Gannet
Twenty-one days to the weld. Morning. High water.
She was wearing my coat again, and I'd not said a word about it.
It had been on her yesterday at the water stair, and on a chair in her room all night, she told me, and it was on her now in the bottom of Wenna's lighter with the sleeves turned back three times and the hem round her boots. I'd come out in an oilskin off a peg in the Guild yard that fitted me like a sail on a rowing boat. I was cold. I'd have been colder if I'd asked for it.
"Don't look so green, duck," said Wenna, going at the oars. "It's only a door."
"It's not the door."
"Mind the swell, then. It's lumpy off the point."
I was thinking about yesterday. About the weight of a man's head in one hand, and a row of red dots behind an ear, and a plate with a bright scrape on it where somebody had dragged him across. About the captain writing drowned. Nobody had asked me about the needle marks since. I had the answer ready, like a loaf kept in the cupboard in case, and I couldn't make anybody hungry.
And beside me on the thwart, small in my coat, Bryony Pask was going to pay a fourth door.
I'd tried. All night, in my head, with my feet off the end of the bed. I'd tried the captain, who'd not listen, and some form of words with the writ, and none of it was any use. The truth is I couldn't pay it. I knew what it'd take. It'd go up the hill to the long room by the window and take her face coming up like milk, and I'd have nothing to hold against it. I'm a man with one thing in the cupboard.
"I'll not ask you not to," I said.
"Good."
"I'm just saying I'd like to."
"I heard you," she said. And pulled my collar up round her ears.
The water at the stair was standing again, flat and brown, with a skin of oil on it. There was weed pressed flat on the bottom step where he'd lain. Somebody had thrown sand over the stone and it hadn't helped.
The captain was already on the quay. He didn't come down. He stood at the top, with the clerk beside him with a cold that'd gone to his chest, and the smith, and two dockyard men leaning on the rail, who weren't anybody's business but had come to see.
And Ivo Dace was out on the pier.
It stood across the mouth of the culvert, a great block of stone with weed round the foot of it, and a skiff tied to a ring at the side, and a man in the skiff with his long legs folded up and his rule sticking out of his back pocket. He'd been there a while. He'd got his sleeves up.
"Captain," he said. "It's Hollin's door. In my lock, in my culvert, in my yard. It's mine to say how it's opened."
"It's the writ's," said Haverill, from the quay. "Pask is the opener."
"Pask." Ivo looked at her down the length of the culvert mouth. "You've set a thief to open and a dog to watch her."
I thought he meant it for me, and it went in, and I sat where I was.
"Guild's," said Bryony.
She was stood in the boat. She'd got up without my noticing and gone to the front of it with her hands pushed up inside my sleeves. She looked at Ivo, and not at me, and she said it clear across the water so the dockyard men could hear.
"Guild's dog. And nobody's."
My ears went hot. I looked at my boots.
Ivo's face did something short and unpleasant. "That's very nice," he said. "Here, then."
He'd put his hand in his coat. What he got out was a key, and I'll not pretend I could tell you much about it. It was about as long as my finger. It had a bit on the end like a fork that's had ideas. It was dark with handling.
"Hatch key," said Ivo. "Hollin left it me. For this door." And before anyone could say a word, he'd turned in the skiff, and put his arm out toward the side of the pier, and there was a square of iron in the face of it, a hand above the water, with weed hanging off its lip.
Bryony stopped moving beside me.
"That's a keep key," she said. "Keys went with the doors, to whoever bought them. You didn't buy it."
"I said. He left it me."
"Captain." She'd turned to the quay. "He's got no right to be at that. The writ—"
"Let him show it," said Haverill.
I think we were all surprised. Ivo most of all. He'd the face of somebody who's put his shoulder to a door and found it open. But he didn't wait for the captain to think better of it. He put the key in. There was a scrape, and a click, and the little iron door swung out on its pins with a screech that went round the whole of the dockyard.
He leaned in. Bryony, in the bow, leaned the other way, sharp, with her good hand out as if she meant to snatch.
"Look," said Ivo. "Look at it. See it."
A green glass in a brass cup in the stone. Beads in the bottom of it, one on another, round, dull, not touching. Six. I counted them as I'd counted the others, because I can't help it. The clerk, up on the quay, called down, "Is it full?" and Ivo said, "It's all there," and Haverill said, "Then that's the proof there's been no one at it."
I'd thought he'd look up and be pleased. He didn't. He had his face close to the iron, and he went along the beads with his eyes one at a time, bottom to top, as slow as a man reading down a list of names looking for one. He looked at the top one. He looked at the bottom. He took a long breath through his nose, and his knuckle went white on the key.
Then he'd put his face back on. He turned to Bryony with his mouth sour and he said, "Tar's hard."
"What?"
"Round the hatch. You can put your nail to it. It's last quarter's, that, it's gone like a boot. Tar wants a day to go off in the wet. Nobody's been at this one." He wiped his thumb on his rule.
"You're the only man in the dockyard that knows tar."
"I'm the only one who'd say," said Ivo. And then, not looking at her, the way you'd drop a coin in a hat: "Go on, then, chick. Pay it."
I didn't understand it. I'll say that now, so no one thinks I did.
Her face went white. Not pale. White all at once, as though somebody had pulled a plug. Her mouth went flat and her eyes didn't look at Ivo, or at me, or at anything, and she stood very straight in the boat in my coat with her hands up the sleeves. She looked as if she'd been hit. I looked at Ivo to see if he'd moved.
He hadn't. He was looking at his key.
Chick. I thought, she doesn't like being called small. I'm the size I am, so I'd no right to the opinion.
I got up, anyway. I don't know why. I got up off the thwart and I stood next to her, so close the boat rocked, and my shoulder was against her shoulder. If somebody'd asked me I'd have said I was looking at the pier.
She didn't tell me to move. We stood there, the pair of us, shoulder to shoulder, and she was breathing like she'd run up a hill.
"Pask," said the captain, from the quay. "Are you fit to open?"
"Yes," said Bryony.
It came out in somebody else's voice. Then she said it again, in her own, and went up the stair.
It's the same every time. You'd think by the fourth you'd get easier, and I've learned that you don't, you only get quicker at standing where you can see.
She put her hand on the plate. She'd the left on it. The right was in its rag, with the blister under, and I'd seen her look at it and swap. I stood at her shoulder with my hands behind my back. The water, flat, all round the step, and Wenna in the lighter at the foot with an oar dug in. Ivo in his skiff at the pier, watching. The captain on the quay. The clerk with his bottles.
"Hello, you," she said.
"Don't," I said. "You don't have to."
"I do."
"Then let it be something small."
"It doesn't work like that." She didn't turn her head. "Go and stand where I can't see your face."
I went and stood on the next step. It made no difference to what I could hear.
"I'm in the workshop," she said. "It's the night after. He's in the ground the one day. Nobody's lit the stove. He lit it, every morning, and now nobody's lit it. His hat's on the hook by the door and I'll not touch it. I'm under the bench. I don't know why. Where he used to sit and hand things down. I've got a file and a bit of brass off the floor, and I'm filing it. I file it all night. It gets smaller. It gets so small I can't hold it, and I go on filing, and the window goes grey, and I think, somebody'll come. Somebody'll come in at the door. And it's morning, and nobody's come. And it's gone through, the brass. There's nothing left in my hand but a bit of dust. And I'm twenty-one. And I've not cried. I've not cried at all. I wait for it, and—"
She stopped.
It was the worst of the four. I'd heard her mam's kitchen and the thumb in the wax and the box with the clapping, and this was the one that was nothing. A night. Nothing happened in it.
Her face smoothed out. Then she smiled, a little crooked.
"Good," said Bryony. "Have it."
The door went in. Hard, on its pins, a great black push of cold air out of the strongroom that took the breath out of my mouth. The smith got the wedge in. The clerk went by me with a bottle in each hand, saying "Seven. Seven," and I stood on my step with my mouth open and the water lapping at the stone.
Good. Have it.
I know what it looks like when somebody's had a thing taken. It looks like my mam's hands on the blanket. And I'd never in my life seen anybody stand in front of that and say have it.
"Don't," she said. She'd turned. She was looking at my face. "Don't. It's a night. It's no good to anybody. Don't write it up like it's a funeral."
"I'll have to write it."
"Then write that it's gone," said Bryony. And came down past me, in my coat, with the sleeve hanging empty at her side, and didn't look at Ivo once.
The count was seven. Six old and one new, which was grey as a pigeon's wing. The clerk had it written before the wedge was cold. I'd stood on the quay with the captain and watched Ivo take his skiff in off the pier without a word. He had his key in his fist. He sat in the skiff a good while with the oars shipped, looking at nothing. He looked like somebody who'd wanted to see a thing and been shown it.
I thought, he's the emptier, and he's showed us a full glass to say he's not, and he's looked in it like a man checking his own work. There was nobody to say it to. Bryony was gone down the quay with her hand in a rag.
That night the gate shut at the bell. The gulls had gone up on the roof for the night. The captain stood at the top of his steps and I stood at the bottom with my hands behind me, and he said it the way he'd asked it every night since the first.
"What did it take, Sergeant? Say it plain."
I said it plain. I said the workshop, and the stove, and the hat on the hook. The file, and the brass going to dust. And I've not cried. Good. Have it. He listened with his head down and didn't write anything, because he doesn't, he keeps it, and when I'd done he stood there a while.
"Is that all?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then go home," said Haverill.
I went down to the water-stair. The lighter was already in, with the eel-man sat in the stern in his sou'wester, and a lad off the coal barges with a pole across his knees, and Wenna at the oars. She said, "In you get, duck." The three of them asked me what it took while we were still going out into the basin, and I told them.
My room's on the far side, over a baker's, which is why I took it. It smells of yesterday's bread from about four in the morning. I've a bed I don't fit and a table I do, and a window with a view of a wall, and a candle-end that's mostly wax.
I'd the book out on the table with the pen.
Door four. The dockyard water stair. Paid by Bryony Pask. A hard night, and she was glad to lose it.
I held the pen over glad until the candle-end had run down to nothing on the table.