The Drowned Sailor

by Benjamin Parsons

Ravella was pleased to accept his invitation.

  As always happens when the sun shines, the memory of the dour skies that preceded it was driven from their minds, and they wandered up to Hurlevor Point together marvelling at the refreshing change in the air, the clarity of the gentle salt breezes, the blithe existence of seagulls, and the quantity of cow-parsley in the hedgerows. They came to the shore in deep conference, and Trevick gently drew her attention to the water, which dappled the pebbles tranquilly.

  ‘What do you think of the sea now?’ he asked. ‘It’s hard to even imagine how rough it looked when you found me here.’

  Ravella smiled in sympathy and confessed she would have to make friends with the ocean after all, if she could.

  Her companion surveyed the horizon, broken as it was by jagged stacks of rock, with his habitual stern expression, and she took a sly opportunity to study his impressive profile and dark eyes. They were eyes, she concluded, habituated to contemplating deep and complex matters, and it seemed to her that poets must think altogether so often, that the thoughts must vex them to distraction eventually. She comforted herself that her own thinking was concise and straight to the point; she tended to shy away from what he would probably find inspirational, because she did not care to dabble with concepts whose outcomes she could not determine personally. However, we often find that we do not always have things our own way, as you shall hear.

  Now Trevick interrupted his reverie and said: ‘Ravella, let me show you something.’

  He led her up a short rise onto a sort of rocky promontory, from which vantage they could overlook the whole vista of the headland, and beyond it, the village and cove. He drew close and pointed out over the water, breathing to her to look carefully, which she did, and saw only the green currents weaving amongst the blue, rippling over the surface. She asked what she was supposed to be looking at, but he hushed her, and bid her wait a moment— and in that moment a fat white cloud idly passing across the sun changed the light imperceptibly, and now the waves appeared to run clear, and uncover beneath them a tracery of darker green, shimmering on the sea bed, a very garden of patterned foliage under the water, forming a broad square maze. This, it seems, was an image of ancient walls, clothed in weeds, the foundations of a mansion laid out beneath the sea.

  ‘That’s where I was swimming when I got into trouble. There are all manner of weird fishes and plants out there. The ruins shelter them, like a reef.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard something about that house,’ said Ravella. ‘I believe I share a room with a certain cavalier who was in love with the late owner of it.’

  ‘She had plenty of cavaliers in love with her, if the legends are true,’ smiled Trevick. ‘She was reputedly the most beautiful lady in England.’

  ‘She was very fortunate!’

  ‘They say she made her own fortune. She married the lord of that manor, who was old and rich, and soon died, which put her in a happy situation enough.’

  ‘Very enterprising.’

  He laughed and went on. ‘Yes, but she soon frittered away her inheritance on loose living— and looser men, like your ghostly roommate. She had plenty of admirers, though, so she just married another rich one and moved him into Hurlevor Point. But he went off to sea, and was away in the Americas for seven years before a report came back that he was wrecked on his way home, and drowned.’

  ‘So she inherited again?’ asked Ravella, taken up with the tale.

  ‘Of course she did— and squandered all that, too, without doubt. So, she tried the same trick over, and married, and was widowed a third time.’

  ‘The merry widow indeed! But what did the third one die of? And was he rich?’

  ‘The richest of the lot! He went the same way as the second one, and the first too, for that matter— yes, they all drowned at sea, apparently. And my Lady Trevick was left very well off, you can be sure.’

  ‘A successful career!’ commended Ravella, looking out at the submerged ruins with a kind of awe.

  Trevick half-smiled, and murmured: ‘Oh, but she came to a bad end.’

  ‘Did she? I’m sure she was much too clever for that.’

  ‘Cleverness had nothing to do with it,’ countered Trevick. ‘Fate took a hand.’

  ‘Fate!’

  ‘Fate,’ he affirmed. ‘You see, this last husband had a sister who loved her brother dearly, and after he was reported dead she had a dream that his ghost came into her bedroom, drew back the curtains of her bed and announced in a hollow voice that he had been murdered by his wife! Well of course this sister went into fits, and told everybody who would listen what she’d seen— and since Lady Trevick was never much liked, public opinion got up against her. A party gathered together and stormed up here demanding to search the house, which they did, bursting open every door of every single room. There were seven hundred rooms by all accounts, but three doors were sealed up, so they were broken down, and inside each were discovered the bodies of her three husbands, with their throats cut.’

  Ravella was appalled. ‘Well, but did she escape?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said he, ‘because the devil came and dragged her screaming down into the sea, and the house with her, which is the legend of how it comes to be offshore now, under the water.’

  Ravella shuddered, and eyed the waves warily. ‘What a pretty fairytale! I knew I dreaded the sea for a reason. What bad ends come of it!’

  Trevick laughed and thoughtlessly put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t tell me I’ve undone all my good work already? There’s nothing bad about the sea really, only the things we associate with it. You see, I always link the shoreline here with happy days. This is where I learned to swim as a child, and to sail off the point, and to dive out at the ruin. They’re all fond memories. The sea is what you make of it.’

  Ravella frowned. She was caught up in contemplating just one of those mysteries that she usually shunned when they hovered near; but perhaps it was about time she addressed these vexing matters. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right. It’s no good me dreading the sea, when I could make him into my ally after all.’ —and she took a resolution, then and there, that she would never suffer herself to be caught out by ghosts, sisters, rabbles or the devil himself, at any time.

  Now turning to Trevick, she said they would both have the sea as their escape in future.

  ‘Escape?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, from unwanted thoughts.’ She began to pick her way down the slope to the beach again, mentioning casually over her shoulder: ‘I heard from Clare the other day,’ because she knew exactly where she wanted his thoughts to be.

  He frowned at the uncalled-for remembrance, and did not reply or follow her.

  Ravella blithely continued. ‘She seems content enough with Guy Laurence. I hope he makes her happy.’

  Trevick brooded further, and folded his arms. Ravella, having reached the shingle, looked up at him and laughed.

  ‘I’m being impertinent,’ she said, ‘so while I’m about it, can I ask an impertinent question?’

  ‘Do you usually need permission?’

  ‘No, but it usually obliges a reply. The question is this: has the sea mended your broken heart yet?’

  He smiled grimly. ‘You were never in love, were you, Ravella?’

  ‘Oh ho! Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because you’re too blunt. You don’t know what it’s like to have your moods changed against your will— or at least, you don’t remember.’ He made his way down towards her.

  ‘I’ll have to treat you with kid gloves, then,’ she said, ‘if you’re still so sore and sensitive.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was— I only said that you are too blunt. But perhaps you have been in love, and you’ve learned to hide it well.’

  ‘Perhaps I have.’

  ‘I wonder what you’re like in love?’

  She considered. ‘Dizzy, I suppose,’ she decided.

  ‘But you’re dizzying now!’ he laughed. ‘You dizzy me!’


  ‘That says more about you being in love than me,’ she told him, ‘with Clare.’

  ‘Am I!’ he replied, and pursued her as she stepped off to the water’s edge. ‘So if I’m in love, as you say, what am I feeling?’

  ‘However would I know?’

  ‘You told me that love is dizzy, and I’m dizzy— so tell me what else I’m feeling.’

  ‘It’s not for me to say.’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t know? You’ve never been in love?’

  She turned her head aside.

  ‘Then you don’t remember,’ he pressed.

  ‘Oh, I remember,’ she began, and was about to continue, but, looking out over the waves, was distracted, and remained silent. Maybe she recalled a time, longsince passed, when a man carried her in his arms and the air was full of bells; or times when they would go looking for shells on the wet rocks in hot stormy weather; or when the moon shone red and the corn-stubble hurt their feet; or when she watched his cloudy breath while they stood on a jetty —but then, maybe her mind wandered on none of these things, and she merely feigned contemplation while she gazed at the foam trickling amongst the pebbles. Coming to herself, she noticed Trevick standing very near, watching her face, and glanced at him slyly.

  He said quietly: ‘So you have been in love before, and you remember all about it. But I wonder whether, having loved once, it’s possible to love again?’ He gazed at her earnestly.

  ‘I can’t tell,’ she answered, with an ingenuous look. ‘Could you ever love again, after Clare?’

  He