Ebb tide

'You drink too much,' she said without looking up.

'Eh? What's that?'

'I said, you drink too much. That is the fourth glass you have had since dinner. It does not improve your conversation,' she added drily.

'You are becoming a scold,' he retorted.

She ignored the provocation and looked up at him. 'What is troubling you?'

'Troubling me? Why nothing, of course.'

'Why then are you looking out of that window as though expecting to see something? Is the garden full of ghosts?'

'How did you know?' he asked, and their eyes met.

'There is something troubling you, isn't there?'

He shook his head. 'Only the weather, my dear,' he said dismissively, closing the shutter and crossing the room to sit opposite her. He stretched his legs out towards the fire.

'And the ghosts?'

He sighed. 'Oh, at moments like this I recall Quilhampton ... And one or two others...'

'Why at moments like this?' she asked, lowering her needlepoint and looking at him directly over her spectacles. She saw him shrug.

'I don't know. They say old men forget, and 'tis largely true to be sure, but there are some memories one cannot erase. Nor perhaps should you when you have borne responsibility.'

Elizabeth smiled. 'It is the burden of that responsibility that prevents you from accepting things as they are, my dear,' she said gently. 'If, as you say you believe, Providence guides us in our lives, then Providence must bear the burden of what it creates. After all, you yourself are what you are only partly by your own making.'

Drinkwater smiled over his glass. 'Yes, you are right.' He leaned forward and patted her knee. 'You are always a fount of good sense, Elizabeth.'

'And you drink too much.'

'Do I?' Drinkwater looked at his empty glass. He placed it on an adjacent table. 'Perhaps I do. A little.'

'What o'clock is it?' Elizabeth asked.

Drinkwater lugged out his watch and consulted it. Almost ten,' he said, looking up at her. 'What is it?'

'Oh nothing. I was just thinking you have had that watch a long time.'

He gave a short laugh. 'Yes, so long that I forget it was your father's.'

'It was, I think, the only thing of any real value he had.'

'Except yourself,' he said.

'Thank you, kind sir.' Elizabeth stifled a yawn. 'I shall not linger tonight,' she said, laying down her work. 'Susan will have put the bedpan in an hour since.'

'Then I shall not make up the fire ...'

Drinkwater was interrupted by a loud and urgent knocking at the door. 'What the devil...?' Their eyes met.

'Were you expecting someone?' Elizabeth asked, a sudden suspicion kindled in her.

'No, not at all,' Drinkwater answered, shaking his head and rising stiffly. He hobbled awkwardly towards the hall door muttering about his 'damned rheumaticks'.

Elizabeth sat and listened. She heard the front door open and felt the sudden in-draught of cold air that sent the dying fire leaping into a brief, flaring activity. She heard, too, a man's insistent voice and her husband's lower response. Cold air ceased to run into the room and she heard the door close. The exchange of voices continued and then her husband came back into the room.

'What is it, Nathaniel?'

'There's a vessel in trouble in the bay. I have Mr Vane in the hall. He has his trap outside. I shall have to go and see what can be done.'

Elizabeth sighed. 'Very well. But please ask poor Mr Vane in for a glass while you put on something suitable for such a night.'

Drinkwater turned back to open the door and waved for the visitor to enter. 'Remiss of me, Vane, come in. My wife will look after you while I fetch a coat.'

'My boots, Captain ...'

'Oh, damn your boots, man. Come you in.'

'Thank you, sir.' Vane was a large man who always looked uncomfortable indoors, despite the quality of his coat and cravat. He entered the drawing-room with his customary awkwardness. 'Mistress Drinkwater.' He bowed his head, turning his low beaver in his hands.

'I should like to say it was pleasant to see you, Mr Vane, and in a sense it is,' Elizabeth said, as she rose smiling, 'but at this hour and in such circumstances ...'

'Aye, ma'am. There's a ship in trouble. I saw the rockets go off just as I was going up with Ruth and, as you know, the Captain likes to know...'

'Oh, yes,' Elizabeth said, handing a glass to her unexpected visitor, 'the Captain likes to know. Here, take this for your trouble.'

'I didn't ought to...'

'You may need it before the night's out.'

Vane's huge fist closed round the glass and he smiled shyly at his benefactress, for Elizabeth had established him as the tenant in Gantley Hall's only farm. Vane had been driven off land that his family had worked for years by an extension of the Enclosures Act. He had come to Elizabeth's notice while eking out a living as a groom in Woodbridge where, for a while, she and Louise Quilhampton, the dead James's mother, had run a small school. Louise had heard of his plight and the incumbent of Lower Ufford had stood as guarantor of his character when Elizabeth, in the absence of her husband at sea, had come to grips with the management of the small farm they had bought with the estate. She had liked his slow patience and the ability the man possessed to accomplish an enormous amount without apparent effort. It was in such stark contrast to her own erratic attempts to accomplish matters that she had regarded the arrival of Mr and Mrs Vane as providential, an opinion shared by her fatalistic husband. Vane was supported by his energetic wife. Ruth Vane was a plain woman of sound good sense who managed a brood of children with the same efficiency as her geese and hens. On his rare visits to Home Farm, 'The Captain' as Drinkwater was always referred to between them, voiced his approval. 'Mistress Vane runs as tight an establishment as the boatswain of a flag-ship, and that bear of a husband of hers puts me in mind of a lieutenant I once knew ...' Elizabeth smiled at him now.

'Please sit down. Do you know what manner of ship is in distress, Mr Vane?'

'No, ma'am. But I've the trap outside. We can soon run down to the shingle and take a look.'

A moment later Drinkwater re-entered the room in his hessian boots and cloak. He bore in his hands his cocked hat.

'You will need gloves, my dear.'

'I have them, and my glass.' Drinkwater patted his hip. 'Come, Vane. Let's be off.'

Vane put his glass down and a moment later Elizabeth stood alone in the room. She turned, made up the fire and resumed her needlework.

'Can't see a damned thing!'

Drinkwater spoke above the roar of the wind which blew directly onshore and was much stronger than he had anticipated. They stood on the low shingle escarpment which stretched away to the north-east and south-west in a pale crescent under the full moon, its successive ridges marking the recent high tides. The shallow indentation of Hollesley Bay, 'Ho'sley' to the local people, was an anchorage in westerly winds, but in the present south-easterly gale, washed as it was at this time in the moon's life by strong tides, it could become a deathtrap.

'Well, Vane, there are no more rockets going up ...'