The Morwenna, by Elinor Trask

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

The fog came in at noon, and by three o’clock it had swallowed the harbour mouth, the breakwater and half the quay, so that the boats which were home lay on a grey nothing, like toys left on a table. The ‘Morwenna’ was not home. Tamsin had counted the boats four times, and four times she had come to the same number, and four times the gap where the ‘Morwenna’ should be had seemed to grow larger.

She had been married to Jory for seven months. In seven months she had learned the sound of his boots on the stair, the smell of tar and fish in his jersey, the way he hummed through his teeth when he mended nets. She had not learned how to wait. The older women knew how. They stood in a row along the wall with their shawls crossed and their arms folded, talking about the price of coal and Mrs Bolitho’s daughter, and none of them looked at the sea more than once in a minute. Tamsin looked at nothing else.

The fog bell on the end of the breakwater tolled every half minute. Without meaning to, she began to count between the strokes, and each time she reached thirty the bell came in again like a hand clapped over her mouth.

‘He’ll have stood off,’ said old Mrs Hocking, beside her. ‘He’ll lie off till it clears. Jory’s no fool.’ Tamsin nodded. She wanted to believe it so badly that she could feel the wanting in her throat, a hard, aching lump she could not swallow down.

She thought of the things she had said that morning. That he was late. That he had trodden mud on her clean floor. That he could get his own breakfast if he could not be bothered to wipe his feet. She had not kissed him. She had stood at the sink with her back to him, and heard the door, and been glad, for a whole minute, to have the kitchen to herself.

Now she would have given the kitchen, the floor, the house and everything in it for the sound of his boots on the stair.

At half past four a shape moved in the fog beyond the harbour mouth. It was dark and low and uncertain, and it might have been anything, a rock, a shadow, a trick of her aching eyes. Tamsin did not breathe. Along the wall, one by one, the women unfolded their arms.

How does the writer show Tamsin’s thoughts and feelings as she waits for her husband’s boat to return?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Tamsin
• the writer’s use of language to show her thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.