A Year of Marvellous Ways (13 page)

24

T
hat night the moon was out and a sliver off full
. Huge brushstrokes of pink and mauve had encroached upon the deepening blue. The river was filling up and shadows were forming on the bright surface and music danced hand in hand with the tide. A familiar trumpet introduction curled around the trees. Armstrong. Louis, they whispered.

A long time since Drake had heard music. Had forgotten how it stirred, how it moved him. For months he had tried to remember the name of the jazz club in Paris, the one he went to after the war. He had tried to remember the name on the ferry back to England whilst he gripped the rails and vomited on to his shoes.

He remembered following a group of American soldiers – black soldiers, they were – down a dingy staircase into a dank underground cave, full of sweat and dancing and smoke and drink, and the music was unrepentant and men, women danced freely, danced sex upright and fully clothed. A woman came and sat next to him and she was French and she leant over and whispered,
Merci
. And then she whispered,
Liberté
, and the only reason he remembered was because he thought at the time they rhymed. She got up, saluted him and left. Even in civvies he looked like a soldier.

Drake caught his reflection in the glass. The soldier had been replaced by something else. A fisherman perhaps? He went on to the balcony and saw Marvellous inspecting the pit-fire he had started an hour before.

Drake called out to her and she looked up and waved.

Caveau. That was the name of the club. Caveau s
omething
.

They fished in a creek still stained by the fall of day, and they watched in silence as the iridescent flow of pink and gold gave way to the solemn colour of night. Marvellous reeled in and cast her line back out towards the deep black channel. They’ll bite now, she whispered.

How d’you know?

Shh, she said.

Fuck! said Drake.

Got one?

The
jab jab jab
was like electricity in his muscles and his heart beat fast and even faster still when he saw the silver fish darting just below the surface. He’d never fished before and he felt like a boy, and he laughed and thought he might even have squealed like a girl. And Marvellous said, Careful now, we want this one, and he was careful and he did what she said, and he reeled in and raised the rod, reeled in and raised the rod until panicked gills could be seen flapping at surface break and the fish surrendered with a last flick of fin on the ignominious mud, staring wildly at the idiot who had caught him, the squealing idiot who had never landed a fish before. God, what a silly way to go, thought fish.

A mullet, said Marvellous. A good size too. And she hit it on the head with a thick branch.

She stood over Drake and showed him how to gut the fish. Knife under the gills and head off. That’s it, she said. Slice all the way along from its bottom. Scrape the guts out. Simple. Here’s your fish, Francis Drake. And Drake took it in both his hands and he felt so proud. And he wanted to hold that fish up high like a trophy and would have done it, had Marvellous not pointed out the bright hungry eyes that watched him intently from the barren trees around.

They drank mugs of warm bitter ale whilst the fish cooked on a griddle pan in a sea of flames, butter and salt browning and crisping the skin.

The wreck on the sand bank, said Drake. Was it your boat?

No, said Marvellous, that’s
Deliverance
. That was Old Cundy’s boat, a fisher chap I knew way-back. Both he and his boat passed on a few months after Dunkirk, not that either of them were particularly seaworthy at the time.

Marvellous took the pan off the fire and on to the grass. It sizzled and spat. Plate, she said and Drake handed her his plate and she placed the fish upon it. There was little room for the boiled carrots.

Remember this taste, said Marvellous. It is the taste of freshly caught fish and triumph and the knowledge that you will never need to go hungry. It is the sweetest combination, in my opinion.

And from the first mouthful, Drake knew that it was.

Do you know, said Marvellous licking her fingers free of fish oil and butter, that when they asked for fishing boats to join the flotilla and go to France,
Deliverance
’s engine started all by itself?

Really? said Drake, smiling.

I know you probably find that hard to believe, but yes, it did. And Old Cundy didn’t have any decision to make at all because it had been made for him: that boat was going with or without him.

Brave boat.

It
was
a brave boat, Drake, indeed it was. But it was more than that. Would you like some carrots now?

Thank you, said Drake, as a large buttery spoonful landed on his plate.

What was more than that? he asked, pulling a bone from his mouth.

Old Cundy’s grandson was over there. And the boat loved that boy because it could still feel the young man’s hand on its tiller. A tiller never forgets the hand that steers it. Always remember that, Drake.

I will, he said.

I waved
Deliverance
off myself. It was a moving sight. Imagine it, Drake! Nose forward through the waves. German bombs dropping fore and aft but onwards she went, until the French coast came into sight. And what a sight! Beaches packed with men, jeeps on fire and oil drums too, and lines of soldiers wading into the breakwater desperate for home.

Deliverance
got as close as it could because of its shallow hull and planes flew in low and dropped their bombs and boats were hit and boats went down and fishermen drowned far from home. And soldiers scrambled towards the boat and some fell just feet from safety. And that boat shuddered every time a young life was lost, but it didn’t turn away, didn’t shift into reverse, not until it had ten soldiers on board, and its job was done.

But then suddenly, said Marvellous, racing from the shore, came the last man standing. He dived into the spume and struck out for
Deliverance
. Come on! Come on! they shouted as bullets rained down. His comrades leant over the sides causing the boat to tilt dangerously, hands reaching for the struggling soldier, his hands reaching for them. Come on! Come on! they screamed. His hands, their hands reaching. And then they got him. They heaved him aboard and he fell face down on the deck and refused to move. He stayed there for minutes. Maybe a bit longer. And only when they reached safer water with naval gunships by their side, did the old fella leave the tiller. He knelt down by the young man and placed his hand on what he believed to be a familiar shoulder. The young man stirred and slowly raised his head.

And it was him, right? The grandson? said Drake, eagerly.

Marvellous put down her plate and lifted the ale to her lips. No, it wasn’t, she said.

Fuck.

You swear a lot.

Sorry.

But it should have been him, shouldn’t it? It should’ve been him.

Did he ever come back? said Drake.

No. Old Cundy died shortly after. Maybe it was the effort, maybe the heartache. They tried to sell the boat but the boat was like a grief-stricken dog and refused to move. It knew, you see. Overnight it just seemed to break apart. I watched it die on the ooze. Everything has its time, Drake. That’s what I’ve learnt. Everything has its time.

The fire burned low and the cold grew and old Marvellous retired early. Drake sat alone and finished the last of the ale. He looked over to the church and thought that maybe God too had become a casualty of war. He watched insects flit feebly around the dying flames lured by the charred remains of fish bones and skin. He poured a jug of river water on the fire. It hissed and steamed, and his face glistened. The unexpected sound of a clarinet and saxophone in the early bars of a song stirred his heart.

He picked up the oil lamp and stumbled along the riverbank until he stood level to the rotting hull on the other side. And in the lamplight, as Billie Holiday sang of foolish things, Drake stood to attention and saluted the good ship
Deliverance
and he didn’t feel silly – or foolish – because he was a little bit drunk. And had you been passing that clear night, you would have seen a young man saluting a wreck on a sandbank as an old song wound its way around the coast and up valleys and along creeks, falling into the ears of the sleeping, reminding them of love because sometimes that’s all there is.

And as the song came to an end, back in the caravan, Marvellous Ways reached across and turned off the wireless. She lay down on her bed, her head giddy in the silence. She was about to blow out the candle when she noticed a note stuck to the ceiling, scribbled in an unfamiliar hand.

Drake=a bit happier

She blew out the candle and like a blind, darkness fell.

25

A
week later, Marvellous noticed that the birds in
the creek had become edgy and their songs rushed. A flounder had beached itself during the morning’s empty, given-up before sun up, it had, died in that cruel between-light. Crabs, too, had risen from the mucky ooze, looked about fearfully before thinking better of it.

For days she had felt it coming but had said nothing. Had felt it in the mar of her back, the slow build-up of strange behaviours and unfamiliar smells, smells of the dark soul, she liked to call them.

She stood by the mooring stone and studied the encroaching dark. Her barometer had fallen but not a cloud weighted the sky as yet. It was the pressure of expectation, that’s what it was, because that’s what happened during the Night of Tears. Her ears sifted the silence. When the dogfish barked that’s when the river rose. That’s when broken dreams escaped the mud and floated to the surface like bobbing wrecks.

Once, Mrs Hard’s pram had floated wheels up and wedged itself in the eelgrass. The pram had never felt the weight of a child, only bread, and there’d been talk back-along of Mrs Hard carrying a child but whether it had entered the world breathing, no one quite knew. But Marvellous knew and knew that it hadn’t. There never was another child and the pram remained the dream she couldn’t quite let go of. That was when her name seemed to change from Heart to Hard, and Marvellous knew nothing good could come from a heart turning hard. It was Mrs Hard who had told Marvellous that tears ran out like women’s eggs. When you no longer bleed, you no longer cry. That’s what Mrs Hard had long-back said.

Drake awoke suddenly to the light drum of rain and the sensation of a clinging wetness around his body. He opened his eyes, sat up. The room was moving, had become one with the river; a continuous plane of shimmering black. A shaft of moonlight snaked across the floor as strong as a lighthouse beam. Drake rolled out of his bunk and his toes disappeared into the chill salt water. Panic gripped immediately. He rolled up his trouser legs and waded across to the balcony door and looked out. There was no more riverbank, no mooring stone, the world was water. The tide had won.

So cold he began to shake. He grabbed his oilskin by the door and stumbled out. A step to the right was the rising tide, a step to the left woodland. He stepped left and saw the light. It was just a flicker at first, hazy in the drizzle, but it got bigger and came towards him like a large firefly, and as the firefly drew near, so it turned into a candle, stuck above the brim of a dirty miner’s tull, worn by an old woman carving across the creek in a canoe, her stroke slow and majestic.

Get in! shouted Marvellous as she reached his feet. Get in and paddle!

And he got in nervously and did.

He pushed away from the bank and let the vessel glide in the current around the island and the dark outline of the church. He looked back to where the white of the boathouse merged with the waterline at the balcony edge. The strange disorientation of it all. Trees were reaching out for the opposite bank, branches reaching up from the depths like fingers, everything reaching suddenly for him, and the image choked him and the first wave of puke shot from his mouth.

An owl hooted, and the clouds pulled away. And suddenly, there was the moon, fat and orange and low, directly above the roofless church. Shafts of light poured from the broken windows like bright tentacles reaching out, highlighting the tops of the submerged headstones:
Sacred
 . . . 
In Loving Memory
 . . . 
In Peace Perfect Peace.

Drake stopped paddling and held tightly on to the sharp fronds of a palm tree.

You all right?

Yes, he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. It’ll pass, he said, shivering.

This way then, said Marvellous, pointing ahead.

As the way became narrower, Drake used his hands to guide the craft towards the open door of the church. It was just wide enough to get through.

It had been years since he had been in a church. Years since eyes of stained glass looked down on him and wept. His heart felt heavy as he ducked under the doorframe and entered a still world that time had long forgot.

A lit candle rose from the submerged altar slab casting fierce light on to the crumbling walls, and what walls! They near took his breath away, for clinging there like crabs were model boats of every shape and size – yawls, cutters, gigs, luggers – perfect, every one of them, in care and detail, made from matchsticks and cork and whittled twigs.

Who made these? asked Drake.

I did, said Marvellous.

When?

I don’t know. I’ve had a long life.

He manoeuvred the craft to the wall and read out some of the names of the boats:
Gladly
,
Douglas
,
Audrey
,
Simeon
,
Peace
.

Peace
, said Echo.

Children I delivered, said the old woman. Ships of souls.

The canoe drifted back to the light.

They say Jesus came to this land as a boy, Drake. The old woman’s voice was measured, and echoed in the submerged ruin. He came with Joseph of Arimathea. They were on their way to Glastonbury. Imagine that, Drake! Jesus here. That’s why they call this land a blessed land, blessed by the tread of Holy feet. And people over the years have spent a lifetime trying to walk in the exact confines of that tread and people were so busy looking down that they forgot to look up. Forgot to see what it was all about.

Marvellous took out her pipe, lifted the glass guard around the altar candle and lit it. She said, Where you are now was where the young Breton saint who founded this hamlet in the sixth century sat and fasted and prayed. He dragged a granite stone all the way from Penwith with a thick rope held between his teeth, and he walked in silence. And he placed the stone here and from this stone rose a church. From this stone rose the faith of thousands.

Drake looked up through the broken roof. The sky was starlit and directly above him, the moon cast its beams directly on to his face.

Once upon a time that would have signified you were the chosen one. Maybe you are the chosen one? What’s your story, Francis Drake? What stone are you dragging behind you?

I don’t have a stone. Or a story, he said.

Everyone has a story.

Not me.

Hmm, she said, looking at him disbelieving, and the drizzle turned once again to rain and carried moonlight with it.

She said, The young Breton saint was called Christopher – or Christophe, I expect, as the French say. ’Course he wasn’t a saint then, just a hermit monk with great ambition. He couldn’t actually be Saint Christopher anyway because the Catholics had that one, so his name became corrupted just as he eventually did. One day he bartered a thorn from Christ’s crown for waters from the River Jordan – holy relics were like cigarette cards in those days – and he fasted and prayed and his prayers led him to pour the River Jordan into our river and it became a cure-all for those who swam. He went into the woods and cried and from his tears rose a spring – just up there beyond my caravan – of the purest, freshest water. I’ve drunk from that well all my life, Drake, and I’ve never had worms.

Drake took out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. Marvellous dipped her head and he leant towards her candle and took a light. The brief sensation of warmth calmed him.

You know, she said, even when the roof was long gone and the rain fell like this, they still held services in here. They became known as special services.

What happened to the roof? said Drake.

Blown away in a gale probably. Yes, it was, in fact, destroyed by the storm at the end of the last century. The Great Blizzard, that’s what they called it. Brought snow and wind and death to the Peninsula. I saw sailors stuck to mainsails out in the bay. Spread-eagled like this. Arms reaching skywards. Mouths frozen in prayer. No atheists at sea, Drake. When the waves are the size of mountains even the godless kneel.

Do you think that’s what I should do? Kneel? asked Drake.

No. To kneel you have to believe you might be heard. I don’t think you’ve ever believed that.

Small spirals of smoke rose from her pipe into the moonlight. The rain had ceased and Marvellous dipped her hand in the water and watched a shoal of young mullet file slowly up the aisle.

What was I talking about? she asked.

The services in the rain, he said.

Ah yes, the services in the rain. Yes. They liked the rain, that’s why they never bothered with a roof again, thought it was a sign of God’s grace falling upon them. And God was very important then because He’d blessed the Cornish Trinity – The Copper, The Tin and The Holy Fish – with prosperous and far-reaching breath.

Who’s Jack? asked Drake.

What’s that?

The other night I heard you talking to Jack. Was he your sweetheart?

The old woman sucked hard on her pipe.

Yes. He was my love. My
great
love.

Was he your first love?

No, he was my third love, my last. My first love was a lighthouse keeper: unexpected, that was. Then came Jimmy: that one was expected.

Why expected?

I saw him coming.

In a dream?

No, in a glass.

In a glass?

Are you repeating things just to annoy me again?

No. Sorry.

And then came Jack.

So was he expected or unexpected?

Good question. He was neither. He was my always. I have had three loves, Drake. At the time I thought it was enough, but looking back I think there might have been room for more. I’ve seen life expand like a womb to accommodate love.

Love, said Echo.

One was my beginning, one was my middle and one became my end.

Drake looked down at the still water.

So it all started with a lighthouse keeper? he said.

Yes, I suppose it did, said the old woman. All love starts with the flicker of a flame.