clipped London accents.
“Thank you for meeting me here. Will we go to your house
now?”
“Yes.”
“I have a cell phone if we need to call a cab.”
“We’ll walk.”
She has my eyes, Halcyon Grenville. Grey, elongated at the
corners, fringed with dark straight lashes. My eyes. I wonder
what my sister thought of that.
Hallie politely took her suitcase up to her room, politely accepted the cup of tea I gave her, politely sat in the rocking chair and sipped. I wonder what my sister told her about me.
“Is your room comfortable?”
“Very, thank you.”
“There are extra blankets under the bed if you need them. Cornish nights are cold, even in June.”
“Mmm.”
“How long were you on the train?”
“Since this morning.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral.”
“That’s all right. Mam wouldn’t have—” I turned in time to
see a deep flush mount in Hallie’s cheeks.
“Your mother wouldn’t have wanted me there anyway,” I
finished. “Your mother didn’t like me, Hallie. I know that, and
so do you. No need to tip-toe.”
A spark of curiosity lit her eye. “Why?”
“Well, I’m a great deal older than she. I was twenty when she
was born. That makes me sixty-two, now. And then, she was
always making plans to get out of Covell as soon as she grew up.
I wanted to stay.” I shrugged. “Differences.”
“She didn’t talk about you much,” Hallie said abruptly. “But
I could read between the lines.”
“Yes, you seem quite bright.” I turned to look at her. “I had
hoped you wouldn’t dislike me, Hallie. Perhaps you need a few
days to figure that one out. For now, I’ll say good-night.” ¶She
didn’t smile. But she looked as if she might like to.
“Can we see the townie?” Nine-year-old Simon tugged his hand from his mother’s and ran to me. “Can we see her?”
“Call her Hallie, not ‘townie.’”
“But she’s from London, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is. And she’s still asleep, so keep your antics down.” I pushed a cookie into his hand, laughing as he shot off in pursuit of the cat.
“He expects the townie to have green hair.” His mother Gartred brushed back a bit of straying hair. She was a tall, rawboned woman in jeans and rain slicker, her only ornament a pearl strung around her neck on a plaited flax thread. “And three eyes, like the Martians in his comic books.”
“He’s nine, Gartred. He’s never seen a Londoner in his life.”
“That’s so.” Her eyes traveled up the stairs. “How is she settling in?”
“All right, from what I could see. She’s reserved.”
“No easy thing for a townie to settle in with fisher folk like us.”
“She’s born to it. My sister was fisher folk.”
“Queer name, Hallie.”
“It’s not her full name.” I smiled, knowing the effect I was about to make. “My sister named her Halcyon.”
Gartred’s eyes widened, and a smile broke across her face. “And here we thought your sister never looked back after she packed her suitcase.” A glance at me. “Might bring good luck, the Undine’s niece bein’ called Halcyon.”
“Morning, Aunt Nora.” Hallie stood yawning in the doorway. “Sorry I slept in.”
“Quite all right. Hallie, this is Gartred. She lives next door. And somewhere around here is Simon.”
Simon pounded into the room, face sticky with chocolate, and skidded to a halt, looking up at Hallie. “You don’t have green hair,” he observed.
“That’ll be enough out of you.” Gartred grasped his hand firmly. “Hallie has lots of settling in to do. Lovely to meet you, dear.” Simon waved chubby fingers as he was tugged out the door, sunlight gleaming off his barley-fair hair.
“Sit down, and I’ll fetch some breakfast.” I shooed Hallie over to the table.
“What was it she called you when I came in?” A gleam of curiosity lit the eyes that looked like mine.
“The Undine.” I spooned hot oatmeal into a clay bowl. “It’s an honorary position I hold here in Covell.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing, really,” I said easily. “It’s an old tradition more than anything. Back in the middle ages, the Undine blessed the village on Midsummer’s Day, and her touch was supposed to keep the villagers from drowning. We still have the ceremony, but it’s more for tradition’s sake. Traditions die hard in a place like this.”
“What did Gartred mean when she said my name was good luck?”
“Halcyon means calm.” I smiled, placing her bowl before her. “Even now, the fishermen pray for calm seas. Eat up, now, and I’ll show you around the town.”
Covell clings to the Cornish cliffs like a little grey jewel. The houses are built of weathered grey wood, knotted and swirled like the rain-swept waves of the sea. The streets are narrow, still paved with the rough cobblestones laid down over two centuries ago. I saw it all new through Hallie’s gaze as I took her on a tour of her new home. Her London-bred eyes, accustomed to crowded buildings, peered into the lush green gardens surrounding each house; her traffic-savvy feet trod the car-free streets with caution. Her nose wrinkled up at the smell of brine and herring that washed over everything, but she soon forgot the reek of fish and became fascinated by the sight of the fishermen hauling in their nets in the trawlers as their fathers had done before them.
“Don’t they have machinery to do that?” She pointed to a man bent nearly double beneath a net full of cod.
“We don’t need it,” I answered. “Things change slow in Covell. The old ways work well enough, at least for now.”
“Mam didn’t like the old ways. She thought they were stupid and slow.”
“Your mam liked the fast track. Life moves slowly out here, true. The sea doesn’t count time, and neither do we.”
“How long has Covell been here, Aunt Nora?”
“The oldest stone in our graveyard reads 1278. And there are older graves, marked by cairns. Would you like to see the graveyard?”
We drew glances as we turned away from the harbor and walked towards the graveyard. “That’s the Undine’s niece,” came a whisper or two. “Halcyon Grenville...” Hallie lifted her chin, and I was proud of her. “They’ll forget in a week or two,” I told her. “Not much new happens here, so for the time being you are news.”
“They think I don’t belong here.”
“I tell them differently. They’ll believe me.”
Unexpectedly, a smile touched her mouth. “You could say the earth was flat, and make people believe you.”
“The earth,” I said severely, “is not flat.”
“Yes, Aunt Nora.” A flash of laughter escaped her Grenville eyes.
The Covell graveyard is a peaceful place. The stones lean grey and crooked in the long grass, and the trees arch overhead like the ribs of a great ship. “Beautiful trees.” Hallie laid her hand on a vast smooth trunk. “Beech?”
“Oaks, with mistletoe growing between. People say that the trees were planted by Druids, who founded Covell as a place of worship.”
“Do you believe that?”
“It’s a pretty story, anyway.”
She bent to brush a leaf from a stone. “I can see why people like to be buried in graveyards. It gives the family a place to visit them—a sense of permanence. Are people still buried here?”
“Everyone. Each family has their own burial space. Here is the Grenville plot.” I led her to a patch of shade beneath a spreading oak, watching with a smile as Hallie tramped among her ancestors to read their lives on the stones.
“My mother would have been buried here if s
he’d stayed in Covell. But she wanted to be cremated.” Hallie brushed a leaf from a stone. “Will you be buried here, Aunt Nora?”
“No, I’ll have a place in that corner.” Hallie followed me, curious, to a new batch of tombs. The names here were all women. Hesitant, she read them aloud. “‘Elizabeth Cartwright, 1694 to 1753. The Undine.’ ‘Anne Gardiner, 1753-1798. The Undine.’ ‘Deborah Welles, 1798-1842. The Undine.’” She looked up at me. “All the Undines are buried here?”
“Yes.”
“The dates back up on each other.”
“It’s their terms of service, not their life spans.”
“Why?” Her musing voice overlapped mine. “‘Tradition.’” Her chin poked up in a gesture I was beginning to recognize. “I like tradition,” she said boldly, and looked around as if she expected a cry of alarm from her mother.
I laughed. “Good. I like it too.”
She bent down to brush her fingers over the newest tombstone. “‘Laura Eddington. The Undine.’ Your predecessor?”
“Yes.”
“Funny, how none of these stones just say The Undine. Never ‘Beloved Wife Of’ or ‘Mother Of.’”
“The Undines are always spinsters.”
“Why? Oh, I know. ‘Tradition.’ What’s this design here, under the name—the row of circles? All the Undines have that pattern.”
“It’s the ceremonial string of pearls. Every Undine has a pearl necklace.”
“Do you have one?”
“Certainly.” I folded down my collar so she could see my Undine’s necklace: forty-two fine white pearls strung loose along a plaited flax thread.
“They’re beautiful.” Hallie touched the pearls with one finger, and then bounded ahead to look at the other tombstones. “You know,” she called back, “none of these stones ever say, ‘Drowned’ or ‘Lost At Sea.’ Funny for a fishing village.”
“We are very good fishermen in Covell,” I said lightly, tucking my pearls in close to my skin. “We don’t often drown. Come, you should see the ocean from Covell Crag.”
Covell Crag is a white rock that juts out over the ocean. The waves smash into the rocks forty feet below, and the currents are deadly. But the light there has a peculiar clarity, and the air is like wet silk. I heard Hallie suck in a breath as she stood on the crag and looked out over the ocean. The waves lashed themselves into frenzy on the rocks, and the wind tore fiercely at her hair. The sharp smell of salt blew over our noses, and the sky was a maelstrom of tinted green and violet and blue, like paint stirred by the hand of God. Hallie turned back to me, breathless, exhilarated. “The sea will swallow Covell right up one of these days, Aunt Nora.”
I shook my head. “No, we’ve made our peace with the sea. She’ll let us be.”
Hallie tilted her head. “You sound like a sibyl.”
“Come home,” I smiled, “and the sibyl will make you some cocoa.”
Hallie settled into Covell with barely a ripple. A few brows were raised initially at her London voice and her iPod, but she was my niece, and the village accepted her. She went to school with trepidation, and came bounding back that afternoon with a glowing face and Maura Cartwright for a study partner. They did more giggling and texting on their phones than studying, but the sound did my heart good.
She settled in tentatively, scarcely daring to like the place that her mother had loathed. I was pleased to see that she did like Covell, liked the silence and the sea and the serenity of the traditions that lived around her. She liked to sit on Covell Crag, watching half-fascinated and half-horrified as the fishermen plied their precarious trade on the slippery rocks. “I don’t know how they do it,” she exclaimed one afternoon as I was kneading bread dough. “I don’t see how they can stay outside all day, all year, without getting swept away by those currents. I’d be dead in a week.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
I half-smiled and punched the dough flat.
“You’re awfully—peaceful,” Hallie said suddenly. “You’re
never in a rush. With Mam it was always hurry hurry hurry.” “It’s roots, that’s all.” More flour on the rolling pin, another
turn of the dough. “Your Mam was a footloose creature from the day she was birthed. It’s how she was happy. Being still, putting my roots down in one place, that’s what makes me
happy.”
“I’m—a bit more like you, aren’t I, Aunt Nora?” Hallie
cleared her throat. “You know, Mam always wanted me to get
colored contact lenses; blue, or green, or hazel. She didn’t like
my eyes.” Hallie’s grey Grenville glance flicked up at me. “Put down your roots if you like,” I said softly. “No one’ll
come along to transplant you now.”
She gave a smile so sweet my heart turned over. That was the
night she stopped crying.
Gartred and I were knitting on the porch one fine afternoon and little Simon playing at our feet when Hallie and Maura Cartwright thumped up the steps.
“No school this Wednesday?” I overheard Hallie saying. “Why not?”
“It’s the Shelling.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when we pick the Child of the Sea.”
“What’s that?” said Hallie patiently.
“Your aunt’s the Undine, and you don’t know about the Child of the Sea?”
Gartred shot me a glance. I kept on sewing, the voices of the girls pattering over my ears.
“On Midsummer’s Day we have a Parade of the Sea,” Maura was explaining. “Games, races, pageants. The Child of the Sea presides over everything. Like a Harvest King or Queen.”
“And you pick the Child of the Sea during the—what’s it called?”
“The Shelling. The men gather a big heap of mussels, and the children shell them. One’s got three pearls inside. Whoever finds the pearls gets to be the Child of the Sea.”
“I don’t know how to shell a mussel.”
“You’re too old. It’s for the little kids, really. All the ones under ten.”
Gartred’s eyes fell on Simon, contentedly zooming toy cars off the porch railing. He was nine; this year would be his last Shelling. “Nora.”
“Mmm?”
“Will you be taking Hallie to the Shelling?”
“No reason why not, Gartred.”
Gartred’s fingers fiddled with the single pearl around her neck. We continued our knitting, backed by the laughter of the girls.
The morning of the Shelling dawned fair and bright. “What should I wear?” Hallie said anxiously. “I don’t want to look like a townie.”
“Wear a sweater. It may look warm outside, but these sea breezes blow straight from the north.” I looped my string of pearls tight around my neck, and the two of us sallied forth.
“Where’s the Shelling held, Aunt Nora?” “Covell Crag. Last night the men dragged up all the mussels they could find. One has the three pearls.”
“Who puts the pearls in?”
“No one.”
“But pearls don’t come in mussels; they come in oysters. So someone has to pry a shell open, put the pearls in, and glue it back together, right?”
I smiled.
“You’re not going to tell me,” Hallie sighed. “That’s your Undine face.”
The Shelling children gathered in behind us, chattering and laughing. They ranged in age from four to nine, and they all had been equipped with sharp little shelling knives. “It’s quite safe,” I laughed, seeing Hallie’s doubtful expression. “They’ve been shelling mussels in their mams’s kitchens since they were three.”
“And they all want to be—what did you call it? The ‘Child of the Sea?’”
“You couldn’t keep them away. They only get a few tries at it, you know. Once they reach the age of ten, they’re too old.”
“Says who?”
“Says tradition.”
The older children and their parents strolled a
long behind, gossiping and laughing. It was a festive mood; old John Penhallow already had out his fiddle and was tripping old Cornish tunes. We mounted Covell Crag like a triumphal procession, and the children bunched eagerly at the sight of the black dripping heap of mussels.
“Bet you I’ll find the pearls,” little Simon boasted. “Like Nancy did.”
“Nancy?” Hallie wondered.
“His big sister,” I heard Maura explaining. “She was Child of the Sea—oh, it must have been three years ago. Died that same fall, poor sweetie. Pneumonia on her lungs.”
Hallie’s exclamation of sympathy was drowned by the eager shouts of the children. “Can we, Nora? Now? Now?”
I waved my hand. “Now.”
There was a rush of small bodies and a flash of little knives as they hurled themselves on the mussels. Each of the children elbowed themselves a place, expertly splitting the black shells. I saw Simon’s bright head bend low over an open shell, searching the flaccid grey meat for the pearls.
Gartred was sensibly unpacking a blanket to sit on, and the other women followed suit. “Best sit down and eat,” I told Hallie, unpacking a hamper of meat pasties and smoked herring. “It could take all morning.”
Maura dragged her off to sit with the other girls, who giggled and tossed their blowing hair and threw glances to the boys. The men jostled with much hilarity around the whiskey bottle that someone had stowed in the bottom of his hamper. Their wives settled down to sample each other’s nut-bread and gossip. A peaceful scene; I wondered how much it had changed over the hundreds of years it had taken place.
“I found ‘em! I found ‘em! Lookee here!” Simon waved a mussel over his head jubilantly.
“All right you little joker, let’s see.” I held out my hand. Hopping with excitement, he tipped three white pearls into my palm. I rolled them back and forth, and the sun struck a rich luster from the surfaces.
“Congratulations, Gartred.” I looked up at my friend. “Your son is this year’s Child of the Sea.”
Simon let out a war whoop, and his mother reached out to ruffle his hair.
The rest of the day sank into hilarity, as always happens. Simon was perched on top of the crag and crowned with seaweed. I kissed his hand with much solemnity, and the rest of the villagers followed suit. I saw Hallie scramble to get into line, giggling as she caught sight of Simon’s regal expression. And oh, how the tunes from the fiddle soared.
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