The Essex Serpent(104)
‘Poor thing,’ said Joanna, stooping beside the boat, knocking on the wood, wincing at the barnacles sharp against her knuckles: ‘Poor thing, ending up like this, when it should be headed out to sea. And look,’ she said. ‘Blue flowers in the stones, like they were put there, and a bit of blue glass.’ She picked up the sea-blunted glass and put it in her pocket. ‘Come along home,’ said Will, drawing her away. ‘It’ll be dark before we know it, and Banks should be told.’ Arms linked, companionable, feeling they’d done a good day’s work, they turned their backs on the Blackwater.
Cora looked up from the book she’d not been reading, and there was Francis at the door. He’d been running, that much was evident: his fringe lay slick against his forehead, and his thin chest fluttered beneath his jacket. To see him at all out of sorts was so extraordinary that she began to rise from her chair: ‘Frankie?’ she said – ‘Frankie? Are you hurt?’
He stood neatly at the threshold, as if afraid he ought not to come in; he took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, which he opened carefully and smoothed against his sleeve. Then clutching the paper to his chest he said, with eyes turned to hers in an appeal she’d never – not ever – seen before: ‘I’m afraid I’ve done something wrong.’ His voice was more like a child’s than it had ever been, but with no childish sniffling or gulping at the air he began very quietly to cry.
Cora felt something rise in her which was like the accumulation of every pain she’d ever felt; it clutched at her throat, and for a moment she could not speak. ‘I didn’t mean anything bad by it,’ he said: ‘She told me she needed my help and she was kind and I gave her my best things –’ It took a great effort not to run towards him and attempt to take him in her arms; she’d done so many times before, and been rebuffed. Better simply to let him come to her – she returned to her chair and said, ‘Frankie, if you were only trying to be kind, how could you have done something wrong?’ Then there he was on her lap, suddenly, with his dark head fitting precisely between her cheek and her shoulder; his arms clutched about her neck – she felt the warmth of his tears, and how his fast heart beat against hers. ‘Now,’ she said – she cradled his face between her palms, half-afraid she’d see him recede from her, and never come back again – ‘tell me what you think you’ve done, and I’ll tell you how we can make it right.’
‘It’s Mrs Ransome,’ he said. ‘I want to show you, but I’m not supposed to! I want to show you, but I told her I wouldn’t!’ The impossibility of reconciling what he had promised, and what he desired, bewildered him: whichever way he turned, something would be knocked out of place. His grasp on the paper loosened, and she took it from him. There in blue ink on blue paper were the words TOMORROW SIX MY WILL BE DONE! and beneath them a childish sketch of a woman – long-haired, smiling – laid out beneath a curling wave. Stella Ransome had signed her name, and written underneath, Put your jacket on it might get cold.
‘Stella, my God,’ said Cora – but she could not frighten Francis, or toss him from her lap as she ran for the door: what if he never came to her again, her son – with his arms open, and his eyes seeking hers? Nausea came, and she bit at it, and said – conversationally, as if nothing much would come of his response – ‘Frankie, did you go down with her to the water? Did you help her down?’
‘She told me she was being called home,’ he said: ‘She told me the Essex Serpent wanted her, and I told her there was nothing there, and she said God moves in mysterious ways and she’d already stayed too long.’ He put his hands over his face and began to shiver, as if he were still out there on the shingle and the sun long gone.
‘All right,’ said Cora: ‘All right, now,’ and soothed him, astonished to find that he submitted to it, that he actually turned his face towards her. She held him, as much for her own comfort as for his; she called for Martha, who came, and whose recent coolness to her friend did not last beyond the threshold.
‘Take him – please, Martha,’ said Cora – ‘my God, my God, where is my coat, my boots? – Frankie, you only did your best, and now I’ll do mine – no, no – stay: I’m coming back soon.’
Will was walking on the High Road with Joanna and Naomi by his side. How proud they are! he thought, smiling, wondering, as he always did, how best to tell it all to Cora, what might please her most; but perhaps that was impossible now, it had all been broken, remade, he could not make out the shape of things – then ‘Cora!’ called out Joanna, and waved. And there was his friend on the path running, or almost; and for a brief moment (which caused him to make a sound he could not suppress) he thought perhaps she’d come to seek him out, could not remain another hour behind closed doors.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Naomi, stopping, touching her pewter locket for comfort. Something was wrong, that much was certain – Cora’s cheeks were wet, her mouth open in distress – she clutched a sheet of paper which she waved at them as she came, like a signal none of them could decipher. She reached them, and hardly paused, only tugged at Will’s sleeve and said, ‘I think Stella is down there, by the water – I think something is wrong.’
‘But we have come from there – it’s nothing, it’s the boat Banks lost –’ But Cora by then had gone, the scrap of paper thrust at Will and dropped on the wet path, and for a moment he could neither move nor speak. For something was wrong, yes – yes: he ought to’ve seen it at once – it was there, just beyond his reach – he could not quite grasp it. Joanna stooped to pick the paper up. She couldn’t at first take it in, then a picture formed in her mind so strange and terrible that she raised her hands as if she could bat it away from her. ‘Daddy,’ said Joanna, unable to keep from crying: ‘Isn’t she sleeping? Didn’t we leave her safely upstairs?’ Will, very white, reeling a little, said, ‘But I heard her, her footsteps, the door closing – she said she wanted to rest …’