The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield Read Free Book Online Page B

Pascoe’s letter.
    When she had washed the supper things they sat together in the room next to the kitchen. There was no mantle for the pictures or the clock, which was now partly hidden in a recess by the window. The wallpaper was peeling in this room too, though not as badly as in the damp bedroom, and the floor wouldn’t come clean no matter how much Pearl scrubbed.
    Jack read the newspaper, humphing to himself every so often, but never sharing his thoughts. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. The Carew Street house was lost. She was mending, Jack was reading. It was just as before. Except it didn’t feel like that. Something had shifted when they moved up the hill. Something had come loose.
    The trousers Jack had been wearing when he came home lay across her lap, showing a tear at the knee. She threaded the needle and pulled the pieces of cloth together, making a lip to stitch and it was done, mended. The trousers would do another day, though the weave was thinning round the tear. She held them up to the light. Soon they would need a patch, but Jack was used to such making do.
    He had never had fine clothes. He had barely had clean ones until she married him. Not like Nicholas. She had tried to forget about him for so long but here he was, in the midst of her thoughts and it was wonderful to think of him, but at the same time awful.
    He was hard to ignore, liking to cut a dash. Working on shore helped him stay tidy, once the Master took him on. When the great shoals of pilchards came in there was money for everyone, and often a bit of something extra for Nicholas, for the man who tallied the fish and counted out the shares. The clever man who had been a clever boy, reckoning the worth of a shoal while it was still being brought ashore. She saw him standing, face to the sea, watching. The desire to touch him, to cup his cheek and turn his face to hers, burned through her and she was shocked at its force after all this time. But why should the feeling disappear? She had stayed here, stayed the same. The years since she had last been able to touch him made no difference. Her body was old now, but it wasn’t beyond this need. It was hers still. She clung to it fiercely.
    The hidden clock chimed the hour. Jack burred a gentle snore. The trousers had slipped to the floor and as she bent to pick them up the clock’s low ting swelled to a peal. She kept her head lowered. Nicholas’s face came clearer. He was turning round, looking away from the sea. There was his long, sloping nose, his thin lips pressed together against the cold. The lamp burned red then went out. The clock chimed on and on.

Three
    The bell is ringing from the cliff top and everyone is running. Even people that Pearl thought were too old to run, like Mr Isaac senior, the cooper. He’s galloping towards the seafront, using his stick to propel him over the cobbles, his black hat a cormorant bobbing in a sea of clothes.
    â€˜Hevva!’ shouts Mr Isaac senior. The fishermen rushing to get their seine boats to the water’s edge shout it back at him. Hevva : they are here. A magic, longed-for word that lets the whole village know pilchards are in sight, and to Pearl it’s veined with money.
    The first shoal of this season is on its way into Morlanow’s waters and the fish are early. There hasn’t even been launch day yet, Pearl’s favourite day of the year; even better than Christmas. But sometimes the fish are like that, not doing what they’re supposed to. Time gets away from Pearl then, without the patterns she’s learnt. It’s easy to forget.
    She’s following a group of boys to the seafront to watch the boats being hastily launched. Nicholas and Jack are there, with Timothy Wills and the two Pengelley boys, James and Stephen, all from school. They’re shouting and knocking into one another. She wants to be in the crowd of their excitement but when she comes closer Timothy spins