Coincidence: A Novel (20 page)

21

May 2011

T
hey took an early flight from London City Airport that brought them into Ronaldsway. The landing strip starts just a few dozen yards from the top of the cliffs, so the view from Azalea's window appeared to promise a bellyflop into the Irish Sea until suddenly the island was beneath them, and then they were on the ground.

‘I've never been to the Isle of Man before,' said Thomas.

‘I was born here,' Azalea murmured. What did she expect? She had glimpsed green fields and roads and rooftops. It could have been Somerset or Devon.

They hired a small car and set off towards the Parish of Castletown and Peel. The sun was shining. Azalea felt a numbing sense of anticipation, or was it dread?

‘Do you recognise anything?' asked Thomas. She shook her head. How could she recognise this place – this island from her infanthood?

The roadway wound gently through this hamlet and that one, and then the sea was ahead of them and the lane descended past rows of white cottages to a harbour decked with pleasure boats and fishing smacks. There was a big square inn beside which they parked the car.

‘Ice cream?' invited Thomas.

They walked up to the village shop and bought two vanilla cones, and then, like a pair of tourists, they strolled along the quay observing the boats and watching fishermen roll out nylon nets. They settled on a bench, and a kind blaze of May sunshine served to relax them. The tranquillity of the place after the bustle of London was almost unreal.

‘I could live here,' announced Azalea.

‘You once did,' Thomas reminded her.

She looked over towards the harbour, and the bobbing of the boats seemed to match a gentle rocking in her spirit, and a clean gust of sea air filled her lungs. Above her the herring gulls perched on a high wall waiting for scraps. Nothing about this place seemed familiar; but everything was familiar. She tried to remember the way she had felt at Peter Loak's house in Lakeland. There, she had sensed an echo from her distant past; she had seen in a forgotten corner of her memory the track that led over the stile and down the daffodil path to the beck; she had remembered – or half remembered – the old house and its big empty rooms. And in the background, at Buttermere, there had been a figure; the ever-present shadow of a person who could only have been Marion Yves, her mother. But the shadow of Marion wasn't here. Not here in Port St Menfre. Not yet. But the way the boats rose and fell, and the way the water lapped at the hulls, and the way the breeze came in from the harbour – all of these things, if not familiar, seemed at least to be truthful. They seemed real. And the scent of lobster pots and landed fish; and the hawking of the gulls. These were real too.

On a fishing boat way out in the bay a tall, gaunt fisherman wearing faded waders slopped water from a bucket along his decks. Azalea nudged Thomas. ‘Look at him,' she said, conspiratorially. ‘Do you think that's him?'

‘Too young,' said Thomas. ‘He would be in his sixties by now.'

‘We should have brought binoculars,' she said.

They sat and enjoyed the moment.

‘It feels wrong somehow,' Azalea said. ‘Tracking him down like this.' She watched the gaunt fisherman as he stacked plastic crates on his deck. Did she have a father who worked on a boat like this one, in this little harbour, out in that blue bay? ‘I always thought that I would just encounter him somewhere; somewhere at random – like I did with John Hall and Peter Loak.'

‘Sometimes,' said Thomas, ‘encounters need a nudge to make them happen.'

‘Maybe we shouldn't look too hard for him,' said Azalea. ‘Maybe we should just sit here and wait, and see if he comes to us.' The sunlight flickered on the waves like a soft strobe or an old film.

‘He might be out at sea,' said Thomas. ‘In fact, he probably is.'

‘Do they fish on a Saturday?' Azalea asked, feeling immediately foolish. Of course they would fish on a Saturday. There were no weekends at sea.

They finished the ice creams and found themselves slightly at a loss for what to do next. There was no plan. Thomas had simply said, ‘I've bought two tickets to the Isle of Man. I thought we could go and find Gideon Robertson.' And she had agreed. And here they were. But what should they do now?

They walked back up the quayside to the town. A little shop sold postcards and souvenirs: pottery emblazoned with the three legs of Man, Manx cats in many guises, ashtrays shaped like the Laxey Wheel, model motorcycles, tea towels embroidered with Celtic runes, seashells and nautical paraphernalia. Thomas bought Azalea a badge embossed with the Isle of Man motif, and Azalea pinned it to her lapel.

Back outside they made their way up the cliff path. Without knowing where they were, they walked right past 4 Briny Hill Walk where Marion Yves had lived and where Gideon Robertson had been her lodger, or something more. They came upon the Parish Church of St Menfre and rested on the bench, overlooking the rooftops and the bay, where once Marion Yves had sat and thrown bread to the seagulls.

‘What do we do now?' Azalea asked.

‘I suppose,' said Thomas, ‘we ought to ask someone.'

But instead they sat and savoured the good things that the day had to offer as the sunshine stroked their faces.

An old man with a head of feather-white hair emerged from the churchyard; a very old man. He walked with two sticks. He appeared to be making for the bench, so Thomas stood to let him sit. The old man lowered himself down next to Azalea, who started to stand up, but he beckoned her to stay. ‘Please don't leave on my account,' he said in a voice that was half whisper, half wheeze.

Azalea lowered herself back down. ‘This is such a lovely spot,' she said.

The old man didn't answer. But he did turn his head to look at Azalea through watery eyes. And then he turned back to gaze out over the bay. ‘I mistook you for your mother,' he said after a moment. ‘You do look very much like her.'

Azalea felt a wobble in her world.

‘Is she still with us?' asked the old man. ‘Is Marion still alive?'

Azalea shook her head.

‘Alas, my dear. I'm so sorry.'

How strange it seemed to meet someone who was sorry about Marion. ‘You knew her?' Azalea asked.

Again the old man sat silent, but he nodded in response to her question. A warm sea breeze heavy with the smell of landed fish wafted up the hillside. ‘I hope,' wheezed the old man after a while, ‘that you have forgiven me for the scar.'

Her fingers fluttered over the familiar line.

‘You were wearing a very glossy christening gown. You just slipped through my arms.'

‘You're the priest?' Azalea said.

‘Yes, my dear,' said the Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Lender, ‘I am the priest.'

Out in the harbour, the fishing boat with the gaunt fisherman was making its way between the harbour walls, out into the Irish Sea. Azalea was struck by the timelessness of the place. Even the pleasure boats and souvenir shops and cafés couldn't conceal the thread of continuity and tradition that clung to this village. That fisherman would be the son of a fisherman, and he the son of another, and so it would go back into the past and perhaps into the future as if the pages of the book had already been written. And was she, Azalea, the daughter of just such a fisherman? She was certainly the granddaughter of a man who had sailed out every day between those same harbour walls, and the great-granddaughter of another. Did the sudden comfort she felt about this place hearken back to a calling deep within her genes, the same calling that had summoned the first of her kin to this bay, to these waters?

‘What was she like – my mother?' she asked the priest.

‘Oh, my dear,' said the reverend, ‘has she been lost to us for some time?'

‘For twenty-nine years,' Azalea said.

The Reverend Lender leaned forwards upon his sticks and contemplated the view. ‘The last time I saw your mother must have been around then,' he said at last. ‘She looked a lot like you do now. She was an outspoken young woman, but she had a good heart. A very good heart.'

Azalea told him Marion's story. She told him about HMS
Sheffield
and Peter Loak. She told him about the fairground in Totnes and about Carl Morse and the cliffs at Millook.

After this, they sat for a while in silence. Then Lender told Azalea more about Marion. He told her the story of the dropped baby at the font and asked again for her forgiveness.

‘Of course I forgive you,' Azalea told him. She took his hand. His skin felt like paper.

‘She came to me,' Lender said, ‘when she was first expecting you. She wanted to ask God for guidance. I'm afraid I wasn't much help.'

‘What guidance did she need?'

‘Oh . . .' Lender hesitated. ‘This and that.'

‘Was it to do with my father? Was it because she wanted to know who my father was?'

The old priest nodded slowly. ‘Did she ever tell you the story of the seagulls?'

Azalea shook her head. ‘I barely remember her,' she said. ‘But I have heard the story. I heard it from Peter Loak.'

‘I was angry with her.' His voice dropped, and it seemed as if the breeze would whip his words out across the bay.

Azalea found herself leaning closer to hear him.

‘I shouldn't have been angry, but I was. I told her this was no way to put your problems to God. But Marion didn't see things the same way I did. In her view, everything happens for a reason. That's why it made sense to her to make a serious decision about her life based upon nothing better than a seagull and a piece of bread.'

This made Azalea smile. ‘I can understand that. I think perhaps it's something I might have done.'

‘We were sitting on this bench,' the priest told her.

She tried to imagine it. She had, in a sense, been there, unborn, just a bundle of cells in a womb. On the rooftops today the gulls were perched, scanning the ocean. Perhaps these birds were descendants of the gull that saved her life. She smiled at the thought.

‘So is Peter Loak your father then?' asked Lender. ‘Your real father? Just as Marion believed God had told her?'

Azalea shook her head. ‘My real father was a man called Luke Folley.' And she felt a tear appear unbidden in her eye. She blinked it quickly away. ‘He was my real father because he loved me and he raised me; and in the end, he gave his life for me.'

‘Then he truly was your father,' said the priest.

‘But as for the man who lent me just one cell from his body, I don't know who that man was. When I was a child I met John Hall. Do you remember him?'

The old man nodded.

‘He believed he was my father, and I believed him too. Then seventeen years passed and I met Peter. He also believed himself to be my father, so what could I say? Maybe he was. Maybe the seagull told the truth.'

‘And what of Gideon Robertson? Are you here to find him?'

Azalea nodded, and as she did the tear reappeared in her eye.

‘Are you all right?' asked Thomas, who had been listening to the conversation.

The old man gave him a gentle but reproving look. ‘There are times,' he said, ‘when it is prudent not to ask.' Slowly he raised himself up on his sticks. ‘You had better come with me,' he said.

They followed him at his hobbling pace back through the gate of the churchyard.

‘Are you still the vicar here?' asked Thomas.

‘Oh no,' the wheeze was almost a laugh. ‘No, indeed. I've been retired for many, many years.'

Azalea was holding Lender by the arm as they toiled up the three or four shallow steps to the great oak door of the church.

‘They built this church,' said Lender, ‘in fourteen hundred and twenty-five.' He stood, perhaps to admire the building, perhaps to recover his breath from the steps. ‘The island had just been transferred from the rule of Scotland to the rule of England. Then in 1405 King Henry IV gave the island to his friend, Sir John Stanley. It was a very amiable arrangement. All Stanley had to do was provide a gift of two falcons to every new king of England on his coronation. Of course, Stanley hardly bothered to visit the island; but he did give the Church a very free rein, and hence,' Lender waved a stick up towards the church, ‘we have magnificent places such as this.'

They stepped out of the spring sunshine into the cool shade of the church porch. Slowly they followed the Reverend Lender, down past the font where Azalea had slid from the preacher's arms and earned the scar that would line her face for life; up the aisle and through the nave where once Marion had bowed her head and prayed to God for direction; and through the chancel past the choir stalls. Azalea wondered for one moment if the Reverend Lender was about to ask them to kneel and pray. Instead he led them to one side and into a transept chapel behind the organ.

They stood in the transept, which was lit by a stained-glass window depicting the gospel fishermen, each with a halo, pulling in a net from a small boat. The Reverend Lender sank into one of the pews. Azalea helped him down. ‘Why have you brought us here?' she asked.

The old man nodded very slowly. Then he raised one stick and pointed to a brass plaque beneath the window. ‘We put this here because of the window. It seemed the right place.'

The engraving on the plaque also bore the image of a fisherman with his net; and the words below read, ‘In Loving Memory of the Men of Port St Menfre who Gave their Lives to the Sea'. Beneath this was a text that read, ‘For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me'.

And now the tears were in Azalea's eyes again and she could read no further. She let go her grasp on the arm of the Reverend Doctor, and instead she found a hand reaching for Thomas. She slid her hand within his.

Beneath the Bible text came a list of names and dates.