tom called it: bare, fully exposed. No other islands lie to the west of Parla; from here, there is only the open sea. And centuries of storms and thundering water have battered it – picked off rocks, and scooped out caves so that this coastline echoes. The sea booms; the birds wail. She hears them now, as she walks.

This was her routine, too: she’d walk on this coast at every low tide. For two years Maggie would come, twice daily – so she has come to know each stile, each thistle patch, each rabbit hole. She knows each track through the gorse, how the word Tom! bounces back to her from every dank cave wall. And in the early days, before she believed that he was truly gone, and not returning, she’d step down the wooden staircase onto Lock-and-Key and tread across its sand. For it is on this beach that a whale stranded itself, where the best shells have come, where there has been driftwood so smooth and bleached by the waves that they looked like bones and it’s here that Maggie has found pottery shards and a piece of glass that had been so worn, so turned over and over by the sea that it had been rolled into a ball. A marble as green as an eye. There is a fence, too, on which those lost rubber boots have been hung – boots that have been washed ashore without their other, matching halves – so they look out to sea forlornly. And if something of worth – something she’d loved, and still loved – was to wash ashore, she has always believed it would be here. This beach.

Lock-and-Key. Named because the headland to its south is shaped, or partly, as the beach is. It has the same outline, but inverted. One might fit the other … If you squint. So she was told.

Maggie steps down the staircase now.

The row of rubber boots is still here – still waiting.

Tom. Who knew all the beaches. He knew each cave, each promontory. Tom was Parlan entirely, and so he knew the history of houses, the names in the graveyard, how puffins fly, how to coax the lugworm out, how to read the weather by clouds or a sheep’s positioning, how to cook mussels in garlic and white wine. So many stories in his head – of love and loss, of the old pig farm. Maggie had been in awe of this.

You’re lucky, she’d told him.

I feel it. Kissing her.

She was told time would help. People said it to her, meaning well: give it time … But time does not help. All that happens with time is that you grow tired – so hugely, indescribably tired. He was everywhere and nowhere. He was in the gold band on her finger but he was not in the house, not in their bed. And she began to grow tired of walking on this beach: walking on this beach meant she was looking at each sodden piece of cloth, each inch of rope, each footprint in the sand thinking is that his …? She would hurry towards new driftwood. She’d make her way to each line of faded plastic in case it held a clue. And one dusk – one awful, half-lit, winter dusk – she’d thought she’d seen a person lying on Lock-and-Key. In the gloom, she saw it: a dark and indefinable shape at the water’s edge. So she ran. She dropped to her knees as she reached it. She plunged her hands into the shape, gasping, swearing, saying Tom with sand in her mouth and tears in her eyes – and it was weed. Just weed. Two metres or more of tangled wrack which had fooled her, briefly, in the evening light. And she knelt by that weed, and sobbed. He is not coming back to me. He is not coming back to me. She knew, she knew. She knew he was not. She had to admit this, kneeling there.

Maggie never wants another moment like that moment – no more crouching next to weed. No more Tom! – sand-tasting. And so for four years she has tried to live a small life. A safe life. No changes.

No hope, and no loss.

But now this … A man. A man has come ashore. Nathan says just passing and she spills her yellow paint, and for one tiny, impossible moment …

Maggie closes her eyes. The wind finds her hair and it tugs, tugs.

I have to see this man. She must. He is not Tom; she knows he is not. But he is a new, rolled mass of weed; he is a new indefinable shape that she must kick at, at least, to make sure of. For otherwise, she will always be thinking what if …?

She will see him tomorrow.

This human driftwood. This jetsam that washed up with more unwanted things.

* * *

He is sleeping again. He is upright but his eyes are closed. Tabitha smiles, and takes the empty mug from his hand.

People are children again, when they sleep. Their frown lines go and their worries do, so that they lie as they would have lain in their childhood beds. She’s seen it enough. Her brother-in-law, Jack Bundy, was a fierce, bad-tempered piece by day but she found him sleeping in the armchair once, and his left hand was near his face as if trying to hide himself or, even, suck his thumb. He’d looked like a boy, not a middle-aged man. And if Jack Bundy could look sweet-natured …

She brings the blankets around her patient. She wonders, briefly, who else has done this for him – for whoever he is, he’ll have had a mother. Does he have a wife? There is no ring. No white mark where a ring has been.

Amnesia. It’s a new one for her. Nearly half a century since she became a nurse, and how many amnesiacs has she met? She will have to research it – books, online.

Tabitha pads through to her kitchen.

It is small, square. It is dark, too, for its single window looks out onto a bank of grass. A sheep has been here this morning – she can see its fresh droppings, berry-bright. Tabitha exhales, picks up the phone. The task she must do is motherly.

Hello? It is answered after two rings.

Em, it’s me.

What do you want?

I have a request …

There is silence from her sister.

Well – it’s this …

* * *

The quayside is empty, and still. Nancy cannot see anyone now – just their black cat and a gull that walks like a man in a waistcoat, his hands behind his back. The gull has eyed the cat; the cat, in turn, is treading in the shadows, keeping her distance. As a kitten, she got pecked at; her ear is split at its tip.

Nancy shuffles forwards, drops down onto the sand. There is a shell here – blue, and chalky inside. She brings it right up to her eye and looks at it. It is joined, with two halves and when she presses those halves together the shell clacks, like a mouth.

She makes the shell say hello to the cat. Hello to the mean-looking gull.

What have you there, little Nancy?

The voice makes her jump. She turns. It is old Mrs Coyle with her walking stick and her butterscotch breath. She has made her way down from the white house, near the sea wall. There is a line of sweat between her nose and mouth. Mrs Coyle dabs at it.

Another lovely morning. All this lovely weather!

She tucks the tissue up her sleeve.

May I join you?

They sit side by side on the harbour’s bench. Nan swings her legs. It’s a shell.

And a fine one, too. A mussel shell. Look at that blue …

I found it down there.

Well, they’re common enough. Have you eaten mussels?

Nan shakes her head. She likes doing this, as she has glass bobbles at the end of her plaits which knock against each other. She shakes her head more than she needs to.

Your brother could find you some, I’m sure. Whilst he’s out walking.

Nan picks at some grit she finds in the shell. She is not sure what to say to Mrs Coyle, or what to say about mussels, so she says Sam found a person on Wednesday night. He was washed up at Sye.

So I heard.

Daddy says he probably fell off a boat.

Does he? Perhaps.

Nan looks up. Do you think he did?

Fell overboard?

She nods.

Well, perhaps. It’s nine miles to the mainland, which would be a very long swim.

She squints at the ferry. Is he a ghost, maybe?

Oh I think he’s real enough. Your brother carried him! So did the Bundy men. If he was a ghost how could they carry him?

A pirate?

No pirates.

Nan studies the shell. I think he’s a pirate.

No, no. I don’t think so.

Who do you think he is, Mrs Coyle?

Abigail smiles. Me? She stays quiet for a moment. She takes the tissue out, dabs her nose and pops it back again. Then she leans towards Nancy and says do you like stories?

Stories?

Yes. I thought most children liked stories.

Only good ones.

Ah! Very wise. Have you heard of the Fishman?

She looks up from her shell. A Fishman?

The Fishman. A man who has the tail of a fish, but he can also grow legs and come ashore?

Nan stares. He’s a fish? A fish who grew legs? She looks down at the shell, wide-eyed. Maybe she has heard the story. Maybe Alfie told her in the playground once. And there is a book on her shelf – a pink spine, with thick cardboard pages – which has a mermaid in it, and so she turns and says like a mermaid?

Abigail considers this. Yes, in a way. But it’s always a man in the stories – a strong, bearded, good-looking man.

The mussel shell goes clack.

My husband saw him, once. At Sye.

Nan’s eyes grow like moons.

Jim was young, but he remembers it. Says he looked up from the beach and saw a man swimming – a man with dark hair, and a very solemn face. Then he went under, and where he had been swimming there rose a huge, silvery tail …

Mr Coyle saw him? Properly?

He did.

And this is him? This man is the Fishman he saw? But he’s got legs now?

Abigail smiles. Why not? Humans think they know everything but there is so much more.

They are watched, as they talk. One of the oldest and the youngest inhabitants of Parla, side by side on the wrought-iron bench.

Dee Lovegrove stands in her bedroom. She has taken a pillowcase off the radiator, and she folds it by the window. Outside, she can see them. Nancy is wearing her denim dungarees with the heart-shaped buttons. She insisted on plaits this morning but one is already escaping its band and there’s mud, Dee notes, on her knees. Never, ever tidy. Nan discards clothing like petals, sticks her fingers into all manner of dirt. It was sheep dung last week, and diesel the week before. Little Nancy Lovegrove. Dee feels a pang of love. It is the sudden punch of it that she always feels with her children – Nan’s reddened knees, or how Sam puts his sunglasses on, patting the sides to make sure they’re in place. Today, Rona had looked so beautiful, standing on the quayside with her arms full of cakes and Dee had watched her step back from the crate, shield her eyes against the sun. Dee had thought, she’s mine. All grown up.

And her other boys, too. After Sam, there came the twins – as alike as shoes are. In the first few years of their life, it was Dee and Dee alone who knew who was who, and it was their ways that told her, not how they looked. Ben would gaze past her, as he lay on the changing mat; he’d watch a bee or a bird’s shadow on the bedroom wall – whilst Austin’s eyes would be on her, and her alone. Austin spoke first by three weeks. Yes, Dee knew who was who.

A pang, too, for those boys. Where are they now? Backpacking. Sticky with mosquito repellent, drinking beer with foreign names. Meeting girls, no doubt. Austin claimed he would not shave again till he was home, and Dee tries to imagine it – that wriggling tot on the flowery changing mat being able to grow facial hair at all. Ben wants to get his eyebrow pierced. How did it happen? Be safe, boys. Drop me a postcard, sometime.

But they fly. It is what the fledged birds must do, and she’s always known that. The nest can’t always be full.

She looks at Nan. Nancy aged six and three-quarters, who is far from fledged, thank God. There are the great surprises in life, and then there is Nan who was conceived after half a bottle of sweet sherry and a fumble on the sofa when Dee was nearly forty-four. She’d thought it was her menopause until she was sick in the footwell of the car. The risks … Ed had been nervous. But a life had been made so the life must be born. And now that life is swinging her legs on the bench outside.

Above them, and above the stone wall, is the sea. Wide, wide water. In the far distance is the white dot of the Morning Star and the trail of white water she leaves in her wake. It will be a house of girls tonight – just Dee and her youngest daughter. She wraps her arms around herself. Her other son, too, is on the Star – her second oldest child, with his stoop and silences, with his migraines which make him whimper with the pain. Sam, who loiters near Crest, runs along the coastal path or stays in his room, lifting weights. He does not do much more than this. No speaking, no letting go of the old ghosts. He trawls his self-blame as boats trawl their nets; it gathers everything, and slows him down, and one day she fears he’ll go under.

* * *

At Lowfield, the nurse is outside. She stands in her garden and watches the wind, as it blows through the grass. The nettle patch at Litty whitens, for the undersides of the leaves are paler than their tops. She loves these small moments.

In comes a car with a broken exhaust.

Emmeline parks, and climbs out. She leans into the back of the car and lifts out a large black plastic bag; the plastic has stretched and greyed in places where Emmeline’s fingers have been. Here.

Perfect. Tabitha goes to it. The bag is passed over as a child might be – with the nurse’s hand going underneath it, bringing the bag to her chest. I’m sorry I had to ask, but it’s all I could think of.

I’ll want them back.

You’ll get them back. Of course you will.

And I don’t want them torn. Or damaged.

They’re already torn and damaged – aren’t they?

Emmeline sniffs, ignores her. Has he said anything yet?

Not much.

His name?

No. Thank you for these. And Tabitha goes inside.

In the kitchen, she unties the bag and reaches in. There is a cream shirt, a blue jumper with a hood. Socks. T-shirts. They are clothes that Tabitha partly remembers. They were Tom’s – fraying, stained or worn-out clothes that he’d kept at his mother’s house. For once he’d met Maggie, he’d wanted to make room for her clothes – in his wardrobe, up at Crest.