The Visitor (18 page)

Nicholas scowls at Jack, his forehead pulled into a deep crease. There's a pulse of anger about him then he throws himself at Jack, shoving him onto the floor. They wrestle but it's like how the girls fight, grabbing one another's hair and pushing each other's faces, until Jack gets hold of Nicholas' arm and wrenches it behind his back. Nicholas' eyes water, he cries out. She's never seen them fight like this. They row and Jack is often grumpy, like when he sank the little boat with the handkerchief sail, but actually hurting one another is something else. She can't look away and she can't speak either. She knows she should tell them to stop but she can't. Instead she drags one of the nets from the corner, braving herself against the rats and the keygrims, and throws it over Jack. He's confused and lets go of Nicholas' arm. Nicholas quickly rolls out from under the net and stumbles to his feet. Jack tries to get up but gets more tangled, binding himself. Nicholas laughs, which makes Pearl laugh too, and makes Jack fight the net even more, becoming even more caught. He stops moving. Their laughter dries up and they hear Jack crying. Through the thick weave of the net she can just about see that his hands are over his face and he's shaking.

Nicholas is on his hands and knees then, trying to free Jack. Pearl goes to help but the net is too big and heavy and Jack seems too deeply buried. She's sorry she threw it now and more sorry that she laughed. Finally Jack is able to shrug the last of the net from his shoulders and to stand. He wipes his sniffing nose with the back of his hand. His eyes are red and swollen.

‘It's today, isn't it?' Nicholas asks him.

Jack nods. ‘They'll be married by now. He's so angry but it's his fault. He drove my mother away and now he's a sinner. He'll go to hell. I want him to. It's his fault the fish haven't come.'

‘Don't be foolish,' Nicholas says, though in a kind voice. ‘It's no one's fault. It's how things are sometimes.'

‘It is his fault. And hers. She's a whore!'

Nicholas puts his hand on Jack's shoulder but Jack shakes it off. Still sniffing and wiping his eyes, he leaves the palace. He'll go to Skommow Bay, Pearl thinks. He won't want Timothy or the Pengelley boys to see him crying and everyone on the seafront will be talking about the wedding, about his father's sinfulness with Alice. About blame.

She and Nicholas go out onto the seafront. Jack's already gone. There's a wall of dark-clothed bodies looking out to sea. At least the chapel service will have been quiet. Nicholas climbs the cliff path to wait with his grandfather, Mr Jenner, at the huer's hut on the cliff. Watching for fish runs down his line. His grandfather is determined Nicholas is to be one of the men and see the shoal first as it enters the bay. Pearl goes and sits beneath the harbour wall.
Hevva
, she whispers to herself, willing the word from the air. But still the fish don't come.

*

The days roll on. Hope makes every cloud a sign, every wave becomes a clue. If all fish are eaten from their tails to their heads, luck is given to those in the boats and more fish will flood into the bay, which must then be eaten in the same manner. If the pressing stones are heard rolling in the cellars without the touch of human hands, it means that they're eager to weigh down the lids of packed hogsheads and the fish must be on their way. Aunt Lilly's knowledge is sought each morning; her gift as a pellar is to see beyond the horizon. But each morning she shakes her head, and still there are no fish.

Fishermen wait on the seafront, huddled over pipes and plans. Their talk is only of other seasons, of great catches or empty palaces. The lean year the hake ate right through William Pendeen's seine net, just as it was about to be brought to the surface, bursting with pilchards. The fishermen turn their backs on home, on families, as they gaze on the calm water, willing Mr Jenner's trumpet to sound from the cliff.

When big ships put into harbour to load their cargo onto the train or to pick up new crews and supplies, the men on board are asked if they have seen any shoals. If there has been a sighting, charts are spread on the seafront. The older fishermen, those who have spent their lives waiting for the pilchards to grace Morlanow, chew on their pipes and suck in their cheeks. Their thick fingers, darkened by the sun and years caulking boats, trace paths through the sea, along Cornwall's ragged coast, predicting the shoal's next route and when the fish might come to her father's net. But these can only ever be guesses, and the days roll on.

Waiting, waiting. Nets dry in the sun. Bussa jars gather dust. There are whispers that the early catch was a false dawn and now Morlanow is cursed for the whole season – no pilchards will come. There will be nothing to eat this winter.

Her dreams flicker with fish. They're always in the sea, never drowning in the nets or laid out in salt. She swims with them, as quick and lithe as a fish herself. The pilchard shoal moves as one body, called a ‘she' by the fishermen. Pearl pictures the darting shimmer as having long silver hair made of all the light in the sea.

In her dreams, the shoal slips by Pearl, close to her face so she feels the tickle of scales on her skin. But the shoal gets away and the widening gap between them makes her cry. She falters then, in the water, losing her ability to move like the shoal. As she begins to sink there's a violent shift in the water; a blurred shape surrounded by bubbles crashes into the sea. Someone has jumped off the harbour wall. Pearl feels an arm around her, holding her up. She knows it's Nicholas without having to look.

When she hears the bell she thinks she must still be asleep. But then she becomes aware of movement. Polly's weight creaks off the bed. Feet run past the window, the magical word pounded in their tread.
Hevva. Hevva. Hevva
.

Her mother's lighting the lamp. ‘Come along, my sweet, or you'll miss them.'

And it's real – the fish have finally come. For a moment Pearl can't breathe. Her mother rubs her chest until it softens and Pearl can scrabble for her boots in the lamp's weak light. Its oil, pressed from the bodies of last season's catches, sizzles and burns its smell into the room. The fish are here, in the house. The shoal from her dream is swimming round the ceiling, sputtering in and out of the shadows cast there by the lamp. Pearl knew they would come. If you hope hard enough, what you truly wish for will appear.

‘Where's Father?' she asks.

‘He heard the wind get up once you'd gone to bed. Mr Polance came for him. They've been at sea four hours now, waiting for the fish to come in close enough.' Her mother ties Pearl's laces for her, Pearl's fingers too jittery.

When her mother opens the front door onto the street, the rain blows into the house. In between gusts of wind, the trumpet sounds. The weather has broken and the pilchards have followed on its heels. Despite the wet, the whole village seems to be pouring past the house on its way to the seafront. Pearl, her mother, and Polly join the crowd and are swept along in the damp crush of hastily grabbed boots and coats; everyone's faces have blurred together in the tide of bodies. Her mother holds tight to Pearl's hand but her feet are trodden on and she takes a knock to the shin, flinching into her mother's warm shape beside her.

They go to the seafront to wait for the boats to come in. Dawn's not far off; through the rain clouds at the horizon a thin seam of lighter blue is easing itself over the dark bulk of the sea. The rain sluices the cobbles down to the seafront, but Pearl isn't cold. Her whole body crackles with heat, radiating from her insides and filling her skin so she wonders her mother's hand doesn't burn.

Pearl leaves her mother and Polly at the front; she won't be needed yet and no one will miss her in the excitement. Passing the entrance to the palace she ducks past the Master in his usual hand-wringing state. No hiding in the cellar today for her.

At the end of the seafront a column of flickering lamps light the path up to the huer's hut. Pearl joins the line of people winding that way. The sound of the trumpet grows louder with each step. The bell's still pealing, though there can't be many left in bed to rouse. Pearl looks up from the path as shadows graze overhead; gulls are streaming across the cliff to attack the shoal, their cries chiming against the bell's clear sound. As she turns her head she loses her footing and puts out her hands to steady herself, the soft mud of the churned path meeting her grip.

The huer's hut is hidden by the mass of people surrounding it. Some are artists, standing beneath umbrellas. Morlanow's people brave the rain, smiling as it soaks them. A little way off, three other huers are dancing. They're directing different crews, employed by other palace owners. On the water below, groups of boats will move in on the shoal, trying to enclose as many fish as possible. Pearl only has eyes for her father's boat. She moves close to the cliff edge so that she can watch Mr Jenner, the huer in the Master's pay, who will direct her father and his crew from up here. Nicholas is standing by his grandfather, carefully holding the green-and-white tin trumpet.

The crowd here's quieter than the people at the seafront. It's a difficult job being huer. Her father says he would rather be in the boat than have the burden of directing the seines. So many bussa jars depend on Mr Jenner to be filled. He's bent over from years of waiting, his whole frame leaning forward to see the fish appear in the water. Pearl can feel the tension in him, how tight his muscles are against his bones, and how his eyes burn for the longed-for sight of the fish.

Mr Jenner grasps two little moons, the bushes, gorse balled and tied to a stick to make a handle, pale muslin stretched taut around the shape. Mr Jenner wields the bushes to direct her father and the other men in the boats. All his different movements are a code that the seine men know, watching Mr Jenner from the boats while the tricksy fish play their games about them. Mr Jenner has the best view from up here on the cliff. He knows how the fish will turn when they get into the bay.

All of a sudden Mr Jenner drops the bushes and grabs the trumpet from Nicholas. He calls down to the boats far below, the trumpet making his voice boom and bounce off the cliff face.

‘Steady, boys. Steady. Not yet. Damn and blast, Tremain – get round!'

He shoves the trumpet back at Nicholas, picks up the muslin bushes again and runs to the huer's hut. He climbs the ladder leaning against it, nimble despite his crooked back, and gets onto the roof where the men will be able to see him better. Once more he waves signals with the muslin bushes.

Already night is nearly over. The sky is a soft green where it lips the sea. Pearl moves forward, a few paces from where Nicholas stands. He turns to see her. He looks older, as if Mr Jenner's age and worry for the fish have seeped in to his flesh in the days he has spent up on the cliff, watching the sea. The rain has flattened his hair to his head and his mouth is fixed in a hard line. He grabs Pearl's hand and whispers to her, trying not to disturb Mr Jenner's concentration.

‘Think how far they've come just to swim into a trap. All that way in the water and they'll be sent out again, next time above it, dead in a hogshead.'

Nicholas's breath mists as it leaves his mouth and his grip on her hand is icy and a little too tight. She can see the boats quite clearly now. Her father's seine boat,
Fair Maid
, pulls ahead. A few yards over lies the shoal itself.

She can't think of the shoal as being made of food, as scales circled under a stone while oil's forced out, not yet. While still in the water the shoal shapes itself into a woman, swimming and slicing through the sea. Nothing should be able to hold this strange woman, let alone a seine net cast upon her by tired and cold fishermen.

The Master's team of men are working ahead of the other crews. Following Mr Jenner's waved instructions and swearing – her mother wouldn't approve of the bad words – her father's boat and two others make a triangle at one end of the shoal. Pearl knows the men will be praying together as they do so, but quietly, as the fish don't like noise. The oldest Pengelley boy, Stephen, and Mr Polance take the great seine net in their arms. They are in
Fair Maid
and her father's in charge of the oars. Lead weights are tied to one end of the net. Pearl runs her eyes the length of it to the corks at the other. Mr Jenner swings the muslin bush that is in his right hand, the sign for those on shore to take the long warp rope, attached to the seine net, to the nearest capstan. The warp will draw the net to the surface and hold it steady once the fish are caught.

But the warp won't be pulled just yet. Mr Jenner is readying himself for the most important moment of the entire catch. He bends his knees and leans even closer to the roof of the hut, his hands spread wide as if he's holding an enormous fish that no one else can see. Slowly, he raises both bushes above his head. Pearl's chest tightens as the low murmur of voices around her falls to silence. The drip drip drip of rain on the hut roof is as loud as thunderclaps. Still holding Pearl's hand, Nicholas puts the tin trumpet to his lips; Pearl knows it's an honour to give the call. Nicholas will be closer to being thought a man than a boy. He looks up at his grandfather, waiting for the signal. His shoulders are slumped, as if he doesn't want his part in capturing the fish. Perhaps he's just cold.

In the boats below, the fishermen are stock still, locked in their positions until they are given the sign to shoot the net. The tumble of the gulls just above their heads seems wilder against their stillness. Pearl's hands begin to tremble. She's suddenly aware of the rain slipping down her back. A shiver runs the length of her. She can barely watch the boats but she can't look away either. And then at last the moment comes.