The Offing

by Benjamin Myers

‘No one is safe in the sea. It’s prone to cruelty, trust me. And you’ve brought me those, have you?’

  ‘Mr Barton asked me to deliver them to you.’

  ‘All the way from down there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did his last slave die of?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘And what about your voyage south?’

  ‘Well, he was quite insistent.’

  ‘I’ll not eat all these myself, even with Butler’s help. So you’ll have to stay for tea, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, even though I was once again famished after the swim and the hike up the hill.

  ‘Well, alright. The fish were a gift for both of us, though. Barton only usually fetches up half what he’s given us today.’

  I looked down to the bay, to the sea, and to Ravenscar beyond.

  ‘I’ll stuff them with fresh fennel and spinach,’ said Dulcie.

  ‘I don’t want to impose.’

  ‘So don’t, then.’

  ‘What’s fennel?’ I asked.

  ‘Right. You’re staying. Butler will be delighted.’

  I was back again.

  It was evening when we ate, though this time I refused wine.

  ‘Did you find somewhere to kip tonight?’ Dulcie asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Take the shack again if you like. It’s grubby but I imagine it’s better than bivvying out under canvas.’

  Butler sat beside Dulcie, her hand placed on his head. I picked up a final flake of fish from my plate.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I held it out and the dog snatched it, and then greedily licked at my fingers.

  ‘What was it used for originally? The shack, I mean.’

  Dulcie fed some bread to the dog.

  ‘It was a studio,’ she said.

  ‘An artist’s studio?’

  ‘Yes. Was. Still is, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s a great location for one. Are you an artist?’

  ‘Oh, no. Not me.’

  ‘A writer?’

  ‘No, I have not been stricken with that curse either, thank Christ.’

  ‘But you tell such good stories, Dulcie.’

  ‘Telling isn’t selling.’

  ‘It looks like it could do with patching up,’ I said. ‘A lick of paint.’

  ‘I’ve no call for it.’

  ‘I saw there’s a log burner in there too.’

  ‘I had it put in for the colder months.’

  ‘Did you build it?’

  ‘Yes. Well, no. Not with my own hands. I helped design it.’

  For a few moments the only sound was the dog chewing his bread. I was suddenly aware of the silence and stillness of Dulcie’s overgrown corner, and not just how tranquil it was, but how isolated it might be too. Only then did I feel the faintest glimmer of the loneliness, cold like a shard of ice, that she perhaps experienced deep down inside. Before I knew it I was blurting out a suggestion.

  ‘I could fix it up for you if you like.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I just thought it needs protecting before the damp gets into it entirely.’

  ‘Let the damp have it. The cottage is enough for me.’

  ‘A lick of paint and a clear-out is all it needs. It’ll help preserve it. Give it a new lease of life before the meadow swallows it up entirely.’

  ‘The meadow is welcome. It hardly seems worth it.’

  ‘Even so. It’s still a good cabin.’

  ‘Well, look, Robert, if you want to waste your time on it I won’t object. I have little to no use for the studio now but I will insist on reimbursing you.’

  ‘I don’t need paying. It’ll only take a day. Two at the most. One to clean it out and undercoat it, a second for another layer.’

  ‘You’ll still need feeding, though. I insist. There’s plenty of paint in the lean-to. Use that. Brushes too, though Christ knows what state they’re in. Use what you can find.’

  ‘And then when it’s done – ’

  ‘You’ll be on your way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it looks like we have a deal.’

  Bemused, Dulcie’s crooked smile turned into a full beam as she raised her glass and we clinked drinks, hers half-full of wine and mine with cool spring water that had a faint hue of the earth to it.

  ‘Very good,’ she said. ‘Very good.’

  The light was fading rapidly and my forearms still itching with inflammation when Dulcie picked up a very small snail shell, long since vacated by its inhabitant. She held it up and examined it closely.

  ‘See this? That’s a Fibonacci pattern. It’s nature’s numbering system, where certain plants and insects and animals follow what is known as the golden ratio. Humans too. Studies have been made. In a world of chaos, I find it gratifying to know we can still find order.’

  ‘I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘Well, it really is one of the most amazing natural things. It’s all about proportion, you see. I’m afraid I don’t know the technicalities but it’s something to do with each number being the sum of the previous two numbers. It’s an increasing sequence, first detected in the breeding of rabbits. It’s there in pine cones and pineapples. The positioning of leaves on a stem. They say it can be found running through the middle of bananas and apples – we can check that later if you like. It’s there in seashells and artichokes and ferns and the spiralling carapace of this beautiful peripatetic gastropod’s home – a more beautifully engineered creature you will not find. The Fibonacci pattern. The Fibonacci sequence. It’s one of life’s many mysterious mathematical wonders.’

  ‘I wasn’t taught anything so interesting as this at school,’ I said, and it was true, for already my schooling was fading into a blur of boring teachers entirely lacking the verve and enthusiasm shown by Dulcie when in full flow on certain chosen subjects. If one or two had been only half as engaging I might have been inclined to stay on. Still, I must have looked rather baffled as she continued.

  ‘The natural world is full of them. Look, I’ll show you another. Take off your boot, will you.’

  ‘My boot?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  I did as she asked and unlaced my boot.

  ‘Now. Take your hand and stretch it out – that’s it, full stretch. Right, so from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your little finger is your handspan. Now, place it over your face. A bit lower now, Robert.’

  I placed my palm on my nose and held it there. I found the span of my hand fit my face almost exactly.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘a perfect fit, from thumb to littlest fingertip.’

  I lowered my hand.

  ‘But why did I have to remove my boot?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Now try the same handspan measurement on your foot.’

  I did and found that too fit.

  ‘And now your forearm,’ said Dulcie.

  The same result.

  ‘You can place your foot on your forearm and you’ll see that that fits too, though we know that already. And now the final thing you need to do is sniff the boot.’

  ‘Sniff my boot?’

  ‘That’s right. Stick your nose in and take a big hit.’

  I brought the boot up and inhaled its stale leather interior, smelling the sweat of many a summer mile. I pulled a face.

  ‘And what are your findings?’

  ‘It pongs a bit.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But what does that have to do with the Fibonacci pattern, Dulcie?’

  ‘Precisely nothing. This is my polite way of saying that your feet hum, Robert, and if we are to continue our little chats in future you might want to consider giving your boots an airing and perhaps a dash of talcum from time to time.’

  I rose at first light and walked to a pool in the stream that was deep enough for me to sit in up to my waist. I scrubbed myself with a clump of moss, taking extra care to clean between my toes, and then washed my s
pare pair of socks.

  There was no sign of Dulcie when I began to clear out the shack, moving first the pieces of furniture stacked in the corner out into the meadow and then the empty bottles, lampshades and broken picture frames. Next followed two ashtrays, the wadded rags and a palette of paints, each coloured cube cracked and arid like desert earth. There was a cardboard box containing various newspapers from the early 1930s plus a string-tied stack of photographs, theatre programmes and other printed items. I began to thumb through them and saw ticket stubs, party invitations, scribbled pages torn from notepads and many lists containing the names of people and places, errands and items, but as I rifled through I felt a pang of voyeuristic guilt. Here were lives into which I had not been entirely invited. I continued for a curious lingering moment longer, then stopped and hurriedly replaced them.

  Beside the stack was a small brown suitcase, its locks turned turquoise with decay. I prised them open. Inside was a file containing a typed manuscript also tied, but this time with the pink ribbon commonly used for legal documents. It was thin in my hand.

  Placed on top of the manuscript was a curious item that I lifted out. It was made from a number of drab rags that had a washed-out appearance, each tied to a circle made from a wooden rod – hazel, perhaps – and bound and tightly lagged with further strips of cloth. A string was attached to the circular frame so that it might be suspended. In amongst the ragged strands was a handmade rosette and dangling through the centre of it was a pair of white elbow-length gloves, the palms clasped together by a single stitch as if in prayer. When I lifted it up to its full length, the strips dangled the way the bladderwrack seaweed that I had seen the previous day reaches up from the rocks that it clings to, but in reverse.

  The item was strange and inexplicable and it unnerved me, so I gently laid it aside and as I did the morning sun beamed into the studio, dazzling me for a moment; I turned my back to it and untied the knotted pink string of the manuscript.

  On the front in typed letters it said:

  The Offing

  by

  Romy Landau

  Curious, I held it for a moment then replaced it.

  An hour or so later I walked back down to the bay and bought from an ironmonger’s some fresh paintbrushes, white spirit, varnish, sandpaper, nails and various other things that I required.

  The shopkeeper’s eyes followed me around the store but when I presented the money Dulcie had given me to pay her monthly bill, her face brightened and she tallied up my items.

  ‘You’re the lad from the north country I heard about,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I expect so.’

  ‘A relative of Dulcie’s, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  Feeling slightly protective, I did not care to elaborate until I knew the purpose of this woman’s questioning. Village life might have shown me the destructive power of idle corner-shop gossip, but it had also taught me the art of discretion.

  She looked at my supplies. ‘A handyman, then?’

  ‘I suppose so, in a way.’

  ‘A bit of company will be nice for her. It must be lonely up on that hillside, after everything she’s been through.’

  ‘She has her dog.’

  She shook her head. ‘Scant consolation. Terrible. Terrible business.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, before asking, ‘What was it that happened, exactly?’

  ‘That’s Miss Piper’s business,’ she said, passing me the bag. ‘It’s hers and hers alone; she’ll no doubt let you know if or when you need to know. It’s certainly not my place to start flapping my tongue to every passing tradesman.’

  I could tell that the shopkeeper wanted to say more – or at least wanted me to enquire further so that she could take some small sadistic pleasure in refusing me again, and the way she said ‘tradesman’ was weighted with condescension – but instead I thanked her, then turned and left to slowly walk home. Though I was curious, I had no desire to be drawn into the complex web woven by people like the shopkeeper. Instead I bought some crab sticks and slowly chewed them as I climbed the steep track out of the village. They were like pieces of rubber inner tube that had been dredged from the ocean floor.

  I took a longer, looping route back via a small church that I had seen far across the fields from Dulcie’s hollow. It sat at the crossroads of three back roads, and as I approached it I saw that its cemetery, a walled-off, steep, sloping triangular patch of hillside containing closely stacked headstones, was inhabited by a dozen rare-breed sheep, their shorn coats as dark as coke dust and their yellow eyes indifferent to my presence. They raised their heads in unison for a moment, and then collectively continued to chew at the grass that was growing around the burial plots as I climbed a stile to walk amongst the graves.

  They were quite unlike any I had seen. Several stones were carved to represent different aspects of nautical life – knotted ropes, anchors and leaping fish all featured – and the epitaphs told of lives lost to storms. Several of them, I noted, were mariners drowned on the same day. Others featured engravings of agricultural implements such as scythes, forks, rakes and winnowing flails. One or two were mounted with stone engravings of hands clasped in friendship, and many featured the same few family names.

  The plots were well tended by the sheep as they trimmed their way around the final resting places of men with old biblical names such as Obadiah, Ezekiel and Aloysius who had died a century or so earlier. They were positioned so that the weathered slabs of North Yorkshire stone faced out to the sea that had taken many of these lives, and were in fact mere memorial markers for bodies never found.

  The church itself was a small box of sandstone with a tiny bell tower no taller than a chimney stack. In the top corner of the portico was built a swallow’s nest of mud and grass, from which there came the insistent call of chicks, and when I climbed up onto the bench to gain a better look I was met by four upturned heads with their beaks awaiting worms and open so wide I could see the thin pink membranes of their throats.

  I pushed at the grainy oak door and stepped into the church’s shadowed interior.

  It was cool and still and perfumed with the scent of centuries: dust, polish, old worn cushions, leather, wet coats, candlewax and oil all combined to evoke a tingle of fear that one experiences when faced with the awesome architectural spectacle of faith manifest.

  I passed a table laid with dead flowers, a visitors’ book and a donation box, and walked down the central aisle, which, like the badger-inhabited lanes that had first delivered me here, was a sunken declivity worn away by the shuffling feet of generations of believers. The church was narrow but the bowed ceiling was like an upturned schooner, much higher than it appeared from the outside. My boots echoed up to the old curved beams overhead.

  Each row of pews was entered through a door at chest height, so that anyone sitting in there would have to tilt their head up towards the pulpit, behind which light shone through a simple stained-glass window to illuminate a large crucifix whose shadow stretched for five times its actual length. Proportions were distorted and angles appeared altered, as if I were in the world’s most austere seaside-fairground funhouse.

  Wooden steps led up to some stalls on a steep and narrow balcony that watched over the nave, and as I climbed them each step creaked uneasily. Only then did I see I was not alone, for at the back of the church, hunched over at the far end of the penultimate row, was a woman, her head bowed and her shoulders silently shaking.

  If she had seen me enter – and she can hardly have failed to – she did not acknowledge me, and I suddenly felt like an intruder upon her grief. An agnostic imposter.

  I turned to leave and as I did I saw hanging from the ceiling several of the very same curious mobile-like creations that I had found in the suitcase in the shack. These ones appeared to be made from older cloth trimmings and hung suspended on twine from ceiling beams like jellyfish in the deepest offshore waters.

  As I passed the woman I saw that she was not old and had
in her lap the folded cap of a soldier. Overcome with loss, she did not look up as I lifted the latch on the door and carefully closed it behind me.

  VII

  That night in the shack I was stirred awake again by a truffling sound close by. Very slowly I sat upright and peered over the windowsill to see a badger not more than ten feet away, rooting at the soft soil. It was large and grey and had its back turned to me, stooped in such a way that I thought of the war widow I had seen weeping in the stillness of the evening, and again I felt a guilty sense of voyeurism, but immense luck too at being privy to this moonlit moment of solitude.

  The big old badger’s coat was coarse, and the creature so close I could gain a measure of its long claws as it scraped at the soil amongst the first unfurling fronds of early summer bracken, and its sharp, slightly yellowed incisors as it gnawed on a long worm as if it were a child chewing on a cherry bootlace plucked from a penny poke of pick-and-mix. Only its face had the familiar black-and-white striped markings.

  It slowly ambled away, nose to the ground, oblivious to my rapt presence.

  The encounter left me exhilarated, wide awake, sleep now an impossibility, so I lit the lamp and lifted the manuscript that I had found from the briefcase again.

  I turned the title page and read the table of contents. On the next page its dedication read:

  For Dulcie

  Spinner of honey

  I read a poem entitled ‘Exeunt (or White Horses)’ and when I finished it I read it again. Though I felt like a trespasser of sorts and there were words and images in it that I did not understand – nor was I certain of its specific meaning or message, if indeed it had anything so tangible – the poem awoke unfamiliar sensations within me. In that moment new feelings of confusion and curiosity unfolded, more than anything it was an overwhelmingly powerful awareness of sense of place, this place in the here and now, as if the words had crept across the paper and fallen off the page to gather all around me like vines that pulled me back into the poem, so that the imagined lines and the real world somehow merged into a deeper portrait of the land and sea. I read it a third time.