Water (4 page)

town. After that he would go almost every day, taking Pitiable with him to help search and carry,

but the quiet days of the heat wave brought little to land.

That dense stillness broke, as usual, with a week of storm. There—was a proverb in the town,

“The hotter burns the sun, the wilder blows the wind,” and so it proved that year, with gales that

brought down trees and chimneys and stripped roofs and scattered haystacks, while day and

night huge rollers thundered against the shore. On the ninth night the storm blew itself out and

was followed by a dawn of pearly calm.

Probity was up before sunrise and gulped his breakfast and pulled on his boots and told Pitiable

to leave the dishes unwashed and the hearth unlaid.

“The Lord spoke to me in the night,” he said. “We must be first down on the shore, for this is the

day on which He will provide.”

The town was barely stirring as they hurried towards the harbour, and left up Northgate to the

beaches. On Home Beach there were men about, seeing to their boats, many of which, though

drawn well up above the tide-lines, had been tossed about by the storm, overturned, piled

together or washed inland. Probity hurried past, and on over Shag Point to Huxholme Bay, which

was steep small shingle. Here they stopped to search. The waves had brought in a mass of new

stuff, piles of wrack and driftwood, tangles of half-rotted cording, torn nets, broken casks and

crates, as well as sea-things, shells and jellyfish and small squid and so on. Probity had a piece of

chalk with which to mark anything he wanted to collect on his way back, but he was not looking

for timber or firewood to-day and marked nothing.

Next came Watch Point, both sandy and rocky. Here Pitiable picked out of the sand an ancient

leather boot with a spur, which Probity tested with his jack knife to see if it might be silver. It

was not, but he put it in his sack and poked around with his staff in the sand, in case it might be

part of some buried hoard exposed by the storm, but again it was not.

Beyond Oyster Bay lay the Scaurs, two miles of tilted rocky promontories with inlets between,

like the teeth of a broken comb, and beyond them black unscalable cliffs. The Scaurs were the

best hunting ground, but slow work, full of crannies and fissures where trove might lodge. If

Pitiable had been less sore from last night’s beating—lengthy and savage after Probity had been

nine days cooped up by the storm—she might have enjoyed the search, the jumping and

scrambling, and the bright sea-things that lurked in the countless pools. As it was, she searched

numbly, dutifully, her mind filled with the dread of their homecoming, having found nothing.

That failure would be made her fault, reason enough for another beating.

She searched the upper half of the beach and Probity the lower. They were about half way to the

cliffs, and could already hear the screaming of the tens of thousands of gulls that nested there,

when her way was blocked by the next jut of rock, a vertical wall too high for her to climb. She

was hesitating to go shoreward or seaward to get past the barrier when she heard a new noise, a

quick rush of water followed by a slithering, a mewling cry and a splash. After a short while the

sounds were repeated in the same order. And again. And again.

They seemed to come from beyond the barrier to her right, so she turned left, looking for a place

where she could climb and peer over without whatever was making them becoming aware of her.

She came to a pile of rocks she could scramble up. The top of the barrier was rough but level.

Crouching, she crept towards the sea and discovered a large, deep pool, formed by the main rock

splitting apart and then becoming blocked at the seaward end by an immense slab, trapping into

the cleft any wave that might be thrown that far up the shore. The seal at the top end wasn’t

perfect, and enough water had drained away for the surface to be several feet down from the rim,

leaving a pool about as wide as one of the fishing boats and twice as long, or more.

As Pitiable watched, the surface at the seaward end of the pool convulsed and something shot up

in a burst of foam. She saw a dark head, a smooth, pale body, and a threshing silvery tail that

drove the creature up the steep slope of the slab that held the pool in. A slim arm—not a leg or

flipper but an arm like Pitiable’s own—reached and clutched, “uselessly, well short of the rim,

and then the thing slithered back with its thin despairing wail and splashed into the water. From

what Mercy had told her of Charity Goodrich’s adventure, Pitiable understood at once what she

had seen.

Amazed out of her numbness, she watched the creature try once more, and again, before she

silently backed away and looked down the shore for her grandfather. He was standing near the

water’s edge but gazing landward, looking for her, she guessed. She waved to him to come and

he hurried towards her. She held her finger to her lips and made urgent gestures for silence with

her other hand. By now he must have heard the sounds and understood that something living was

concerned, which must not be alarmed, so he made his way round and climbed cautiously up the

same way that she had. She pointed and he crept forward to peer into the pool.

She lost count of the cries and splashes while he stared, but when at length he backed away and

turned she saw that his eyes were glistening with a new, excited light. He climbed down, helped

her to follow, chalked his mark onto the rock and led her up the beach.

“The Lord has indeed provided,” he whispered. “Blessed be His name. Now you must stand

guard while I fetch nets and men to bring this thing home. If anyone comes, you must tell them

that the find is mine. See how excellent are His ways! This very week He brings the fair to town!

Stay here. Do not go back up the rock. It must not see you.”

He strode off, walking like a younger man, picking his way easily across the broken rocks.

Pitiable sat on a sea-worn slab and waited. She felt none of Probity’s excitement. She was now

appalled at what she had done. Probity and his helpers would catch the sea-child and sell her—

from what she had seen, Pitiable was almost sure it was a girl—sell her to the showmen at the

fair. That in itself was dreadful. The People had no dealings with the fair that came each autumn.

It was an occasion of frivolity and wickedness, they said. But now Probity was going to take the

sea-child to them and haggle for a price. More than anything else, more than the ruined farm,

more even than her own beatings, this made Pitiable see how much he had changed.

Obediently she sat and watched him go. When he came to Oyster Bay, he turned back, shading

his eyes, so she stood and waved and he waved back and vanished into the dip, leaving her alone

with the sea and the shore and the strange, sad cries from the pool. By now Pitiable was again

too wrapped in her own misery to hear them as anything more than cries, as meaningless to her

as the calling of the gulls. It struck her perhaps that Probity would perhaps not sell the sea-girl,

but would join the fair, taking Pitiable with him, and show her himself. She would be dead by

then, of course—in Charity Goodrich’s story the sea-people could not live long out of water—

but people would pay money to see even a dead sea-child.

The cries and splashes stopped for a while. Probably the sea-child was resting for a fresh attempt,

and yes, when it came the swirl of the water was stronger and the slap of the body against the

rock was louder, and the wail as the child fell back yet more despairing than before—so lost, so

hopeless, that this time Pitiable heard it for what it was, and when it came again she felt it was

calling to her, to her alone, in a language she alone knew, the language of a child trapped in a pit

of despair by things too powerful for her to overcome.

Weeping, she realised that she could not bear it.

She dried her eyes and rose and climbed back up to the pool. This time as she watched the seachild’s desperate leapings she saw that there must be something wrong with the other arm, which

dangled uselessly by the slim body as it shot from the water. Still, one arm should be enough, if

Pitiable could lean far enough to reach it, so she made her way round to the sloping rock, knelt

and craned over.

The sea-girl was on the point of leaping again. For a moment Pitiable gazed down at the wan,

drawn face with its too-small mouth and its too-large dark eyes, but then the sea-girl twisted

from her leap and plunged back below the surface, leaving nothing but the swirl of her going.

Pitiable reached down, calling gently and kindly, telling the girl she wanted to help her, though

they must hurry because her grandfather would soon be back. But the girl hid in the depths,

invisible behind the sky-reflecting surface, and did not stir.

Pitiable stood up and looked along the Scaurs, but there was still no sign of Probity. He must

have reached Home Beach by now, but perhaps the men there were too busy with their boats to

listen to him. Well, she thought, though I cannot swim, if the girl will not come to me, I must go

to her. At its shoreward end the pool narrowed almost to a slit, into which a few boulders had

fallen and wedged, so she made her way round, sat down and took off all her clothes. Then she

lowered herself into the slimy crack and, using the boulders for footholds, climbed down to the

water.

Despite the hot summer it was chill from the storm, which had churned up the underdeeps and

thrown them here ashore. The salt stung the weals where Probity’s belt had cut, but she forced

herself down and down, clutching a jag of rock beside her. With her chin level with the water she

spoke.

“Please come. Please trust me. I want to help you. I will take you back to the sea.”

Nothing happened. She was about to plead again, but then changed her mind and lowered herself

a little further, drew a deep breath and ducked beneath the surface. Through closed lips she

started to hum the music Mercy had taught her, and now she discovered why it needed to be

hummed, not sung. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t open her mouth under water—the sea-people

spoke with words, so they must be able to. It was because now her whole body acted as a sort of

sounding-board from which the slow notes vibrated. She could feel them moving away from her

through the water, and when she rose to draw breath and sank again, they were still there, the

same wavering air that she had heard Mercy hum so often, but this time coming out of the depths

where the sea-child lay hidden.

Pitiable joined the music, weaving her own notes through it as she had learned to do with Mercy

those last days, until she needed to draw breath again, but before she sank back, the surface

stirred and the sea-girl’s head appeared, staring at her from only a few feet away, lips parted,

desperate with fear.

Pitiable smiled at her and hummed again, in the air this time. The sea-girl answered and moved

closer, slowly, but then came darting in and gave Pitiable a quick, brushing kiss and swirled

away. Pitiable smiled and beckoned. Now the girl came more gently, and stayed, letting Pitiable

take her good arm by the wrist and wind it around her own neck and then turn so that the girl’s

body lay along Pitiable’s back and Pitiable could try to climb out the way she had come.

She gestured first, trying to explain that though they had to start inland, she would turn seaward

as soon as they reached the top of the rock. The girl seemed to understand, and hummed the tune

again, with a querying rise at the end.

“Yes,” said Pitiable. “I will take you to the sea.”

The great fish tail became desperately heavy as she dragged it from the water, but the girl

understood the need and spoke and knocked with her closed knuckles against Pitiable’s shoulder

to stop her climbing while she deftly swung her tail sideways and up so that it lodged among the

fallen boulders and Pitiable was now lifting only half her weight as she climbed on. Pitiable’s

small body was wiry from its household tasks, and since Mercy had fallen ill, she had had to

learn how to lift and shift burdens beyond her apparent strength, so she strove and grunted up the

cleft, with the girl helping as best as she could, until she could roll her out onto the surface and

climb gasping beside her.

From then on she could crawl, with the sea-girl’s arm round her neck and the chilly body pressed

against her back and the tail slithering behind. The rock promontory that held the pool tilted

steadily down towards the incoming tide. It had weathered into sharp ridges, painful to crawl on,

but Pitiable barely noticed, because a tremendous thought had come to her and given her fresh

strength. She herself belonged body and soul to Probity, to beat and use in whatever way he

chose until he finally killed her. Until then she was utterly trapped in that pit, with no escape. But

here, now, there was this one thing she could prevent him from doing. He would not have the

sea-girl, to join her in the pit. Not now, not ever.

So she crawled on. Soon the sea-girl was gulping and panting from being too long in the air, but

she lay still and trusting as the sea came slowly nearer. At last one flank of the promontory

sloped down with the small waves washing in beside it, and Pitiable could crawl down until the