The Essex Serpent (25 page)
Authors: Sarah Perry
‘What should we do?’ said Evansford, looking as if he rather regretted the bright sun rising, the pathos of the corpse at his feet, the staying of the hand of judgment. ‘It can’t be left. It’ll poison the river.’
‘The tide’ll take it,’ said Banks, sure-footed: no-one knew dead fish as well as he. ‘The tide, the gulls.’
Then – ‘Something is moving,’ said Harriet’s mother, who’d walked a little onward, and stood at the place where the creature’s belly bulged against the shingle: ‘Something inside is moving!’ Will came near, and saw a kind of shiver and writhing behind the skin; it paused, so that he rubbed his eyes, imagining that his vision had grown disordered by the early morning and the low sun; he opened them again, and all at once, as if slipping free of many small buttons, the belly opened up along the seam and spilled out a pale and writhing mass. The stench was unbearable: each staggered back as if struck by a blow, and Banks could not prevent himself from running to Leviathan’s bones and vomiting. He could not look – he could not: he imagined that there among the white fragments still moving he might see a skein of red hair. But one of the women, indifferent to the sight, stirred at the glistening mess with her foot and said: ‘Tapeworm. Look at it, yards long and still hungry. Probably did for the beast: starved it from the inside. Seen it happen before – you not going to take a look, Reverend? Found you had something to fear, after all?’ Inclining his head (he knew when he was bested) Will did take a look, reeling a little; saw the worm’s last movements, and its peculiar look of a length of white ribbon into which threads had been irregularly woven. What was the creator thinking of, to come up with so revolting a creature, which moreover lived off the life of others? He supposed it served some purpose.
‘Banks,’ said Will, suppressing the urge to deliver a short homily which emphasised his rightness in countering the villagers’ superstitious fears with godly reason: ‘Banks, what ought we to do?’
‘Leave it,’ said Banks, in whose wet eyes new veins had broken. ‘High tide’ll take it, due eleven or just after. Nature has her ways.’
‘And no harm done to the herring, the oyster beds?’
‘See the gulls? See the rooks, followed us from the common? Short work of it they’ll make, and the water: come Sunday – no sign of it.’
Nothing now moved. The lens of the creature’s eye grew milky; Will imagined, knowing himself foolish, that from the open mouth a last breath came. The shingle stirred, the tide edged nearer: on the toe of his boot a dark stain showed, and its edge was rimmed with salt.
Katherine Ambrose
c/o All Saints Rectory
Aldwinter
11
th
September
Our darling Cora,
Have you heard? What with your determination to no longer be interested in poor old Essex (really, I never knew a fad of yours fall from favour so fast!) I daresay you remain in the dark, so for once I get the pleasure of telling you something you don’t already know, which is this:
THEY HAVE FOUND THE ESSEX SERPENT!
Now dust yourself down, and fetch a cup of tea (Charles, who reads over my shoulder, says if the sun’s over the yard-arm you must get a glass of something strengthening), and I’ll tell all. And since I am currently in Aldwinter I have it direct from the Reverend William Ransome, whom you and I both know to be incapable of transgressing so far as to exaggerate – so you must take this report to be as sober and truthful as if it came from the pen of the man himself.
Well, it happened like this. Yesterday morning the entire village was woken by the most disgusting smell. I gather at first some thought they’d all been poisoned, since it was bad enough to make them sick in their beds: can you imagine!
At any rate, apparently they summoned up the courage to go down to the shore, and there it was – the beast itself, only dead as a doornail. Quite as big as they’d feared: Will estimates 20 feet, only not at all bulky. Rather like an eel, he said, and shining like silver, or mother-of-pearl (he grows poetical in his old age). Those that saw it knew at once how foolish they’d been – no monster after all, and certainly no wings: it looked as if it might take a chunk out of your leg, but would’ve had no end of trouble getting out of the water to snatch a sheep or a child. I gather there was an unpleasant moment with a parasite of some kind which I do not wish to dwell on, but there you have it: a beast, I suppose, but no more strange, no more dangerous, than an elephant or crocodile.
Now, I know you’ll be wondering whether it bore any resemblance to the sea-serpents which your beloved Mary Anning had a habit of digging up, and I regret to tell you that it did not. Will says it had no limbs of any kind, and that for all its size and strangeness it was quite unmistakably nothing but a fish. There was talk of notifying the authorities – Will sent a message to Charles, since we happened to be in Colchester at the time – but apparently it broke up when the tide came in and got washed back out to sea. Oh Cora! I can’t help feeling rather sorry for you. What a let-down! I had high hopes for that case in the British Museum, and inside a monstrous sea-serpent stuffed and fitted with glass eyes, and there on the wall your name on a brass plate. And what a disappointment to those looking forward to judgment day: I wonder if they repent of their repentance? I know I would!
The following day we came down to Aldwinter, half-hoping to see the wretch for ourselves, so I write to you from Will’s study. It’s warm, and mild: the window’s open, and I can see a goat cropping grass on the lawn. How curious it is to be here without the Ransome children, knowing they’re back at our own home in London! All the world is topsy-turvy. And how curious it is to be here among things I recognise as yours – your letters (I didn’t look, though I was sorely tempted!) – a glove which I know to be yours – a fossil (an ammonite, I think?) which can only have come from you. I almost think I can smell that scent of yours, which is always like the first rain of spring – as if you’d only just got up out of the chair where I am sitting! Will keeps odd books for a vicar – here’s Marx and Darwin, no doubt getting along very well.
Aldwinter is quite transformed. When we arrived this morning (to what frankly I’ve always thought a dour sort of village) a festival was taking place. The children are out to play again, since there’s no danger of encountering a beast behind the hedges, and the women had laid out blankets on the grass and sat leaning against each other, gossiping no end. We finished up the summer’s cider (delicious, and far better than any wine I’ve ever had in this county), and made short work of an entire Essex flitch of ham. Darling Stella – even more beautiful, I’d be prepared to swear, than when I saw her last (really I think it terribly unfair) – put on a blue dress and danced a little while the fiddlers played, but had to go to bed soon after. I’ve not seen her since, though I hear her pacing upstairs: mostly she lies in her bed, writing in her notebook. I brought her gifts from the children, and letters, but she hasn’t read them yet. She does not believe the strange fish on the shore to have been the Essex Serpent, but she’s had so many strange ideas in her lately I just squeezed her hand (so hot, and so small!) and said of course not, of course not, and let her put a blue ribbon in my hair. It’s a cruel disease but is treating her kindly enough.
Now then, Cora. You must allow me the dignity of my years and permit me to give you a dressing-down. I’ve heard it from Charles that you have not yet seen Luke Garrett, that you do not write to either Stella or Will though you must know she is sick (dying, one rather assumes, though aren’t we all in our fashion?), and having to do without her children.
My dear, I know you grieve. I admit I was never sure what it was that first brought you to Michael, who always frightened me just a bit (do you mind my saying so?) but it was something. And the bond is broken, and you are left untethered – and now it seems you are severing all your ties! Cora, you cannot always keep yourself away from things that hurt you. We all wish that we could, but we cannot: to live at all is to be bruised. I don’t know what has come between you and your friends, but I know that none of us was made to be alone. You told me once you forget you are a woman, and I understand it now – you think to be a woman is to be weak – you think ours is a sisterhood of suffering! Perhaps so, but doesn’t it take greater strength to walk a mile in pain than seven miles in none? You are a woman, and must begin to live like one. By which I mean: have courage.
All love,
KATHERINE
PS – One odd thing: all that relief, that lightness of heart – the fiddler with a flower in his buttonhole, that marvellous food – but no-one took the trouble to climb up Traitor’s Oak and take down the horseshoes hanging there? As the sun went down the wind came up and there they were: turning and flashing on their bits of string.
Don’t you think that’s strange?
Cora Seaborne
c/o The Midland Grand Hotel
London
12
th
September
My dear Katherine
–
I took your dressing-down on the chin and love you no less than ever. I’ve displeased everyone, it seems, and am used to it by now. Do you think me self-pitying? Well: I am, though I’d stop if I could find the source of it! Sometimes I think I see what troubles me but at the last minute look away, it seems so
ABSURD
: whoever heard of a woman brought so low by the loss of a friend?
So then: the Essex Serpent is found. A month ago I’d have been utterly furious, but I find myself generally muted these days. I suppose I did think, now and then, that I’d stand on the shore and see the snout of an ichthyosaur poking out of the estuary waters (God knows I’ve seen stranger things there!), but I can’t remember it. It seems absurd: the daydreams of another woman. Last week I took myself off to the Natural History Museum and stood counting the bones of the fossils there, and tried to summon up the wonder it once gave me, and there was nothing.
Perhaps you know how cruel I was to Dr Garrett. Katherine,
HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN?
They don’t want me there: I write, and he does not reply. I am not certain that William Ransome wants to see me, either. I go blundering about – I break things – I turned out to be no more competent a friend than I have been a wife or mother
–
Oh (having read just now what I have written) what self-pity! It will do me no good. What would Will say? That we’ve all fallen short of the glory of God, or something along those lines: at any rate he never seemed much bothered by the failings of others since it’s all a consequence of the human condition, and only to be expected. Though if that is the case, he ought to bear with my failings rather better than he seems to, or at least keep me informed as to
WHICH
of my failings have displeased him most …
You see how I have become? I was never so girlish, so mournful! Even when a girl! Even when mourning!
I will write to Luke. I will write to Stella. I will go to Aldwinter.
I WILL BE GOOD. I PROMISE.
Much love, darling K – indeed you have all of it, since no-one else wants it
–
CORA SEABORNE
Cora Seaborne
c/o The Midland Grand Hotel
London
12
th
September
Dear Stella, Dear Will
–
It’s usual I know to begin with ‘I hope you are well’ – but I know you are not. I was so desperately sorry to hear how ill you have become, and send my love. Did you see Dr Butler? I’m told he’s the best to be had.
I am coming back to Essex. Tell me what I can bring. Tell me what you most like to eat. Shall I bring books? There is a man outside the hotel selling peonies: I’ll bring as many as I can stuff in a first-class carriage.
I hear the Essex Serpent was found, and nothing but a great fish after all, and long since dead to boot! Katherine tells me all Aldwinter celebrated – how I wish I could have been there, and seen it.
With love,
CORA SEABORNE
4
‘He’s not here,’ said Stella, closing her blue notebook, tying it with ribbon: ‘He’ll be sorry to’ve missed you – no, don’t sit next to me: I don’t much feel like coughing, but sometimes it comes when I don’t expect it – and what’s this? What is this! What have you brought me!’
Relief and disappointment weakened Cora at the knee; concealing it with a smile she put a parcel in her friend’s lap, and said, ‘It’s only a book I thought you’d like, and some marzipan from Harrods: we remembered how you like it – Frankie, come and say hello.’ But Francis was nonplussed, and could only stand on the threshold, surveying the room. Never in his years of accumulating treasures had he seen anything like it: he’d thought himself expert in the collector’s art, but knew when he was bested. Stella Ransome lay on a white couch between two open windows hung with blue curtains. She wore a dark blue dressing-gown and blue slippers, and was decked with turquoise beads. On her hands were gimcrack rings, and on every windowsill blue glass bottles glinted: there were sherry bottles and poison bottles and little flag-ons for scent, shards of glass gathered from gutters and opaque nuggets tossed up by the tide. Neatly laid out on tables and chairs were items ordered by depth or pallor of pigment: bottle-tops and buttons, silk scraps and folded sheets of paper, feathers and stones, and all of them blue. Awestruck, he knelt a little distance away and said, ‘I like all your special things. I have special things, too.’ Stella turned her pansy eyes on him and without surprise or censure said, ‘Then we share a habit of finding beauty no-one else sees’ – she lowered her voice and whispered confidingly: ‘It is a habit also of the angels who we sometimes entertain unawares, and lately there’s been a lot of them about.’ It troubled Cora to see her put her finger to her mouth in a gesture of secrecy, and to see Francis make the gesture in return; the woman had certainly grown stranger in her absence – was it the disease? Why had Will not written to tell her?
Stella then became her old brisk self; she twitched at her dressing-gown, and said, ‘Now then: I have lots and lots to ask and tell. How is Dr Garrett? I couldn’t bear it when I was told – I will never forget how he treated me the day I went to hospital. It wasn’t the ordinary kindness you know – he spoke to me as if I were an equal – he wouldn’t let them keep it from me. Will he really never operate again? I had been ready to let him do what he wanted with me, but I suppose that’s out of the question now.’
Cora found that she could not speak of her Imp without a pain in her throat, and said carelessly, ‘Oh: Spencer tells me he’s healing well. Can it really be that bad? He didn’t lose a finger, and it would take more than a street-fight to have him lose his mind. Frankie, no – those aren’t yours.’ The boy had begun to fetch grey-blue stones from the mantelpiece and to put them on the carpet, and ignoring his mother breathed hotly on a flat pebble and polished it on his sleeve.
‘Please – let him play: he understands me, I think,’ said Stella, and together they watched a moment as he set them out in the pattern of a seven-pointed star, now and then glancing up at Stella in what his mother saw with surprise to be an expression of adoration.
‘They took my babies away,’ said Stella, drearily, losing for a moment her lightness of heart: ‘I remember their faces, of course – I have their photos here – only I forget how it is to feel their arms around my neck and the weight of them in my lap – it makes me happy to see him there – let him do what he wants.’ Then she leaned against the curved wing of the chair, and Stella saw the high colour on her cheeks burn brighter. When she raised her head again her hair was dark at the roots with sweat.
‘But they’re coming back again – Katherine Ambrose is bringing them to me,’ she said. She touched the Bible. ‘Our heavenly father never gives us more than we can bear.’
‘I daresay,’ said Cora.
‘And they say the Essex Serpent is found, and no more than a rotting fish!’ Stella leaned forward – secretive, confiding – ‘But Cora, do not be deceived. Just last night a dead dog was cast up at Brightlingsea with its neck broken, and no sign yet of the Banks girl –’
How gleeful she is
, thought Cora:
I believe she is almost willing the serpent back into the Blackwater!
‘I hear it whispering in the night,’ said Stella, ‘though I never can make out the words …’
Cora took her friend’s hand; but what after all was to be said? Her eyes glittered, as if she saw not the hand of judgment but of redemption. Stella made a few marks in her notebook, then shook her head as if waking from a light sleep and said, ‘And how is Martha: cross to find herself back in Aldwinter, I’m sure.’ She’d not yet lost her habit of gossip, and for a while they ran through all their mutual acquaintances while Will filled the room with his absence.
Francis sat some distance away, observing in his usual fashion. He saw how Stella clutched the notebook, stroking its blue cover; how one moment her attention fixed avidly on what his mother said, then dissipated as she grew dreamy and vague. Sometimes she’d fall to phrases that sat oddly on her tongue – ‘The fact is, and I know you agree, that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality!’ – then immediately after say, briskly, ‘Magog doesn’t seem at all bothered by Cracknell’s death: her milk’s as good as ever.’ And all the while his mother’s eyes grew darker, as they did when she was troubled: she patted Stella Ransome’s hand, and nodded, and never contradicted; she said, ‘Tell me again how it is you plait your hair so beautifully: I try, but I can never get it right!’ and poured another cup of tea.
‘Come again soon, won’t you?’ Stella said, when Cora rose to leave. ‘How sorry you must be to miss Will – I will give him all your best. And Master Seaborne,’ she said, turning to Francis and holding out her hands: ‘We should be friends, you and me: we understand each other. Come again and bring me your treasures, and we’ll compare them, shall we?’ And Francis put his hand in hers, and felt how hot it was, and how very much smaller than his own; he said: ‘I’ve got three jays’ feathers and a chrysalis. I’ll bring them tomorrow, if you like.’