The Essex Serpent (13 page)

‘Surely not!’ he said, evidently delighted, though attempting to conceal it. ‘Surely not! Well – if you say so, Mrs Seaborne: I bow to your knowledge.’ And indeed he did bow, standing, and holding the crumbling bit of mud out as he did so, and placing it on the mantelpiece with a reverence that was only partly mocking.

‘Will,’ said Cora: ‘How did you come to
be
here?’ She spoke with a kindly hauteur very like that of a minor royal greeting dignitaries at the opening of a library; they both heard it, and smiled.

‘Here, you mean?’ he said, taking in the uncurtained window which overlooked the lawn, the pot of leaking pens, the several drawings of mechanical devices which served no purpose other than to turn and turn.

‘Here, I mean! Here, in Aldwinter – you ought to be elsewhere – Manchester, London, Birmingham – not always fifty paces from a rural church with no equal near to hand! If I met you elsewhere I would think you a – a lawyer, or an engineer, or a government minister – what, did you vow to take holy orders at fifteen, when you were a child, and were afraid to break your promise in case you were struck by lightning for your betrayal!’

Leaning against the windowsill Will surveyed his guest, and frowned. ‘Am I really so interesting – did you never meet a clergyman before?’

‘Oh – I am sorry – do you mind?’ said Cora. ‘I have met more clergymen than I care to remember, but you surprise me: that’s all.’

He shrugged, elaborately. ‘You are a solipsist, Mrs Seaborne – can you really not imagine that I might take a path which differs from yours and be happy walking there?’

No
, she thought:
no, I cannot.

‘I’m not an unusual or interesting man. You’re mistaken if you think so. For a time I wanted be an engineer, and revered Pritchard and Brunel, and once skipped school and travelled by train all the way to Ironbridge, and made drawings of the rivets and struts; I’d sit bored in class and make plans for box-girder bridges. But in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement – you see the difference? I have a good enough mind – if I’d played my cards right I could even now be sitting on the back benches debating some minor point of law – wondering whether it’s turbot for dinner and has Ambrose found another parliamentary candidate and ought I to go to Drury Lane or the Mall for dinner. But it chills me. Give me an afternoon guiding Cracknell back to the God who never left him over a thousand Drury Lane dinners. Give me an evening with the Psalms on the saltings and the sky breaking open over a thousand walks in Regency Park.’ He could not remember having ever spoken so long on the subject of himself, and wondered how she’d contrived to make him do so. ‘Besides,’ he said, a little irritated: ‘I have an equal in Stella.’

‘I think it a shame, that’s all.’

‘A shame!’

‘Yes – a shame. That in the modern age a man could impoverish his intellect enough to satisfy himself with myth and legend – could be content to turn his back to the world and bury himself in ideas which even your father must have thought outdated! Nothing is more important than to use your mind to its last degree!’

‘I’ve turned my back on nothing – I have done the reverse. Do you think everything can be accounted for by equations and soil deposits? I am looking up, not down.’ There again was another of those little alterations in the air, as if the pressure had dropped, and a storm was coming: each was aware of having grown angry with the other, uncertain why.

‘You certainly don’t seem to be looking outward – I know that at least!’ Cora found herself braced against the arms of her chair, wanting to be a little unkind: ‘What do you know of England now, of how the roads are laid, and where they’re going – of places in the city where children have never seen the Thames – never seen a patch of grass. How content you must be, reciting your Psalms to the air, and coming home to a pretty wife and books that left the press three hundred years ago!’ It was unjust, she knew; she faltered a little, wanting neither to retreat nor press on. And if she’d intended to infuriate her host she succeeded; he said, with a sharpness to his voice on which she could have cut herself, ‘How perceptive of you, to have my character and motives sketched out on our third meeting.’ Their gazes met. ‘It is not I who goes grubbing about in the mud for scraps of dead things – it’s not I who has run away from London and lost myself in a science I barely understand.’

‘True,’ said Cora. ‘Oh well, true enough!’ and smiled; and the effect was to disarm him completely.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘I am not sure. Liberty, I suppose. I lived so long under constraints. You wonder why I grub about in the mud – it’s what I remember from childhood. Barely ever wearing shoes – picking gorse for cordial, watching the ponds boiling with frogs. And then there was Michael, and he was – civilised. He would pave over every bit of woodland, have every sparrow mounted on a plinth. And he had me mounted on a plinth. My waist pinched, my hair burned into curls, the colour on my face painted out, then painted in again. And now I’m free to sink back into the earth if I like – to let myself grow over with moss and lichen. Perhaps you’re appalled to think we’re no higher than the animals – or at least, if we are, only one rung further up the ladder. But no, no – it has given me liberty. No other animal abides by rules – why then must we?’

If Will was able to set aside the obligations of his office, they were never far away; as she spoke he touched his throat as if hoping to find there the comfort of his white collar. How could he begin to believe that she was content to be as much animal as woman, careless, without a soul, or the prospect of its loss or salvation? What’s more, she contradicted herself on every turn: impossible to reconcile an animal Cora with the one who seemed always to be grasping at fresh ideas just beyond her reach. The silence that fell had the effect of a full stop at the conclusion of a long confusing sentence, and it was not broken for a time. Then, with a deliberately relieved glance at the clock – and smiling, because she’d taken no offence, and hoped she’d given none – Cora said, ‘I should go. Francis doesn’t exactly need me, but he does like to know that come six o’clock there will be dinner on the table, and that I will be eating it. And I am already hungry! I always am.’

‘I have noticed.’ She stood; he opened the door. ‘Then I’ll walk with you – I should do my rounds, like a surgeon in a hospital – I must pay calls to Cracknell, and to Matthew Evansford, who took a vow of temperance the day the body was found on New Year’s Eve, and has taken to wearing black and getting in a state over the serpent, and the End Times. You may have seen him when you first came to All Saints – all in black, and looking as if he ought to have a coffin on his shoulder.’

Out on the common again, with the sun lowering, and no wind; they walked with lightness of heart, conscious of having traversed uncertain terrain without serious injury. Cora spoke admiringly of Stella, perhaps by way of apology; Will in turn asked to be taught how it was that fossils were dated by the layers of sediment in which they were found. On the All Saints tower sunlight sparkled on the flint; beside the path the courteous daffodils all nodded as they passed. ‘And do you still think – seriously now, Cora – that you might find a living fossil (the ichthyosaur did you say?) in such a dull and shallow place as the Blackwater estuary?’

‘I think I might – I believe I might. And I am never sure of the difference between thinking and believing: you can teach me, one day. And after all I can hardly lay claim to the idea: Charles Lyell was firmly of the opinion that an ichthyosaur might turn up, although I admit no-one took him very seriously. Look – I’ve ten minutes of liberty left – let me walk with you to World’s End, and the water. I’m sure we’ll be safe: April’s too gentle a month for sea-dragons.’

They reached the water – the tide was out – mud and shingle gleamed in the westering light, and someone had wreathed the bones of Leviathan in yellow branches of broom. Sedge grew in soft pale sheaves that shimmered when the wind took them; a little distance away they heard the deep implausible booming of a bittern. The air was sweet and clear: it went in like good wine.

Neither was ever certain who first shielded their eyes against the dazzle on the water, and saw what lay beyond. Neither recalled having exclaimed, or having told the other ‘Look – look!’ only that all at once both stood transfixed on the path above the saltings, gazing east. There on the horizon, between the silver line of water and the sky, there lay a strip of pale and gauzy air. Within the strip, sailing far above the water, a barge moved slowly through the lower sky. It was possible to make out the separate pieces of its oxblood sail, which appeared to move under a strong wind; there quite clearly was the deck and rigging, the dark prow. On it went, flying in full sail, high above the estuary; it flickered, and diminished, then regained its size; then for a moment it was possible to see the image of it inverted just beneath, as if a great mirror had been laid out. The air grew chill – the bittern boomed – each heard the other breathing swiftly, and it was not quite terror they felt, though something like it. Then the mirror vanished, and the boat sailed on alone; a gull flew below the black hull, above the gleaming water. Then some member of the ghostly crew tugged a rope, or dropped an anchor – the vessel ceased to move, only hung on silent, wonderful, becalmed against the sky. William Ransome and Cora Seaborne, stripped of code and convention, even of speech, stood with her strong hand in his: children of the earth and lost in wonder.