The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [274]
He was weathered and oily, not unlike the boot, which he produced from under his bags of tackle. He wore an oiled sou’wester, and an oiled jacket with the collar up.
“I reckon I seen this on someun’s feet, last week,” he said. He turned the boot over. It dripped. Its laces were still fastened. It was old, but had once been expensive. Its tongue lolled.
“I think so,” said Frank Mallett.
Prosper Cain took it in his hands and turned it about.
“I think so, too,” he said. “God help us, it’s got clay in its eyelets and under the tongue. And it hasn’t been decently cleaned, it’s cracking. I think we know whose it is. Any further findings, Mr. Twomey?”
“No, nor very likely to be. The current here is powerful strong. It would pull things—pull a man—deep under and away fast, round the Ness. You won’t find by searching, too hard to know where.”
“Where this came, more may come to the surface,” said Prosper. “Can you ask your friends to keep their eyes open?”
He took the wet boot, rewarded the man, and set out to walk back to Purchase House. The Channel was darkening. The colour of the crashing foam was indescribable—you knew it to be white, but it was the ghost of white, light itself with silver sifted in, and the dark swell of the sucking water.
“I can see him,” said Frank Mallett. “Just walking out into it. He knew how it would take him, what it would do to him.”
They were walking back past the huts. They stopped, whilst Frank lit his lantern. Stars were showing, pale on the blue-black. The sudden beam of the lantern lit up a kind of clothes-line, stretched from the eave of one of the black huts to a mast-head, from which fluttered a narrow St. George’s cross, on a pennant.
“What’s that?” said Prosper.
It was shredded, and crumpled, and mangled. It was stained, and soaked, and it appeared to be the overall-robe Benedict Fludd had worn for his lecture. Flotsam, jetsam, retrieved from the sea.
“Mr. Mallett,” said Prosper Cain, as they walked slowly back towards Purchase House with a brown paper parcel. “Mr. Mallett—these thoughts may be premature—though I think both you and I think not. If my old friend has done away with himself, we may yet find him. He could hardly have chosen a more final place to disappear. The uncertainty will be very painful for his wife and daughters, very. Now I, too, am confiding my private anxieties to you. I wish to marry Miss Fludd as soon as possible—this event has both made me more anxious to do so, and rendered it harder to arrange. I do not know what would be appropriate mourning for a dead man—where no body exists. I do know that his family would live more easily if I were in a position to look after them with a right to do so. I should like you to marry us, Mr. Mallett. Quietly, but not surreptitiously. With flowers in the church, and a decorous feast. How soon could this be done, do you think?”
“If—if nothing floats in to shore—if he does not suddenly walk up the drive—maybe in a month?”
They quickened the pace.
“A final suggestion, Mr. Mallett. Would you agree to say nothing of this to anyone else until the kiln is cooled and the festivity is over? All we have to convey is doubt, suspicion, uncertainty. If we wait, certainty may come. And if it doesn’t, the uncertainty itself will be more of a certain thing—a real thing, if you follow me.”
“Indeed,” said Frank Mallett. “May I say, I am grateful