Read Online The Visitor by Katherine Stansfield - Free Book Online

mark the way from the palace to the boats and silhouettes dance in and out of the glow. Only the palace women and the children go inside its open ring. She hears her father’s voice, and that of Mr Tremain and Mr Polance, Jack and Nicholas’s fathers. The seine men have come ashore, the early catch safely in. A crowd has gathered to watch the fish being unloaded. There are artists in their paint-covered clothes, their trousers that stop at their knees, and she recognises Mr Michaels. He is with three other men, some of whom are making sketches, as she has seen them do often all over the village. Miss Charles is talking with the Master, arranging for some fish for the art school, but for drawing rather than eating. The preacher, Mr Taylor, is watching the coming and going of the fish and the men, smiling and nodding his head. There will be a thanksgiving service soon, she knows, once all the fish have been put to bed in the palace. Mr Taylor looks like a fish himself, his face wide and flat as a ray. It looks like his stretched glasses will pop off his nose at any moment.
    There are also the few local people who don’t work for the Tillotsons, and strangers too – men with pocketbooks and pencils stand near the doorway. The Master goes to talk with them, all smiles now that the catch is his. He speaks to the strangers. Pearl is too far away to hear what is said but the strangers keep nodding and writing things in their pocketbooks. One man, who carries a walking stick even though he is young and doesn’t have a limp like Alice, leaves the others and peers into the palace. Instantly Aunt Lilly is in front of him, blocking the way.
    â€˜A penny gazey-money, sir? A penny for us fair maids if you want to come in.’
    The man looks Lilly up and down, tucking away his pocketbook inside his coat. ‘My dear,’ he says, ‘I have no intention of paying you anything to see inside this filthy place. Kindly move aside.’
    Aunt Lilly calls behind her. ‘This gentleman’s not paid, ladies.’ Then she smiles and does as he asks. The man takes a last gulp of clean air and steps forward. A pilchard slaps him square across the jaw. The man with the stick splutters and swears, while his friends roar with laughter. More fish follow before the man has time to retreat. Aunt Lilly sways back inside the palace to hoots and cheers from the women.
    There’s the sound of them getting to their feet, the rest over. From inside comes a sad song, soft and low, about a boy in a seine boat who is lost.
    The corn was in the shock,
    And the fish were on the rock,
    When the boats went out from Sennen with the pilchard seine;
    But the morning broke so fair,
    And not a boat was there,
    And the lad I loved was with them and he came not back again.
    All the women know it and sing to ease the work. Pearl looks for Nicholas in the clumps of people still gathered outside the palace’s thick granite walls but she can’t see him.
    Inside her mother is back on the floor, fixed rigid apart from her hands which dip and dip into the salt. She is cast in a net of gold from the lamp behind her, her face a shadow. Voices float through the ripe air, weaving dark and light across the cobbled floor. They catch the silver and ring off the granite, floating up to the stars through the open roof.

Four
    â€˜What on earth’s kept you?’ Eileen said. ‘I was beginning to think you were glad to be rid of me when you moved up the hill.’ Eileen steered Pearl to a chair by the shop’s counter, which was covered in tins.
    â€˜It hasn’t been that long, surely,’ Pearl said. She sat down and was grateful for the chance to catch her breath. ‘We had to unpack, and then there was all that business with Pascoe and the house.’
    â€˜I’ve not see you for weeks,’ Eileen said. ‘A month, actually.’ Pearl was about to protest but Eileen was already bustling about as she