Water (3 page)

with which they seemed to breathe the sea-water, as a fish does with its gills. Their language was

strange. She told them her name, but they could not say it, nor she theirs. Instead they sang, not

opening their mouths but humming with closed lips. You have often heard me humming the song

of the sea-people.”

“This one?” said Pitiable, and hummed the slow, wavering tune that she had heard so often.

Mercy joined her, and they hummed it together, their voices twining like ripples in water. When

they finished, Mercy smiled.

“That is how I used to sing it with my own mother,” she said. “And then with yours. It needs two

voices, or three. So Charity sang it with the sea-children in their cave, and they hummed the

tunes she taught them,
The Old Hundredth
and
Mount Ephraim
and such, so that they should be

able to praise their Creator beneath the waves. So as the days went by a kind of friendship grew,

and then she saw that they began to be troubled by what they had done. At first, she supposed,

she had seemed no more than a kind of toy, or amusement, for them, a thing with which they

could do as they chose, like the shining fish. Now they were learning that this was not so.

“They made signs to her, which she did not understand, but supposed them to be trying to

comfort her, so she signed to them that she wished to return to her own people, but they in their

turn frowned and shook their heads, until she went to the place where the shining fish was

trapped and started to take down the wall they had built. They stopped her, angrily, but she

pointed to the fish as it sought to escape through the gap she had made, and then at herself, and at

the Avails that held her, and made swimming motions with her arms, though she could not swim.

They looked at each other, more troubled than before, and argued for a while in their own

language, the one trying to persuade the other, though she could see that both were afraid. In the

end they left her.

“She sat a long while, waiting, until there was a stirring in the water that told her that some large

creature was moving below the surface. She backed away as it broke into the air. It was a man, a

huge, pale man of the sea-people. If he had had legs to walk upon, he would have stood as tall as

two grown men. She could feel the man’s anger as he gazed at her, but she said the Lord’s Prayer

in her mind and with her palms together walked down to the water’s edge and stood before him,

waiting to see what he would do.

“Still he stared, furious and cold. She thought to herself and closed her lips and started to hum

the music the sea-children had taught her, until he put up his hand and stopped her. He spoke a

few words of command and left

“She waited. Twice he came back, bringing stuff from the wreck, spars and canvas and rope,

which he then worked on, in and out of the water, making what seemed to be a kind of tent

which he held clear of the water and then dragged back in, with air caught inside it, so that it

floated high. He then buoyed it down with boulders to drag it under. He took it away and came

back and—worked on it some more, and then returned, having, she supposed, tried it out and

been satisfied. Meanwhile she had gathered up her own clothes and wrapped them tightly in

oilskin, and stripped off the ones she was wearing, down to the slip, and tied her bundle to her

waist

“When he was ready, the man, being unwilling himself to come ashore, signalled to her to break

down the Avail that held the shining fish, which she did, and it swam gladly away. So in utter

darkness she walked down into the water, where the man lifted his tent over her and placed her

hands upon a spar that he had lashed across it for her to hold and towed her away, with her head

still in the air that he had caught within the canvas and her body trailing in the water. She felt the

structure jar and scrape as he towed it through the opening and out into the sea. By the time they

broke the surface, the air had leaked almost away, but he lifted the tent from her and she looked

around and saw that it was night

“The storm was over, and the sea was smooth, with stars above, and a glimmer of dawn out over

the ocean. Charity lay along the sea-man’s back with her arms around his shoulders as he swam

south and set her down at last in the shallows of a beach. Oyster Beach we call it now.

“She waded ashore, but turned knee-deep in the water to thank him. He cut her short, putting the

flat of his hand against his lips and making a fierce sideways gesture with his other hand—so—

then pointed at her, still as angry-seeming as when she had first seen him. She put her palms

crosswise over her mouth, sealing it shut, trying to say to him: Yes, I will keep silent. She had

already known she must. She did not know if any of the People were left alive after the storm,

but they were the only folk she knew, and who of them would believe her, and not think she was

either mad or else talking profane wickedness? Then she bowed low before him, and when she

looked up, he was gone.

“She took off the slip she had worn in the sea and left it at the water’s edge, as though the tide

had washed it there. Then she dressed herself in her own clothes, dank and mildewy though they

were, and walked up the shore. Inland was all dense woods, so she walked along beside them,

past Watch Point to Huxholme Bay, where three men met her, coming to look for clams at the

low tide.

“So. That is the story of Charity Goodrich. Tomorrow you shall tell it to me, leaving nothing out,

so that I can be sure you know it to tell it truly to your own daughters when they are old enough

to understand.”

Probity sat by Mercy’s bed throughout the night she died, holding both her hands in his. They

prayed together, and from time to time they spoke of other things, but in voices too soft for

Pitiable, in her cot at the top of the ladder, to hear. In the end she slept, and when she came down

before dawn to remake the fire, she found Probity still in his clothes, sitting by the fire with his

head between his hands, and Mercy stretched out cold on her cot with her Bible on her chest. For

two days Probity would not eat or dress or undress or go to bed. He let the Church Elders make

the arrangements for the funeral, simply grunting assent to anything that was said to him, but for

the ceremony itself he pulled himself together and shaved carefully and polished his belt and

boots and dressed in his Sunday suit and stood erect and stern by the graveside with his hand

upon Pitiable’s shoulder, and then waited with her at the churchyard gate to receive the

condolences of the People.

Mercy in her last hours must have spoken to him about their granddaughter, and told him to take

comfort in her and give her comfort in return, and this he tried to do. He read the Bible with her

in the evenings, and sometimes noticed if she seemed tired and told her to rest. And around

Christmas, when all the children of the townspeople were given toys, he whittled a tiny horse and

cart for her to set upon the mantelshelf. By day he worked as he always had to see that the two of

them were warm and fed, fetching in the stacked logs for the stove, and bringing in more from

the frozen woods to make next season’s stack, and digging turnips and other roots from the

mounds where they were stored, and fetching out grain from the bins and salted meat from the

barrels, and mending the tools he would need for next summer’s toil, while Pitiable cooked and

stitched and cleaned as best she could, the way Mercy had shown her. She was young for such

work, and he did not often scold her for her mistakes. So the neighbours, who at first had felt that

in Christian duty they must keep an eye upon the pair, decided that all was well and left them

alone.

Spring came with the usual mud and mess, followed by the urgent seed-time when the ground

dried to a fine soft tilth and had not yet begun to parch. It was then that Probity, after brooding

for a while, went to the Elders of the People and asked for their permission to bring his

daughter’s body up from the town cemetery and bury it beside Mercy s in the graveyard of the

People. The Elders did not debate the question long. They were all of one grim mind. Obedience

Hooke had cut herself off from the People by marrying the out-warder, Simon Nasmith. When

the Lord came again in Glory, he would raise the bodies of His faithful People from their

graveyard to eternal life, but Obedience Hooke had by her own act cast herself into damnation

and would not be among them.

Probity sowed his crops as usual, but then, as June hardened into its steady, dreary heat, he

seemed to lose heart. The leafy summer crops came quick and easy, and there was always a glut

of them, but the slow-grown roots and pulses that would be harvested later, and then dried or

salted or earthed into clamps, were another matter. He did not hoe them enough, and watered

irregularly, so that the plants had no root-depth and half of them wilted or wasted. He neglected,

too, to do the rounds of his fences, so that the sheep broke out and he had to search the hills for

them, and lost three good ewes.

Pitiable was aware that the stores were barely half-filled, but said nothing. Probity was her

grandfather, her only protector, and absolute master in his own house. He did what he chose, and

the choice was right because it was his.

September brought a great crop of apples from the two old trees. Mercy had always bottled them

into sealed jars, but that was a skill that had to be done just right, and Pitiable did not know how.

Probity could well have asked a neighbour to teach her, but he was too proud, so he told her to

let them fall and he would make cider of them. Most of the People made a little cider, keeping it

for special days, but this year Probity made a lot, using casks he would not now need for storage

as he had less to store. He shook himself out of his dull mood and took trouble so that the cider

brewed strong and clear. He took to drinking a tankard of it with his supper, and became more

cheerful in the evenings.

Winter came, with its iron frosts, and Probity started to drink cider with his dinner, to keep the

cold out, he said. And then with his breakfast, to get the blood moving on the icy mornings. By

the time the sunrise turned back along the horizon, he was seldom without a tankard near by,

from the hour he rose until the hour at which he fell snorting, and still in his day clothes, onto his

bed.

He began to beat Pitiable, using his belt, finding some fault and punishing her for it, though both

of them knew that that was not the cause. He was hurt to the heart, and sick with his own hurt,

and all he could think of was to hurt someone or something else, and doing so himself to hurt

himself worse, dulling the pain with new pain. One night Pitiable watched as he took the horse

and cart he had made her and broke them into splinters with his strong hands and dropped them

into the fire.

Pitiable did not complain or ask anyone for help. She knew that anything that happened to her

was a just punishment for her having been born. Her mother and father should never have wed
.

By doing so they had broken God’s law. And then Obedience, Probity’s lovely lost daughter, had

died giving birth to Pitiable. So Pitiable was both the fruit of her parents’ sin and the cause of her

mother’s death, and of Probity’s dreadful hurt. Nothing that was done to her could be

undeserved.

On Sunday mornings Probity did not drink. He shaved and dressed with care and took Pitiable to

church. They made an impressive pair, the big, gaunt man and the pale and silent child.

Neighbours remarked how much they meant to each other, now Mercy was gone. Once a woman

asked Pitiable why she wept in church, and Pitiable replied that it was because of her

grandmother dying. The woman clucked and said that she was a good little girl—how could she

have known that Pitiable had been weeping with the pain of having to sit still on the hard bench

after last night’s beating?

They came through the winter, barely, scraping out the old and mouldy stores from the year

before. Probity butchered and salted one of his ewes, saying she was too old for bearing, which

was not true. So they did not quite starve.

The mush of spring dried to the blaze of summer, and Probity pulled himself together and drank

less and worked in his fields and brought home food and kept his belt around his waist, but he

did almost nothing to provide for the coming winter. One noon in the late summer heat wave,

Pitiable went out to tell him that his dinner was on the table and found him at the door of his

store shed, staring into its emptiness, as if lost in a dream. He started when she spoke and swung

on her, and snarled, “The Lord will provide.” That evening he undid his belt and beat her for no

reason at all.

From then on he was as harsh as he had been last winter, but at the same time strangely

possessive. He seemed unable to bear to let her out of his sight. Having no harvest to gather, he

took to wandering along the shore, in the manner of the truly poor and shiftless townspeople,

looking for scraps of the sea’s leavings, driftwood and such, which he might use or sell. Almost

at once he was lucky, finding a cask of good sweet raisins, unspoilt, which he sold well in the