The Essex Serpent(51)

At the mention of a prize, the class clattered up – ‘In single file, please,’ said Mr Caffyn, watching Cora dole out ammonites and toadstones and soft pieces of clay in which sharp teeth were embedded – and fetched pots of water and brushes, and hard cakes of paint.

Joanna Ransome remained placidly seated. ‘Why don’t we go up?’ said Naomi, itching to get her hands on some particularly beautiful rock, and show Mrs Seaborne that she, too, was worthy of her attention.

‘Because she’s my friend and I can’t talk to her with you children all around,’ said Joanna, not meaning it nastily: but in Cora’s presence her old friend had seemed to dwindle in the chair beside her, and grow shabby and stupid, her clothes torn and smelling of rotten fish deep in the seams, her hair in ugly bunches because her father never could get the hang of plaits. How can I be like Cora, she thought, if I talk like Naomi, and sit like her, and am as stupid as her, and don’t even know that the moon goes round the earth?

Behind her freckles Naomi turned pale. She felt slights keenly, and never more keenly than this. Before she had a chance to respond Joanna was at the woman’s side, and had kissed her cheek, and was saying, ‘I thought you did very well’ – Just as if she were a grown-up too, and didn’t still wipe her nose on her sleeve when she thinks no-one’s looking! Naomi hadn’t eaten that day, and hunger made the room begin to turn about her; she tried to stand, but Mr Caffyn appeared at her desk and set down a pot of black ink, a sheaf of paper, and something that looked like a garden snail made of grey stone.

‘Oh do sit up straight, Naomi Banks,’ said the teacher, who was not unkind, but who felt that Mrs Seaborne and her monsters had turned out to be less of an asset to the day than he’d hoped. ‘You’re a better artist than most of us here: see what you can do with that.’

What will I do with it, thought Naomi, hefting it in her right hand and then her left: she would’ve liked to toss it at Cora Seaborne and strike her square on the forehead. Who was she anyway? They’d all been all right before she came, Jo and her with their spells and fires. Probably she was a witch, she thought: wouldn’t put it past her with a coat like that; probably the Essex Serpent was a familiar she’d brought with her. The wickedness of the idea cheered her, and when Joanna came back to her seat Naomi was circling her paintbrush in the pot of ink, laughing. Probably sleeps with it tethered to the end of the bed, she thought: probably rides it. She stirred and stirred the pot of ink, and blots appeared on the sheet of white paper in front of her. Probably gives it her breast at night! she thought, and laughed harder, only wasn’t sure whether the laughter really had anything to do with her own thoughts, because it was so loud and strange, and she couldn’t stop it, even though she saw Joanna look puzzled, and a little cross. It’s probably here – on the step – outside the door, she thought: I bet she whistled for it like the farmer does with his dogs. She looked down at her own hands, with the little white pockets of flesh that linked each finger, and they seemed to her to be gleaming with salt water, and scented with scraps of fish. Her laughter shook her and grew a little high-pitched, and it was the unmistakable pitch of fear: she glanced over first her left shoulder and then her right, but the classroom door was closed. The paintbrush in the inkpot went frantically round, as if someone else were guiding her hand, and the desk jolted, and a jar of water toppled and spread across the ink-stained page. Look at it, there it is, thought Naomi, still laughing, still jerking her head over her shoulder (when it came she’d be the first to see it!): ‘LOOK,’ she said, to Joanna, or to Mr Caffyn, who appeared again in front of her, wringing her hands, saying something she couldn’t hear above her own high peals of laughter. ‘CAN’T YOU SEE IT?’ she said, watching the water make the ink bloom, making – surely they could see it! – the coiled body of a serpent of some kind, heart pulsing through the thin skin of its belly and a pair of black wings opening. ‘Not long now,’ she said, ‘not long now –’: over her shoulder she looked, again and again, absolutely certain the serpent was on the threshold – she could smell it, certainly she could: she’d know the scent anywhere … and besides, others could see it too – there was Harriet in her yellow dress, and she was laughing, and craning her head so far over her shoulder you’d think her neck would break, and there were the twins from across the road, who barely spoke, even to each other, and now dashed their heads left and right, left and right, snapping them back and forth, and laughing as they did it.

Cora, appalled, watched as laughter spread outward from the red-haired girl’s desk, missing Joanna, moving around her like a flow of water interrupted by a rock. It was as if they’d all heard a silent joke which had passed the adults by: some girls laughed behind hands pressed to their mouths; others threw back their heads and roared, thumping the desk in front of them, as though they were older women and the joke had been a bawdy one. Naomi, who’d begun it all, had worn herself out, and sat giggling quietly, putting her hands in the water-and-ink that spilled across the paper, now and then pausing to look over her shoulder and giggle a little more loudly. The child in the yellow dress, who was nearest the door, had laughed herself into frantic tears, and instead of turning to look over her shoulder had turned her chair around and sat facing the door, her hands pressed to her cheeks, chanting It’s coming ready or not, coming ready or not between open-mouthed gulps at the air.