The Visitor (22 page)

She can't settle to anything, waiting for Nicholas who doesn't come. He must be too busy in the Master's hut which is hot and filled with ledgers. Or maybe he didn't want to see her. Maybe he has other girls to sit with by the hearth. That thought is so terrible she gets up and, eager to busy herself, decides to clean the cooking slab. She rubs hard at its black iron surface.

Her mother and Polly come back at midday. Polly tears off her oily apron, hurls it in the corner of the room then bursts into tears. Their mother throws up her hands and says to Pearl, ‘I don't know what to say to her. If it's Gerald she wants then she'll just have to wait for him.' And then to Polly, ‘You can't have a home of your own without a wage.' At this Polly only cries harder.

‘I'm tired of waiting,' Polly says, her pretty face red and swollen with crying. She won't look at Pearl or her mother, just stares at the hearth with leaden eyes. ‘I'm tired of sharing a bed with Pearl, tired of making Father's supper, tired of all this.' She puts her hands over her eyes and cries again.

Their mother ignores her, getting out the plates. ‘We've all had to wait,' she says, but to herself in a low voice. ‘Gerald's got to get a boat. No good crying about it.'

They eat their meal in silence. The clock on the mantle ticks out their lives. Polly looks murderously towards it, as if she'd like to throw it through the window.

Six

When Sunday rolls round again Pearl has no excuse to miss chapel. After a few days resting at home – and some secret swims first thing in the morning – her chest is better. Not mended, but better than it has been in a while. Keeping from chapel will do her more harm than good, her mother says.

Gerald is waiting for them outside the house. Polly gives him her arm. He chides her for looking so miserable but in a kind way, so that she manages a smile for the first time in days. Her mother takes her father's arm and, as usual, Pearl walks alone behind them all. She thinks about slipping away, ducking into an alley and making for the beach below the drying field, or Witch Cove round the bay. Her feet slow down, her body keen to escape now the thought's there. Would anyone notice? But there's a hand at her elbow.

‘How are you?' Jack says.

Her arm stiffens but she tries not to let him see. He keeps as much distance between their bodies as is comfortable whilst still making contact. He smells of the sea but his shirt is clean and his boots wiped. Alice is managing to look after Jack a little, much as he'll let her.

‘Better than I was,' Pearl says. ‘You're not walking in with your father?'

‘No,' Jack says. Then there's silence and Pearl is grateful for the run of alleys that appear before the main street up the hill to chapel, where they have to walk in single file. When they emerge into daylight she falls into step alongside Polly and Gerald, pretending she doesn't notice that they stop talking mid-sentence. Polly is crying again but wipes her eyes and takes Pearl's arm so that they walk as a three. Jack has drifted away.

Pearl doesn't see him once the service begins. Her family sits together mid-way down. Jack usually sits on his own. His father sits right at the back. Jack won't pray next to him. When Samuel was first brought to chapel he screamed the moment he was inside the doors, kicking his legs and thrashing his arms, as if the little boy could feel what everyone was thinking. He's quiet as a lamb at all other times, so much so that people have said the boy's slow, and they all know why, of course. Alice keeps him at home on Sundays and the commonly spoken view is that it's to spare everyone the disturbance. Mr and Mrs Polance sit in the row in front of Pearl, joined by old Mrs Pendeen who'll sit anywhere she fancies, wherever her gossipy tongue takes her. Mrs Polance has given up the Sunday School classes. There aren't enough children to make it worthwhile sending them to the back room that smells of wet coats.

In the fidgety moments before the service begins people settle themselves on the hard wooden benches, easing their trousers over their knees, spreading their skirts to prevent creases. Pearl's mother leans forwards and speaks to Mrs Polance.

‘Annie, where is he?'

Mrs Polance shakes her head but won't turn round. Mr Polance sits in silence, his hands gripping the hymnal. Old Mrs Pendeen leans backwards, her chapel hat a squashed brown cake.

‘Another soul lost,' old Mrs Pendeen says to Pearl's mother. ‘He's on the path to sin, you mark my words. Better to cast out the devil than have him taint your home.'

Mrs Polance lowers her head. Fortunately Mr Taylor's wide face appears at that moment in the pulpit. Pearl couldn't have held her tongue much longer. What do any of them know about Nicholas?

The service begins with a hymn. Mrs Taylor plays the organ though it's so old there are more squeaks of lost air than actual notes. It's impossible not to notice that there are fewer voices now to drown out the organ in song. Then come prayers then the sermon. Another denouncement of Sabbath breakers. The east coast and Govenek men are dealt a more painful fate each week as Mr Taylor works himself into a storm. As the preacher's words ebb and flow Pearl drifts away, letting the tide take her out to sea, an arm around her waist, soft lips at her ear.

That night it's Polly who wakes Pearl, not the dream. They still share a bed though it's not big enough for them now. Polly complains that Pearl takes up too much space and gets angry when Pearl fights in her sleep, when the dream makes her walk into the sea.

At first Pearl pretends she's still asleep, ignoring the sobs half muffled by the pillow. What can she say to make Polly feel better? At least she has someone. But the sobs get louder, becoming full body cries that Pearl can feel thrumming through the shared mattress. She'll have to say something or she'll never be able to get back to sleep.

She puts her hand on her sister's shoulder and gently rolls her towards her. Pearl has only the old words for Polly. She knows they won't be any use when Polly's waiting for her life to begin properly, in a home of her own, with a man she loves, but those words are better than nothing.

‘Come on now,' Pearl says. ‘It'll be all right. Gerald will find some work soon. Maybe the Master will have a berth for him. I'm sure Nicholas will ask for you. He's good like that.'

Polly shakes her head. ‘It's too late,' she manages to mumble.

‘No, it isn't. The Master's bound to need new hands once the next shoal of pilchards arrives.'

But Polly only shakes her head more vigorously and throws a damp, screwed up piece of paper at Pearl before sobbing into the pillow again. The paper's torn from the newspaper. They don't take one in their house as neither of her parents can read and she and Polly are slow, halting readers. She recognises it though, the local edition. Nicholas can often be found reading it. She lights a candle and smoothes out the scrap on the blanket. It takes her a moment to work out what it says. The long, difficult word ‘Australia' takes up most of the space and then underneath there are dates and ports listed. Then she realises what the paper is, what it means. Her body runs cold and she feels as if she'll be sick. Polly has stopped crying. The candle's flame flickers in a draft from the window. Pearl has the sudden desire to put the flame to the advertisement, to make it disappear.

‘Do you want to leave?' Pearl says.

‘I want to be with Gerald,' Polly says, finally wiping her eyes. Her voice is cold. ‘He says it's the only way.'

To leave Morlanow. To get far away from wagging tongues, from chapel, from waiting. The temptation is there inside Pearl, thick and full as if it's been growing for years and she's only just realised.

‘Then you should go,' Pearl says. She gives Polly the newspaper scrap and blows out the candle.

Seven

The following day is Monday and washday. Still no shoal has come so Pearl's task is to see to the house's clothes and bedding while her mother spends another day sorting salt and empty hogsheads and Polly absent-mindedly checks nets for holes. There's been no mention of Australia and Pearl has decided it's wiser to keep quiet until a decision has been made.

It's a day's work to scrub and rinse, to wring and press. She longs to escape the confines of the yard, its dusty stone and pock-marked weeds. All she can think of is getting to the sea's edge at the end of the day and feeling the breeze on her face. Not that she will get there at this rate. She's not as good at organising her time as Polly and her mother. Early evening has arrived and the washing is still damp. Given the hot sun today Pearl should have spread the clothes on the drying field like the rest of the women. But time got away from her again and what was going to be a hasty swim devoured most of the morning.

From the other side of the wall between Pearl's yard and that of the Polances' next door there is the scrape of boots against brick. In her yard the dozing chickens scatter in indignation and Nicholas's face appears over the top of the wall. She's struck afresh at how he has grown into a striking young man, still bearing that smile that cuts her to the quick, but still cradling his boyishness too. She can't look at him. She pretends to sort through the washing at her feet.

‘You're not still washing, limpet-legs?' he says.

She pauses with her hands caught in a sheet. Why must he call her that? She's not a child any more. He can't want her as she wants him. It's clear from the way he speaks to her. She's annoyed, and disappointed. ‘Finished work for the day, have you?' she says. ‘All right for some.'

‘I've been hard at it,' he says. ‘Muddle with the amount needed for the last shipment. A palace maid too busy working her tongue instead of her wits, no doubt.'

Pearl looks at him then, can't help herself. He's smiling and she's smiling too and maybe he feels as she does. Maybe. She scoops a handful of water from the tub at her feet and throws it at him. He ducks and then laughs when the water falls short of the wall anyway.

He still has a cheek to him but she doesn't mind it, has never minded. He's clever with it. The Master, now all but blind, needs Nicholas working on his accounts. He's given him a scratchy-nibbed pen and pages of thick, cream paper that Pearl longs to stroke. Nicholas spends his days filling columns with weights of fish, prices of fish, buyers for fish, yet he doesn't go out to catch any himself. It's good, steady work to have, unlike fishing, and the wages are welcome at home. All the girls in Morlanow should be trying to win him.

‘When will you be done?' Nicholas says. ‘I've got to help with nets but I'm thinking of disappearing for a bit.'

Pearl wrings out a sheet then flaps it loose of the twist. ‘I can't,' she says. ‘I'm meant to get the supper but I'm behind as it is. Father's been at sea all day. He'll be hungry.' Though what she will find for him is another matter.

The sun is dropping behind Nicholas, turning the sky orange fired red in swathes. Gulls fleck their dark shapes against this rich display; an enormous painting, Pearl thinks, with Nicholas's head and shoulders as the centrepiece.

‘Well, come out after you've eaten,' Nicholas says. ‘They can't expect you to sit in with them after scrubbing all day. Just for a while.'

Her insides are as tightly wound as the sheets. She wants to go with him, of course she does. ‘I can't. I'm sorry.' She picks up a pair of trousers. There's nothing she can do to change things, however much she wants to.

A door bangs in the Tremain house on the other side. Jack's white-blond head of hair precedes his washed out eyes and broad face over the top of the wall. His skin is burnt from his day at sea and freckles have spread across the bridge of his nose.

Jack nods across the yard. ‘Evening,' he says.

Nicholas nods back and Jack shifts on whatever it is he's standing on. Pearl hangs the sheet on the line. She can feel both of them looking down on her in the yard below.

Finally Nicholas clears his throat. ‘Good day was it, Jack?'

‘Not bad,' Jack says, fiddling with a weed poking through the brickwork. ‘Got ling off the lines, tiddlers though. Men of
The Dancer
saw a pilchard shoal past Keeper's Point so I'm hoping for the call tomorrow.'

‘I heard that, at the sale this morning, though there was a load of hot air too.' Nicholas shakes his head. ‘All that fuss. You'd think the east coast boys of
Good Girl
had set fire to chapel rather than bring in a few fish yesterday.'

Pearl's hands freeze on the washing line. She can feel Jack bristling even with the wall between them.

Jack takes his time before speaking, still toying with the weed poking from the wall. ‘I can't hold with that way of thinking, Nicholas. You know it's wrong of them, going out on a Sunday, and even worse to land their fish here.'

‘But Jack, it's not as if it's against the law. People have got to eat. East coasters as well as us. Govenek made the change years ago and we've been left behind. We need to try new things, go for other fish. Waiting for the pilchards each year is just foolish. The Master– '

‘You'd do better to watch your tongue,' Jack says. ‘There's ill feeling towards the
Good Girl
crew and the meeting will– '