The Visitors

by Mascull, Rebecca

  ‘But your father had done his own thinking and came back with a wage, room and board. He liked me, he said, and believed I was the only one that you would trust. I told him I’d had a pretty decent education from the vicar, better than a lot of the other Whitstable children from the local school. But I could be no governess to a girl from a big house. And he just smiled kindly and said we should wait and see. So I talked with Ma and she said it was a great step up for me and I should do it. Only that month we had been talking about me going into service, as there was never enough money at home, and the thought of being a housemaid filled me with dread. This was a much better position. I knew I would miss my family – the boys were only tiny then and I loved to see them grow. But this was something I would never have thought could happen to a girl like me and I was thrilled to do it. To leave my life planned out for the rest of my days, and move to the big house, with all its possibilities.

  ‘I was happy to come. And when I met you properly, and spent my days with you, I had not been so happy since the times I had spent with our darling Constance. I loved you soon and suddenly and I have never lost that love. It has grown over time so that you are family to me, Liza. I have watched you grow from that wild girl into a person, a beautiful young lady who found her eyes and now has the world spread out before her and can do anything she desires. I think of the time not so many years from now when you will find a man who deserves you and who will love you and be beside you, your equal and helpmeet as he should be. Then you won’t need me any more, which is as it should be. But it will break my heart to leave you.’

  To think, all these years, apprehension has grown in me of Lottie being the one who would tire of me and find a man, move away and leave me bereft. To discover she has the same fear is so aching to me in my heart, my blood runs quick and I quiver with the life of it. And we hug and hug, and cry like fools and laugh too at our foolishness.

  ‘But I will never leave you,’ I say. ‘I love you much more than anyone else in the earth. What man would have me anyway?’

  ‘Are you mad? Have you any idea how lovely you are?’

  ‘But would it not be very inconvenient for him to sign to me?’

  ‘He can learn.’

  ‘But it will be years before I am old enough. You. You are the one who will go first. Have you never had a beau, Lottie? You are the beautiful one.’

  Lottie dries her eyes and composes herself.

  ‘There was a man once, when I was much younger. He was a fisherman, a good man. His name was Tom Winstanley.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘I liked him. Very much. I was interested in him. He was a thinker. He used to write long poems about the sea. I liked that.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. There was something about him. Something sad. He’d come from the workhouse, and he used to steal books to teach himself to read. He apprenticed as a fisherboy. He went to live in a fisherboys’ home, with rougher boys. It was a hard upbringing for a soft bookish boy like him. And he never got over it. He made me sad. I didn’t want my life to be like that, trying to take his sadness away. Something told me it would never end, as deep as the deep sea. I would be doomed to sink with him. I ended it.’

  ‘Did he repine for you?’

  ‘I believe so. He used to come around and ask me to change my mind. He wrote to me when I first came to live with you, long letters full of hope and coaxing. But I never changed my mind.’

  ‘Does he still live here?’

  ‘Round about. He fishes for plaice and brill at Ramsgate. He lives up there. Done very well, owns his own boat now. I’ve seen him around Whitstable sometimes. He always looks away. He never married.’

  ‘Has there been no one else for you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘There will be, Lottie. I just know it. There will be a kind and good man out there for you some day,’ and I gesture beyond us, as if we might see him coming towards us beyond the shore.

  She shakes her head, then looks up abruptly. A sound has come from the sea. Here come the yawls, four of them fairly whizzing in with the brisk April breeze filling their sails, each towing a rowing boat behind it. We can see them drop anchor a way out. Three men climb down from each yawl into their rowing boat, pulling into shore, the man at the back pulling at two oars, the front two with one oar each. From this distance, they are so alike in dress as to be almost indistinguishable: chunky Guernsey sweaters up top, thigh-high leather boots below, drooping moustaches like Father’s on every top lip and a cheesecutter cap on some heads, on others oilskin sou’westers.

  Lottie on tiptoe waves her arm to and fro. In one boat, two of the men wave back. As they approach, their broad oar-pulls briskly bringing them home to the stony beach, I can see that, beneath their caps, these two men have terracotta hair, lustrous in the setting sun, large eyes turned towards us I know already are blue. The older man leaps out first, in a hurry to see his only daughter. He casts down his oar and rushes up the beach, his stride long and loping, grinning from ear to ear. The son, slower, more deliberate, smiling to himself, tidies the oars into the rowing boat and heaves a sack over his shoulder, resting on his back. He saunters up behind, in no particular hurry, not surly or rude, but a man unto himself. Caleb.

  Mr Crowe greets Lottie in just the way her mother did. He lifts her off the floor and whirls her round. A tall man, he does it easily. Lottie is laughing and smoothing her hair. Caleb comes after and puts down his sack. There is an odd moment when Lottie and Caleb regard each other, a sizing up, that they are who they were, that all is well. A swift kiss on the cheek from Lottie and Caleb squeezes her arm, holding on while their foreheads briefly touch and Lottie steps back. Nothing is said. I think of how they dwelt in the womb curled into each other, companions betimes.

  Mr Crowe greets me most generously, shaking my hand and trying to say ‘Hello’ in finger spelling. Lottie instructs them both on my new skills, heads nod and we are easy together. Caleb picks up his sack and we all move off towards home, Caleb and Lottie behind, murmuring of I know not what. Mr Crowe tells me things slowly with clear lip movements, a little laboured, but I appreciate his efforts. His protraction does not affect the amount he says, he is very loquacious.

  ‘Do you like our yawls? Pretty boats, eh? And they can put up with some weather, they can. You know, it’s a good job you’ve come in April. Only eat oysters in a month with an “r” in its name, you know that? ’Cause in May and June and July and August, they are not fit to eat. They’re spatting soon, you see, and the sea’ll be filled with spawn, just like confetti it is.’

  I turn to Lottie. ‘Spatting?’ I spell out to her.

  ‘Producing young,’ she signs back.

  Mr Crowe watches us. He adds, ‘They’re making their babies, if you know what I mean. Not like we do, as they have both parts and do it themselves.’ He glances at Lottie. ‘I’m not being impolite, am I? It’s only oysters we’re speaking of, eh?’ And his face creases up in mirth and we are all laughing; even Caleb smiles and looks down, shaking his head. I do like Mr Crowe.

  When we reach home, we are greeted by the aroma of baked bread. Three large loaves rest on the kitchen table, beside a pat of golden butter. Plates jostle with tea-cakes, scones and a huge fruit tart. There is no sign of Constance, as yet. We find Mrs Crowe in the yard, emerging from the ash closet. Piles of washing have been through the mangle and are now pegged, heavy and clingy, on the line stretched across the yard, propped up by a sawn-off branch for the line to reach the glancing wind. One last item is being squeezed out of the mangle by Clarence, a beige shirt with linen buttons which will not get broken by the crushing cylinders, while Claude holds it straight as he can as it comes through. Christopher is assisting by patting rhythms on the turning wheels, almost getting his delicate fingers trapped and crushed by the contraption, which makes me gasp. Claude swills out a wooden tub of grey water over the fence into the alleyway, wiping his brow with the back of his hand and
yawning.

  Mrs Crowe calls to Claude, ‘Hurry up! Don’t you have any gumption?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he says, nettled. ‘I’m doing it directly, Ma. Don’t keep all on at me.’

  I cannot imagine speaking to Mother or Father in this manner. Mrs Crowe raises her eyebrows at a neighbour, who passes her a cup of steaming tea, engaged in her own washday in her own backyard beyond the low wall, on which hang two tin baths beside the meat safe.

  There are smiles all round as the Crowe men are welcomed and Caleb hands the sack to the lady of the house.

  She says, ‘Normal we’d have cold meat and bubble and squeak on washday, or whatever’s left from Sunday. But we have our special guest, so we are having an oyster feast tonight, Miss Liza.’

  Once we are seated at the kitchen table, oysters are passed around several to a plate, the adults grabbing a shucking knife and opening up the stubborn beasts. Mine are done for me by Lottie and put on my plate. I am shown how to loosen them and pop them in my mouth.

  Mr Crowe taps my arm and says, ‘Some say swallow it whole and others say savour it and chew. It’s up to you.’

  The Crowes all swallow whole, so I try to knock it back like medicine and end up with it caught at the top of my throat and nearly gag. I cough and all eyes are on me. Lottie whacks my back and my first oyster lands on my plate. Everyone laughs, and though I am not wholly mortified I do feel embarrassed before Caleb and take a quick glance at him, to secure my shame. He is watching me.

  ‘Chew it,’ he says.

  I try and find it much more accommodating. The texture is disagreeable, the flavour indifferent, but the experience is not altogether unpleasant, something of the wildness of the sea and the wash of saltwater and the embrace of the tides swilling in my mouth. I take a hunk of bread roughly sawn by Mrs Crowe and spread a large swathe of home-made butter across it. The bread is still slightly warm and the butter melts in my mouth and fills me with warmth and comfort. With that in my belly, I try another oyster and the new taste grows on me. I try another, and another.

  Mr Crowe says, ‘Nothing better than an oyster, eh? They call it a kiss from the sea.’

  I steal another glance at Caleb. He is dipping his bread in the juices on his plate and taking great bites. He picks up a shell and tips his head back, the grey cargo slipping into his mouth. I watch his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallows it down.

  After dinner, we sit by the Crowe fire and Caleb plays his fiddle. Perhaps afraid that I would feel affronted at so aural an activity, he asks if I would like to place my hand on the body of the violin and feel its vibrations. I stand beside him and he shows me a place I can hold it, as I had done in times past when blind. Now I close my eyes again, to feel the rhythm of his playing travel up my arm and down into sinew and bone. He plays songs with curious titles that summon up stories of wayfarers’ lives, such as ‘Captain Ward’, ‘The Bold Fisherman’ and ‘Banish Misfortune’. The table and chairs are pushed back and I take to dancing with the others on the tiles before the fire and feel the stamp of their feet and glimpse the clap-clap-clap of Mrs Crowe’s hands to guide me. When I tire of dancing, I sit for a time by the fire and watch the Crowes.

  Constance appears beside me. The Crowes dance and Caleb fiddles and they do not know their sister is here. I see her hand reach for mine. I spread out my palm along my thigh as if it aches and I uncurl it. I feel her tenuous fingers like a glimpse and watch her spelling.

  When Charlotte comes, I like her best. She braids my hair and never pulls it. Ma is rough and pulls my hair, but she is always sorry after.

  I look up and smile at the entertainment, so no Crowes suspect me.

  I say, What is your favourite thing to eat?

  Satin pralines. You can suck and suck and then your teeth crash through and it is soft and sugary and like heaven inside.

  Lottie is watching me, one of her frowns. I smile and nod my head to the pounding feet. She looks away. I have one more question for Constance.

  Did you have a secret with Charlotte? Something only you and she knew?

  Constance smiles and nods her head. She had a secret name for me. She would spell it in my hand at bedtime, over and over. It was my lullaby.

  What was your secret name?

  That is my secret with Charlotte. No one else knows of it.

  You can tell me.

  I do not think so.

  I am your friend. I am Charlotte’s friend. You can tell me.

  It was Tanty. She used to spell it in my hand. I love Tanty, Tanty is my love.

  Thank you, I say. Time to go now.

  Constance turns and wanes.

  I come back to Caleb and he nods to me, assenting to my holding the edge of the fiddle again and feeling its spell. Between tunes, he asks me, ‘What do you think of music?’

  I motion for his hand and he places his palm out, lets me spell into it.

  ‘I love music.’

  ‘How do you love it?’

  ‘I feel the beat as I do my pulse. And the notes have different vibrations. I feel them all.’

  ‘Do you know a sad song from happy?’

  ‘Yes, by its rhythm, by the look on your face.’

  ‘What do you wish me to play?’

  ‘Your favourite.’

  He closes his eyes a moment then sets to, my hand receiving it. It is slow, so slow, with graceful bows and shudders as if the bow itself is weeping. Oh, for sure, it is a sad, sad song. His chosen one, his favourite. He closes his eyes and raises his eyebrows, his chest fills as he breathes in the beautiful music. He has a sculpted face, calm eyes. All stop in the room and listen, their eyes mournful, their bodies sunken. It is the saddest song I ever heard.

  When he is done, I tap his arm: ‘What was its name?’

  He spells it out for me: ‘Twa Corbies.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘They are Scottish words. It means two crows. They watch a dead knight in a ditch, a soldier. No one knows he lies there. They will take his blue eyes for dinner and pluck his golden hair to warm their nest. And over his bare white bones, the wind shall blow for ever more.’

  One of the boys pipes up something and I see Mr Crowe say, ‘Oh yes, Caleb, tell us one of your ghost stories. He is marvellous good at it, Miss Liza. You must sit here by me, where you can see him. He’ll give you shivers up and down your back, you mark me!’

  We seat ourselves by the fire. Caleb has put his violin on the sideboard and takes his place leaning on the mantelpiece. The three boys sit at Caleb’s feet, eager faces upturned.

  ‘There was once a beautiful young lady with long golden hair and large brown eyes, name of Nell. She worked for a canon at the Cathedral of Canterbury back in fat old Henry VIII’s time. She loved the canon and was an excellent cook. One day another young woman came from the shires to live with the holy man, who said she was his niece. But Nell discovered the lady never slept in her own bed. She beleft they were lovers and fell with a fearful jealousy. Now there was no bounds to her. She spied on the couple every moment she could, listening to their laughter and torturing her soul with their twinkling eyes. She could bear it no longer and took a great crock from the shelf and in it baked the most sumptuous pie of her career. When the canon and the lady had eaten of the pie, they grasped at their stomachs, they tore at their insides, they bled from their noses and ears and eyes and all their other holes …’

  At this, the three little brothers squirmed on the floor in gleeful horror.

  ‘They clutched each other one last time in agony, and fell … down … dead. The monks from the priory came the next morning to find the two stone dead on the floor, a look of hideous agony writ large across their tortured faces, the poisoned pie half eaten on the table and crumbs of it smeared around their blue lips. All called for Nell the cook, but she had run away, never to be seen alive again. They buried the canon and his lady in a secret ceremony, to avoid a sure scandal. Years later, three stonemasons were called to repair a loose flagst
one in the Dark Entry, a spooky walkway of the cathedral. When they lifted the stone, what did they find? A skeleton huddled in the corner of a secret crypt, its flesh worn away by time and nibbled by worms and cheesy-bugs and all manner of creeping things. Beside the bones lay a rock-hard crust of … what else, but the poisoned pie. Was it Nelly’s bones they found? Within a year, all three unfortunate masons were dead. They say two murdered the other one, though nobody knows what drove them to such a grisly deed. The murdering masons were hanged, strung up by coarse rope, their necks broken, their feet kicking their poor lives away. And now whoever dares to walk the Dark Entry late on any night, if he sees the ghost of poor Nell a-wandering there, he will be cursed and not live a year! Would you dare? Would you, eh?’

  Caleb points at the three rapt boys who jump up and vie to be the bravest before their big brother, ‘Oh, I will!’ says one, then another. ‘I would do it! I’m not afraid of ghosts!’

  Mrs Crowe gestures to me. ‘What about you, Miss Liza? Do you have any ghost stories to tell us?’

  And I want to tell them about the gypsy lady with the black eyes, the signalman who cannot find the lost sheep on the line, the navvy begging for soup. But I feel a heat from Lottie’s glare and know I cannot.

  ‘Oh, no. Not me,’ I sign and make my meaning clear with a shake of the head and shy eyes.

  Caleb moves from the fire and wraps his violin and bow in a cloth. He walks to the kitchen door and lifts an arm.

  ‘Night all,’ he calls, eyes down, fiddle under one arm.

  All raise a hand and Mrs Crowe embraces him before he goes. He has his own room, the eldest son’s privilege.

  I am thinking of his eyes. They do not seem to me the eyes of a happy man.