LITMIR.BIZ

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all of this with staring eyes and the back of his hand pressed up to his mouth.

      ‘Hold hard,’ Matthias bellowed at him. There were other matters to attend to if they were not all to end up in the same way as Martin the bowman. The whale was still running away from them and they were fast being drawn from the other boats in the wake of this leviathan. The boat steerer was calling for the drags to slow her rush, and Matthias saw to it that William and the other two men worked the line regardless of the grim cargo they bore with them.

      The whale flew on like an arrow and at such a speed that the water rose up in a wall on either side of the boat. The tubs would soon be empty of line and there was no other boat within reach to bend on with her own lines and help save them, and the fine whale.

      William Corder cooled the flying line with water from his bucket, but his face had no more colour than the dead man’s.

      At length Matthias had the bitter choice between giving the order to cut the line and thus surrendering whale, whaleline and two harpoons, as well as his bowman, or to risk being dragged under, and losing the boat itself and the lives of five more men. He gave the command, the lines were cut and, freed of her tormentor at last, the vessel wallowed in the swell like a porpoise.

      The Dolphin rode three miles off to their stern. It was a bitter hard row back to her, with Martin lying cut almost in half at their feet. The sight of William Corder’s face touched some chord of pity buried deep in Matthias Plant’s hardened heart and to hide it the mate let out a great bluster of rage. He cursed the boy squarely for his softness, so that William bowed his head over his oar to conceal the shock and grief that racked him.

      The men carried the body of their companion back on board the Dolphin and that night it was William Corder who sewed him into his sailcloth shroud. The last stitch was made through his nose, in the whalemen’s way, to be sure that the man was truly dead. Yet no man could have lived an hour with wounds like Martin the bowman’s. Before his body was given back to the sea William Corder tenderly kissed the cloth over the man’s face. Matthias Plant was the only one of the men who witnessed this last tribute, and that because he was secretly watching the boy and wondering what had led such a tender-hearted creature into the cruel chase for whales.

      Captain Gunnell read out the funeral service and the corpse was slipped over the side. William turned away from the rail as soon as the water closed over it and silently sought his bunk down in the forecastle.

      May was sick of reading, sick of her bedroom, of every mute piece of furniture and spider crack in the walls, and when she left it and went outside she felt like a snail winkled out of its shell to perish in the heat. The beach was a place of glaring light and intrusive happy voices, and the house was full of shadows that frightened her because they were impenetrable. She crept restlessly from one place to the next, never finding a refuge in which to be comfortable.

      The three books lay on the bedroom shelf. She didn’t bother to replace Doone’s diary in its hiding-place any longer. It refused to give up its secrets to her, so she retaliated by leaving it in the open. Voyages of the Dolphin was significant because it had been in Doone’s possession, but she couldn’t fathom what it meant or why it mattered. What she had read of it was gruesome or boring, in equal parts

      The other book Hannah Fennymore had lent her, In the Country of the Pointed Firs, she had read in a couple of sittings. It was quite short and easier than the whaling book. There was a lot about picking wild herbs and going visiting, but two stories from it stuck in her mind even though she tried not to think about them.

      One was about the grave of a young woman who had cut herself off from the world because of some secret sin, and had lived the rest of her life and died alone on one of the bay islands. The image of the deserted place and the grassed hump of ground in the corner of a field was too vivid in May’s mind. One of the characters said of it, ‘A growin’ bush makes the best gravestone. I expect that wormwood always stood for somebody’s solemn monument.’ May had no idea what wormwood might be, but it spoke eerily of worms and coffin wood.

      The other story was to do with a woman, quite an old woman herself, rowing out to visit her mother on some remote island. As soon as the boat drew near enough to be seen the ancient mother was at her cottage door, her handkerchief a white speck fluttering in the distance. The daughter smilingly said to her companion, ‘There, you never get over bein’ a child long’s you have a mother to go to.’

      The words had made May buckle with grief. Even when she thought about them now and about never having a mother to go to, her mouth stretched and saliva flooded her tongue.

      She hadn’t got past being a child, and now she was stopped dead, stuck in some midway place where nothing seemed to be within control nor ever to change. No talking to a tree, even one that reminded her of Alison, was going to help her. May was afraid and the worst of it was that she was frightened of herself, because she didn’t understand what was happening to her.

      She left the books again and walked out of the house. From the land side of the porch she could see across the gardens to a corner window at the rear of Elizabeth’s house. Suddenly she remembered that she had told Elizabeth about the woman on the island and Elizabeth had responded with some embarrassing question about love, before telling a long story about sneaking out to meet some guy here in the Captain’s House.

      Listening to anything would be better than going round in circles alone.

      ‘Hi,’ May said, when Elizabeth opened her door. ‘I, um, I thought I’d just, kind of, come by. Is it okay?’

      Elizabeth thought how sad the child looked. Her chin and bottom lip jutted out, ready for a rejection, but her eyes were imploring. ‘Come on in.’

      The girl followed Elizabeth through the house. In the evening room she marched to the window and stared out at the garden. ‘What’s wormwood?’ she asked abruptly.

      ‘It’s a plant. Artemisia is the botanical name. Why?’

      ‘Does it grow on graves?’

      ‘I don’t know. I suppose it could do, but I’ve never heard of it. Look, there’s a bush outside.’

      It was a silvery white mound, dotted with yellow flowers. Just a garden plant, nothing more. May studied it in silence; then, without turning to look at Elizabeth, she said in a low voice, ‘I want to know about the woman I saw on the island. I can’t forget the way she looked at me. You know something about her, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ Elizabeth said. The softness of her voice made May shiver. ‘I saw her fifty years ago.’

      ‘But…’

      ‘I can tell you the story, if you like.’

      May did turn pleading eyes on her now. ‘Do you have to make it a story? I’d kind of like to know about things for real.’

      ‘How do we know what’s real, May? Anyhow, I don’t know any other way. I was told it as a story myself, by my grandmother, Elizabeth Page Freshett.’

      May understood that she wasn’t going to get any matter-of-fact explanations. This old woman with her milky eyes looking back into the past, and her forebears and their murky, staring portraits, were all a part of this place, wound up tight with it, and she was delivering herself up just by being in the house with them. Daring a glance around the room she saw that everything in it was old, and looked as if it had sat in the same place for ever, regulated by the ticking of the clock and the crawl of sunlight across polished wood. The door of the room was shut tight. She thought the old woman might see her shiver. ‘Go on, then,’ she ordered in a loud voice.

      ‘I told you how I fell in love,’ Elizabeth began. She wasn’t looking at May any longer, but away to one side, at a little army of photographs in silver frames, drawn up on the lid of the piano. ‘I was unhappy because I couldn’t marry him. I wanted to, and I should have gone ahead and done it, but I was a coward.

      ‘I was going away to Europe for a year. I didn’t often go out on the water, but I wanted to get to Moon Island and look back at the beach and the

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