How do you know?
Because there are differences! Big ones! He’s too tall to be Tom. Too broad. The nose isn’t right and the teeth aren’t the same, and those aren’t his hands, and …
Teeth change! He could have changed them. He could have grown …
Em …
I want to see him. A statement, of course.
He’s sleeping. No.
I won’t leave till I see him.
That stubborn streak. Tabitha narrows her eyes, thinks that’s Emmeline. The petulant child who grew into a fierce, resolute grown-up who rarely laughs or takes no for an answer. But then, so much has happened. And Emmeline’s had to be tough, she supposes: Jack as a husband, that farm and four children. Four to begin with.
The grandfather clock ticks.
Fine, Tabitha says. You can see him. But – she holds up a finger – no waking him, Em – whoever he is, he needs to rest. And she leads her sister down the hallway to a door with frosted glass.
* * *
He sleeps, this sea creature. This man from the waves. This tired Poseidon.
Firstly, Emmeline sees his size. He is as broad as a boat, and as long as one. Then she sees the long lashes, the tiny lines by his eyes. His nose is perfectly straight. The beard is black – not a deep brown with a reddish hue, and with no grey flecked in it: it is as black as night is. His eyebrows are of the same blackness. The tip of his left ear is creased. The backs of his hands are veined and sore-looking – huge, capable hands.
Has he spoken?
Not much.
The man breathes like the sea.
Emmeline is in the mending room for a minute, no longer. It is enough.
She walks out into the sunlight. She cannot name it, or describe it – what she is feeling now. Disappointment is not enough of a word – not nearly. She had known, deep down, it wasn’t him. In her heart she’d known that he could not be Tom – it can’t be, it can’t be, not after so long – but she had hoped, all the same; she had snatched at the faintest of chances because she is his mother, and she must, and so she had stumbled and demanded and banged on her sister’s door and now Emmeline feels unsteady, foolish. Unspeakably sad.
Tom had a scar on his nose from a childhood fall; his lips were thinner, equal-sized. She’d know her boy in the dark, even now. She’d know him in a crowded room or by smell alone or handwriting.
Tabitha comes by her. I’m sorry.
Oh, I’m sure you are.
Emmeline leaves, and as she goes she feels, too, the swell of anger – as if someone, somewhere, is laughing. As if a trick has been played.
* * *
Who else? Who else cannot know what to think or say? They are all like fish on land now – blank-eyed, open-mouthed.
What a day … Ed Lovegrove stands with his hands in his pockets; he looks out to sea. Boy oh boy, what a day … Eighteen years as a harbourmaster, thirty-nine years as a harbourmaster’s son before that, and Edward can’t remember a man being washed ashore like this. Bodies, yes. He’s had his deaths to deal with – Jack’s, a birdspotter’s, that man from Utta who caught his foot in the line as he was throwing out pots so that they found his boat going round and round and when they hauled in the line he was already half-plucked at by fish. Ed fears the watery deaths. It is the watery deaths that he feels he can prevent by watching the weather, noting down each boat that docks here, keeping an eye on the weather station that lives at the back of his house. He has a rain gauge; there is a small anemometer to measure wind speed and wind direction. He tends to it, like a man at prayer.
But a person who has appeared? That the sea has given?
Tabitha rang earlier. She’d given the details – the beard, the injured hands – and Ed had not known the words or the way forwards. He’d said it isn’t a death, is it? So …? A man washed ashore is the stuff of books; it is not what happens in the twenty-first century to an island that relies on tourism and migrant birds and the sinking price of lamb. An island with a coloured line of jetsam – plastics, netting, nylon rope – on every beach like a scar.
We wait until he wakes. We do nothing till he’s woken.
I should call the coastguard in case …
OK, said Tabitha. But not the police. Not yet.
Fine. Not yet, Ed agreed. The police, he knows, would bring trouble of their own.
So Ed had settled in the office of the harbourmaster’s house and made the call. Mac had answered. He was eating something. With a half-full mouth he’d said, really? Jesus. Need an air ambulance?
Tab says not. Any boats down?
There had been the distant click of computer keys, and when the clicking stopped he’d heard Mac swallow, clear his throat. Nope, no boats, Ed. Well, there was a dinghy capsized about twenty miles north of you, but both men were picked up. He’s not one of yours? A guest, or some such?
I’m sure he is. Just checking, you know.
Or some half-fish creature? A part-whale? Haven’t you guys got a tale about that sort of thing? A hard, single laugh.
Mac – who Ed has never warmed to. Thanks, he’d said, hung up.
* * *
The day fades. The sky pinkens.
It is low tide. The beaches are glassy. The wading birds are reflected in the sand and sometimes they make their short, skimming flight to a different stretch of sand and land with their legs stretched out.
Curlews. Nathan hears them.
He turns off the engine but he sits, for a while. He stares at the steering wheel. Nathan has no thoughts at this moment: he is empty, worn-out.
Kitty watches him. She wears a floral apron, and as she’d been picking bits of eggshell out of a bowl of yolks she’d heard his car, looked up.
Her husband is staring at something – the dashboard?
Then he climbs out. The car door shuts and there is the crunch of the gravel, and from an upstairs bed the cat jumps down with a muffled thud as Nathan comes into the hallway, kicks off his boots.
She wipes her hands, goes to him. He tastes of salt. So?
They sit at the kitchen table, facing each other. His wife has a sweep of navy-blue powder on her eyelids, and Nathan sees that some of this powder is also on her cheekbones as if it has dusted down through the course of the day. She smells as she always does – lotion, Miss Dior, a touch of turpentine. Kitty Bundy. At first, she’d called it a dancing name.
Mum went straight to Lowfield. I told her it wasn’t Tom but she still went.
Of course she did – softly said.
Seven years of marriage but the word wife can still feel new to him. This woman – rich-haired, curved, slow in her movements – leans forwards, over her glass. She looks down into it, holds it by the stem and swirls the wine very carefully. Her hair comes down as she does this. She has not aged – not even slightly. She looks as she did when he first met her, when she turned around in a scarlet dress.
And Maggie? Did you go to see her?
I did. He sighs,