The Essex Serpent(16)
He resolved to shake himself into a better frame of mind by walking a circuit of the parish – looking up a few folk as he went, quelling rumours of a sea-dragon wherever they arose. He took up his hat and coat, and there was whispering at the study door (the children were forbidden entry, but were not above trying the handle); he bellowed threats of bread-and-water for a fortnight, and made his habitual escape through the window.
Aldwinter that day was aptly named: frost lay on the hard earth, and black oaks clutched the pale sky. Will thrust his hands into his pockets, and set out. The red brick house behind had been new the day he’d first crossed the threshold, Stella coming slowly up the tiled pathway with her swollen belly cradled in her hands, and Joanna bringing up the rear trailing an invisible pet (species never established) on a length of string. Bay windows on both floors gave the impression of shallow turrets on either side of the front door, above which a fanlight in coloured glass caught an hour of light each afternoon. The largest house on the single street which passed through the village, leading south from Colchester and terminating at the small dock where a single barge now lay at anchor, it had a bright hard look entirely out of keeping with the rest of the village. He never thought there was much to recommend it save good insulation and a garden large enough to lose the children for hours at a stretch, but knew himself blessed: at least one of his peers endured a house which seemed to be sinking into the ground, and in which fungus the size of a man’s hand grew in the upper corners of the dining room.
Coming onto the street they called High Lane in deference to its slight elevation above sea level, Will bore left where it passed through common ground. A few sheep grazed listlessly under the Aldwinter oak, said to have once sheltered troops loyal to the traitor Charles, and which appeared so black it might have been burned to charcoal. Its lower branches had sunk beneath their own weight, and curving down thrust into the earth and after a while up again, so that in the spring the tree appeared surrounded by saplings. The down-curved branches formed seats where in summer lovers sat, and as Will passed a woman spread her red skirts and tossed out a few scraps for the birds. Beyond the oak, set back from the road behind a mossy wall, All Saints with its modest tower made its usual call on him: he ought, really, to sit there awhile on a bare cold pew and wait for a cooling of his temper, but someone might be waiting in the shadows for blessing or censure. In the year past, with the coming of the Essex Serpent (which he took to calling ‘the Trouble’, reluctant to christen a rumour), claims on his time had grown steadily greater. There was a feeling – mostly unspoken, at least in his presence – that they were all under judgment, doubtless well-deserved, from which only he could deliver them; but what comfort could he offer which would not also affirm their sudden fear? He could not do it, any more than he could say to John, who so often woke at night, you and I will go together at midnight and slay the creature that lives under your bed. What was built on deceit, however kindly done, would not withstand the first blow. And time enough for pulpit and pew tomorrow, when the sun rose on the Lord’s Day; for now he felt such an urgent desire to look out on the saltings and fill his self with the empty air that he almost ran.
On past the White Hare (‘My dear Mansfield, impossible for a man of the cloth, as I think you know!’) and past the neat small cottages with cyclamen on the windowsill (‘She’s very well thank you: the ’flu has gone, praise God …’) to the place where High Lane sloped down to the quay. Hardly that, of course, simply an inlet on the Blackwater bolstered with stonework that only ever seemed to last a season and was re-made each spring out of whatever fell to hand. Henry Banks, who racketed up and down the estuary in his barge, conveying who-knew-what to who-knew-where beneath his sacks of corn and barley, sat cross-legged on the deck mending his sails, his cold hands livid as the cloth. Seeing Will, he beckoned him over, saying ‘Still no sign of her, Reverend: still no sign,’ pulling dolefully at a hipflask. Some months had passed since Banks had lost a rowing-boat, and been refused his insurance on the grounds that he’d failed to make it fast to the quay, being probably drunk at the time. Banks felt the grievance deeply, and told anyone who’d listen that it had been stolen away in the night by oystermen from over Mersea way, and that he’d always been a truthful man, as Gracie would’ve witnessed, had she still been living, God rest her. ‘No? I’m sorry for it, Banks,’ said Will sincerely: ‘Nothing’s harder to bear than injustice. I’ll keep a lookout, mind.’ He refused a nip of rum, gesturing ruefully at his collar, and moved on – past the quay, the low water always to his right, where up ahead on a slight incline a row of bare ash trees were like so many grey feathers stuck in the ground. Beyond the ashes was the last Aldwinter house, which for as long as he could remember they’d called World’s End. Its bowed walls were bound together with moss and lichen, and over the years it had been added to so that by degrees of lean-to and annex it had doubled in size, and seemed a living thing feasting on the hard earth. The portion of land around it was fenced off on three sides; the fourth gave directly onto the grasses of the salt-marsh, and from there down to the pale stretch of mud riddled with creeks that glistened in the weak sun.
As Will approached World’s End, its sole resident was so nearly camouflaged against the walls of the house that when he emerged it was as if by a charm. Mr Cracknell seemed made of the same stuff as his home: his coat green as moss and quite as damp, and his beard reddish as the clay tiles that fell from the roof. He held in his right hand the small grey body of a mole, and in his left a folded knife. ‘Stand back a little, Reverend, for the good of your coat,’ he said, and Will obeyed, seeing that strung all along the fence were a dozen moles or more; but these were skinned, and their hides hung from their hindquarters like a shadow. Their pale paws, so like the hands of children, reached blindly for the earth. Will inspected the body nearest. ‘Quite a haul; and a penny apiece?’ Man’s dominion over animals notwithstanding, he’d never been able to shake a fondness for the little gentlemen in their velvet jackets, and wished the farmers’ war of attrition could be ended by kinder means.