The Essex Serpent(14)
‘I’ll write to William, and give him your address – you’re staying at the George, I assume? You’ll all make fast friends, I’m sure, and find piles of your wretched fossils.’
‘We’re staying at the Red Lion,’ said Martha. ‘Cora thought it looked authentic, and was disappointed not to find straw on the floor and a goat tethered to the bar.’ Reverend Ransome, she thought, scornfully: as if some slow-witted parson and his fatcheeked children could interest her Cora! But kindness shown to her friend always earned her loyalty, and so she tipped the last of the cakes onto Charles’s plate and said quite sincerely: ‘I’ve so enjoyed seeing you again: d’you think you might come back to Essex soon, before we go?’
‘Probably.’ He took on an air of noble suffering. ‘And by then we expect a whole new species to be discovered and anatomised, and ready for the Seaborne Wing at Castle Museum.’ With a little gesture to his wife that signalled they should depart, he reached for his coat, and then with an arm arrested mid-sleeve said ‘Oh!’ and turned grinning to Cora. ‘How could we forget! Have you heard of this strange beast that’s been putting the fear of all the gods into the local populace?’
Katherine laughing said: ‘Charles, don’t tease: it’s just some game of Chinese whispers that went a little too far.’
Struggling with his jacket, Ambrose ignored his wife. ‘Now here’s a mystery of science for you – put that appalling hat down and listen! Three hundred years ago or thereabouts a dragon took up residence in Henham, twenty miles north-west of here. Ask at the library and they’ll show you the leaflets they nailed up round the town: eye-witness accounts from farmers, and a picture of some kind of leviathan with wings of leather and a toothy grin. It used to lie about basking in the sunshine and snapping its beak (its beak, mind you!), and no-one thought much of it until a boy got his leg broken. It vanished soon after, but the rumours never did. Every time crops failed or the sun eclipsed, or there was a plague of toads, someone somewhere would see the beast down on the riverbank, or lurking on the village green. And listen: it’s back!’ Charles looked triumphant, as if he’d personally spawned the beast for her benefit, so that Cora regretted diminishing his delight by saying, ‘Oh Charles, I know – I heard! We’ve just been treated to a lecture on the Essex Earthquake – haven’t we, Martha? – and how it shook something loose out there in the estuary. It’s all I can do to prevent myself from heading there now with notebook and camera and seeing it for myself!’
Katherine consoled her husband with a kiss, and said placidly, ‘Stella Ransome wrote and told us all about it. On New Year’s Day a local man was washed up on the Aldwinter saltings with his neck broken. Drunk, I should think, and got caught in the tide, but the whole village is up in arms. There’ve been several sightings just off the coast, and someone swore they saw it moving up the Blackwater at midnight with murder in its eyes. There, Charles, you were right: did you ever see anyone so excited?’
Cora shifted like a child in her seat, and pulled at a lock of hair. ‘Just like Mary Anning’s sea-dragon, all those years ago! Every six months a paper’s published setting out ways and places extinct animals might still live on – imagine, just imagine, if we were to encounter one in so dull a place as Essex! And imagine what it might mean: further evidence that it’s an ancient world we live in, that our debt is to natural progression, not some divinity –’
‘Well: I don’t know about that,’ said Charles, ‘But it will interest you, no doubt. And if you visit Aldwinter you must ask the Ransomes to show you their very own Essex serpent: one of the pews in the parish church has a winged snake making its way up the arm-rest, though since the latest sightings the good rector has been threatening to take it off with a chisel.’
‘That settles it,’ said Cora. ‘Write your letters, as many as you like: we’ll suffer the attentions of a hundred parsons for the sake of one sea-dragon, won’t we, Martha?’ Leaving Charles to attend to the bill, and dispense the immense tips with which he salved his conscience, the women stepped out onto the High Street. The rain had receded and the declining sun sent the shadow of St Nicholas across their path. Katherine gestured across to the broad white fa?ade of her hotel. ‘I’ll go upstairs right away and find some headed paper, and warn them you’ll bring trouble, with your London ideas and your disgraceful coat.’ She plucked at Cora’s sleeve, and said: ‘Martha, can’t you do anything about this?’
Since half her pleasure in adopting such a ramshackle appearance lay in her friends’ disgust, Cora turned up her collar against the wind, tilted her hat like a boy, and stuck her thumbs in her belt. ‘The wonderful thing about being a widow is that, really, you’re not obliged to be much of a woman anymore – but here comes Charles, and I can tell by that look he’s in need of his evening drink. Thank you, dear both.’ She kissed them, and pressed Katherine’s hand much too hard. She’d have liked to say more, and explain that her years of marriage had so degraded her expectation of happiness that to sit cradling a teacup with no thought for what waited behind the curtains on Foulis Street seemed little short of miraculous. Smiling a farewell, she stepped briskly across the road towards the Red Lion, wondering if it was Francis’s face she saw at the window, and whether he might be pleased to see her.