Chapter Two #2
The way his expression crushes—had he really believed she would accept him, then and there, as her protector, whatever he thought the role entailed?
“Madam, I must insist. A woman, such as yourself, with your…” He shakes his head as if searching for words.
“Your virtue and such purity of character. Do you have any idea, madam, what a band of smugglers would do to a woman like you if they found you here alone?”
He lifts his hand, reaching for her as if he’s about to illustrate his point. A wetness has appeared in the corners of his mouth. “What would your late husband say?”
“My dear sir!” The words fly out in a gasp. She backs up all the way to the door, wrenches it open. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to…tend to the fire. Thank you for calling on me, sir. I shall bear your warning in mind.”
He looks at her for a creeping moment, his jaw working as if he’s chewing down a protest. His breath is coming too fast; the sweetness of the liquor on it surrounds her like a cloud.
She’s nearly pinned to the door, he’s that close.
She watches in horror as his hand goes up again, reaching for her.
His eyes are fixed on a point below her chin—her chest, she realizes.
A cry escapes her. The lieutenant blinks.
Stepping back, he wipes beads of sweat from his forehead and makes a stiff bow.
“Very well,” he says. “I have done my duty.”
“So you have, and I thank you for it.” Now go, please. Leave me be.
“If it doesn’t inconvenience you, I shall call on you from time to time as I pass by on patrol, to ensure you are safe.”
“I’d be much obliged to you, sir,” she says, her voice wavering.
He nods, as if her answer is satisfactory, though barely so.
She waits in the doorway as he gets on his horse, a strong-looking brown mare.
The rain has slackened a little. She thinks of the smugglers he likes to hang.
The sensation of his cold lips lingers on her hand.
It’s only when the greenery of the coastal path swallows Lieutenant Sowerby’s overlarge shape and she turns to the swirling river that she can breathe freely again.
The shudder in her limbs subsides as she watches the rain pelt the surface.
Back inside, she sits down at the table, her fingers around George’s medal.
Perhaps she should call on Mrs. Dowling and ask her how to make tea.
The wife of my friend the deputy lord lieutenant will call on you soon, Lieutenant Sowerby said.
She wants to both laugh and cry at the thought of the wife of the deputy lord lieutenant of Cornwall knocking on the door of her cottage.
She wouldn’t know what to serve the woman.
Not tea, that’s for certain. She lives in a different world now.
The hours ahead seem as long as those she used to spend waiting for a letter from George.
She glances at her travel case on the floor in the nook by the door of the sitting room.
It looks as if it’s yawning. Inside its mouth are cottons and linens, and the silk chemise she bought for when George would come home.
At the time, she pictured the scene over and over, how she’d come into the room wearing only the chemise, the look on his face; how it would be when they weren’t nervous because it was the first time or because he had to go back to sea the next day.
She doesn’t know why she has brought the chemise.
It doesn’t belong in a place like this. She has never worn it and now she never shall.
The familiar sting inside at the thought; the screwing shut of her throat.
She pushes the chemise back into the case, and shutting the lid, replaces the memory with a happier one: the two of them, walking in Hyde Park, arm in arm.
How he’d say something funny and laugh at his own joke.
She wants to reach out and pull him to her, to smell the mix of cologne and after-dinner brandy on him and the wool of his jacket as she pushes her face into the crook of his neck.
Then she’s crying, as if it happened that week, as if she’s only just had the news. She gives in to the tears, crossing her arms on the table and putting her face on them, letting the sobs run through her. She loved him, but sometimes she worries she did not love him enough.
After a few minutes, she wipes her face.
She needs to get out. She looks out of the door to make sure Lieutenant Sowerby really has gone and goes to inspect the shed.
The door to it is latched but unlocked. Light filters through two narrow windows at the back and along the wall runs a single shelf, waist high, with a wooden work chest on it.
Closer inspection of the chest reveals a hammer, a handful of nails, and a tool with a flat end that she thinks may be a chisel.
She imagines the shed still smells of fish, but that’s impossible.
The innkeeper’s son told her it’s not in use anymore; it hasn’t been for years.
She turns back to the door, and in the light falling through the opening, she catches a glint on the wall. A padlock, almost the size of the palm of her hand, hangs from a hook in the wood. It’s locked and there isn’t a key. She wonders who put it there. The padlock isn’t rusted.
Upon leaving the shed, the coastal path beckons.
The rain has stopped and the sun tries to escape the clouds as she walks.
Everything smells new. After a few minutes, the path starts to hug the cliff.
In some places it’s so narrow she has to step into the grass on the hillside so as not to get too close to the edge.
God knows how the riding officers of the Revenue Service negotiate the path on horseback.
She passes a small cove filled with splashing foam.
As she looks down at it from the top of the cliff, it’s as if an invisible rope runs from the water to a point inside her chest, and every wave breaking on the rocks pulls on it.
The sea has always drawn her, but never like this, with such restiveness.
She wants nothing more than to get in, to feel the water rush around her, but the thought of Lieutenant Sowerby and his men patrolling on the path holds her back.
She’s about to go home when she catches sight of a ship, a mile or two out from shore.
It’s a cutter, she thinks, shielding her eyes from the sun, or perhaps a sloop.
George would’ve been able to tell her. The wood of the hull has been painted black and the sun hitting the sails turns them almost too bright to look at.
The ship is sailing away, out to where the ocean is so deep no one knows the end of it.
She thinks of her father, who spent so many years at sea.
Did he feel it, too, this tugging and longing?
Did George? She wishes she could’ve spoken with George about it, how the sight of the sea moves her.
She almost told him once, but the moment flitted away before she found the words.
And what would he have thought? In the nine years since he became a midshipman, he grew to love the sea, but unlike her, he didn’t feel the need to be near it in order to breathe freely.
Which was ironic, because he spent most of his short life at sea and in the end it took him.
Since his death, Isabel’s desire to go where he went, to see what he saw, has only grown stronger.
George rests at sea; she hasn’t got a grave to visit.
She has only the ocean. She’d never envy George, but it’s deeply unfair she’ll never be able to go sailing like him.
The deck of a ship is as closed to her as the doors of Parliament.
She watches the ship until it’s a white dot hovering on the horizon. The walk home to the cottage seems longer, somehow.
—
The next two days pass as slow and empty as the first. To fill the hours, she walks the coastal path, learning where it leads, where she can climb down the rocks and stick her feet into the water.
On the morning of her fourth day in Helford, a Friday, her breakfast consists of a rock-hard piece of bread.
After some debate, she calls on a gratified Mrs. Dowling, and in the course of the next few days, she learns how to make tea, bread, and stew, how to clean and prepare fish.
Everything she does takes four times as long as it should.
Peeling her first potato, she ends up with half of it stuck to the peel.
The second one is the same, as is the third.
Gulping down a cry of frustration, she attacks the fourth, which comes out better but takes even longer.
No matter. She’ll get faster—so Mrs. Dowling says.
When she’s an expert, she’ll be able to do the whole thing without breaking the peel.
She carries a small notebook and copies Mrs. Dowling’s neatly written recipes in it. Mrs. Dowling is as proud of the fact that she can read and write as she is of the handful of cottages she owns in the area, which used to be her late husband’s and which she lets mainly to tradesmen and fishermen.
One afternoon, Mrs. Dowling shows her where to go for the day’s catch and how to negotiate the best price. “The biggest one is for the Bucca,” she says, indicating the display of fish.
The owner of the boat, a grizzled-looking fisherman, overhears. “An offering, for a flat sea and a decent catch,” he says, nodding. “I heard him calling today, Mrs. Dowling.”
Mrs. Dowling looks up. “Do you think there’s a storm coming, Mr. Penrose?”
“Could be.” He turns to Isabel. “When it blows from the southwest, that’s the Sea Bucca calling.” Lowering his voice, he adds, “But then you know all about that, don’t you, Mrs. Henley?” His eyes are dark, nearly black, and he gives her a look that seems to imply some shared secret.