Jess
Monday, eleven in the morning, and the undertaker's brought my great-great-aunt's coat in a carrier bag.
He's from Wisbech. He's got a black fleece and a van with a name on the side in gold, and he's driven it a mile down Low Drove with the wheels in the ruts, which he mentions twice. He stands in the kitchen with the bag held out in both hands, as if it might go off.
"Her effects," he says. "I'm so sorry for your loss. There's the coat, a watch, her glasses. A purse, with eleven pounds. And the key." He takes a small clear bag out of the carrier and holds it up. There's a brass key in it, as long as my finger, with a paper label on a string. "It says bureau. I'm told it's the one in the front room. If you'd sign."
I sign. He looks at the cat, who's on the table, and says, "Hello, puss. Sorry about your lady." The cat says nothing. The undertaker backs out of the door with his hand up, like somebody leaving a church.
The bureau's in the front room, behind the door that's never open. It's dark, and cold, and it smells of damp paper and old soap. There's a settee under a sheet and a clock on the mantelpiece with no hands. The bureau's against the wall, a big brown slope-fronted thing with brass handles. I put the key in. It turns on the first go.
"Do not sneeze on it," says the cat, from the door.
Inside there are pigeonholes full of string and receipts and tins of buttons. And, flat on the writing slope, there's a book. It's the size of a paving slab. It's got a cracked brown cover with a strap round it, and it's heavier than it looks, and when I open it, it smells of her. Of the cottage, the liniment, the range.
It's handwriting. Page after page of it, in a hand that goes uphill, in blue-black ink. Lists, dates, weather. And then, about a third in, a map.
It's the fen. I know it before I've worked out how. There's the high street with a little square for the war memorial, and the church on its hill, and the drove drawn straight as a ruler, with the cottage at the end of it, and the sea bank wobbling along the top of the page. And all round the edges of the town, in red, there are crosses. I count them. Thirteen. Each one's got a name next to it. War Memorial. Churchyard, Low Corner. Low Drove. School Field. Allotments. Bowls. Causeway. Six more of them, and the last, at the top of the page, on the bank, in a bigger hand, with a ring round it. The Bank.
"Seven are gone," says the cat. "The bowls green went on Saturday. The causeway went last night. At midnight."
"Where is it?"
"Under the milestone. At the end of the town. Where the road goes into the water."
I turn the pages. There's one with a list on it, and a heading, To Fill. Thirteen nails, bent. A hank of the witch's hair. A fist of sea salt. Water from the one who mends, fresh. Then the steps. Lift the old. Pour out the old water. Fill. Stop the crack with clay. Bury at the stone with the face to the sea.
I read it twice. I take my phone out and photograph the map and the list, a page at a time. It's what I do on a job.
"And this?" I say. I've got to a page near the back, headed in the same hand, and I put my finger on it.
It's a column of writing, but I can't read it. It's not that it's faded. It moves. It's like looking at ink in water. The words are there, and they slide, the minute I look at one, away from me, to the side of the page, and when I look at that, they've gone back. It makes me feel seasick.
"That is my names," says the cat. His voice has gone very dignified. "It won't sit still for anyone who isn't a witch, or taught by one."
"How many are there?"
"I never kept count."
I shut the book.
I take it out to the car, because I don't leave things in a house with a flap in the door and a vicar. The car's at the gate on the hard standing, with the water gone down round it to a dark stain on the mud, and I open the glovebox to put the book in, and the first thing in it, on top of the tyre gauge and the parking tickets, is an envelope.
It's white. It's got my name on it in the same hand that goes uphill. It's never been opened.
I look at it for a bit. There were thirty-one of them. One every few weeks, for six years, to the flat in Dogsthorpe and then the one in Orton and then the one with the bad landlord, and I put every one in the bin, unopened, because I didn't know any Agatha Crowle and I didn't need a reason. This one's from February. The bag split on the night I did the bins.
I get in the car. I open it.
It's one sheet. It's got three lines on it.
Jess, love. I know you'll bin this, your mother did. Come before the spring tide. Before someone takes it. Agatha.
And underneath, smaller, a line on its own. He's not as bad as he says. Don't let him have the box room.
It's got a stain on one corner. Could be tea.
I read it through twice. I put it back in the envelope, and the envelope in my coat. I put the book in the glovebox on top of the tyre gauge, and lock it, and sit there with my hands on the wheel.
My phone goes.
"Jess! Gavin." The line's very loud. "Monday. Morning. Your answer. I've got a cheque, I've got a pen, I've got a solicitor in Wisbech with his coat on. What's the number?"
"Thursday," I say, and hang up.
The causeway's three miles from the cottage, at the end of the town, past the pumping station. It's the one road out. It's raised, on a bank, with a milestone at the near end of it that says Wisbech eleven, and then the road goes down into the water and across the fen for about two hundred yards, brown, with the tops of the fence posts showing in a line, and comes up the other side. There's a barrier, and nobody's guarding it.
I stop at the barrier. I get out. It's a foot of water over the road at the edge, and moving. I put a boot in it and the current pushes the boot.
"You can't cross that," says the cat. He's on the verge by the stone, looking at it with his tail down. "It is a foot, and it is a foot of something that is going somewhere."
"I've got to get out."
"For what?"
"Work. I haven't had a fare since last Monday." I do it in my head. A week of rank. Five shifts, give or take. Five hundred and fifty, near enough. Fourteen thousand two hundred. "I'm not paying the finance company out of a cat's dinner."
"The bottle is under the milestone," he says.
"It's a milestone."
"It is a jug, with a face on it, and it is cracked."
"I don't believe you." I look at the stone. It's about knee high, grey, with moss on it. "I don't believe any of it. I'd like to see it. A jug. I'd like to see it's just a jug."
He doesn't argue. That's how I know I'm in trouble.
I've got a spade in the boot. It's the bowls club's, I never gave it back. I dig. It's soft ground, a foot of wet turf and then clay, and about two feet down my spade hits something that isn't clay, with a note like a bell, and I put the spade down and use my hands.
It comes up with a noise like a boot out of mud. It's grey, glazed stoneware, about the size of a big flask, with a stopper in the neck and a face on the front of the neck, a man's face, with a mean mouth, pulled in. There's a crack down the side of it from the lip to the belly. It's heavy. It's full. It sloshes.
It smells like a bus shelter.
I hold it at arm's length. There are nails in it. I can hear them turn. There's a clump of hair, grey, and something yellow and old, and I know what it is, because I've read the recipe. The witch's water. It's Agatha's.
"You are holding it," says the cat.
My phone goes.
I've got the jug in my right hand. I get the phone out with my left. It says Ned Pumps.
"Jess? Hi. It's Ned. Pumps. Sorry. Is this a, can you talk?"
"I'm holding something."
"Oh. Right. I'll be quick. It's, I wanted to, I didn't know if. Do you, would you, there's a quiz at the Lamb on Thursday. It's not a date. Well. It's a bit of a date. It's fine if not. It's fine. I'll just go and stand in a drain."
The cat's got his mouth open. I point at him. He shuts it.
"Nope," I say.
"No. Right. Good. That's, no, that's great, that's absolutely fine. I'm glad I asked. I'm not, ha. I'll just, I've got Maud, she's, anyway." There's a clang behind him like he's dropped a spanner. "Sorry. Since I've got you. There's a man from the board. He rang the office and the office rang me, because I'm, I know a lot of, he's stuck at Ely. The station. He's coming to look at the pumps, they've sent him, but there's not a cab at Ely that'll come over the causeway. Sixty each way. Cash. I thought, you've got a taxi. I thought of you."
"The causeway's shut."
"Yeah. It's, I know. Sixty, and it'd be good for the town if he, if the board, you know. If he could look at her tonight."
Sixty out. Sixty back. A hundred and twenty. I look at the road, with the water running over it.
"What time?" I say.
"Train's at half seven."
"I'll think."
"Brilliant. Right. Ring me. I'll be, Maud's making a noise. I've got to go."
He's gone. I put the phone in my pocket and I hold the jug.
"No," says the cat. "Whatever you are about to say."
"It's on the way."
"It is a hundred and twenty pounds on the other side of a flood. It is not on any way. It is a barrier."
"It's a hundred and twenty pounds and the barrier's your bottle." I put the jug down on the verge. "If that's what stops it. If it goes back down. Then it's on the way."
"That is not a vocation, madam," says the cat. "That is a sat nav."
"It's what I've got."
I get my phone out and find the page. Lift the old. Pour out the old water. I tip it out. It goes on the grass and I don't look at it. The nails stay in. The hair stays in. Fill. I look at the next line for a while.
"It says fresh," I say.
"It does."
"It says from the one who mends."
"It says that."
"Turn round."
"I am looking at the dyke," says the cat. "I have been looking at the dyke for some time."
I take the jug round the back of the milestone. I'm not going to describe it. There's a field full of sheep who don't care. When I'm done I put my thumb in the clay from the hole and press it into the crack, along the whole length, till it's smooth. I carry it back. I put it in the hole with the face to the sea, which is where it's looking anyway, and push the earth in over it, and stamp, and stand there.
It goes in like a key.
I don't know how else to say it. It's in my chest, low down, below the ribs, and it's not a feeling, it's a click, small and cold and exact. Then it's finished. I don't feel any different, except that there's a warm spot in my chest about the size of a fifty-pence piece.
Neither of us says anything. I count it. I get to sixty. The sheep eat. A bird goes over. The cat is sitting upright on the verge with his ears forward and his eyes on me, absolutely still, and he doesn't blink.
"That was for sixty quid," I say.
"Apparently," says the cat, "it only has to be on purpose. Not decent."
I look at the road. At the edge, where the barrier is, the water's changed. It's gone down. Not much. A hand. I watch it do another, and then another, the brown pulling off the tarmac, and the white line coming up through it, a dotted one, one dot at a time, like somebody's drawing it back in. And at the side, along the verge, where there wasn't any water at all, there's a new little stream. It's brown, and quick, and it's running the wrong way, back toward the town, along the ditch at the side of the road.
"You're not coming," I say. "To Ely. He doesn't want a cat."
"Madam, nobody wants to go to Ely."
"Right."
"I shall walk. I know a path. And it is the Cathedral, I'll have you know, with which I have history." He gets up. "There will be something tonight. Somewhere. There always is."
"Not my problem."
I put the spade in the boot. It's twenty to six. I've got a hundred and twenty pounds on the far side of a road that wasn't a road at four.
I drive out through the barrier, at five miles an hour, with the wheels in the water, down the middle, where the middle was.
In the mirror there's the milestone, getting smaller. And on top of it, a black shape, sitting very upright, not moving.