Big Low Tide

by Candy Neubert

– this ain’t the bar, you know. Morning, boys. I’m not dressed for company.

  – yeh you are.

  – shut the door then – him next door’s listening; he always is. I’m getting back into bed and sitting like this – and you can sit there. Mind my foot, you big booby. What you holding your coat like that for, John Hamon – what you got in there?

  – somefin’ for you, darlin’ ... ’ere ... ’an ’ere ...TA DAA!

  – oh! Get it off!

  In the bathroom at Number 7, Wilf Pickery holds himself in mid-flow. He juts his head towards the adjoining wall, concentrating.

  The lobster has hunched back on itself. Its blue plating settles noiselessly, dry and crisp and knobbled and mysterious on a landscape of nylon and wool. Its eyes look, and register God knows what. The antennae swivel painstakingly through the air.

  – ugh! God in heaven. You dirty pigs! I hate you! Get it off the bed now, now, NOW.

  The three men are laughing too much to move. The lobster, finding itself free, lifts a claw and digs it into the blanket, edging forward. Brenda scrambles onto the dresser, pulling down her nightie and tossing things to the floor.

  – oh Lor, the goldfish. Look what you’ve done! Listen, you scummy lot – I’ll never serve you again, never.

  – yer will! Henry’ll make yer. It’s his bar.

  – I’ll get you banned.

  – oh yeah? We’re ’is best customers. ’Specially when we give him this little beauty for the draw.

  Johnny plucks it up and takes it through the open door to the tiny kitchen.

  – never saw yer move so fast, Brend.

  – look at this mess! Bleedin’ heck. Flippin’ bowl’s cracked; me fish’ll die.

  – stick ’im in the teapot.

  – better empty it, eh!

  – yeah, imagine that swimmin’ round yer cup.

  – goldfish an’ three sugars please.

  – yeah.

  – I’ve had enough. Get on with you, go on – out, out! Shoo!

  – aw’right, darlin’. Still love yer. See yer t’night.

  Wilf Pickery stoops on the inside of his front door, lifting the letterbox with one stained fingernail. He hears the men blowing noisy kisses and sees a flash of Brenda before she slams the door. A second scream has him riveted to the spot. Brenda has found the forgotten lobster in the sink. The old man looks down at his trousers and rubs at a wet patch. Ah well, they’ll dry. It’s sunny out.

  four

  The streets of the town are veinous and narrow. For each one that is level there are three that snake up the hill, sloped and stepped and channelled in the middle by centuries of feet. Victoria is an old port. King John’s men looked across the walls and loosed their arrows at Cromwell. It is an old port. The houses swarm over the hill and the hill folds back for its covering of cement and brick and stone, but this will change it as little as barnacles change the rock to which they cling. The shells shuffle and fall away, but the breath of the rock is not at the surface and the sleep of the rock is very deep.

  _____

  Brenda clips across La Soeur Street in her little heels. She swings along, a woman just thirty, full of life and well-being and shopping for underwear. Gerry Vine is on the up and up. She smiles to herself. He’s been in London doing something or other – business, anyway – and he’s just moved into that enormous house at Le Clef. It isn’t possible to make a move undetected on the island – that must be why he doesn’t see her often in public, while their affair is getting established. These little white silky things won’t do it any harm.

  A little later, she is sitting with Jackie from the shoe shop in a window seat of the Grange Bar.

  – ’ave one of them pies with me.

  – I couldn’t. I’m not hungry.

  – it’s love, does that. I can’t stop meself. Go on, stop me, Brend.

  – just eat it, silly. See what I bought.

  – oh gor. Look at them little flowers. What d’it cost?

  – never mind. Guess what those Hamons did to me this morning.

  – they never.

  – put a lobster in my bed.

  – they never. Dead one?

  – no. It’s walking about in my bath.

  – it never.

  – know that Gerry Vine?

  – ’course. Skinny and sunglasses. Thinks a lot of himself. Heard ’e come into money. That pie was delish. I feel awful; I blown me diet. You should’ve stopped me.

  – you seen him with anyone?

  – you in love with Gerry Vine?

  – no. Just wondering.

  – there’s that Susan Pickery look – out there. Won’t see him with ’er, anyway. She’s a right priss.

  Susan turns at the corner at the end of Turkenwell and greets Mr Chandramohan in his shop. She knows that her mother is running out of sugar; today is Susan’s afternoon off from the old peoples’ home where she lives and works, and she can discreetly replenish supplies. She doesn’t understand the fuss about the magazines; they’re only pictures, they don’t hurt. Her mother is set in her opinions and that was the trouble with people, that’s what happens to them.

  _____

  Mrs Pickery has stopped for lunch. Jack and Peter have gone and she sits on an upturned crate in the shed, just in the doorway with the sun on her knees. She unscrews the lid of her flask and sips the sweet and watery tea. She chews a sandwich slowly: jam. A yellow newspaper lies under the corner of the bench, a calendar two years old hangs on a nail, the bagging machine for potatoes stands to one side. The chute needs cleaning. Dust motes speckle the air. Mrs Pickery is thinking; will she let her Susan in on the plan, or not? Bit more complicated if not, but more satisfying.

  _____

  Danny Duncan rides on the bicycle with his father, home from nursery school. He sits with his legs over the handlebars and his hair flies straight back off his head and his eyes water in the wind. Rockets hurtle through space, dolphins burst out of the ocean, a great black horse thunders across yellow grass like the one in the painting at Auntie Deborah’s. The last bit is best – fooosh! Past the church and the white wall and the gateposts and bump bump bump down the drive without slowing down.

  The best part of the day is followed by the worst. Sitting in the kitchen for lunch with Dad and Aunt Elsa, then Dad gets up to do something else and Aunt Elsa talks to him, Danny. She has a great mane of hair and red lips. She is also very thin and wears strange clothes with silver belts. She laughs with sudden shrieking noises and nubs the end of his nose with her hard fingers; once the cigarette fell out from between them and stung his arm like a nettle.

  Peter Duncan has his third cup of tea and goes back to work. For Danny there are two hours alone at Le Puits with his aunt before his brother comes home, and in this time he usually succeeds in avoiding her entirely.

  Sometimes he goes to the hen house where the hens purr softly in their boxes full of straw and he won’t come out even when Patrick is home and calling for him. In the winter there are indoor places like the back room, behind the curtains – not hiding places, for there is no one to hide from. Elsa is busy sorting out papers and turning out cupboards and moving furniture.

  They are just places. Outside in the Long Meadow there are any number of these places. Danny can flatten himself between two tussocks of grass and disappear like a hare in a form. And then there are the wells.

  The wells are at the bottom of the land in the field behind the hen house, forbidden ground. There are two wells and the first is sealed, but a pebble pushed under the cover with a thin stick will sometimes make a tiny plip! into the inner waters. The second has a pump poised above it. Wooden planks have been jammed into place making a crude lid, rotten now with the damp of long winters. Danny can look into the blackness and see the mirror sheen below. The wells are the place for bad days and Sundays. Today it is the hole in the hedge.

  five

  We are having difficulty meeting Elsa Duncan. We’ve tried to call her out but she ha
sn’t come; she is like that. We can know that she is thirty-nine and arresting to look at and fills us with unease, but not much more.

  Patrick is also asking himself questions about his aunt; they are second only to the great unspeakable question in his heart. At two-thirty Melissa is waiting for him at the school gate.

  – your aunt’s a witch, Patrick Dunkhead.

  – leave off.

  – she shot her husband.

  – who says?

  – everyone. She’s a mad witch. She’s been in the mad house. There.

  – leave off, pig.

  – and you’re a bustard.

  – I am not.

  – Dunkhead’s a bustard! Cowardy cowardy custard!

  He runs, he must always run, but round the corner he slows down; she won’t follow. It’s possible that his aunt is a witch. It would explain his mother leaving. Maybe Aunt Elsa was jealous when his mother had babies. Maybe she cursed his mother, and stopped her liking the babies. Maybe the second baby – Danny – belonged to Aunt Elsa really and it was his mother who was jealous? Was the dead husband somebody’s father? Maybe he lay in the churchyard over the wall at Le Puits. He’ll stop and have a look; there’s no homework.

  Instead of crossing the Long Meadow, Patrick takes the longer route by the lane. The lychgate is open. He walks slowly around the stone slabs of the cemetery, as familiar to him as his own backyard. He knows the little group in the corner where the name Duncan appears many times. Henry Duncan son of...Vera Duncan beloved wife and mother. There are no clues. Perhaps people who get shot are not put in the same place as everyone else. It seems as though all the names might mean something, but they never do. He likes it here.

  He turns to go and gives a sudden cry. It’s only Danny’s face between the bars of the gate, looking. He does that – he’s just there, looking. Quiet. He’s on another planet if you let him. Patrick brings him back to normal quickly.

  – hi. Bet you can’t climb up.

  – what you doing?

  – gonna race you back. Give you a start, count of five.

  One, two, three...

  _____

  The smell of beer hangs heavy but not unpleasant on the air. The Navigator bar is a dim brown hole sparsely decorated with a spotty mirror and a framed display of fisherman’s knots. Willy le Cras sits at the corner of the bar with a pint of mild. He looks fixedly at a row of pint glasses hanging from their hooks above the bar, each one belonging to its own regular customer and emblazoned with a crest of their favourite football team.

  Brenda is noisily filling up the shelves beneath the counter from the crates which Henry, the landlord, left in the doorway. Guinness, milk stout, lager, ginger, lemonade, Coke; all stacked up to the edge with no gaps. The shelves will be emptied by eleven o’clock, and running up and down to the cellar and back is something she doesn’t need. It’s bad enough when the beers need changing. Or the gas bottles, even worse. Henry’s primed the pumps; the barrels should last the night but you can never tell. The darts league will be here by eight and that lot from the King’s Arms might turn up, and there’s the draw. Thank heavens Henry came over to remove the lobster from her bath; now it’s in the icebox, good and dead.

  She kicks the empty crates away and then rubs at a mark on her black high heels with a licked finger. These heels are plain stupid behind the bar, but the lads expect it. They probably hope she’ll slip. Not the old ones, like Willy there.

  – all right, Willy?

  – oh aye.

  – will I top her up, before the rush?

  – aye.

  The door swings open, admitting two men. Brenda reaches for their glasses and fills them before she is bidden, two pints of bitter top.

  – looking smart tonight, boys.

  – ’s Friday. ’S the league, innit. Give yer a game, Bob. Gis the chalk, Brend.

  By ten o’clock The Navigator is full. Willy le Cras has slipped out, making his way in the warm haze through the lamp-lit streets. His corner seat is too near the score-board; he doesn’t feel safe when there’s a darts match, it’s not the same.

  Men are crowded against each other now, standing sideways to the bar with one arm holding their drinks firmly in place. In the far corner a man from The King’s Arms is taking on the opposition at the pool table. Sid Corbin has laid down his cue in disgust. Franklin, Michael and Johnny elbow their way through from the match.

  – we’re mashing ’em. It’s a whitewash.

  – fill ’em up, Henry.

  – this ain’t a garage, mate.

  – aw, get on with it. ’Ere, Brend! A man could die of thirst in this place.

  – you wait your turn, Micky. I’m serving this gentleman here.

  – servin’, eh? Do your ’ol man know about it? I’ll give you a service anytime. We boatmen are good at it.

  – cheek. My ol’ man’s got a boat, thanking you.

  – yeah but it ain’t got no engine, gorgeous. My engine’s a great big beauty. Smooth runner ’n’ all.

  – your mouth’s a smooth runner. Three pints coming up.

  – on the house, ain’t that right, Henry?

  – you’re joking. The last two rounds were on the house; I’m counting.

  – hangy me! Fer a luvverly lobster like that?

  – it ain’t gold-plated, is it?

  – go on, then. Have one yerself an’ all.

  Henry clangs a ship’s bell for attention.

  – all right. Time for the draw.

  – lobster, innit, eh?

  – yeah. Whopper, ’e sez.

  – FAUGH!

  – What’s up with Johnny?

  – EYUK! Thez a fuckin’ fish in me beer!

  – nah! Let’s ’av a look...

  – bloody ’ell he’s right y’know!

  – look at that!

  – that’s nivver beer. Tha’s water.

  – that’s a bleedin’ goldfish.

  – ha – that’s a good un. A bleedin’ goldfish!

  – Brenda Duncan, I wants a word wiv you.

  – oh yes?

  – put this poor little bugger in a bucket. I reckon you ’n’ me should sort this out outside.

  – an’ I reckon we’re quits. If you think I’m stepping outside with you, you want your head examined, John Hamon.

  _____

  She kicks off her shoes, and her stockings soak up the wet from the floor. She dumps the ashtrays into the sink and swills them out in the black water. That Gerry. That no-good big-mouthed lying sod. See you later, he said. That meant later, today. Got six minutes to go, then. She wouldn’t have worn this silly bra if she’d known he wasn’t coming.

  – go on, love. We’re all shipshape here.

  – thanks, Hen. I’m whacked. Someone’s chucked up in the loo.

  – I’ll deal with it. ’Night, love.

  – night, Hen.

  six

  The familiar black car draws up as Brenda crosses Main Street. He leans across to open the passenger door, and she slides in meekly.

  – where’re we going?

  – Italy.

  – what?

  – it’ll taste like Italy. Look on the back seat.

  – oh, Gerry! I’m too tired.

  – too tired for me?

  – no; to drink wine at this hour.

  He doesn’t answer. The car is part of him, his long legs tucked comfortably into its body, his hand resting on the gear stick. Obediently it soars away from the town, turning corners, closing gaps, thrumming into the darkness after the thread of its own headlights. I’ll be his car, she thinks. She raises a hand unconsciously to the lace trim at her breast. The island is eaten away under their wheels.

  On the gatepost, the name of his house, mellowed into stone; Le Clef du Ferme. The solid proportions of the walls blur into the night garden, dipping into the leaves of camellias for an instant as the car swings to the front porch. He peers forward, leaning on the steering wheel as a hawk might sit on a dead
rabbit. The hunch of shoulder, the fold of wing, the slow moment before the jabbing of the beak. He flicks the car back into life.

  – aren’t we going in?

  – no.

  – are you taking me home?

  – you want to go home?

  – no.

  – I’m just driving.

  _____

  In the bedroom at Les Puits, Patrick lies awake. The wind has strengthened and the elms bow and curtsey to its song, touching the hen house roof. Bows. Boughs. Perhaps that’s why boughs are called boughs. The bowing boughs. The boy tries to shuffle back into sleep but his ears are alerted to sounds. There’s that funny hooshing noise in the wells; his dad says it’s the same as blowing across the neck of a bottle. He’s tried it.

  It’s a northerly wind, blowing the trees like that. If it’s gone round to the west by Sunday they won’t take the boat out. Low tide at two. Tide’s probably on the turn now; that’s why the wind’s suddenly come up.

  He hears the back door close, the movements of someone in the kitchen, and then his aunt’s tread in the corridor towards her own room. She is a nocturnal creature. They’ve just done that at school. Owls and bats and hamsters; they are nocturnal creatures.

  _____

  On Sunday the wind has dropped. Still blowing enough to fill a sail; just right. Patrick has hurried out of church and waits anxiously while his father talks with Mr Vauquier. They’re discussing the hedgerows; the lanes haven’t been cut in the neighbouring parish; it is early summer and the weeds will seed. Unfairly these seeds will blow across the fields of St Stephen’s. Plus the ragwort is bad for grazing. John Corbin’s hedgecutter could be hired; Peter will have a word with him – he’s a cousin on his mother’s side, after all. Jack Vine will loan a tractor; it’s all family, since his Deborah wed John.

  Patrick shifts from foot to foot impatiently. They must change out of their Sunday clothes and make sandwiches and take Danny to Auntie Deb’s before they can even begin.

  Behind the group of people murmuring in the church porch, Danny is jumping on and off the stones which edge the path. Mrs Jessop catches sight of him.