The Silver Dark Sea

The Seals with Human Hearts

Of all the sea creatures – whales, turtles, lobsters with their intricate, grooved tails that can slide into themselves like a fan, the jellyfish, the squid, the octopus that I reckon knows far more than I can ever know – it is the seal I love the most. I always have. And it’s hard to be sure if I love the seals for the stories I have heard of them or for their expressions – quizzical, trusting. Both maybe. Both is most likely.

The first seal I ever saw was near Tap Hole. It was winter or late autumn, at least, for I wore woollen gloves with a matching hat. I had the hat pulled down very low. It covered my ears and brushed my eyelashes.

The seal looked human at first. I thought someone was swimming. But then I stood on the edge, squinted and thought I know what that is … Its head was glossy, its eyes were round. Its body was freckled, slick.

Sea-hounds, Emmeline called them. For how they barked at night.

Or they are the souls of the drowned men … So Nathan said. He knew his stories and told them, from time to time.

Me? I liked Abigail’s version most of all. In her well-worn armchair and with her Earl Grey tea she unfolded her book called Folklore and Myth and said, in the beginning, when the world was made, the seals were given human hearts … I asked why – and she’d looked up, surprised. I don’t know why! It doesn’t matter why … What matters is that it says so. She tapped the page – see? I like this because it is fitting; it seems a tale that’s right. For seals are drawn to human voices, after all; they bask on rocks, human-like, and they have eyes that are expressive as human eyes can be and I might easily believe that seals speak our language and feel our private human pains. That they grieve as we do at the world’s sorrows – at its wars, famines, its loneliness and bombs.

Also, they can fall in love. There are tales of seals loving a person so much and so deeply that they wish for that human to join them, at sea. They wait, offshore. They sniff the salty air, and call. And so it has been a form of consolation, in the past: she didn’t drown, not really. Her soul lives with the seals, now … Where she is loved, and well-cared for. Where they dart, dapple-bodied, through shafts of light.

* * *

Abigail Coyle believes this. For her, it is the truth.

Her sister was loved by the seals. Thomasina was loved for she looked like them – with eyes so black that Abigail could see her own face looking back at her. She has a faded photograph that she keeps by her bed – both of them, in matching pinafores. They do not look like twins. They never did. Abigail is the shorter, plumper girl – her dress is straining at the buttons, and one sock is rolled down. Thomasina is taller, with her hair untied so that half of it covers those seal-eyes. But it does not hide the look of suspicion, the narrowed stare as if she does not trust this moment or the person who is saying good … Hold it … On the count of three …

Abigail turns in bed. She looks at this photograph now.

Thomasina. Who was openly called the beautiful one.

She drowned at fifteen. She floated in that pinafore – a damp, patchwork star. And she is buried in the ground but Abigail believes – knows – that her sister’s soul is not in Parla’s graveyard, in a wooden box. Instead, her soul – her, Thomasina’s true self – rolls with the seals that loved her, and which she loved in return. In that cave, they found her. Join us, they said, gentle-eyed. Come and swim at our side. So her twin sister – the elder by nine minutes, the taller by three inches and who could do backbends and walk on her hands – lowered her nose and mouth underwater, closed her eyes, and did.

Abigail pats the pillow. She sorts out the blankets, tucks them round her.

When she heard of this strange, bearded man, her first thought was of her twin. The sea is Thomasina’s. All things that come from it belong to her – the pearled insides of mussel shells, or a squid’s dark ink. And her second thought? It had been of a story she knew. Kept in a leather-bound book.

It has been a long time since she took Folklore and Myth of Parla, Merme and the Lesser Isles off the sitting-room shelf. But this evening she bent down to it, blew off its dust.

It was her mother’s book. In Abigail’s childhood, it was hauled off the shelf in Wind Rising after stormy days or days of such hardship that her mother cried. They read it at bedtime. Its pages were turned very slowly, and they sounded like a person saying hush, now … So many stories. Their mother read them over and over: the whale that answered the foghorn, the gannets which gave their fish to good people, the changing wind of the north. They became friends and they became the truth, for Mercy believed them absolutely. We only know the foam, she’d say – meaning this human world is merely the very surface of it, and there is more, so much more, that we lack the vision for.

Abigail’s mother was from Merme which is an isle known for its strangeness. They ate many things but not seals, never seals – for seals have human hearts.

It is a well-thumbed tale. The seal that has been drawn here lies on its side, one flipper raised as if in greeting. But Abigail keeps turning …

She goes to the fourteenth page.

The Fishman of Sye. It is barely a story – merely a description of this part-man, part-fish. He is tall and strong, it says. He is dark-haired and does not age. There are two drawings of him. In the first, he is in the water: his shoulders are grooved and muscular, and the tip of his tail can be seen. In the second he is on land. He walks on white, capable legs and he is watched by others who are amazed and smiling. Beneath this, it says he comes ashore to restore hope and wonder! He is bearded, and black-eyed.

Hope and wonder. Abigail smiles. She can hear her mother saying it. She can see her mother’s long, straight hair falling down onto the page as she followed the words with her finger. Once, long ago …

The northerly window frame rattles to itself. Jim lies beside her, breathing through his mouth so that he makes a soft, popping sound.

Abigail has not always believed. She did in the beginning. She believed absolutely just as her mother did, and so did Thomasina who claimed she’d seen his tail. They believed all the stories entirely – why should they not be true? If we exist, why shouldn’t they? And it made Abigail feel safe, somehow – to know that seals understood her and a shell that knocks against your foot as you walk is your shell, meant for you, and that nobody actually ever really dies. She’d smile in her bed, to think of this. But then Mercy did die. And a little after, Thomasina died too, and Abigail’s faith was swept out of Wind Rising and lost like autumn leaves are lost – scattered and not coming back. Where is the Fishman, with his bright eyes? Where are the whales that speak of love? How she wanted to see them. How she wanted proof. She’d cry so that her tears dampened her bed-sheets; she’d wear her twin’s coat to bed and snuffle into its sleeves. And one night, Abigail looked at the pictures in her mother’s book and thought please … Send me a sign. Something to prove that the people she loved were not truly gone; something to show her that yes, there are souls, and yes, there is magic, and there are reasons behind everything so that nothing is ever over, or lost. Please … And as if the Fishman heard her or as if the seals heard and passed the message on, there was a new sighting of him. Not by Abigail; Abigail didn’t see him. But the lighthouse-keeper’s son did. The awkward, slightly spotty boy called Jim confessed that yes, he had seen him – a bearded man and a mirrored tail, near the cove called Sye.

Over six decades have passed since then. Six decades, and Abigail can’t climb over stiles any more. Her feet tend to be blue-coloured so she has to prop them on a stool, when she sits. So much has been and gone. And for six decades she has believed in something she herself has never seen but has longed to. And he is here now.

I have been waiting. That is how it feels – as if the Fishman has always meant to come to her and this – now – is his chosen time.

Abigail settles back, closes her eyes.

Hope and wonder. There has never been more need for a touch of that. These are not good days – with all the world’s troubles that she hears on the radio; war in dusty countries, abductions that chill her to the bones. Who is making money on this island, now? No-one is making money. They count coins like beans. Fleece and meat make so little; lobsters do not always come and tourists are the same. No-one seems to have plans as such – no little dreams that may one day be made tangible – and when did that happen? When did the dream-making end? The ambitions, however small? Hers had been small, but she’d had them: a husband, a safe place, a solid Parlan life. Good health for the ones she loves.

And there is so much sadness too. It is a sad isle, for certain. Abigail sees it, and feels it: it is on everything and left there, like salt.

He will come ashore for one or for many.

He will only stay until the next full moon.

She turns out the light. Folklore and Myth lies on the floor beside her; twice in the night she will visit the bathroom, and both times she will bend down to feel its leather edges. It is more than a book to her, as this man is far more – far more – than just a man.

Four

Can you see him now? Legs that seem to have no end? The dark matting of his hair that, if a hand was laid there, would cover that hand? His body was hard, too – harder than other bodies, as if he was not only skin and bones. Was he even human? He felt stronger than all the humans I’d known and it made me ache – this strength under my palms, this anchor.

But I do not touch him yet.

I have not even met him – but I will.

He is looking at the ceiling of the mending room. He looks without blinking – the white paint, the single hair-thin crack.

He can smell the sea. Also he can hear it, and he lifts his head. He tries to sit up, and in doing this there is the bed’s creak, and the dragging sound of his dry heels against the cotton sheets.

Curtains move; the window is open.

He can also hear footsteps. They grow louder. Pat, pat.

* * *

Tabitha knows he is awake before she comes into the room. A nurse’s intuition, perhaps, or a woman’s. She pushes the door and she is right – he is there, trying to sit up. His arms are bent and he is wincing. She puts down the water she is carrying and says careful! Careful! Here – let me help …

He has been sleeping for over thirty-six hours. In that time she has watched him turn, heard him murmur; she has held glasses of water to his lips, whispered drink – and he has drunk. So she knows that he is real enough. But seeing him now – awake, moving … He is even larger as he moves. His chest is defined as chests, on Parla, don’t tend to be so that a deep cleft runs down from his throat to his waist.

He exhales, as if pained.

Are you OK?

A thick, even beard. Hair like a thatch. There is sand, also. Last night, she’d cleaned sand from his skin, ears and nostrils but not from his hair – and it is on the pillow, in the crook of his elbow and in the creases of the sheets.

Do you understand me?

He gives a single nod.

Good. Tabitha blushes. The question seems childish. She hands him the glass of water. You need to keep drinking.

He takes the glass.

Where does she start? What can she say? Do you know where you are?

A flinch, which is no.

On an island called Parla. You were found on a beach the night before last. Do you remember the beach?

She watches him drink – the long draws of water and the movement of his throat. He drains the glass, lowers it. A beach?

Yes. A stony one. She takes the glass from him.

The man shakes his head.

I’m the nurse. Tabitha. Bright. My father kept a lighthouse so it’s a fitting surname. Her smile is quick. Your name?

For a moment he looks at her. Then he turns his stare away and looks out of the window, at the dark-green nettle patch and the sea beyond. He is thinking. He thinks for a long time and in that time Tabitha looks at his profile, the lines on his forehead. She hears the grandfather clock in the hall. I don’t know –

You don’t know your name? Really?

I’m sorry …

It’s alright. It will come, I’m sure. No headaches?

No. And he looks troubled, then. He looks lost, so that Tabitha lays her hand on his forearm. It is all she can think of doing. He has come from the sea like driftwood. He has no memory and marks on his hand that she cannot fathom, and this is like an old, old tale that is hard to have faith in, in modern times. She is sixty-five, and it’s the twenty-first century, and surely there are no mysteries left? Falling in love is serotonin. Phosphorescent water is not God’s light.

Yet here he is. Sea-smelling.

Do you remember anything?

Being in the water.

Good. That’s something. She pats his arm. How about food? You must be hungry.

No answer.

A drink, then? Tea?

He says tea … And he says it as if he does not know what tea could be, or perhaps he is agreeing to it – Tabitha can’t tell which. But he says tea … again, and he looks grateful, very tired.

Tea for two. She smiles. I’ll be back in a minute. You stay put.

She goes to the kitchen, feeling happy. She puts the kettle on.

The wind lifts a flake of rust from a car, at High Haven. The ivy that grows on the minister’s house taps against the wood.

Alfie Moss is by the primary school. It is closed for the summer but he stands in its playground all the same. He does a clumsy somersault on the fence and when he lands he wipes his nose on his bare arm.

The primary school is three rooms in a grey stone building. It has a single classroom with its desk, globe, and its stack of plastic drawers with the children’s names taped on them. It has a whiteboard at one end that squeaks when his mother writes on it. There is also a tiny kitchen and beside it there are two toilet cubicles – one with a pink door, and one with blue. Alfie uses the blue one, as do the three other boys that catch the boat from Utta. He doesn’t live on Utta; Alfie lives next door.

Alfie steps back from the fence. He is checking his palms for splinters when he hears footsteps, looks up. His mother is coming down the path; her hair is a cloud and the gold cross around her neck catches the light as she comes. She shouts Alfie! We’re late – into the car.

They drive down towards the harbour – past the viewpoint, and the airstrip. Alfie presses his nose to the glass. He squints at each person who passes. He has heard there is a new man on the island – he came from the sea and he has no name. He has heard, too, that he looks a bit like Uncle Tom. But Alfie is too young to really remember his uncle Tom.

* * *

Three times a week the ferry comes and goes. For nearly a century, a boat called the Morning Star has made its way across the sea, tilting left to right and followed by gulls. This ferry – the vessel that sits in the harbour now – is the third to be called this, so it has Morning Star III painted on its prow and perhaps it is larger than the Stars that came before. But it has the same blue bottom. The same white railings with lifebelts on.

On two days – Monday and Wednesday – it leaves Parla and sails directly to the mainland and back. It is nearly a two-hour journey in each direction when the weather is kind, or when Ed does not peel away from the usual route to follow a dolphin pod or a whale’s spray. In the summer, he often does this – for the passengers are mostly holidaymakers who live in cities, far from the coast. For them, a flash of back in the water is a gift, and he loves how they point, say look! There! In choppy sea the journey may take over three hours. In high winds or high water, the Star does not run at all.

On Fridays, it makes its way over via the other isles. For these other, smaller islands this is the only ferry service that they have – one boat every seven days. Parla is busy and easy to reach compared to these strangely shaped rocks: Utta, with its standing stones and cluster of salt-walled homes; Say, with the many sea stacks that gannets whiten; and Cantalay, where there is a single sheep farm and a ruined fort that the wind whistles through in winter. Merme is uninhabited, now. No boats go to it. Nothing does, except the puffins and they do not stay long.

Today it’s Friday. Today, the Star will go out to these islands. It will creep in and out of their harbours, carry lives and luggage elsewhere. The ferry is fuelled and ready. Its white railings are shining in the morning light. The metal gangplank which the passengers must walk upon is also white and when it is lowered down onto the quayside there is a sudden, hard chime which sends up the gulls, makes a black cat flinch down against the ground.

It is nine twenty in the morning. There is a slight glint of dew on the fields and there is already heat in the sun. Most of the islanders are at the harbour. The grass verge that leads down to it has their cars parked upon it – cars with no wing mirrors or hubcaps, and most have dents in their sides. Hester steps out of a hatchback, pulls open the door behind her seat saying out out out to Alfie.

As they walk down, they pass a purple car. Its passenger door is open and a small, denim-covered bottom is beside it; its owner’s head and body are still inside the car. There is the smell of baking, and ginger. Hester glances inside as she passes – she sees the dark butter icing of a chocolate cake. Alfie does too – Mum, look … They hurry down to the Morning Star.

Rona straightens herself, sees them go. In her arms she carries six plastic, airtight boxes. They are transparent – they hold scones, chocolate cake, iced gingerbread, a cheesecake with grated limes, flapjack with apricots, and a huge, powdered Victoria sponge that’s filled with homemade jam. She rests her chin on the uppermost box, shuts the car door with her foot.

On the quayside itself are the island’s men. Edward Lovegrove, of course. He wears a luminous jacket with matching trousers and a baseball cap with Skipper on it. He takes the cargo – suitcases, bicycles, cardboard boxes – and puts it in a crate that rests next to the boat. Anything else? He calls this out and Rona quickens her step. Yep, Dad! Her car keys are hanging from the back pocket of her jeans and they jangle as she hurries.

There are other men in bright-yellow clothing – the crew, the men who have worked on Morning Star for years, or all their adult lives in some cases. George Moss – late fifties and not yet greying – stands at the end of the gangway, a rolled cigarette between his thumb and forefinger as if throwing a dart. He sees his wife and son coming. Alfie waves cheerily. On you hop, George tells him. Hester’s hair is wild-looking, today – the curls are tight like springs and he loves it like this, wants to push his hands into it and grip those curls at their roots. He winks at his wife as she passes.

Sam Lovegrove and Jonny Bundy are also in fluorescent yellow. They are both on board, making the ferry’s final checks – securing lines, checking lists on clipboards, handing out brown paper bags just in case the water gets rough. Sam has not slept properly for two nights now and it shows in his face. There are shadows under his eyes; the sunburn has lessened against his pale skin. Jonny is by the winch. He leans over the side of the boat, watching Ed pack up the crate. Rona, he thinks, is looking good today. She always looks good – but those jeans are tight and when she peers over the side of the crate to make sure her cakes are packed well, and safely, he can see down her top for a moment. White lace – very nice. She has sunglasses pushed up into her hair.

Nine twenty-five. Ed shouts, last call! Kitty hears this and kisses Nathan. She carries an overnight bag, steps onto the gangplank. She pauses to say something to the skipper who laughs, touches her shoulder. Two tourists are the last ones on – clanking with binoculars, sour-breathed from the seasickness pills they have taken, sad to be leaving Parla for city life.

Sam lets them pass. Then, at that moment, puts a hand on either side of the gangplank and leans down from the deck. George?

The older man treads out his cigarette, looks up.

Has Maggie been? Haven’t seen her yet.

He nods. On the far side. Under the tarpaulin.

She must have come early.

She was waiting for us. Maybe seven thirty? She’s done herself proud, though. One of them is a monster.

Sam steps back. He goes to the far side of the ferry. Sure enough, he finds the black plastic crate with tarpaulin on it, and he crouches down beside it. Slowly, he peels the covering aside. The lobsters shift as he does this. Their smell is fishy and cold. They are midnight-coloured, their claws tied with elastic bands, and he wonders what time Maggie went out to get them this morning – first light? Maybe it was still dark when she went. Maybe, he thinks, she’s not sleeping either, and he imagines her, in that little boat – hat and gloves, setting out at dawn. The birds would still have been roosting. Perhaps the first sign of daylight was a pink glow in the east and she would have seen it – on her own, in that boat.