5

She waited on the common in her man’s tweed coat, watching all the while for Will. It was too warm an evening for the collar high at the nape of her neck: autumn was as tentative as summer had been mild. But Cora had lately felt uneasy in herself, and not only when remembering the press of Will’s palm on her waist: she wanted to be swathed in heavy clothes, unwomanned by lumpish fabrics and heavy shoes. If Martha had not hidden the scissors she’d’ve done away with her hair, and satisfied herself instead with plaiting it severely from her face like a schoolgirl in the morning.

It had been so long since she’d seen her friend she almost wondered if she’d know him – anxiety at how he might greet her made her mouth run dry. Might he show his sterner side – part chastening, part disappointed? Might he speak warmly, as once he had, or with the diffident manners that chilled her?

The wind blew over the Blackwater and brought with it the scent of salt; in the long grass mushrooms grew and their caps were pearly as oyster-shells. When he came it was silently, as if he’d stolen up like a grinning boy: a light hand touched her arm above the elbow; a voice said, ‘You needn’t’ve dressed up on my account.’ The measured cadence and country slowness on the vowels was so familiar, and so dear, that she could not think why she’d been a little afraid, and spread the skirts of her coat in a curtsey.

They surveyed each other a while, unable to keep from smiling. Will had left off his collar, and with the country man’s disdain for the seasons wore no coat. His sleeves were rolled back as if he’d laboured all afternoon, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the throat. His hair had lightened since she’d seen it last, and grown longer: it was almost amber in the evening light. The scar on his cheek mimicked the edge of the sheep’s hoof, and his eyes seemed smudged as if he’d rubbed at them while reading an evening paper. He isn’t sleeping, thought Cora, with dreadful tenderness.

Under his gaze she knew she’d never looked less handsome: closeting herself indoors for much of the summer had given her face a greyish pallor, and her neglected hair grew coarsely at the crown. If she consented to look in the mirror it was to see quite dispassionately the fine lines fanning from the corner of her eyes, the single crease between her brows. All this she felt acutely, and with relief. Whatever mistaken moment at midsummer had caused their breach was impossible to countenance now: she was no man’s idea of a lover. The thought was so absurd she laughed with the relief of it; the sound pleased him, because it obliterated the weeks between and put him back in that warm room when first she’d held out her hand.

‘Come on, Mrs Seaborne: let’s go,’ he said: ‘I feel I’ve so much to tell you’; and far from feeling chastened or suppressed, Cora felt all her recent heaviness of spirit lift. They walked swiftly, matching step for step, leaving behind the village and the briny estuary breeze; they passed All Saints, and neither averted their eyes, because it did not occur to them there might be any misdemeanour in taking the evening air.

Both had saved such stores of anecdote and complaint, of tall tale and half-formed theory, that fully an hour passed without pause. Each made an inventory of the other, totting up with pleasure the well-remembered gesture or the phrases used too often, the tendency to withhold or exaggerate, the sudden veering-off into fresh pastures which the other followed at a run. They delighted in each other then as they had from the first, without thinking it indecent to smile so much and laugh so readily, while sinking in her blue silk cushions Stella raised a scrap of cotton to her mouth and withdrew it flecked with blood, and in Colchester Luke Garrett felt himself adrift. That each had felt betrayed by the other was not forgiven so much as forgotten: they’d sealed themselves up – they were inviolate.

‘And after all that, nothing but a dead fish!’ said Cora. ‘So much for the Essex Serpent – its wing and beak! Truly, I’ve never felt more foolish. I took myself off to the Reading Rooms (I half-thought I’d see you there) and did my homework, like any good schoolgirl, and saw the oarfish cast up in Bermuda thirty years ago, and read how they loiter near the surface when they’re dying – I must apologise to Mary Anning for disgracing both her sex and her profession.’

‘But such a fish,’ said Will, and described for her how the shining skin of its belly had split, and how its contents had writhed on the shingle.

When they spoke of Stella, Cora turned her face away: she’d shown Will her tears once before and had resolved not to do so again.

‘She asked to be shown the glass slide in the microscope,’ said Will, wondering again at his wife’s courage. ‘She looked at what came from her own body and there was death in it and she faced it better than I did. I think she’d known for months. She’d seen it all before.’

‘She’s the kind of woman who’s misunderstood: they think because she’s so pretty and wears her clothes so well, and because she gossips and chatters, that she’s nothing but a ballerina in a jewellery box turning round and round; but I knew from her first letter that she’d a sharpness to her – I don’t think she misses anything, not even now.’

‘Less now than ever, though something has changed.’ They’d entered the fringes of a wood; the track narrowed; jackdaws convened in the oaks, and brambles tugged at their clothes. Berries had been left to rot on the branch, since all through the months of the Trouble no-one had felt much like going out alone with their baskets. ‘Something has changed, and they told me it would, but I never expected this. She had faith of course, or I couldn’t have married her – you are horrified! But how could I ask a woman to spare me every Sunday and half the week between if she didn’t serve the same God? – yes: she had a faith, but not like this. It was’ – he cast about for the right phrase – ‘it was polite. Do you understand? This – it’s different – I find myself embarrassed by it. She sings. I wake in the night and I hear her singing from along the hall. I think she has the Essex Serpent muddled up with Bible stories, and doesn’t really believe it has gone.’

‘You sound more of a civil servant than a minister! Don’t you think those women who went to the tomb – I forget their names – might’ve been a little like that – blinded by glory, already half-dead, wanting this short time over as soon as possible – no: I’m not mocking you and God knows I’d never mock her – but if you insist on your faith you ought at least to concede it’s a strange business and very little to do with well-ironed cassocks and the order of service.’ She felt her temper rise slightly – she’d forgotten how readily they exasperated each other, and considered letting the conversation reach unstable ground; but it was too soon for all that. ‘But I do see,’ she said, growing conciliatory: ‘Of course I do: nothing’s more troubling than change in those we love. It’s a nightmare I have – I’ve told you about it often! – that one day I come home and there’s Martha and there’s Francis and they put their hands to their faces and lift them clear away like masks and underneath there’s loathing …’ She shuddered. ‘But she’s still your Stella, your star of the sea: love is not love which alters when it alteration finds! What will you do? What treatment can she have?’

He told her of that anxious afternoon in the hospital, with Dr Butler polite on one side and Luke sardonic on the other; of how she’d given her own diagnosis and coolly taken in their prescriptions. ‘Dr Butler is cautious – he wants to see her again – wants to give her tuberculin, which is the fashion these days. Charles Ambrose says he’ll pay, and how can I refuse? I’ve not been able to afford my pride for a long time.’

‘And Luke?’ Still she could not quite say the name without a rise of shame that stained her cheek.

Will might, with effort, have forgiven the Imp, but since his creed made no mention of actually developing affection for those who’d wronged him he said, ‘Forgive me, but I’m glad he’s prevented from operating – he wanted to collapse her lungs, one at a time, to let the other heal! Don’t misunderstand me – I regret very deeply his injury – but really I cannot think past Stella, and her wellbeing: it’s all that matters now.’ Then he flushed, as if caught out in a lie – all that matters, he’d said – and it ought to be! It ought to be!

‘What does Stella say?’ Cora was conscious of a sensation very like envy: what must it be, to be loved so entirely?

‘She tells me Christ is coming to gather up his jewels, and that she’s ready,’ said Will. ‘I don’t believe she much cares one way or the other. Sometimes she speaks as if this time next year she’ll be climbing Traitor’s Oak with James, and sometimes I find her lying with her hands crossed over her breast as if she’s already in her coffin. And the blue – the incessant blue – she sends me out for violets and I tell her it’s not the season and she almost weeps with rage!’

Then he told her – shyly, because he was ashamed – of his bargain with God, and how he’d been prepared to loose his wife into Luke’s hands, his needles and blades, if the signs had seemed auspicious. ‘News came of Garrett’s injury and if I didn’t exactly think it a sign, certainly Stella did – she looked relieved; she told me she’d’ve had the operation if I’d thought it best, but preferred to give herself over to God – sometimes I think she wants to leave us – that she wants to go away from me!’

Cora concealed a look at her friend, who so rarely seemed less than in command that it threw her – she said: ‘I remember when Michael was first taken ill. We were having breakfast and he couldn’t swallow – he went rigid and red and pulled at the tablecloth, then flapped at his throat – and since he never panicked or let down his guard, not ever, we knew something was wrong. Just then a bird flew in and God knows I’ve never been superstitious but for a moment I thought of that old wives’ tale that a bird indoors foretells a death and my heart lifted, and I sat and watched him choke … then of course I came to my senses and we gave him water, and he vomited, and later that month he passed blood and Luke came – it was the first time I ever saw him and I was a little afraid of him, to speak the truth: isn’t it odd, how strangers come over the threshold and you never know what they might become … Oh!’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what point I’m making – how can I compare him to Stella: they might be different species! – only that it takes us strangely, all this.’ She flung out her arms, and he was grateful: what a strange habit she had, of offering up understanding out of her thorough disagreement with almost everything he knew and prized.

Evening had come quickly, and the rosy sun was caught below a black bank of cloud. Light struck only the lower part of the beech and chestnut trees and left the rest in darkness; it gave the appearance of ranks of bronze pillars bearing up a thick black canopy. They’d come to a slight rise, and the path was traversed at regular intervals by forest roots that formed a broad and shallow flight of stairs. Everywhere was thickly mossed, and it laid down a carpet of vivid green.

For all their talking and delight there’d been little of the intimacy of their letters, which spoke so readily of ‘I’ and ‘you’; but as the wood closed around them it seemed possible to approach the heart of the matter – though tentatively, and by small degrees.

‘I was glad when you wrote,’ he said, diffidently: ‘I’d had a bad day of it and then there you were, on the doormat.’

‘I am glad I swallowed my pride.’ She put her foot on the green stair, and paused, and said: ‘You were so angry with me after Luke tried out his tricks on Jo – and I’ve never minded anyone being angry with me if I deserved it, but I didn’t think I did – it was only an offer of help! If you’d seen what I saw – those laughing girls – how they laughed and snapped their heads back and forth …’

He shook his head, impatient. ‘It doesn’t matter now – what use would it be to go over it?’ Then he laughed, and said: ‘I always did enjoy fighting with you, but not over anything that mattered.’

‘Only matters of good and evil …’

‘Exactly – look, we are in a cathedral.’ High overhead the trees stooped and made a chancel arch; a branch had sheared off a nearby oak and left behind a peaked cavity above a deep shelf. ‘It looks as though Cromwell’s taken hammer and chisel to a saint.’

‘I see you’ve despatched the serpent in your church, at least,’ said Cora. ‘I went in the day I came back and there’s nothing but a few scales left: what made you lose your patience?’

Thinking of that shameful moment on the midsummer marsh after he’d left them all behind, Will coughed and said: ‘Joanna would’ve boxed my ears if news of Cracknell hadn’t come in time – look: all these conkers lying about, and no children taking them home.’ He bent to pick up a handful and passed one to her, snug in its green casing. With a fingertip in the split she prised it open, and found the nut in its white silk bed. ‘I was angry,’ he said: ‘That’s all. Now the Trouble has gone I hardly remember how it was – how folk kept indoors and we never heard the children playing, and how nothing I could say would convince them there was nothing to fear they didn’t summon up themselves.’

‘I felt it in the village as soon as I came,’ she said. ‘A change of air. I heard the school choir singing and not until I was home did I remember the day they’d laughed and laughed and something went badly wrong. To think when I first came there was rarely anyone on the common, and I thought I’d see people look at me mistrustfully – as if it were all my fault! As if it had anything to do with me!’

‘Sometimes I think it was,’ said Will, dropping his hands, kicking at the moss. He gave her one of his chastening looks and only half in jest.

She said, laughing: ‘The Trouble might not be my doing, but I hardly helped – I made other things muddled. What you said in your letter – that you’d come to the end of new things – I realised then how I go blundering about. I forced myself in. I might as well have broken a window! Imagine saying we should write to each other when you were barely half a mile away! And all because we talked once …’

‘There was also the question of the sheep,’ said Will.

‘There was that, of course.’ They looked at each other, relieved to have overstepped the crack opening in the path before them. But it widened and they tripped: Will said, ‘My windows were already broken – no: I left them on the latch – and why? Why was it, when I had everything a man asks, I saw you and ever since was glad of you –’

‘It’s not surprising to me.’ Cora prised the conker from its shell and rolled it between her palms. ‘Did you really think because you loved here you couldn’t love there? Poor Will – poor boy! – did you think you had so little of it? Look – should I boil it, bake it, or pickle it in vinegar?’ She made as if to throw it at him, but he’d turned away and moved a step or two above her.

‘It’s like talking to a child,’ he said, exasperated: ‘I know what you think of me – secretly, even secret from yourself – that I’m a God-addled half-wit fallen miles behind you, as if you’ve evolved past me!’ She surveyed him sombrely, and (he thought) with amusement very faintly at the corner of her mouth, and it made him press home his point more cruelly than he meant: ‘Look at you! Whichever Cora you are – the one in silk and diamonds or the one who wears clothes Cracknell would’ve thrown away; the one always laughing at us or the one vowing love to anyone who’ll listen – you wall yourself away because you know as well as I do you’ve almost run through your youth without ever having been loved as you should have been –’

‘Stop it,’ Cora said. All the intimacy she’d sought by letter was unbearable out there under the black forest canopy; she wanted to be back in their safe territory of ink and paper and not here, where her colour rose and she thought she could smell, above the sweetness of a distant fire, the scent of his body under his shirt. It was indecent – he was at his best sealed in an envelope – that he was so unavoidably a thing of blood and bones made it impossible to ignore the strong pulse beating in her neck – ‘Come down,’ she said: ‘Come back – don’t fight with me. Haven’t we had enough of that?’ A little ashamed, he stooped beside a chestnut tree, rooting among fallen leaves for conkers, handing them to her one by one.

‘I wish we were children!’ said Cora, closing her fingers over them, remembering how once they’d been treasures to be bartered and prized. She came closer – she sat beside him on the moss – ‘Why can we not be like children, and play together …’

‘Because you’re not innocent!’ said Will – there was a strange vertiginous feeling, as if what they were saying had flung them high up and they’d not yet fallen: ‘You are not innocent, and nor am I – you play at it – you fend me off –’ He tugged at her sleeve, a little rough – ‘d’you think because you wear a man’s coat I might forget what you are?’

‘And do you think I do it for you?’ she said. ‘I forget I’m a woman – I set it aside. God knows I’m no mother and was never much of a wife … d’you think I should torture myself with high-heeled shoes and paint out my freckles so you’re kept on your guard against me?’

‘No – I think you’re guarding against yourself; you told me once you’d like to be nothing but an intellect, disembodied, untroubled by your own flesh and blood –’

‘I would, I would! I despise it – my body only ever betrayed me: I don’t live in it, I live up here, in my mind and words …’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I know, yes: but here you are too, here,’ and moving aside the folds of her coat he tugged her shirt where it was tucked at the waist, in the place where once he’d touched her and been disgraced by it. But the disgrace this time kept its distance: it seemed to him that to keep apart from her now would be obscene; how could it be possible to seek out each fold and turn of her mind, and not grow familiar with the particular patina of her skin, the scent and taste of it? Not to touch her now would be to breach a natural law. Back she lay against the soft green stair in the thickening dusk and fixed her eyes on his, unsurprised, daring him: he raised her shirt and there in the split between the black cloth of her clothes he found her soft belly, very white, marked with the silver lines her son had made; he kissed it once, and could not stop, and she rolled against him in delight.

The sun slid down – the forest closed about them – the copper on the pillars of the trees turned to verdigris. The gilded temple was gone, and in its place there was the scent of leaf mould and long grass dying, and windfall apples splitting on the path. She met his gaze then, levelly as she always had, and felt herself go rushing to meet him like a river in spate; ‘Please,’ she said, pulling at her skirt: ‘Please,’ and he heard it like a command. He found her easily, and his hand slipped and moved in her, and her bright head drooped, and she was silent. He showed her his hand, and how she gleamed there; he put a forefinger to his mouth and hers, and they had an equal share.