Wrecker Page 16

  Gideon’s chin dropped to his chest and he closed his eyes. He sat that way a long while, me beside him. Meanwhile, the sun sank lower in the western sky, the grasses of the headland took on an amber glow and long shadows were thrown behind every tree and boulder. Gideon’s face was bathed in soft light and I was free to stare to my heart’s delight at his long, dark eyelashes quivering on his cheeks, the care lines on his brow, his long, straight nose. At last, he roused himself and looked blearily about him, rolling his shoulder and rubbing his neck. ‘That big oaf has done me grievous harm,’ he said.

  ‘So you remember now?’

  ‘I remember the brute bashing my head on the wall, but not how I got here.’

  ‘What you did today was terrible brave,’ I said softly. ‘All on your own among those ruffians – and standing up to that big devil, Pentecost. To turn the other cheek was braver still – no man hereabouts would have done such a thing.’

  ‘Over the years, I’ve had brickbats thrown at me, and pisspots emptied on my head from windows as I preached. I’ve had to leave towns in the dead of night for fear of my life.’ He turned to me, squinting into the sun’s glare. ‘I see Christ in you, Mary, as you sit there before me, with the sun for a halo. His light is shining from within you. It was Providence that drew me to this shore so you could haul me out of the sea.’

  ‘You must be feeling better if you’re back in the preaching way,’ I said.

  ‘There was a young fellow just now in the alehouse, the one who accosted us as we were leaving. Who is he?’ he asked.

  ‘That ain’t worth talking of.’

  ‘He has a claim on you, it would seem.’ He winced, touching his head gingerly. Gideon was in a queer mood after what had happened, and it struck me that he might be envious of Johnenry, or of what had once gone between Johnenry and me. I felt the scroll that hung on a string around my neck, the copy of Mr Wesley’s hymn that Gideon had given me after the first Sunday school class. It seemed to throb against my breast.

  ‘We’ve known each other since we were children, Johnenry and me,’ I said. ‘And we walked out together a while ago, but not anymore.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You’ll have had dalliances. It occurs to me I know nothing of your past life. I should like to know more.’

  ‘Oh, there’s little enough to tell. Not like you. Who was that Molly, who you cried out to in your fever? Forgive me, it is not my place to ask such things.’

  He was quiet a moment, looking down at his feet, before looking up at me and answering. ‘I thought Molly an Irish Magdalen, but her heart was as black as her hair. Perhaps I was looking for somebody to save, even then. She told me she was putting aside the money I gave her so that we could emigrate together. One day it was Canada, the next Australia. On her account, I left a man with his skull cracked open and his life blood spilling over the straw of an alehouse floor. And all to defend the honour of a woman who had no honour to begin with.’

  ‘Can this be so?’ I cried.

  ‘My fall from grace came when I was twenty years of age. My father, for whom I was an eternal disappointment, had me apprenticed to an engineering draughtsman in Plymouth. My dear doting mother would have contested it, had she not been confined to her room by a seizure of melancholy. That draughtsman’s office was as good as a prison to me. My shackles were the lines and angles I was forced to put upon the paper with pen, rule and compass. I wasn’t fit for such work. And it was all for no higher purpose than to serve mammon, to fill the pockets of the merchants and speculators whose goods I saw loaded and unloaded on the quay. They built fine houses in the country for themselves, while men, women and even children ground away their short, wretched lives in their mills and factories. Before long, I took to spending my days in the alehouses around the fetid alleys haunted by Molly and her ilk.

  ‘So it was, that one cold, black night I came to be walking in steady drizzle through the meanest alleys of the port, lanes frequented by press gangs, cut-throats and harlots, and I’m ashamed to say these byways were well known to me. I was intent on one thing only – to bring my wretched life to an end in the place where I’d first met Molly. But as I approached, I heard the voice of a preacher, and thought bitterly that I was to be thwarted even in death. A throng of people of the lowest sort filled the little courtyard: indigents, pickpockets, convicts, smugglers, men who made their living from the immoral earnings of women, all peering through the murky light at a stout little man in their midst, the kind of ranting preacher my father despised.

  ‘“Friend!” the preacher cried. “Some great trouble weighs on your heart, I see it in your eyes. Don’t be afeard, now, feel the Lord’s grace. Your saviour is here for you. You have found a true father in God. Take him to your heart, and save yourself. Make Christ the sole object of your wishes!”

  ‘The preacher seemed to look into my soul. You have found a true father in God. Those words, and others he spoke to me that night, set my heart beating like the pendulum of a clock. The power of Our Lord Jesus Christ seized every limb and laid me flat out on the floor. The crowd, coarse as they were, gathered all about me, offering consolation and friendship. In that moment Heaven and earth appeared to me in a new light.’

  He was quiet a moment, rocking back and forward where he sat, and breathing hard. There was a sheen of sweat on his face. I thought I knew his meaning. At times, I too had seen another world, glimpsed through a veil as fine as spiders’ webs.

  He turned and looked at me closely. ‘You’re a rare individual, Mary Blight. A poor country woman who knows the Scriptures better than many a country cleric. This will set you in good stead. But your friend back there says I don’t know you. What was it he said – I’m mazed by you?’

  ‘I haven’t always been as good as I should be. You’re not alone in your sinfulness,’ I said, unable to look him in the face.

  ‘All can be saved! Open your heart to Christ Our Saviour, Mary.’

  ‘I have often wished I could raise myself to a better life, but I hankered for base things, to be rich as the bettermost, to put myself above my neighbours out of pride, and even . . .’

  My hands trembled in my lap, for as I spoke I saw myself on Porthmorvoren strand on that grey winter’s morning months ago, pulling the tooth out of the noblewoman’s mouth, and seeing the bubbles rise in her mouth, and wondering if she had still been breathing as I pulled the boots from her feet. The memory gave me such a fright, I forgot where I was for a moment.

  ‘I’ve filched things from the dead who washed up in shipwrecks,’ I said. ‘Can the Maker forgive even that?’

  Instead of blaming me, he gave me a weary smile. ‘Your conscience is even now awakening. The essence of perfection is perfect love for God and neighbour, not sinlessness. This is not a religion of hard doctrine, but a religion of the heart. Perfection begins with the new birth. You can be born again.’

  He spoke on, most of it too hard for me to grasp. Yet I felt a new day dawning, a new birth, as he’d called it. I had always thought myself far beneath others, no more than a worm delving in the dirt, eking out a poor living, my heart full of spite and envy for my neighbours among the bettermost – not that they didn’t deserve it, mind. Yet, now a great surging hope sprung in my heart.

  ‘We must bear witness, even as the stones rain down on our heads,’ Gideon said. ‘All around is evidence of the Fall. Industrialists who plunder and rend this earth, poor wretches in rags slaving long hours in black mills. You too, Mary, you must bear witness of the spirit working within you when you teach the children in the Sunday school.’

  His passion was spent, and he slumped where he sat. My rump was sore from sitting so long on the hard rock, so I got him up to his feet, and led him down the hillside. The sun was now all but sunk under the far horizon and the sky was streaked with clouds of rose and deep blue that spread far and wide over the heavens. Above, a great many birds, gulls and geese and crows and starlings, flew in flocks across the sky, their screeches and croaks piercing the air,
all heading the same way as if called into the swirling golden haze in the west. Gideon and I tramped down the hillside, two weary pilgrims side by side. And though I had no wings to fly, my soul soared as darkness began to spread over the waters.

  The man who walked beside me had been a sinner too, in his time, and he had been reborn. In his weakened state, he had opened his heart to me and I cared not if on the morrow he was back to his old puffed up ways. He’d wrought a change in me, and I swore I’d submit to Christ’s saving grace and never more go wrecking for the rest of my days.

  At the next prayer meeting in the makeshift chapel down in the harbour, two men turned up just as Gideon was mounting his pulpit. I recognised them from among those who had been in the alehouse the night Martha took a beating. The men took off their caps and fumbled with them. ‘Begging your pardon, parson, if it’s all the same to you, we should like to attend your meeting,’ said one of them.

  ‘You are very welcome to join us,’ he cried, showing them the men’s benches. The man who had spoken went and stood under the pulpit, glancing about him furtively before looking up at Gideon. ‘We wanted to say . . .’ He seemed to lose courage, but found it again. ‘What I mean is . . . Your words struck at our hearts that night. We be tinners, Jack and me, and must go and work the second night core in the bal tonight. We has often wondered, stuck down there in that black hole, if this were all life holds for men like we. And it seemed awful hard. Your words has given we hope.’

  Almost as one, the hearers rose to their feet, shouting hosannahs and alleluias and clapping the men.

  When the shouting had died down, Gideon said: ‘Gentlemen, I cannot tell you how much your appearance here tonight has lifted my spirits. You are very welcome here.’

  A few more women came through the door at that moment, but the women’s benches were full so they went to sit on some corn sacks that had been put along the walls for latecomers.

  ‘Sisters, there is room on the men’s benches,’ Gideon called to them. ‘It will not breach decorum or anger the Maker, I promise you.’ But the women looked horrified at the notion and took their place on the sacks, where the grease from the tapers up on the wall was like to drop on their shoulders.

  With a little shake of his head, Gideon began the meeting. ‘Now, I have some wise words for all the young maidens here,’ he said. ‘Let me remind you to put a sprig of myrtle under your pillow tonight. That way you’ll know the man you are to marry.’ The hearers looked at each other, not able to believe their own ears. Some of the girls looked at their friends and couldn’t help giggling, until they were told off by their parents. ‘And if there is any old widow among you suffering with heartburn, the remedy is to grind up a black spider into powder and put it in your tea.’ I saw he was laughing at our old ways, but some looked at each other, not knowing how to take it. ‘As you will have surmised, my friends, I am not in earnest,’ he said. ‘Such foolish superstitions may be harmless in themselves, but I know of other pagan customs that are of more concern to me. This very day I learned of a family whose members, wishing to cure a grandmother of a malady, had cut a live pigeon in two and placed the bleeding parts against the soles of the old woman’s feet. Such barbarism has no place in a civilised Christian country. I commend you to turn your backs on primitive beliefs and customs and trust instead in the divine truth of the gospels.’

  After that, the rest of the meeting went as usual, with Gideon ending with the dismissal prayer and a reminder of the tender mercy of God’s love.

  ‘Before you go, I have an announcement to make,’ he said. ‘Next month, we will be holding a Lovefeast, the first ever in this village. All will be welcome. I bid you to invite those of your neighbours who, for whatever reason, have not so far joined us at our meetings. There will be cakes and tea for all at the Lovefeast!’

  There was a great hubbub about this as people filed out of the benches towards the door. But then, word got about that the bells in the old church up on the headland were ringing. I strained my ears and heard that it was true. It sounded like lunatics had got in and got hold of the bell ropes. I thought of that lonely hilltop at this late hour and of phantoms in the old church where I’d spent so many hours, and it chilled me to the bone. Instead of stopping awhile to chatter, all the hearers were pushing and shoving to get out of the door.

  ‘What is the matter?’ said Gideon, as he came to the scrum of panicking people jostling to get out.

  ‘Do you not hear the bells ringing in the old church?’ said Millie Hicks, her sewing bag under her arm.

  ‘Dead sailors leave their graves at nine bells and go to ring the bells,’ said Dolly Stoddern, pushing past.

  ‘And you believe these old yarns? Even after all I’ve said about superstition? I hoped for better from you, Millie.’

  ‘I ben’t no ways particular about the tale,’ said Millie. ‘But just the same I’d sooner be tucked up inside my home if there’s any chance of spirits haunting the lanes.’

  ‘Lord, have mercy!’ he shouted. ‘There is a rational explanation for this bell ringing. It is no doubt a few drunkards playing a prank on you all.’

  ‘We have so many lost souls on our consciences,’ said another woman. ‘So many who has been buried in unblessed ground over the years, or lost at sea.’

  ‘Listen, friends,’ Gideon cried. ‘I can put this nonsense to rest if a few stout men and women will go up to the church with me this night and discover the true cause of the disturbance.’

  The men were no more keen to go up to the church than the women. Outside, the two tinners from the kiddlywink loitered after the other hearers had fled.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Tegen asked me.

  ‘Not just yet.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of going up to the church?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Mary, what’s got into you, of late? Well, I’m off, and what happens to you is your own lookout.’

  Gideon emerged, locking the barn doors behind him.

  ‘If you want to go and take a look at the church, we’ll go with you,’ one of the tinners said to him, the one that did the talking. ‘We must walk across the moor anyhow to get to the mine.’

  ‘And you, Sister Blight? We have two witnesses already, so there’s no need for a woman to go roaming around on the headland in the dark.’

  ‘If you want people to believe the church isn’t haunted, you must bring a woman along. Everyone knows women have the sight more than men do, and can better see if there are spirits abroad in the world.’

  ‘And you really believe this – about “the sight”?’

  ‘Not I, no. But there are others that do.’

  ‘Oh dear. Then perhaps I’d better let you join our party.’

  And so it was decided that we should set off for the church right away. It was a clear and quiet summer night, well lit by the moon, so we were able to climb to the headland without fear of a mishap. Scarcely a breeze rattled the branches of the stooped little trees that clung to the slopes. The moon was low in the sky and cast shadows behind the boulders that were flung about the barren, blasted heathland where clusters of gorse and nettle lay in wait to snare the unwary. The bells fell silent and for a while it seemed that we had set out too late to catch the miscreants. The tinners said nothing, so for a while the only sounds were our boots on the rocky ground, the wash of the distant sea and a lonely owl that hooted from time to time. Cows stood still as statues on the cliff tops a good way off, as if they were on the very edge of the world.

  We passed a ghostly circle of standing stones poking out of the earth at odd angles. A strange whining music filled the air.

  ‘Listen!’ I whispered.

  ‘What?’ said Gideon.

  ‘Can you not hear? The maidens of the stones are singing.’

  ‘What you hear is the wind blowing around the stones.’

  ‘But there is little wind tonight.’

  ‘The sound is in your imagination, Sister Blight. These stones are the forgot
ten relics of an ancient civilisation, put here to placate the false Gods of a pagan faith, now all but forgotten.’ He stopped walking. ‘Perhaps we should turn back. I fear we set out too late to catch whoever it was that was ringing the bells.’ But at that moment the bells sounded again, as wild and unruly as before.

  My stomach churned as we headed towards the squat shape of the church up ahead.

  We reached the wall of the churchyard. Over the crumbling wall marooned grave stones poked out of the earth, not unlike the stone maidens on the open headland. A broad tree with darkness deep within it trailed its branches and the sight of it made me shiver. The bell ringing was ear-splitting and more crazed than ever.

  ‘We go this far and no further, parson,’ said the man who was the spokesman for the two tinners. ‘If you do come upon a night wanderer, I suppose you has the power to exorcise him and send him fast to hell?’

  ‘This nonsense about night wanderers is only an old smugglers’ tale,’ said Gideon,

  ‘Aye, but one of the miners saw a woman here not more than a month ago,’ said the tinner. ‘It was the dead of night she appeared, of a sudden, on the field path, dressed in black and all muffled up about the face. If I were you, I’d take a stout stick with me before going in there. They say the old parson of this church carried a horse whip with him when he laid the ghost of Wild Harris.’

  ‘Well, I intend to enter the church unarmed, gentlemen. I only ask that you wait here for me, so you can bear witness to the true explanation for the bell ringing.’

  Just then, the bells stopped their crazed clanging. We all looked at each other. Gideon climbed over the wall and made for the porch. Trembling, I followed him. The church door was open. Inside it was pitch dark. I wished Gideon had thought to bring a lantern with him.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called. His voice echoed from wall to wall and sounded afraid of itself. He moved into the deep darkness of the church, and I stayed close behind him, our footsteps loud on the stone flags. Some faint light showed under a big hole in the roof and lit the edge of an old pew. Dwarfish arches showed pale on one side of the nave, but under the tower it was darker than ever. ‘I am not alone,’ Gideon called. Spirits echoed him all around us with their hollow, shivering voices, each repeating the words of the one before him. ‘I have men outside in support. Why not be sensible and show yourselves?’