The Essex Serpent(103)
The strengthening sun cast a clear light on the shingle, so that each girl saw, at the same bright moment, what had been cast up. It was a black boat, small and clinker-built, long sunk in the Blackwater and thick with barnacles which gave it the look of uneven flesh, coarse and battle-scarred. Its upturned hull had rotted and begun to sink, so that there was the impression of a blunt snout nosing at the shore; it moved in the last lap of the receding tide, causing its wood to grind against the shingle, and now and then its timber groaned in distress. It was possible to make out, beneath the draping of bladderwrack and sugar-kelp, the name GRACIE picked out in blue-white paint: Banks’s boat, long since given up for lost, all the while casting up on the marsh on the whim of the tides, sending a village clean out of its wits.
They clutched each other, not knowing whether to laugh or weep: ‘It was here all along,’ said Naomi, ‘he thought it was stolen from the quay and I said no, it’s just you never tie it up right, that’s all …’
‘Think of Mrs Seaborne down here with her notebook, wishing she’d brought her camera, thinking of a case in the British Museum –’ said Joanna, beginning to laugh, feeling disloyal, though certain Cora would see the humour in it.
‘– and all the horseshoes hanging up in Traitor’s Oak, and the watchmen, and no-one letting the children out –’
‘We ought to tell my father,’ said Joanna: ‘We should bring everyone down here, and let them see – only what if we came back and it was gone because the tide took it, and no-one believed us …’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Naomi. It was hardly possible to believe, while the low sun copper-plated the wet marsh, that they’d ever felt a moment’s fear. ‘I’ll stay. It’s practically my boat, after all.’ Gracie, she thought. I’d know it anywhere! ‘Go on, Jojo, fast as you can, before it gets too dark to see.’
‘It’s funny,’ said Joanna, turning away to the path above the shingle: ‘There’s something blue sticking out underneath – can you see? Cornflowers, maybe, though it’s late in the year for that.’
Some distance away, sitting between the ribs of Leviathan and pulling at dark splinters driven into the palm of his hand, Francis Seaborne watched – seen by neither, missed by no-one.
In his study Will drowsed dreamlessly. When he woke it was to so uneasy a mind and such vivid recollections that for a moment he was hard pushed to tell which had been sleep, and which waking. There on the desk was the blank sheet of paper, but what use was it now? There was no hope of conveying to Cora how all the deep-sunk foundations on which he’d built his being had shifted, cracked, been rebuilt. Each phrase that came to mind was immediately contradicted by another of equal and opposite truth: we broke the law – we obeyed it; would to God you’d kept your London distance – thank God you live when I do, thank God we share this earth! The effect was to be nullified: he had nothing to say. A broken spirit and a contrite heart Thou wilt not despise, he thought, wishing in that case that his own spirit could be more completely broken, his heart more wholly contrite.
A sound roused him – footsteps, a gate closed and opened: he thought of Stella, waking upstairs, wanting him, perhaps, and his heart lifted, as it always did. He pushed away Cora’s letter with a sound of distaste – it was a taint at worst, a distraction at best, when every thought should be directed up to where his loved one lay half in this world, half in the next. But after all, it was only Joanna, back from the saltings with the scent of it on her coat, her eyes gleaming, mischievous, merry: ‘You’ve got to come,’ she said, plucking at his sleeve: ‘You’ve got to come and see what we’ve found – we’ll show everyone and everything’s going to be all right.’
Going quietly, afraid they’d wake Stella, they set out across the common, where in the blue dusk Traitor’s Oak cast a long shadow and all the mist was gone. ‘You wait,’ said Joanna, making him run, refusing to answer (‘I’m tired, Jojo, can’t you tell me?’ – ‘Just you wait and see’). Then they were on High Road, which blazed wet in the last of the day; as they reached All Saints they saw Francis Seaborne running home like any ordinary boy. Then there was World’s End, which had so lost heart without Cracknell it had returned almost completely to the Essex clay. ‘Just a bit further,’ she said, dragging him on: ‘Down by Leviathan, where Naomi’s waiting.’ And there was Naomi Banks with her glinting curls, and some distance away a fire set in a circle of stones.
He heard the gulls all crying out, relieved at the clear sight of land; drew in air scented with salt and the sweetness of oysters in their beds. Turnstones busied themselves in the creeks, and there was the curlew’s underwater song. Then Naomi called, and beckoned, and he saw what it was they’d found: in the clear evening light a wrecked boat, heavily barnacled and decked with bladderwrack. Something in the way it was cast up, nudging at the shingle, gave it a half-alive look; he came closer, seeing GRACIE written clearly on the hull. ‘After all that,’ he said, turning to Naomi, ‘was it really just your father’s boat?’ She nodded, rather proud, as if it had all been her doing, and bowing, he shook each girl’s hand in turn. ‘A job well done,’ he said. ‘You should be given the freedom of this parish.’ Silently he prayed in brief full-hearted gratitude: Let that be an end of it, then – the fear, and the whispers, and you girls half-mad at your desks! ‘Let’s fetch your father, Naomi: there’ll be no more of this. To think we had two Essex Serpents, and neither of them fit to harm a fly!’