The Silver Dark Sea

by Susan Fletcher

  Yes, maybe. She has been angry and embittered for too long.

  Now Emmeline sits at the kitchen table, and what had been anger – what she had formed into anger, as a child forms sand – has gone, and the tiredness that followed it has, also, gone, and what she is left with is pure sadness. She sees the waste. She sees the absolute waste of life that happened in an afternoon sea nearly four years ago, which can never be calculated in any meaningful terms. But other wastes – other wasted lives. Emmeline has always been called angry. So cold, so walled-up. And yes, she has been. She has been angry for too many reasons to ever count. She has burned because Sea Fairy tilted and a boy fell in; she is angry because Tom chose to kick off his shoes and dive in without stopping to think of his own life or the lives of his mother, his family, his wife. And she is angry because she feels, sometimes, as if she’s the only one who misses him, as if she and she alone still looks for him on beaches or in the faces of those who step off the Morning Star. She feels angry because it isn’t fair – he was thirty-seven, and her youngest, and yet she herself is still here when she would gladly bargain with God if He would listen – my life for his life. But God doesn’t work that way. Even Lorcan says He does not, and she is angry, too, at the death certificate. She is angry that it talks of something she has never been able to see with her eyes – as if that certificate and the words on it are lying words, uninformed. Perhaps she is angry that she has been this angry. It is not the face of grief she had ever thought she’d had.

  But then, she was angry before it. Her boxed rage did not begin with Tom diving into the water. When, then? At what moment did it seep into her blood and bones? It is too hard to know. It is hard to know at what point she knew that Tabitha was the favoured one – if not favoured by their parents, then favoured by genes and character. Fair-haired Tab, stubborn but angelic and without the heavy Bright hips that anchored Emmeline on the windy days. Tab, who could silence the local teenage boys by simply walking past them, whilst Emmeline had to say excuse me three times to get noticed in the island’s shop: anger had come, she knows, from that. And whilst Emmeline was scraping the sheep dung off the soles of her boots before walking into a house where no-one else had bothered to, Tabitha was on the mainland in her nurse’s uniform, writing letters home that were signed with a cheery bye for now! and after that she swanned off to save lives in the parched worlds of drought and war. Quite the heroine. And if she is honest, there have been days when Emmeline has regretted the choice she made in her teens – to marry a man who could let days pass by without asking her a question or remarking on a single part of Emmeline’s own life. My life … Which she had handed over to a sheep farm and the dour farmer in it too easily – too easily. Once, she found a photograph from their wedding day and tore it down the middle. Later, guilt-flushed, she’d mended it: she will never regret – never regret – her children. But if she hadn’t married Jack Bundy, what might she have been? Who might she have grown into? Not the farmer’s wife. She might have left the island as Tabitha did – taken classes, gone to parties that she only ever heard about from her sister’s tales. And she has been angry, too; that low, simmering, unreasonable anger that builds slowly until she almost feared wrapping her hands around a knife’s handle and using it against something, anything. She did so many unseen, unthanked jobs. She scrubbed pots whilst others slept; she cleaned the bathroom daily; she wrung the necks of chickens that were too old to lay; she polished school shoes and made five birthday cakes a year when no-one made one for her in return, or even remembered her birthday at all, and she’d hear Jack Senior say Emma’s not blessed with her looks, is she? and she’d wash and cook and iron and worm the dog and mourn her dead parents and all the while – all the while – she’d be nursing a headache or a bruise under clothes. So often she thought they wouldn’t miss me. They’d only notice that I’d gone when the laundry basket was full.

  Not true, of course. The children might not have thanked her for their favourite sandwiches in their packed lunch but she knows they loved her and love her still. Sometimes Tom would leave a daisy on her pillow. Other times, Nathan would come to her and cling like a limpet so that she had to prise him off her, finger by finger – there you go … They love her and she loves them, and so she can feel guilty, sometimes, about the anger she has. You raised four happy children by doing what you did. But still, she could be angry. Oh, how she could be.

  It was how I survived him.

  It was how I found the fuel to wake up every morning and go to bed at night.

  It was how Emmeline stayed in her marriage. How she stayed strong.

  Anger was what she knew. And so it was anger she turned to when Tom went overboard. Anger was her help of choice. She went for it instinctively – like the painkillers she came to know did the job, routinely, so that she always bought them.

  Her boy. He had always been so happy. In the early days, he sucked his thumb. Once, she found him and Nathan sleeping in the tractor’s cab – sharing the seat, entwined so that she wasn’t sure whose leg was whose. He’d loved stories. If he discovered something – anything – he’d want to show them, running to Wind Rising with a breathless guess what?

  She cries.

  She wants him back so badly, but she can’t have him.

  A box of tissues sits beside her. For the next three hours, there is the steady rasp and puff of tissues being pulled from it, and the sound, also, of her blowing her nose. She sobs. It is the sobbing which shakes her, which is rhythmic, almost spasmodic. It is a lifetime’s crying, and it flows.

  * * *

  So she cries. There are damp buds of tissue on the table, on the kitchen floor.

  The sun makes its journey from the east towards the west.

  Maggie and the Fishman walk on the flat sand. There are the coils of lugworms, the shine of upturned shells. She tells him the names of each weed they come by – channelled wrack, oar-weed. This is laver, which … And she stops, unable to tell him more. All she can think is how she will miss him. He knows; he understands this. He holds her against him, kisses her hair and they look out at the water.

  I did not want the sun to lower itself, and go. I did not want the moon to come. But who are we to stop it all?

  That night at Tavey, we talked of coincidence. And luck – good and bad.

  We talked of the world’s magic, of all the tiny miracles, and we performed our own warm, human kind of it.

  * * *

  It is not fully dark. It cannot be fully dark when there are no clouds and the moon is one night away from being as full as a moon can be.

  A young woman climbs over the electric fence. She climbs very neatly, in her walking boots.

  Walking boots, jeans, a woollen cardigan over a sleeveless top.

  Leah Grace Bundy. She walks with her arms swinging, with intent.

  Cool air, a strong sea smell. She cannot remember the last time she was walking on Parla this late. It looks small, somehow. The houses look toy-like with their curtains closed, their bedroom lights going out one by one. She tastes salt as she licks her lips.

  Past the viewpoint, past the red telephone box.

  At the harbour, she finds herself a pebble and stands in front of the harbourmaster’s house, looks up. Who is she, these days? She barely knows.

  Sam is lying on his bed when he hears it. Tack.

  He lifts his head.

  It comes again. Tack.

  He goes to the window, leans out. For one small moment he does not know her; he can’t be sure who she is. Then Leah smiles. She beckons to him.

  What is it? On the quayside, in his bare feet. Are you alright?

  I wanted to say goodnight to you in person, for once – not by a message on a phone.

  She does not look like Leah, or rather she looks like the Leah he used to know. The Leah before.

  They do not go far. They walk to the sea wall that shelters one side of the harbour and they climb up onto it. Sam, barefoot, winces – ow ow …

  L
et’s just sit here, then. Save your toes.

  They can still see the mainland in the moonlight. A few orange lights cluster at the harbour; further down the coast they can see another town. And to the south Sam can make out the tiny lighthouse on Utta’s end. Between all these things is the sea.

  She gives out warmth – he can feel it.

  I love how the sea sounds, she says.

  Still? I reckon I’ve grown used to it.

  What about now? Listen.

  They can hear the open water against the sea wall. The harbour’s side is quiet, but beneath them in the darkness there is the slop and suck of it. It knocks back and forth.

  He says do you still stay away from Lock-and-Key?

  I haven’t been back yet. But I will.

  Really?

  Yes. Soon. I think I should. It wasn’t the beach’s fault, after all. And she leans to the side, nudges Sam’s shoulder with her shoulder in a gesture of comfort or soft reprimand. And it wasn’t yours …

  Yeah, well.

  It wasn’t. You need to know that, Sam.

  He smiles a little. He cannot help it – he smiles at the fact that Leah who has not left Parla in over three years and who hardly left Wind Rising for most of that time is talking about progression and the future. Perhaps he is dreaming this.

  You know she is happy now? Maggie?

  It is not a question that he answers. But yes, of course he knows. He knows more than Leah does – more than anybody does. And as he sits on the wall, looking out at the mainland’s night-time lights, he thinks should I tell Leah? What Maggie has told him? And what will, tomorrow night, come to pass? He could tell her now; he could hint, show her the smallest part of it and let her imagine the incredible rest. Like orca, Sam thinks. He saw a pod of them, once – off the side of the Star. All he really saw of them was their patch of whiteness – so little in the sea is such a perfect white – and in the days that followed, he’d had to conjure up the rest of them. Their teeth, their eyes.

  But he says nothing about it. He can’t. He promised Maggie, and he keeps his word.

  Do you think he’s the Fishman? Honestly?

  I love to think that he could be. That’s the answer I want.

  Leah takes Sam’s hand. She reaches across, lifts his wrist out of his lap and places it in hers. It is both shy and bold – he does not know which. And he does not care which. He only likes that she is here – here, in person. Her palm fits against his palm.

  They walk to where the lane begins. Sam says go there on Saturday morning.

  Saturday? The day after tomorrow?

  The day after tomorrow.

  Where?

  Lock-and-Key. The sly tide is coming. It’s due tomorrow night. It means there’ll be more shells, more driftwood … Who knows what you’ll find?

  They say goodnight on the quayside. It is spoken – not typed on a small, blue screen.

  * * *

  At High Haven, Nathan turns his wedding band over and over. When he slides it off, it leaves a perfect dent behind – such white skin that it glows, in this bedroom. It is brighter than the wedding ring itself, so that he thinks I will always be married. We will always be married.

  He dials the mobile number that he knows by heart.

  It rings four times. He can feel his pulse in his ears.

  It’s me.

  Nathan. What do you want?

  I want you to come back.

  Nathe, it’s late …

  I love you more than I have ever loved anything.

  A pause. In the distance, a siren. He can hear her breath; no answer but her breathing.

  Kitty sinks to the floor of a hotel room. She is eye-level with a fraying curtain. She can see the house at High Haven – the blue vase on the windowsill, the tea stain on the rug by the bedroom door. Salt in his hair and holes in his jeans, and Nathan does not talk of love. So rarely has he ever spoken as he’s spoken now. Sometimes, she has ached to be touched; but sometimes it has been the words she’s been wanting – just the words and nothing else.

  Nathan closes his eyes. His puts his hand against his forehead, and in a rush he is holding a towel out for her on a beach, or he is counting her toes after sex – one, two … – or he is feeling the draught of air as she passes in the hallway, the scent of the air, or he is watching how she pads barefoot down the lane, or she is dancing, or she is above him with her full, female shape, or she is glancing over her shoulder in a red dress with her shoes in her left hand, swinging as she walks away, or she is marrying him, with perfect skin and a white veil, saying yes, yes. And he says everything is wrong without you. I miss you more than I can tell you.

  A long silence. It is the longest he’s known, in all his life.

  Good is what she says – good.

  * * *

  Lorcan once told me there is a season for everything. Moons are thin, and then they are full; tides come in and go out.

  We spend our last night together. Me – the widow, the blonde girl with lines by her eyes; and him, the man who came from the sea.

  The Nurse and the Wasted Heart

  The lighthouse-keeper who knew his sea shanties and who played cards on a green velvet-topped table had two daughters – two Bright girls. One was straight-backed and sharp-tongued, and she married a farmer called Jack. The other – the younger – became a nurse.

  At eighteen, Tabitha went across the water. She went to a medical school on the mainland that glinted with needles and scalpels, where the beds were hard and the tea was stewed. Everything smelt of disinfectant. She, like the others, wore a blue uniform. She had to pin her hair back, tuck it under her cap.

  New words. Ventricular, arrhythmia.

  And love. That, too, was a new word. It came on a Monday morning in a lecture room – wood-smelling, half-lit. Rain on the windows. Tabitha was chewing on a pencil when the door opened, five minutes late; she glanced across, still chewing. And the latecomer had an armful of books and a rain-wet collar and mouthed I’m sorry to the rest of the room. Tabitha lowered the pencil and looked down at the desk. There were many things she had loved, before now. She had loved her mother’s roast chicken dinners, and candlelight, and the seals’ calling in the evenings, and she’d loved Christmas Eves and her father’s peanut jar. She loved how a thin, drab anemone would bloom when the tide came across it – from nothing at all to a broad, open, flame-coloured flower that waved, and waved, and brushed her ankles as she waded out. Tabitha had adored these things – but this feeling was different. It was stronger. Her heart thumped in her chest.

  Tabitha Bright woke up, as a woman, in those hospital wards.

  By day she took notes. She swabbed, and read thermometers. She learnt how to insert a catheter, and she stroked the veined hands of the old. Do you need something to take the pain away?

  By night, in her tiny single room, she burned.

  This latecomer. This pink-lipped, brown-eyed, honey-scented girl who had sat herself down, brushed the rain from her coat.

  It was not what Tabitha expected. She’d not expected it at all. Her heart had not even flinched, till then. All she had known, on the island, was that her heart was sturdy and that one day it would love in its full entirety: she had never known what, or whom. Once, in her early teens, she had felt something like this: a dark December storm had come from the north, and a wave struck the lighthouse tower. It had wrapped itself around the stonework with a boom so deep and thunderous that Tabitha had felt it, under her ribs. Her belly had echoed, and her legs had shaken. And she’d reached out to keep her balance, thinking what is …? It was like nothing else she’d known. It was as if something momentous had nearly happened, but not quite. A foreshadowing, perhaps. The storm passed but Tabitha decided that love would feel like that – wise, all-consuming, visceral – when, at last, it came.

  She was right. It did feel like that. She’d had to take hold of the wooden desk when this trainee nurse mouthed I’m sorry …

  In time, they became friends. Thi
s girl was absent-minded, apologetic; she curled her hair on Sunday nights as she listened to the Hit Parade. They shared umbrellas as they ran through the streets, and blew strawberry-flavoured bubbles in the picture house, and when they changed the hospital bed-sheets together Tabitha would think how beautiful she looked, amongst all this white, all this billowing, bridal, unblemished white.

  Her.

  Who was like a wave, booming. Who turned the drab world into colour and movement and light.

  She thinks of her now. She thinks of her now, over forty years on – the person she’d loved and longed to be loved by. But not all things work out.

  Tabitha never mentioned it. She never spoke of love. There was no point. The nurse pinched her cheeks before dates with a boy whose eyes were different colours – one brown and one blue. Have you seen his eyes, Tab? Have you?

  So yes, she knew. No point. It was entirely one-sided love.

  Tabitha looks out to sea. She looks out to sea, and feels sad. In the past, she has wished, and wished – but what good does it do? Nothing could have been done. The honey-scented nurse used to take her ponytail in both hands – half in each hand – and pull it, dividing the two halves of hair to tighten the band that fastened it and all Tabitha could do was watch as she did this, before setting off down the ward with the squeak squeak of her shoes. Even now, it hurts. That ponytail is as clear as it was, and those rubber-soled shoes still sing. I am a nurse, Tabitha thinks – but for this, there are no syrups to be poured onto a spoon, no pills to be placed on the tongue. There is the body, and there is the heart, and they are different things. And whose heart can be ordered? Tabitha’s cannot be. The other nurse’s heart could not be swayed from its course, or nature. It was just bad luck – what else could be said? Hearts are beyond controlling. Wilful, hopeful, wonderful things.

  Even the Fishman can’t help me with this one. She smiles.

  Four decades, or more. It is the only time she has ever felt it – the inner, unbearable boom of love’s wave. After it, she left. It hurt her too much to stay, so Tabitha chose to nurse in foreign countries – where she could count the ribs of a child through its thinness, where the only shelter they had from a punishing sun was a square of white canvas tied between trees. It was a tough, tender, relentless business where no-one ever talked of love; love was a luxury, a sideline that had no bearing on malaria or dysentery, on who lived or died. She held limbs where the kneecaps were by far the fattest part, lifted children who were streaming out foul, brown water and doctors would touch her shoulders and say are you OK? Do you need a break? She did her best to forget the nurse. Sometimes she did, for there was so much to do. There are things that matter more than love. But then there would be sunsets of such extraordinary beauty that she missed her beyond words. I wish she could see this sunset, or this night sky, or this bird.