Collector of Lost Things (16 page)

‘My parents have ruined my life before it has even started,’ Clara said. ‘I can’t bear the thought of returning to them.’

‘Clara—you must forget your past, it is too heavy a burden to carry around with you,’ I said. ‘Think of this—of the world in such a strange and unexpected light as this morning. Think of all the possibilities you now have.’

‘I am able to deal with the world when it is so brightly lit as this morning,’ she replied. ‘But at the end of each day I am faced with a long night, and I am afraid of it.’ I held her hand. ‘My feet are cold, Eliot. We should return to the ship. I don’t want Edward to wake and see me out here.’

I nodded, unable to let her go.

‘Why do you look at me so strangely?’ she asked. ‘It was the first thing I noticed about you. It’s as if you know me.’

Soon, the weather deteriorated, and we were unable to remain by the ice for much longer. I was glad to leave. The sea became the colour of lead shot, unreflective and choppy, and squalls of rain and snow blew bitterly through the rigging. The spray froze quickly on the woodwork, turning the deck into a hazardous sheet of ice. Seals, we were informed, had the advantage over the hunter in such weather. The
Amethyst
stretched at her reins, much like an impatient horse, as the floe creaked alongside in a murderous fashion.

As I went towards my cabin, I noticed a small soft ball of fur blowing across the deck. I stopped it with the side of my boot, thinking it might be a mouse, but quickly I saw it was a very tiny bird. I crouched. A wheatear, no larger than the palm of my hand.

‘Simao,’ I called. ‘A bird has landed—bring me some grains.’ I had cupped my hands on the deck, and the wheatear had nestled quickly into the space I had made, instinctively seeking shelter. It leant against the warmth of my skin, but trembled most horribly. A film of skin descended several times across its eye, and its beak parted, almost in a silent call.

‘Quick, Simao,’ I called. He ran to me, bringing jars of seeds and meal with him. He crouched by me, and swiftly made a small pile of food on the deck. But the wheatear was in no state to eat. It shivered uncontrollably, falling into the palm of my hand with no more weight than that of a leaf.

‘It has died,’ I whispered.

Upset, I went below and sat in my cabin, wondering how it could be possible that such a small and fragile bird could live out here, upon the ice. It had blown out of a dense grey fog of freezing air, with no protection, no hope of survival. I sat at my desk, trying to study my books, attempting to calm my mind, but I kept thinking of the bird, how it had died, and then I started to think about Clara and the things she had told me of her childhood. Why hadn’t I confessed, when I had had the chance, that she was known to me?

I remembered the day I’d first met her father. I had been walking on Blakeney Point, in north Norfolk, among the dunes and shingle, studying the nesting sites of sandwich and little terns. It was in May. I was fascinated by migration, even then, and I wished to chart the landings of the flocks coinciding with the arrival of the coastal herring and with the flowering of sea kale, toadflax and thrift.

I was observing the nesting site from within a shallow dune, when a tall man strode past, in full hunting attire, not six feet from where I lay. He failed to see me, but continued directly into the colony. The birds flew up as he approached, and he waved a walking stick angrily at them. Although I was frustrated that my studies would be cut short, I became fascinated when I saw him crouching on the shingle and placing something carefully into his bag. By the time I reached him, he was already straightening and beginning to walk off.

‘I say! What are you up to?’ I had asked.

The man had turned at me with an irate look. ‘How dare you address me like that!’ he replied. ‘Why, I could ask the very same of you. In fact, I shall. What are
you
up to?’

That was how I met Celeste’s father. In fear. He had the ability to destroy your nerves with a simple glance and, at that first encounter, I had faltered trying to explain why I had been hiding in the dunes.

‘Migration, eh?’ he had said, with a little less hostility. ‘So you know about birds, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He pointed along the shore with his stick. ‘That?’

‘A dunlin.’

‘That?’

‘A female oystercatcher.’

‘And by the pool?’

‘Redshank. He has been stamping his feet and flapping for nearly an hour—in courtship. I believe he must have lost his first brood and is trying again.’

‘Very good!’

‘Am I being tested?’ I asked. For the first time he smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant expression. It was more like the smile a snake is said to give, when swallowing prey.

‘What can you tell me of these?’ he said, producing a couple of eggs he had folded into a band of cotton.

‘Well, the more elongated one is a sandwich tern’s. The other is a turnstone’s. Its markings often have a smudged appearance, such as this one. If you would like my opinion I would say it is not a particularly good example—’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘I will employ you. I have a fine egg collection which is in need of restoration and of cataloguing. I shall pay you well and feed you for the duration of the time you spend at the house. Are you interested?’

He asked without any possibility of being turned down. He was forceful and persuasive.

‘We’ll walk back to the staithe together and discuss the particulars.’

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘What is in your bag?’

Celeste’s father, Judge Cottesloe, gave an ugly smile, while he considered. ‘You may look,’ he answered. In a matter of seconds he had reached into his felt bag and pulled out a live Arctic tern, which I estimated to be a juvenile from the previous year. The bird splayed its slender wings in terror as Celeste’s father held it, expertly but a little too tightly, as if he was wringing water from a flannel. ‘A sea swallow. I snared it in the colony.’ The bird trembled under the pressure of his hand.

‘For what purpose, sir?’

‘A present.’

With that, he pushed the tern roughly into his bag, and it was then that I should have known: known that this man was a cruel man, known that I should never go to work for him. For as he forced the bird into the bottom of the bag his hand lingered for a second too long, and it was in that second that I heard a soft damp click. A noise that might easily have been missed. But I knew what it was. It was the bone in the tern’s wing being snapped.

After we had left the ice floe, Sykes invited me to the chart room to explain the approach we would make to the island of Eldey, the last known breeding site of the great auks.

There is no point in being at the ice in this weather,’ he told me, unrolling the necessary charts. ‘The hunting is poor and the conditions are unpredictable for the ship. It is near impossible to keep a bearing on it, and it behaves most aggressively. A storm at the ice edge is a most hazardous situation—you would not wish to experience it. In fact, you might hear the breakers, right now, Mr Saxby, a few miles away?’ He gestured for me to listen and, distantly, I heard a low moaning roar, the sound of which had not previously been pointed out to me. It was a terrible and frightening noise. Sykes smiled, satisfied at my reaction. ‘Yes, she’s a hungry beast.’ He placed four glass weights on the corners of the uppermost chart. ‘Besides, I believe your fellow passenger, Mr Bletchley, has had enough of the hunt?’

‘Yes, most definitely,’ I answered.

‘He is a fine one,’ Sykes said, rubbing his chin. ‘He prances like a gelding pony in those flashy trousers, showing us his guns and the like, then he has to be brought back to my ship howling like a baby. Most curious. I believe you witnessed the scene?’

‘I did.’

‘A child can hold a rifle, but it takes a man to fire it. Tell me, do I need to keep an eye on Mr B, or not?’

‘I think Bletchley has conflicting emotions we know little about. I thought he was supremely confident when I first met him, but I was mistaken.’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve seen his type many times before. A man like that, out here, it’s a disaster. But I have more worries about him upon the ship than on the ice. This business in the evenings, with him and Miss Gould sitting as if they are possessed—well, I don’t know. He’ll have the crew spooked. Mr French has an interesting theory on the matter. Has he told you?’

‘No.’

‘He believes they might be communing with the spirit world,’ Sykes said, conspiratorially.

‘That’s absurd.’

‘My thought entirely. But that Bletchley is a piece of work. I won’t have my passengers going mad on me, upon my ship. Do you think that is possible?’

‘I would say you have little choice, Captain Sykes. If he wishes to become mad, we shall just have to look after him. At the moment I think he is merely agitated.’

‘Agitated, you say.’ Sykes considered the problem. I’ll have French keep an eye on him. I believe they could be soulmates.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Oh, no reason. But Mr French has his own currents of disaster running through his veins. Have you seen how he stares at the candle flames? I do not like it one bit. When he does that I feel like slapping the man.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ I said, amused.

‘It is no laughing matter, sir,’ Sykes replied. ‘I have a ship to run, not an asylum.’

Sykes waved his hand expansively over the intricate markings of the chart. ‘So. This is the island you speak of.’ He pricked the map with a finger. ‘Not much to look at. A few hundred feet long. There are many underwater features and reefs in that area, and a racing current that is something of a trickster. It’s a fine one to read. I was once caught in it and handled the ship in a most unprofessional manner. I shall leave the
Amethyst
with Mr Talbot, because he has a walrus’s nose when it comes to water. I believe he smells changes as they rise from the depths. Mr French will command one of the whaleboats, and I shall skipper the other. Best you sit in my boat. In that manner we can gain access to many of the rocks without danger.’ He pointed to an area of cross-hatching on one side of the island. ‘Notice these markings?’

‘A landing place?’

‘Precisely. We shall be expecting a neap tide, so the reef should be accessible and reliable.’ He cocked his head at the chart, as if a fresh perspective might reveal more. ‘This island is a well-known feature on the approach to Iceland, Mr Saxby. It has a very distinctive profile, as flat as a table on top, but with sheer cliffs perhaps two hundred feet high. It is this shape.’ He made an impression with his hands. ‘Among English sailors it is called the flour-sack. You will see why.’

He began to roll the chart up. Apparently our meeting was at an end. ‘Will we find your birds?’ he asked.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Me also. But we shall try. And in any case we will have some sport, Mr Saxby. I’m looking forward to it.’

‘As am I. I want to thank you, once again, for making all this possible.’

‘Well, I have been chartered to steer this ship to these bird ledges of yours, let us not forget that. There’s no charity out here. Did you enjoy the ice?’

‘I thought it was the most extraordinary sight a man could wish to see. Do you ever get used to it?’

‘I look at it merely as a farmer regards his field. Work to be done and machinery to maintain. Workers, too, to keep content. But I’m glad you were inspired—the first sight of the ice sheet can haunt a man for many years. I watched you with Miss Gould as you conducted your promenades upon the floe. You two seemed to be getting on very well indeed.’

I regarded the captain suspiciously, trying to ascertain his point.

‘What is your opinion of her and Mr Bletchley?’ he asked. ‘What say you—are we dealing with an elopement here?’

‘Captain Sykes!’ I said, appalled by his indiscretion. ‘You must withdraw that at once—such gossiping is beneath you.’

He sounded curiously happy to have riled me. ‘It is a captain’s role to be a gossip, sir.’ He turned his back to me, busily putting the rolled chart into a pigeonhole. ‘An attractive woman, wouldn’t you say?’ He glanced slyly at me. ‘Ah, yes, I see you agree.’

‘Yes, Captain Sykes.’ His prying tone annoyed me intensely. ‘I
have
noticed that Miss Gould is an attractive woman. I have also noticed she is delicate and should not be discussed in this manner.’

Sykes turned back, satisfied with his childish goading. ‘Well, as I say, we’ll have us some sport. I have enjoyed our chat. That is all, Mr Saxby.’

A couple of days later we were passing the barren treeless coast of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. It was a world away from the great sheets of ice we had been among. The weather was dreary, with a persistent Scotch mist drifting in bands and coating every inch of the ship with a cold wet shine. Little auks—or
rotges
as the sailors called them—constantly circled the ship in a small flock, their fast wings and aimless motion making me feel quite dizzy as I watched them. I wore a rain cap and greatcoat, and had tied the hat’s brim to one of my coat buttons with a cord, as I had seen several of the men do. Peering with difficulty at the rocky peninsula, a mile or two off, I realised that what I was seeing was no ordinary land. This was a lava coast, where volcanic earth had risen and cooled in successive layers of black and grey, in heaps such as a child might make, in disorder and without scheme, some parts pushed roughly into the sea, other stretches in cliffs and crumbled ridges. The land was desolate, without houses or lights or signs that it had ever been set upon.

Talbot was at the helm that morning, stoic and wet through, one of his frostbitten hands resting on the face of a binnacle.

‘Your island,’ he said, simply, gesturing with a nod towards a point somewhere off the front port bow.

I could make out nothing but the grey on grey of bad weather on a dismal sea. A low brooding sky seamed to leach, at distance, into the ocean, both without colour.

‘How can you see it?’ I asked, more to myself than to him. He seldom answered a question.

Even the tops of the masts could not be seen. The crosstrees and captain’s barrel had a feathery aspect as the mist drifted past. Yet strangely, corridors of clear view were emerging. At certain angles, whole mile lengths of sea were suddenly visible, the small black waves in sharp focus, and it was through one of these gaps in the vapours that I saw, or imagined, my first glimpse of Eldey. After all those years of dreaming the sight. This was it, the last rock on the earth where the great auks had stood. I felt a thrill shooting up my spine. Yet it had appeared as a distant window appears, a paler squared-off shape in the sky, which vanished as soon as I looked directly at it.