The Courage Consort

by Michel Faber

  Before descending the stairs to the breakfast room, Siân took a swig from the peculiar little complimentary bottle of mineral water and looked out over the rooftops of Whitby's east side. The rising sun glowed yellow and orange on the terra-cotta ridges. Obscured by the buildings and a litter of sails and boat masts, the water of the river Esk twinkled indigo. Deep in Siân's abdomen, a twinge of pain made her wince. Was it indigestion, or something to do with the lump in her hip? She mustn't think about it. Go away, Venerable Bede! 'In the seventh year of her illness,' he wrote of Saint Hilda, 'the pain passed into her innermost parts.' Whereupon, of course, she died.

  Siân went downstairs to the breakfast room, hoping that if she could find something to eat, the pain in her innermost parts might settle down. It was much too early, though, and the room was dim and deserted, with tea towels shrouding the cereal boxes and the milk jug empty. Siân considered eating a banana, but it was the last one in the bowl and she felt, absurdly, that this would make the act sinful somehow. Instead she ate a couple of grapes and wandered around the room, touching each identically laid, melancholy table with her fingertips. She seated herself at one, thinking of the Benedictine monks and nuns in their refectories, forbidden to speak except for the reciting of Holy Scripture. Dreamily pretending she was one of them, she lifted her hands into the pale light and gestured in the air the mute signals for fish, for bread, for wine.

  'Are you all right?'

  Siân jerked, almost knocking a teacup off the table.

  'Yes, yes,' she assured the Horse and Griffin's kitchen maid, large as life in the doorway. 'Fine, thank you.' She sighed. 'Just going batty.'

  'I don't wonder,' said the kitchen maid. 'All them bodies.'

  'Bodies?'

  'The skeletons you've been diggin' up.' The girl made a face. 'Sixty of 'em, I read in the Whitby Gazette.'

  'Sixty graves. We haven't actually—'

  'D'you 'ave to touch 'em? I'd be sickened off. You wear gloves, I 'ope.'

  Siân smiled, shook her head. The girl's look of horrified awe beamed at her across the breakfast room like a ray, and she basked shyly in it: Siân the daredevil. For the sake of the truth, she ought to disabuse this girl of her fantasy of archaeologists rooting elbow deep in grisly human remains, and tell her that the dig was really very like gardening except less eventful. But instead, she raised her hands and wiggled the fingers, as if to say, Ordinary mortals cannot know what I have touched.

  'Braver than me, you are,' said the girl, unveiling the milk.

  ***

  To help time pass, Siân crossed the bridge from the less corrupted east side to the more newfangled west, and strolled along Pier Road towards the sea. Thinly gilded with sunlight, the façades of the amusement arcades and clairvoyants' cabins looked almost grand, their windows and shuttered doors deflecting the glare. Siân dawdled in Marine Parade to peer through the window of what, until 1813, had been the Whitby Commercial Newsroom. 'The Award-Winning Dracula Experience' said the poster, followed by a list of attractions, including voluptuous female vampires and Christopher Lee's cape.

  The fish quay, deserted just now, was nevertheless infested with loitering seagulls. They wandered around aimlessly in the sunrise, much as the town's young men would do after sunset, or simply snoozed on top of crates and the roofs of the moored boats.

  Siân walked to the lighthouse, then left the terra firma of Aislaby sandstone to tread the timber deck of the pier's end. Careful not to snag the heels of her shoes on the gaps in the wood, she allowed herself the queasy thrill of peeking at the restless waves churning far beneath her feet. She wasn't sure if she could swim anymore; it had been a long time.

  She stood at the very end of the west pier and cupped her hand across her brow to look over at the east one. The two piers were like outstretched arms curving into the ocean, to gather boats from the wild waters of the North Sea into the safety of Whitby harbour. Siân was standing on a giant fingertip.

  She consulted her watch and walked back to the mainland. Her work was on the other side.

  Ascending the East Cliff, halfway up the one hundred and ninety-nine stone steps, Siân paused for a breather. Much as she loved to walk, she'd overdone it, perhaps, so early in the day. She should keep in mind that instead of going to sit at a desk now, she was going to spend the whole day digging in the earth.

  Siân traced the imperfections of the stone step with her shoe, demarcating the erosion caused by the foot traffic of centuries. On just this spot, this wide plateaulike step amongst many narrow ones, the townspeople of ancient Whitby laid down the coffins they must carry up to the churchyard, and had paused, black-clad and red-faced, before resuming their doleful ascent. Only now that tourists and archaeologists had finally taken the place of mourners did these steps no longer accommodate dead people—apart from the occasional obese American holidaymaker who collapsed with a heart attack before reaching the hallowed photo opportunity.

  Siân peered down towards Church Street and saw a man jogging—no, not jogging, running—towards the steps. At his side, a dog—a gorgeous animal, the size of a spaniel perhaps, but with a lovely thick coat, like a wolf's. The man wasn't bad-looking himself, broad-shouldered and well-muscled, pounding the cobbled surface of the street with his expensive-looking trainers. He was dressed in shorts and a loose, thin T-shirt, a shivery proposition in the early morning chill, but he was obviously well up to it. His face was calm as he ran, his dark brown hair, free of sweat, flopping back and forth across his brow. The dog looked up at him frequently as he ran, revealing the vanilla and caramel colouring in its mane.

  I want, I want, I want, thought Siân, then turned away, blushing. Thirty-four years old, and still thinking like a child! Saint Hilda would have been ashamed of her. And what exactly was she hankering after, anyway: the man or the dog? She wasn't even sure.

  Another glance at her watch confirmed there was still a little while to fill before the first of her colleagues was likely to roll up. They all slept soundly, she gathered, in spite of the dawn chorus.

  'Hello-o!'

  She turned. The handsome young man was sprinting up the hundred and ninety-nine steps, as easily as if he were on flat ground. His dog was bounding ahead, narrowing the distance to Siân two steps at a time. For an instant Siân felt primeval fear at the approach of a powerful fanged creature, then relaxed as the dog scudded to a halt and sat to attention in front of her, panting politely, its head tilted to one side, just like a dog on a cheesy greeting card.

  'He won't hurt you!' said the man, catching up, panting a little himself now.

  'I can see that,' she said, hesitantly reaching forward to stroke the dog's mane.

  'He's got an eye for the ladies,' said the man.

  'Nothing personal, then.'

  The man came to a halt one step below her, so as not to intimidate her with his tallness: he must be six foot three, at least. With every breath his pectorals swelled into his shirt in two faint haloes of sweat, and faded again.

  'You're very fit,' she said, trying to keep her tone the same as if she were saying, 'You're out and about very early.'

  'Well, if you don't use it,' he shrugged, 'you lose it.'

  The dog was becoming quietly ecstatic, pushing his downy black brow up towards Siân's palm, following her fingers with his eyes, hoping she would get around to stroking the back of his head, the right ear, the left, the part of the right ear she'd missed the first time.

  'What sort of dog is he?'

  'Finnish Lapphund,' said the man, squatting on his haunches, as if seeking to qualify for a bit of stroking himself.

  'Beautiful.'

  'A hell of a lot of work.'

  She knelt, carefully so that he wouldn't notice any problem with her left leg. 'Doesn't look it,' she said, stroking the dog's back all the way to his plushly fringed tail. All three of them were eye to eye now.

  'You bring out his contemplative side, obviously,' the man remarked, grinning. 'With me, it's a different sto
ry. I'll be an Olympic runner by the time he's through with me.'

  Siân stroked on and on, a little self-conscious about the ardour with which she was combing the creature's sumptuous pelt. 'You must have known what you were taking on when you got him,' she suggested.

  'Well, no, he was actually my father's dog. My father died three weeks ago.'

  Siân stopped stroking. 'Oh, I'm sorry.'

  'No need. He and I weren't close.' The dog, bereft of caresses, was poking his snout in the air, begging for more. The man obliged, ruffling the animal's ears, pulling the furry face towards his. 'I didn't like our dad much, did I, hmm? Grumpy old man, wasn't 'e?'

  Siân noticed the size of the man's hands: unusually large. A superstitious chill tickled her spine, like a tiny trickle of water. She distracted herself from it by noting the estuary twang of the man's accent.

  'Did you come up from London?'

  'Yeah.' He frowned a little, intent on proving he could please the dog as much as the next pair of hands. 'To bury the old man. And to sort out the house. Haven't decided what I'll do yet. It's in Loggerhead's Yard, so it's worth a mint. I might sell it; I might live in it. As a building, it's a hell of a lot nicer than my flat in West Kilburn.' He cast a deprecating glance back at the town, as if to add, Except of course it's in bloody Whitby.

  'Did you live here as a kid?'

  'Many, many, long, long years,' he affirmed, in a querulous tone of weary melodrama. 'Couldn't get out fast enough.'

  Siân puzzled over the two halves of his statement, and couldn't help thinking there was a flaw in his logic somewhere.

  'I like this place myself,' she said. It surprised her to hear herself saying it—given the nightmares and the insomnia, she had good reason to associate Whitby with misery. But it was true: she liked the place.

  'But you're not from here, are you?'

  'No. I'm an archaeologist, working at the dig.'

  'Cool! The sixty skeletons, right?'

  'Among other things, yes.' She looked away from him, to register her disapproval of his sensationalist instincts, but if he noticed, he didn't give a toss.

  'Wow,' he said. 'Gothic.'

  'Anglian, actually, as far as we can tell.'

  Her attempt to put him in his place hung in the air between them, sounding more and more snooty as she replayed it in her head. She returned her attention to the dog, trying to salvage things by stroking the parts the man wasn't stroking.

  'What's his name?'

  He hesitated for a moment. 'Hadrian.'

  She snorted helplessly. 'That's … that's an exceptionally crap name. For any dog, but especially this one.'

  'Isn't it!' he beamed. 'My dad was a Roman history buff, you see.'

  'And your name?'

  Again he hesitated. 'Call me Mack.'

  'Short for something?'

  'Magnus.' His pale blue eyes narrowed. 'Latin for "great." Grisly, isn't it?'

  'Grisly?'

  'Sounds like I've got a big head or something.'

  'I'll reserve judgment on that. It's a fine, ancient name, anyway.'

  'You would say that, wouldn't you?'

  The familiarity of his tone worried her a bit. What delicate work it was, this business of conversing with strangers of the other sex! No wonder she hardly ever attempted it anymore…

  'What do you mean?' she said.

  'You know, being an archaeologist and all that.'

  'I'm not actually a fully fledged archaeologist. Still studying.'

  'Oh? I would've thought…' He caught himself before he could say 'at your age' or anything like that, but the implication stabbed straight into Siân—straight into her innermost parts, so to speak. Yes, damn it, she didn't look like a peachy young thing anymore. What she'd gone through in Bosnia—and since—was written and underlined on her face. "It pleased the Author of our salvation…" Pleased Him to put her body and soul through hell. In order that her strength might be made perfect in weakness. In order that people she'd only just met would think she was awfully old to be studying for a degree.

  'I would've thought archaeology was a hands-on kind of thing,' he said.

  'So it is. I'm a qualified conservator, actually, specialising in the preservation of paper and parchment. I just fancied a change, thought I should get out more. There's a nice mixture of people at this dig. Some have been archaeologists for a million years. Some are just kids, getting their first pay-packet.'

  'And then there's you.'

  'Yes, then there's me.'

  He was staring at her; in fact, both he and his dog were staring at her, and in much the same way, too: eyes wide and sincere, waiting for her to give them the next piece of her.

  'I'm Siân,' she said, at last.

  'Lovely name. Meaning?'

  'Sorry?'

  'Siân. In Welsh, it means…?'

  She racked her brains for the derivation of her name. 'I don't think it means anything much. Jane, I suppose. Just plain Jane.'

  'You're not plain,' he spoke up immediately, grateful for the chance to make amends.

  To hide her embarrassment, she heaved herself to her feet. 'Well, it's nearly time I started work.' And she steeled herself for the remaining hundred steps.

  'Can I walk with you as far as the church? There's a run I can do with Hadrian near there, back down to the town…'

  'Sure,' she said lightly. He mustn't see her limping. She would do what she could to prevent his attention straying below her waist.

  'So…' she said, as they set off together, the dog scampering ahead, then scooting back to circle them. 'Now that your father's funeral's over, do you have much more sorting out to do?'

  'It's finished, really. But I've got a research paper to write, for my final year of Medicine. So, I'm using Dad's house as a kind of … solitary confinement. To get on with it, you know. There's a lot of distractions in London. Even worse distractions than this fellow…' And he aimed a slow, playful kick at Hadrian.

  'You're partaking of a fine Whitby tradition, then,' said Siân. 'Think of those monks and nuns sitting in their bare cells, reading and scribing all day.'

  He laughed. 'Oh, I'm sure they got up to a hell of a lot more than that.'

  Was this bawdy crack, and the wink that accompanied it, supposed to have any relevance to the two of them, or was it just the usual cynicism that most people had about monastic life? Probably just the usual cynicism, because when they ascended to the point where the turrets of Whitby Abbey were visible, he said: 'Ah! The lucrative ruins!' He flung his right arm forward, unfurling his massive hand in a grandiose gesture. 'See Whitby Abbey and die!'

  Siân felt her hackles rise, yet at the same time she was tickled by his theatricality. She'd always detested shy, cringing men.

  'If the Abbey'd had a bit more money over the centuries,' she retorted, 'it wouldn't be ruins.'

  'Oh come on,' he teased. 'Ruins are where the real money is, surely? People love it.' He mimicked an American sightseer posing for his camera-toting wife: '"Take a pitcha now, Wilma, of me wid dese here ruins of antiquiddy behind me!"'

  Squinting myopically, acting the buffoon, he ought to have looked foolish, but his clowning only served to accentuate how handsome he was. His irreverent grin, and the way he inhabited his body with more grace than his gangly frame ought to allow, were an attractive combination for Siân—a combination she'd been attracted to before, almost fatally. She'd have to be careful with this young man, that's for sure, if she didn't want a rerun of … of the Patrick fiasco.

  'Antiquity is exciting,' she said. 'It's good that people are willing to come a long way to see it. They walk up these stone stairs towards that abbey, and they feel they're literally following in the footsteps of medieval monks and ancient kings. They see those turrets poking up over the headland, and it takes them back eight hundred years…'

  'Ah, but that thing up there isn't the real Whitby Abbey, is it? It's a reconstruction: some tourist body's idea of what a medieval abbey should look like.' />
  'That's not true.'

  'Didn't it all fall down ages ago, and they built it up in completely the wrong shape?'

  'No, that's not true,' she insisted, feeling herself tempted to argue heatedly with a complete stranger—something she hadn't done since Patrick. She ought to dismiss his ignorance with the lofty condescension it deserved, but instead she said, 'Come up and I'll show you.'

  'What?' he said, but she was already quickening her pace.

  'Wait!'

  She stumped ahead, leading him past Saint Mary's churchyard, past the cliffside trail to Caedmon's Trod—the alternative path back to the town below, along which he'd meant to run with Hadrian. Teeth clenched with effort, she stumped up another flight of steps leading to the abbey.

  'It's all right, I believe you!' Magnus protested as he dawdled in her wake, hoping she'd come round, but she led him straight on to the admission gate. He baulked at the doorway, only to see his cheerfully disloyal dog trotting across the threshold.

  'Bastard,' he muttered as he followed.

  Inside, there was a sign warning visitors that all pets must be on a leash, and there was a man at the admissions counter waiting to be handed £1.70. Siân, so used to wandering freely in and out of the abbey grounds that she'd forgotten there was a charge for nonarchaeologists, paused to take stock. Mack's running shorts, whatever else they might contain, clearly had no provision for a wallet.

  'He's with me,' she declared, and led the hapless Magnus past the snack foods and pamphlets, through the portal to antiquity. It all happened so fast, Hadrian was dashing across the turf, already halfway to the twelfth century, before the English Heritage man could say a word.

  ***

  Siân stood in the grassy emptiness of what had once been the abbey's nave. The wind flapped at her skirt. She pointed up at the towering stone arches, stark and skeletal against the sky. The thought of anyone—well, specifically this man at her side—being immune to the primitive grandeur and the tragic devastation of this place, provoked her to a righteous lecture.