Signs for Lost Children

by Sarah Moss

  Waves slap lazily against the hull below his feet. There must be life down there, something happening, a submarine world of fish and weed, a landscape of rock and valley. But for a man used to working, to looking back on a day or an hour and seeing what he has done, a passenger’s life is vexatious. To sit, to be served, to read books that would be pleasurable as an evening’s recreation but cannot substitute for the satisfactions of hard work done well: he is no fine gentleman to tolerate such weeks. To reflect on what has been done, and what should not have been done. It is not as if he planned what has happened, not as if he intended to do wrong. He paces. He tries not to count the days until they will probably reach harbour, wind and weather permitting. He wonders why he, who passed the voyage out contentedly enough in reading about Japan, watching the sea and conversing with others eastward bound for similar reasons, should suffer such discontent now. Perhaps the presences that dogged his final days in Kyoto are with him still, provoking unease and a state of pointless yearning. For the marriage he left, for Japan, for birds and flowers and fruit more beautiful than the real thing, for things he can barely name and certainly cannot have. For Louisa, or for Ally. He shakes his head, as if yearning were an insect whining around his ears, and then he hears whimpering and snuffling, a sound that reminds him of puppies. There is no dog on board, surely.

  He turns around and squints along the ship, up into the sun. Not a dog, but on the deck above, up under the mast, a sailor—a boy scarcely old enough to be a sailor—sits rocking with his head on his knees.

  ‘Hey,’ Tom calls. ‘Hey, are you ill? You need help?’

  He remembers the stories the sailors in Scotland used to tell about young boys on ships, the acts they must suffer. The boy rocks and keens. There is no passenger access to that deck. Tom glances around, gets a foot onto the handle of the door into the corridor and pulls himself up by the railing above. Sweat pulses as he catches his breath. It is the most exercise he has had in days. The boy looks up as Tom moves towards him. Dark hair, too long and falling into his eyes, pale face. He rubs his nose from side to side on the back of his hand.

  ‘What? What do you want?’

  At least he speaks English. An accent Tom hasn’t heard before, southern.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ Tom asks. ‘Can I help you?’

  The boy grins. There are still tears on his face. He pushes back his hair and then holds out his other arm for Tom to see.

  ‘Knew it’d hurt. See?’

  On the back of the forearm, where a down of dark hair is beginning to push, the skin is swollen and red, as if scalded, and in the centre of the burn is a scribble of blue and green and red.

  Tom reaches towards it. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Don’t touch. Bloody sore and all. ‘S a dragon, see? Almost finished.’ The boy licks his lip. ‘You can’t do ‘em all at once. No-one could stand the pain.’

  ‘Someone on board does this?’

  The boy touches his arm with a fingertip and grimaces. ‘Koni done it for me.’

  ‘Koni?’

  ‘Chinaman. AB.’

  Able Seaman. Tom has seen several sailors who would fit such a description. He leans over the boy’s arm and sees that there is indeed a dragon, a winged serpent whose scaly head reaches towards the wrist while its tail curves towards the pale tenderness of his inside arm. He cannot be older than about fourteen. Tom remembers the betto, the blue-skinned jinriksha man. He pushes up his sleeve. He thinks of pain, throbbing through the hot night, of having a real sensation as his constant companion. He thinks of the risk of infection, and of healing as the ship makes its slow way west.

  ‘Do you think he would do one for me?’

  HIS CHILDREN’S CHILDREN

  The sky is clear on this side of the peninsula. It’s the first time, he thinks, he’s seen the sun since the Endellion entered the channel ten days ago, and it’s already low over the sea. Out there is Scilly, the Wolf Rock, and then Spain, Africa, the Atlantic gathering and swirling towards the equator. But even in his mind he can’t fly as far as Japan from here.

  Ally’s hand lifts and falls again, as if she thought better of reaching towards him. He puts his arm around her, hears her intake of breath and sees her glance at the driver. As if they were not man and wife. He pulls her in to him. She adjusts her hat.

  ‘You are thinking of lighthouses,’ she says. ‘Of Bishop Rock, and Wolf?’

  ‘Yes. And that everything is different here. I had always thought it a nonsense when people say that the light in one place is distinctive, but it is true that the sun shines differently and the very air seems to have another composition.’

  Ally’s gloved hand pats his. ‘No. The mechanisms of respiration are just the same. But Cornwall is unlike anywhere.’

  ‘You have learnt to love it. While I was away.’

  She looks out. In the back of the trap, they are just high enough to see over some of the hedges, across stony fields and down to the shimmering sea. He has been to Penzance often enough but this is the first time he has taken this road, along Mount’s Bay and over the hill to—what is the village called again? Perran-something. As they all are.

  ‘Perhaps. I am not sure, about loving a place.’

  She does not have many places, he thinks. Manchester is a trap from which she has escaped, London, or at least her aunt and uncle’s part of London, only her foster-home. Now that De Rivers has paid him he can give her a home of her own. If she wants one. Not Florence Terrace, quite, but somewhere large enough for a servant and a child or two. He sits back and takes a slow breath: damp earth, wild garlic, sea wind. And homes must be made, not given.

  There are mine-workings on both sides of the road, and the chapel dwarfed by mining towers better built of larger stones. The towers will outlive the churches, will stand above the low-lying fields when the damp in the walls and the roof timbers has undone all the cottages and the jerry-built miners’ terraces have fallen like dominos. His mind’s eye strains for the future, for what will happen when all the tin has been taken away, how this place will appear to the eyes of his children’s children. If any. It is another conversation they are not having. They turn right, towards the sea. Perranuthoe, he remembers. You didn’t take a honeymoon, Penvenick said, and a friend of mine has a small house, nothing much but it happens to be between tenants just now. I’m giving you a week’s holiday and here are the keys. My wife reminded me, even in an established marriage it’s hard when a man returns from a long trip. But my wife, Tom said, she has her own professional commitments. The new convalescent home. Penvenick had already arranged things with Crosswyn. The road narrows, gorse and grasses brushing the sides of the trap and the seat pitching and bucking over ruts and potholes. Ally turns to him in alarm and he shouts to the driver. We will walk, he says, take the luggage on and we will walk from here.

  Perranuthoe is not a village, barely even a hamlet. Three farm houses and a few fishermen’s cottages, a new schoolhouse with the bricks—bricks, here?—still sharp and red between the granite cornerstones. And here it is, with their valises and the box of food outside the door, another unfamiliar house where there will be another unfamiliar bed in which he will wake to the unfamiliar light of another day. The last in the row of cottages, with only a field between the front windows and the sea. It’s smaller than the white house in Falmouth and has thinner walls, probably colder and the wind will come straight off the open sea. Come, he tells himself, Penvenick has seen enough homecomings and knows what he is about. Tom takes the key from his pocket and opens the door for his wife.

  They step straight into the front room, where a fire has already been lit for them. The floor is flagstones, but there is a hooked rug before the hearth where two deep armchairs await them, and a carved wall-cupboard of antique appearance hanging from the whitewashed wall below the stairs.

  ‘There’s water laid on,’ Ally calls from the room on the oth
er side of the warped wooden door. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  And she would, he thinks, she would happily have carried it from the well herself twice a day, as if she were a medieval peasant. The stone flags continue across the kitchen, where there is an oak dresser against one wall, an old wooden table with a bench at each side, an iron stove and a white sink with one brass tap.

  ‘No bathroom,’ he says.

  She looks up from the range. ‘Most people manage without, you know.’

  He hears what she is not saying: most of the population is without bathrooms and apparently capable of happiness. But in Japan, he thinks, in Japan there were bathtubs made of polished wood filled every day and bags of bran to scrub away the dirt, all poured away in daily absolution. De Rivers’ payment has been generous, beyond the terms agreed, but if he ever finds himself truly rich he will bring the carpenter from Makoto’s village and have a Japanese house built in England. Or perhaps simply move to Japan. If Ally will come too.

  She comes to him, raises her arms as if to put them around his neck and then pauses and lets her hands return to her sides. She does sometimes want to touch him.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t stop. You can hold me, Al. I’ve come back.’

  He has come back. Here he is. He waits for her to move, to embrace him. Penvenick was right, he thinks, here, here in this house, they will surely find their way back to each other as they have not, so far, been able to do at home. She is still standing there, as if she can’t decide what to do.

  THE SPACE BETWEEN THEM

  Ally is unpacking the box of food provided by Penvenick, or, more probably, by Penvenick’s housekeeper. Such a woman, she fears, will not have imagined Ally’s incompetence in the kitchen, will have ordered on the assumption that cooking is a universal feminine skill. There may be rabbits to be skinned or flour and yeast to be turned into bread. She kneels at the dresser and moves the two pans, the four plates and four bowls, to one side. From the other room she hears Tom rustle and cough. She is beginning to think that the—the awkwardness, the constraint—between them is not going to clear like a morning mist, that time itself will not heal their harm. Good: on the top of the crate there is a large loaf of brown bread and box containing a dozen eggs. A pound of butter and, thank you, Mr. Penvenick, a boiled ham. Ham and eggs, ham sandwiches. Milk, tea, sugar. A bunch of leeks, easy enough to cook. Potatoes, onions. A whole plum cake! And at the bottom, a china jar of potted shrimps. She will need to buy some more bread from somewhere during the week. Probably one of the farms will sell milk. Fruit, she thinks, we should have some fruit, but at least fruit is not an omission she can be expected to repair by kitchen work. She sits back on her heels. There must be more to do in the kitchen, there is always more to do in a kitchen. She closes the cupboard and stands up. She could wash and chop some leeks, ready to cook later. It is past teatime; perhaps Tom would like a cup of tea and a slice of the cake. She hasn’t found a teapot. She moves towards the sink and touches its cold white edge, briefly reminded of laboratories and the dissection room at the Women’s Hospital. Outside the window, a hawk hangs in the sky over the gorse. In ten days, she will be back at Rose Tree House, where there is real work for her.

  ‘Ally? Would you like to take a walk?’

  The shadows out there are long and the light pink.

  ‘Of course. Unless you would like me to make tea? There is a cake.’

  ‘It’s nearly sunset. Let’s go out.’

  He helps her into her coat, holds the door for her and locks it behind them. The grass bows as the wind off the sea flaps her skirts and tugs at her hat. The field between the cottages and the sea has been ploughed and lines of green are forming on the dark earth. Behind it is the silver sea, and then the reddening sky. West, America. There are no ships.

  Tom offers his arm and she takes it, a sign of willingness. She should say something about the house, about Penvenick’s kindness.

  ‘There is a boiled ham,’ she says. ‘It will make the cooking much easier.’

  He nods. ‘I like ham.’

  They walk back down to the road, which appears to run over the edge of the rocks into the sea. She steals a glance at him, at the line of his jaw and the red hair under his hat.

  ‘And potted shrimps.’

  He is looking at the horizon, at the waves in the gap where the road falls onto the beach. ‘That’s good. Here, let me help you.’

  The rocks are partly worn and partly cut into steps leading down to a mass of grey boulders. I will never be able to climb over those, she thinks, not in this skirt and these shoes, but beyond them waves are curling onto the sand. There is sand on the steps and she slips and grabs his arm, feeling the popping of stitches in her skirt.

  ‘Careful,’ he says. ‘Would you rather go back?’

  No, she thinks, she would rather stop and kilt up this ridiculous tight skirt, and there is nobody but him to see if she did and even if there were it is not as if farm labourers are likely to faint at the sight of a woman’s ankle.

  ‘I can manage,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

  But she almost falls twice before they reach the sand. Hobbling yourself in the name of vanity, Mamma would say, trussing up your limbs at the dictate of fashion. Are you quite lost to all sense? She imagines Mamma and May coming back across the sea, finding her undefended here. He braces himself and takes both her hands as she slithers off the last rock. She is too old for this physical comedy, she thinks, too old and too tall.

  ‘There. And no Louisa Musgrove about it.’

  ‘Louisa Musgrove?’ She brushes down her skirt.

  ‘A character in a novel. One you would perhaps enjoy.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I have not time or patience for novels, Tom.’

  Not since Mrs. Gaskell, before she was unwell. He must know she is not that kind of woman. He should have known it since the day they met.

  ‘I know. But that is not to say you would not enjoy one.’

  From here, they can see the castle on St Michael’s Mount, and some of the causeway over to Marazion. It is one of those buildings that is not quite real, a turreted palace drifting between the sea and the sky. Perhaps they will make a trip there, later in the week, walk across the causeway and picnic by the church at the foot of the hill. She lifts her face to the wind, closes her eyes to see the sun red through her eyelids. She should not have agreed to this, a week of time-wasting just when she is most needed at Rose Tree House, just when the women are beginning to trust her and each other. She will not be there if a reply comes from Mrs. Rudge’s children, or when Mrs. Curnow goes out on day leave with her husband. She can’t think why Dr. Crosswyn was so insistent. Unless he has some change or scheme in mind best accomplished in her absence, unless the committee has made some condition that he knows she would resist.

  He comes to her side. ‘Did you read anything new? While I was away?’

  She doesn’t open her eyes. ‘No. Only medical books.’ She must try harder. She must not shut him out, must not allow herself for a moment to admit the possibility that his questions might be foolish. She should tell him that she read his Gaskell, and did not find it unpleasant. ‘And you? You wrote to me about the travel books.’

  She took off her gloves to come down the rocks and the touch of his fingers on her bare hand makes her start.

  ‘I wanted to learn all I could. I think some of those books are much more accurate than others. It’s hard, without reading Japanese.’

  His hand is warmer than hers, and larger. Maybe every day they should touch a little more, hands and then forearms and then upper arms, faces, shoulders, chests and bellies. In one week—

  ‘But the ship’s library was mostly novels. I began with Richardson but after Singapore I’m afraid my tastes declined sadly.’

  She lets her fingers tighten on his. ‘There is little do on a ship, I dare say. Especially f
or a man used to action.’

  He lifts her hand and pats it. ‘My time could have been better spent. They were strange days.’

  ‘You were between lands,’ she says.

  The fire has gone out when they return to the house and shade is gathering in the corners of the rooms. She stands rubbing her chilled hands and watching while he kneels at the grate rebuilding the fire. She should light the candle lantern and find a bedroom candlestick before it is too dark, she should carve the ham and cook some eggs. His match grates and flares and the newspaper kindling flames out and then the log begins to hiss and glow.

  ‘There. Shall I light the range too, or will we have a cold supper?’

  She blows into her hands. ‘Tea, at least.’

  He stands up. ‘Why don’t you sit here and get warm? I know how to make tea, you know. And how would you like your eggs?’

  She holds her hands to the fire, where flames are steadying around the log. ‘I don’t like to sit idle, Tom. We’ll do it together.’

  They bring their plates back into the front room and eat from their laps. Tom tells her Japanese tales, as if by talking he can fill the space between them, as if there are stories that will reach across months and oceans apart, bridging madness and despair. He tells her about temples with gardens spread about them, about beds of gravel raked every morning into the semblance of wind-rippled ponds. He tells her about red leaves blowing into a canal, and about roof tiles each embossed with a chrysanthemum pattern, and she does not know why he tells these things, what is the purpose of informing her about foliage and waterways she will never see. Later, when first she and then he have washed at the kitchen sink and climbed the steep stairs carrying a wavering candle, later when they have blown out those candles and lain a few moments side-by-side in an unfamiliar bed in the dark, he reaches for her again and again she feels her body tighten and tense, her shoulders lift and her belly clench and she turns away from him. She thinks of Rose Tree House, of her white room there and the women resting below her, their minds healing in her care. This is not the answer, she thinks. There is no optimism in the propagation of family life. She has found a way to live and it does not involve the institution of marriage. It does not, it turns out, involve Tom. She lies on her side, facing the wall, feeling the lumps in the mattress under her ribs and thigh and the rough grain of the pillow under her cheek in the dark. The air is cold and smells of candle-smoke. It does not seem to take him very long to fall asleep.