Strange Waters E-Book

Jackie Taylor

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 194

Beschreibung

Set in Cornwall, coastal erosion and flooding take on a near mythical power as the short stories in this collection weave in and out of the recent past and near future, as lives and relationships ebb and flow with the tide. From one maritime tragedy to another, the community, and three generations of women from the same family, struggle with their over-close affinity for the sea.

Leseprobe

That’s the thing about selkies – they spend their lives looking out to sea thinking about other places they’d rather be

Contents

New Lyonesse

Finisterre

CV

Pelt

Lifelines

Heartbeat

Noah

Bilateral Breathing

Quarry Swimming

Guillemot Payne

Hostile Design

The Things We Can’t Say

Drowning in Green

Cream Cakes at the Knit and Natter

Strange Waters

Another Place

Zero Hours

Rewilding

New Lyonesse

September 2032

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome. Welcome, all, to New Lyonesse. My name is Chloe, I’m the caretaker here, and I’ll be your guide today. You’re in safe hands, I promise you. I’ve lived here all my life, so I know everything there is to know about this place and what happened here. We’re not full, so please – spread out, get comfortable, fasten your life jackets and enjoy the tour. Just one health and safety note: please keep your hands inside the boat.

Have you been here before? Summer holidays in a caravan, or a short break in a B&B? Let’s have a show of hands… that’s most of you – great – so I don’t need to tell you how it looked harbourside before the flood. Thanks for coming back to see us, it’s wonderful to be welcoming old friends and new. It’s been quiet here for so long. You’ll already have noticed how changed we are.

I’ll point out anything of interest as we go. We won’t be going far offshore, but you’ll see plenty of bird life – cormorants, oyster catchers, guillemots, terns. Puffins? Possibly, I’ll call out if I see – puffins are always smaller than people imagine, they always look so big in photographs. The last couple of days there’s been a pod of harbour porpoise checking us out. Very exciting, so fingers crossed. There’s a colony of seals on the far side of the bay; one of them usually comes over to say hello.

You’re lucky, this is a great day to visit. The tide’s fairly low and the water’s clear, not much run-off from the fields inland, so you should be able to get a good view down to the streets and the buildings below. As we make our way over the old village, you’ll see things just breaking through the surface – like there, to the left – that cormorant stretching out its wings – that’s the roof of the old Harbour Master’s Office he’s perched on. Below you now, can you see the outline of the car park that used to sit behind the dunes? Those black sticks are parking meters – an excellent habitat for mussels, apparently. We are very proud that a new species of barnacle has been found, thriving inside some of the old cottages, clinging to blackened hearths and old slate floors. We have become a Mecca for scientists. We’re not short of researchers, students and volunteers; our little corner of the world is being studied like you wouldn’t believe. Bit late, but still, it may help somewhere else. We get our fair share of weirdos too – sceptics, deniers, preachers, activists and rebels – all with their own particular axe to grind, all giving us the benefit of their rock-solid knowledge. I’m still a resident, one of the few to stay when the managed retreat from this coastline became a rout. All of us who were here have our experience and expertise.

You should be able to see the row of coastguards’ cottages, curtains at the glassless windows, breathing in and out with the tide. Kelp has rooted around all the chimney pots. My grandfather lived in one of those, the one second from the end. Beautiful isn’t it, when you look down? Can you see it now? We lived there when I was young; I wanted to be a mermaid then.

Is everyone OK? If you’ve got any questions – please – ask as we go along.

Quiet? Yes, surprising isn’t it? The seagulls have all moved inland where there are richer pickings to be had.

So I guess you all know the story? Anyone not? You remember something on the TV once? OK… right. Yes, things tend to get a bit mixed up. Tragedies accumulate until they join up into one big blur, don’t they?

It was on the news a lot, and after, there were documentaries, official and unofficial enquiries, a public hearing with legal representatives. Lots of time and money was spent trying to lay the blame. All the reports started off by referring to us as a ‘tight-knit’ community and I suppose we were – I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I’ve nothing to compare.

Hard to credit now, but it was so busy down here, specially in summer. In and out with the tide – trawlers, trips round the bay, fishing charters – we used to watch the visitors coming back after a day’s mackerel fishing, chugging back into the harbour and most of the men looking green round the gills. Could have been seasickness, or could have been something to do with the crates of beer in the hold, I couldn’t possibly comment.

There’s wasn’t much down in the old village itself, the lanes weren’t designed for more than a horse and cart, so no cars, except the ones that followed their SatNavs past all the ‘no vehicle’ signs and got themselves well and truly stuck. There was a pub, a chapel and a corner shop, a hairdresser, and a pasty shop. A couple of summer-only cafés. The fishermen’s cottages look idyllic, but no one wanted to live in them. Fine for a summer holiday, but damp, and tiny. That’s why we didn’t lose more lives, most of the cottages being holiday lets or second homes. Up on the hill as you drove in, that’s all unchanged. The estate, a few more shops, the community centre, but it’s not like it was. The heart’s gone out of the place, as you’d expect. Not many people want to live on the outskirts of New Lyonesse.

There was never much work, but we were all kept busy when the summer crowds swept through. Difficult in winter, but we got by, and made enough to keep our heads above the sea. It wasn’t idyllic, far from, hindsight always lends a rosy glow.

That spring, it rained day after day after day, relentless, a thirty-day monsoon. The fields were as saturated as sponges, the streams dirt-brown; you can’t hold water back, we all know that. The cliffs started to crumble like fruitcake, and were washed away by run-off and undermined from the base by wind-driven seas. At the Ship, they ran a ‘build an ark’ competition. It was supposed to be a joke, an attempt to look on a brighter side. Then the rain stopped, but the damage had been done.

You could say we should have seen it coming. We planned, to some extent, but no one ever thought the worst would happen. It was strange; a few days before the flood, a fin whale beached, just up the coast. People seemed drawn to it, as if it were an omen; they gathered around and tried so hard to save it. Then the storm, and once the harbour wall was breached, it was all over in an hour or two. Three dead; one of them was a local girl, the others were day trippers just passing through. The council is building a memorial, up on the cliff – bit late, we all feel, but that’s another story – you probably passed the site on your drive in.

Please – feel free to ask…

Is that it? Well, yes, it is.

You thought there’d be more to see? We realise there’s not much here – not yet – that’s why we’ve kept our entrance fees so low. But we have great plans for New Lyonesse.

We’re very excited to share with you some of the opportunities that we’re considering; most are at the feasibility stage, but we are hopeful. There’s a girl who harvests dulse for all the top London chefs. She’s talking about a seafood cookery school, and, if it’s successful, accommodation – five star – with a boutique Wellness Spa. We’ve put in for funding for a glass-bottomed boat, and a kayak launch built around the chapel roof. There’s some talk of a dolphin experience and possibly a Son et Lumière, to support our conservation goals.

Pie in the sky?

Possibly, but we have to dream.

Personally, I’d like to commission a poet in residence – well, I’d apply! And I have been asked to plan a ‘Myths and Legends of the Deep’ VIP package with dinner-and-private-tour, which I’m sure will be popular with some visitors.

Of course, there’s always the risk that I could be replaced by an audio guide, though who’d do the rowing, eh? Virtual reality, that’s another idea, fronted by that man from Poldark, him with the scythe and the rippling abs. You don’t know who I mean? It was a TV show – way back – but he’s still alive apparently, and still popular with people of the right age.

We’ll be back on dry land soon. You’ll find a coffee machine just inside the shed. That’s the gift shop too, I should have said.

People often ask what I did here, before the flood. Like most of us from the village – a bit of this and a bit of that, cleaning, bar work, that sort of thing. I thought I’d move away when I was younger, but there’s something about being born by the sea. It gets under your skin.

It’s difficult, of course. What can I say? We make the best of what we’ve got.

We do rely on the public for their support. If you’d like to help us, you can do this in several different ways. You can sign up for our newsletter, or become a Friend, or a Sponsor, which gives you unlimited free entry, anytime.

I’m sorry you didn’t see any seals today. Or puffins, dolphins, or porpoise. Or whales. They’re out there though, isn’t that an amazing thing? Knowing that those creatures are out there, whether we see them or not?

I realise it’s disappointing. But the availability of wildlife is out of our control.

We’re just reaching the end of our tour. Don’t forget – keep an eye on our social media, we’ve got a presence on all the platforms, I think. We’d appreciate a review, particularly if you did enjoy the trip, and please come back. We’re positive about the opportunities for growth in this, our ‘Liminal Enterprise Zone’. But we do rely on you, our visitors. We need stable work in these unstable times, those of us who still try to make some sort of living here, in this new, tidal economy.

I’m sorry we didn’t meet your expectations. Please direct your feedback to the management; they will be delighted to hear from you. I hope some of you at least found it slightly interesting. We try our best to tell the story, in the only way we can.

The pontoon can be slippery, please be careful as you leave the boat. Make sure you’ve got all your things. And don’t forget to tell your friends. We’ve got great plans for New Lyonesse.

Finisterre

November 2032

It’s Grace’s job to keep everyone safe, to steady the land, to stop it falling away. She does this by building piles of stones, accumulating more each day, adding their anchoring weight around the shoreline. Grace tells herself this will save them all. She knows it’s probably not true, but she can’t afford to take the risk.

Her cottage squats on an outcrop of granite. This is Finisterre, the end of the world, a thin finger of land surrounded by sea. It’s about to break free, weightless, honeycombed out. It will float away on the Atlantic waves unless she intervenes. There’s no such thing as solid ground here. It’s riddled, like woodworm. Abandoned mine shafts drop straight down, then turn and disappear out under the seabed. There are hundreds of miles of tunnels, unmapped. The earth is like Swiss cheese; just thinking about it makes her sick.

Grace has been awake through the night, listening to the wind, and counting. The storm wasn’t bad, but before opening the curtains, just to be sure, she takes extra care with the things she needs to do. Everything looks the same as it was, but she can never really know for certain and once doubt starts to insinuate itself into her mind, there’s no stopping its progress or moving it to one side.

This morning, the same as every morning, she must prepare to go to her stones. It takes her a long time to get ready, there are so many conversations she needs to have with herself, and so many things that have to be done. Somehow, it’s nearly three o’clock by the time she leaves the cottage, and the day is almost lost to winter dusk.

Her route takes her along the lane past the Spar. A woman parks in the small, gravelled car park and picks her way through puddles to reach the shop door just as Grace passes. The woman smiles, says hello; Grace nods without lifting her head. The shop door opens and releases the smells of kerosene and last autumn’s apples.

The woman behind the till says to her customer, new to the village You’ve met Grace then? You mustn’t mind her if she doesn’t say hello. She’s eighty if she’s a day, and harmless enough. Buys the same number of things each time she comes in, packs them in separate bags that she brings from home. No wonder she always looks exhausted. Poor woman. Used to have the hairdressers, down by the harbour.

The customer gives an encouraging smile; she’s keen to learn who’s who in the community but doesn’t what to seem too inquisitive. The woman behind the till continues quietly, almost to her herself; the customer has to lean in towards her to hear.

She was always a bit alternative. Then after the flood… she lost her granddaughter. Lovely girl. Gilly. Grace has never been the same.

Grace reaches the footpath that only she uses, the way narrowed by gorse, bramble and blackthorn. She clambers over boulders scarred with lichen. Beware adders, they say, basking in the summer sunshine. But not today. It’s wet and windy. Stormy, but not bad for here. The fields are like brown corduroy, frayed at the sea-edges. The land has been gulped away by the sea, greedy mouthfuls at a time. Beware – Mine Workings – Keep Out – Danger. New shafts tend to open after rain.

She sings to herself as she hurries along, children’s songs mostly, simple but enough to block out the voice that wants to tell her that she’s too late. She crosses the abandoned road that used to lead down to the drowned village. This is her greatest burden; she failed to protect this place and those people.

*

Banjo and Wes are parked up in a lay-by on the road overlooking the sea. Below them is the road that leads down to where the old village used to hunker, before the harbour wall was breached. The road stops abruptly now with fencing and ‘keep out’ signs. The cab of the pick-up smells of sheep dog and pasties. Condensation drips on them, despite the slip-opened windows. They’ve been yarning all afternoon. It’s been too wet to work, much better to sit tight and put the world to rights. Grace crosses the road in front of them, unmistakable in her wet-weather gear and her focus.

Wes says There she goes again. What a life she’s had. Daughter died in childbirth, then losing the granddaughter in the flood.

And Banjo says She used to have the hairdressers, remember? Cut my Pauline’s hair for years.

And they both nod slowly at this, like a pair of dashboard dogs, and Wes remembers what a looker she’d been back in the day, despite being a bit of a hippy-type, although you’d never believe it now.

Panicked by the memory of the village and the people she couldn’t save, Grace crosses the road and picks up the footpath again, and starts running, sort-of, slipping often. Every day this is becoming harder; she never used to be this late. The rain on her face is slimy and the wind is pushing her back, but at last she reaches the rocks. She looks over the edge. Way down below her, an arc of pale gold sand, a stream cutting through it, taking fresh water to the salt waves. Off to the east, she can hear the clamour from the guillemot cliffs. The birds cram together on vertiginous ledges; the chicks are just three weeks old when they dive to the sea. She wishes they would all stay in the safety of their nests forever.

She crosses the granite bridge over the zawn, the sea below scouring the base of the cliffs. The plateau is creviced and cracked, with sea on three sides. Here are her stones, her beautiful, orderly field of stones. Pile after pile of pebbles, like the cityscape of an alien world. There are three stones on the base of each cairn, another three in the gaps to make the next layer, one larger stone over the top.

She looks around the stone field, trying to decide where to build today’s cairn. The stones are so well-known to her that they feel almost like friends or family. Strangers sometimes add their own small monuments to hers as they walk past on the coast path. Grace doesn’t mind this, as long as it is done in a way that’s respectful.

She is only too aware of the irrationality of her actions, but this building and saving is the only thing that makes any sense for her to be doing anymore. Nearly fifty years ago, in one single day, she lost her daughter and gained a granddaughter, her beautiful, beautiful Gilly, hers to nurture and raise. And now Gilly is gone too, ten years ago. In the face of these cold, hard facts, the act of trying to save the world by piling stones around a fractured coastline is as sensible a response as any she can imagine.

In the corner of her vision, she catches sight of a kestrel, flexed into the wind. She watches, her mind quiet – captured for a few precious moments. She breathes, breathes, breathes in the peace. The kestrel wheels away, arcing into the wind with a cry like quartz.

She closes her eyes against the field of stacked stones in front of her. If she just thinks of the kestrel, can she keep the worry away? She knows it won’t last, this quiet. It never does. Recalling the times she brought Gilly here after school, in the summer or on Sundays, she squeezes her eyes shut, refusing to open them to the sea-world in front of her. They used to build streets, villages and towns out of pebbles, decorated with ropes of purple seaweed, white cuttlefish bones, candy floss coloured shells and feathers. It was their favourite game, so much better than sandcastles that collapsed and disappeared with every incoming tide. After Gilly, and the flood, this game of careful construction, the process of strengthening and reinforcing, had become life and death to Grace, a daily routine that couldn’t be broken. She is so tired, right down in her bones. She would like to rest now, to not be responsible for saving the rest of the world. She wants the kestrel overhead, just the kestrel, and quiet, simple things. She yearns for the smell and sound of the sea, and the feel of the wind, without worrying about the consequences.

Grace sits on a flat jagged slab, feeling the cold seep through layers of clothes. She is too tired to gather her stones. She is too tired to build a new cairn. She can’t do it anymore, not today, perhaps never. The weight is too much for one person. She hesitates then lifts a stone from the top of a cairn, leaving it incomplete, defenceless. She holds her breath, waiting for the terrible consequences. Nothing changes. There is no shudder of earth, no shift of land. What if…? What if…? Could she really stop all this, and know that everyone would be safe? Can she take the risk?

The stone she has removed is rounded and sea-worn. It seems that she has been travelling with these sea stones all her life. It’s nearly dark. She returns to the granite bridge across the zawn and drops the stone over the edge. It bounces three times on the faces of the rock, then disappears into the push and pull of the waves. A seal-shadow twists in the curl of a wave; Grace watches to see if the creature will surface to observe the shore and return the stare of anyone watching, as they normally do, but it doesn’t appear, hunting deep down by the submerged rock face or arrowing back towards their rocky colony on the far side of the bay.

Before the sea encroached, there was a cove here, inaccessible on foot, where the seals hauled out, twenty or thirty at a time. Her mother would sit and watch them for hours, while Grace plaited grass, or collected sea glass or other treasures to take back to her father. Her mother was always reluctant to leave; Grace thinks she can remember her mother crying as she sat on the cliffs watching the seals.

Grace follows the path that loops and switches down to the arc of sand. Buried deep below is the old road down to the harbour, and the shop she used to own with the flat above, flooded now, like the whole village. Her mother and father had lived in the cottage at the end of the terrace, nearest the sea. Captured by a fisherman, as selkie-born women so often are, her mother had been taken into marriage, motherhood and domesticity without really knowing what was expected of her.

*

Grace has never learned to swim, fearing the sea’s draw and her mother’s legacy. Churning waves wash over outcrops of rock, and heave and break, and between the rocks is a quiet pool of white foam within the black of the sea, protected and circled, serene and inviting. If she lay down in the soft foam, would she float? Could she lie on her back and watch the clouds clearing, with nothing to think about except the sky quietly darkening? Could everything be reduced to a single, weightless moment?

The woman in the Spar wonders whether Grace has returned yet; she hasn’t seen her go by. She decides to close up early. They used to be busy all year round with visitors, but it’s so quiet now, hardly even worth opening. There’s no one around except Banjo and Wes chewing the fat up the road in the lay-by. She comes out from behind the till and swaps ‘open’ for ‘closed’.

Banjo and Wes call it a day – might as well. Weather permitting, they’ll come back tomorrow and make a start on the footings for the memorial to the village that was washed away.

Wes says We’ll be lucky to find something solid to work off, it’s all mine waste and shillet.