Annie Evans

Several billion years ago, the water molecules gathered on the moor began to develop a more collegiate nature. For some, it was enough to sink into the land, but those in greater need of fellowship began to group together, and across a span of time immeasurable, their company formed a trickle. And long before the creatures came, the trickle became a stream, fed by other courses which had formed elsewhere. And as the moor met the end of the world, with the raging sea below, the molecules began to cut through the land until it created a chine, a great cleft in the rock face, at which the molecules joined with the brine and were set free of all earthly concerns. 

This natural outlet to the sea formed a community of fishermen. In much earlier centuries, the village was owned by a lord, who extracted a gentle tax on the inhabitants for the rights to fish and to profit by it. The village remains in private hands, and although the present owner is not nobility, the locals still call him “Duke”. It remains a closed colony. Those without a pass must pay to park their vehicles and enter the cobbled street, along which early-eighteenth century houses reach down to the shore. It has a 20% gradient, and those cobbles get as slippy as all hell when the rain falls, or the leaves fall. Especially the leaves. 

Goods, shopping, beer barrels and refuse are carried up and down by sleds, each individually pimped to reflect the nature of its owner. This community of five hundred souls live and breathe by taking money from tourists all through April to September. But after that, they are left alone, apart from the odd geologist. And you don’t mess with these people, not at any time, because they are all outlaws in one way or another. The Duke has a fondness for authenticity and will not rent his cottages to the second-homers. He rents them to fishermen, lifeboatmen, or agricultural workers, although there is precious little of that in the village. Not too many questions are asked, he likes them or he doesn’t. He doubts he harbours murderers, but tax avoiders, well maybe. Many families have lived here for generations, paying peppercorn money, and there is not a single soul who doesn’t know the business of the other. It was how small communities used to live, and there is much to commend it if you conduct yourself right. 

If you walk beyond the carpark and out onto a busy coast road, with the moor at your shoulder, you will eventually come to a smaller settlement of slightly newer homes, which is an overspill site. Here, children of the village, seeking more space, might move when they get older, to raise children of their own without the dangers of a treacherous, pounding sea. And it is within one of these houses that Kate sits at her dressing table and tries to disguise a black eye with makeup. At once, we should be clear about something. Kate didn’t walk into a door, because nobody does that. Nor did she slip and catch her eye on the kitchen table, although it’s a more feasible explanation. Kate has a black eye because her husband put it there. And he will put it there again, because there is no stopping it once it starts. 

It began with the abdomen and ribs because these marks don’t show. But those fists will always creep higher, given time. He is out now, slamming the door, revving the car, tearing off along the moor road to a council meeting. A big man now, head of the council, bigging up the DEI although there is scant need for that round here. She knows he doesn’t hold with it, but he will do and say anything to get what he wants. He will always say what is expected to be said, and never what should be. A charming man indeed, a charismatic glad-handing, back-slapping, all-round good guy. 

She turns her head this way and that, but that old shiner won’t go away. It is late autumn. Sunglasses are out. Nothing for it but to say she slipped in the kitchen. 

Later, she drives to the carpark at the top of the village. The walk is not far but the road is more dangerous than poking sharks, especially when the sun goes down. Someone’s swept up red and gold leaves, netting them in the corner by the village stores. Fairy lights festoon the plot, and they’ll continue all the way down to the sea. It is the Winter Festival, always held on the last Saturday in October, but her husband has forgotten that. Forgotten that she has volunteered to run the mulled cider stall with Harry. It won’t go well with her if she rolls in after him, because there is no way he would want her out with that injury to her face. He would expect her to stay indoors. 

Josie’s kids are sweeping up leaves as they fall, this one working from the top, the other from the bottom, dragging bin liners hooked to their belts. She has a brief chat with Peter, who can’t stop looking at her eye. 

“How d’ya get that?” he asked. 

“Slipped in the kitchen,” she says, rolling her eyes at her clumsiness. 

There are stalls outside each house, more by the harbour. Each table has two legs cut short to match the gradient, so they stand even. They won’t slide because the cobbles anchor them. Hand-made Christmas decorations, food stalls, several charities touting for business, local preserves, cheeses, wood carvings, candy floss and toffee apples are all on display. The most exquisite night of the year, so many childhood memories wrapping her in love and warmth. 

They all nod and call out to Kate, one of theirs born and bred, and then they see her eye and their faces drop because this isn’t the first time, and every man, woman and dog knows it. 

Harry, who crews the lifeboat along with fifteen other villagers, knows better than to ask. He figures she’s heard it before. The sea below is marshalled so that people can’t walk on the rough, pebbled beach, which means he can have a drink. He offers one to Kate, who savours the homely, rosy blush of apple and spice. 

It’s as busy as always. Tickets are highly-sought and every year they sell to the maximum allowance for outsiders. The Duke mingles, stopping at stalls, paying for all his purchases like a politician wouldn’t. The air is quiet, but still the russet leaves drop.

Harry, looking out for her as always, tells Kate to take herself down the pub at the bottom, enjoy the stalls along the way. She gratefully accepts, kissing his rough cheek. 

“John the Methodist will take you home later,” he says. “And get you in the morning to pick up your car.” 

“Thanks, Harry.”

“And Kate? He’ll wait outside tonight, OK? For a while, you know?”

*****

In the seventeenth century, the sea was tamed somewhat by a stone breakwater. It allowed the fishermen to moor their boats and bring in their catch. But the shingled strip of beach remains the single and most pernicious danger, because when the tide rolls in, if you are not paying attention, because you’re looking at fossils and flotsam, perhaps, it will have you. It rolls in so fast a person would not make it, not across the pebbles. And there is nowhere to escape it. It’s you, the sea, and a rock face. 

Villagers know this, but they also know the tides, and so when Kate asked the marshalling Janice Joyce if she can slip through the cordon for a small minute, Janice agrees, although she looks at her eye and says, “You’re not thinking of anything stupid, are you?”

“No.” 

Janice watches Kate as she heads towards the lifeboat station. Stays watching her as she rests her back against the boat hall doors, looking out to sea. 

To the right of the lifeboat station is a cottage with a high stone frontage. The living quarters don’t begin for some way up, because the sea would find a way in otherwise. There is a balcony, which the present tenant has prettified with pots and pumpkins. Legend has it that in the 1850s, a fisherman’s wife called Annie Evans stood out on that balcony night after night, waiting for her husband to return from the sea, but he never did, so one night Annie, in her nightgown, walked out into the open embrace of her husband’s murderer. Her body washed ashore a day or so later. 

That was the tourist version. Lovesick Annie. 

Kate lit a rare cigarette, and although her eyes were trained out to sea, she caught something in the periphery and dared to turn her head a little. Annie, hair tumbling down her back, walks across the pebbles without sound. When she reaches the shore she opens her arms and wades into the surf, without hesitation. The moon lights up the crown of her head as it disappears beneath the water. 

Kate says, “My, My.” She looks across at Janice in her hi-viz vest, still watching her. It is clear that Janice saw nothing, so this little message was for her alone. The women born in the village know Annie’s real message, a message the tourists don’t get to hear.

And what Annie is telling her is that Kate’s husband is about to die. 

She makes it back to Janice. “I’ve seen Annie,” she whispered, and Janice briefly smiled. 

“She was drawing you down there,” Janice said. 

“You know, he tried to stop the festival,” Kate confided. “He hates us.”

“We know it,” Janice said. “City boy with fake ideas.”

Kate ran to the pub on the harbour. There’s another at the top of the hill and most of the visitors have made their way back up, for a nightcap. The faces that remain are faces she has known all her life. She would die for them, and they for her. 

“I’ve seen Annie,” she announced, and there was a suppressed ripple of relief. John the Methodist, who has a burning desire for grapefruit juice and drinks nothing else, raised his glass, but cleared his throat. 

“Kate,” he said. “It doesn’t mean he’ll die, not necessarily. Only sometimes do they die. Other times they just go away.”

There were nods of agreement. 

“The tourists think Annie is a romantic figure, but we all know she’s one for vengeance more often than not.”

“We’ll drink to that!” shouted Ed Wickes. 

“Passed down by word of mouth,” reminded Meg the postmistress, “that she bloody hated her husband. He was a brute. She didn’t drown herself because of him, but because she was facing the workhouse, and they were no place for anyone.” 

Kate sat amongst them. They all looked at her eye. 

“Why don’t you leave him?” asks a female voice. 

“Because he has something on me,” Kate replied. “I’ve asked him to leave, but he won’t go. He likes his house on the moor, and his position. A wife is necessary for him.”

“What’s he got on you?” asks a male voice, this one so familiar to her. Tom, the boy she grew up with, her first kiss, until it all felt a little incestuous, living so close. It doesn’t feel like that now. 

“Grandmother,” she said. “Do you all remember?”

They all did. 

“She got so scared at the end because she wouldn’t be able to swallow. And she begged me —”

“And you told him?” asked Tom. 

“Yes. He says it’s murder. And if I leave …”

John the Methodist cleared his throat again. Told her that every last man and woman of them would have done the same, and that if the police come asking, which they won’t, they’d all confess to it. Every last one of them. 

“So that’s your problem gone,” says the postmistress. “Now you can tell him to leave.”

“That’s one problem,” says Kate. “The other is that he’ll likely kill me on the way out.”

*****

Days go by, and he’s not dead. Annie, though, she never gets it wrong. One way or another, he’ll soon be gone. 

But the manner of it was deliciously subtle. 

On the night of the Winter Festival, a woman had asked why Kate didn’t leave him. Her name was Suki Brand, a local journalist who was there that night covering the event. She’s well-liked in the village, although an outsider. She doesn’t like Kate’s husband, the way he’s running things, and she’s been keeping her ears to the ground. Little things, maybe, things that twenty years ago would have been acceptable but which he self-righteously proclaims are not acceptable now. He was ever ripe for being hoist by his own petard. 

And then there’s his wife’s black eye, which she photographed several times on that night. And then there is the testimony of the villagers, who she has been speaking to in the week following. And then she speaks to her editor, who also hates the councillor, and runs with it. She doesn’t mention Annie’s ghost. That’s a local matter, one that would muddy credulity. But she believes it, all the same. 

A week after the festival, on a morning so cold it hurt the ears, the local paper drops on the mat, the one just inside the front door of the house of the moor. 

DOES OUR CHIEF OF COUNCIL ABUSE HIS WIFE?

By Suki Brand

And there it all was. Pictures of Kate at the mulled cider stall, a picture of Kate looking at a craft stall, both showing a blazing black eye and a beautiful, sad face. 

All manner of things crawled out the woodwork then. And as a consequence, Kate’s husband crawled back to the city. 

Annie is a prescient ghost. Suki is a clever journalist. The death of Kate’s husband would not have been a just punishment. He would have been lauded, a plaque on the wall, an endless memorial service. That was never his fate. His fate was more resourceful than that. A lifetime nursing a bad reputation. 

*****

The house on the moor was sold, the profits split equally. The Duke offers Kate a cottage at the top of the village, recently vacated. She takes it, next door to Tom. And we can all guess how that ended. 

She still goes down to the beach, especially in the darker months. But she never goes there when Tom is called out to the lifeboat.

Annie is one of their own, but that doesn’t mean she ever wants to see her again.