She gave him a startled glance, one that said very clearly,I thought I made it obvious I had no wish to speak of this?
Yes. She had. But he didn’t believe her. People with their hearts that full of another always wanted to talk of them, the way a bird must sing.
“You said your husband died nine years ago,” he continued. “You could only have been eighteen or nineteen. Twenty, at most.”
Around them, the breeze twisted, bringing first the call of the rooks and then the music, leaving gaps for quiet words to fill.
“Nine years ago today.” The admission was sad and soft. “I was seventeen when I married. Nineteen when I was widowed.”
“You met young, then.”
His gaze remained on the view, hands clasped at his back, but he could see how she glanced at him.
“He…he was my neighbour. We were both fourteen when he moved into the house three doors down from my own. His father was a chandler and had a successful business in London. The house in Winchelsea was meant to be a country retreat, for holidays, but Alf—” She forced herself on. “Alfred and his mother loved it so much they decided to move there all year round.”
Sebastian stayed quiet, just waited and watched the breeze rifle through the oaks. Did what needed to be done.
“He loved the sea. Alfred. Their house in London was on the Thames, and so he rowed, and learnt to sail on the river—his father’s trade was boats, of course—the water was his life. Down in Sussex, he kept a small yacht at the harbour at Rye—that’s the next town along—a sailing dinghy, and he’d sail whenever he could; he’d even go out on the fishing boats and learn their ways, for no one knows the water better than a man who owes his living to it. And…and sometimes, he would take me out with him. At night, sailing by the moon. I’m sure my parents knew, ormy mother, at least, but she never stopped me. I think she knew she couldn’t… Nothing could have…nothing could have kept me from Alfred. Or him from me. Well. Except death.”
She said that last as though she tried to laugh, but it was too tight and anguished to be that. She blinked against tears, her nose pink from a day in the sun, her hair escaping the hairdresser’s coils, being tugged this way and that by the breeze.
But her blue eyes were clear and steady as a rock, despite their sparkling sheen. She kept on looking out, as though she really did look out over ancient seas to somewhere far, far away. The past. That unreachable country.
“How did he die?”
This time she did laugh, though it held no less anguish. “Some sudden internal infection, some inflamed organ. Can you believe it? He sailed his whole life, served two years in the navy, and yet he wasn’t drowned or blown to bits by a cannonball or shipwrecked on some savage shore, but died of something like that. The fittest, most vital, mostaliveboy you could imagine… He went from that to dead in two days. And he was at sea, and there was only some butcher of a ship’s surgeon, and I wasn’t there—”
He couldn’t touch her. And this was a moment when a person ought to be held—he’d seen it, a woman overcome in the street, a father at a friend’s funeral… But he stood silent and still, not being allowed. Not knowing how.
“And when he was dead, they wrapped him up and dropped him overboard. And I know it was all they could do…I know it’s what happens at sea…but he has no grave, he’s down there somewhere, thousands of miles away…and I… You know, sometimes I used to sit on the beach with the sea all hazy in the sun, the light all broken and fractured, and I’d feel like I’d blink and somehow he’d be walking up towards me out of the water,as though it was all a mistake and he’d only got lost somewhere along the way home…”
She gave a gasping sob, and his hand lifted…but fell away as she recovered herself, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise.”
“You asked for the story.”
“I did.”
“And I suppose you regret it.”
“Not at all.”
She looked up at him, embarrassed, sad, broken in a deep, lasting place, in a way he could hardly fathom. And yet…he thought he understood. Or at least he knew what it was like to long for something to be very different to how it was.
After a moment, she raised him a smile, though unshed tears still darkened her lashes. “You must be angry. You are being nice to me. Isn’t that the only time you’re polite?”
“Should I tell you your hair needs repinning?”
“Yes. Much better.”
If there hadn’t been three people walking towards them, he would have offered to do it for her. She would blush and refuse, but she would stand still and let him, wondering why she did. Hating herself for it. For the way she shivered at his touch.
So this was the ghost who held her forever moored offshore. Alfred, who had loved her from fourteen to nineteen. Alfred, who had married her for two years and left her grieving for nine.
So alive, so vital…Moonlight sailing, two children exploring an ancient landscape already full of ancient ghosts… He watched a large bumblebee fly low over the grass, looking for clover not yet out.
