The House at Tyneford (39 page)

I opened my eyes as Mrs. Ellsworth removed the blackouts. She kept the curtains drawn, but early morning light sneaked between the cracks, falling across Mr. Rivers’ face. He had lost the sickly grey colour, and his skin had almost a tan from the days spent at sea.

“Oh, he does look better,” I said, yawning and stretching my arms.

“Yes. And the doctor’s been in. Took his pulse, says he’s much better. Infection hasn’t spread.”

I smiled with relief. “I’m so glad. Is the doctor still here?”

“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Ellsworth. “Wouldn’t leave without seeing you first. Said he ‘didn’t have the young lady’s permission to depart.’”

Mr. Rivers began to stir. He opened his eyes and blinked.

“Elise.”

“Yes, Mr. Rivers? How do you feel?”

“A trifle sore. But I’ll be all right.”

Mrs. Ellsworth smiled. “You gave us quite a scare, sir. I’ll get Mr. Wrexham to bring up your breakfast.”

She tripped out, leaving us alone.

“You stayed,” said Mr. Rivers. “I told you to go.”

“Well, I didn’t listen. I don’t have to obey you anymore, you know. I’m not your maid.”

He managed a smile. “Kit?”

“Is quite all right. Sleeping.”

“You want to go to him.”

I did not answer as it was not a question. I stood up and smiled at him.

“I’m so glad that you are feeling better.”

“Bring him back with you, if he’s up to coming to the house,” said Mr. Rivers.

“I will.”

I turned and walked out of the bedroom, sunlight streaming through the chinks in the curtain, feeling him watch me as I went.

The ground was drenched with dew, and my plimsolls were instantly wet. Rabbits hurtled through the long grass, white tails flashing in the morning light. In the distance I heard the roar of the sea, the pull and crash of the tide across the pebbles. The air held a chill, and while the sun sneaked between the clouds, the sky was dark and a black haze lined the horizon. The wind carried the metal scent of coming rain, and I wrapped my thin cardigan around my shoulders. I knew the telltale signs well enough by now to know that a summer squall was brewing. There was an eerie beauty in the smoke-dark clouds rolling across the water, while the waves far out in the bay peaked with foaming white horses. Black cormorants skimmed the shallows like shadow birds. The yellow buttercups scattered across the grass verges seemed like stars in the half-light. I smiled and hurried toward the beach and Kit. I remembered the promise I’d made the night before he sailed and I felt a flutter of anticipation in my belly. I thought of his letters and my blood fizzed in my veins, suddenly electric.

I can see it now as vividly as a moving picture. Kit is waiting for me beside a small skiff. “Come on, hurry up,” he calls, eager to dodge the coming squall. Panting, we push the boat out into the shallows, shoving away from the beach with an oar. Kit heaves up the canvas sail, wobbling for a second in the swell. I hold the tiller and steer her, Kit’s fingers covering mine. The tide races and carries us out to the mouth of the bay and we tack around the coast, seeing the black rocks of Kimmeridge loom before us. I want to ask Kit if he was very frightened at Dunkirk but I am silent. I notice a scratch above his eye and along his cheek. The sky turns grey and it begins to mizzle. My dress is thin and I shiver, and Kit wraps his arms around me to keep me warm. He tugs me down onto the floor of the boat. It is damp and smells of stale fish. He starts to kiss me and I am crying. The sail flaps wild in the wind and the boat rocks like a cradle on the tide. I unfasten my dress with steady fingers and lie back on the ropes coiled at the bottom of the boat. All I see is Kit and all I hear is the crack of the loose sail. I love you, I tell him, and I draw him down on top of me. The coil of ropes digs into my back. This time I do not ask him to stop.

I have imagined it so many times that sometimes I have to remind myself that it is not true. That it happened to some other Elise in another version of this story. In my memory there are a myriad of Kits spinning in the sunshine like the gaps between the leaves, and who is to say that one of them did not find his way home to peel off my stockings. I wanted to see it here in words. As I write, it becomes as real as anything else.

But what happened is that I stood alone on the beach. A thin plume of smoke filed out of Burt’s cottage chimney, while the old fisherman perched on his usual lobster pot, filleting mackerel ready to smoke in the inglenook for breakfast. He looked surprised to see me, but gave a friendly nod.

“Won’t shake yer hand, missy,” he said. “Got fish guts up to my elbows. I stinks like the sea.”

“Is Kit still asleep?” I asked.

Burt frowned, deep creases furrowing his brow.

“Nope. ’ee weren’t ’ere when I woke up. Thought Mr. Kit had garn up ter the big house ter see yoos an’ the squire.”

I shook my head. “No. He’s not at the house. How long has he been gone?” I asked, hearing my voice grow thick and strange.

“Since dawn. Sun wakes me, blackouts or no,” said Burt, rising to his feet, gutted fish slithering to the ground in a brown bloodied trail.

“But he couldn’t go,” I insisted. “The
Lugger
needs repairing. I saw her. She couldn’t sail. And the engine. You didn’t fix the engine.”

“’Course not.” Burt shot me an angry glance. “Locked up toolshed too. Jist in case. But it’s no matter—as you say, the
Lugger
couldn’t sail ter Swanage much less ter France.”

Rain spots began to pelt the sand and mottle the pebbles along the beach. The sea growled and thrashed against the shore. Burt marched around the side of the cottage to a series of wooden sheds half concealed beneath the cliffs. I followed close behind as he hurried to the farthest shelter, a haphazard boathouse. One door was missing, rotted away years before, while the other was thrown back, dangling from its hinges. Burt took a step toward it and gave a short cry. I peered inside the shed. It was empty. Neat tracks led down to the shore.

“The
Anna,
” he cried. “He’s taken the
Anna.
”

B
rave and reckless. Brave and reckless and I loved him. I rushed out into the water, the cold slapping my ankles, then my thighs, as I waded deeper and deeper. Why had he gone? To save Will and others like him? For an adventure? I needed him to come back. I’d lost everyone else. I wished I’d stayed with him, watched him all night. I wouldn’t have let him leave. The cold water reached my stomach and I gasped. I couldn’t see anything out in the bay. Not the
Anna
. Not any boat. The rain battered the sea and drenched my hair. From the shore I heard Burt yelling at me to come back. Why? Kit had come back and then he’d left again. He didn’t even say good-bye. But then, what could he have said? I would have pleaded with him not to go. I ducked down under the surface, the salt water stinging my eyes and nose, my hair brushing my cheeks like fronds of seaweed. I scooped up a handful of pebbles and, rising out of the water, hurled them back into the sea. I screamed his name—“
Kit! Kit! Kit!”—
as though some supernatural force would carry my voice to him and the moment he heard it he would sigh and turn the boat around, and before that black cloud reached Lovell’s Tower—no, before that grey-bellied gull alighted on the rock stack in the bay—I’d see the small wooden boat racing across the water toward me. My throat hurt from shouting, but there was no boat. The cloud hurtled past Lovell’s folly on the cliff and the gull vanished behind the rocks. I crashed my way through the surf to the far edge of the bay. The yellow cliff of Worbarrow Tout bookended the beach, the sharp ridge running up a hundred feet, a snub-nosed lookout point rising above the water like the snout of a sea monster. My clothes and shoes dripped as I crawled across green rocks greased to a slick by waves and rain. Sharp barnacles sliced my fingers and shins, and blood streaked my skin. I clawed my way up the haphazard path to the pinnacle of the Tout, breath coming in rasps. I stood at the very edge of the cliff, watching the water tumble and break below me on three sides. The water was as black as the rocks and sky. I searched the horizon. Empty.

I looked out toward Lulcombe Cove, with its neat, cobbled causeway and cluster of stone cottages, and then farther west toward the jutting strip that linked Portland to the Dorset coast. Hulking ships glowered in the channel, black smoke puffing from funnels as small as cigars from this distance. Beyond the curve of Worbarrow Bay lay the outside world. In its way, Tyneford was as separate from the rest of England as the Isle of Portland. The valley and the combe and the barrows and the black woods belonged to a more ancient world. The war happened elsewhere. I felt its sorrows in the silence from my family and in the slow disappearance of the young men one by one into the armed forces. For those of us left behind, life continued much as before: the servants grumbled over the inconvenience and we had to churn our own butter from the milk on the farm, and without elastic our stockings slithered down our knees, but the changes were irksome, not yet catastrophic. We all felt the war at night in the utter darkness and in the hush of the church bells, but the wireless reports referred to another world. Tyneford hardly seemed to belong to Europe, and if we only stayed here, hidden in these hills and vales, we would be safe. I watched the storm front crawl along the horizon, rain rushing the breakers, and I saw Kit disappear into the outside world. He surrendered himself to the unknown, to that noisy, smoke-filled other place.

Rain streaking my face, I turned and retreated down the path to where Burt waited on the beach. The water fell in lines, spouting from the sky like the pump in the yard, but through the downpour I saw that he clutched something, a jagged necklace of giant teeth. Blinking, I realised that Burt held before him the string of witch-stones, and in the weird gloom of the June storm they appeared brushed with red-brown blood. The wind crackled in the long sea grass and I felt a twinge of dread, cool and light as the brush of a feather, crawl along my spine.

“How could he have taken it?” repeated Mr. Rivers. “I don’t understand. The
Anna
’s too heavy for one man to sail.”

Mr. Rivers sat in the leather armchair in his bedroom, still dressed in his pyjamas. Mrs. Ellsworth and I lingered by the window, feigning calm.

“Christ, Wrexham. Help me dress,” he commanded.

The old butler stepped forward. “Sir, please, if you will permit the impertinence. I believe the doctor said that Sir should rest.”

“Wrexham. There is an indignity in learning one’s son has rushed back to battle while one is wearing Simpson’s striped pyjamas. I should very much like to dress.”

“Very good, sir.”

The butler retreated into the dressing room and began to open and shut drawers. Mr. Rivers’ face assumed the same ghastly hue as it had the previous evening.

“Well? Will someone tell me how Kit managed to take her?”

“Jack Miller has gone,” I said, leaning against the windowsill. “His parents noticed him missing this morning. The two of them managed to drag her down to the beach together.”

“Good God. Well, I suppose we’ll find out more when Jack Miller comes back in a day or two,” said Mr. Rivers, closing his eyes for a minute. When he opened them again, he realised that we were both watching him. “Kit will send the boy home. He’s only seventeen. Kit won’t let him sail to France.”