She mounts the steps to the store. A hum of loud chatter wafts through the screen door. Pulling it open, she walks past the white counters and into the large room with the bay window. Instead of finding Ellie bending over her printing press, or hosting an art class at the wooden table while Florie packages up purchases, she’s met with a bank of angry faces as the room falls into a tense silence.
Ellie rises. Crescents the colour of prunes sit under her eyes and she takes an additional step to steady herself as she waves away Florie’s extended hand. ‘Come in, Sophie.’ She gestures to a chair that has been centred in the bay window. ‘Please, sit.’
Sophie scans the faces – her aunt, Florie, Sam leaning against the back wall, Becca and a good-looking boy she can only imagine is Becca’s boyfriend Toby Molloy, Emmett, Wince – and other faces, some of whom she’s seen on her walks around the village, and others she doesn’t recognise. About forty people. All of them looking at her like cats about to pounce on a mouse.
Sophie sits on the chair. ‘What’s going on?
‘Oh, I thinks you have a good idea about that, my girl,’ Florie says. ‘Nice to have a spy livin’ under our roof.’ She glances at Ellie. ‘Told you it was odd, her visitin’ at the last minute, didn’t I, Ellie?’
‘I’m not a spy, Florie. I don’t know what Sam’s told you, but … but, really, it’s not … it’s not …’ She closes her mouth. She feels sweat bead on her forehead as her cheeks flush.
There’s a scrape of the wooden chair legs against the floorboards as Emmett stands. ‘What is it then? Where do you wants me to live when they builds the hotel?’
Sophie’s mouth drops open. ‘You can live anywhere, Emmett. The investors are offering an excellent package—’
‘I don’t owns anything to sell but for the stage on the tickle. I lives with me mam in my Da’s house. If Mam sells the house, where do you expects me to live?’
Sophie glances at Ellie. ‘Well, I’m sure that can be worked out. I … I wouldn’t worry about it, Emmett.’
Emmett frowns, hooding his strange eyes into a squint. ‘I’s worried about it. I’s worried about it a lot.’
A murmur rumbles through the room. Another man stands. ‘I’m worried too, b’y! I heard they’re gonna chase out all our boats to makes way for them superyachts.’
Sophie shakes her head. ‘No. No. Where did you hear that?’
Florie jumps to her feet and waggles a sturdy finger at Sophie. ‘The nerve of you, girl. We opens up our arms to you, and look what you does to us. Boots us out of our homes. I don’t know how you looks in the mirror.’
Sophie leaps to her feet. ‘That’s not fair, Florie,’ she says, her voice rising. ‘You’re the one being selfish.’
‘Oh, am I? How do you figger that?’
‘How many steps is it to get up to Kittiwake? Thirty-four. And two of them are so rotten you have to watch where you step or you’d go right through. Thirty-four steps is a lot for someone who’s about to turn eighty-nine. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘Ellie’s tough as old boots. Isn’t that right, Ellie?’
Ellie looks at Florie. She shakes her head, her fine white hair fanning across her thin cheeks. ‘No. No, Sophie’s right. It’s not as easy as it used to be.’
Florie’s eyes widen. ‘What’re you saying, love? You never said a word before.’
Ellie shrugs. ‘I know. Sophie’s right, Florie. It isn’t that easy anymore.’
‘I’d make sure they’d pay you over market value for your house, Aunt Ellie,’ Sophie says. ‘You and Florie could buy a lovely place wherever you like.’
Florie crosses her arms. ‘I likes it fine enough here.’ Another murmur ripples through the crowd. Someone stamps their feet.
Sophie scans the faces, resting her gaze on Sam. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard.’ She looks back at the crowd of locals. ‘Please, let me tell you what’s being proposed. Then, why don’t you go away tonight and think about it? We can meet here again tomorrow at the same time and put it to a vote. If you decide you don’t want the hotel here, I’ll tell that to the consortium. And that’s the last you’ll hear from me.’
The room erupts into life. Sophie watches Sam shake his head. He skirts around the chairs and heads out the door.
***
Sophie flops onto the large iron bed in the attic room. She pulls the quilt, one of Becca’s hand-made designs – a triumph of orange and pink floral pieces arranged in an intricate knot design – over her head, and shuts her eyes. The swoosh of waves surging against the rocky cliff below the house beats a rhythm outside her open window, like a symphony building to a climax. The first wave piano, washing softly against the cliff; diminuendo as the water quietens as it recedes; then the second wave, crescendo, growing louder; followed by another diminuendo, lingering as the ocean pulls itself into the final thundering wave; fortissimo.
Sophie laughs to herself. The legacy of a pianist mother. The flip-top piano bench in their Norwich home had been stuffed with yellowing musical scores, annotated in her mother’s impatient hand. Piano. Diminuendo. Crescendo. Fortissimo. Funny how she remembered that after all these years. Funny the things that bury themselves in your mind.
She tosses off the quilt and kicks it to the floor. She fans her face with her hand. The air is heavy with humidity, pressing down on her chest like a weight. She sits up and walks over to the small desk in front of the window. Switching on the old brass desk lamp, she opens her laptop and switches it on. She opens a Word document. Her fingers hover over the keyboard as she stares at the flashing cursor. Bending her head over the keyboard, she writes.
Chapter 64
Tippy’s Tickle – 14 June 1953
The iceberg sits like a moored boat at the mouth of the tickle, its triangular shape like a clipper ship in full sail. The wooden houses along the shore look as small as boxes from the cliff, and as the sun rises and sets, the iceberg’s shadow spreads democratically over the outport, first darkening the wooden turrets on the Parsons’ house on the cliff, then moving over Jim Boyd’s general store and Rod Fizzard’s stage with its wharf and store, and the one-storey fishermen’s houses clustered along the tickle. Then, if it’s a rare cloudless day, the berg swallows its shadow until the late afternoon, when the triangular greyness once again reaches out over the tickle to the aluminium steeple of St Stephen’s Church on its rocky spit of land, until the shadow settles on the round hill of the cemetery.
On this day, there is the suggestion that summer has finally arrived for its brief stay on the island. The sky is a vivid blue and the sun sits high above the floating clouds. Ellie sets down her charcoal drawing pencil on a spongy mound of moss under the twisted fir near the house, and lifts her face up to the sun. The warmth tickles her skin and turns the world underneath her eyelids red. The baby bounces in her stomach and she rests her hand over her blossoming belly.
Not long now, little one. Clever you to come in the summertime. We’ll go for walks amongst the summer flowers – the wild lupins and buttercups, the tiny blue irises and cloudbanks of the purple-pink fireweed – and in the autumn we’ll pick blueberries and partridgeberries and bakeapples for all the cobblers and crumbles I’ll make. I’ll take you down to the beach and we’ll search for winkles in the shallow tide pools to steam up for Daddy’s supper.