Collector of Lost Things (34 page)

There was no possible explanation, other than to admit I had let her escape. Behind me, the housekeeper had joined us, adding weight to my guilt. I shook my head, unable to speak.

If a man is able to snarl, then I believe I saw it then. His expression clouded, as if a pain was forming within him, and I thought he might strike me with his stick. Possibly only the housekeeper’s presence prevented it. ‘So,’ he said, savouring every second. Every part of every second. ‘Can you run?’

‘Yes, Your Honour.’

He looked down the length of his lawn, to the spot between the shrubs where his daughter had vanished.

‘Then run. Bring her back.’

I spent most of the day in my cabin. By lunchtime we had cleared the icebergs around Jakobshavn, and had made a good mileage into the Davis Strait where, with stiffening winds and a mounting sea, the
Amethyst
started to labour as it sailed into turbulent weather. I decided to stay lying on my bunk, an injured space for an injured man. Why had French given me that drugged liquor last night? I was sure it had prompted that terrible hallucination. My mind was filled with thoughts of Clara. Parts of our conversation from the night before kept returning, unresolved and troubling.
You are confused, my dear friend, you are so confused,
she had said,
my name is Clara.
But she had been tender with me, at least I had that, yet also so forthright. She had looked me in the eye and said that I was mistaken. She was not Celeste.

Outside my porthole the sea had darkened to the colour of pewter. My head ached. White horses broke and rushed by, leaving an angry spindrift across the surface. When I closed my eyes it was as if trees were being felled around me, their branches and leaves whipping past each other in sprays of sound. The ship began to pitch—I opened my eyes, trying to fight the nausea that was growing, trying to steady a liquid world—and I realised the view from my porthole had briefly become a view of the sea itself, as it flooded and surged. Again and again the ship lurched forward and down then slowly, so slowly, rose once more. It felt as though we were permanently in the process of sinking, digging into each wave, not returning but sinking further.

The surface of my bedside desk trembled, and occasionally my cabin would shudder with the compression of the ship. The spars cracked aloft, whipping the stays and rigging taut, each crack more irreparable, more catastrophic than the last. I thought of the captain’s fortification timbers holding us all together, the ice beams he had had fitted taking the slap and smash of the waves and dispersing them, evenly, throughout the structure of the vessel. But it felt as though each wave that struck must be loosening some joint or fitting. I imagined the
Amethyst
separating into hundreds of unconnected timbers and bindings, opening out like a fruit held in the palm of a bear.

A shutter of wood was lowered outside my window and fixed. And it was the application of these deadlights, with the storm still howling beyond them, that made me feel truly cocooned. I lay on my bunk, staring up at the dim ceiling, trapped.

There was a knock at my cabin door. Simao appeared, dressed in an oilskin, but his appearance as always was impeccably neat and ordered. He had the calmness that comes from being an islander. He was a most welcome sight.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘are you ill?’

‘Ill? I don’t know. Do I look ill?’

‘A little.’

The pitching of the ship made the door-frame swing from side to side, nearly touching each of his shoulders.

‘I feel sick,’ I managed to say, turning away from him to stare at the ceiling once more.

‘Everyone is sick,’ he said, cheerily, placing a small drink on my table. ‘Aguardiente,’ he said. ‘Portuguese brandy. I return in one hour,’ he added. ‘No dinner tonight, but some cold cuts are there. And candied fruits.’ He pointed behind him. ‘The galley is in deep flood.’

He made to leave, but I stopped him. ‘What flood?’ I asked.

He grinned back, miming a large wave sweeping the deck. ‘Was very big,’ he said.

When he had gone, I wondered helplessly about the great auk sitting on its egg in the anchor locker, right at the front of the ship where the storm must be most severe. It was impossible to contemplate going forward to see it. That space must be plunging under the waves at least twice a minute, more than likely flooded, too, by water pouring in through the chain pipe. I decided I must seek out French, who would hopefully put my mind at ease. Despite his aloofness and his unpredictable moods, he would be good in a situation such as this.

The cabin floor pitched and rolled as I went for my door, and I listened with despair as the ship strained in the storm. The saloon looked incongruously calm and serene but the lights above the table swinging almost flat to the ceiling were a mad sight. So, too, was the glimpse of French, bent almost double at the far end of the saloon, one arm grasping the side of the settee, and the other grappling Bletchley in a silent, furious wrestle. I stared, disbelieving and alarmed, as both men saw me at the same time. French had his arm round the other’s neck, and was attempting to hold him down, but Bletchley, although smaller and less broad, was putting up a surprising and wiry resistance. I watched, grimly fascinated, at this insane
danse macabre
evolving before my eyes, as Bletchley began to force the taller man away as if bending a sapling. I stepped back into my cabin and sealed the door behind me.

My relief to be running across that lawn had been considerable. I was glad to be leaving the scowling dark presence of Celeste’s father and had thought, hopefully, that by catching his daughter I might, against the odds, enact some restoration of my position. Quickly I reached the shrubs and ran through them, roughly where Celeste had vanished, and entered a wooded area thick with damp bracken and briars. I became snagged almost immediately, and wondered how Celeste had managed to run through this, barefoot and scarcely clothed. It was only then that I realised I, too, was without my boots. The wood was shady and peaceful, with a pungent autumn smell of earth and fungus. Nothing stirred. Above me, the blasted rooks flapped from branch to branch, their splayed wings falling like axe heads. I searched for glimpses of Celeste’s pale silk gown, half believing I could see the outline of her brown hair among the undergrowth. I thought I saw her standing, poised as deer can be in the distant shadows. Perhaps she was hiding? Crouching in the bracken, watching me. Perhaps it was a game she was playing? But I knew I had broken an order and discipline that I knew nothing about. I felt as if I had pulled apart the workings of a clock and would never be able to replace the cogs and springs in the correct position. I began to run again, forcing my way through the tangled briars that seemed like arms trying to impede me. On a muddy track I found a line of bare footprints. I could see where the heels had slipped and the toes had clenched in the attempt to grip. Several yards later they vanished, then appeared further along the track, a fleeting trail, but enough to follow.

Behind me, from the direction of the house, I heard men being called as her father mustered more hands to help with the search. A dog began to bark with excitement. From the opposite direction I became aware of distant snaps, the startled cry of a pheasant, scraps of sound that only I could hear. But did Celeste want to be found? Why had she run past me in the corridor, why had she tricked me into unlocking the door?

The ground became more sodden as the wood sloped into a natural hollow. Rhododendrons grew in thick stands, obscuring the view and creating impenetrable barriers. I pushed blindly through the leaves and saw the dark hearts of the trees, the gnarled and twisted trunks, as a marshy smell of decay and stale water began to grow around me.

‘
Celeste!
’ I shouted.

I had carried on further, impeded more and more as my feet sank in mud. An oily sheen covered the ground, and I saw the beginnings of reeds and marsh grasses through the dark shrubs. It stank, as if air had never properly circulated in this part of the wood, a breath that felt wrong and trapped. But I sensed I was close. As I pushed at last through a thick wall of leaves I emerged at the side of a round lake which was entirely fringed with rhododendrons. A coot floated in the centre of water, chipping with alarm. Birds flew up, startled, from the trees on the opposite bank, perhaps two hundred feet away. The water looked unbroken and ancient, encroached on all edges by thick rafts of lily pads. Then I noticed a faint rippling of the surface, spreading in a delicate shell pattern from one side of the lake. The coot bobbed calmly among these ripples, instinctively turning towards the direction they had come from, and that is where I saw Celeste, her body floating face down among the lily pads, her hair spread across the surface of the water like a stain.

I plunged into the lake and paddled and dragged and tore at the weeds but was held back—with dreamlike insistence—by the roots of the plants. Cloudy black water rose around me, as dark as ink, smelling of death, as I thrashed my way through. Celeste’s silk gown floated before me, bubbled with air, her arms extended in a stretch I could not reach. I touched her fingers, reached for her wrist and pulled her to me, trying to lift her from the water, and plunged several times beneath the surface. Eventually I managed to clasp an arm around her waist and drag her towards the bank, her silk gown slipping through my hold for the second time that morning as, nearing the edge, I became aware that two other men had waded in. They pushed me away and took her from me. They lifted her from the water. I saw Celeste in fragments as I coughed and spluttered: her hair, hanging in front of her face, the weed and mud woven into it, an arm that appeared to hang lifeless, a glimpse of her mouth that looked alarmingly serene and at peace.

The sight of her, laid out cold on the bank, was the last reliable memory I have of that day. That, and the memory of the coot, floating in the centre of the lake: those images feel certain, everything else feels unclear. I didn’t see Celeste again. Each time I try to remember, I am held back by a numbness. I didn’t see her father, nor my place of work in the conservatory. I was ushered away, told never to enter the house again, or ever set foot in the grounds. The eggshell I had broken would remain on my workbench, forever unglued.

T
HE STORM WAS THE
beginning of the end, I can see that now. It shook the frame of the ship, as a dog might shake a length of old rope. But ships are designed and built to resist natural onslaughts, whereas people may or may not be. It was the passengers, in that storm, who became loosened from their fastenings. That is how I perceive it, now. I cannot recall how long it lasted. Perhaps it was for twenty-four hours, perhaps a good deal less—bad weather bends the notion of time—but I slept, and at some point I became aware that the howling of the wind had receded and been taken over by the hammering of men, fixing and repairing, a comforting replacement. I fell back to sleep, listening to the fall of hammers and the hauling of rope, imagining a ship re-forming. When I awoke, Clara was in my cabin, laying a damp flannel across my forehead.

‘Hello,’ she whispered, kindly. ‘We have been worried for you.’

When I looked into her eyes, it wasn’t Clara that I saw. I saw Celeste. Glad, and relieved that she was back, that she had come back for me, I smiled. Hers was the expression of peacefulness that I remembered and cherished, so distinctly, as she had been carried from the Norfolk lake. Celeste’s body had hung across the back of one of the men who had waded in among the lily pads; her head had been turned towards me, and I had stood in the cold water, gazing at her in a stunned silence.

‘You’re wet,’ I said, confused.

‘I have been on deck.’

The deck, of course, I am on the ship, I had thought. I sat bolt upright. ‘Is the ship not sinking? What about the bird is the bird
drowned
?’

She put a finger to my lips, humoured by my confusion. ‘I have brought you some sweetened milk syllabub, it will make you well.’ Then she bent to my ear and whispered, ‘The bird is fine. Do not worry about her. She has told me she intends to survive. And right now she is sitting on her egg as proud as a hen in a coop. Shall I describe her to you?’

‘Please.’

‘She sits on the egg so just a part of it might be seen, between her feet in the soft down of the underbelly. Sometimes she guides it onto one of her feet, to prevent it touching the floor. She still takes a step or two away from it, every hour or so—I think the egg amazes her, continually. She did this …’ Clara rested her head on her shoulder … ‘her beak lay across the egg and she growled, deeply, as if communicating.’

‘Did it not flood down there? Simao told me the ship was flooded.’

‘A wave overran the deck and washed through the galley, that is all. He lost several pots and goods, but it is all repaired.’

‘It was a terrible storm.’

She smiled. ‘Yes. Hailstones broke several of the windows. I expect you heard. The ship is covered with a frost-rime—you cannot touch the rails for fear of cutting your fingers on the ice.’

‘Clara,’ I said. ‘I saw French wrestling with your cousin.’

She listened, thoughtfully, and I imagined I saw a flicker of a smile at the side of her mouth. She took the flannel from my forehead and dipped it in an enamel pot filled with warm water.

‘I know something of this,’ she replied. ‘Edward found it difficult to cope with the storm.’

‘But they were
fighting
.’

‘Perhaps, but not now. Have some drink.’

‘It was a demonic sight …’

‘Edward is in my cabin—he has been for several hours—asleep on the floor.’

‘What is he doing there? Is he injured? Why is he in
your
cabin?’

‘No, he is not injured,’ she answered. ‘I am looking after him, in the same manner that I am damping your brow. You are both my patients, and I am your nurse. If you wish to know, I enjoy the role—it is something I always intended to be one day. When I was young, I would dress as a nurse and tend to birds that had been hurt, and I would try to heal them. It was said I had a gift for healing birds, as you have also told me. I would keep them in the drawer of an armoire, where I could stroke their feathers and bandage their wings.’