The Tide Mill Page 2

  Ralf cupped his hands to his mouth.

  “Hullo there! Hullo!”

  Had he been heard? The shoulders were agitated, moving as the unseen body struggled to get free.

  “Hullo! Hullo!”

  A mere boy’s voice could not compete with the wind. Ralf clenched his fists in frustration, looking back once more towards the distant village. There was no time to fetch help.

  From here, the victim was in line with the top of Boling Down, ten miles away to the east. Ralf hurriedly surveyed the pattern and course of the larger channels, trying to fix them in his mind. He pulled the leather strap of his bag over his head so that it no longer hung from one shoulder but crossed his breast. Next he stamped down the vegetation on the top of the dike, making a gap three or four feet across. And then, without hesitation, his heart pounding, he scrambled down the slope.

  At the bottom, as he was pushing through the waist-high thickets of seablite, he knew that what he was doing was foolish, dangerous, even mad. He knew that he should be afraid. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he knew very well that he too would get stuck and that, trapped by the ferocious suction of the mud, he too would be overwhelmed by the sea; he knew all this, yet still he kept on, forcing his pace, driven further and further from safety by a rising excitement he had never known before.

  The seablite dwindled and was left behind. The firmest ground now was covered by a luxuriant growth of samphire. He made several detours to keep to it, pausing only to confirm his position using the line he had established between the dike and Boling Down. From this elevation the victim was no longer visible.

  Ralf arrived at the first sizeable gully, jumped across, leapt another, and a third. The next was too wide. He turned left, realized he was being driven back on himself and went the other way. The mud underfoot was becoming softer, vibrating more and more readily with his weight. The sea-lavender had begun.

  By now he was two hundred yards into the saltings. His shoes were already caked, his leggings already spattered: it was not always possible to keep to the crowns of the tummocks. Coming at speed to another gully, he misjudged its width and fell, making himself filthy as he scrambled upright.

  Without thinking, he dragged a hand across his face.

  He came to a halt, making a deliberate attempt at calm. Only if he kept a clear head would all be well. He did not know how much higher the sea had to come, but there was still time, time enough, surely, to do what was needed.

  A little further on he encountered a line of deep footprints, leading out. Beside them, crossing them and there obliterated, wavered the prints of a small dog. At once he guessed the identity of his quarry and of the tan and white terrier, and knew what must have happened. Guided towards the right by the direction of the tracks, he now saw, almost hidden by sea-purslane, the top of the head of a boy of about his own age and size, a boy with whom, throughout his three years in the village, Ralf had not exchanged so much as a single word: the Honourable Godric, youngest son of Lord de Maepe.

  When Ralf reached him, he was horrified to see that he was already chest-deep in fast-flowing water, his arms held level before him, his face, viewed from the side, a mask of disbelief. He did not even see Ralf approaching.

  “It’s all right!” Ralf cried, getting as close as he dared and unhitching his bag. “It’s all right!” he repeated, although he knew it most certainly was not.

  The boy turned his head.

  “How deep is the mud? Where does it come to? Your knees?”

  “Higher.”

  “Your waist?”

  “Nearly.”

  “Take this!” Gripping the centre of the strap, Ralf flung the bag towards him. It splashed just out of reach. Ralf tried again, and a third time, before Godric, leaning to the side, was able to grab it.

  As soon as Ralf began to pull, two things happened. He felt his feet being driven into the mud; and, almost immediately, the strap broke. Unable to help himself, he fell backwards in a heap.

  The stitching had parted where one end of the strap had been fixed to the bag. Ralf saw the advantage. They could use the full length of the strap, so that he could stand further up where the mud was firmer. They could wrap the ends round their wrists, to get a better grip. As Ralf imparted this information, the boy nodded blankly.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold tight.”

  “I will.”

  “Point your feet if you can.”

  “I will.”

  “Now put your head under.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got to let the water take your weight. I can’t manage otherwise.”

  To Ralf’s amazement, Godric understood him at once. Ralf saw him take a deep breath, lean sideways, and his head duly went below the swirling surface of the tide.

  Ralf pulled with every ounce of his strength, pulled ten times harder than ever he had pulled on the heaviest, most bulging net, and was rewarded with nothing but his feet once again sinking and the knowledge that Godric had absolutely and terminally been claimed by the marsh.

  It was no good. Godric spluttered for air.

  “Again!” Ralf shouted.

  Again Ralf failed. The churned mud at his feet showed how desperately he had tried.

  The water was rising towards Godric’s throat. Part of Ralf’s mind was aware that he also was at the mercy of the tide: the gullies he had leapt, like this very channel, were now filling, widening, becoming impassable; but mainly he was seized by an appalled determination that no one should have to die in such a stupid and horrible way. For a dog, a little yapping dog!

  “Again!”

  As he pulled, as his feet slithered and floundered, as he realized he could never do it, Ralf remembered God. He remembered he was supposed to pray for strength. But the remote, all-knowing god of the village church or Alincester Cathedral, the father on high, who had sent his only son to be reviled and crucified, this god was just someone in a story. The god Ralf knew, knew intimately, lived down here. His ruthlessness and beneficence were of another kind. He made the weather and the sky, the downs, the forests, the porpoise and the gannet. His message, expressed everywhere, was clear. Self reliance.

  These thoughts had consumed no more than a moment. They produced a single idea that changed everything. It was no longer a matter of trying, but deciding. Ralf decided. Not only would Godric come free, but they would both get back to the dike alive.

  As he hauled anew, he could not be sure whether he had become endowed with miraculous strength or whether his previous strivings had served to loosen the mud’s grip. At first so slight as to be no more credible than wishful thinking, a sensation of yielding, of success, grew to the stage where he accepted it was happening. His eyes, tight shut in the extreme grimace of his effort, opened to see that he was dragging Godric out.

  * * *

  It was not until they reached the seablite that Ralf gave any thought to what might happen next. The uncertain passage back, diverted again and again from the reassuring course of his own outward footprints, conducted largely in silence, had frightened him more than he cared to know. As for the other, he remained distracted, disbelieving. He had been encased in slime from the waist downwards. Ralf had helped him to scrape the heaviest part of it off, but the mud, cracked, paling here and there as it dried, still made a sort of strange and clinging garment. Godric’s tunic, hands and face, like Ralf himself, were hardly any better.

  “We can’t go back like this,” Ralf said. His mother would be so angry that he might be beaten, either when his father returned from Rushton on Saturday afternoon, or sooner, by Grandfather. To have fouled his clothes and ruined the bag would have been bad enough, but to have ventured into the saltings, alone and at high tide, would merit the most severe punishment. He had been warned, most sternly, over and over again: all the village children had.

  “I agree,” Godric said, sounding, for the first time, as though he might be capable of rational speech. “I’ll be thr
ashed if he finds out.”

  Ralf wondered if “he” was the Baron, the holder of eleven thousand acres, lord of the manor and dispenser of justice, who, it was said, counted the Bishop of Alincester, and even the King himself, among his personal friends. Ralf had never before considered the Baron as a father like his own: yet indubitably he was. Did he not have two daughters and three sons, the smallest of whom, here beside him, chilled to the bone, numb with shock, and barely able to utter a coherent word, was already conspiring with him to keep the adults at bay?

  They started up the slope of the dike.

  Over his shoulder, Ralf asked, “What will you say about Letty?” That, he had just learned, was the name of the dog.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Tell the truth. She ran off and got stuck. Just don’t mention the rest.”

  “Yes,” Godric said. “That’s what I’ll do.”

  The beach was not far away. Godric had lost his boots. The shingle pained his feet and he trod gingerly. Ralf crouched in the surf, washing his face and forearms, before returning to dry land, where Godric was standing with arms clasped. He had begun to shiver even more violently. “What’s it like?”

  “Cold,” Ralf said.

  “I thought as much.”

  “You’ll have to go in.”

  “I know.”

  “I can rinse your clothes, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” Godric looked at him. “What’s your name?”

  “Ralf Grigg.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “I’m thirteen.” He unclasped his arms and pulled off his mud-laden tunic, revealing a torso which to Ralf seemed absurdly puny. “You live with old Jacob Farlow, don’t you?”

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  “Your father’s the shipwright? A freeman?”

  “Yes. Hurry up. I’m getting cold myself.”

  Godric removed the rest of his clothes. Ralf took the bundle into the surf while Godric himself reluctantly followed. Just as Ralf had done, he crouched down in the water, splashing and washing himself all over, before moving further out to immerse himself fully. He soon waded back to the stones, squeezed his hair and did his best to brush away the water from his skin, then sat down and embraced his legs in an effort to get warm.

  The clothes were of a quality Ralf had rarely seen. He wrung them out again and again, and to his satisfaction saw most, and then all, of the mud flowing away. “Clean as you like,” he announced, returning the bundle to its owner. He extracted the tunic. “Here. Take one end.”

  By twisting the material between them as tightly as they could and pulling, they rendered it no more than damp. Ralf, having bathed, repeated the procedure with his own clothes.

  “When are you expected back?” he said.

  “A long time ago,” Godric said.

  “Will anyone come looking?”

  “Not yet. I hope.” Godric stared at the shingle. “I really liked that dog,” he said.

  He had rather close, intense features and dark eyebrows which almost joined in the middle. Ralf felt drawn to him, though he did not know why. “Do you want to use my shoes? To get back to the village. I don’t mind going barefoot. I work like that in the boat. My feet are tough.”

  “You’d lend me your shoes?”

  “Why not? As long as I’ve got them on when I get home.”

  As they walked along the dike, Godric asked Ralf more questions about his family. Against his own inclination, Ralf found himself exaggerating the part his father had played in building the Cathedral, the size of his workshop, and the scale of the debt that had led to its downfall.

  By the time they reached the village end of the dike, the wind had dried their clothes further and their hair completely. Still they had encountered no one. They climbed towards the church, unlatched the stock-gate and, overhung by the restless branches of the limes, hurried along the path beside the graveyard.

  They paused under the big yew, just before the other gate. Godric removed the shoes and handed them back. Except for his lateness and his missing boots, nothing remained to get him into trouble. “You’re a good fellow, Ralf,” he said, diffidently, and extended his hand. “What you did, I mean, I’ll never forget.”

  “You won’t tell anyone?”

  “No.”

  On the other side of the gate Godric turned right, to skirt the north side of the church and head for the Hall.

  Ralf, having turned left, and walking along the road beside the village green, found his mind dwelling hardly at all on the terror he had experienced, or even on the far greater terror felt by the one whose life he had saved. Rather, he could not help thinking of the way his prayer – if that was what it had been – had been so swiftly answered. Once his decision had been reached, the rest had seemed inevitable: the safe return to the dike, their words about the dog, the walk to the beach, his affinity with Godric. Somehow, they had known each other already. Thinking further, he remembered the way the heron had struggled aloft, into the wind, guiding his eye. Could that really have been chance?

  Ralf pondered these matters for the rest of the evening. And at last, as he drifted into sleep, becoming oblivious of the mice in the thatch, his disjointed thoughts went back to the place of chilly green water and seething foam where he and Godric had washed their clothes and cleansed themselves, to the place where their friendship had been baptized.

  3

  When he was working, Ralf rarely got home at the same time two days running: the boats usually launched on the morning high tide and returned eight or nine hours later. His grandfather might go out again, after dark, but never with Ralf.

  The fishing year began with potting for whelks, lobsters and crabs. Now, in late spring, many of the men were also setting drift-nets at night for mackerel and herring, and then, during the day, shooting seines near the beach for sea-trout. When the mackerel season ended, lining would begin for flounders and skate, and, later yet, cod. In rough weather or when fishing was bad, there were cockles to be raked and bait to be dug.

  Jacob was required to fish two days a week for the manor, which provided the shallop and gear. These he shared with another serf. For the other four days a week – working on Sundays was not permitted – Jacob and Edwin worked for themselves.

  Their haul on the two fief-days was judged by the Steward, who compared it with those from the other boats. If he deemed it short, they could be fined or made to give up a number of free-days till the deficit was met. Though the manor was generally fair, it expected there to be no consistent difference between catches made on a fief-day and those on a free.

  Edwin Maw was nearly twenty years younger than Jacob, tall and strongly made; Jacob was acutely aware that he could no longer contribute as once he had. Moreover, Edwin’s son, a field-worker, sometimes gave a day to the enterprise. Jacob disliked taking Ralf as much as Ralf’s parents disliked letting him go, but the boat, and the family, needed the help. Even with Linsell’s contribution, there was hardship in the house: most of Linsell’s wage went perforce to his creditors.

  Today had again been cloudy, with a warm onshore wind. By late afternoon the Meg had visited all her sixty crab-pots, each attached to a float bearing a wooden tag branded with her mark. Most of the pots were close to the shore or in the estuary mouth. Today’s catch had been average, with about three pots in five yielding crabs, some too small to be worth keeping, others extremely large.

  The crabs, still alive, had been sorted by size into baskets; three pots, two floats and a flag-buoy had been brought back for repair; and now, as the shallop followed the harbour channel in, little remained for Jacob and Edwin to do but sit in the thwarts and talk.

  While working, they remained largely silent, sometimes issuing a grunt or a brief and superfluous request for this object or that which was immediately granted. When they broke for their bread and beer, they might speak of their families, discuss matters of moment in the village, talk about people Ralf had nev
er known, or rehearse improbable stories they had told each other a hundred times before. Young as he was, Ralf marvelled that they never argued or showed signs of irritability, even when things were going wrong.

  He was at the tiller. From the very first, his grandfather had taught him how to sail. One day, his grandfather had said, he might be the only able-bodied hand left aboard.

  Ralf could feel in his grasp the rivalry between the breeze, three-quarters astern, and the bubbling resistance of the rudder and hull. His eye took pleasure from the wind-filled curve of the reefed, tan-coloured sail: its shape was a perfect expression of the tensions between the mast and boom.

  This was the part of his working day he liked best. Though they were both kindly, well meaning men, and their occasional jokes at his expense were harmless enough – unlike some of the pranks played on the other boys who went out – Ralf had no understanding with them. He still remembered his days at the cathedral school; he had, assisted by the village priest, tried to keep on with his Latin; and, using precious sheets of parchment, also provided by the priest, he had continued to take solace from drawing.

  He had always drawn, especially buildings and tools, and now the more interesting things he found on the beach: anything that seemed to him beautiful or well adapted to its purpose. The more he drew, the more closely he needed to observe. Drawing was observation made permanent. Since there was always something else to be seen, however much you looked, the very nature of a drawing made it obsolete, and Ralf was never satisfied, even though the priest himself had called some of his efforts “very like”.

  He glanced to starboard, at an approaching channel marker. Beyond it ran the village shoreline, saltings backed by the tree-grown eastern dike, behind and below which lay arable fields. Nearer the village, on the far side of the river, the ground rose and the trees became thicker, culminating in the stand of limes around the church and Hall. Ralf could already see, by now in line with the church tower, the sheds and landing-stage of the staith where, in a few minutes’ time, he would help to unload the catch and wait for the Reeve to mark the ledger.