Water (2 page)

he was going away and not coming back. Probity had taken the baby from him and closed the

door in his face without a word.

He had chosen a first name for the baby because she had neither father nor mother. She was

pitiable.

The Hookes lived in a white wooden house on the edge of the town. Their fields lay a little

distance off, in two separate odd-shaped patches along the floor of the steep valley, where soil

deep enough to cultivate had lodged on the underlying granite. The summers were short, but

desperately hot, ending usually in a week of storms, followed by a mellow autumn and then a

long, bitter winter, with blizzards and gales. For night after night, lying two miles inland in her

cot at the top of the ladder, Pitiable would fall asleep to the sound of waves raging along the

outer shore, and wake to the same sound. Between the gales there would be still, clear days with

the sun no more than a handsbreadth above the horizon, and its light glittering off mile after mile

of thigh-deep snow. Then spring, and thaw and mud and slush and the reek of all the winter’s

rubbish, rotting at last. Then searing summer again.

It was a hard land to scrape a living off, though there was a good harbour that attracted trade, so

some of the People prospered as merchants. Fishermen, and others not of the People, came there

too, though many of these later went south and west to kinder, sunnier, richer places. But the

People stayed “in the land the Lord has given us,” as they used to say. There they had been born,

and their ancestors before them, all the way back to the two shiploads who had founded the

town. The same names could be read over and over again in their graveyard, Bennetts and

Hookes and Warrens and Lyalls and Goodriches, but no Nasmiths, not one.

For eight years Pitiable lived much like any other girl-child of the People. She was clothed and

fed, and nursed if she was ill. She went to the People’s school, where she was taught to read her

Bible, and tales of the persecution of her forebears. The People had few other books, but those

they read endlessly, to themselves and to each other. They took pride in their education, narrow

though it was, and their speech was grave and formal, as if taken from their books. Twice every

Sunday Pitiable would go with her grandparents to their church, to sit still for two hours while

the Word was given forth.

As soon as she could walk, she was taught little tasks to do about the house. The People took no

pride in possessions or comforts. What mattered to them in this world was cleanliness and

decency, every pot scoured, every chair in its place, every garment neatly stitched and saved, and

on Sundays the men’s belts and boots gleaming with polish, and the women’s lace caps and

collars starched as white as first-fall snow and as crisp as the frost that binds it. They would

dutifully help a neighbour who was in trouble, but they themselves would have to be in desperate

need before they asked for aid.

Probity was a steady-working, stern old man whose face never changed, but Mercy was short

and plump and kindly. If Probity was out of the house, she used to hum as she worked, usually

the plodding, four-square hymn tunes that the People had brought with them across the ocean,

but sometimes a strange, slow, wavering air that was hardly a tune at all, difficult to follow or

learn, but once learnt, difficult to let go of While Pitiable was still very small, she came to know

it as if it had been part of her blood, but she was eight before she discovered what it meant.

The summer before that, Mercy had fallen ill. At first she would not admit it, though her face lost

its roundness and became grey and sagging, and sometimes she would gasp and stand still while

a shudder of pain ran through her and spent itself. Probity for a while did not notice, and for

another while chose not to, but Pitiable found herself doing more and more of her grandmother’s

tasks while Mercy sat on one of the thin upright chairs and told her what she did not already

know. By winter Mercy could not even sit and was forced to lie, and the neighbours had come to

see why she no longer came to church, but Probity had sent them away, saying that he and the

child could manage between them. Which they did, but Pitiable’s days were very long for a

child, from well before dawn until hours after dark, keeping the house clean and de-Cent, and

seeing to her grandfather’s meals and clothes, and nursing her grandmother.

On a Sunday near Christmas (though the People did not keep Christmas, saying it was

idolatrous) there was a storm out of the west, driving snow like a million tiny whips, fiery with

cold. Still, Probity put on his leather coat and fetched out his staff and snowshoes, and told

Pitiable to get ready so that he could drag her to church on the log sled.

“Let her stay,” said Mercy. “I am dying, Probity. I may perhaps die while you are gone. May the

Lord deal with me as He will, but I am afraid to die alone.”

Probity stared at her with his face unchanging, then nodded and tied on his snowshoes and went

out into the storm without a word. Mercy watched the door close.

“He had love in him once,” she said. “But he buried it the day your mother left us and set the

tombstone on it the day she died. Bear with him, Pitiable. Deal with him as best you may. It will

not be easy.”

“Are you really going to die?” said Pitiable.

“As we all are, when the Lord calls to us.”

“To-day? Now?”

“Not to-day, I think. I am better to-day. The pain is almost gone, which is a bad sign. My body

has no more messages to send me.”

Pitiable knelt by Mercy’s cot and put her head on the quilt and wept, while Mercy stroked her

shoulders and told her she was glad to be going, because she trusted in God to forgive her the

small harms she had done in her life. She told Pitiable to fetch a stool and sit by her and hold her

hand.

“I have a story to tell you,” she said. “My mother told it to me, and her mother to her, through

seven generations since
The Trust in God
was lost. You remember the story of Charity Goodrich,

our ancestress, yours and mine?”

Pitiable nodded. Every child among the People, even those who were not directly descended

from her, knew about Charity Goodrich. It was almost the only story they knew, outside the ones

in the Bible. They were told that the stories other children knew were superstitious nonsense,

inventions of the devil, to distract believers from the narrow path to salvation. Two hundred

years ago, three small ships had set out to cross the great ocean. They had been given new names

before they left,
The Lord is Our Refuge, The Deliver Us from Bondage
and
The Trust in God.

Apart from their crews they carried the People, 287 men, women and children who had

determined to leave the country where they were oppressed and imprisoned and burnt for their

beliefs, and settle in new land where they could worship as they chose. After a dangerous voyage

they were in sight of land when a storm separated them. Two ships came safe into the

providential bay which was now the harbour of the town, but the third,
The Trust in God,
was

driven against the cliffs to the north of it and lost with all hands. All hands but one, that is, for

five days later a child was found wandering on the shore, unable to say how she had come there.

Her name was Charity Goodrich.

“I am going to tell you how Charity was saved,” said Mercy. “But first you must promise me two

things. You must remember it so that you can tell it to your daughters when they are old enough

to understand. And you must tell it to nobody else, ever. It is a secret. You will see why. Charity

Goodrich was my great-grandmother’s great-grandmother. There are other descendants of hers

among the People, but I have never asked, never even hinted, and nor must you. Do you

understand?”

“Yes, and I promise,” said Pitiable.

“Good. Now this is the story Charity told. She remembered the storm, and the breaking of the

mast, and the shouts of the sailors, and the People gathering on the deck, standing all together

and singing to the Lord Who made the sea, while they clutched at ropes and spars and the ship

heaved and wallowed and waves swept foaming around their legs. Some of them were washed

away, still singing, and then the ship was laid on its side and the deck stood upright and they all

went tumbling down into the roaring sea. Charity remembered her hand being torn from her

father’s grasp, and then a loose sail tangled round her and she remembered nothing more.

“Nothing more, that is, until she woke. A shuddering cold roused her and told her too that she

was not dead, but alive. Her clothes were soaked, but she was lying on dry sand. She sat up and

looked around. She saw a dim, pale light to one side of her. It was just enough for her to make

out the black water that stirred at her feet, and the black rock all around her and over her.

Somehow she had been washed up in a small cave whose entrance was beneath the water.

“Beside her was a small sea chest of the sort that the People had used to store their possessions

for the voyage. With numbed fingers she opened it and found that it had been well packed, with

all its contents wrapped tight in oilskins. There were dry clothes, far too large for her, but she

stripped off, spreading out her own clothes to dry on the rocks, and wrapped herself in these

others, layer on layer, and nursed her body back to warmth.

“Now she began to wonder what had happened to her and how she had come to this cave. She

remembered the sinking of the ship, and herself being tumbled into the sea and tangled in the

sail, and remembering that she saw that the sail was lying half out of the water, over against one

wall of the cave. So she supposed that some current had washed her in here, and the sea chest

too, and the tide had then gone out and left her in air. But why was it not dark? The light came

from the other side of the cave, low down, and when she went to look she found that the water

washed in along that wall, making as it were an inlet in the waterline, and partway up this was a

pool where lay a coiling fish like a great eel, which shone with points of light all along its flanks.

It stirred when it saw her and the light grew stronger, and now she saw that it was trapped in that

place by a wall of small boulders, piled neatly against one another across the inlet.

“Then she grew afraid, for she could see that the wall had not come there by chance. She

searched the cave, looking for a place to hide, but there was none. Only she found that the inlet

was formed by a little stream of water, sweet to drink, that ran down the back of the cave. After

that she prayed and sang, and then fell asleep, weeping for the mother and father she would

never see again.

“When she woke she knew before she opened her eyes that she was not alone. She had heard the

whisper of a voice.

“She sat up and looked at the water. Two heads had risen from it. Four eyes were gazing at her.

She could not see them well in the faint light, but her heart leaped and her throat hardened. Then

one of the heads spoke, in a weak human voice, in a language she did not know, though she

understood it to be a question.

“‘Who are you?’ she whispered, and they laughed and came further out of the water, so that she

could see that they were human-shaped, pale-skinned and dark-haired, wearing no clothes but for

what seemed to be collars or ruffs around their necks. She stood and put her palms together and

said the Lord’s Prayer in her mind while she crept down to the water’s edge. As she came, the

creatures used their arms to heave themselves up through the shallows. Closer seen, she thought

they were children of about her age, until she saw that instead of legs each had a long and

shining tail, like that of a fish. This is what Charity Goodrich said she saw, Pitiable. Do you

believe her?”

“If you believe her, I do too.”

“Then you believe her. Now it came to her that these two were children of the sea-people, and

the cave was a place they had found and made their own, as children like to do. They had caught

the fish and prisoned it here to give light to the cave, for their own amusement, and in the same

way they had found Charity and brought her here, and the chest, floating them in when the tide

was high and dragging them onto dry land.

“They fetched the sail and by signs showed her that somehow a pocket of air had been caught in

it with her, allowing her to breathe for a little beneath the water. All this and other things Charity

learnt as the days passed. She could count those days by the coming and going of the tide.

“They had brought food for the shining fish, so she made signs that she wanted to eat and they

swam off. She was afraid that they would bring her raw fish, but instead they came with human

stores from the wrecked ship. Some were spoilt with salt, but some were in canisters that had

kept the water out, wormy bread and dried apples and oatmeal which she mixed with fresh water

from the stream at the back of the cave.

“She tried to talk with the sea-children. Their voices were weak, and they could not breathe for

long out of the water. What she had thought to be ruffs around their necks were plumy growths