Black Juice (11 page)

There was other furniture in the cow-house. There was a wooden chest on Dot’s right. An unlit lamp stood on it, and beside it the Three’s House, hooked closed.

‘I am sure my mother has always respected and admired you,’ he said.

‘And I am sure she has not, for how could she? I was an embarrassment with my wives and my slave-men and my “wisdom”. I preached purity and lived a prince’s life. Bonneh preached nothing and lived purity. Her vow held her steady, and not all my glamour and power could ever budge that woman. She was before me as my lesson every day, yet did I ever learn?’

The Three’s House was quite a lot smaller than the House of the Many—but then, everything here had shrunk with the years: the curve of the river, the mothers, the Bard himself. Dot took the House to the doorway where he could see it. Oh, yes—smaller, and so much lighter. So brown, so worn. Even the healing hands of the accordion-man in Port-of-Lords could do nothing for this. It hardly
existed
as an instrument.

‘Take it,’ rasped the Bard. ‘Take the damned thing. Everything else you’ve taken, you might as well.’

‘Can it still sound?’

‘As much as it ever did. Go on, take its weight off my mind. And your weight, too. Leave me to die in peace and with nothing.’

Dot left the cow-house and walked back up the road to
the village. Samed had got the balloons out; bright dots of colour were bounding and flying at the end of strings. There was a tiny pop as one burst, then a tiny child-wail. Dot held the dusty accordion to his chest, where he knew its ancient concertina-folds would leave long stripes of disintegrating paper. He felt haggard from exposure to the Bard’s bitter breath; his belly was sore from the tension it had carried all day.

He walked up the rise to the remains of the tea-tent. The tables and benches were weather-warped but still strong, and he sat where the last piece of worn cloth would shield him from the village. The breeze was very soft and steady, the sunlight yellow-gold, the shadows long.

He undid the catch. It was a while since the accordion had been used; Dot had to open it very carefully so that it didn’t tear itself apart, so that the fragile cardboard didn’t split in several places and take away the instrument’s last breath. He eased it open and closed slowly several times, wondering whether it could play a single note without breaking.

And as he wondered and worked the house’s hallway, Anneh idled out a side-door of the house just as she always had, her arms full of thatch, three piglets and a chicken following behind. She could go only so far, to the limits of her yard and beyond that to her farm patch, a bit farther, a bit fainter, before she faded from hearing.

Robbreh took some finding, some odd angles and pressures, but before too long Dot had him singing, and not
long after that the two of them singing together, going about their separate businesses. Dot had tried for the same sound on the red accordion, but there was too much juice in it, too much harmony, not enough dust and age. The broken pieces that made the Three alive were missing.

Then, in the middle of one of Robbreh’s wheezes he heard a corner, an edge of an echo that was high and crazy and said anything that came into its head. He played more of the same part of Robbreh, coaxing and coaxing the little one out from behind the dad.

What was left of the flap of the tea-tent lifted, and there stood Bonneh, washed and dressed in her white. She came in and perched on a bench, inclined her head and listened. From his years out in the world, Dot read her movements as full of grace, the bones of her face and speckled head as smooth and beautiful.

‘Been a long time since anyone took that up,’ she said in a pause where Dot had lost the older Two and was working to find them again among the huffs and rattles. They jumped out again suddenly with Viljastramaratan blaring beside them, and Dot had to laugh, and his mother too smiled.

He played until he had all three moving somewhat in the old ways, Anneh busy with her work, Robbreh happy among the rumble of the men.

But Viljastramaratan came and went as Viljastramaratan pleased. When that one decided to sing, Dot could keep him going a little, but—

‘I can’t keep a hold on the child,’ he said to Bonneh.

She gave the smallest smile in the world, rose and left the tent. And when the fraying flap had fallen closed behind her, he wound the music down and finished. The wind in the cloth and the guy-ropes had more notes in it than the accordion, though it didn’t form what you’d call music.

Dot fastened the Three’s House closed and carried it down to the village. The shadows streamed away, endlessly long now. A sweet-wrapper tinkled past him. The car stood beyond the huts, its curves gathering the last sunlight into lines and points. Samed was walking slowly towards it like a carnival in his orange robe, the children running up to replace his rings and bracelets. He flirted with the mothers over the children’s heads, and they bumped shoulders with each other and laughed behind their hands.

But in the car, against the sunset, Dot saw Bonneh’s round head. Like the plainest wooden statue, she sat polished by life’s handling, beautified by the completion of her work. She waited while he wrapped and stowed the old accordion, while he said farewell to Winsome, and warned her children not to put these gifts of rose-scented soap in their mouths. She waited motionless while he went to the fields’ edge and stood over the fresh mound where Ardent lay, which the children had prettied with lolly-foils weighted with stones. When Samed and Dot entered the car, she eyed them out of a deep smiling thought, and then fixed her gaze forward again.

‘Bonneh, aren’t you bringing belongings?’ said Samed.
‘Your … your pots and things? Other clothes, maybe?’

Again she cast him that sideways joking glance and was silent.

‘Samed,’ said Dot. ‘You are my best friend, but you don’t know when to keep quiet.’

‘Is there such a time?’ laughed Samed. He took his sunglasses from a child’s hand poked through the window, and tried to kiss the hand before it was snatched away.

Dot tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘We can go now,’ he said.

I’
M IN DANGER
. Up ahead, limousines, white horses, flower strewers, white-and-silver gift carts block the street. Here, brides and their families crowd. Irate mothers are shouting, fathers are giggling and some are trying to push forward; we brides stand motionless in First Position, like fence posts in a flood. But a few feet behind me, Gabby’s dad has started one of his hairy stories. In many a Composure class I’ve busted out laughing from one of those stories. But this is The Day; I can’t afford to come unstuck today. I have to get away from him, before the crowd jams up completely.

I turn, and people make way for me. ‘Why,’ says Gabby’s dad in his always-surprised voice, ‘if it isn’t little Matty Weir!’ I steel myself for the joke he’ll toss at me, that’ll prod my mind in an unexpected spot and make me splutter laughter. But it doesn’t come, and I pass through. I lost Gabby’s dad for words! I won’t risk blushing by thinking about such a
compliment now; I’ll store it away to tell Mother and Winke later, when I’m allowed to be myself.

Here, I’ll duck into the Lanes district. I haven’t been through this part of town since they rebuilt after last year’s rat-hunt, but it can’t be that different, can it? And there won’t be a lot of people around; not many families in these poorer quarters can afford to bride-up a daughter.

I gather up two handfuls of the beaded, white-tissue skirt. Last night’s rain has left all the flagstones gleaming, and the sun shows up every pore of them, every puddle and scrap of refuse. I tiptoe through.

The slippers are made to last one day—
this
day. They’re folded out of varnished paper, with a twinkle in it. We had to go all the way to the markets at the Crossways to find a paperbinder who did shoes the old way with no glue, just sheer skill of folding and knowledge of a girl’s own foot and a girl’s own walk holding the creation together.

Where am I, now?

The crowd noise is fading behind me, though the bells still carol overhead. Oh yes, there’s the old Mechanics Hall, where Mother used to hold her mask-making workshops, so I turn right here to loop around the Orphans Home. I’m trying to hurry, yet stay Composed. I’m keeping my skin cool, all pores closed, as they taught us in School. I’ll come up to the side door of the church, by the Hospice there. It won’t matter to Mother and Winke; they can still come up the main way and do their nodding and smiling. That’s not the point of this, for
me. I’m not quite sure what the point
is
—I couldn’t put it into words or anything—but it’s strong, and it’s not about getting the neighbours to admire me. The neighbours have nothing to do with it at all.

What, have they
moved
the Orphans Home? Come to think of it, I did hear Gabby and Flo say something about that. Farther up the hill, for better drainage. But the lane looks much the same—maybe a bit of a curve downward, which I’ll have to compensate for when I get to Farmers Bar. Those bells, they’re wild, as if they’re shouting fire, or an attack on the town; they’re a test in themselves. But I’m prepared for that kind of test: I’ve got counting rhymes in my head; I’ve got breathing exercises; I’ve got six terms worth of Bride School resources to draw on.

And then the bells stop, and the lane stops. And I stop. Farmers Bar isn’t here.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I say coolly, firmly. ‘No matter how ratty, a public house doesn’t move. They smoke out the cellars, and they scrub everything else down with disinfectant.’

Then I remember: it was the Olds Home that moved, not the Orphans; they moved all the olds away from the dampness, for their arthritis or something. The Orphans Home should have been where it always was.

Five lanes meet where I’m standing; not a soul stirs along any of them. Not a sound from any window or door.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, counting furiously inside to keep my heart down. ‘I can go back the way I came.’

But behind me are two lanes, and with all my revolving I can’t remember which one I came down.

‘The church is at the top of the hill, Mattild.’ There’s a shake in my voice, and I pause to do some breathing. ‘All you have to do is choose any lane that goes upward, and you’ll be there.’

So I set off. Actually, the silence—just the pat and shush of my shoes—is more alarming than the bells were. The silence means they’re inside the church—all the brides, anyway. The relatives will take a while to shuffle in. But I mustn’t think about that; I must just walk and breathe and count.

Every lane deceives me; every lane curves. I set out confidently upward at every corner; I end up hoisting my skirts behind me so they won’t drag as I go down steps. Lanes keep ending at a wall, or a dripping mill-wheel, or they continue on the other side of an unbridged drain a trousered person could leap, but not me in my finery. I go back and forth, breathing, counting, intent on outwitting the Lanes. I try a new tactic, taking some downward streets in the hope that their curves will take me upward. No such luck; down and down they go. I’m so confused, I’m just starting to think I’m getting somewhere when I arrive—the lane does a quick turnabout and dumps me—at an arched gateway in the town wall.

I stand there, counting, breathing, shocked. Beyond the gate, the water meadows and the market gardens stretch purple and many-greened among their windguards of black pines. Rubbish-stink streams from the pits farther east.

Ha!
said my dad over the whirr and clatter of his workshop. I was there to wangle money out of him towards my shoes.
My daughter? Matty Weir? Miss Million-Miles-an-Hour? Miss Ten-Projects-at-Once, none of them ever finished? You haven’t a hope! You’re lucky to’ve made it through the first semester. They mustn’t have much of a crop this year
. All this very cheerfully, as he
zizzed
the wooden bowl to a perfect curve on the lathe.

And then Mother, wearing that face that makes you ashamed to have brought her down from the clouds where she dances and sings and brings such joy to so many people—that doubtful, older face:
But are you
sure
about this?

Which I was, I
was
. Tearfulness rises in my throat. My skin trembles, ready to give out. I was
sure
I was sure, until …

An old woman in blue gardening clothes appears in the archway, carrying an enormous cabbage. ‘Madam,’ she says, and walks in past me.

Madam
, she said, not
Miss
. You see a bride, you don’t meet her eye. You say
Madam
to acknowledge her, but nothing more unless she speaks to you. Thank the Saints that woman came along.

I breathe more carefully. My shoes are still good—perhaps a bit soft underfoot, but still good. I just need to walk out a little way beyond the arch to see which gate I’m at, to see my way back.

I lift my skirts and go. I’m not far out among the fields before I can see the church’s twin spires. But I’m behind them;
if I take any of the three gates I can see from here, I’ll be straight back in the maze. Better to go around on the outside to a gate that leads to straighter streets, like Silk Street or Jewellers Way. I shade my eyes and pick out a zigzag way for myself, along the broad earthen field-walls, between the water meadows and the moving leaves of purple sour-kale.

I put out of my head the thought of Mother and Winke and all the other families in the church, sitting patched pink with rose-window light. I push away the vision of all the other brides, their upper bodies like snooty white flockherons at rest on a mist of white gorgeousness. I just walk, swiftly and calmly, trying to think of nothing.

You see
, said Mother doubtfully,
as someone who had to go to Bride School herself, whose parents wanted it more than anything else in the
world,
I sometimes thought …

It was as if her voice were
funnelling
stubbornness and resentment into my spine.