The Visitor (21 page)

‘Swimming,' she says.

He shakes his head but is grinning. She knows he'll let her. He'll be itching to get in the water too and when they're deep enough so their feet don't reach the bottom her blushes will go. They always do. When they're bobbing together they knock elbows. One of them will graze the other's shin with their foot. They've stopped mumbling apologies in recent weeks. They will be closer than they are on land because both of them are different in the water.

It's a warm day, the first real sign of summer after cloud and cool breezes for weeks. He turns his back when she takes off her dress though he doesn't need to as she's wearing her nightdress underneath. He keeps his trousers on but takes off his shirt. She has perfected the art of looking at his chest without making it obvious, because that would be something new, unacknowledged. That would make the gossips right. His collar bone catches her eyes today, the line of it. She wants to run a finger across it to feel the bone beneath, the smoothness of his skin. She busies herself folding her dress and placing it on a rock.

They don't rush into the sea but savour the transition from dry to wet, letting the waves splash water up their legs then their chests. His presence by her side is strong. His body is close to her. It's all she can see. He seems to block out the cliffs, the horizon.

‘Better already,' she says.

‘You look it,' he says. ‘Let's swim out.'

He strikes ahead of her and she watches his brown hair moving away. It's grown long, to his collar, but she likes it. His skin is nearly as pale as hers. He works on land, in the Master's office, moving numbers from one tidy column into another. He's clever, this grown up boy Nicholas has become. Still thin and wiry, still with a lean face. His eyes are dark pools.

‘Hang on,' she calls. ‘Wait for me, Nicholas.'

He turns and waves, twenty feet or so away. Her chest still isn't right. She can't swim as strongly as usual. She can taste blood again. Nicholas bobs where he is, letting her catch up. Her nightdress blooms around her like a sail. She reaches him and he touches her arm, very gently. She wants to grab him, hold him tightly in the water. Would he let her? He is all she wants but he's hard to fathom. He might only think of her as she thinks of Jack, as a friend. But she would never do this with Jack, never get down to her nightdress and be close with him in the water. Close enough to press herself against him. But this doubt makes her keep her hands at her sides, beating time with the waves, her pulse. Morlanow has doubts too. The women mutter about Pearl but everyone mutters about Nicholas. She has a good reason not to be in chapel today. Nicholas doesn't.

‘It's nearly dinner time,' she says. ‘We should go back.'

He's disappointed. Even in the water she can see his shoulders slump. But he doesn't argue. Talk in Morlanow is a dangerous thing.

They reach their street through alleyways in the fisherman's quarter rather than the open space of the seafront. In the alleys you can disappear. At the back wall of the yard behind Pearl's house they say good bye. Nicholas gives her a leg-up to get over the wall. When his hand touches her leg she blushes and again she has a desire to hold him, fiercely and without blushing. She should have done so in the sea, or said something in the alleys on the way home. This closeness is almost too much to bear. She lingers on the wall, sitting astride the bricks, looking down at the squawking chickens in her yard and daring herself to tell him about this feeling that keeps threatening to overwhelm her. She hears singing. Alice is in the yard next door. There's no sign of little Samuel. Pearl's foot knocks a loose chunk of brick. Alice looks up. Her singing stops.

‘Be quick,' she says to Pearl. ‘They're on their way back.'

Nicholas climbs over his own wall, elegant as ever, and nips indoors. Next time, she promises herself.

‘Thanks,' Pearl says to Alice but the Tremain yard is empty. The singing is faint inside the house. Pearl half slides, half falls into her yard. She scrapes her leg on the rough brick and feels it bleeding but she can't stop to look. She has to have her nightdress hidden before everyone gets back. She has to hide this thing that's started, to keep it safe and for herself.

Four

The front door banged. She was in the kitchen, leaning her forehead against the wall. Jack was back. The day had stolen past her again. How long had she stood there? Still in her nightdress, the housecoat wrongly buttoned over it. She had been looking in the mirror, hadn't she? But crumbs of sand clung to her bare feet.

Jack hung his coat on the back of the door and put a papered parcel of fish on the table. He ran his eyes over Pearl. ‘What are you doing?' he said.

The light was fading. She was supposed to be in bed. Her chest was bad. There was something she was meant to be hiding. Jack was watching her.

‘I've been that busy today,' Pearl said. ‘I was just taking a breath.'

Jack didn't move but continued looking at her. She smoothed her nightdress. It was clammy against her skin.

‘That busy you couldn't get yourself dressed? What
have
you been doing?'

Pearl jammed her hands on her hips. ‘What have I been doing? I ask you! Washing every scrap of cloth in the house and wearing my hands out with soap. Is that enough for you or would you rather be looking after yourself these days, Mr Tremain?' That got him. ‘Then I went down to the shop and felt that worn after the walk back up here that I got into bed for an hour or so.'

‘Calm down. I hear you.' He sat at the table, taking in her sandy feet. ‘You've not been swimming, have you?'

‘I wouldn't have the time,' she told him.

Jack looked as if he was going to press the matter but instead sat quietly, waiting for her to come and take off his boots. ‘You were laid thick as a lintel this morning,' he said. ‘Didn't stir a beat when I left.'

She didn't move. Let him wait to have his boots off.

‘I was awake half the night,' she said. ‘Cat misbehaving outside.' She tried to sound relaxed though her breath was rushing quicker. ‘You didn't hear anything?'

‘Nothing,' he said. ‘What's for supper?'

Pearl heated some fat in a pan and buttered bread, all the time aware of Jack's eyes on her. Perhaps he was lying and had been awake last night when Nicholas came to her. A fresh thought struck her – perhaps Jack had made Nicholas leave, had banished him from the room. He was crafty, little Jack Tremain, and good at hiding. Always last to be found in games of hide and seek, able to hunt out secret hollows and tuck his limbs away. Even when he was brought into the daylight and a new game was begun, Pearl had the feeling that he hadn't been found so much as given himself up, tired of waiting.

‘What's that?' he said. ‘You're mumbling, Pearl.'

She was chewing words into her cheek.

‘Have you eaten today?' Jack said. ‘You've no colour in you.'

She couldn't remember. The bulk of the day was a cliff drop. That she couldn't think what she had done with it brought a shake to her hands. She turned and managed to smile. ‘Course I have,' she said. ‘Go and wash. I'll put the fish on.'

But he was staring at her. Why wouldn't he look away?

Jack got to his feet. ‘You have been swimming!' he shouted. ‘I can see it on you. Look at yourself – jumping all over the place. For goodness sake, Pearl.' Then he lowered his head. ‘I can't do for myself, you know that.' His twisted fingers groped uselessly for one another. ‘You'll have to take better care of yourself, and, and…get rid of this funny business. Mrs Tiddy told me—'

‘I heard my mother, on the seafront.' The words flew from Pearl's mouth before she had time to think.

He was struck dumb for a moment then said, ‘What are you talking about?' He looked at her in exasperation, spreading his hands wide. ‘It's this nonsense you've got to stop. People will talk and then…'

Pearl slumped into a chair. He came to stand over her.

‘You'll be holed up in some hospital place,' he said. ‘You see?'

She nodded. Jack patted her shoulder and left the room. She sat very still. The butter on the bread was a lurid streak of grease. A fly nosed the fat in the pan. It wouldn't do to let her guard down around Jack. He would play a long game, waiting for Pearl to give something away. It was the way he moved around her. It was obvious in that still moment in the kitchen. She wondered that she hadn't seen it before.

She stood and opened the front door. She could barely hear the sea but just the sight of its rich doily heads made Pearl more certain. Nicholas had come to her. He'd gone but he hadn't gone far and he would be back. The white hare and the knapweed cairn said so. Waiting was in her bones. Each season the pilchards played with Morlanow, making everyone linger at the seafront for weeks or months, some years never coming at all. Pearl had waited for Nicholas this long, she could wait a while yet. But she would have to be cautious. She couldn't trust Jack one inch.

Five

She's stuck indoors again. The dream came for her last night and with it a fit of coughing, her chest shut tight and hot. She's not in bed today though, not taken as bad as that, but still unable to go to the palace. The women are making ready for another catch of pilchards. They are back to waiting, Morlanow's most constant state. Nicholas might come calling. He said he would try and slip away from the Master's hut. Only to see how she's faring, of course. Nothing more than that. They'll stay inside today, keep away from prying eyes, sitting by the hearth. Just to talk, to hear the news from the seafront. But perhaps when he's told her all about the orders and the prices she'll be able tell him how she feels, and maybe he'll put his arms around her and hold her, not just graze her hand in a way that could be accidental. She wants him to say he wants her too. She needs him to say it.

There's a knock at the door and she's on her feet quicker than she should be with her chest as bad as it is. But it's Gerald Hoskin on the doorstep, Polly's young man. Gerald smiles but it's clear he's as disappointed as Pearl. When Pearl realised she wasn't beautiful it was partly because she saw that Polly had become a looker. Her sister has grown more rosy-faced and tidy as Sarah Dray's got stouter, which is something at least. Before Polly was ensnared by Gerald, men stared openly in the street and left posies of primroses at the back door, hoping her father wouldn't catch them in the act. But now Gerald is the only man who brings Polly flowers from the cliff path.

He's not a tall man, and not broad for a fisherman either, but his hands are strong. He has a big family in Govenek where he's from – six brothers and two sisters – and they all look like him. Blond with creased up eyes. He reads very well and when he's brave enough to try he can make people laugh too. But he doesn't have a boat of his own and no crews are hiring.

‘Morning,' Gerald says, his cheeks colouring as they do when anyone but Polly speaks to him. ‘Is she here?'

‘She's at the palace,' Pearl says. ‘She'll be home for her dinner, I think. You can stay and wait if you want.'

‘I don't want to trouble you. I'll go and wait for her outside the palace. I don't mind.'

Pearl smiles and nods, picturing the catcalls from the women when they see him mooning about in the doorway. But he's kind and good and Polly is lucky to have someone like Gerald who so clearly loves her.

‘You sure?' Pearl says. ‘I can make you some tea.'

‘No, it's fine. Plenty on the seafront to keep me entertained. That many east coast men using the harbour today. More of them than Morlanow men, I should think.'

Pearl doesn't say anything to that. Everyone's got something to say about the east coast men. There's no use adding to the bad feeling.

‘If it wasn't for their Sunday practices I wouldn't mind them,' Gerald says, lost in his own thoughts. ‘Seem a good sort and they've got some smart gear to fish with. Getting big catches. But then who am I to talk, eh? Govenek men been sinners longer than the east coasters, and at least Sabbath-breakers have boats.'

‘Gerald…'

He scuffs his boot on the ground, keeping his eyes fixed on it when he says, ‘I don't know why your Polly holds out any hope for me, Pearl. Your father'll see sense soon enough and I'll be sent back up the cliff path home.'

‘He likes you,' Pearl says. ‘You're a fisherman.'

‘Without a boat,' Gerald says. ‘Not much of one.'

‘Things will get better,' she says. ‘Someone will take you on as a hand at least, then you'll be able to work towards your own boat.'

Gerald looks up and smiles but sadly. ‘Not here,' he says. ‘There's nothing for us here.'

She doesn't know what to say and Gerald looks uncomfortable. There's an awkward pause before he turns abruptly and goes off in the direction of the palace. Such melancholy isn't like him but there's plenty of that around the harbour wall. Melancholy and whispering. She's about to shut the door on it all when she hears a shout from next door, on the Tremain side of the house. It's the usual row. Mr Tremain is shouting at Alice which is soon followed by the cries of the child, Samuel. Jack will be safely out at sea at least. The weather's good. For east coast men and Morlanow men. But not for poor Gerald.