Island (18 page)

15
Ashplant

Calum called for me after
his dinner; from the smell she gave him something fried, or maybe it was chips. Hot fat pervaded the hall and I was entirely glad to be dining on water and a fag. It was a hot, glowing mid-August type day suddenly fallen into early October. I sat on my doorstep and the sun made my skin prickle.

‘Your p-poor face.’

‘It’s OK. Where are you off to today?’ I passed him a cigarette and he sat next to me on the step. He didn’t have his coat on, just a shapeless T-shirt which hung limply from his thin angular shoulders. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, right leg trembling like a dog’s. He was avoiding looking at me.

‘I’ll take you to the s-sithein.’

He assumed I was going with him but all I wanted to do was sit and absorb the sun. I felt dopey. I don’t know why but I wanted him to look at me. The
dull ache around my eye was soothing and mind-numbing, it excused me from things. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’

‘No. You come. It’s – it’s a special place.’

‘Is it a climb?’

‘No – no, it’s near the woods. Beautiful, you’ll like it.’

He was wretched, guilty and solicitous. I felt sorry for him, his mother had him trapped. She would have told him off for hurting me. She wouldn’t like it if I went with him today … slowly I remembered the things I had to do, they surfaced in slow silence as things do in the fog, materialising out of nothing. I couldn’t afford to waste the day. I had to act. I had to get Calum off her. This hot drowsiness that was pulling me down – I had to shake it off.

‘Have you got some water in there?’ He put my mineral water bottle in his rucksack and we set off. We walked in silence, the island was glassy in the heat, the lane shimmered with mirage. It was very quiet, somehow suspended – I was suspended, the day was suspended in a strange hot glassy calm. We came to the edge of the woods and had a drink and a smoke in the shade of a warped tree dotted with blue-black berries. I asked him what it was.

‘Elder. The birds eat the berries.’

There was a Mother Elder in a fairy story, but my sleepy brain couldn’t recall if she was good or bad. ‘I’ll be leaving quite soon,’ I said.

He looked at me properly for the first time that day. ‘Why?’

‘Well, I have things to do, I have to
get another job.’ ‘You can stay here.’

‘No.’ I realised that I’d stopped seeing his wandering eye. I was automatically looking at the good one.

‘Because I hit you?’

‘No. You can come with me if you want.’

I saw him consider the suggestion. ‘But–’

‘What?’

‘My m-mother.’

‘Other people don’t stay with their mothers all their life.’

He shook his head.

‘Wouldn’t you like to see where I live?’

He was twisting a couple of long grass stems in and out between his fingers. ‘I can’t go off the island.’ He moved away abruptly through the tall grass. After a hundred yards or so he stopped and crouched, cupping a growing stalk in his hand. ‘Look.’

Two little snails with their shells on their backs were toiling up the grass stem. He went on slowly, stopping again for a stone which he said was a fossil, then for an old pen lid and a plastic bottle, which all went into the rucksack. I felt light and weak, my powers of concentration and persuasion were like water. How could I entice him away from her and off the island? It seemed terribly easy and simultaneously, impossible.

We skirted a wood until we came to an overgrown field. The long grass had
feathery seeds, reddish and purplish against the green stalks. There were three hummocks in the field. ‘More ruined crofts?’

‘No.’ He made for the closest. At one side there was a narrow opening; bending down I could just see into a dark stone-lined space like a small cold cave.

‘It’s a sithein. The Little People live here.’ He moved off round the other two humps, touching and checking them in his Calum-ish way. I sat down and leaned my back against the grass-covered hummock. The sun was hot, I closed my eyes and it shone redly through my lids. My cheek was throbbing gently. I heard him come and settle down next to me, he passed me the bottle of water.

‘Thanks. D’you like me, Calum?’

‘Yes.’

I opened my good eye and turned to face him, he was frowning at his knees. I patted his hand on the grass. It felt rough and dry. There was a little silence filled with the buzzing of bees and the soft rustle of breeze in the grass.

‘Nikki?’

‘Yes?’

‘You know about the Little People?’

‘No.’

‘They live in this field.’

‘I don’t believe in fairies.’

‘You sh-shouldn’t say
that.’

‘Why?’

‘They can’t keep sheep in this field – the Little People drive them mad.’

‘Yeah?’

‘If the sh-sheep graze on the sithein they start to run round in circles. Nobody can make them stop, they run in circles till they die.’

Long hot sleepy pause, the sun has drenched through to my bones, I am hot and molten and Calum’s soft stammer with its note of anxiety – wanting to convince me – is pleasantly distracting, just keeping me on the surface. The heat is sexy too, I undo the top buttons of my shirt. ‘Go on then. Tell me about them.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Sod all. Nothing. Not a peep.’

‘You know they came from h-heaven?’

‘No Calum I don’t.’ So easy to let that sarcasm in; it curls him into himself like a snail when your shadow falls across it. Be sweet. ‘Please – tell me. Why did they leave heaven?’

‘They were Lucifer’s angels. When he was thrown out they fell too. They were hurtled to earth and some fell in the sea. The Blue Men, they d-drowned my dad.’

‘Blue men?’

‘In the w-waves. Foam-grey faces, sometimes calm but always plotting …’

His voice drifts off; I open my eyes and
squint at the woods bordering the field. The sunshine makes the leaves glint like metal. ‘Some fell in the sea–?’

‘The others fell on land. The Little People. Daoine Sithe. They have all s-sorts of tricks.’

‘Like what?’ A fly comes buzzing round my sweaty face and I flap it away.

‘People who annoy them – th-they spoil everything for them. They can suck the insides out of stuff and leave it looking just the same.’

‘Explain.’

‘A meal, say, a feast. They suck the goodness out of everything and leave it just a h-hollow shell. It looks good but when you touch it crumbles. To dust.’

I know this, I’ve heard this before.

‘They do that to gold and j-jewels, cattle, houses, anything. It still looks all right but they’ve s-sucked the insides out.’

‘Can they do it to people?’

‘I don’t know. There are lots of things they’ve ruined and people don’t even know.’ He’s hacking at a tuft of grass with a stone he’s picked up. Agitated, his voice anxious. ‘Some people say they’ve done it to the whole w-world already.’

Silence. My back itches. I wriggle against the hummock. ‘Well they sound horrible, Calum. Why are we sitting here?’

‘Sh-shh. You mustn’t say that. If they like you they bring good luck. They can make your wish come true.’

‘I’m getting too hot. Can we
move into the shade?’ My hurt face was smarting and stinging, I suddenly thought it would be really stupid to get it sunburnt. And I suspected I might be leaning against an ants’ nest. I crossed to the edge of the field and shook myself and scratched my back then lay down in the shade of a huge beech tree. Calum was stroking the tumulus like a pet. When he came over to me his expression was lugubrious. I rolled onto my side and watched his eye register my cleavage in the open shirt. ‘Go on about the Little People.’

‘They d-don’t want to be bad. But they haven’t got a home. All they can do is prey on people.’ He sat down and I rolled him a cigarette, and he told me his story about the Little People.

‘It was right here in this wood. A priest was on his way to a baptism. It was hot as today, and when he came to a clearing he sat down for a rest. He stuck his crook in the ground beside him.’

There was a sharp squint of light coming in my injured eye – I lay back down and shielded my eyes with my arm. My neck and chest were tickly as if an insect was crawling over me; I brushed it off and ran my fingertip into the little hot valley of sweat between my tits.

‘There were all sorts of noises. The priest could hear rustlings and sounds like whispering voices – coming from the trees.’

With my arm over my eyes I could see Calum and he couldn’t see me. His face was anxious with the effort of getting the story right.

‘He – he saw, suddenly, at the edge of the clearing, a c-crowd. A crowd of little people. With tiny pointed faces and raggedy clothes, like dirty little monkeys. He was shocked. He did the sign of the c-cross but
they didn’t disappear. One came nearer – a wizened little man with a long grey beard and eyes like raisins.’

I was so hot I felt like melting. I wondered if the black eye had somehow caused a temperature. Stupid to be wearing jeans and a shirt in such weather. I undid the cuffs and slowly rolled the sleeves up. Calum seemed to have stopped. ‘Go on.’

‘The little man knelt down and asked the priest to bless him. “Who are you?” said the priest. “Daoine Sithe. Little People. We want forgiveness. We want to be God’s children and have our souls back. We are sorry for our sins.” The priest was very angry. “Give you my blessing? When God has thrown you out?” The little man and all the fairies groaned. They had tiny hands like skinny chickens’ claws, they raised them up to the priest. “Please forgive us.” “Never! My walking stick here will sprout leaves before God forgives the likes of you.”’

I rolled over onto my belly. My whole body was ticklish and tingling – maybe it was the after-effects of that medicine she gave me. I wanted to pull off all my clothes and rub myself against the cool green grass. There were waves of heat rolling through me. Calum shifted on the grass beside me. He’s your brother, Nikki, don’t be gross. Brother,
half
-brother, what the hell does it matter anyway? He’s
simple
, Nikki, he’s just a big kid. With a perfectly adequate male body, and sweet as can be, he’d be all hot and trembly and uncertain.

It seemed like quite a long silence. ‘Have you forgotten the rest of the story?’

‘Oh no.’ He coughed to clear his throat but when he spoke again his voice seemed husky. ‘The Little People all stood staring at him with their beady eyes
. And he hitched up his cassock and ran as fast as he could and their soft wailing voices came curling after him through the trees like smoke.’

Another Angus number, obviously. I wondered how many times over Calum’d heard the stories. To remember them word for word.

‘The priest visited the new baby and did the baptism. He was ready to go home but he couldn’t find his walking stick. Then he remembered he must have left it in the clearing. When he was going back through the woods he could hear the Little People still crying through the trees. As if they followed him. But when he came to the clearing it looked different.’

I like it when you can see it coming. Sprouting. There’s a sexy word.

‘Where his crook had been – there was a great big ash tree – beautiful, with spreading branches, taller than all the other trees. Over – over …’ he hesitated.

‘Over what?’

‘Overtopping. Overtopping all the trees of the wood. As God’s mercy outreaches man’s.’ He delivered his punchline with a note of relief.

‘So the priest was a bit gobsmacked?’ I rolled over again so I could see his face. He was nodding and grinning. I sat up to undo my trainers so I could feel the grass with my toes.

‘He knelt down – even his teeth were chattering!’ Calum said delightedly. ‘And he was staring madly everywhere in the trees staring and staring to find their little pointy faces. And he called to them, “Please forgive me! Little People! Forgive me!” but all he could hear was the noise of wailing far away in the trees.’

‘Too late,’ I said. ‘He was
way too late.’

‘Yes, he went up and down–’

‘This way and that–’

‘In and out–’

‘Through the trees–’

Calum stopped, looking at me worriedly.

‘It’s OK. Just joining in. He never found them did he? There’s no happy ending?’

Calum’s face dropped. ‘No, no happy ending.’ He peered at his fingers combing through a tuft of grass, as if they didn’t belong to him. Then looked up at me. I rolled onto my side again.

‘Calum, why don’t you come away with me? It’ll be fun – we can do all sorts of things …’

He was sitting with his legs drawn up in front of him. I raised my foot and pressed it gently against his shin. I could make him do anything.

‘I like you,’ he said.

Of course he liked me.

‘Nikki?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can I marry you?’

Bull’s-eye in one! ‘When we go to the mainland – maybe we could talk about it …’

‘I do
like you.’

‘I know.’

He moved suddenly onto his knees and he was kneeling over me, blocking out the light. I struggled to sit up. ‘Nikki do you like me?’ His voice was uncertain but his face loomed in very close. Right next to mine his sweet hay-breath on my face I could see his lips and they were as soft and dry as a whisper. He’ll come away with me oh yes he’ll follow me wherever I go she’s lost him now the fucking bitch has lost him.