Free His Last Fire by Alix Nathan

kept close to the curve of the coast wherever he could. Dipped down to the beach to stare at the waves, as if she might rise out of them. His money ran low but his story kept him fed. And on occasion woken in the night by women younger than Margaret had been back then; for she was older than he by a number of years and already saddened, even though he’d made her smile.
    The country changed, woods became rare, fields opened themselves to the sky. Where he could he walked along the beach, his boots cracking wrack and razorshells. On one side flint-grey ocean, on the other mud cliffs scraped by wind and flood, shaped like waves before they break, their crests a spume of grass. Here, in this land, sea ruled. You accepted it, lived off what it gave, grieved for what it took, fishing smacks, men o’war. Villages.
    On a blustery day he heard bells ring, tolling without cease. Faint, distant, some village on the way to Cromer; he wouldn’t reach the place till late. He hastened but it was quite dark when he arrived, flares had been extinguished, rescue was over for the day. A 74-gun, they said, The Tremendous , set sail from Yarmouth, the light good, mid-afternoon, known pilots in charge but a strong tide flowing. More than 500 men on board. Broke up in no time and only two smacks out fishing to haul in the living from the swell. Hit Hammond’s Knoll, the worst of the sandbanks. So many ships lost there. So many good men gone. Yes, tomorrow they’d be glad of any help with the sea’s harvest.
    He joined the line of carts to retrieve those cast up by the morning’s high tide, to lay them on boards hastily swept of dung, trundle them back to crowd the churchyard.
    The whole village was at the beach sifting through treasures arranged by the artless sea on beds of wrecked shells. Women and children loaded their handcarts with food, linen, casks, little spoiled, so freshly drowned. Men heaved wooden boxes onto wagons, furniture, spars, planks, winters’ worth of fuel. It was as if a fair were taking place in the midst of war. People must step over bodies to reach their booty.
    John had seen men killed in battle, men with whom he’d eaten, laughed and argued hours before. These were not his companions, yet they were the same: the worn, the untried, hardened, soft-faced. Brave, terrified. Which of them had cried out and to whom had they called? Which had looked inward and found a sudden consolation? Or none. All day the sound of surf and wind pounded in his ears. All day he heard the voice of every man and boy whose body he gently carried to the cart.
    â€˜Will you stay?’ they asked him in the village. ‘We need more seamen.’ Later in the week there would be a funeral at a great single grave dug in the glebe next to the church.
    No, he told them, when all this is done he’d attend the burial but then he must travel north. He had made up his mind.
    â€˜Leave that one,’ someone said to him as he bent to lift another corpse the following day. ‘He’s a local man. Fisherman. Boat capsized when the big one went down. They’ll come for him.’
    He laid the body on the sand. The weathered face beaten, the huge hands like nets drying.
    Margaret came to collect her husband.

S PY
    W hen should a wife spy on her husband?
    In Exchange Alley lecherous sparrows fought in the gutters at Battle’s. She’d lived there all her life, her father’s coffee house. A child playing with the puppy among men’s feet, petted by pipe-smokers, removed when the mood became rowdy. Was more familiar with the smell of coffee than porridge. Then for years the comely girl pouring port, claret, porter. Her face drew the men (there were no female customers), caused them to linger, chalk up another. His wife dead, Sam Battle depended on his daughter: she must keep an eye on the poaching, roasting, toasting as well as on him. Waiters in striped waistcoats ran about with coffee, dishes,