The Visitors (14 page)

‘Just you, Liza. I never get time to spend alone with Ma and Pa, so we are going for a walk together this morning. Caleb has offered to take you on a boat trip out to the oyster beds, so you can see how they grow. You don’t mind, do you?’

Then her head cocks and she signals that Mr Crowe is coming through the front door. I tumble back into her room so he does not see me in my bed things. As I dress, I think of it and grin: a boat trip with Caleb.

We leave the house, dodging the Crowe boys as they play rounders in the street, one bashing the ball with his hand before hurtling past us, then yowling as he gets thumped in the back with the ball. Caleb says, ‘Don’t forget I got you that golf caddying today. Make sure you give your thruppence to Ma and don’t lose it on the walk back.’

The boys throw their heads back in protest, then forget it as easily as the breeze blows clouds and beat on with their game, dodging in and out of neighbours’ front gardens. Caleb shakes his head at them and smiles. We walk down to the beach together without conversing. I am worried about my clothes. I am not accustomed to dressing for boat trips and I only brought three outfits for our three-day stay. I have plumped for the outfit I packed for inclement weather, my tailored tweed jacket and matching skirt. They are warm and thick. I have plaited my hair and tied it up so that it does not blow about in a troublesome way and chosen my smallest hat, a little boater, which I have secured with extra pins so it is not stolen by sea winds. Caleb does not make comment on me, so I am hoping he approves. Most of all, I do not want to be an embarrassment to him, trip over any ropes or fall overboard and require rescuing. At this moment, I would like to be a burly man in leather boots and woolly jumper. But I am a slip of a girl in tweed and must make do as I am.

We cross the stones to the rowing boats and Caleb takes my hand, helping me into the boat where I sit on a wooden ledge facing the sea. He pushes the boat into the shallows, climbs in and takes up the oars, rowing us out with a languid ease towards the waiting yawl. Two men are already aboard, smoking and laughing, watching our approach with surreptitious comments that I cannot read beneath their heavy moustaches. I worry I am a ridiculous burden to them and there are a hundred other things they would rather do than take this silly girl on a tourist trip. As we pull alongside the bobbing yawl, Caleb stands and takes my hand again. One of the men on the boat touches his cap and nods at me, holds out his hand and helps me climb aboard. I am very glad my skirt is wide enough and I do not trip like a fool. I smile at the men and nod back, my version of thanks. I can see from their downturned eyes and half-hidden smiles that they are a little timid with me. Caleb is aboard and ties up the rowing boat to the stern. The others set to pulling at a rope to raise the main sail, which billows with the wind, and soon we are off.

The yawl is beautiful. It has three sails, three triangles of descending size down to a long beam that juts out in front of the boat, pointing its way through the water. We weave along merrily with the April winds and I grab on tight to the edge as the boat tips this way and that. Caleb has seated me at the prow of the boat beside the smallest sail, while the men work at the back. We reach a forest of poles proud of the water. The yawl is manoeuvred to the proper place.

Caleb comes over to me and says, ‘These are our oyster beds.’

I look at the sea and the clutch of posts, all the same to me. I reach up and spell into his hand, ‘How do you know which is yours?’

He smiles. ‘Oh, we know.’

The men watch our talking hands with shy, shifting eyes. They turn, take up large nets topped with wooden handles like a carpet bag, and throw them overboard, each linked to a rope tied to the boat. We sail along and the nets are dragged across the seabed. Soon, the men haul up the nets, one each, and drag them heavy with catch on to the deck. I come over to see their hoard. They shake out the nets and a mish-mash of shell and sealife spills across the boards: seaweed and starfish, cockles and crabs, whelks and urchins, little silvery fish gasping for life and dozens of oysters. The men grab at wooden baskets piled up. Crouching, they sort through the oysters with chubby yet nimble fingers in less than a minute, throwing some into the baskets and others overboard.

Caleb says, ‘Culling.’

He takes my hand and spells it.

‘Some of the oysters are too young to harvest, see?’ he says with his mouth. He takes up a smaller one and spans it with finger and thumb. He shows me the shell covered with pearly discs. ‘This is brood stock. Infant oysters.’

He speaks slowly, carefully, to help me understand the unusual words. He flicks the infant overboard. He picks up another. ‘This one is nearly mature, see? This is half-ware.’ That one is jettisoned too.

‘But this one, look. This is mature. Much bigger. It takes them at least five years to reach table age. You can count the layers on the bottom shell. This yellow, these three brown and this rough bit on the edge. That makes five. Now it’s legal, ready to eat.’

One man takes a little hammer from his pocket and is breaking loose a large clump of shells. Dead shells, empty of life, are thrown overboard with the detritus and the young oysters.

‘We pick out the legals and throw the rest back,’ says Caleb. ‘When it’s all done, we’ll take them to the hoys anchored in the bay and they’ll ship down to Billingsgate. Cockneys will eat my oysters, then tramp down to your farm and pick your hops.’

We smile at this.

Once the cull is complete, the men repeat the process twice more, throwing the dredgers overboard and hauling up fresh catches. Caleb takes me to the prow, sits with me and watches them.

I take his hand and spell for him, ‘Is it a good life, a fisherman?’

‘We are not fishermen, as much as gardeners. We grow them and nurture them. Then we harvest them.’

‘Like my father’s hops.’

‘Yes, like that. A farmer’s life.’

‘Do you like it?’

Caleb looks away and scans the sea for a time. He tilts his head closer to mine and it looks as if he mouths the words silently. I think he does not want the other men to hear him.

‘Sometimes I hold brood in my hand and think, in five years that will be ready. And I see my life stretch away in five-year blocks and it feels like a waste.’

‘What else would you do?’

‘I could go deep-sea trawling. A hunter’s life.’

Then he steals a glance at the men, crouched and culling at the other end of the boat. He takes my hand and spells this next slowly and deliberately, pressing my fingers closely to ensure no letter escapes him.

‘I might join the navy. I have not told a soul that.’

‘I will not tell.’

We stare at each other.

Caleb stands suddenly and marches over to the others. He hauls in a net and culls this last catch. They are done and prepare for return. He does not look at me all this time. We head for shore, the pea-green hills forming a semicircle beside us. I watch Whitstable grow as we near, the railway station fronted by carriages of coal, the docks packed with ships and bobbing boats, the seafront of stalls and tourists and the odd kite fluttering in the sea breezes, the whole town a clutter of fun and hard work and grime and sugar rock. From time to time I glance around to watch Caleb. One man is pointing at something in the water. They all rush to the side and gape and point. Caleb turns and looks at me, fearful.

I stand and he comes to me.

‘Don’t look in the water,’ he says.

I immediately crane beyond him. He takes my hand and says, ‘Look away, Liza,’ squeezing it so hard I wrench it from him. He stares at me and does not move.

But I have to know. He does not stop me as I step around him and go to the side with the others. In the lapping waves I can see the back of a man, his head fallen down beneath the surface and legs and arms hanging below. It is a drowned man, a fisherman by the looks of the woollen sweater stretched across his back. A wave tips him a little and an arm comes up, the hand bloated and white, the neck twisting and the side of the face visible, black beard bristling across the cheeks and chin, black hair plastered across the white forehead, one ghastly eye like jelly glaring blindly.

I cry out and the men look strangely at me; my alien deaf voice disturbs them. Caleb takes me and holds me. We sway with the cradle-rock of the waves as the boat comes in and we drop anchor. He does not let go and I have buried my face into his chest, the dead man’s staring eye haunting my mind. I have seen the dead, but not like this. I have seen the ghosts of the dead, whole, full of ethereal energy, complaints and anger, fear and confusion, their phosphorescence making them seem more alive than the actual life they cannot regain. But I have never seen a dead body. Caleb releases me and helps me climb down into the rowing boat. The other men stay aboard, shouting between boats with other sailors, all gesturing to where the dead man floats. They are busy with sensation as they organise the hauling in of the corpse.

Caleb rows me to shore alone and watches me as he pulls the oars. At the beach, he steps out and pulls the boat on to the pebbles, takes my hand and helps me step on to the stones. I hold his hand and tell him, ‘I am all right. It was the shock, that is all.’

‘I am sorry you had to see that.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who is it?’

‘A fisherman. We have all known him for years.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Tom Winstanley.’

Caleb asks me to wait just a moment as he goes across to some fishermen nearby. They are talking about the case, asking questions, pointing along the coastline, shading their eyes as if they expect something to appear out there. I look about me, scan the beach to see if Tom Winstanley has taken up his new existence as a Visitor yet, wandering along in his blue-white light looking for his lost love. There are other Visitors there, a boy, more fishermen, a very old lady shuffling. But no Tom. Not yet.

Caleb walks me home. When we arrive Lottie is there with her parents, flushed from their walk. At first she is smiling, happy to see us, full of questions about our trip. But she stops smiling when she sees Caleb’s face and looks straight at me, questioning, fearful that something has happened to me, something shameful. I watch her face as he tells her the news. As Caleb speaks, her countenance changes, in realisation that this is something beyond her, beyond us and this house, but connected by an iron cable to her heart. Her face shows it all, the shock of it, the pity. She bites her bottom lip then covers her mouth with a hand, stares at the floor. There is something else in her eyes, but I am too young to understand it.

Lottie asks, ‘Did he go down with his boat?’

‘Yes. It was found smashed up on rocks just below Reculver Towers. A tourist at the fort saw it down there, last evening. Tom … his body drifted down this way.’

Mr Crowe shakes his head. ‘Smashed up? But there’s been no tempest in recent days. The wind was up a bit night before last. But nothing too bad. And he’s a good sailor, Tom … he was. Any other hands lost?’

‘No, he was alone on the boat. Had took it out alone, they say. They’ve towed the boat in and there was nothing on board, no gear, no bait. He wasn’t fishing, that’s for sure.’

Everyone is quiet. The boys come tumbling in from the yard.

‘What?’ says Clarence.

But no one answers him.

Lottie goes to her room. I follow and close her door behind me. She is sitting on the edge of her bed, biting her thumbnail. I tap her arm to make her look. Her eyes are looking beyond me, through the walls and down the narrow streets to the sea.

‘It was your Tom, wasn’t it?’

She nods.

I do not know what to say to comfort her. I do not know what she is thinking.

‘Have you seen it yet?’ she says. ‘His ghost? Has he come to you?’

I shake my head. She looks disappointed.

‘Will he come soon?’

‘I don’t know how it works, exactly. I haven’t known anyone who died before. I don’t know how long it takes. Between death, I mean, and their first visit.’

‘His ship went down at Reculver. Maybe that’s where he died. Perhaps his ghost would be there, in the water.’

‘Since coming I can say I have seen no Visitors in the sea. Only on the beach. None on boats or in the water itself. Not one. So I am wondering if they cannot go on water, or perhaps they choose not to.’

‘Then he would be on the cliffs. You told me last night, the Visitors seem to stay where they died. They don’t stray far. They are obsessed with the day of their death, so they stay there.’

‘That is true.’

Her face is alight with possibility.

I ask, ‘What are you thinking?’

‘That we must go to Reculver and look for him.’

A creeping horror climbs up my spine. ‘Oh, Lottie. No.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘I have never sought out the dead.’

‘You said yourself, you never knew anyone who died. Now you do.’

‘I did not know him.’

‘Well, I did,’ she says, punching her chest. Resolute and wild-eyed. ‘And I want to see him again. I have to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘What happened, of course. How he died.’

‘Do you think it wise?’

‘I don’t care.’

We make our excuses, say we are going for a walk. Lottie tells me Herne Bay is about five miles. We could walk but the railway would be quicker. It is on the London line, towards Ramsgate. If we hurry, we might find a train this afternoon. She asks to borrow some of Father’s spending money for the tickets. I tell her there is no talk of borrowing. It is my gift. We are in luck. A train is due in less than half an hour, stopping at Herne Bay and then a three-mile walk along the coast path to Reculver. We purchase some eel and meat pies with apples to keep us going. The Ramsgate train arrives and the families with buckets and spades pile off, met by beaming relatives. They are holidaymakers, thrilled to be here, glad the journey is over and the sea air fills their nostrils with pleasure. We climb on, a darker mission on our minds.

On the short trip, Lottie quizzes me more on the Visitors. It is a subject new to us. We had spoken about it last night, but mostly about Constance. We had waited up and hoped she would come to us. But she did not and we fell asleep waiting. Lottie still has many questions.