A Year of Marvellous Ways (22 page)

And then one night, coming into shore, I saw men waiting for me on the beach, torches alight. I knew what was about to happen. They pulled me from the boat, pulled off my cap and smock. Uncovered me. That’s when Cundy warned them, warned them not to mess with me. Said the Bucca had come from Keziah. Even the mention of her name sent fear through them.

It took days for them to reach an agreement. In the end they agreed I could fish if I continued to dress and behave as a man. They treated me no differently to a man. Soon they forgot I wasn’t a man because the fleet prospered. Pilchards came in close by the tens of thousands, crabs were abundant and oysters seemed to launch themselves into the dredge. But most of all they stayed safe. Rich times, lucky times. And the Bucca watched over them.

So where’s the Bucca now? asked Drake.

What’s that? said Marvellous, rubbing her ear.

The Bucca. Where is it?

Oh somewhere or other, I expect, said Marvellous, reaching for her stick.

Don’t you know?

No.

Isn’t that a bit careless?

It’s around. Probably in a cupboard somewhere.

Doesn’t it need air? Or food?

It’s not a pet, she said, sternly, shaking her head, and she got up and headed towards the stairs and the water closet outside. Only when she felt the cooling evening air did she begin to smile because she never had a Bucca in a bottle, just a small sea horse from the day of her birth.

They stood side by side out in the night and waited for Marvellous to say her goodbyes. The moon was a dazzling white sliver, more like a winter moon. Stars cascaded into the watery black, as the lighthouse beams tried to catch them in freefall.

Make a wish, said Peace.

You too, said Drake.

Don’t tell me.

I won’t.

Eyes closed, they stood. Together yet separate. Smiling into their private unspeaking wish-world.

They said she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen.

Drake opened his eyes. The young fisherman who had been sitting on the bench all evening was now facing him, talking to him.

Who was? said Drake.

Old Marvellous. They said she was the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. Even waves –

– drew back to look at her, said Drake, finishing the sentence.

Ned Blaney nodded and grinned, and he cast a tender glance towards Peace. By then he knew she swam free. And the joy that carried from her smile was just too much for him and he took off into the night-drenched back streets.

Wait! shouted Peace.

But he didn’t wait.

Come back, she cried.

But he didn’t come back. Onwards, he strode, listing as he walked, the sudden shifting ballast of a fit-to-burst heart. Up-along the familiar lanes he went until he came to the old cottage where he lived alone, his quiet old cottage called Long Gone, because everyone he had ever known and everyone who had ever lived there, was. He stopped before he turned the key. Looked back towards that infinite shimmering dark. Mast lights near and far winked at him in brotherly assent. It felt like the first time he’d seen a flying fish. He entered his home full of hope and wonder.

Pht pht pht pht.

The sound of the crabber cut through the still air. There was no light at all just different shades of black. Eyes flickered from bank to bank and the occasional gull would dart out of nowhere with a flash of white. Booze-heavy lids hung low by the time the confluence was reached but Marvellous didn’t care, she knew the boat would guide them through the narrow and get them home safe. She could fall asleep and did.

Peace watched Drake doze. Earlier in the evening she had looked on him with the eyes of love. Now it was with what? The eyes of a sister? She wasn’t sure. She thought instead about the young fisherman who ran off into the night. She thought about his smile, his halo of curls, as she drifted off to the smell of diesel, to the quiet language of boat.

That night an old woman at the end of her life, and three young people at the start of their lives lie in bed listening to the earth turn. It has a melody that only the gentle hear. They each lie thinking about love. Lost love and love to come. The old woman falls asleep first. She falls asleep with moonlit lips upon her lips and the sweet scent of china tea and gorse flower whispering tales from youth-drenched time. The young woman who smells of bread thinks love is like yeast. It needs time to prove. It is complex. She thinks she might get a dog instead. Along the coast in a cottage called Long Gone a young fisherman thinks only of her. He thinks love is like the sea, beautiful and dangerous but something he would like to know. And in the boathouse a young man lights a cigarette. He takes two puffs, one for sorrow two for joy. He thinks about a woman called Missy Hall. For once it is a good memory. The moon falls behind the trees and the lights go out.

46

Two weeks later, the bridge was ready to
manoeuvre
into position. Drake stood on the riverbank wondering how to get the bridge across and had settled on floating it at the highest tide, when he heard the unusual sound of an outboard engine spluttering up the creek. It wasn’t the crabber because the sound of the crabber was now as distinct to him as a child’s voice. He looked up and watched the high-bowed fishing craft pass through the sandbar, the sun smiling on a wiry thatch of salt-bleached curls.

The young fisherman secured the bowline around the mooring stone and jumped ashore.

Hello again! he said, offering his hand. Ned Blaney, he said.

Drake, said Drake.

What you up to then? asked Ned.

That end needs to be over there, said Drake, pointing to the island. Any ideas?

Ned looked over to the church and squinted. His lips moved, mind calculating the task. He looked at Drake, looked at the boat. Decision made.

Better get an end into the boat, he said and he jumped back down on to the seat slats. Let’s give her a go, eh, shall we? and he cast off.

He was stocky and strong, Cornish through and through, and he lined up the bow as Drake slid the bridge towards him. He held the slatted end high above his head, the weight tearing into his arms and shoulders. Drake secured the bridge into the mainland dug-out then slipped down into the water and waded to the island shore. The boat inched towards him and he grabbed the bridge and took half the weight, and together they lowered it slowly into the deep trough. It fitted perfectly. Stable and unmoving. A trusted walkway from island to shore.

They smoked and said little, the comfortable silence of a shared task done well. When Ned finished his cigarette, from his pocket he pulled out the bakehouse card and said, Daft not to get a loaf now I’m here, right?

Drake smiled. He said, Up through the trees and meadow, mate. You can’t miss it. Just follow the smell and you’ll come to her. Better be quick, though, he said, glancing at his watch. And the young fisher raised his arm and took off into the wood.

Ned Blaney ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He ran up through the trees, across the meadow until he arrived at the bakehouse door, bent double with breathlessness.

He waited unseen until the queue had dispersed and the last loaf sold. As Peace was about to flip the sign from Open to Closed, he appeared out of nowhere on the threshold, all wind-swept and tongue-tied with a large packet under his arm.

You again! said Peace.

Me again! said Ned.

Sold out, said Peace. Only got half a dozen scones from yesterday.

I’ll take ’em, he said.

They’re a bit hard, said Peace.

I’ll take ’em.

Actually, they’re stale.

I’ll take ’em, he said, still struggling for breath. Finally he said, I’ve brought you these, and he handed her the package.

For me?

Yes.

Why?

’Cause I was just passing.

Boat’s outside is it?

Ned looked back out through the door. Well, I’ll be— he said. Strong tide up ’ere.

Peace laughed. What are they? she said.

Fish.

I can smell that.

Oh. Whiting.

I like whiting.

Hoped you might, he said.

What’s your name? said Peace.

Ned.

I’m Peace, said Peace loudly. She was nervous.

Peace, he repeated, softly.

He said, I put in some oysters too. I could shuck them now if you want.

Peace said she did want. And he reached into his smock and pulled out a well-used knife.

Here, he said.

She took the shell from his rough hands. The smell of the sea and the sound of the shore rose from its iridescent heart, and when she tipped the small muscle into her mouth she felt the coolness, the saltiness of a prince’s kiss.

Later that evening, Ned Blaney sat in his cottage with its view of the sea and the falling sun, and ate a plate of mackerel and potatoes. Midway through, though, he stopped eating and anyone watching might have thought he had swallowed a bone, but he hadn’t. He sat quite still and brought his fingers up to his lips, brought his eyes down to his glistening fingertips. He got up and went to the kitchen and ran his hands under the tap. He watched intently as the soap lathered, felt something release as his hand moved across his other hand. He went to his desk, his movement and breath slow. He sat down and picked up a pen. He looked at the photograph of him and his brother just after they’d joined up, and words that had so long evaded his mouth now gathered at the nib of his pen, and he wrote down everything he felt and everything he could see.

He wrote to Peace once a week between their courting, and what he couldn’t get down on paper that first week he continued into the second week, then the third. He wrote sitting on a harbour bench, he wrote at the tiller of his boat. Peace got to know her fisherman through his letters. And when they met up she made him read them out loud, so that the words that had gathered at the nib of his pen found their rightful place upon his tongue.

47

F
ish again tonight! Shouted Peace as she galloped
through the woods and stopped by the bridge. Drake looked up from his fishing.

What’s it this time? he said.

A large pollack.

Getting serious.

Oh Drake, said Peace, blushing.

Come and sit down with me, he said, and she did as he asked, feet dangling over the river, looking downstream towards the gateway to another life.

So how are you?

I’m OK.

How long now?

I’m not sure.

Really?

Six weeks and three days.

Drake smiled. Do you like him?

He likes me.

That’s not what I asked.

He brings me fish instead of flowers.

You’ll never go hungry.

I like flowers.

He laughed. Grow some, he said.

What’s the matter? he asked.

I just have to make sure.

I know you do.

I’m that kind of person, Drake.

He put his arm around her. I know you are, he said.

Here, she said, and pulled a small bun out of her pocket. It was still warm.

What’s this?

You tell me, she said.

He bit into the vanilla icing and smiled. She was sure, he thought.

Delicious, he said.

The late sun was as sweet and as orange as the bun. Marvellous awoke to the enthusiastic calling of her name. She stumbled from her caravan with the haze of an afternoon nap clinging to her like resin.

Look Marvellous! Look at this, said Peace.

Marvellous shuffled carefully on to the bridge and looked down into the river.

Starfish!

They came slowly, one, three, six at a time, drawn in by the spring tide, and they were a starry gathering down there in the shade of the bridge.

Jack loved starfish, said Marvellous.

He did? said Drake.

Oh yes. He used to tell the village children that they were once stars from a night sky that had fallen to earth after an argument with a comet. He said they’d had a disagreement as bright things tend to do, and the comet had lashed out with its tail and had knocked them off their spot. The stars began to plummet and they reached out to grab on to something and out of that reaching was born their five arms. They cried out in freefall and the cries were heard by the earth and the earth spun a little faster so the stars would fall into the sea and not crash on to land because everyone agreed that such a fall from grace was punishment enough. And sometimes, you can hear the starfish lament because they are continually homesick and some nights you can hear them sigh as they lay on the shore looking up at the sky and all that might have been. That’s why they help us get back home. They are filled with empathy for the lost.

They all three looked down into the watery universe as the orange stars twisted and danced on the gentle current.

Who are they going to take back home? said Peace.

Me probably, said Marvellous, and she dipped her stick into the water and watched an orange arm reach out to hold. Definitely me, she whispered.

How did you know he was the one? said Peace.

What’s that? said Marvellous, leaning close.

Jack. How did you know?

Because life without him would have been so wrong.

What was he like? said Peace.

Ordinary, really. But he had a stowaway poet that lived in his soul and that poet made him restless. But that poet also made him see the world like no one else. He was too good for the life he was dealt.

And what life was that? asked Drake.

The life of a miner. He wanted so much more. Deserved so much more. But what he wanted and what he was destined for were two very different things. He told me that the first morning he went to the mine, it was as if it was his last morning, and everything beautiful had to be etched on to his memory before the dark amnesia swallowed him whole.

He said he watched the rising sun burnish across the moorland, the gorse ablaze, more yellow than yellow, amidst the claret-dark sweep of heath. He had noticed colour before, but that morning it was different because he knew he would not resurface until his hands were the hands of an old man. His feet were already sore. He was wearing the same boots his father had died in.

He said he stopped and watched a sailing ship blow across that shimmering distant line and he gave that ship his heart for safe-keeping. He felt the moment it climbed from his chest and watched it fly towards the billowing sails whose cargo was tin and kaolin and other men’s dreams.

Two hundred and fifty fathoms below sea level they went looking for tin. Him and his brother, Jimmy, worked the deepest lodes that stretched out far far under the sea. They could hear the groundswell overhead as waves pummelled down on waves, and now and again they would stop and listen as pillars of pitch pine creaked like masts in the man-made gloom.

They worked in the scorching heat. Boots full of sweat and torsos bare, their white skin ghoulish in the candlelight. Jack told jokes but Jimmy didn’t laugh. He’d woken up with the bad luck shadow across his chest and he was looking out for Death instead. His fear was contagious and began to travel through the tunnels. Gradually the
tap tap
tap
of hammers grew still, till only the
boom shh
boom
shh
of waves could be heard overhead.

At first, no one knew who started it. That’s what they said later. Some said Sammy Dray, others Tommy Ruff, but those boys weren’t singers, and this here voice came out of the gloom, a sweet voice they all said, belonging to no one they knew. But they did know him, of course, for the voice came from Jack. He sang:

Amazing love! How can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me.

Then Jimmy began to sing too, and gradually voices echoed along the shafts until there was the sound of eighty voices, a hundred voices and the sound of waves, and the earth holding itself tight in those tunnels, and those who were above ground swore they could hear that hymn coming from below grass, and the sheer beauty near enough stopped those engine houses. And those voices rose until the twelve miles of working tunnel were ablaze with song, as if that alone was support enough to keep back the weakening stope. And there were men who cried in that space touched by something divine. And as the last voice fell silent, so rose a crescendo of falling waves above just like cymbals. And in that darkness, came the light. And for a moment all fear abated in the hushed stillness of answered grace.

Those were the days when legends were born and names given, said old Marvellous. Singer Jack, that’s what they called him then. Singer Jack. Because those were the days when he still had a song.