The Silver Dark Sea

by Susan Fletcher

  I am the only one left.

  She comes here to rest, and be still. But she also comes here to be close to the family she no longer has – the ones who have all passed on ahead of her, into the earth and sky. Once, long ago, Abigail had siblings. There had been her breathless twin, with crooked front teeth and a slight yeasty smell, and their brother Jack – Jack Junior – who had ears like spoons and a hiccupping laugh. Abigail remembers running after them. She couldn’t keep up, but she tried. She can see it, even now – the blackened soles of Thomasina’s feet and the punch punch of Jack’s skinny elbows as they ran ahead of her, shouting slow coach! Come on!

  I was always the slowest. In running. In living her life.

  Abigail, being the eldest, should have died first – but she did not.

  She shifts her weight on the bench.

  I am the last. Not of the Bundys – that was her maiden name and there are plenty of other Bundys in this part of the world, that’s for sure. But she is the last of those three children who had their cheeks scrubbed with a wire brush before church, every Sunday, so that they might be clean for the all-seeing Lord. The last of that generation.

  The last of the Deepwaters, too.

  Mercy Deepwater … A good name. Dependable.

  A magical name too, in its way, and Abigail knows very well that she is as much Deepwater as she is Bundy, that she might have been born with her father’s surname but the other half of her came from a strong-boned, raven-haired woman who was bestowed with a name – as many islanders were – that might protect her from her watery life. Mercy from the water. Mercy from the winter gales.

  Her mother, who had a taste for puffin meat.

  Who sucked on old crab shells.

  Oh, it is like no other island; Mercy used to whisper this to her daughters and son. Little Merme. So far out to sea that it could only be glimpsed on the clearest of days. Once, it was known for its seaweed and the fearless birds that would dive at your head if you walked near their nests; also for being so small and remote and so traditional, which could be both an insult or praise. But now? Merme is forgotten now. The last few people who lived there were lifted off and taken away half a century ago – for what kind of life had theirs been? All gales and bad nutrition. A six-hour boat ride to the mainland, on the best of days. And it was such a flat, treeless island that on stormy nights a wave might throw itself over a house or two and wash people out of their beds onto their stony floors. Mercy had told them.

  We picked a herring out of the chimney, and ate it. And the widower Cooley saw a boat move through his house and out again. These are true stories.

  Abigail sniffs.

  Mercy Deepwater. Who lost three siblings to the sea, or disease. Who had spent her childhood prising barnacles off rocks and sewing gannet feathers into clothes to make them warmer so that I thought I might fly, if the wind caught me right, like the Meddle girl who was blown away … Behind their black-walled house they’d grown potatoes and kale. Kept a few hens. It was a blunt, relentless way of living – and so when a farmer from Parla took a fancy to Mercy’s shining hair, it felt like a chance for a better one.

  A better life? Ha. Abigail tuts.

  She tells herself this, as she sits here on this bench: that if Mercy hadn’t wrapped herself in a rug and rowed across to Parla to marry a farmer called Jack, then Abigail herself would not exist. Nor would Jack Junior, or Thomasina. Nor would the four Bundy children that Jack went on to make, or their three children, or their children which are yet to be made. It fans out – the lives. And all because Jack Senior looked up one day and saw a woman that he wanted in the same way he might want a bottle of rum or a hearty meal.

  Abigail tries to think this way – of the positives. The happy things.

  So did Mercy. She smiled, all the same. She pressed cold stones against swellings, saved the teeth that Jack knocked out and she stitched her own head one night with a darning needle, her reflection in a polished spoon. She hummed and shrugged and kissed her children, and she found her solace in a leather-bound book called Folklore and Myth. It held the stories she’d grown up with, which she had been told in her own mother’s voice – the Fishman, the speaking birds, the sea stacks off Parla that had been giants once. There was no pain that could not be lessened by turning the pages of it. Mercy’s husband blackened her eyes, or he dragged her over the flagstones by her waist-length hair – but she’d patch herself up, usher her children to bed saying ssh, it doesn’t matter, I’m right as rain and she’d return with the book and unfold it.

  The world is full of magic. You must remember that.

  Abigail does. She does remember it.

  There are fists and sorrow, but there are also seals with human hearts and a Fishman who said there is hope, there is hope. And at the one time when she doubted it – when she felt that there was no magic at all – Jim Coyle came along and saved her. Casually, he’d told her and he had a fish’s tail …

  A sparrow pecks near her feet. It tilts its head, says tink!

  Abigail looks down. She knows how she is talked of, here. Crazy old woman. Maybe, once or twice, a witch … No-one else believes in what Abigail believes in, but these people didn’t have a mother who’d grown up on black beaches, shinned up rocks to steal a fulmar’s egg, tugged teats every morning, watched her friends get buried at sea or who’d sworn she’d seen a sea snake with her own blue eyes. Live far out, and you believe strange things. Live a hard life and you believe in things that make it better. You’ll see these things whereas most people will not – an evening star, a phosphorous sea. Abigail thinks that perhaps most folk are too busy with their jobs and houses and huge televisions to look out of the window and see what’s there. To listen. To breathe sea air.

  Mercy lies here, now. Her bones are under her husband’s, since she died before Jack Senior did. She fell asleep and did not wake up. There was blood on the pillow when Abigail found her. She tugged her mother’s finger, whispered Mummy, wake up.

  Mercy from the water, and Mercy from the winds. But not from a brain haemorrhage when she was still so young. And two years later Thomasina died. On a sly tide – the highest tide of all – she’d run down to Tap Hole in her patchwork pinafore. Why? Everyone asked it. No-one goes into Tap Hole … But Abigail knew why, as they watched her coffin be lowered down.

  If Abigail had managed children, she’d have named them after her lost twin – all of them. Every living thing which she passes is called Thomasina, in her eyes. A bird. A single bud.

  Sixty-eight years since Thomasina died. And yet she does not grow old. She is still firm-bodied, dark-haired. Can still do handstands. She has no age spots, no spaces where teeth had been which she can push her tongue into. No arthritic knees, or varicose veins.

  Abigail is sad, of course. Her sadness is a real, touchable thing and it sits inside her as her organs do. But just as she knows she is sad, she knows this: they are not gone. How could they be? Their spirits swim through the water; their souls flash in the sunlit spray. Abigail has felt them – as she’s pruned her flowers, or sat on the bench by the harbour wall; she has turned, as if expecting to find them standing there.

  No, they are not fully gone. Abigail believes this absolutely. She believes it to the point where she can say she knows.

  There is more to this world than the life we are living.

  There’s a whole other world, under the waves.

  Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina’s gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands – gradually, moving their fingertips over each other’s palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes.

  * * *

  Kitty is in the shop. She is buying bleach, loo roll, tins of beans, wine and a packet of biscuits; with her armful of groceries, Kitty opens the shop door with her foot and slips outside. As she passes the noticeboard, with i
ts ferry schedule and tide times, she pauses. She glimpses a new note pinned there. It’s handwritten, on pink paper. It is Tabitha’s writing – elegant, curled – and it reads, If anyone has information they think might help the man who came ashore, please call Tabitha – Tel: 159. She has described him as six foot five, early forties, dark-haired.

  Kitty presses her lips together.

  She starts to walk, but for the first few steps she is still looking at the noticeboard, still holding the shopping in her arms so that when she steps into the lane she walks straight into a woman who yelps, surprised.

  Sorry! Excuse me. I wasn’t … Did I step on you?

  Rona shakes her head. No. I’m fine.

  Sure?

  Fine. Really.

  Kitty smiles. She shifts her groceries. How’s the lighthouse? I hear you’re busy up there.

  I’m baking now. Need more flour, so … She tries to pass by.

  How are my paintings? Any sales?

  Not for a while.

  Ah well … Kitty thinks the girl looks tired. She has shadows under her eyes and her arms are thin. All that baking and not enough flesh on her bones. What is she, now? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? Have you seen him?

  No. Who?

  This man. The one they found on the stones at Sye.

  Yes. Briefly. You?

  From a distance. Not to talk to. It sounds all so impossible, doesn’t it? An amnesiac washed up like that …

  Silence from Rona.

  Anyway. I’ll let you get on. Good luck with the baking.

  Yes.

  Kitty climbs into the car, passes her groceries onto the passenger seat. Perhaps it’s genes. After all, Sam is just as difficult to talk to, just as reluctant to be looked in the eye. But then there is Nancy, little Nancy Lovegrove who talks more than all of them put together, who envies Kitty’s amber ring and who has told Kitty that she looks like gypsies do in her picture books – black-haired, skirted, with hoops in her ears.

  Rona steps into the shop. She walks with her hands out, as if she might fall. When she comes to the chest freezer, she takes hold of it. Shit …

  Nausea. Guilt. Her breathing is irregular and she tries to slow it. She stares at the tensed backs of her hands.

  This can’t go on, Rona whispers.

  He needs to tell her. He needs to tell Kitty about us, now.

  * * *

  None of the fences are strong. Sheep rub against them and storms tilt them over. Sometimes they are taken by campers for firewood; this infuriates Ian. It is theft, and he says so. Our livelihood, he snaps – pulled up to toast marshmallows on …

  He and Nathan are at Tavey, on the southern coast. The pigs are long gone – but the old metal shelters for the pigs are still here; rainwater sits in the trough. Ian has not been here for years. Why would he come here? But they needed more than pig shelters for their pigs, long ago: they needed strong fences, too, to stop the pigs from wandering – thick wire and firm stakes, driven deep into the ground. And aren’t they wasted, where they are? There are no pigs to keep any more, no vegetable patch to protect. No-one lives at Tavey, now.

  Ian surveys the posts. They’ll do. How many?

  A few. Six? Maybe more.

  You do it. He passes the sledge hammer over.

  Nathan takes it, finds a decent grip. He takes three big swings, catches the nearest fence-post with two of them. The post shifts to its left. The hole it sits in widens, so that the men can see dark earth.

  See if that’s done it.

  Ian pulls the fence-post clear of the earth, drops it to the floor and he says, talked to this man yet?

  Nope.

  Going to?

  Nathan exhales. Don’t plan to. Reckon I’ll just leave him be.

  Let him find his memory … He hears his own sarcasm.

  You think he’s lying?

  Ian looks up. He has been clipping the wire from the wooden post, and he says come on, Nathe. An amnesiac gets washed ashore? I don’t think so.

  Then what? He’s nothing to gain by lying.

  Hasn’t he? How about a free home, free food? Hiding from the police? Who knows what he was prowling round this place for the other day … Maybe he’s going to win our trust and then rob us blind. Give it time …

  The post is thrown behind them, onto the grass. Nathan swings the sledgehammer at a second post which leaves the earth more easily and as they both kneel down to pull it free, the younger brother says Tab says it can happen. She’s looked online, read her books. Trauma can do it.

  Ian does not reply.

  He is thinking, at that moment, of their mother. He wonders how she feels, kneeling in her flowerbed, knowing a man wears her dead son’s clothes. He knows that if he asked her, she’d say I’m fine. But he doubts she is.

  They haul the posts to the Land Rover, heave the sledgehammer into the back.

  You been drinking today, Nathe? He expects to be sworn at for that.

  What?

  You smell of it.

  No I bloody haven’t. His brother is incredulous.

  Last night?

  Yes, last night – at Milton’s. I had a beer with Milton. What’s wrong with that?

  There are conversations that are too known and tiring to have. This is one of them. This, Ian thinks, is all too heavy to be brought out again, as a chest might be hauled out from under a bed, the dust blown off. He hasn’t the energy to talk of this now, or to remember.

  Just get in the car. Let’s mend this fence.

  The car rolls over the grass. The windows are down, so that the breeze moves through it and flutters the litter on the car floor – receipts, newspapers, crisp packets, a plastic bag.

  Silence, between them. The sheep bleat.

  Maybe he’s the Fishman, Nathan says. Heard that?

  Yep.

  Aunt Abigail’s certain.

  Ian smiles – a quick, wry smile. Aunt Abigail’s fucking nuts.

  And briefly it is like they’re not middle-aged men, but boys – talking like they used to, laughing behind their hands or sharing out toffees as they sat on hay bales. One for you, one for me, one for you … The years vanish, briefly. Ian looks across at Nathan and sees the boy who lost his two front milk teeth by tripping on the quayside, and whose dream was to fly to the moon.

  We spoke of him. And when we weren’t speaking of him, we were thinking of him. We were all thinking what does he know? Why is he here?

  And who …?

  Who could he be?

  The stranger himself is asking who …? He wants to know more of the Fishman. It is how he is known on Parla, now; it is the name he answers to, or lifts his head at. It is what Maggie calls him – for she has no other name.

  If you want to know more about yourself …

  He wears a dark-red shirt. The skin on his forearms is already darkening from his days here; his hair shines in the afternoon sun. The Fishman passes the viewpoint, the telephone box. And as the path starts to lead down towards the boats – the Morning Star, Sea Fairy, Lady Caroline – he hears what he’s been listening for: a dainty call of bells.

  He has to duck, to enter the house.

  Abigail is radiant. I’ve been waiting for you.

  The Old Fish Store is a dark house. It has thick walls and small, square windows – and so it is also cool. He steps into a room with a table lamp. There is a small fire, despite the days of sun.

  Jim Coyle is sitting in the corner. He tries to stand as the Fishman enters but the Fishman says please – there’s no need. He goes to him, bends and puts his hand into Jim’s hand. It is their first meeting – or their first proper one.

  Ah, says Jim. Hello.

  His wife says look who’s here.

  I’ve been told I am … half-fish?

  Abigail smiles. The Fishman of Sye. She takes the heavy, leather-bound book, shows him the fourteenth page.

  And there he is – there is his own face, his own body. There is his height and breadth; even the dark hair on his chest is
his hair. The stance of the Fishman as he walks onto land is how he himself walks and stands, and all he can do is stare at this. He has few words. This book …

  It was my mother’s. All the island stories …

  The man in the drawing has black eyes. His tail, when he has it, is as silvery as stars.

  Surely you remember? That you came from the water?

  I can’t …

  But he can still taste salt. If he licks his lips, he is sure he can taste it; his lips are still dry from his time at sea. And his hands; he looks down at these two hands of his which are no longer grazed or rough or red but that old wound remains – the circular wound like a dark-orange eye. A hook, perhaps. Or a place of broken skin, made by a lobster’s grip. How is he here? How did it happen?

  Jim has seen you before. Haven’t you, Jim?

  The milky-eyed man has heard every word. He sits very still, hands in his lap, and without moving he says yes, I saw you. A long time ago. I saw your face and your raised tail.

  At this moment, the Fishman feels their goodness. He feels it as he feels the pages of Folklore and Myth – clear, and real. And this story, he knows, is old; this story – his story – is as worn and warm as a blanket might be, a blanket that so many children or adults have wrapped themselves up in on stormy nights or when feeling lonely or afraid. When he looks across to Abigail her eyes are shining. She, too, has been warmed by this tale.

  How long can I stay for?

  Not long. Until the next full moon.

  What if I like it? Have reason to stay?

  She shakes her head kindly. The Fishman needs water; he is half-fish. In the story he must always go away.

  Jim listens. He listens, and he breathes the man’s smell – grass, soap, the slight fish tang that Maggie can have when she’s been on her boat. There is something else, too – what else does he smell of? He hears the book’s pages creak as they are turned.

  Jim cannot see. But he has learnt that sight does not merely come from the optic nerve and retina, and cones within the eye. He can see a sausage grilling merely from its sound and he can see the Lovegroves’ cat from how she feels under his hands. And he can see this man, now – for he remembers the bearded face, the huge, raised tail off Sye. And Jim wants, at that moment, for Abigail to go – for her to pop into the kitchen or pad upstairs to the bathroom for a minute or two, no longer. He wants to reach for this man. He wants to take his hand again, to feel his hand with both of his own, and he wants to talk as two men with secrets will always talk – sparsely, low-voiced. But Abigail does not go. Instead she says Maggie loves this book, you know. She has sat where you are sitting too many times to count. She was here the other night, talking of you.