The Essex Serpent(4)
The widow was roused from her reverie by footsteps overhead, which were slow, and measured out as precisely as the ticking of a clock. ‘Francis,’ she said. She sat quietly, waiting.
A year before his father died, and perhaps six months after his disease had first appeared at the breakfast table (a lump in the throat restricting the passage of dry toast), Francis Seaborne had been moved to a room on the fourth floor of the house and at the furthest end of the passage.
His father would’ve had no interest in domestic arrangements even if he’d not at that time been assisting Parliament with the passage of a housing act. The decision had been made wholly by his mother and by Martha, who’d been hired as nurse when he was a baby, and never, as she herself put it, quite got round to leaving. It was felt that Francis was best kept at arm’s length, since he was restless at night and made frequent appearances at the door and even, once or twice, at the window. He’d never ask for water, or for comfort, as any other child might; only stand at the threshold holding one of his many talismans until unease raised a head from the pillow.
Soon after his removal to what Cora called the Upper Room, he lost interest in his nightly travels, becoming content with accumulating (no-one ever said ‘stealing’) whatever took his fancy. These he laid out in a series of complex and baffling patterns that changed each time Cora made a maternal visit; they had a beauty and strangeness she’d have admired if they’d been the work of somebody else’s son.
This being Friday, and the day of his father’s funeral, he’d dressed himself. At eleven years old he knew both one end of a shirt from the other, and its usefulness in spelling (‘It is NECESSARY that the shirt has one Collar, but two Sleeves’). That his father had died struck him as a calamity, but one no worse than the loss of one of his treasures the day before (a pigeon’s feather, quite ordinary, but which could be coiled into a perfect circle without snapping its spine). When told the news – noting that his mother was not crying but was rigid and also somehow blazing, as if in the midst of a lightning strike – his first thought was this: I cannot understand why these things happen to me. But the feather was gone; his father was dead; and it seemed he was to attend church. The idea pleased him. He said, conscious of being quite affable given the circumstances: ‘A change is as good as a rest.’
In the days following the discovery of Michael Seaborne’s body it was the dog who’d suffered most. It had whined at the sickroom door and could not be consoled; a caress might’ve done it, but since no-one would sink their hands into its greasy pelt, the laying-out of the body (‘Put a penny on his eye for the ferry-man,’ Martha said: ‘I don’t think St Peter will trouble himself …’) had been accompanied by that same high keening. The dog was dead now, of course, thought Francis, patting with satisfaction a little wad of fur collected from his father’s sleeve, and so the only mourner was now itself to be mourned.
He was uncertain what rituals attended the disposal of the dead, but thought it best to come prepared. His jacket had a number of pockets, each of which contained an object not sacred, precisely, but well suited, he thought, to the task. An eyeglass which had cracked, offering a broken view of things; the wad of fur (he hoped it might still contain a flea or tick, and within that, if he was ever so lucky, a bead of blood); a raven-feather, which was his best, being bluish at the tip; a scrap of fabric he’d torn from Martha’s hem, having observed on it a persistent stain in the shape of the Isle of Wight; and a stone with a perfect perforation in the centre. Pockets packed, and tapped, and counted out, he went down to find his mother, and at each of the thirty-six steps to her room incanted ‘Here – today – gone – tomorrow; here – today – gone.’
‘Frankie –’ How small he was, she thought. His face, which curiously bore scant resemblance to either parent, save for his father’s rather flat-seeming black eyes, was impassive. He’d combed his hair, and it lay in ridges flat against his scalp: that he had troubled to make himself neat moved her, and she put out her hand, but let it fall empty to her lap. He stood patting each of pockets in turn, and said: ‘Where is he now?’
‘He will be waiting for us at the church.’ Ought she to take him into her arms? He did not look, it must be said, much in need of comfort.
‘Frankie, if you want to cry, there is no shame in it.’
‘If I wanted to cry, I would. If I wanted to do anything, I would.’ She didn’t chastise him for that, since really it was little more than a statement of fact. He once again patted each of his pockets, and she said, gently, ‘You are bringing your treasures.’
‘I am bringing my treasures. I have a treasure for you (pat), a treasure for Martha (pat), a treasure for Father (pat), a treasure for me (pat, pat).’
‘Thank you, Frankie …’ – all at a loss: but there at last was Martha, brightening the room as she always did, dissipating by nothing more than her presence the slight tension which had taken the air. She lightly touched Francis on the head, just as though he had been any other child; her strong arm circled Cora’s waist; she smelt of lemons.
‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘He never did like us to be late.’
The St Martin’s bells tolled for the dead at two, rolling out across Trafalgar Square. Francis, whose hearing was pitilessly acute, pressed gloved hands to each ear and refused to cross the threshold until the last peal died, so that the congregation, turning to see the late-coming widow and her son, sighed, gratified: how pale they were! How very fitting! And would you take a look at that hat!