The Cryptographer

by Tobias Hill

  She narrows her eyes, remembering. One year there was a fair and a raffle for some local cause. She and Martha bought two tickets and won a kilo bag of tiger prawns. There is a photograph of them somewhere: two children with the sack held between them, proud as anglers. They ate nothing else for days, sucking the prawns still frozen, like ice cubes. And once they went to an island further north, one of the West Frisians, the ferry ungainly between hidden sandbanks. She recalls the rough grey of the sea and the reticence of the people. Their smiles welcoming but inscrutable. Their conversations gently lapsing into silence in the presence of others. Like a shyness, but ultimately prouder than shyness. Harder.

  An island would be a good place to hide, she thinks. But only for an islander. An island would keep its own secrets to itself.

  Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama. She makes decent time. By eight-thirty she has crossed two state lines. The outskirts of Mobile begin to rise around her, prefabricated industrial structures to the north, ribbon developments along the coast. It is not yet November, and already there are Christmas billboards along the interstate. Seasonal Greetings from Mobile Quays – The World’s Largest Forest Products Terminal! Santa Claus drawn across the sky by a school of dolphins.

  She turns off the interstate too soon, slows uncertainly through towns that are little more than main streets. Ten minutes east of Pascagoula she catches sight of the bridge, an interminable spar of concrete crossing the channel. There is land at its far end, miles off, low and flat as the Gulf itself. Around Dauphin Island the waves are green and blue and brightening.

  The traffic around her has dwindled with every fork since the interstate. Now there is almost none. She has crossed half the bridge’s length – two miles, she thinks, or more – before a single motorcyclist overtakes her, the biker leaning back into lane as he passes. A school bus heads the other way, all waving hands and mouthing faces. A trawler crawls beneath her, its nets drawn in for the morning.

  Now she can make out buildings ahead. The turret of a lighthouse in the clear sea-light. The Martian landmark of a water tower,. There are pelicans on the island’s northern jetties, rows of them hanging out their wings like dirty washing. As she approaches them the sea breeze catches her, the hired car shuddering in the crosswind.

  The water tower looms above her. The streets of Dauphin Island are as empty as the bridge that serves them. At their far ends the sea rises high and foreshortened. Two petrol stations, an oyster bar on wooden stilts (CLOSED TIL APRIL), a car wash, a fish-catch outlet. A broken hurricane window leans against the shop-front of a laundromat. A woman comes out and bangs laundry sacks into the back of a station wagon. In the rear-view Anna watches her make a U-turn, her wheels flinging sand across the blacktop.

  None of it is as she imagined. What did she expect? More comfort than this, certainly. A retirement town, a resort house on a stately avenue. Money, she thinks: in John’s world she has become used to its presence. Here there is only the memory of wealth. The rawness of its loss, and a dogged, worked edge of persistence. The streets turned in from the sea, as if one night it might try and rise up and wash them all away.

  Her map is too broad in scale to carry much detail. The only street named on the island is Bienville Boulevard, which stretches from the horn of the land to its tail, drives and courts extending from its length like vertebrae. She looks out for the appropriate road sign but the main street is obvious before she reaches it, its buildings larger and more permanent than elsewhere. There are cars parked outside the Mobile Union Bank, and figures at the window seats of the Fort Gaines Seafood Diner. She parks and unbelts, yawning gigantically, cat-like, as if she has just woken from a long sleep.

  The smell of seaweed and petrol. The breeze lifts at her hair. At the corner of each side street there are signposts, but she can’t make out one for Audobon, and the smell of the restaurant is making her hungry again. She crosses the boulevard, tries the door, goes in under the chime of an electric bell.

  There are a handful of customers, three men in shirtsleeves, two older women, none hurrying over their breakfasts. The women look up attentively, knives and forks poised. The men only glance. By the Please wait to be seated sign there is a stack of news-sheets, and she takes one and reads to be out of their gaze.

  The Mullet Wrapper Hot Tips Special.

  Including How to Get Your Car Unstuck Out of Sand,

  Jellyfish Home Remedies & What Is An Undertow?

  ‘Help you?’

  She looks up. The waitress is in her fifties, grim at the mouth, kinder at the eyes. A tag on her uniform gives her name and what might be the day’s special, though for a moment, the jet lag finally catching up with her, it looks to Anna almost like a surname. Nancy Catfish Pecan.

  ‘Do you have a menu?’

  ‘Sure. You sit yourself down. Coffee?’

  She sits herself. At the next table the frailest of the men glances anxiously at the air around her, as if she has brought in the smell of imminent rain. The menu is long and crudely altered in black marker. She orders coffee and cornbread, pickles and blackened snapper.

  ‘Early for fish. Mike’s still doing breakfast. Best else I can do you is popcorn shrimp.’

  She closes the menu. ‘Breakfast would be fine. Whatever you’ve got.’

  ‘Wait just a minute.’ The waitress walks back to the kitchens. Left alone, the jet lag hits her again. A wave of placelessness. Her head aches, and she lowers it tenderly into the palm of one hand. What would happen, she wonders, if Anneli were to walk in now? Would she be angry, to see Anna in this place where she doesn’t belong? Or frightened? Would she throw the cruet sets beside the door? Would she run?

  She wonders what she is herself. Not angry, not quite frightened. Her gut feels light with nervousness. Soon she will have to face Anneli, and however she is she will not want to be found. She should be thinking of the right things to say.

  Instead she closes her eyes and thinks of nothing. In the background a radio is turned on low. Traffic warnings and tide forecasts, old music and shipping news.

  ‘Okay!’ Nancy Catfish Pecan calls from the kitchen doorway. ‘He’ll do you.’

  Anna waves back. A pot of coffee has appeared beside her, though she doesn’t remember the waitress bringing it. She drinks while it is still almost too hot to do so, the heat and caffeine flushing her cheeks, bringing her back to herself.

  The food is good. Better than good. She eats as if she has not done so for days. When she is done the waitress comes over and smiles as she clears.

  ‘Always a pleasure to see a clean plate. Anything else you want? There’s fresh hushpuppies.’ She raises her eyebrows, holds up floured hands.

  ‘Just the bill.’

  ‘Sure. You’re English, right?’

  ‘Right,’ she says, and the waitress smiles again.

  ‘I knew it. Before, we had English folks here. Only the once, though.’

  ‘Can you tell me where I can find Audobon Street?’

  Nancy nods eastwards. ‘Right off the boulevard, you can’t miss it. There’s the Dauphin Motel on the corner.’ Dawfinn, the word sleekly Americanised. She has the dishes cradled in her hands now, though she still stands, shifting from foot to foot. Waiting for something. ‘Nothing else down that way but the bird sanctuary. You here for the birdwatching?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thought not. I know the type. For the fishing, maybe?’

  ‘The fishing,’ she says, as if in confirmation.

  ‘Your gear’s in the car, I’ll bet. Make sure you lock your doors, folks take advantage all over. Planning to stay long?’

  ‘Not long.’ She reaches for her bag, extracts a moneycard. Nancy takes the payment in her two free fingers. When she leaves it is reluctantly, and when she returns with the receipt she stands again, her large hands at her sides, her eyes kind and flat and searching.

  ‘You know, we don’t get many visitors this time of year.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘N
ot many visitors at all, these days.’ She leans forward confidingly. ‘We’re a little starved of the company. Excuse my curiosity.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask what it is you’re here fishing for?’

  ‘I’m not.’ She feels herself blush. ‘Actually, I’m not here to fish.’

  ‘Fishers of men,’ whispers the washed-out figure at the next table, looking only at the radio. Nancy turns on him.

  ‘Bill Raley, you eat up, hear?’

  ‘I was just saying it,’ says Bill Raley. ‘I meant nothing by it.’

  She revolves back to Anna, her warmth returning like sunlight. ‘Well. So nice meeting you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You have a nice day. There’ll be rooms at the Dauphin. Come back soon. Too, we’re open late! Anytime, we’ll still be here!’

  Audobon Street. She stops at the corner by the motel. The advice of the waitress was overly hopeful; like the oyster bar, the Dauphin is closed till Spring. A freight truck heads up the boulevard, dripping ice water, rank with fish and disinfectant. Her mobile is buried in her overnight bag, and when she finally extricates it she finds that it is no longer working. The signal gone or the account cancelled, she can’t tell which.

  There is an old-fashioned phone-box across the street, the receiver swinging from its cord in the wind. She crosses behind the truck, replaces the handset in its cradle. When she picks it up again there is the purr of a tone.

  She knows the Numminen number by heart. There is a smudge of flour on her credit card, the imprint of a finger superimposed on her own golden one. She wipes it clean, inserts the card, dials.

  Three rings and she is through. ‘Four two nine one,’ says a woman’s voice, accent overlaid with accent.

  ‘Is Anneli there?’

  There is a pause. When the woman speaks again it is less clearly, as if she has moved back a little. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘My name is Anna. I’m a friend of Anneli’s from England. We’re in Gulf Shores for the week and I thought I’d – I just thought I’d call by …’

  The lie dies on the wind. Another station wagon goes past, bumper-stickered, bass thumping through its tinted windows. She turns her back, leaning protectively over the receiver, as if to light a cigarette.

  ‘… no one,’ the woman is saying. ‘I am sorry. Perhaps when I speak to her, I should tell her you called. You are Anna – ?’

  ‘Moore,’ she says. ‘Anna Moore. Mrs Numminen, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’m not exactly Anneli’s friend.’

  ‘No?’ Stern, without surprise.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. I’m with the British Inland Revenue.’

  At the far end of the line Mrs Numminen is silent. Anna talks into the vacuum. ‘I’m not a lawyer. I have nothing to do with any of that. I don’t need anything read or signed. I’m here only on behalf of the Revenue –’

  ‘You are here? On the island?’

  ‘I just need to talk to Anneli.’ Awkwardly. ‘It’s important to the Revenue that I –’

  ‘What can be so important that you would come all the way to Dauphin Island?’

  ‘Her husband.’

  A sigh on the line. It reminds her of Terence. You have a job to do. I have mine. ‘Always him. But my daughter has no husband. She is with us now. And the … man you want isn’t with her.’

  Her head is beginning to ache again. She presses her eyes closed. She should have been prepared for this. A good inspector would always be prepared. She starts to say something, another apology, but the woman is talking again, her voice sure and calm.

  ‘He isn’t here. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘Do you know if he’s alive?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have to find him.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Anneli’s mother says, and laughs. For a while there is a careful silence again, as if she is thinking. ‘Tell me the truth. Does my daughter know you?’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘Then wait.’

  The line goes dead. From where Anna stands she has a clear view down Audobon Street. The buildings are haphazard, mock-colonial, raised on clapboard or bare pilings, set back behind palms and swamp magnolia. Sand drifts across the asphalt. At the far end there is a flash of white beach. Out to sea there are oil rigs, faint and stilted, distant echoes of the houses that precede them.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Anneli.’ She turns back into the hood of the booth. The voice is hard and querulous, angry and frightened. Everything she has imagined and more.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Wait. Where are you?’

  She looks through the distorting curve of the plexiglass. Outside one house an old man works on an upturned dinghy. Under the pilings of the motel a bird hunkers down against the wind, large as a child.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Here? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to talk to you. I have –’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘The Revenue sent me.’

  ‘To find me?’ Her voice rising.

  ‘Anneli –’

  ‘Why can’t you just leave me alone?’

  Because and because, she thinks. Because something has happened between myself and your husband, who is not your husband, and it isn’t finished yet. Because you never quite told me the truth. Because I am still an inspector of the Revenue, and the Revenue gets what the Revenue wants.

  ‘Anneli, listen to me. Alright? No one knows you’re here.’

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘The lawyers don’t know. The government doesn’t. Even the Revenue doesn’t know yet. No one knows except me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  For a long time she doesn’t answer. The station wagon returns back the way it came. Slowing to a crawl beside her, accelerating away. As if it has been startled. ‘Will you see me?’ she says finally, and somewhere in the street on the edge of the Gulf Anneli says, low-voiced, that alright, that she sees, that she will see her.

  ‘Welcome,’ Anneli’s mother says, and stands back by the open door. The house is cool and dark and aromatic – fresh paint, sea salt, new bread – and there is music playing, though Anna doesn’t remember hearing it on the land line. In a corner of the single room a fishing spear and rod are leant, a mask and speargun at their feet. Driftwood is stacked beside the hearth, ready for the evening to close in. It is a home one would never choose to leave. A safe house: a refuge, even. She wishes she could stay herself.

  ‘Suvi.’ The woman holds out her hand.

  ‘Anna,’ Anna says, and takes it, though there is no need for introductions. She can see the older woman knows it as well as she does herself. She can hear no one else in the rooms beyond, no sound of Anneli or her son or father. She wonders if the woman she has come for is already gone.

  The silence is uncomfortable. She searches for something else to say. ‘You have a beautiful house.’

  ”Thank you,’ Suvi says, automatically, but as if she has hardly heard. ‘My daughter has agreed to speak with you, and you must do what you need to do. But I would like you to know she has not been well. It is not good for her to talk about him. I would like you to be quick.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I will, of course.’

  ‘Please,’ Suvi says, and she motions Anna in and through to the garden where Anneli waits.

  They sit together on a lawn of Bermuda grass. There are birds in the trees overhead, small and dull with bright, questioning voices. Anneli’s mother brings out iced tea and leaves them reluctantly. No one says a word. A helicopter goes muttering over, and Anneli starts and looks up and away.

  At first glance she seems well – her face and limbs are tanned, her hair already almost white from the sun. She has put on a little weight, and the new curves are more comfortable on her than her old film-star gauntness. B
ut despite the weight she looks smaller, as if she has retreated into herself. Her eyes are dark, and in her lap her hands won’t keep still. She is holding her glass as the helicopter passes, and the iced tea slops over onto her sundress.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Here.’ Anna searches through her bag for tissues, but already Anneli is waving her away.

  ‘It’s fine! I can do it myself.’ From her sleeve she has produced a handkerchief, and as Anna sits back she spits on it and scrubs vigorously at the stain. The activity seems to calm her, her mouth levelling.

  ‘There are always helicopters here. In and out to the oil rigs all the time. My father used to do work out there. I hated them for taking him away.’

  ‘It must be worse now.’

  ‘It is. I always think they’re coming for me.’

  ‘No one’s coming for you.’

  ‘But they are.’ Her eyebrows coolly raised. ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not here for you.’

  She has done with the stain. She drops the handkerchief on the lawn beside her and looks up at Anna for the first time. Her gaze is unwavering, as if having begun she is unable to take her eyes away again.

  ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Not long, no.’

  ‘And how do you like the island?’ Politely, as if she is a hostess, Anna a guest.

  ‘It’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Do you really think so? It always feels to me like the bottom of the sea. I never understood why my parents came here. Finland is beautiful. You should be here in hurricane season. In the old days the people used to tie themselves to trees. Otherwise they’d be blown away.’

  She stops, distracted, looking across the garden to the rough land beyond. At the end of Audobon Street a weather-vane shuttles in the wind. ‘I’m sorry you came for nothing. Perhaps I can give you the house,’ she says. ‘Erith Reach. I can do that, if you like.’

  ‘I’m not here for that,’ Anna says gently.

  ‘Oh … It must have come as quite a shock to you. All this.’