Chapter 13 The Consent Hearing

The hearing was on Friday at two in the afternoon in a room above the post office at Saltwyke. The room was small and wooden and smelled of tea and floor polish. There were fourteen people in it, and four of them had been there before, and Tamar had been to a consent hearing before. The clerk was a woman named Aisling, with a lanyard and a stack of papers. She read the agenda from the papers, and item four was the Ebbmouth Coastal Defence Scheme, and she read the names of the applicants, and she read the names of the technical advisors, and she read Tamar's name. "Any objections to the agenda?" she asked. Lowri, in the back corner, raised her hand. "I object on the basis that the technical advisor has not filed her datum." Aisling looked at Tamar. Tamar was standing at the front of the room with her jacket off and her file in her hand. She did not look surprised. "Ms Collow," Aisling said. "May I have your objection in writing?" "Yes," Lowri said. "I'll have it to you by the end of the day." Aisling moved to item five, and item five was the mitigation package, in a green binder on the table in front of Cragmere. He opened it and read the first page, the datum, and then the second, the survey, and then the third, the signature line where Tamar's name was meant to be. "Ms Saybrook," he said. "The datum." "I'm here," Tamar said. "I've served you a stop-work order." "You have." "I've written it in red ink on your survey." "You have." "Would you like to withdraw your objection?" "I didn't file an objection." "You declined to file a datum." "I declined to file a provisional datum." "Are those different things?" "They are different things." "They're the same thing, as far as the application is concerned." "As far as the application is concerned," Tamar said. "Yes." Cragmere closed the binder. Aisling tapped her pen on the table. "Ms Saybrook," she said. "You're not in the room to file numbers. You're in the room to advise." "Yes, I'm here to advise." "Then I'll take it that you're advising against the datum." "I'm advising that the datum is provisional." "That's what the application says." "That's what the application says, and the application is wrong, and I'm here to say so, and I'm not going to sign anything that says otherwise." Cragmere looked at her. "Thank you, Ms Saybrook," he said. "The application proceeds." Aisling opened a new sheet. "Consent application, item five, Ebbmouth Coastal Defence Scheme," she read. "Do we have the vote?" Cragmere raised his hand. Two other councillors did. The harbourmaster, a man named Pritchard, raised his. The chairman, a woman named Aldridge, raised hers. "Consent granted," Aisling said. "Subject to the conditions on the table." The room emptied in the way rooms do, with chairs dragged and papers folded and coats taken off the backs of chairs. Lowri stayed, and so did Tamar, and so did the man from the Crown Estate, and so did Deveril, who had come from the yard in Saltwyke and stood in the doorway with a cup of tea and did not come in. "Done," Lowri said. "Done," Tamar said. "Good. Now I have to write my report." "We're writing mine," she said. "Where does it go?" "Aisling at Saltwyke writes letters and sends them to a place. The place sends letters back. The letters are always polite. The letters are never late." "Where is there?" "I don't know. I've never been." "You've never been to where the record goes." "No. I've never been to where the record goes." Tamar looked at Lowri. "Lowri," she said. "What is the record?" "The record is the Sounding list." "I read the Sounding list." "You did," Lowri said. "You didn't read the last line." "I read the last line. There isn't a last line." "There is a last line. It's written on the ledger. It's not written on my list." "Written where?" "Third column. Observation seven. The child, age nine, Harnsey Wick, spring of eighty-four. Memory given: the walk. Object: none. And under the object, in a different hand, in a different ink, somebody has written: the walk was up. The walk was not down. The walk was not finished." "Nobody wrote that on my list." "Nobody wrote that on mine either. I read it on the ledger. I've been reading it on the ledger for two years, and I've been here since two thousand seventeen, and I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure you were going to be the one who needed to know." "I'm the one who needs to know." "You are the one who needs to know," Lowri said. "That's what it means." Deveril came in from the doorway. "Cragmere," he said. "He'll be back." "Who?" "Deveril." "Me?" "Tamar," Deveril said. "He'll be back. He always comes back. He comes back with a different argument, or a different name, or a different reason. The walk is going to be walked." Tamar looked at the table. The table was covered in papers, and the papers were the papers of the application, and the application was approved, and the approval was subject to conditions, and the conditions were on the table. The conditions did not say the word steps. The conditions did not say the word datum. The conditions did not say the word bell. The conditions did not say the word walk. The conditions said everything else, and everything else was going to be built. She folded her file. She put it in her bag. She got her jacket off the back of the chair and put it on. She stood in the doorway of the room with Deveril, and looked at Lowri, and looked at the table, and looked at the paper with the number minus one point nine at the top of it, and she understood, for the first time since Monday, that she had done the wrong thing, and she understood that she was going to do the right thing, and she understood that the two were the same thing. Outside, the car was on the drive from Saltwyke. It was the car that had been at the top of the village on Wednesday with the light on in the front window. The light was off. The car was empty. The key was in the ignition. Tamar walked to the car. She got in. She started the engine. She drove back to the yard at the house, and she parked, and she got out, and she went to the kitchen, and she made tea, and she drank the tea, and she looked out at the bay, and she saw the steps, and the steps were nine, and the steps were in the air, and the walk was up, and the walk was not finished, and she was going to walk it. She was not going to walk it yet. She was going to walk it on Monday.