The Toll of the Sea Read online

  The Toll of the Sea

  Theresa Murphy

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Anxiety on her face, the woman was kneading dough on a rough wooden table. Years of poverty and hardship had eroded her prettiness but an indelible sensuality remained. Her dark auburn hair was tousled and concentration caused her heavy bottom lip to droop a little. Lean arms dusted with flour up to the elbows, she kept her eyes nervously averted from the man standing in the corner of the crude kitchen. He was a big man in an obese way. Expensively dressed, he had a bulging stomach covered and supported by a gaudy chequered waistcoat more suited to a bookmaker than an insurance agent. His black hair was parted in the middle and greased flat to the skull on each side. A heavily jowled, florid face had as a centrepiece a bulbous nose criss-crossed with blue veins. His breathing caused a purring rattle in his throat, and he had an aura of sour perspiration that extended six feet from his gross body. As he made a display of opening a thick book with a glossy black cover, the small girl sitting on the floor studied him with the ego-absent scrutiny of an infant.

  Placing a finger on a page of the book, he pursed his fat blue lips in an expression of concern. His loud voice broke an uncomfortably lengthening silence, startling the woman. She cowered, reacting to each of his words as if they were physical blows.

  ‘I hadn’t realized how sorry a state you are in, Mrs Willard.’ The man shook a large, despairing head. ‘It says here that the last payment you made was on the 23rd of September. That is coming up to four months ago, Mrs Willard. I am sure you appreciate that it can’t be allowed to go on like this.’

  Though her lips moved, the woman had no reply to make. The impoverished could only hope to evade issues such as this. They certainly didn’t argue them.

  From somewhere high and distant outside came the mournful and repetitive cry of a wheeling seagull. Closer then, so near that it seemed to be a threat to the stone house that had been built without mortar, came the pebble-scraping roar of a wave building up to smash against the beach with an impact that shook the dirt floor beneath their feet.

  A chicken, its dark-red feathers caked with mud, walked in uninvited to do a pointlessly circular tour of the kitchen in its peculiar neck and leg stretching gait. Both the man and the woman watched the chicken intently as if it was right then the most important thing in the world. As it went back out of the door the child waved the arm of a rag doll at the hen and giggled a farewell.

  Regretting that the diversion was over, the woman turned her gaze back to the dough in front of her. Watching her keenly for a moment, the man suddenly clutched jerkily at the book he was holding in both hands, giving the impression he was struggling against some action the book had decided to take independently.

  ‘It’s only a matter of pence, Mrs Willard,’ he used a reasonable tone to point out.

  ‘Pennies don’t come easy to the likes of we, sir,’ she said.

  As she spoke she turned her face to him. It had a strength, something of a masculinity that was, conversely, exciting in a woman. Yet she seemed to have been frightened by her own temerity, and was using long white teeth to hold a moist bottom lip to prevent herself from saying more.

  The rattle of the man’s breathing increased in volume. It no longer resembled a feline sound of contentment. There was a threat to it before a noisy clearing of his throat cured the wheezing, but only temporarily. Soon the rasping was louder than before as he seemed to be fighting to retrieve a lost voice.

  ‘I do understand that these are hard times, Mrs Willard, but as a good wife and mother, an admirably intelligent woman if I may be so bold, you will recognize the security that these few pennies buy you.’ Pausing, he tilted his large head to one side in a listening attitude, the excess flesh on his face dangling lopsidedly in rounded folds. Another wave had crashed against the shore, and he waited. The violent crescendo eased to an angry hissing as the shattered breaker died. Then he went on, ‘There’s a huge swell out there this morning that makes hauling in those nets dangerous. Is your man trawling with them, Mrs Willard?’

  She nodded, putting more effort into her kneading, pounding her knuckles into the dough as if it represented all the deprivations in her life. From under long lashes she covertly watched him bend to run fat white fingers through the copper-coloured ringlets of her tiny daughter. His smile displayed artificial teeth and bogus sincerity. The woman was hurt by the way the man energetically wiped the hand with which he had touched the child.

  Then, taking a sudden step towards her, he seemed to fill the room so that she felt a claustrophobic suffocation. He laid the open book on the table in front of her. Repeatedly tapping the relevant page with a forefinger, he again made his lips bell-shaped to produce a sighing sound to let her know this was the part of his job that he didn’t like.

  He coaxingly enquired, ‘Perhaps you could manage this week’s payment and a little off the arrears, Mrs Willard?’ When she gave a rapid, negative shake of her head, he added in a less pleasant tone, ‘Otherwise I will have no option but to cancel the policy. Sad to say, it won’t end there. My superiors will take immediate action to recover your debt to date.’

  Under pressure, the woman started to cry. It wasn’t a self-pitying sobbing, but the weary weeping of someone who’d fought too many unequal battles against overpowering odds. A small tear leaked from each of her closed lids. She cringed as he moved closer to her. Using a crudely suggestive middle finger he ran it up through flour dust from the wrist to the elbow of her right arm, leaving a temporary track on her skin while inflicting an eternal mark on her soul.

  ‘It has to be paid,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘One way or another … Lucy.’

  For a few seconds her body went as rigid as steel. Then she slumped forwards in defeat, grasping the thick edges of the table with both hands to support herself. After a little while she straightened up to walk zombie-like across the kitchen. Being one of the poorer houses in that part of Devon, it had only one other room. She stooped to sit on her heels beside her tiny daughter. Reaching out with both hands to clasp the chubby little shoulders, she whispered falteringly, ‘Be a good girl for Mama, Bella,’ she urged, using a swift movement of her hand to knock away a falling tear before it could land on the small girl. ‘Stay here and play with your dolly. Mama will be back soon.’

  Standing up, the woman carried on to go through the doorway into the adjoining room, avoiding the lustfully clutching hands of the man until they were both out of the child’s sight.

  The fact that she kept her eyes closed saved the woman from witnessing the grimace of distaste the man gave on seeing sacking masquerading as bedclothes. He glanced up disdainfully at the black-edged hole in the ceiling that served in the absence of an unaffordable chimney. But his needs overcame his repugnance and he reached for her.

  Twenty minutes later it was the man who came back into the kitchen first. The red/blue hue of his face had gained a purple depth from exertion, and there were beads of sweat linking up with each other on his brow. His top lip was wet either with perspiration or smeared dribble. Picking up his book from the table he closed it with a thud that frightened the child. Permitting himself a brief, lip-smacking leer of satisfaction, he fed his book under his right arm, the shoulder doing a practised lift to accommodate it. Then he walked out of the house without glancing at th
e smiling child who was waving the arm of her doll at him.

  Less than a minute later the mother returned to run across the room and drop to her knees beside her daughter. Tilting back her head of shining ringlets, the child’s face came alight with a loving smile. Putting out her hands to the little girl, the mother then snatched them back violently before they could actually touch the child.

  Dismayed at being deprived of an anticipated embrace, the girl began to cry. Making comforting sounds, the mother dashed to where a basin of water rested on a rickety chair. Stooping over, she washed her hands over and over again.

  Becoming aware of a commotion outside of the house, she swiftly dried her hands and lifted the child from the floor. Taking the weight of her little daughter on a thrust-out right hip, she walked out into the grey winter’s air that was filled with the sorrowful wailing of women.

  Instinctively, she knew. As she inwardly collapsed she outwardly tried to deny her usually reliable intuition. Surely a sin didn’t attract instant punishment! Trying to convince herself she had wrongly surmised what was happening, she failed miserably as the parade of shouting, sobbing women advanced on her.

  The majority of them were old, with toothless gums and wrinkled faces. The young were among them, wailing and howling just as loudly as their elders. Wheeling seagulls joined in the lament with their loud cries. Josephine Heelan, a woman of her own age, cried out tearfully, ‘Ooooh, Lucy. It’s your man, Lucy! It’s your man.’

  Parting without an order having been given, the women moved with the precision of military drill. Four men came forward between them, ghostlike in the white flannel suits the fishermen wore for warmth in winter. They moved towards her in an awkward, shuffling gait, each of them holding one corner of an improvised stretcher fashioned out of a blanket. Not being in step, they caused a constant jolting that performed a pseudoresurrection of the body they carried. Covered by sacking, the corpse was more animated with each step the bearers took.

  It was a parody of a cortège. The screeching women were the mourners, the unshaven fishermen impromptu pallbearers, while the rhythmic pounding of the sea provided a background of funereal music.

  An elderly man, so weak that he clasped his corner of the blanket with both hands, called out an explanation. ‘He didn’t have no chance, Mistress Willard. A great wave hit us when we was a-pulling the nets. Ned got caughted in the rope and was draggeded over the side. He drownded long afore we could get to ’im.’

  With tiredness preventing them from showing reverence, the four men lowered the body on to the ground before her. The sackcloth shroud made the dead man comfortingly anonymous. Dry-eyed and in the grip of shock that allowed her face no expression of any kind, Lucy Willard looked down numbly. The taste of salt spray on her lips was welcome after the wetness of the unwanted kisses she had just endured. She couldn’t connect this inert, silent homecoming with the laughing, loving, living man she had expected to stride up from the sea to embrace her daughter and herself.

  All around her the women fell silent. They had led lives that were too harsh, too cruel, and, in many cases, too long, but not one of them had ever seen a new widow react with such indifference.

  With a bemused expression on her face now, seemingly at a loss to know why they were staring at her or what they expected of her, Lucy Willard looked back at them steadily. She behaved like they and not she were the recently bereaved.

  There was some muttering among the crowd. Several of them were ready to criticize what they regarded as a heartless young woman. Others, the more sensitive, were sadly aware that something was terribly amiss. They neither knew what it was nor what they could do about it.

  After a considerable spell of quiet that only the restless sea had the courage to disturb, Josephine Heelan broke away from the crowd and made her hesitant, slow way towards where Lucy Willard stood unmoving, as lifeless as a stone statue.

  Josephine was a tall woman whose height and thinness had disguised her many pregnancies so that each of the six children she had given birth to had taken the village, and most probably her, by surprise. She was three months gone now, and was aware of her condition. But her hardworking fisherman husband, Jacob was already terribly worried over having so many mouths to feed, so she would allow him to remain blissfully ignorant for a few months yet.

  Lucy Willard made no protest when Josephine took her daughter from her arms, bouncing the bewildered child up and down as it started to cry. An older woman, encouraged by Josephine’s intervention, shuffled forward in frayed boots. Bent over permanently from gutting fish, she peered worriedly up into Lucy Willard’s face. The old one stank of fish, and the breath she puffed at the new widow reeked in a way that defied description, but Lucy Willard neither cringed nor flinched.

  ‘Did you pay into the club for your man, dearie?’ the fishwife enquired in a whining, wheedling way. ‘Was he insured, dearie?’

  For quite a time Lucy Willard remained motionless and silent. Then she moved slowly. Reaching into her bodice she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. When she did speak her voice was flat and dispirited.

  ‘Oh yes, my Ned was insured.’

  This brought a variety of sounds and comments from the crowd. Some were pleased that the young widow and her baby would not have to struggle to live; while others would selfishly feel better about their own battle for a bare existence had they learned that Lucy Willard would be worse off than they were.

  Suddenly switching from immobility into convulsive movement, the widow waved a piece of paper above her head, a little document so recent that the ink was smudging under her fingers.

  ‘Fully paid up!’ she shouted, her voice cracking partway through the sentence.

  Then everyone there, men as well as women, pulled back a little in horror as Lucy Willard, standing over the body of her newly dead husband, shrieked out in peal after peal of hysterical laughter.

  It went on and on, causing people to clap their hands over their ears and turn away. It was Josephine Heelan who once more made a constructive move.

  Passing Lucy Willard’s daughter to the woman beside her, Josephine went to her friend, who was still rocking backwards and forwards as she screamed out insane laughter.

  As Josephine’s arms went round her, the young widow’s laughter became interspersed with sobs. By the time her friend was leading her slowly away towards her home, Lucy Willard was no longer laughing. Bent over, her steps dragging, she wept.

  After glancing at each other to come to a tacit agreement, the four fishermen picked up the stretcher. Josephine guided the widow in through the door of her house, and the men bearing her husband’s corpse followed them.

  Ned Willard was home from the sea.

  One

  ARABELLA SAT BESIDE the bed on which her sick mother lay. She pushed her mass of copper-coloured hair away from her ears in a worried attempt at trying to identify one of the many sounds going on outside. It was a horrific din. A wind that had howled earlier in the evening was now an ear-splitting screech. Occasionally there was a mighty rumble as yet another chimneystack toppled, while a continual shattering of glass recorded the breaking of windows as displaced tiles and slates flew like missiles. She was glad that her mother slept the deep and infrequently disturbed sleep of the very ill, even though it left Arabella feeling very much alone.

  She had wished over the years that she and her mother could share life. Lucy Willard had always been remote, as if she wanted to avoid the reality of living. Josie Heelan, Lionel’s mother, said this was due to shock when the father Arabella couldn’t remember had been drowned.

  According to the older villagers the young Lucy had been a vivacious beauty. Arabella could not fit that description with the poor sunken creature that slept on the bed.

  A loud bang outside brought Arabella into alertness. Although expected, the storm had struck Adamslee with a devastating fury that had caught even the village fishermen unawares. Since it had begun, Arabella had been praying that Lionel Heelan wo
uld call to check that her mother and she were safe. Lionel and Arabella were ‘walking out’, if that quaint term could apply in their circumstances. They spent most of their time together at opposite sides of her mother’s bed. Yet he never complained. He was a caring lad who took care of his widowed mother and younger sister with what he earned by occasionally doing menial work. The first-born of the Heelan family, Esther, had married a clergyman and lived on the far side of Exeter.

  Between them, Lionel and Arabella constantly nurtured an idea that they would one day improve their lot dramatically, to rise far above the line of poverty. But it was a yearning not a plan – a dream that she believed would never permit itself to be dreamt. Generation after generation in Adamslee had spent a lifetime fighting the sea in order to survive. They had died, most of them prematurely, having succeeded only in turning the impoverishment of their birth into the destitution of their death.

  Though recognizing it was a futile hope, Arabella didn’t want Lionel to find permanent work on the boats. The sea had claimed her father, leaving her mother alone with a family of only one child and long years of neediness and aching emptiness ahead of her. Although Arabella loved her deeply, she had never been able to get to know her the way a girl should know her mother.

  She leapt up from where she was sitting then, in the grip of terror as the outside door in the kitchen imploded. Assuming that someone had lifted the latch and the wind had done the rest, Arabella heard the door strike the inner wall so hard that it reverberated. Swiftly the gale came into the room, lifting the bedcovers and disturbing her mother a little before extinguishing the smoking lamp to leave Arabella in an inky blackness that disorientated her.

  Then her frantic worry subsided together with the wind that had been buffeting around the room. The door was being closed, and she could see a flickering yellow light in the kitchen.

  Making her way carefully to the doorway, Arabella saw two heavily garbed figures straining to secure the door. Both were wearing oilskins, but she easily identified Lionel Heelan, who was tall and thin like his mother. A hurricane lamp had been placed on the floor, and with the door closed, Lionel bent to pick it up. As the shorter figure turned she saw the rain-dripping face of Ruth, Lionel’s crippled sister, peering owl-like out at her through a protective hood.