The Essex Serpent(96)
‘We should show them,’ he said: ‘We should go down there and show them.’
‘Show them,’ she said, ‘yes: the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen …’ She patted at the beads of sweat which settled in the cleft above her lip: ‘The people that walked in darkness will see a great light! We will deliver them out of their fear – give me my notebook, hand me my pen: I am a ready writer! Come’ – she patted the vacant seat beside her, and Francis knelt there, leaning on her arm, watching her leaf through pages blotted with blue ink – ‘I will show you what we’ll do, you and I.’ She began to sketch, her moment of weakness forgotten; her small body radiated vitality and purpose. ‘It is my time,’ she said: ‘The sands are sinking – I have heard it calling! – I am wet to my ankles in blue water …’
Francis wondered if he ought to be troubled, or should call for Martha: the woman’s white hands trembled – her words were tangled strings of bright beads – the black centres of her eyes had spread to the rims. But she put out her arm, and drew him to her, and Francis – who could not bear the shy attempts his mother made to pet him – leaned against her, and felt the heat rise from her shoulder and the incurve of her neck. ‘I can’t do it without you,’ she said, confidingly: ‘I can’t do it on my own, and who else understands, Frankie? Who else can help me?’
She told him what she had in mind. Any other child might have been frightened, or put their head on her shoulder and wept. But as she drew in her notebook, and showed him what part he should play, he was aware for the first time of being wanted, and not out of duty. A new sensation came, which he examined, and would think about later, when he was alone: he thought perhaps it was pride.
‘When shall we do it?’ he said. She tore the pages from the notebook (he admired how neatly she had set out what they were to do, and the care with which she’d planned it) and put them in his pocket.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said: ‘When I’ve seen my babies again. Will you help? Do you promise?’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I do.’
Martha in the garden watched Will try and crown Magog with a home-coming wreath: the goat, growing stout on scraps, shook it repeatedly off, giving him a sour look they both understood to convey that Cracknell would’ve never dreamt of such an indignity. She blinked her slotted eyes and retreated to the misty garden’s end.
‘When are the children home?’ said Martha. ‘You must’ve missed them.’
‘I’ve prayed for them every day,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s been right since they’ve been gone.’ He looked very young, in a shirt with a tear on the shoulder and red berries from the discarded wreath caught in his hair. He’d left behind his pulpit voice and instead leaned on his country vowels; it had a curious effect, drawing the eye more than ever to the corded strength of his bare arms. ‘Tomorrow on the midday train.’ Martha studied him a while – dared she ask where he’d walked the night before with Cora? Had he too been a little off-kilter since then, a little restive? Perhaps it was only that his children were coming home, and meanwhile Stella burned in her blue room.
‘I’ll look forward to seeing them,’ she said: ‘Anyway, I was sent to give you this.’ She gave him the letter, which he looked at without interest; ‘Leave it there,’ he said: ‘I’d best go fetch Magog.’ He gave a curious bow – half-ironic, and half-comical – and walked into the white air.
Returning to the house to take Francis home, she stood amazed at the threshold. Frankie – who even as an infant could never bear to be held – was seated astride on Stella’s lap, his arms clasped about her neck; she’d drawn a blue cloth over them both, and under it they swayed very slightly back and forth.
What Martha later recalled most vividly of those last few fog-white days was this: William’s wife and Cora’s son, fit together like broken pieces soldered on the seam.
The blackeyed boy came and showed me the way.
Bless the LORD Oh my soul!
And all that is within me bless his holy name!
Do not let this cup pass from me for Oh I am thirsty
And Oh my tongue is dry
10
‘Bad morning for it,’ said Thomas Taylor, surveying the lamplit Colchester street. He held up the sleeve of his coat, and saw on every fibre a bead of moisture gleaming in the gaslight glow. The sea-fog was in its second day, and though the city was spared the dense and briny pall enclosing Aldwinter the streets nonetheless were queerly mute, and every now and then a passer-by stumbled on the curb or ran into the arms of a startled stranger. Behind him in the ruin, coils of mist moved across carpets and hung in empty grates, and fanciful guests at the Red Lion swore they’d seen a grey lady closing the curtains in the highest window.
Taylor was joined these days by an apprentice, who sat cross-legged on a slab of stone. He was an odd copper-headed lad, slight and silent, who soberly took instruction and, what’s more, on finer mornings turned out cheerful caricatures of passing tourists, who parted readily with their coins and often came back for more.
‘Can’t see a bloody thing,’ said the apprentice: ‘Nobody knows we’re here. We might as well go home.’