Even so, it’s hard not to despair. The house seems quiet as a grave. I’ve stopped closing my study door since no-one ever comes in. The children write nearly every day and are coming next week. When I imagine them running up the garden path I want to hang a banner up – I want a gun salute!
Stella’s glad they’re coming, but her heart has moved on. Sometimes she tells me she will live, and says it to console me – then she says it’s eternal life she’s looking for and I think she’s running to the graveyard. I love her. We’ve loved each other so long I’ve never been a man and not loved her. I can no more imagine life without her than without my own limbs. Who will I be if she is gone? If she is not looking at me – will I still be here? Will I look in the mirror one morning and find my reflection gone?
And how can this be true when news of your coming made me happier than I ever had any right to expect?
Every evening at around 6pm I walk west for a while, away from the marsh and the estuary. Even now I almost think my nose will never be rid of that awful stench – I find I prefer to turn my back on the water and go into the woods.
I’d like to see you. Come out with me. You like a walk, don’t you?
WILLIAM RANSOME
5
She waited on the common in her man’s tweed coat, watching all the while for Will. It was too warm an evening for the collar high at the nape of her neck: autumn was as tentative as summer had been mild. But Cora had lately felt uneasy in herself, and not only when remembering the press of Will’s palm on her waist: she wanted to be swathed in heavy clothes, unwomanned by lumpish fabrics and heavy shoes. If Martha had not hidden the scissors she’d’ve done away with her hair, and satisfied herself instead with plaiting it severely from her face like a schoolgirl in the morning.
It had been so long since she’d seen her friend she almost wondered if she’d know him – anxiety at how he might greet her made her mouth run dry. Might he show his sterner side – part chastening, part disappointed? Might he speak warmly, as once he had, or with the diffident manners that chilled her?
The wind blew over the Blackwater and brought with it the scent of salt; in the long grass mushrooms grew and their caps were pearly as oyster-shells. When he came it was silently, as if he’d stolen up like a grinning boy: a light hand touched her arm above the elbow; a voice said, ‘You needn’t’ve dressed up on my account.’ The measured cadence and country slowness on the vowels was so familiar, and so dear, that she could not think why she’d been a little afraid, and spread the skirts of her coat in a curtsey.
They surveyed each other a while, unable to keep from smiling. Will had left off his collar, and with the country man’s disdain for the seasons wore no coat. His sleeves were rolled back as if he’d laboured all afternoon, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the throat. His hair had lightened since she’d seen it last, and grown longer: it was almost amber in the evening light. The scar on his cheek mimicked the edge of the sheep’s hoof, and his eyes seemed smudged as if he’d rubbed at them while reading an evening paper. He isn’t sleeping, thought Cora, with dreadful tenderness.
Under his gaze she knew she’d never looked less handsome: closeting herself indoors for much of the summer had given her face a greyish pallor, and her neglected hair grew coarsely at the crown. If she consented to look in the mirror it was to see quite dispassionately the fine lines fanning from the corner of her eyes, the single crease between her brows. All this she felt acutely, and with relief. Whatever mistaken moment at midsummer had caused their breach was impossible to countenance now: she was no man’s idea of a lover. The thought was so absurd she laughed with the relief of it; the sound pleased him, because it obliterated the weeks between and put him back in that warm room when first she’d held out her hand.
‘Come on, Mrs Seaborne: let’s go,’ he said: ‘I feel I’ve so much to tell you’; and far from feeling chastened or suppressed, Cora felt all her recent heaviness of spirit lift. They walked swiftly, matching step for step, leaving behind the village and the briny estuary breeze; they passed All Saints, and neither averted their eyes, because it did not occur to them there might be any misdemeanour in taking the evening air.
Both had saved such stores of anecdote and complaint, of tall tale and half-formed theory, that fully an hour passed without pause. Each made an inventory of the other, totting up with pleasure the well-remembered gesture or the phrases used too often, the tendency to withhold or exaggerate, the sudden veering-off into fresh pastures which the other followed at a run. They delighted in each other then as they had from the first, without thinking it indecent to smile so much and laugh so readily, while sinking in her blue silk cushions Stella raised a scrap of cotton to her mouth and withdrew it flecked with blood, and in Colchester Luke Garrett felt himself adrift. That each had felt betrayed by the other was not forgiven so much as forgotten: they’d sealed themselves up – they were inviolate.
‘And after all that, nothing but a dead fish!’ said Cora. ‘So much for the Essex Serpent – its wing and beak! Truly, I’ve never felt more foolish. I took myself off to the Reading Rooms (I half-thought I’d see you there) and did my homework, like any good schoolgirl, and saw the oarfish cast up in Bermuda thirty years ago, and read how they loiter near the surface when they’re dying – I must apologise to Mary Anning for disgracing both her sex and her profession.’
‘But such a fish,’ said Will, and described for her how the shining skin of its belly had split, and how its contents had writhed on the shingle.
When they spoke of Stella, Cora turned her face away: she’d shown Will her tears once before and had resolved not to do so again.
‘She asked to be shown the glass slide in the microscope,’ said Will, wondering again at his wife’s courage. ‘She looked at what came from her own body and there was death in it and she faced it better than I did. I think she’d known for months. She’d seen it all before.’
‘She’s the kind of woman who’s misunderstood: they think because she’s so pretty and wears her clothes so well, and because she gossips and chatters, that she’s nothing but a ballerina in a jewellery box turning round and round; but I knew from her first letter that she’d a sharpness to her – I don’t think she misses anything, not even now.’