The Essex Serpent (9 page)

Martha’s socialism was no less ingrained than any inherited faith still clung to past childhood fervour. Community halls and picket lines were her temples, and Annie Besant and Eleanor Marx stood at the altar; she had no hymn book but the fury of folk songs setting English suffering to English melody. In the kitchen of their Whitechapel rooms her father – hands reddened with brick dust, the whorls of his fingertips worn smooth – counted out his wages and set aside his Union fees, and in his careful handwriting joined the petitioning of Parliament for a ten-hour limit on the working day. Her mother – who’d once stitched stoles and copes with golden crosses, and pelicans pecking out their hearts – cut cloth for banners held high above the picket line, and eked out the household budget to take beef soup to the striking match-girls at Bryant and May. ‘
All that is solid melts into air
,’ her father had said, reverently reciting his apostle’s creed: ‘
And all that is holy is profaned!
Martha, don’t bow your head to the way things are and always were – whole empires are brought down by nothing but ivy and time.’ He washed his shirts in the small tin bath – the water came out red – he sang as he wrung the linen dry: ‘
When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Englishman?
’ When Martha walked from Limehouse to Covent Garden she saw not high windows and Doric columns, but the labourers toiling behind them. It seemed to her that the city’s bricks were red with the blood of its citizens, its mortar pale with the dust of their bones; that deep in its foundations women and children lay head-to-toe in buried ranks, bearing up the city on their backs.

Taking her place in Cora’s household had been an act of purest pragmatism: it permitted a degree of social acceptance and a reasonable wage; it placed her firmly outside the class she despised and equally firmly within it. But she had not bargained for Cora Seaborne – after all, who could?

Spencer’s long, melancholy face was flushed – she was conscious of his eagerness to please, and it roused her to mischief: ‘
All that is solid melts into air
,’ she said, testing his courage.

‘Shakespeare?’ he said.

Smiling, relenting, Martha said, ‘Karl Marx, I’m afraid, though he was a bard of sorts. Yes, there was something I wanted to tell you’ – for the sorry truth was that Spencer and those like him, however despised, were useful sources of influence and income. She spread open the pages and showed him a map on which the poorest of London’s housing was overlaid with plans for new developments. They would be sanitary, she said, and spacious: children would have green spaces to play in and tenants would be free from landlord caprice. But (she flicked contemptuously at the paper) to qualify for housing, tenants must demonstrate good character. ‘They’re expected to live better than you or I ever did to deserve a roof over their children’s heads: must never be drunk, or a nuisance to neighbours, or gamble, and God forbid too many children by too many fathers, and had too often. You, Spencer – with your estate and your pedigree – you can drink yourself wretched on claret and port and no-one begrudges you any of your homes; but spend what little you have on cheap beer and the dogs and you’ve not enough moral standing to sleep in a dry bed.’

Spencer could not rightly claim to have given the capital’s housing crisis any further thought than the headlines invited, and felt keenly the contempt for his wealth and status which lay behind her words. But in her indignation she seemed to him more to be desired than ever, and as if her rage were contagious he felt something like anger stir in his belly. He said, ‘And if you’re given one of these homes, and are later discovered out in the streets breaking a pint glass over your neighbour’s head?’

‘On the streets you’ll stay, and your children, and it’ll be no more than you deserve. We are punishing poverty,’ she said, pushing away her plate: ‘If you are poor, and miserable, and behave as you might well expect a poor and miserable person to behave, since there’s precious little else to pass the time, then your sentence is more misery, and more poverty.’

He would’ve liked to ask what he could do, but felt the presence of his privilege as uncomfortably as if it had been pockets full of chilly gold, and instead fumbled with words of agreement and censure – certainly something ought to be done about it, questions raised and so on … ‘
I’m
going to do something about it,’ she said, imperiously; then as if to forestall requests for detail raised her voice, and said: ‘Now, Cora: have you told the Imp about your poor Essex parson, and the serpent?’

Cora (who’d been sitting at Luke’s feet recounting the tale of how she had rescued a lost lamb from the clutches of an Essex ogre) explained how they’d encountered Charles Ambrose, and how they’d learned of the beast in the Blackwater shaken loose by the earthquake. She showed him photos of a plesiosaur uncovered at Lyme Regis, and gestured to its long tail, and its flippers rather like wings. ‘Sea-dragon, Mary Anning called it: you can see why, can’t you? Can’t you see why?’ She snapped the book shut, triumphant, and told him how she planned to go down to the coast, where the Colne and the Blackwater met in their estuary and went out to the sea, and how Charles Ambrose had foisted them on an unsuspecting rural priest and his family. Her friend’s appalled laughter threatened to crack in two the black beams that upheld the roof: mirth doubled him at the waist, and he gestured to her man’s boots, and the earth beneath her fingernails, and the godless little library on the windowsill. The sweet letter of invitation was unfolded and passed from hand to hand and the primrose crumbled: this Stella Ransome was a darling woman (it was agreed) and ought at all costs to be protected from Cora, who would surely terrify her more than any sea-serpent might.

‘I hope the good Reverend’s faith is sincere,’ he said. ‘He’ll be needing it.’ Only Spencer, silently watching from his window-seat, saw in Luke’s hilarity the unease of a man who would’ve liked to keep Cora only for himself, with no other friend or confidant, even one choked with a dog-collar and slow-witted to boot.

A little later, watching from the window as Spencer guided his friend the short distance to the George, Martha said, ‘I like him: I always thought him stupid, but really I think he’s just kind.’

Cora said, ‘The two things are hard to tell apart, sometimes, and sometimes amount to much the same thing – will you take Francis to his room? I will clear the feathers up, or the maids will think we’ve held a black mass, and we will lose our reputation.’

2

Stella Ransome stood at the window buttoning her blue dress. It was the view she liked best, taking in the chequered path with its bluebell border, and beyond that the High Road with its cluster of cottages and shops, the sturdy All Saints tower, and the fresh red-brick walls of the school. Nothing pleased her more than feeling that all around her was the bustle of life, and she loved the beginning of spring, when green buds quickened on Traitor’s Oak, and the village children were set free from heavy clothes and indoor games. Her usually irrepressible cheer had been dampened by a long winter which had not had the glamour of snow, only been a dreary chill period that not even Christmas could make bearable. The cough which had kept her awake at night had receded as the weather grew warmer, and the grey thumbprints beneath her weary eyes had almost gone. This, too, pleased her: she was not vain, only took delight in her appearance in just the same way she took delight in the scarlet camellia blooming in its black flower-bed down on the lawn. Her white fair hair, heart-shaped face and pansy-blue eyes were a pleasant enough sight in the mirror, but one she took for granted. It was true that Will could no longer circle her waist with his outspread hands, but she took to her new stoutness cheerfully: it was evidence of the five children she’d carried, and of the three who remained.

She heard them downstairs ending their early supper, and closing her eyes saw each as plainly as if she’d gone to the kitchen. James bent over as he drew his fantastic machines, all food disregarded as he sketched another cog or flywheel, and Joanna, the eldest, tending sternly to John, the youngest, who was doubtless embarking on his third slice of cake. Delighted at the prospect of the night’s visitors (they adored Charles Ambrose, as all children did, for the depth of his pockets and the colours of his coat), they’d helped set the dining table with every piece of silver and glass in the house, exclaiming over the napkins their mother had sewn with forget-me-nots, and which they were not permitted to use. Only Joanna would be awake to greet the guests, and had promised to gather what gossip she could to entertain the younger children over breakfast. ‘I think the widow will be fat as a carthorse and will cry into her soup,’ she said, ‘and her son will be handsome and rich and stupid, and will ask me to marry him, and I’ll turn him down, and he will blow his brains out.’

Stella felt, as she often did, dazed with the good fortune which she knew to be a gift she had done nothing to earn. Her love for Will – which had arrived as suddenly as a fever when she was seventeen and had been just as dizzying – had not abated or diminished, even briefly, in their fifteen years of marriage. She’d been warned by a mother disappointed in almost every aspect of life that she should keep her expectations of happiness low: the man was likely to demand unpleasantness from her which she should bear bravely for the sake of children; he would tire of her quickly, but by then she would be grateful; he would grow fat; he was headed for a country parish and would never be rich. But Stella, to whom the mere existence of William Ransome, with his grave eyes and his sincerity and his deeply buried humour, was a miracle on a par with the wedding at Cana, could not prevent herself from laughing at her mother, and kissing her on the cheek. She felt then, and felt still, a fond pity for any woman who had not had the sense to marry her Will. Her mother had lived long enough to be disappointed in her daughter’s failure to be disappointed. The girl had taken to every aspect of marriage with indecent delight, and seemed to be expecting a child the moment she had delivered one; they walked the Aldwinter High Road hand in hand; even the loss of two children had not struck a blow to their love, only settled it more deeply on its foundation. Stella admitted, every now and then, that she might have been happier in London or Surrey, where you could barely cross the road without making some new friend; but she was a kind and indefatigable gossip, and found in Aldwinter sufficient intrigue to sustain her interest in her fellow man without ever being heard to speak ill of anyone.

Will, meanwhile, had not emerged from his study since breakfast. It was a habit of his to see no-one on a Saturday until it was evening, when he eked out as long as possible a single glass of good wine. For all the bemusement of friends and family at his willing exile to this little parish (something most predicted would pall on him within a year) he took his Sunday duties as seriously as if he’d taken instruction at the burning bush. His was not the kind of religion lived only in rule and rubric, as if he were a civil servant and God the permanent secretary of a celestial government department. He felt his faith deeply, and above all out of doors, where the vaulted sky was his cathedral nave and the oaks its transept pillars: when faith failed, as it sometimes did, he saw the heavens declare the glory of God and heard the stones cry out.

Marking morning readings in the prayer book, and composing a prayer for the safety of Aldwinter and all who were in it, he too heard the clamour of children in the room across the passage. It was an unwelcome reminder that his time of peaceful solitude was coming to an end: the clock on the mantel struck six, and a bare two hours remained before the ringing of the doorbell would disturb his peace.

He was not an inhospitable man, though he’d never shared his wife’s longing to be always in the company of others. Charles and Katherine Ambrose he loved more dearly than his own brothers, and frequent untimely visits from anxious parishioners were always met with welcome. He loved also to see Stella admired, presiding over the table with her warmth and wit, her beautiful head turning this way and that as she overlooked the pleasure of her guests. But a London widow, and her crone of a companion, and her indulged son! He shook his head, and slammed his notebook shut: he’d do his duty, because he always did, but he would not indulge a wealthy woman’s dabbling in the natural sciences, probably to the detriment of her spiritual health. If she were to ask him to chaperone some harebrained attempt to uncover whatever it was she thought lay buried in the Essex clay or lived still out in the estuary, she would receive a polite and implacable refusal. It was all part of the Trouble, he thought, refusing as always to dignify the village’s anxious rumours with the name of beast or serpent; they were all to be tried like gold in the fire, and would emerge purified. ‘Praise God,’ he said, but a little sourly, and went in search of tea.

‘You are not at all what I expected!’

‘Nor I you – you’re so young to be a widow, and so beautiful!’

At ten past eight Stella Ransome and Cora Seaborne were seated side by side on the couch nearest the fire. Within moments each had taken such a liking to the other it was agreed it had been a great shame they’d not met during childhood. Martha, used to her friend’s sudden affection and its equally sudden removal, took very little notice, and watched Joanna shyly shuffle a pack of cards. The girl’s serious, clever face and thin plait pleased her, and drawing near her she indicated that they should play a game.

‘Oh, I’m not beautiful: not at all,’ said Cora, delighted by the kind lie. ‘My mother always said the most I could hope for was to be thought striking, which suits me fine. Though it’s true I’ve dressed more respectably than usual. I’m afraid you would never have let me over the doorstep if you’d seen me this afternoon.’ It was true: at Martha’s insistence she’d put on her good green dress, in the folds of which it was possible to imagine every kind of moss growing. She’d covered the scar on her collarbone with a pale scarf, and for once her shoes were intended for a woman. Her hair, given one hundred strokes of the brush by Martha, strained against its hairpins, several of which lay already on the carpet.

‘Will is so pleased you’ve come, and will be so sorry to be late: he was called just now to see one of the parishioners who lives at the end of the village, but he won’t be long.’

‘I am so looking forward to meeting him!’ This also was true: Cora decided that this delightful woman with her fairy’s face and white-blonde hair would not be so happy if she shared her life with an oaf of a parson with flat feet. She was more than prepared to like him enormously, and settled happily into the cushions with her glass of wine. ‘It was kind of you to invite my son, but he’s been unwell, and I didn’t want him to travel.’

‘Ah!’ The other woman’s eyes filled with tears, which made their blue remarkable; she swiftly wiped them away. ‘To lose a father is very cruel – I am so sorry for him, and of course I should have thought that he wouldn’t want to spend an evening with strangers.’

Cora, whose honest disposition could not bear to see tears shed for a grief she suspected had never been felt, said: ‘He is bearing it very well – he is … an unusual child, and I think doesn’t feel things as deeply as you might expect.’ Seeing her hostess was puzzled, she was glad to be spared further explanation by a bustle on the doorstep and the sound of boots on the scraper; a large and heavy bunch of keys was fitted to the lock, and Stella Ransome leaped to her feet. ‘William – was it Cracknell? Is he taken ill?’

Cora looked up, and saw in the doorway a man stooping to kiss the woman where her fair hair parted. Stella was so little that he seemed to loom above her, though he was not especially tall. He was dressed smartly in a black coat cut well across his shoulders, and showing a breadth and strength that made a curious contrast with the little white collar of his office. His hair was of the kind that is never tidy, unless clipped short to the scalp: it fell in pale brown curls and in the light from the lamps had a reddish look. Having embraced his wife – his hands resting lightly at her waist, the fingers broad and rather short – he turned back to the door and said, ‘No, love – Cracknell himself is not sick – and see who I found on the path?’ He stood aside, plucking the white collar from his throat and tossing it onto a table; then in came Charles Ambrose in a scarlet frock coat, and behind him Katherine, concealed by a bouquet of hot-house flowers. Their scent was indecent, thought Cora: it went to her stomach, and she could not think why, until she recalled that when last she’d seen lilies they’d been laid all around the trestle where her husband’s coffin had rested.

There was a flurry of greeting, in which Cora – glad for once to be forgotten – watched Martha and the girl absorbed in a game of patience. ‘The queen is in her counting-house,’ said Joanna, and dealt another card. Then the brief peace broke, and the little crowd came in; Charles and Katherine embraced Cora, patting her cheek and exclaiming at the beauty of her dress, and the absence of mud on her shoes. Was she well? Look at her hair, so clean and shining! And there was Martha, and what were her latest schemes, they wondered? And Frankie: did he take well to the country air? What of the sea-dragon – was Cora at last to see her name in the pages of
The Times
? And did they not love Stella already, and what did she make of the good Reverend Will?

At this, a deep quiet voice said – with good humour, but (thought Cora) a decided lack of enthusiasm: ‘I’ve yet to meet our guests – Charles, you blind me with your glory, and nothing else can be seen.’ Charles Ambrose stood aside, and raising an arm conducted their host to the couch where Cora sat. She saw, above the open neck of a black shirt, a mouth pressed into a smile, eyes with the grain of polished oak, and a cheek which seemed to have been badly nicked while shaving. In all her long years of society life, she had prided herself on an astute assessment of the status and character of those she met: here the wealthy businessman embarrassed by his own success, there the shabby Lady with a van Dyck on the staircase. But here was a man who’d not be categorised, however long she stared at the high polish on his shoes and the sleeves which pulled a little at the bulk of his arm: he was too burly for a desk-bound parson, but his gaze too thoughtful to be that of a man content with farming; his smile was too polite for sincerity, but his eyes glittered with good humour; his voice (and had she heard it before, on the Colchester streets perhaps, or on the London train?) had in it an echo of Essex, but he spoke like a scholar. She stood, and with all the graciousness she could muster while her stomach still turned with the scent of the lilies, held out her hand.

Will, for his part, saw a tall handsome woman whose fine nose was specked with freckles, and whose mossy dress (its value, he rightly guessed, twice that of Stella’s entire wardrobe) drew out a greenish cast in eyes which were largely grey. She’d wound a scrap of gauzy fabric around her throat (absurd: did she really think it would keep her warm?), and wore on her wedding finger a diamond which broke the light and threw it against the wall. Despite the grandeur of her clothes, there was something boyish about her: she wore no jewellery aside from the ring, and her face had not been powdered pale, but glowed where the briny Essex air had struck it. When she stood, he saw that she was not the cart-horse his daughter had prophesied, but nor was she slender: she was large, and had substance; her presence would be, he thought, impossible to ignore, however hard one tried.

Whether it was the motion she made as she raised her hand or the realisation that her height matched his completely he was never sure, but at that moment he knew her at once. She was the roaring harridan who’d plunged out of the mist that day on the Colchester road, when together they’d tugged the sheep from its muddy trap and he’d received the cut on his cheek. She did not recognise him, of that he was certain: her smile was warm, though perhaps a little condescending. The pause before he took her hand was surely too brief to have been noticed by their companions, but caused her to look more keenly at her host. Will, who had not ceased laughing at the memory of that absurd encounter by the lake since the night he returned home in his coat of mud, could no longer conceal his amusement, and began to laugh again, touching lightly the reddish mark the animal had made.

Cora, so swift to assess the shifting moods of those around her, was briefly thrown: he put his hand in hers, and it was perhaps something in the pressure of his grasp that caused her to look again at the position of the cut on his cheek, and the curls on his collar, and with a gasp – ‘Oh!
You!
’ – begin laughing too. Martha (watching the exchange with a sensation very like fear) saw her friend and their host each cling to the hand of the other, helpless with inexplicable merriment. Cora, mindful of her manners, tried now and then to contain herself and explain to a bewildered Stella what it was that had struck them with laughing-sickness, but she could not. It was Will, at last, who released her hand, and giving an ironic bow – one leg extended, as if in the court of the queen – said, ‘I’m so pleased to meet you, Mrs Seaborne: might I offer you a drink?’