That is who he is looking for. That is who he must find.
He has followed the path of her usual errands, through narrow streets and alleys upon the turnings of which the harbor may be seen, to the market, to the bake house, to the fishmonger’s; but her familiar silhouette, the longed-for figure of his sister, dark hair flying out behind her, eludes him. She is not in the yard; she is not in the streets. From the corner where he stands, he can see, in the window of the bedroom they once shared, the shade drawn firmly down. It is well past her time for rising. Certainly she is not there.
He thinks, She never answered any of my letters. All those hours, writing. Hiding from Clotilde. Hiding from his fate.
In his distress he does not know whom to ask, Where is my sister? He will not ask anyone at all until one evening, by accident, in the rain, he runs into Jamie Humber in Sandgate Street, neighbor of his childhood but a different Jamie Humber, hunched beneath the weight of jetty’s tools, his eyes older than they used to be; and then without even the preamble of a decent greeting he will blurt it out, Where is Anna? Hast seen her?—falling, in his anxiety, into the old, childish way of talking; and Jamie Humber will look at him and want to move on; his face will be streaked with dirt because he has been out on the Scaur all day; he is tired, the rain edged with ice stings both of them as they stand awkwardly together beneath the awning of Edward Corner’s, the butcher’s shop. A half dozen slaughtered piglets and a dead goose, hanging in the window, peer over their shoulders, listening eagerly. Leo, too hasty, impatient: Hast seen her? Jamie Humber, soft voiced, gentle as ever—I ain’t seen nowt, Leo. Nowt. And then Jamie will do what he wants to do, will shrug and move on, in the dark and rain, into the crowd in Market Square and then up the cliff, toward Henrietta Street, and home.
Nowt. I ain’t seen nowt.
Shrugging indifferently, as if it were not he who, as a boy, once scrambled desperately behind her up the twilit Scaur, calling her name, begging her to wait, longing for her indulgent mercy, mercy received and forgotten.
• • •
Yes, my father thinks. Sometimes people come back. Sometimes they don’t.
• • •
Outside, in the cold, in the shed, where he is attempting to make himself a studio, he wonders where his sister can be. Beneath his preoccupied gaze the penciled lines of his own drawings come together and fall apart, transform into runes, maps, a palimpsest, which, if only he can read it rightly, will reveal the answer. But the answer is not there. There is only Clotilde at the taffrail, Clotilde in the saloon, Clotilde at the spinet, Clotilde bending over to button her boot; Harry Owen with his cigar; Felix Girard, hat over his face, sleeping in the smallboat; and specimens—endless specimens, drawn in exacting detail. My father, while recognizing the skill with which he has worked, nonetheless regards all these with despair. Where, he thinks, is Anna? He had hoped for her indulgent mercy himself; and finds himself, now that he is unable to claim that mercy, suddenly bereft. It has been brought home to him that he and Clotilde are utterly alone. With the remains of his stipend as Narcissus ship’s artist, with Clotilde’s small inheritance (mostly the last proceeds of Felix’s Girard’s Ghosts of Bain Dzak), and by selling the few saleable objects from Bury Place that held neither sentimental value for Clotilde nor sufficient worldly value to interest Petrook, they have rented this five-sided, shuddering house above the river, the Birdcage, for one year. Beyond that: the abyss. Sitting by the fire with his bewildered young wife, feeling the house shiver and shake beneath them, Leopold feels their future, too, shuddering and shaking, ready to sink, to slide, to fall, to drown, to be carried, along with the rest of the offal in the River Esk, out into the cold North Sea.
He must work. He does not know what to do. He will not carve jet again, not ever. He will never step foot inside the Dell’oro Jet Works.
But then what?
In the cold, dark, sleeting afternoons he rounds the streets, as if, looking into windows, he will find the solution—will, perhaps, peer into a grocer’s or shoemaker’s or a smithy and see himself looking out, staring back through time from the vantage of some happier and better-ordered future. Round he goes, up Bridge Street past Horne and Richardson, Booksellers, to Grape Lane, skirting the entry of Walker, Hunt, and Simpson, Attnys-at-Law; he clings to rough-surfaced, whitewashed walls, guides himself where the lamps have not yet been lit, until he emerges around a corner into Church Street; then up past Jonathan Smallwood’s smithy, Appleton’s brewery, and Jim Watt the chemist’s; past the My Infant Academy, Ann Davis, Proprietress; all the way up to the circle at Tate Hill, where, barely pausing to glance at the purpling line of horizon at the lip of the sea, he skirts the turning to Henrietta Street, makes his way instead down Sandgate Street, past Hugill’s Hairdressers and the Victoria Inn, into the bustle of Market Square, where, pushing through a wooden door heavy at the hinges, he makes his way into the Bird in Hand, settles himself into a dark unnoticed corner, his drawing paper unfolded from within his coat and opened surreptitiously on the bench beside him. The place is filled with fug of smoke, wet steam rising off drying woolens, voices decrying the state of the weather, the state of the state, the state of the neighbors. What a flirtigiggs she is, a woman is saying, close to him, by the reeking fire. She’s browden on un, surely, the daft fool. From farther off, by the counter: It’s cawd as hell. Better button up them gammashes, Robby. And then, softly, a whisper almost, carried to him on an eddy in the conversation: He’ll rue it tomorrow. He’ll rue it for sartain.