A Year of Marvellous Ways (21 page)

45

T
hey set out in the crabber on the dot of seven
.
the
evening was warm, the sky tender, and gulls played tag on the thermals as herons took off smoothly into an iridescent blue westerly sky. Marvellous manned the tiller, looking over now and then to check on Drake whose fear of water had begun to ease over the past weeks. But she knew that it would take nothing more than a small rogue wave to send him reaching for the bowline or gripping hard on to the well-worn seat slats. He ducked down as Peace splashed him with water from her trailing hand. He looked up at Marvellous and smiled.

He looked happy in that moment. And she would remember his smile suspended in that one delectable moment because it was radiant and she knew he had a chance now, to live well.

As they approached Old Cundy’s boat, they stood to attention one by one and saluted the good ship
Deliverance
as they passed. The soft evening light bathed them, dripped off them, loosened the awkwardness that had initially threatened to stifle the evening, an ill-at-ease quiet caused by strange clothing in familiar surrounds. The old woman tried to catch a glimpse of her long-gone self in the young woman next to her. She studied that dance of attraction, that funny little jig practised by all creatures – the beautiful, the plain, the slim, the big, the unruly – the same exquisite dance handed down by generations and danced flawlessly by all. To Marvellous it was as clear as day that the girl had feelings for Drake. And there he sat, comfortable like a brother. Smiling at her like a brother, unaware of his attractiveness, still bruised by the blows of the past.

Kids, eh? thought Marvellous, and she began to laugh and it was catching, and the three of them laughed as they passed the sandbar and manoeuvred through the narrow way that kept inquisitives out and large craft at bay.

It was here they encountered a world moving forwards and not forgotten. The air tinkled with the sounds of ropes against masts, as pleasure craft swayed on the dividing currents and flaccid sails flapped like washing on a line. Here, the boat turned left into the Great River where they faced open water and the horizon beyond.

Marvellous watched the two young people sit up in unison and look intently ahead, both unaware that their shift was caused by the infinite pull of that unreachable dream, that shimmering silver line that caused hearts to soar, then sometimes to deflate.

It was more like the sea there, wild and erratic. Fierce winds were known to funnel down through the estuary dismantling the unanchored and the insane. But there was no wind that evening. No clouds pulling at the sky and the only ripples across the water were caused by a casually draped hand stretching out from a primrose cuff, tickling the surface as if it was the cool skin of the man opposite.

The small craft hugged the rocky shoreline where fields and trees fell down to lap at water’s edge, where bobbing buoys marked crab pots, and sandy coves enticed the swimmers, the brave and the hardy ones. And always in the distance, the lighthouse keeping watch over the Manacles Rocks, submerged and murmuring beneath the ever-swelling tide, waiting. In 1898 one hundred and six people drowned as those rocks bit deep into the good ship
Mohegan
and feasted well. Nets were required to pull in bodies not pilchards that week.

There! shouted Marvellous, and there it was, the Great Port with its cranes and tugs and sprawl of lights calling the world to its historic hearth. And there were steam funnels spewing black and pleasure craft and fisher craft – red-sailed luggers, and big sailing vessels from Another Time barely hanging on to seaworthiness.

She remembered again the ghost of the
Cutty Sark
with its holds of tea, and magnificent sails billowing and racing with the wind, sailors in the rigging unfurling speed. Saw again packet ships with Jamaica sun hot on their sterns, and Mission Boats helmed by chaplains, God’s hand at the tillers, and Big Houses for Important Men who paid thruppence an hour to pilchard-packing girls. And she saw again the fisherman who used to gather along the shores to eye up the morning like a half-dressed woman.

A seagull flew low in front of her, and she followed its path turning left at Henry’s castle where lights from fisher cottages guided them in, twinkling in promenade rows along the coast road. Marvellous pulled back on the engine and the crabber veered gently into the harbour.

She moored easily by a set of stone steps that had been laid down three hundred years before. Cheers and laughter greeted them from the hotel in front. Drake gave Marvellous his arm and said, Come on Vivien Leigh, and the old woman skipped up the granite blocks as if her knees were as light as air. Peace waited for Drake to come back and help her, too, but he didn’t, and she followed behind with an ache in her chest that she initially thought was the hastily eaten bun that she had devoured on her way down to the creek. But when she felt she was as close to tears as she was to a smile, she realised the affliction was something more momentous than heartburn. It was the rare ingredient that Wilfred Gently had once spoken to her about. She paused briefly at the top of the steps, closed her eyes and let the evening sun lick her from head to toe. She felt like a flower whose petals were finally unfurling in the heat of the unknown. Now I have the chance to become a great baker, she thought.

Peace! shouted Drake, from the doorway.

Peace’s heart skipped and so did she. I’m coming! she called, and bounded across the road towards him.

Wondered where you got to, said Drake. I was worried you got lost. Come on in and tell me what you want to drink.

And those were the exact words the young fisherman with blond curls overheard. Ned Blaney had been sitting on a nearby bench overlooking the harbour when Peace had risen like a figurehead into the evening light. He was born knowing the moods of the sea but he was not so good with women – everyone knew that – and he should have spoken to her there and then, whilst she was alone, before the man had come out and called to her. And now here he was, sitting on the bench too shy and too polite to cast for another man’s fish. The view of the sea no longer held him. He turned and looked longingly towards the doorway of the Amber Lynn pub.

It was a simple fishers’ tavern, nothing fancy, a road-width back from the harbour, and up a short flight of stairs. It was originally named after Henry the Eighth’s second wife, but centuries later took on the name of a fishing lugger that had mysteriously disappeared in the famous week-long mists.

A piano still stood to one side with a full ashtray from the night before resting on its lid. At the back was a timid hearth fire, rather heatless. On the floor were sawdust and scraps of discarded seaweed. On the walls, photographs of long-gone men and boats, and some photographs of record hauls of pilchards extending along the harbour front as far as the eye could see. There was a bar with bottles of whisky and rum and barrels of ale, and pewter tankards for the regulars, drinking edges worn smooth by familiar lips. There was a ship’s bell, rung solely for last orders. Pipes spewed smoke, the air was hazy and warm and the soft murmur of conversation was about fishing and women, two subjects that old-timers once said were like acorns and dogs, and should never mix.

It was the last pub Marvellous had been to with Paper Jack and she looked about eagerly for old faces to share that bygone time with. But the old faces were now young faces, hidden by low-pulled caps and ragged beards. Old Crisp the barber would have had a field day with this lot, she thought. Every Saturday with his steady hand and brisk blade he had spewed out so many clean-shaven and ansum men that the women were so giddy with choice they had fought over them in the street like gulls fighting over scraps of fish.

They took the table by the window overlooking the river. They clinked glasses and said, Cheers, just as the moon and sun did the same outside. Drake drank steadily from his pint glass, savouring the rich taste. He lit a cigarette and stared out at the geometric pattern of fishing nets drying over the harbour wall. Boats were bobbing on the corrugated water, and he thought they looked beautiful, as the lowering sun cast a rich and golden light against their tilting multi-coloured hulls. He thought Missy would have loved it, and surprised himself by such a declaration. Maybe this was the moving forwards that the old woman had once spoken about. You move on and bring them with you, she had said. We leave nothing behind and they come willingly. Have you come willingly, Missy? Have you?

Penny for ’em, said Peace.

I was thinking of someone, said Drake.

It was the way he paused before he said
someone
that made Peace think it was a woman.

Someone special? she asked, bravely.

Yes, he said. More than she knew.

So, thought Peace, there
was
a wall around his heart and she wondered whether she should hoist up her skirt and scale that wall, but she knew she didn’t have the right shoes on for that sort of climb because hers were too sensible for a man like Drake.

Was she your sweetheart? she asked, as casually as she could muster.

Marvellous looked at Drake. Looked back to Peace. Nothing got past her even at the age of nearly ninety.

No, he said. I don’t think she was that. I don’t know what she was but she kept me going forwards.

She was your horizon, said Marvellous.

Was she? said Drake. Was that what she was?

I think so.

I think that’s beautiful, said Peace. I’d like to be someone’s horizon one day, she said.

No you wouldn’t, said Marvellous. Horizons are unreachable. And untouchable. They
haunt
. Lotta nonsense.

Oh, said Peace, and she lifted her glass and didn’t put it down until it was empty. She wiped the froth away from her lip, and said, I don’t think I’ll ever look at one in quite the same way again, and she got up and walked sensibly towards the bar. I am a baker, I am a baker and my life is bread, she said to herself. The thought consoling the bruise that was inching across her heart.

Peace ordered another round of drinks and when the barman turned his back, she took out a new government-sized loaf of bread from her handbag and placed it on the bar. She stuck an oblong card in the top like a fin: ‘Eat Me’, on one side, ‘Gently with Peace, The Old Bakehouse, St Ophere’ on the other. And that’s how it started, people’s intrigue. How people would eventually get to know where she was.

The tots of rum-hot were doing their job and Marvellous said, You see that young man on the bench outside, the young curly bob over there? That’s where Old Cundy used to sit. Fingers held up, like this, between the sea and the sun, calculating the time of day, the walking chronometer that he was. And flying above his head was his own personal seagull, his link between land and sea. And that seagull bore news and messages for him, sometimes even in dreams.

And Marvellous stuffed her pipe with black twist and lit that pipe, and smelt again that pungent ruff-stuff of that long-gone life, and she smelt again the fish on her hands and felt again the tiredness in her muscles as she hauled those pots aboard and worked as uncomplaining as a regular man. And it simply didn’t make sense. Who she was then and who she was now. Just. Didn’t. Make. Sense.

Did you have your own gull? asked Peace.

No. Too much trouble, a gull. But Cundy told everyone I had my own Bucca, and that I kept it in a bottle.

What’s a Bucca? asked Drake.

A sea spirit, said Marvellous. Quite a grumpy one, at that.

Why did he tell them that?

Because women weren’t allowed to fish in those days.

What a lot of rot, said Peace.

Of course it was, but Old Times had Old Ways, and Old Times said it was bad luck to mix women and fish. Fishermen weren’t even supposed to meet a woman on the way down to the boats, that’s why some of the old-timers took the long route across the cliffs, just so they would avoid any contact with the women.

But everyone believed in the Bucca. Everyone knew you needed a Bucca on your side if you wanted to fish well and stay safe because the Bucca ruled the sea. It ruled the wind and the waves too. It was powerful and fickle. It liked silence, so we never whistled or sang out on the water. Unlike sailors, we saved our shanties for shore.

Marvellous paused to drink. Her cheeks glowed rum-red. Where was I? she said.

Old Cundy told the men you had your own Bucca, said Drake.

Ah yes, yes he did. Now why did he do that, you ask? Let’s go back-along. Along the coast lived an old Wise Woman called Keziah. She taught me things my father could never teach me. Things about birthing, things about healing. I was second in command to her. I was very young. I never went hungry, but some days I got close. Until Keziah died and handed her mantel to me, I knew things would be difficult. That’s when I decided to make crab pots. I’d seen it done hundreds of times and I borrowed Cundy’s stand and collected my own withies and wove pots. I did a good job. Maybe Cundy was sweet on me, I don’t know, but he wanted me out in the bay with him. So he helped dress me up as a fisherman, and I took my father’s boat and I rowed and baited those pots and went back and pulled up those pots. And I lived and survived. Made a little money too. Put it away for Hard Times.