The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield Read Free Book Online Page A

over and sinks, the handkerchief closing up like a jellyfish as it goes.

Two
    The windowpane was cold against her cheek. One side of her body was full of stiffness and it took a moment for her eyes to focus. The white sail seemed to have burned them. Her boots were by the front door, splayed and pale with cliff path dust. Had she just come in? Yet here she was in the bedroom looking down at the sea and the light gone from the day. She moved to gather the boots and felt the roughness of sand between her toes. She smelled seawater in her hair.
    Footsteps on the other side of the front door made her jump and she was afraid but didn’t know why. The sound stopped and there were voices: Jack and Mrs Tiddy. Pearl picked up her boots and stood them together by the wall, then hurried to the kitchen. That was where she was meant to be now. It was dark. That meant supper. An ache in her head collected at her temple. She leant against the table to catch her breath.
    Someone was coming in. It was Nicholas. She would lock the door, keep him out. Her breath was harder to catch. She heard herself wheezing. The door opened. But instead of the young man with narrow lips and dark eyes, tall and lean in a smart jacket, it was Jack.
    â€˜It’s a fair walk from the front in this heat,’ he puffed, putting a newspaper parcel on the table. Nicholas was gone. The smell of fish and sweat filled the room. Jack had been talking to Mrs Tiddy. The woman wanted something, she always did. Jack rubbed his sunburnt forehead with his arm; she noticed the freckles and white hair on his skin, the small twists of his ears. When had he become so old? His trousers had another hole at the knee: something else to mend.
    She went over to undo his boots but when she bent to kneel, the ache in her head broke in to a flare of pain and she fell against the table. Jack caught her by the elbow and then lowered her into his own chair.
    â€˜What have you been up to now then, eh?’ he said.
    â€˜Nothing. I… nothing.’
    Jack tutted and fussed. He went to put the kettle on but burnt himself trying to light the stove.
    â€˜Leave it,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’
    He looked at her hard from across the room. ‘You’ve not been swimming, have you? You know how it makes you.’
    Pearl shook her head but even as she did so she wasn’t sure. She was tired, as if she’d done something vigorous. She tried to push her wet hair behind her ears, to hide it from him, but it was so tangled. Jack began to pace, still in his boots. Pearl breathed slowly to ease her chest. Jack stopped as her soft rasps came.
    He waited until her breathing calmed. ‘You need to be careful, Pearl. I’d not be much use if you were laid up in Pentreath, would I? Eight miles away, and me here on my own.’
    She wanted to tell him he wouldn’t be on his own, that he would have George, but the words wouldn’t come. Jack wouldn’t want to hear them, and Mrs Tiddy probably wouldn’t leave him alone either.
    â€˜You’ll be all right, won’t you?’ She nodded, and he went on, ‘No need to worry the doctor then.’
    She was able to undo his boots but didn’t lean too closely into his legs in case he smelt the seawater. Certainty came to her then.
    â€˜I went down the hill, to see the old house.’ Yes, that was it. She was tired from the walk back, as Jack had been. But her wet hair?
    â€˜Why ever did you do that?’ he said. He rolled the tiredness of the day from his still broad shoulders. ‘It’d only upset you.’ He got up to wash his hands, a sign that it was time for supper. She stayed kneeling on the floor, not able to find the energy to stand as she thought about the man in her house. ‘What’s this?’ Jack went over to the front door. There was the scrap of white again. The handkerchief sail had slipped inside the house. Jack was picking it up.
    It was