“Thank you for doing this, Olive Grant,” he said. “I’ve been nothing but a bother to you since I came to town.”
“I daresay Tommy Tavish would call you a blessing,” she said. She knelt and patted the little mound among her spring flowers, flicking away an imaginary weed and smoothing down the soil. “I believe I will plant blue flax here, and perhaps some heather.”
“I promised Mrs. Tavish a headstone,” he told her. “Who should I see?”
“Will McCorckle, two doors down,” she said quickly. “I would say that we have been the bother to you, Mr. … Douglas Bowden.”
“If that is so—and I do not believe it for a minute—I’ll give Tommy two more days and—”
“And then what?” she finished. “Send him back to starvation? And Mrs. Tavish? What of her?”
“It’s your village, not mine,” he said quickly, and then was immediately ashamed of so cavalier a comment. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”
She had turned away, and he didn’t blame her.It isn’t my problem, he thought and felt the tension return to his shoulders. He didn’t know what to say, so he watched the pleasant sway of her skirt instead.
She stopped walking but did not turn around. When she spoke, her voice was still kind. “If you feel up to it, Mr. Bowden, take a walk around Edgar and really look. Supper will be at six of the clock, as usual. Don’t overexert yourself, though.”
He did as he said.She called me Mr. Bowden, he thought, irritated with himself.And so I was, drat the matter.
He didn’t expect to see anything different from his previous sorties up and down the High Street, most memorably running with a bleeding boy in his arms, and more recently staggering back to the only refuge he knew in Edgar, wounded himself because he had never been much of a fighter. If the Royal Navy had required men like him to board enemy vessels with a cutlass in hand, Englishmen would probably be speaking French now.
The thought made him smile and then laugh a little, driving away those carrion birds that circled ships after battle in places like the China Sea and flapped around him in his dreams. He touched his bound ribs, pleased to feel no worse than he expected. His eye and cheek would be a colorful green soon, and then purple, but it would fade.
It was that time of the afternoon when even a quiet village like Edgar grew even more silent. The sun warmed the cobblestones and the few dogs about were content to loll in the warmth and give him no more than a passing glance, almost as if they were already used to him.
He walked to the little bay and stood there, seeing distant sails of fishing boats returning. He counted no more than ten boats on the horizon, a smaller number than the expansive docks were originally built for. This was no busy fishing port any longer. Where had the men and ships gone?
He stopped at Mrs. Cameron’s house, thankful he had remembered to put more coins in his pocket for the two women. Mrs. Tavish was sitting up in bed now. She gave him a ghost of a smile and took his hand when he told her of Deoiridh’s funeral.
“I’ll see to a small headstone before I leave Edgar,” he promised her. “Maybe her name, dates, and a little verse?”
Mrs. Tavish nodded.
“Any verse in particular?”
“Miss Grant will know,” Tommy’s mother whispered.
“I expect she will,” he replied, touched at everyone’s reliance on Olive Grant. “Tommy is doing well. I will probably shorten his splint tomorrow and let him sit up. We might even take soap and a cloth to him.”
Poor Mrs. Tavish didn’t know what to say to someone such as him, even as simple and ordinary as he knew himself to be. She had likely been cowed and abused all her life. Mrs. Cameron curtsied as he handed her more coins and assured him she was buying nourishing food for them both. He probably could not expect more.
And then he was out the door. A cautious glimpse inside the Tavish house showed no evidence of the man.Good riddance, Douglas thought and continued his walk.
He walked beyond the village in the direction he had come only two days ago. His attention had been claimed by Tommy at the time, but now he looked and was saddened by what he saw.
He saw a small dry dock, something familiar to him from years of pulling into Plymouth and Portsmouth, where the dry docks had been massive and always full ofships in various stages of construction or repair. This one lay idle and empty with its two brickworked cradles, or graving docks, and bilge blocks and hinge-shores holding up nothing. The gates of one coffer dam were closed and sound, though, allowing no water inside the enclosure. Also closed tight was what he assumed was the machine shed, probably housing pumps and wheels and stays that could be thrust from the brick frame cradling the infant ship and kept level so the builders could do their work.
He walked onto the dock, peering down at the brickwork, impressed with its soundness. The dry dock with its way, down which a finished vessel would slide into the sound, would never have been large enough for a frigate or a ship of the line, but he knew a yacht or a similar-sized craft could be built most handily here.
Where was everyone? Was this what Olive Grant wanted him to see? Did she expect him to wave a wand and have a work force appear?
The fishing fleet was coming up the bay’s estuary now. He watched the boats with their clouds of seagulls. Soon the herring and whatever else was caught in these waters would be swung onto the dock and into troughs, where people such as Tommy and his mum would clean, scrape and gut, and prepare for larger markets. The gulls would hang about for the scraps and the day would end.
There appeared to be no other revenue source in Edgar. No wonder the little village was on starvation rations.This still isn’t my problem, he assured himself.
True or not, he walked back more slowly, savoring the sight of the pretty little village still keeping up appearances, rather like an old lady from a good family who had fallen upon hard times.
He stopped at the dock to watch the first boat swing its nets over the gunwales, where the catch was guided into the troughs. Women and children stood ready with their knives. He thought he would buy some fish for MissGrant, maybe as a peace offering for being stupid and unmindful. It couldn’t hurt. He made his way carefully down the slippery ladder.
