The Visitor (4 page)

Their house was the last on the row. It was much taller than their Carew Street house and the outside walls had a cleanliness that surprised her. They were made of red brick, bright in the sunshine. The old house had been very grimy, she realised now, the white-wash coming away to reveal the grey stone beneath. The patches of wash that were left were grubby from the visitors pushing through the town. Several motor cars had knocked into the front wall in the last year, one leaving a scratch of green paint below the window sill. But the new house seemed so insubstantial compared to the old one which hunkered into the earth, low next to the sea. The
Wave Crest
house looked precarious, too new. How could it hold them, up here?

It was the same inside. Nothing felt solid, made to last. Downstairs was a kitchen and another smaller room with a fireplace. Nothing like the good room at home on Carew Street but perhaps she could make it nice. Perhaps with their things dotted around it would be all right. The stairs were very narrow and creaked alarmingly once you were halfway up. There was a bedroom and box room above. Both felt dark.

It only took the morning to unload Pearl and Jack's possessions. George seemed relieved to be able to get back down to town and leave them to the unpacking. Before he went Pearl managed to rouse herself from the window sill, where she had sat since they first arrived.

Seeing George to the cart she asked him, ‘Your loft – will you have to move too?'

He pushed his dark hair from his face and screwed his lips together. ‘Pascoe says no, but the palace is so close. If it really does become a hotel then I can't see how me and Elizabeth can stay. Once it's finished he's bound to want the rest of the street too.'

Inside, Jack dropped a box on the floor and cursed it. George took that moment to kiss Pearl goodbye. He had moved out of the Carew Street cottage when he was young, too young, she had often felt. The rows with Jack had heated every waking moment and simmered in sleep. The distance since then had left only an uneasy peace.

She stood listening to George's footsteps retreating. She was in the drying field watching Nicholas go. Her breath caught in her throat. Then it was over. She went back inside.

‘You going to help me?' Jack stood in a nest of crumpled packing paper and blankets. ‘Might make you feel more at home.'

Pearl looked round the new kitchen. There wasn't much space and a draught was coming from somewhere. Near the ceiling the wallpaper was already peeling. Unpacking wouldn't help; it would only make it worse to see their things arranged in this strange place. But it would take Jack all week on his own, his hands the way they were, and he would only work himself into a storm.

She nodded and began stacking the pans on the table. Even though she had known them all her life – her mother had taken such care of the heavy-bottomed saucepans – they had changed somehow, in their journey up the hill. Pearl felt as if she had never seen them before.

Four

When she woke she knew something was wrong. There was a stillness, as if the sound had been sucked from the air. Her own chest tightened in response as she tried to remember where she was. She couldn't hear the sea. Why was she locked in the quiet? Was she in the palace's cellar?

Then she remembered. She was in the new house.

Jack was still asleep. It was barely light. She went to the window that looked down the hill to the town. The morning was already hot but there were thick clouds and a heaviness in the air. Her head was muggy. A good downpour would freshen everything, help her get on with unpacking the rest of their things.

She filled the kettle from the pail by the back door. There were taps over the sink but there was no water in them, despite the assurance from Pascoe. When she had turned them on yesterday they gave a weak gasp but that was it. Each house had a small dirt yard behind it. Beyond these ran the cliff path where a shared tap was connected to a nearby spring. That would have to do for now.

The rain came suddenly, like a wave over the roof. She could smell the bare earth now wet. There was the sound of water nearby, too near. She followed the sound to the bedroom and felt water on her arms and face. She looked up. There were drips across the ceiling. Jack's face was wet. She woke him and together they laid saucepans in an ever-changing pattern across the floor. After a while they gave up and sat in the kitchen, which seemed to be spared, waiting for the rain to stop.

‘Roof's badly done,' Jack said. ‘You can see it from the road. Hardly a slate on right. It's no good, no good at all.'

Pearl was thinking of the sloping doorstep of the old house and how her foot felt against its shape as she walked inside. When Jack broke off she looked up and saw that he was watching her.

‘No good at all,' he said again. He massaged one hand with the other. It was a relief to have silence then. Pearl was tired and wanted only to look out of the window. The sea lay before her, too far away to see any waves but just knowing it was there brought some comfort.

The rain eased. She could hear seagulls again. Jack went outside and presently she caught the smell of tobacco. She opened all the windows to air the house but over the course of the day the damp didn't dry. When she went to bed that night the bedding was cold against her skin.

There was another downpour the following morning. She lit a fire to dry the plaster but the chimney smoked so much that the house became unbearable with the smoke and the extra warmth so she put the fire out. The sky looked clearer from midday so she decided to risk drying the sheets on the gorse bushes which encroached at the back of the yards.

The other yards were empty. Carew Street had been moved up the hill together. Pearl's neighbours on the cliff were still the women she had known all her life, as children, as wives, on the beach and in the palace. There was only one man in the row other than Jack: Betty Thomas' husband, but he was much younger than Betty. All the others were gone, taken by the sea or serving in the reserves. On Carew Street the women always stopped to talk, which had been a bother at times. People were so nosy. But since the move from the seafront the women scuttled from their kitchens to their yards and back again, like anxious gulls fretting for their nests, and Pearl missed the talk. If only Eileen had come up the hill.

Pearl was struggling to spread her sheets across the gorse when Mrs Tiddy appeared and took hold of the other end of a sheet. Already out of breath, Pearl was forced to let her help and then do the same for Mrs Tiddy's damp linen.

‘All night it was dripping from the roof,' Mrs Tiddy said, reaching for another sheet. ‘And my chimney smokes…'

‘And ours,' Pearl said.

‘I'm worried it'll catch light. It's enough to keep a soul from sleep, fretting like this.' She pulled at the corner of a sheet to straighten it over an arm of gorse. ‘Is Jack going to see Pascoe about the house?'

‘I don't know,' Pearl said. Had he mentioned it? She supposed he would have done but she couldn't remember the conversation. She bent to lift another sheet.

‘I wouldn't ask,' Mrs Tiddy was saying, ‘only my Matthew's got work from Pascoe. I don't know when he'll come up here next.'

Pearl stopped to catch her breath. There was an ache at her temple. The weather was still so hot, despite the rain the last few days. The feeling she'd had, stuck inside the hot house earlier, hadn't left her. Nicholas was playing at the edges of her thoughts, though she tried so hard not to think about him. He was stretching out a piece of white cloth, then a sail was being raised. The wind was pushing it full but there was no wind. It was too hot.

‘Are you all right?' Mrs Tiddy said.

But Pearl was already on her way back to the house. She needed to lie down, to send him away.

When she woke it was dark. There was still a warm pressure at her temples but it was weaker now. Jack was standing by the window.

‘How long have I been asleep?' she asked him.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘You were in bed when I got back from the front.'

‘That must have been hours ago. You've had nothing to eat,' she said, struggling to sit up. She couldn't seem to focus in the poor light.

‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘Mrs Tiddy called in, to see how you were. Said you were taken bad hanging out the sheets. I said you were in bed so she got me some supper.' He wouldn't meet her eye. ‘My hands weren't good today. I think it must be the heat.' He looked at his curled fists but without emotion. They had been that way for a long time.

‘Well I'll have to sort out the kitchen then, if she's been in there,' Pearl said. This time she was able to sit up and swing her legs out of bed. She'd be better once she started moving. It was no good getting into bed in the middle of the day. Her mother had done that and she'd been dead a few months later. Once you stopped, that was it.

‘I'm going to see Pascoe tomorrow,' Jack said. ‘About the house.'

‘Good,' Pearl said. ‘We can go back to Carew Street. I don't fancy a winter here. These draughts.'

He nodded. ‘I said I'd ask Pascoe about Mrs Tiddy's place too.' He helped Pearl to stand. ‘As she's on her own.'

‘She's got Matthew,' Pearl said, shaking off Jack's hand. ‘What does she need you for?'

‘Don't be uncharitable,' Jack said. ‘We have to look after each other up here.'

Five

The next day Jack made a fuss down at the Council rooms, along with Betty Thomas' husband. The two of them spoke for all of
Wave Crest
. A motor car brought them back up the hill, with Pascoe driving and two other men in overalls in the back.

The men in overalls spent the day moving from one house to another, working their way down the row. When they came to Pearl and Jack's, the last one, they poked the soft plaster in the bedroom and a great load came off the wall. Dust drifted over the furniture, making Pearl cough. She waited in the yard while the dust settled. There would be so much cleaning to do, she was tired just thinking about it. Presently the men came out. One measured the angles of the windows while the other wrote figures in a pocketbook. She was going to offer them a cup of tea but they didn't speak to her, so she decided not to. Pascoe went down to the town again and returned with a ladder strapped to the roof of the car. One of the men climbed onto the roof of Pearl and Jack's house and measured that too, calling down his figures, at which the other man tutted. Jack watched them, smoking and peering at their numbers. He ignored Pascoe, but Pearl wanted to ask what had happened to the old house: were the taps in? They had heard nothing more about the palace becoming a hotel. She hadn't been back down to the town since the move. It was easy to forget, to pretend Morlanow was the same as when she was a child. Nicholas would call for her and they would go down to the seafront. There was a boat he wanted to show her.

As the sun began to set the men in overalls and Pascoe got back in the car and drove away.

‘What did they find?' Pearl asked Jack.

‘Said it would take a few days,' he said, ‘to do the calculations.'

But the next day the men in overalls were back, joined by two others. They didn't come to the houses but struck away from them, heading inland. They were carrying all sorts of devices and sticks. Pearl looked out for them during the day but didn't see them pass
Wave Crest
again.

She was sitting by the window when Jack came home from the seafront.

‘There's still things to be unpacked,' he said. ‘You've not taken out your mother's china, or the pictures of Polly's family.'

‘There's no point,' she said, smiling at him. ‘We're going home soon.'

She was alone in the new house much of the day. Jack continued to go to the seafront despite the long walk back up the hill in the hot evenings. She did enough to keep the house running – a bit of washing, airing the bedding – but nothing more. They weren't staying, she was sure of it. Even though she wasn't as busy as when they were in the old house she didn't seem to have any time. She sat at the window late morning, looking down to town, and then the clock would strike and it would be mid-afternoon. She wasn't aware of slipping into melancholy but it often found her. It was having to wait to go home. She had time to think about the things she usually managed to keep pushed down in the dark. The white sail came to her again and again, and that terrible word: keygrim. It seemed to be in the clock's very tick. A swim would sort her out. But she wasn't meant to. Mrs Tiddy was watching. That was her now, sneaking in.

‘Mother?' a voice called.

It was George come to see her. He kissed her cheek. He smelt of the town and she realised how much she missed it, even with the crowds and the cars.

‘It's such a walk up here,' he said. ‘However does Father manage it?'

‘He's fitter than you think,' she said. ‘Only his hands stop him doing things, and even then he'll try.'

George wouldn't let her put the kettle on. ‘Water'll be fine,' he said. He took a cup from where they lay still packed in a box and went to the sink.

‘Nothing there,' she said. ‘Pail's by the door.'