The North Water(81)

The clouds close together and darken; a steady rain begins to fall. He meets a carter traveling south with ewes for market and they stop to talk. Sumner asks him how far to Whitby, and the carter scratches his grizzled chin and frowns as if the question is a puzzling one, then tells him he will be lucky to get there afore dark. A few miles farther on, Sumner turns off the Whitby road and cuts northwest towards Goathland and Beck Hole. The rain ceases and the sky turns a pale, summery blue. The purple heather is patchy and burned over on the slopes near the road, and farther off there are clumps of trees and bushes gathered in the wet hollows. Sumner eats his bread and beef dripping, and scoops brown, peatish water from a stream. He passes through Goathland and moves on towards Glaisdale. The moor turns briefly back to grassland edged with bracken, stitchwort, and low elder, then rises again and reverts to its tight-shorn barrenness. That night, Sumner sleeps, shivering, in a half-collapsed barn, and in the morning he remounts and continues northward.

When he gets to the edge of Guisborough, he stops at a stable, sells the horse and saddle for half their value, then picks up his bag and walks on into the town. At a newsdealer near the railway station, he buys a copy of the Newcastle Courant and reads it on the platform. The report of the murder and robbery in Hull occupies a half column on the second page. Patrick Sumner, an Irishman and former soldier, is named as the culprit, and there is a description of the stolen horse and mention of a large reward offered by Baxter for anyone who comes forward with useful information. He leaves the newspaper folded on the bench and boards the next train to Middlesbrough. The compartment smells of soot and hair oil; there are two women talking together and a man asleep in the far corner. He tips his hat at the women and smiles but doesn’t offer to speak. He lifts the leather satchel onto his knees and feels its reassuring pressure.

That night he seeks out foreign voices. He goes along the dockside from one tavern to the next listening for them: Russian, German, Danish, Portuguese. He needs someone who is clever, he thinks, but not too clever; greedy, but not too greedy. In the Baltic Tavern on Commercial Street he finds a Swede, a captain whose brig is leaving for Hamburg in the morning with a cargo of coal and iron. He has a broad face and red eyes and hair so blond it is almost white. When Sumner tells him he needs a berth and will pay whatever is required for the privilege, the Swede looks him over skeptically, smiles, and asks how many men he has murdered.

“Only the one,” Sumner says.

“Just one? And did he deserve it?”

“I’d say he deserved it sure enough.”

The Swede laughs, then shakes his head.

“Mine is a merchant ship. I’m sorry. We have no space for passengers.”

“Then set me to work. I can pull a rope if need be.”

He shakes his head again and takes a sip of his whiskey.

“Not possible,” he says.

Sumner lights his pipe and smiles. He assumes this firmness is just a show, a way of driving up the price of his passage. He wonders for a moment if the Swede might read the Newcastle Courant but decides that’s hardly likely.

“Who are you anyway?” the Swede asks him. “Where do you come from?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“You have a passport though, papers? They’ll ask for them in Hamburg.”

Sumner takes a single sovereign from his pocket and pushes it across the tabletop.

“That’s what I have,” he says.

The Swede raises his pale eyebrows and nods. The roar of drunken voices swells around them, then deflates. A door swings open, and the smoke-filled air shudders above their heads.

“So the man you killed was rich?”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Sumner says. “I was only making a joke.”

The Swede looks down at the gold coin but doesn’t reach for it. Sumner leans back in his chair and waits. He knows the future is close by: he can feel its tug and sprawl, its shimmering blankness. He is standing on the very lip, poised and ready to step off.

“I think you will find someone to take you,” the Swede says eventually. “If you pay them well enough.”

Sumner takes another sovereign from his pocket and places it down next to the first. The twin coins wink yellow in the flickering gaslight; on the wet, black tabletop, they shine like eyes. He looks back at the Swede and smiles.

“I do believe I found him,” he says.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

One bright morning, a month later, he visits the Zoologischer Garten in Berlin. He is clean shaven now, and he has a new suit of clothes and a new name. He strolls about the gravel paths, smoking his pipe and pausing every now and then to watch the animals as they yawn and shit and scratch themselves. The sky is cloudless, and the low autumn sun is broad and warming. He sees lions, camels, and monkeys; he observes a small boy in a sailor suit feeding buns to a solitary zebra. It is close to noon, and he is beginning to lose interest, when he notices the bear. The cage it is standing in is no wider than the deck of a ship. There is a lead-lined pit at one end, filled up with water, and a low brick archway in the rear wall leading to a den with straw for bedding. The bear is standing at the back gazing indifferently forwards. Its fur is shabby, lank, and yellowish; its snout is mottled and threadbare. While Sumner watches, a family arrives and stands beside him at the rail. One of the children asks in German if this is the lion or the tiger, and the other child laughs at him. They argue briefly and the mother scolds, then quiets them. When the family leaves, the bear waits awhile, then slouches slowly forwards, its head twitching like a dowsing rod and its heavy feet scuffing gently against the cement floor. It reaches the front of the cage and pushes its nose through the black bars as far as it can manage, until its narrow wolfish face is only three feet from Sumner’s. It sniffs the air and stares at him, its gimlet eyes like strait gates to a larger darkness. Sumner would like to look away but can’t. The bear’s gaze holds him tight. It snorts, and its raw breath brushes against his face and lips. He feels a moment of fear, and then, in its wake, as the fear fades and loses its force, an unexpected stab of loneliness and need.