‘What if they think it’s you who’s blackmailing them?’
This had not occurred to him, and he pondered the suggestion uneasily. The irony struck him forcibly, because he did in fact have a lot of dirt on the family which hewasintending to blackmail them with should it become necessary.
‘That is a possibility, yes.’
‘So he doesn’t want to do a swap of Harry for theletters—he wantsyou.’
They both considered this in silence, Ben checking the glowing lights on his instrument panel, and him hugging the snoring dog to his chest, now glad of the animal’s warmth. October, even in Scilly, was cold at night.
Ben glanced around at him a couple of times before saying, ‘You know Billy’s probably already dead, yeah? It’s why we’ve not seen him again. We flushed him out of his hiding place to help us, and then we locked him out. Do you remember when you asked him why he’d opened the door for us—what he said?’
Aleksey cast his mind back. He’d been a little busy at the time.
‘He saidbad men, Nik, remember? I think he knew he was being hunted for some reason even then. How did he know we weren’t the bad men?—because we were the ones being chased and running away. I think it’s becausehe’sbeing hunted for those fucking letters, and anyone else in the same situation struck a chord with him. How’s Snodgrass?’
He was sleeping happily, which seemed a good sign to Aleksey. He could not bear to think of Harry and what the old man must now assume had happened to his best friend. To survive you needed hope, and Harry’s had been dashed once before by losing such a companion.
He picked up the bear. He was looking bad and smelled worse. When he’d seized the sword in the warehouse, he’d dropped the bear into the same swill Ben had encountered.MacArthur—named by a little boy who struggled to talk but who had loved music.
Could a baby hear music in the womb? Had Billy listened to Stranger on the Shore as Jenna had repeatedly played it that Christmas? He and Nikolas had been subjected to Stravinsky and Schoenberg played with furious, passionate intensity. Had Nina pressed her swollen belly against her piano, and so discordant vibrations had disturbed their peaceful world even then? It possibly explained a lot.
The scarf was soggy and pinkish, the proud Devon colours melting in the dark, just as the song said. He plucked idly at the knot as they bounced over the cold ocean, and when the scarf was finally free, he chucked it overboard into the swell where the darkness of the night swallowed it up.
He turned back to consider the toy in his hands and his heart gave a tiny lurch.
Underneath, where the scarf had covered it, the bear’s neck was crudely stitched with thick blue thread. The head had apparently been removed at some time and then very roughly reattached.
Aleksey hesitated for only a second, then leaned forwards and nicked one of the stitches open with the edge of the sword.
Ben was staring at the bear with a disbelieving expression.
He removed MacArthur’s head and laid it carefully on the seat alongside him. The inside of the body was filled with sawdust, as Phillipa had claimed, but also, where some of this had apparently been scooped out, with folded paper.
He glanced at Ben’s astonished expression and pulled out a small stack of letters. They were written in a vaguely familiar handwriting—large girlish swirls in green pen. The paper was thin, blue, unlined and the writing began slanting mid-page and by the bottom of each paper was at an alarming angle. “They’re in English. William didn’t speak Cornish, remember?”
He carefully unfolded each one and put them into date order.
‘Read them.’
He nodded to Ben’s request, but continued to turn the fragile stack in his hand. He had missed the significance of the bear. It was a thread of coincidence that even Phillipa had found disturbing. He’d only been joking to her that the bear had gone on his travels, but he actually had: from Phillipa’s home at Barton Combe, to Buckingham Palace for the heir’s Christening; to the lighthouse on La Luz when William brought Jenna and her baby, to the asylum with Billy when Trinity House decommissioned the light; back to the lighthouse with Billy when the children’s home closed; back to the asylum to be placed on an empty bed in an abandoned bedroom, and then to a cottage on Benhar. And now he was carrying it around all these places once more. The bear was circling the whirlpool. Perhaps he always had been.
Ben prodded him with his foot, and he shook himself, clicked on this torch app, and began to read aloud.
***
Chapter Forty-two
26 July
My dear, dear William,
Boatman has promised me he will get this to your cottage but he said it might be a few weeks before your on rotation. I so want to tell you not to worry, because I know you will be. Leaving Guillemot was horrible. I wanted to come and see you on that last day, but I would have been to sad and made you all cry I expext. But now I cannot tell you how happy I am and how kind everyone has been. Its like a miricle, in fact I think I am dreaming really and I dont want to wake up except then I’d never have my baby would I? Hah. Anyway, I cant believe it but because Mrs D said I was such a good girl really she has let me stay in her little cottage untill they can find a new place for me. I’m on Benhar, and its the sweetest little cottage you could imagine if you ever imagine things like cottages. I dont supose you do. Its got thach and its painted light blue. Its only one room with a little tiny bit at the back for a bed, but its just so lovely. I sit in the sun and wait. I can feel him kicking all the time now and I’m not sleeping very well, but thats fine. I put Stranger on the Shore on my record player and I sit just out side on the step and play it over and over again as I gaze over the sea. And I think about you and I want to ask you would it be allright with you if I call my baby William? If hes a boy of course. If shes a girl I’m going to call her Wenna after mum. Its a good Cornish name, and I will teach her the langwich. But William is the only name I want for my son.
I wont go on to long in case you dont get this but if you do please come and see me. I will play house and make you a cup of tea if my tummy can reach the ketle! And I will put three spoonfulls of suger in your’s.
All my love Jenna
He looked up when he was done. ‘Her spelling is worse than yours and that’s saying something. Did they have punctuation in Cornwall in the 1960s? Perhaps they introduced it to schools later. But I’m glad they helped her. The housekeeper and the old nanny were sisters. It must be the same cottage we saw.’
