第8章 The Second Element

Friday came with a wind from the east at eight miles an hour, and a visibility of four miles, and a sea that ran flat grey and still, and Ellerby signed off the diver because Ruan had already told the harbourmaster that the water was right, and the harbourmaster had already told the survey office in Ildwater, and the survey office had already called Ellerby at half past six in the morning to say that Ruan had asked for a second element to be dropped at site two, and Ellerby had already signed the paperwork before the call, because Ruan had already asked him, in the week before, to have it ready. "Ruan doesn't ask," Tamar said, on the boat, watching the channel go past. "Ruan tells." "Ruan tells. Yes." Ellerby stood at the rail in a windcheater, his tie tucked in, his shoes polished, and he looked at the water with the expression of a man trying to see something he had not been told the name of. "He tells me, and I do the paperwork. That's how it's worked for six years. I've stopped asking why." "You should ask." "I asked in the first year. He told me. I didn't understand. I asked again. He told me again. I still didn't understand. I stopped asking." He pointed at the narrows. "That's site two. Two fathoms off the south side. Ruan says there's a shelf here that the chart doesn't show. The sounder will show you. It'll drop three metres in a space of twenty metres, and then it'll hold, and then it'll drop again. That's the shelf. That's where you put the element, on the shelf, where the water comes over it." "You know this site." "I've stood over it twice, in a helicopter, at six thousand feet. I've never been in a boat here. I don't like the boats." He stood at the rail and did not move again until they were home. The second element went in at eight forty, and the diver was the harbourmaster's nephew, a lad of nineteen with a clean dive log and a terrible habit of talking to himself underwater, and he went down to the shelf and put the element on it and came up and did not say a word to Tamar, and Tamar did not say a word to him, and the boat went home, and the element was on the shelf, and the shelf was where Ruan said the shelf was. The record started at eight forty-one. At nine eleven the tone came in. She was in the cottage with the headphones on and the spectrum open, and the tone came in at seventy-eight hertz, at the same height, at the same pitch, and she looked at the amplitude and the amplitude was twice the amplitude of site one, and she looked at the interval and the interval held, and she looked at the file and the file was recording, and she did the mathematics of the thing. Two elements. One tone. Two amplitudes. A ratio. She took the bearing from the shelf to site one, and the bearing from site one to the shelf, and the difference in arrival time, and the speed of sound in the water, and she got a bearing back on the source of the tone, and the bearing pointed south, and south of the narrows was the flat, and the flat was where the steps were, and the steps were where the ledger said the steps were. She did it a second time. She did it a third. The source of the tone was under the flat, at a range of about six hundred metres, at a depth she could not measure from the surface record, at a bearing that put it in the place where the church of Ashenholt had stood, according to the harbormaster's tide tables, according to the ledger, according to the chart of nineteen forty-four, and not according to the chart of today. She took off the headphones and sat in the chair and looked at the laptop. She called Ruan. "You triangulated it." "I triangulated it." "Where." "Under the flat. Where the church was." "Where is that, on the chart." "On the chart, it's shallow water. On the ledger, it's the third step." "Ruan. How deep." "Two point five at the datum. One point nine below the datum. Six feet of stone under the water, if the water's out. That's the third step. That's where the church bell was. The church bell was on the third step, under the tower, and the tower came down in the flood of forty-four, and the bell went down with it, and the bell's been there since." "And it's been ringing." "It's been ringing." "Since when." "Since you put the first element in. Before that, nobody heard it. I don't think it was ringing. I don't think it was. That's the thing I can't tell you. That's the thing I've wanted to know for a month." She hung up. She called Ellerby. "Ellerby, I've got a source bearing." "Good." "The source is under the flat. It's not the buoy. It's not the dockyard. It's not equipment." "Then it's geology." "It's not geology." "Then it's marine life." "It's not marine life. It's a struck metal body. It's a bell. It's under the flat." There was a pause. "Tamar, you're going to put that in the observations section." "I'm going to put that in the report." "You're not going to put that in the report." "The datum is wrong by one point nine. The consent schedule is built on the datum. The datum is wrong. I'm putting that in the report." "Then the report says the datum is wrong, and the datum is national, and the Authority will have to reopen the datum, and the datum correction will invalidate every consent on the coast for forty years, and the Authority does not do that. The Authority does not do that. You're going to put it in the observations section as an artefact of unknown origin and you're going to file it, and you're going to keep the second element running, and you're going to keep the first element running, and you're going to run the baseline to the end of February, and you're going to file the report, and the report will say the scheme is viable, and the datum will be in the observations section, and the observations section will be read by nobody, and the scheme will go ahead, and that's how it's worked for six years, Tamar, and that's how it's going to keep on working." He hung up. Tamar put the headphones back on and played the file, and the tone came in at seventy-eight, and the bell on the wall, under its dust sheet, in the hall, did not move. She took the headphones off and went out to the yard and stood in the cold and looked at the bay, and out past the narrows, in the last of the light, there was the shape of a line of stones, spaced with the regularity of masonry, running out into the water and stopping, and she could count them, and she did not count them. She went in and made tea and did not drink it, and sat at the table, and she opened the ledger, and she turned to the page in blue ink, and she read the third entry again, and she read it a second time, and she read it a third time. Tomas Saltwyke. Nineteenth March, eighty-four. Red ink. At the foot of the page, the green ink. One thousand nine hundred and eighty-four. The child. The walk. She closed the ledger and looked at the wall, and the bell was there, under its dust sheet, and she understood, for the first time, what Deveril had meant, when she had said the ledger was kept because the sea had to be told. The sea had to be told what the water was doing. The ledger was the datum. The ledger had been the datum, since somebody, in some year, had decided that the datum was a thing that had to be kept, and kept by hand, and kept in a room that had a bell on the wall, and kept until the bell stopped sounding, and until the ledger stopped being kept, and until a child, in spring of eighty-four, had come down from the walk with a datum in her head that she did not remember, and had written it down in green ink, in a hand smaller than any of the others, in the column that had never had a heading. And the datum was wrong. And the model was wrong. And the bell was ringing. She picked up the phone and called Deveril. "Deveril, I've triangulated it. It's under the flat. It's the bell." "I know." "How." "The tone came up on the second element. I could hear it in the wall. I could hear it when you put the first one in. I've been hearing it in this house since the fourteenth. That's why I didn't come out. That's why I stayed in. That's why I made tea and didn't drink it, and sat in the kitchen, and listened." "Deveril, the bell's been here on the wall since eighty-four." "It has." "Have you been hearing it in the wall, since eighty-four." There was a pause. "No," Deveril said. "Not in the wall. Not since. I've been hearing it in the water. In the water, from the yard, since the fourteenth. In the water, not in the wall." "How can you hear the water from the yard." "You can't. You can hear the wall. You can hear the wall, because the wall is where the bell is, and the wall is where the datum is, and the datum is where the water is, and the water is where the steps are, and the steps are where the walk is, and the walk is where the child was, and the child is where the datum was set, and the datum is where the bell is ringing." "Deveril, what are you telling me." "I'm telling you the datum is the bell. I'm telling you the bell is the datum. I'm telling you the ledger is the record of the bell, and the bell is the record of the ledger, and the two have been the same thing since the year the child walked, and the child did not remember the walk, and the child wrote the datum down, and the datum has been wrong since, and the bell has been ringing since, and nobody has heard it, because nobody has been listening, and the listening is the job, and the job is the Tidewarden, and the Tidewarden is me, and I have been sitting in my kitchen for a month, and I have been listening, and I have been listening, and I have been listening." She hung up. She sat at the table with the phone in her hand, and she looked at the ledger, and she looked at the graphs, and she looked at the wall. She picked up the pen and opened the ledger to the last page, and she looked at the green ink, and she did not write anything. She put the pen down. She got up and went to the yard, and she stood in the cold, and she looked at the bay, and out past the narrows, the line of stones was there, and the water was going out, and the bell was ringing, and she could not hear the bell, and she could not hear the water, and she could hear the graph, and she could hear the numbers, and she could hear the arithmetic, and the arithmetic said that the bell had been ringing since the fourteenth, and the bell had been ringing, before that, and the bell had been ringing since the year the child walked, and the child had walked in eighty-four, and the child had written the datum down in eighty-four, and the datum had been wrong since eighty-four, and the model had been wrong since the year the model was built, and the model had been built on the datum, and the datum had been set by the child, and the child did not remember the walk, and the walk was written down in nine soundings, and the nine soundings were the walk, and the walk was the datum, and the datum was the bell, and the bell was ringing. ---