I didn’t.
Yes you did. Oh yes you did. Does this embarrass you –
No.
– an old woman talking about sex?
Of course not, he lied.
I was young once. Hard to believe, isn’t it? For most of my life I’ve felt young, but of course I haven’t been. I took being young for granted. That is a statement that can only be made when one is old. I know it may not look it, but this tired old body has loved passionately. It has done things that would obviously make you blush.
Blush, said Echo, emphatically. Drake blushed, scolded.
Why a penny? he asked, after a while.
I’m getting there, said Marvellous. Don’t hurry me. Especially not now.
She said: Waves fell over the stern and with full sails we surfed those waves and made good speed back towards Fowey. But then I could bear it no more. My heart ached and pulled my sight back to the rock and the tower now fading into the horizon. But there was a flickering light coming from that tower, a glint, like sunlight on a mirror, and I realised it was her light to me, and I knew she would always give me light and always get me home.
I felt cold then, yet the coin burned hot in my pocket. I brought it out and warmed my hands, and looked at the coin and saw the picture of Britannia ruling the waves, and I thought, That’s her, really. A little bit her. And then I noticed it. Positioned behind Britannia’s shoulder. The lighthouse. Smeaton’s lighthouse. And everything we had was in that lighthouse. And this coin was the key to that particular door of time.
I can no longer remember her name. And I can no longer see her face. Such is my mind now. Often I am left waiting at the entrance whilst ghosts of my life are ushered to the exit. Many times I never had the chance to say goodbye, but then again my father would have said, Sometimes you never do. C’est la vie, say the French. But what I do remember is the feeling of her face and it was a good feeling and from that I know it was a good face. We never saw each other again.
Never? said Drake.
No, she said. Never. I never knew what happened to her, but I often wondered, of course, whenever I saw a light flashing in the distance. But it wasn’t until the night of the Still-Talked-About Storm many years later, when the new Douglass lighthouse sat upon the reef instead, that I really got to know.
Got to know what? asked Drake.
That she was still alive, said Marvellous, and her face lit up.
How’d you find that out?
Through something quite incredible, really, she said.
Go on, said Drake.
And Marvellous relit her pipe and said, Well, that night, I’d just got past The Point when the weather suddenly turned. The sky became bruised and waves hit the boat sideways in patterns of four of ever increasing size. I thought it was a dark cloud at first, Drake – it looked like a cloud – until this wave bore down on me and the boat was sucked up against its spume-crested wall. Higher and higher we went, until the wave pulled back, and the boat hung in the darkness for a moment before falling and hitting a sea as unyielding as wet sand.
I awoke dazed, looking up through a portal to a star-drenched sky. And beyond the stars bands of milky light stretched out to the hush of infinity. It was beautiful. The boat was floating in the middle of a disc of calm. The storm had pulled away, was encircling but not engulfing, and I watched as waves crashed against an invisible wall thirty yards away. And I realised I had fallen upon a grave of lost seamen, a grave not marked by a cross but by this prayer-sodden peace.
Ten yards away now, the waves were gathering and my boat was drifting mastless and rudderless towards that unmarked boundary between Life and Death. And all the while, I never took my eyes away from the sky, never took my eyes away from that narrowing portal that gave a glimpse to the other side.
And that was where it came from, Drake. The kite. Out of the dark like a falling star, hurtling towards me, its long tail skimming across the mountainous sea. I stood up and when that tail fell just above the boat, I jumped and reached for it. There was a moment of suspension before I felt the rope wrapped firmly between my hands, before my feet lifted off. And when the kite felt my weight, up it swooped just as the waves crashed down and engulfed my boat below.
Up I flew and my stomach lurched. Then sometimes the kite would plunge and my feet would disappear in the froth of waves and sometimes I saw the lights of other ships appear and disappear in the towering swell, and sometimes birds flew at my side, gulls and cormorants mostly, and a small flock of redstarts with the African sun still warm on their feathers. And sometimes the half-moon appeared, and I felt half glad, half scared.
It was just before dawn when the wind abated, when the billows of grey cloud dissipated and became part of a black starless sky. The battered kite drifted into the shadow of a quiet shore and I descended.
I felt the earth beneath my feet again. I listened to the silence that lived the other side of the falling waves, where a line of moon jellyfish had washed up on the wet shingle and pulsed and glowed like footlights.
And the silence melted me. I stumbled up the beach to where the cliffs rose, to where thick clumps of dry grass grew from the sand. My arms were worn ragged, but I managed to pull up great handfuls of the stuff, picked up driftwood too, that looked like severed limbs in the nibbling dawn. I struck my knife against a piece of quartz and using the grass as kindling lit a fire. When the fire took, I walked along to the rocky outlay and prised limpets from their anchor and ate them from the shell.
I untied the guide rope from the kite and dragged it back down to the shore where it disappeared like an eel into the watery dark. And there I waited. With gulls by my side and a fire at my back, I waited.
Sun high, a boat appeared, lured by the spiralling smoke. The fisherman threw me a rope and landed easily at the shore, and in no time at all I was aboard. The boat glided lazily on the swell and I sat back and said nothing. Just held the kite tightly in my arms.
Eighteen sailors died last night, said the fisherman. How you got here, God only knows. Something must have been watching over you.
And you know what? said Marvellous at the end of her story. Something was.
You going tell me it was God? said Drake.
God? Good God, no, Drake. Love. Don’t confuse the two. Love. It’s the only thing to have faith in.
Is that right?
Oh yes, she said.
Or the moon, she added.
The moon?
Yes. Something that turns up every day when you can’t. The sun. The moon. Anything. You have to have faith in something.
Why? said Drake.
Because it makes you more interesting to women, she said.
Drake laughed.
Women like something behind the eyes, said Marvellous.
I have plenty behind my eyes.
Yes, but you don’t have light. Faith gives you light. Jack had light, she said.
What did Jack have faith in?
Me, of course, said Marvellous.
27
They drifted out from the church on the tide. Drake paddled against the current and came to a halt on the bank below Marvellous’ caravan. He gripped hard on to thick clumps of exposed tree roots as Marvellous rolled from the flimsy craft on to the shore. He told her to go on ahead, the yellow of her back rising on the steps, disappearing into the warm and dry. Drake groaned and crawled on to land and dragged the canoe in his wake. He was still on all fours when a final purge of vomit left his body. He looked across to the shed, to the canvas kite tied to its side, and he shook his head. Inside the caravan, a paraffin lamp flared, and he heard a popper pulled from a bottle of gin. He staggered up. Wiped his feet against his trouser legs and climbed the steps.
The gypsy wagon felt close after the wide breadth of night. They sat in silence, huddled around the lamp,
and they drank sloe gin and they listened. Listened to each other’s breathing, to the welcome crackle of the stove, to the slow move of salt rising travelling falling as the water made its journey back out to sea. They listened to the confused call of an owl, the splash of water voles amusing themselves in the grooves along the bank. They listened to the creak of the caravan releasing whispers from its weary well-travelled joints. Drake pointed to The Book of Truths on the shelf at the back and asked what it was about. It is what it says it is, said Marvellous, a Book of Truths. Can I read it? he asked. No, she said, you’re not ready for the truth, and she turned away and rested her eyes.
Drake stood up and took off his oilskin. Empty bottles on the shelf flickered in the lamplight and caught his eye; the glass magical and alluring in the eerie glow. He leant over and lifted one to the light. Inside was a coil of paper.
What are these? he asked.
Marvellous opened her eyes and frowned.
Messages. I collect them from the shore. Always have.
What do you do with them?
Read them. Answer what I can, said the old woman.
Do you rescue people from desert islands?
Don’t be obtuse. Not on a night like this.
Sorry, he said.
Marvellous picked up a gin bottle, label long gone. This was yours actually, she said. November 2nd 1947. River Thames.
I never sent you a message, said Drake.
Yours was silent.
He took the bottle and the date bore down on him and a fist of grief travelled from his guts to his throat. Marvellous rested her hand upon his back as the story of Missy Hall limped out on his tears. She listened to him speak. She lit her pipe and refilled his glass. And she listened to him speak. I loved her, he finally said. I know, she said.
And he so wanted to talk about the war but the sun was creeping high over the trees, and his memory of that day in France wasn’t for the light. He lit a last cigarette and stood up. When he got to the door he stopped. He was about to ask Marvellous a question but she surprised him with the answer: You, she said emphatically. I have faith in you.
He walked on down through the trees towards the boathouse. The still morning air reeked of saltmud and echoed with the sorrowful sound of curlews.
The sun was bright. Skimmed the tops of trees and took them out of shadow. The rippled sand glistened and leftover pools were squatted by terns or gulls.
And for the first time he was aware of the possibility of not settling but living once again. And as the sun shifted it turned the river into a silvery molten flow and it looked beautiful and for the first time in weeks he knew he was going to be all right, and because he was going to be all right he knew he was ready to leave.
He looked back to the riverbank and there she was watching him. As if she could read his thoughts. He raised his hand, she raised hers. He turned away so she couldn’t see his eyes. It had been a long night.
28
He didn’t plan the day he was leaving. He simply rose late with the winter sun, apprehensive of the day ahead. He looked over at the letter addressed to Dr Arnold and knew that today was the day.
He got dressed into his civvies; Collar and Cuffs felt stiff and strange to touch. He looked down and saw turn-ups falling neatly across a polished leather brogue. This was the life he had left. He wasn’t sure it was the life he wanted to go back to. He had got used to the routines, the funny ways of this life, and he wondered what he was going to do when the letter had been delivered and an open road lay ahead of him. He neatly folded the clothes the old woman had given him the night he had arrived. He stood back. The fire was doused. The bed stripped. The little touches gone. It was as if he had never been there. No smudged outline of his presence on the white-washed wall above a hearth.
He had never said goodbye to anyone before. Never had the chance to say goodbye to his mother, nor to Missy, had never left anything he’d cared for. Maybe that was why he was hovering. He’d got used to the old woman and her ways. He cared what happened to her. He quickly put on his raincoat and picked up the suitcase before his nerve failed.
He found her at the riverbed ankle-deep in mud, her knees thick and muddy below her rolled-up trouser legs. He watched her, unseen for a moment. He watched the life she had had before him, the life that would go on after him, just her and her solitude, orbited by a lifetime of stories and irritable saints. And he wanted her to be all right because she had always been all right, and he had to believe that, else he’d never go. That’s when she looked up and saw him. That’s when she put the palm of her hand across her chest.
He walked downriver and waved a big so long salute with his suitcase, just so she’d know and there’d be no mistake, but of course she knew. She didn’t wave back. She stopped her digging and came towards the riverbank. He knelt down to her.
I’m leaving.
She nodded. She lifted up her bucket and said, Lugworm. He couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an insult.
Will you come back? she asked.
I don’t think so.
And the old woman nodded.
Thank you for everything, Marvellous, said Drake. Really. Everything.
She nodded. She said, Good luck, Francis Drake. Live well. Love again.
She offered her hand and he took it. Took it in both his hands. Her hand felt cold and small.
Don’t look back, don’t look back, he said to himself, but he did look back and she was still staring at him. His eyes burned. A thousand goodbyes were etched on to her face: those were the lines of age. As he walked away the clouds opened and a gentle rain fell. Her grace falling upon me, he thought.
29
He rode with Butcher Dewar to a farm on the outskirts of Truro. He said he would be passing back that way in three hours if Drake needed a lift. Drake said he didn’t think he would and waved him goodbye.
He was glad of the walk into town. The rain had eased and the smell was now of dirt and hedgerows, the sweetness of grass, and it softened his anxiety; he was glad of the peace.
So much had happened towards the end of the war, and this letter, this request belonged to the chaos of that time. Drake wished he could have burned it, forgotten about it, no one would have been any the wiser. He didn’t even know Dougie Arnold, not really. The letter had been shoved into his hand by a dying man and Drake couldn’t walk on by, had said those two words, I promise, and he was bound to the task by conscience because his conscience was so stained by then, he needed something to whiten it.
What if the man asks me about his son? Lie. Be a good soldier and lie. He was a great friend, loyal, who died bravely. Lie. Never a day goes by blah blah blah. Lie.
Drake checked his pocket to make sure the letter was there. The letter felt hot against his hand.
Weeks had passed since he had last been in a city. There were people, motor cars and vans, the to and fro of life and women in make-up clicking their heels, and noise! The cathedral spire came into view, glistening wet in the sunshine. He followed the sight and leant against the granite wall and listened to a fiddler string out bright tunes. An Austin 8 pulled up in front of him. His reflection grotesque and unmistakable in the large side window.
The barber placed the warm towel over his face and around his neck and Drake felt his skin open and relax to the sensation. He felt cleaner than he had felt in months. He looked in the mirror. His beard was groomed, his hair cut. Old Spice was patted about his neck. The transformation was complete. He stepped back out into the keen afternoon air knowing he should have felt better.
Chapel Street?
Second turning on the right, then take a left.
Thank you.
He was hurrying now. Stopped at the top of the street and lit a cigarette to ease his nerves. He made it last till the gate of Monk’s Rise where he stubbed it out under his shoe.
/> A detached house. Front and rear garden. Trailing roses against a white-washed front. A neatly edged path to the door. A doctor’s house. No doubt. Drake rang the bell and waited. No answer. He tried to look into the front room window before ringing the bell again. He was about to push the letter through the letterbox when the door opened quickly and a kind-looking gentleman greeted him.
I’m sorry, the man said wiping his hands, I was out the back. In the garden, burning leaves.
The smell of bonfire clung to his body.
Dr Arnold? said Drake.
Yes that’s me.
My name is Francis Drake. I have a letter for you.
Drake watched the man through the French doors. This was a father. He was sitting on a bench reading the letter from his son and he didn’t move, and the only movement was the alternate shift of shadow and sunlight falling through the shedding trees. The peace of the scene was overwhelming and Drake wondered what he would have written to his own father. What his father might have written to him. The clock chimed two. He noticed he wasn’t impatient to get away.
He stood up and looked about. It was an orderly room, a family room filled with photographs on tables and sideboards. Drake went over to the hearth and picked up a photograph of the son in cricket whites, fifteen – sixteen at most – with a Labrador by his side, when life was yet ahead.
Thank you, said the doctor, entering. Thank you for bringing this into my life. And he placed the letter on the mantelpiece behind the photograph of his son.
The clock ticked loudly. The doctor carried in a tray of tea and biscuits and placed it on the table in front of Drake. May I? said Drake, before lighting a cigarette.
Yes, yes, of course. Milk?
Please.
Drake lit his cigarette.
Sugar?
No thank you.
Neither do I. Lost the taste for the stuff after all the rationing. Here.