A Year of Marvellous Ways (25 page)

This and that.

Don’t be alone.

Oh I shall be.

You’ll need someone to comb your hair.

I’ll cut it off before I get someone to do that.

You’ve always been stubborn.

Good job too.

But where will you go?

I’ll not go far.

Will you stay here?

Yes I’ll stay here.

Like this?

Like this.

Sitting by the river?

Sitting by the river.

Listening to music.

That has your song.

I’ll try and come back.

That would be nice.

I want to come back.

Well, you know where I’ll be.

And you’ll be OK?

Sure I’ll be OK.

He stopped combing her hair. The last of his breaths came in groups of twos, groups of threes like shallow waves, and the rattling in his lungs ceased. Marvellous wouldn’t turn round. I’ll be OK, she sang quietly. I’ll be OK my beautiful boy. My beautiful beautiful midsummer boy.

She paused momentarily to see if Death was still around, because she wanted to talk to Death. She felt the cool liquid slide down her spine.

She said, We’ve met many times before, and you passed me by – wouldn’t even look at me, maybe I wasn’t your type. But please don’t pass me by now. Take me. Let’s barter a life for a life. Don’t take that child I know you want to take, or that fisherman about to be trapped in the trawler winch. Or the bride with the burning fever. I know you want to take one of them because they’ll be missed, and they’ll be mourned, and the sound of grief is the sound of your song. I know you and I know what you’re like. But what I’m saying is, don’t. Do something different. Take me instead. It’s a good offer.

But Death said, My my, what a lot of fiddle-faddle, and he laughed and left through the front door (instead of the back) and when he was gone, warmth and sunlight shone in and that’s when she knew Death had gone.

For two days Marvellous lay next to Jack’s body. The sun rose, the day warmed and the birds sang. The tides flowed, the fish returned and the sun set. The moon glowed. The stars came out. The robins sang. The saints murmured. Onwards time, impossible to stop, but she tried, she tried.

It was on the third night that her mother swam across the dreamscape wrapped in mist, and Marvellous smelt her mother and her mother became a buoy and wrapped herself around Marvellous’ neck and stopped her from sinking, made her float away from the cold white body next to her. And that was sign enough. Marvellous knew then what she had to do.

The next day, the boat was ready, the sea calm. She lifted Paper Jack from the bed and carried him down to the riverbank. The water was alive with thousands of orange stars, caught in the tide, waiting to take him home. It was strange because there were people there to see them off, people she hadn’t spoken to in months. And as she walked down towards the mooring stone, the people dressed in black took him from her. The ones who weren’t carrying spades.

But I’m taking him back to the sea with me. To be with my mother and father, Marvellous said.

No one listened.

Please don’t bury him. He never wanted to go back underground. Please don’t put him underground.

No one listened.

Someone held her arms. It should have been gentle, but their words were harsh. She remembered very little after that. Just dirt in her hands and prayers on their lips. And then he was gone, and there was a mound where nothing ever grew.

She went back and scrubbed that boathouse. She took soap and a stiff-bristled hearth brush and walked down to the river. She sat down on the mooring stone and looked over at the church. It was casting deep shadows across the shallows. She undressed, climbed down into the water and wet the soap. She scrubbed her face and her body until both were raw. She stayed in the water until the tide rose and engulfed her, until the burning of the salt near killed her. It took effort to climb out. Her skin was tight, much too small, and every movement broke the seams; it wept, she wept.

Once out, she unpinned her hair, carefully reached up for the chaffinch and held it in her palm. It looked at her, ruffled its wings, and flew to a flowering blackthorn bush. She didn’t re-clothe for a month, but became a bird instead. She lived naked in the woods, took what weather was offered and flew with Paper Jack’s soul, and for that month she drank in the last song of his love until the moment she awoke back in her bed and the feathers that had graced her heart lay on the floor, plucked and scattered by a cruel hand, one that reached for a stethoscope as it casually informed her that Life Had To Go On.

And it did go on. And she went on. And the tides rose. The tides fell. And her moods rose, her moods fell. And she forgot lots of things. But most importantly she forgot to die.

A dark starlit night caressed the end of her story. Old Marvellous said little afterwards, for she still inhabited Time Past. She stood and watched her young self walk confidently down the road until she disappeared round the shadowed curve, for ever. The old woman waved.

Drake held her hand and led her across a field of dew, a line of torchlight marking their way. She gripped his hand the way a child would. And at the border between grass and woodland, Marvellous sank to the ground, exhausted. In the time it took for her to drop, soft snores had already escaped from her mouth.

Drake lifted her easily, and the movement of his carrying must have felt like the play of waves because she drifted, she drifted.

She slept peacefully, unburdened, memories now in order. Drake sat with her, placed his hand upon her brow. In the flicker of candlelight, he looked above the bed and saw there were no longer any notes pinned to the quilted roof. No notes from her to her for nothing needed to be remembered, any more. He blew out the candle, kissed her forehead and walked out into fresh Cornish air.

The saints were loud and he heard them on the back of nightfall, riding east to an early rise. Some were chanting sacred songs, others were chattering, outdoing one another in feats of sainthood and happy sinning, simple men the world over.

He felt something stir deep within him. He began to cry. He had often been fearful, the feeling gnawing at the pit of his guts, but he knew it was his mother’s fear, an unsurprising fear born of the disappointment and inconstancy of life. She had been dealt a losing hand and no one had ever taught her when to call when to raise and when to fold. She had been young as he was young. She had only ever wanted what he now knew he wanted. Like the toss of a coin, heads suddenly became tails and fear became excitement. He closed his eyes and leapt. Felt he was riding with the saints towards a new dawn.

51

M
idsummer’s day and the rain fell hard and
business
was slow. Peace hadn’t slept all day or night and she closed the shop early and went into her back yard. She had cleared the weeds and chaos and had created order, just as her mother had predicted. Vegetable beds had been planted and raspberry canes salvaged, all because she was a Doer.

But as the rain fell, she felt more like a quitter, because the week before she had taken the unusual step of refusing to see Ned Blaney any more until she knew. Knew what? he had asked. She couldn’t say, If you’re The One.

The branches of the apple trees were sodden, hung low like her shoulders. She had tried not to put this torment into her baking, but the loaves and buns were dull and heavy and she suddenly realised that it wasn’t fear or regret that she was kneading into her dough, but the fear
of
regret.

She searched a good hour before she found an egg because the chickens were poor layers – she knew she shouldn’t have given them names. Eventually, she found a warm brown one nestled in a pile of grass clippings. She gathered it gently in her hand and lifted that hand skywards and whispered, Please show me his face.

She was drenched by the time she reached the boathouse. She entered pale-faced and clench-fisted, and Drake wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and led her to the waiting fire.

What’s the matter? he said.

I have to know.

Know what?

And she held out the freshly laid egg, and said, If Ned’s The One.

Hush, said Marvellous, rolling up her sleeves. She took off her glasses and handed them to Drake to wipe. She said again, Are you sure, Peace? and Peace said, I’m quite sure.

Marvellous put her glasses back on and poured out a glass of water from the flagon. She handed the egg to Peace.

Ready?

Peace nodded.

Then continue.

Peace broke the egg and separated the yolk. She dropped the white into the glass of water where it instantly plumed and danced.

Now look away! said Marvellous. Or you’ll only see what you want to see.

Peace looked away admonished by such wise counsel, and Marvellous gently covered the glass with a cloth.

Now let’s leave the magic to begin.

They went to her caravan and sat nervously in the cramped space. They drank tea, they dozed to the tap of falling rain. They listened to the Shipping Forecast. Drake looked over to the bookcase, his eyes drawn again to
The Book of Truths
. Marvellous watched him before she fell asleep.

What if it’s a face I don’t recognise? said Peace, quietly.

Then you have an adventure in front of you, and Drake reached for her hand.

Wouldn’t you like to know if there was someone for you?

Drake thought for a moment. Not sure that I would really. I have you and I have her. That’s enough.

For now, said Peace. Enough for now.

Three hours later the rain stopped and the sun crept out, and as if on cue, Marvellous awoke and said, It’s done. Let’s go.

They bustled back to the boathouse, a mix of nerves and expectation.

Here, said Marvellous and she handed Peace the glass, the hidden answer to her future. Marvellous said, Go on, nothing to fear, and Peace gently pulled the cloth away and raised the glass to the light. She gasped. For there was her answer. As clear as day. And had Ned Blaney been sitting next to her, his heart would have skipped because looking into the glass would have been like looking into a mirror.

52

T
he dog days of summer arrived, and the sun rose
hot and the dawn wind blistered across corrugated sands, slowing nature and slowing tasks.

Peace kneaded her bread with extra care and extra flour with a bowl of cooling water for her sweating hands. Out in the bay, Ned Blaney, distracted and in love, pulled in crab pots he had forgotten to bait.

In the boathouse, Drake slept in late. He threw off the sheets and lay still, hoping to feel a stream of cool air blowing in through the balcony doors, but summer’s breath was hot and clammy. He got up and pissed in the bucket near his bed. He pulled on a shirt and a pair of trousers and rinsed his face with tepid water from the basin. He went over to the hearth and stood in front of the scraggy collage of a man who had travelled the streets and battlefields with him. He had kept him safe, and had been a good enough man, this imaginary father. He had done his job and had brought him here, to a shack by a shore that had become a home.

It’s my birthday today, Dad and I’m twenty-eight years old. said Drake. All is well.

He opened the door and the smell of summer kissed him. Mists of drunken insects buzzed quietly around honeysuckle trailers. Fractured light crept through the bosky wood and fell lazily upon the ferns releasing their pungent sweat. He picked up his fishing rod and walked barefoot into the sunlight.

He sat on the bridge, unhooked the spinner and cast out. He felt at peace. Sunlight caught the brown scum of fermenting weed, the scent as ponderous and heavy as female musk. He slapped dead a horsefly, full of his blood. He watched as shrimps pinked in the search for shade. The summer was so sweet it hummed. Marvellous sat in her deckchair, not commenting, not moving.

By twelve the creek was dizzy with union. And as Drake fished and Marvellous dozed and Peace baked, something else crept up on the back of the rising mercury: the sound of bicycle wheels.

Peace had just taken Drake’s birthday cake out of the oven and had placed it on the window-ledge to cool when the postman’s wide smiling face loomed at the window waving a letter. He delivered one to her every week now, a blue envelope that smelt of fish and cologne and had silver scales caught in the triangular opening.

Thank you, Sam, said Peace, and she put the letter into her apron pocket.

One for the creek next, said Sam.

Want me to take it?

No, that’s all right, m’duck. I quite like free-wheelin’ on hard ground. It’s for Mr Francis Drake this time.

Drake was still on the bridge when the sound of the free-wheelin’ postman clattered through the trees. He put down his rod and looked up, saw the excited approach of a letter waved high in the air.

You and your fancy friends, down ’ere! the postman shouted. Another letter from abroad!

Abroad? said Drake.

Abroad? said Marvellous, heavy with doze.

To a Mr Francis Drake, care of Dr Arnold, Monk’s Rise, Chapel Street, Truro, Cornwall,
United Kingdom
. Redirected to here. There you go, boy, and the postman handed over the letter.

Drake watched the postman clamber up through the wood. He looked back down at the letter, at the Australian stamps, felt the clean line of a postcard inside. He went and sat next to Marvellous. Felt her hand lightly on his back. He opened the envelope and took out the postcard. It was a black-and-white picture of a bridge and a river at night. At the bottom was printed: Murray views. Harbour bridge. Floodlit. Sydney N.S.W.

He turned it over and read:

Freddy, I saw the mermaid.
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