Tidetown (21 page)

‘Here,' she says as he stands in the doorway between jobs, ‘some bread and cheese and a glass of milk.'

She watches him as he sits in the corner, chewing slowly, taking in his surroundings. There's something about his adolescence, mixed with a gentle assuredness, that warms him to her. He wipes his mouth after draining his glass.

‘The next anything?' he says, raising an eyebrow.

She smiles at his familiarity, his robustness.

‘Wood, Master Spider,' she says after a moment's thought. ‘There's a pile of logs outside that needs to be chopped up for the fires.'

Without further a word he ambles from his stool and is out the back door.

‘The axe is by the shed, by the hoes and the rakes,' she shouts after him.

He enjoys the action, the weight and power of the axe, its sharpness, the way it holds its own balance as he lifts it above his head, the perfect arc through the air, how it splits the wood asunder, the sound and the smell, the splintered pieces falling in piles on either side of the chopping block.

When Carp appears he is so engrossed in the rhythm and action of the wood chopping that he fails to notice her. She stands to one side of the shed with a peculiar fascination for the twitch and shift of the muscles in his bare arms, the flow and wave of his hair as he thuds the axe through to the chopping block. She steps away, surprised and unsure of the feelings that course through her.

Then he turns to stretch his back and there she is. Their eyes meet. Some form of recognition. Some notion of their shared youthfulness. She says nothing, pretends nothing. Slowly, deliberately, she puts her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and walks back towards the house.

Night-time descends upon Tidetown as a welcome shroud. Something in the quality of the dark hides away the blemishes, the fears, stifles the coughs and softens the edges. The townsfolk retreat to their parlours and bedrooms, each nestled into a private space where the worries and cares of the day can be revealed and dissected, then held in check within soft down pillows, beneath duck-feather coverlets. The same moon, high in the sky, shared by a myriad of souls across the land and sea: bedding down, keeping watch. Another day done.

NINE

‘The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.'
– Napoleon Bonaparte

The winter had stretched into the new year as a creeping, sneaking frost. The land stayed frozen and silent. Temperatures plummeted and the spring barely thawed the earth's crust. No one could remember a time like it. The previous summer had come overcast, as if the sun had found shelter elsewhere and hidden away, reluctant to illuminate and brighten what was to be seen below. The leaves on the summer trees seemed to be waiting to fall, eager to get any hope of regrowth and rejuvenation out of the way for the year. Crops failed miserably, animals stood subdued by shock in the fields. By that autumn the plague had as firm a grip across the land as had the blanket of ice the previous winter.

Nowhere was to be spared.

Mrs Barnum is glad when the handsome young man joins her in the coach at Keighly-upon-Lea. She has been alone for several hours, ever since the elderly couple alighted at Frampton, and she always prefers company to solitude. As soon as the man has settled on the bench seat opposite her, she nods by way of introduction.

‘Mr Duke,' says the man, taking the feathered hat from his head and laying it on his lap. ‘On my way to Tidetown.'

‘I too am heading for that destination,' she says delightedly. ‘So we shall be good companions to journey's end. I am Mrs Frances Barnum, the very proud mother of that very town's deputy mayor.'

‘Proud you must be, indeed.'

‘And, sir, what brings you to Tidetown?'

‘I am from the Provincial Medical Office, come to survey the health of the town … and its preparedness against eventualities, against disaster. “He who would valiant be”, you might say.'

Mrs Barnum is nonplussed, befuddled by this man who speaks so obliquely. He senses her confusion, but continues nonetheless.

‘… And to determine, and report back to my masters in Bray, of Tidetown's ability to pay for assistance, where payment, as well as prayer for that matter, may be required.'

‘Oh,' she gasps, physically taken aback at the intensity of the words and the worrisome glare that follows them. As if reading her mind, Mr Duke leans forward, as if about to impart a secret.

‘Busy, busy, busy. This town, then the next. No peace for the wicked, eh? Unto God give to God, but unto Caesar give to Caesar.'

Shifting in her seat, uncertain as to how she should respond, Mrs Barnum looks out of the window at the passing fields, wondering if sometimes solitude might indeed be the better option.

‘You've cut my sandwiches the wrong way!'

‘The wrong way, Miss Angelica?'

Spider stands against the wall of the morning room. The mayor has long since left for the council chambers, just a smear of strawberry jam on a napkin a reminder of his breakfasting.

‘Diagonal. I always have them diagonal. Do you know nothing, kitchen boy?'

Spider considers the question, takes a bread knife from the sideboard and, without saying a word, cuts the halved sandwich on the diagonal. The mustard that Angelica loves slavered on her bacon oozes from the now quartered sandwich as if from an open wound.

When Angelica looks up from the butchery Spider has left the room.

First of all she put it down to the long journey. The stagecoach was far from new and she felt every bump, every stone on the road from her village home in Woodford all the long and windy way to Tidetown. Mrs Barnum had been nervously anticipating for months the prospect of visiting her son, so proud was she when she heard he had become deputy mayor. So she assumed the strange tingling on the surface of her skin and her rising temperature (and, dare she say, sweats) were all due to the excitement and rigours of the journey.

‘You look flushed, Mama,' said Joshua, as he took her hand and helped her down from the stagecoach.

‘All in a tizz and lather at seeing you, my precious boy,' she said, lifting up the hem of her voluminous skirt to keep it out of the mud.

At dinner in the hotel that very first night she felt woozy and disconnected. As much as she longed for the company of her son and his regaling tales of the mayor and bugle calls, her body cried out to lie down and sleep.

‘I fear the journey is still too heavy upon me,' she said, the dessert of treacle pudding and double cream, one of her favourites, barely touched before her. ‘I need to rest, darling boy.'

Joshua took his beloved mother up the stairs to her room. He waited in the corridor as she undressed and got into bed.

‘Come in now, Joshua,' she called.

He sat by her bedside. She looked frail and delicate under the covers, the outline of her body, freed of skirts and corsets, almost childlike. On her head she wore a simple white nightcap that heightened and framed her wrinkled face.

She reached out for Joshua's hand.

‘If only your father had lived to see you now,' she said. ‘How puffed up he would have been. Deputy mayor of Tidetown! So very proud he would have been.'

‘Yes, Mama,' replied Joshua, secretly doubting that anything he could ever have done would have satisfied or pleased his father.

Maybe sensing Joshua's reservations, she squeezed his hand tighter.

‘He was hard on you, I know that,' she said, wondering if the weakness spreading through her body was a result of the strain of all those years of marriage and motherhood. How often she had asked her husband to show some love to this boy, peculiar and detached as he was.

‘He was never an easy man and he had such ideals as to what he wanted from a son.'

‘Do not stress yourself, Mama,' said Joshua, noting well the sadness in her voice, ‘you are tired and now you must rest.'

And so Joshua kissed his mother on the forehead, bade her to sleep well and left the room, not knowing that the next time he saw her she would be dead: the first Tidetown victim of the plague.

The emergency meeting of the Tidetown Council Executive takes place in the mayor's office on the top floor of the town hall. With his back to the seated members, the mayor looks out of the large window. He can see the townsfolk busy about their evening activities as if nothing untoward, nothing disastrous was unfolding in their midst.

‘We have word from the Provincial Government,' says Professor Wells, the Chief Medical Officer, ‘that fifty per cent of adults in some towns have been stricken. It seems that all die within days of infection.'

The mayor continues to stare out of the window. In the square below he sees an old lady look up at him. He must appear grand and aloof in the huge, brightly lit window, high up, framed by the solid granite facade. He turns back into the room. There, seated around the large oak table are his councillors, waiting for his command. Professor Wells, an elderly man of great integrity who has both brought into this world and seen into the next many citizens of this town, raises his hand.