Wrecker: A gripping debut for fans of Poldark and the Essex Serpent

Ephraim Lavin, the blind fiddler, was called on to scrape out a few jigs and hornpipes. His son, the little scarper, sat alongside him, thumping out a rhythm on a tub. The dancing began soberly enough. The men took their places in the left file and the women in the right and the shouter numbered us into couples. I had to start with Lean Jack Bodilley, but I took it in good part. When the tune was counted in, Jack took my hand and raised it and we got through the steps without tripping one another up. At each verse we changed partners, and soon my turn with Johnenry Roscorla came about. I remembered the days when Johnenry and me had walked out together and I had a sudden, fierce longing to have him back. I knew he felt the same about me because when we came face to face he was rooted to the spot, gazing into my eyes. He swayed before me and the harbour swayed along with him. He was the most handsome man on earth in the fairy light of the lanterns. I gave him a look to make his knees buckle. Then the other dancers bashed into us and we reeled in a circle with the rest, elbows locking and the men sending their partners spinning into the next man. We women held up our skirts so as not to trip on them as we stamped up and down the line, while the older folk and the lame clapped their hands to urge us on from the benches. It hardly seemed to matter what would happen tomorrow with the smears of light wheeling round my head and Johnenry’s face forever looming up at me and growing more handsome as the night wore on. The men grew rough and hurled us about, some taking liberties, grabbing our waists or clutching at our behinds.

Time passed too quickly. The music petered out and the left-overs of the feast lay spoiling, fit only for flies. Men lay with their heads on the table, snoring amongst the upturned rum pots. Others were laid out on the quay. My feet were sore and my toes crushed after stomping about in those ill-fitting boots. Johnenry and I fell against a harbour post and I was glad of something to prop me up. But the post soon seemed to leave its moorings and began swaying about too. Loveday Skewes stood against another post further along with a face like a whipped dog. She had a habit of nibbling at her fingernails, and she was doing it that moment. Somewhere in my muzzy head I remembered that Johnenry was courting Loveday, and had been a long while since. I shut my eyes to think clearer, but it made my head spin even more. Down along the quay, one or two scolding wives were trying to drag their husbands home, but most people had already taken to their beds. I saw the lily from my hair lying on the stone slabs of the quay, crushed underfoot. I didn’t want to go to my bed. I didn’t want the night to be over and to wake up the next day with that dark and fretful feeling that haunted me, and a pounding headache to boot.

The bettermost women were gathered on the quay. Millie Hicks piped up in her pious wheedling voice. ‘It’s time for we ladies to bestir ourselves, I seem. It don’t belong to women to be abroad at such an hour.’ I always thought of her as a tall bird, a heron perhaps, with her long, thin neck and pointed beak poking forever into places where it had no business.

Millie linked arms with Grace Skewes, Loveday’s mother and the topmost woman in the village, unless you counted Aunt Madgie. ‘It don’t belong to women to drink strong liquor, neither,’ said Grace. Her little group of followers clucked in agreement, as they picked up their baskets, ready for the off. ‘One cup alone do fairly maze a body,’ said Grace, and I thought her eyes swept over me as she said it. It was all because she was sore about Johnenry preferring me to her Loveday.

Nancy Spargo, a big plain woman from the tinners’ cottages on Uplong Row, wandered over from the table where she’d been larking about with some of her mates. ‘Well, it might belong to the bettermost to take to they beds but I be thirsty as a gull and plan on staying out a while longer,’ she said. She bent forward, her breasts almost spilling out of her bodice, screwed up her face and passed wind like a trumpet major. ‘Begging your pardon, ladies, I been fartin’ like a steer all night,’ she said, in a mock lady-like way. ‘Better out nor in, eh?’ She grinned, showing the gaps between her teeth.

I staggered up the steps to the quay. Seeing how linking arms was all the fashion that night, I went over to Nancy and went arm in arm with her. ‘We work as hard as the men, so why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves along with they?’ I said, stumbling. I would have fallen if Nancy hadn’t held me up.

‘I be only thinking of what is seemly,’ said Millie Hicks, rubbing her long neck the way she did when she was about to bad-mouth a neighbour. ‘Others may look to their own reputations. Come along, Zenobia.’ She pulled her daughter away with her. The girl was her match in piety.

Loveday came over from where she’d been sulking by a harbour post. She was being mollified by her friend, Betsy Stoddern, who had stuck by Loveday and fought all her battles for her since they were little. ‘Some of we still care what folks think of we,’ Loveday muttered, glancing at me.

I wasn’t going to let this pass. I let go of Nancy and walked towards her. ‘What’s she saying of? Say it to my face if you got something to say, Loveday,’ I said. But someone had taken a grip of my arm and was leading me away. I tried to fight them off, but then I saw it was Johnenry, so I went along with him. He had a cup of brandy in his hand. He pulled me down from the slipway and led me out onto the beach.

‘Look, you’ve given me the hiccups,’ I said, slapping him. He pulled me deeper into the night. ‘Wait! Let me take off these boots. They’re fair killing me.’ Johnenry took the boots out of my hand and slipped his arm around my waist. I wondered if anybody was spying on us from the dark windows in Fore Street.

‘You’re all hot and greasy, let go o’ me,’ I said.

‘I worked up a power of sweat jigging with you, that’s why.’

We moved further out to where the tide could be heard lazily washing in, some ways off. We leant against the damp hull of one of the boats, out of the breeze. The cold sand soothed my aching feet. Johnenry put the brandy to my lips, but I turned my head away. The storm that had brought the ship onto the rocks the day before had swept every cloud away, and untold numbers of stars were scattered across the night sky.

‘Some pretty, ain’t it, the sky?’ I said. I spoke softly, but my voice was loud out there on so still a night. Johnenry took off his jacket and threw it on the ground so I could lie on it, then he lay down by me. We lay on our backs looking up at the heavens a while without speaking. A white streak bled across the sky.

‘A shooting star!’ he said. ‘I made a wish. Did you?’

I sighed. I knew full well what his wish was, but I didn’t want to hear it right then. ‘Funny to think there were dead people lying all over the strand yesterday,’ I said, shivering. ‘When you see them lying there in their fine clothes, do you ever wonder how they must have lived before they were drowned? Don’t you wish you could see inside their houses? And wardrobes? Don’t you want a life like that?’

‘No use hankering after what you can’t have. It don’t belong to us.’

‘Well, I’m tired of the same old life every day, even if you ain’t. You be happy with too little, I seem.’

‘I have a dream.’

‘And what dream would that be?’ I propped my head up on my hand to look at him.

‘You know the old law that says anyone who builds a house in one night can claim the freehold?’

‘You couldn’t build a chicken coop in one night.’

‘I got some mates lined up to help. And I found the spot for it. A patch of wasteland just down from Uplong Row. There be enough ground for a one-room house and a pig sty, and a rick for furze. I been putting things by for a while, clay and poles for the walls, straw for the thatch. One night I’ll build that house and the next day I’ll carry my wife across the threshold.’

‘That’s your dream, is it? A one-room hovel and a pig sty?’

He took hold of me and nuzzled his chin against my neck, chafing me. I pushed him away.

‘You’re strong,’ he said. I smelt the liquor on his breath.

‘Not surprising I’m strong, slaving day in and day out,’ I said.

‘You start housekeeping with me and you’ll live like a princess, I promise.’

I rolled on top of him. I had a coming-on sort of feeling, so I kissed him with open mouth. ‘I won’t tell nobody if you don’t,’ I said, in a whisper.

‘I been waiting so long for this I thought I’d die,’ he said. He stroked my hair and kissed every inch of my face until I took a hunk of his own hair in my grip and pulled his head away so I could look right into his eyes. ‘It’s loving I need now, Johnenry,’ I said.

That was all the coaxing he needed. He lifted my skirts and let his hands roam wherever they pleased. I pulled my skirts down again so no neighbour would peer out the window and see the moonlight shining on my ass. I rolled on top of him, and he ground into me like gritty sugar. I wanted to lose myself in it, forget the rest of my life had ever happened. When he was about to come to the boil, I lay quiet on him a while and put my mouth to his ear, telling him to hold off a little longer.

Afterwards he said, ‘I have to make an honest woman of you now, I seem,’ as the cold breeze blew up my skirts and tickled my tender parts. A sudden sharp pain in my temple brought me to my senses. ‘Let go o’ me, I be about to puke,’ I said, getting up off him. I staggered away with the drunken stars reeling around my head, and the beach pitching and rolling under my feet.

‘We be as good as man and wife,’ he said, catching up with me, as I staggered towards the quay.

I leant against the side of a boat, waves of seasickness building inside me. Dropping to my knees, I grasped the heavy chain that connected the boat to the quay. ‘You got me then,’ I said. ‘Go and have the banns read out, if you like, but leave me be. Right now all I want to do is urge.’

With that I fell forward, the chain rattling in my grip. I retched, and the first of my spew splattered onto the sand.

I was in Mamm’s old room, which smelt of damp and neglect after so many weeks left empty. She’d been sleeping in the kitchen since her breath had grown too short for her to get up the stairs. I climbed onto a chair and reached up to the rafters where I kept my secrets. The chair wobbled as I reached up to fetch an old stocking swollen with coins, jewellery and other trinkets. When I’d taken it down, I sat on the bed with the stocking in my lap. It was wrapped in yellowed newspaper that I had read so many times the print was worn off the pages. I blew away the dust and cobwebs, upsetting a black beetle that fell to the floor and scuttled a little way before I squashed it underfoot. I untied the string around the frayed worsted, then felt deep inside the stocking for the rag that covered my greatest prize. When the cloth was unwrapped, I gazed upon the hair pin and the butterfly that clung to it, more finely wrought than any lace. I’d taken it from a fine lady who’d breathed her last after a shipwreck a few years past and had never been able to bring myself to part with it, however scat I’d been. When I’d had my fill of staring upon the pin, I went over to stand before the oval mirror above the chest.

With trembling hands I put the pin in the back of my hair and turned my head to see it glimmer in the dusty shaft of light that lay aslant the glass. My face frowned at me, every blemish and line showing. The long winter had taken its toll. My hair was coarse under my fingers. It was both a blessing and a curse, that hair, a flaming beacon to draw the eye and set me apart from the common run of mouse-haired women. I would use my share from the wreck to buy vinegar and make it shine again. A lone white hair was threaded among the darker ones. A trick of the light, I hoped. I plucked it and found it to be silver as the hair pin.

My thoughts kept going back to the wreck, to Aunt Madgie and Loveday Skewes. At least my time of the month had passed since I’d gone with Johnenry, so that was one worry I could put behind me. To escape such dark thoughts, I let my mind drift to the man I’d seen on the beach after the wreck, the one whose watch I’d filched. If only a fellow like that were to wash ashore still alive. If not a land man, then at least a merryman. One like those who take human form on midsummer’s eve and swim ashore buck-naked after dark to mate with a woman who waits on the shore in a rage of longing, only to depart from her at dawn to return to his own kind, leaving his milt stirring inside her to grow into an infant that’s as much fish as human, and oh! how breathless I had become, carried along by such fancies. I’d forgotten I still had the pin in my hair, and before anyone caught me I hid it in the stocking and put it back in its hiding place.

When I felt calmer, I brought out the tinder box from under the bed, sat on the chair and took out my small ration of shag, a mix of baccie and hemp I had dried on the hearth. It was mixed with a rare kind of mushroom that has a soothing effect on the nerves and brings on curious whimsies. Such herbs can be depended on to unlock dreams and let a person glimpse the other world that is only a feather’s breadth from the one we know. I took a few quick pulls on my pipe to get it smoking, releasing its incense into the air. Soon the smoke was swirling about the room and my thoughts were unfurling in its coils. The idol was at my feet, a limbless woman of stone with huge hips and breasts. I picked her up and held her in my lap. Tegen always said the idol was no more than a misshapen rock, but I knew she was an ancient goddess passed down the generations.

Weaving patterns shifted across the idol’s face like light on water. Without speaking aloud, I asked the idol if I was wrong to keep my treasures hidden in an old stocking when I might buy medicine for Mamm. Was it wicked to indulge in idle fancies, to imagine myself as one of the fine ladies who wash up on the beach after wrecks? My heart raced at the thought of the liberties and luxuries such women enjoyed. How would I ever be rid of my lowly life in the cove, with ill wishers all about me?

I looked down into the idol’s face. She seemed to say, ‘Take care, Mary Blight.’

In my mind, I answered, ‘What’s strong in the heart must out some way.’

‘Do not overstep thyself,’ the idol warned.

But the wreaths of smoke about me told another story. A man’s pale naked body was slowly taking form. He groped blindly in a sea of shifting shadows while fatal currents drew him to my embrace. I put the idol on the floor, her face to the wall, and sat back in the chair in a kind of fit, letting my hands fall into my lap.

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