Snake Ropes (10 page)

This metal were dropped in the crowd what were stood here tonight.

I look up at the Thrashing House – it creaks and cracks and whirrs and it’s battering inside, so loud that I know it’s too late for all the men inside it. Too late for Da.

But I’ve found the Thrashing House key.

I shouldn’t even touch
this
key till I’m twenty-one. I lean close and look at the maze of shapes cut out of the bit that would unlock a door. Like a part of a puzzle. The bow, the part held in the fingertips, it’s got a design made of arrows carved into it, one pointing up and one down.

I swallow the sickness down what’s in my throat, wrap the key in my skirt, tie a knot in the fabric, so it’s hid and I’m not touching the metal.

This key will have passed through the hands of all the women when them’ve took thems turns on the bell list. The women’s voices will all be stored in the metal of this key. So I won’t need to take any others. This is the only one I’ll need. For women know everything what’s going on. I’ve got to get this key home, and get it well hid.

This morning the early sun shines as I open the curtains of the bedroom window. All seems still outside. My cottage is full of creakings and footstep noises and nothing making the sounds.

Something small and grey moves on the floor.

It’s the moppet.

It crawls out from under my bed. It crawls awkward, its arms and legs aren’t the same length so it moves like it’s drunk. The moppet’s head is sewn on straight up, so as it crawls it can’t see where it’s going. It faces the floor, with its raggedy ears dragging on the boards. It reaches my feet, sits back and looks up at me.

Barney’s voice says, ‘Mary, I tired. Stay home warm.’

I pick it up and sit down on Barney’s bed. Tears make me not see right. I hold the moppet in my shaking hands. Dun want it to be able to
move
, not if it’s going to make me fearful. But I look down at the squinty mouth what should be Barney’s mouth, the raggedy ears what should be hims curly hair. And I dun mind if it scares me, for it’s got the voice I love the most. I even miss wiping hims snotty nose and washing off the dirt behind hims ears.

I want to ask it the question I should have asked it already. The one I’ve been too afraid to ask. So I do.

‘Barney, are you dead?’

Before it can answer, the sobs shake so hard in me I can’t stop them up. I wish I could unspeak it. Dun want to hear the answer. I bury the moppet in Barney’s blankets.

A clatter from outside the bedroom stops up my tears. I crouch down and look through the keyhole. A wide eye looks back at me. I fall on the floor and bang my arm.

Annie curses on the other side. ‘Thrashes been, Mary! You gave me some shock there.’

I scramble up and wrench open the door.

Her hair frazzles around her face, a pink smudge on her cheek from where her face rested on Mam’s chair. ‘I were only seeing if you were still asleep or no. I must have nodded off. Dogs woke me up knocking over the stool. Best get going home.’

‘Annie, stay a while.’

She puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘Oh Mary, what we going to do? We lost too much too quick ‘ent we?’

I nod.

She takes my hand and we sit by the empty grate. She says, ‘Ah, you poor thing, me in such a state, you must have been feeling right bad about your Da, only you managed to get both of us warmed and fed. You just got to take care of yourself. Feeding one is easier than two or even three. You’re still young, you’ll get through.’

‘So you’re saying I should forget Barney?’ My voice cracks.

Annie says, ‘I’m feeling a whole lot better, after a good sleep in your Mam’s chair.’ She whispers, ‘Tragic what happened to her. Your Mam, my friend. Beatrice.’

It’s a pinprick in my belly, to hear her name. Everyone always calls her ‘Your poor Mam’, or ‘Remember Mary’s Ma?’ Sometimes I forget she were ever called anything else.

I say, ‘With the amount of diamondback addersnakes folks say we’ve got on the island, you’d have thought someone could have come up with something in time.’

Annie starts, eyes wide. ‘No Mary, it were a deep, deep bite, she never even saw that diamondback. She were filled with the venom so fast she were out cold in a heartbeat.’

‘Well, you’d best get back home to feed your dogs.’

Thems tails thud on the floorboards as Annie stands up.

I smile at her. ‘I’ve never been alone here. Not proper alone. Even with Barney gone, when Da were fishing, I knew him’d be coming back.’

‘If your Mam were here, she’d tell you to get to doing your broideries. So I’m saying it for her.’ She squeezes my arm.

‘Ta, Annie. I wish …’

‘I know, pet. Me an’ all.’ She wipes her eyes. ‘Dun tell folks I knew about the boys being traded. I’ll not say anything about your Mam and that tall man. Stick together, we should.’

I nod but dun look at her.

‘For your Mam’s sake, Mary. Stick with me.’

‘Aye. All right. For Mam.’

We walk to the door and I’m thinking about what Grandmam said:

The Thrashing House beats the truth out of a person and turns it into some small object what can be seen and held. These objects are kept safe inside a glass cabinet, in the Weaving Rooms, where only the women go, and when you’re of age, you will be able to go an’ all
.

‘Annie, you’ll go to the Weaving Rooms soon? You’ll get to see what the objects are what come out the hatch – will you tell me what object comes from Da?’

‘No, Mary, I will
not
speak of Weaving Room talk. And you’ve got to get on, keep going.’ Her eyes shine with tears. She runs her thin hand across her nose. ‘If I think about Martyn, I’ll want everything to stop. There’s no good can come from that kind of thinking. Right.’ She steps forwards. ‘I’ve got to get these dogs out before them piss all over your floor.’

Right enough, as soon as we look at them, the dogs all clatter over to the front door and scratch at it to get out.

Annie kisses my cheek. ‘I’ll check on you later. You’ll have a lot of broideries to do if you’re to keep this cottage on. I’m sorry Mary, sorry for us both.’ She opens the door. The dogs
lurch out and head straight for the beach. Annie follows them. The wind blows her hair, it looks like golden smoke.

I make grey porridge, it glugs in the pot. I sit at the kitchen table and eat it on my own.

I get the buckets and go out of the back door. I walk along behind the row of cottages and up a small track to the well these cottages share. No one else is out back, but Camery’s chickens chatter to be let out of the hut. Beattie’s left her washing out on her line all night, her big white drawers and yellowed pillowcases sag. I fill the buckets from the well, take them home and slosh the water in the biggest pots on the range, go in and out with buckets, till I’ve filled the washtub in the kitchen. I lock the front and back doors, close the curtains up and use the copper jug to wash my hair and scrub the rest of myself clean till the water’s gone cold.

After I’ve dried off, I bind my breasts flat with a damp roll of bandage. Been binding them for a long time, and I dun remember when I started. Mam must’ve gave me these bandages when them started to grow. A blank in my memory. Mam never bound hers, and I dun think other women do, but the bindings make me feel stronger. It’s hard to breathe when I’ve bound them too tight, as I do often. As the bandages dry, them get tighter and tighter. I change my vest, drawers and socks and put on a clean grey dress.

I put dried heather in the grate on top of half a firelighter, spark a match, light the twigs and blow on them to get them burning. I put a brick of peat on and get the fire built up. Grey snakes of smoke rise up the chimney.

In the bedroom I reach under the mattress on my bed and
get out the Thrashing House key, wrapped in the broiderie of the owl woman.

I’ve put the other keys that I took last night in my wooden box. Dun need them, but them’re mine now. Them’ll manage fine without them.

But no one’ll manage fine without this one.

Even wrapped in fabric, the metal of the Thrashing House key pulls at my thoughts. I sit in Mam’s rickety chair by the fire.

The key is made from a strong old metal. It’s gathering a sense of me, so it knows how to talk back when I touch it. I want to get at the stories caught inside it. But it’s pulling at my thoughts, not giving the stories up.

It’s trading for memories.

No other metal has ever wanted anything back from me. Just given up what it knows at the first quiet touch.

The smell of peat fills the room. Outside, the waves swish swash along the shore. I unwrap the edge of the broiderie and hold my finger over the bow of the key. It hums, pulls at my fingertip. It makes me think of Grandmam, we’re curled up in her bed and I’m fidgeting with her hair. It makes me think of Mam, watching her carry Barney down the beach to show him the sea. And Da, grinning so proud, when Mam told him how much she’d got from the tall men for one of the best broideries she’d stitched – a picture of red poppies, the petals blowing off in the winds.

I think about when I’m grown to be twenty-one. Then I’ll get given the Thrashing House key for my turn on the bells. It won’t be hid here in my cottage with me. A woman will walk up to me and put it, on its chain, around my neck. Everyone’ll talk nice to me for the whole day while I wear it, and I’ll go up to the bell tower that night and ring out the bells.

There’s a separate door to the bell tower, though it’s attached to the Thrashing House, and it’s this same key what unlocks both doors. The bell tower has just one flight of steps all curled around, no doors inside it that go into the main building. Ringing out the bells must be like reaching up to the stars to pull them down and sew them together, and tucking up the whole island under a bedspread made of stars.

Mam told me, once, when she’d been up there for her turn on the bells, ‘It’s like the Thrashing House were pulling at me through the walls. I were in the bell tower, but the pull of the Thrashing House made me jittery. I could have left the bells, gone downstairs, outside, and found myself going through the great front door. I felt it was gathering a sense of me so it could call me, make me do just that.’

I were sat up in bed, couldn’t sleep. Barney must’ve been crying.

She whispered, ‘I could hear clicks and whirrs in there; the Thrashing House were trying to figure me out. Trying to listen close, to the truth of me.’

Mam said, ‘You dun think bad of me, Mary, do you?’ She looked stricken.

I said, ‘No, Mam, I dun think bad of you.’ Though I dun know what she were talking of. I felt freezing, when she said that. Her eyes were wide and scared so she put her arms around me. I wanted to touch the Thrashing House key then, and I reached out for it, but she took the chain off from around her neck and gripped me tight again. It felt like she were tangling me up in blackthorn branches instead of her arms, but I let her hang on till she were calm, for she seemed so upset.

Remembering made me fall asleep. The morning has gone. I build up the fire again, keep all the curtains closed up and make kale and tattie soup.

Back in the main room, I sit by the fire. Unwrapping the key from the broiderie, I lie it on my lap and hold my hands over it. It pulls. The air between my palms and the key buzzes.

Think of Barney. Who knows where him is?

But the key wants more memories. It’s still trading. If I let it take what it wants, it will speak back. It chooses this memory …

Grandmam came to live with us before she died, when I were about seven. Well before Barney were born. Mam said she were too old and crazed to live in her own cottage.

She dun like it here at first, ran around our home with bare feet, spitting curses at all of us. She saw us like something else, not the belonging people, the family we were. Kept pulling at our hair, mumbling that
five
were a bad number of folks to have living together, though we were just four. Mam said Grandmam’d never got over her husband, Mam’s Da, taking off to live with some other woman. Mam said best not to ask Grandmam about that, for as she’d got older her mind were crumpling. Grandmam sometimes thought him were stood right next to her, like the ghost of a living man.

Grandmam rambled about all kinds of things: outsiders and insiders, marriages shipwrecked, the locked-up pink fence on the other side of the island, the Glimmeras fighting. Said we were all cooped up together like chickens peck pecking at each other. Well, her and Mam pecked hard enough at each other for sure.

She dun have to broider or mend or stitch, as she told Mam, ‘I’m far too ancient to be using up the last snippet of my eyes on the needles and pins.’

Mam weren’t best pleased, but she broidered more than ever.

Me and Grandmam used to play together like she were a child. It seemed sometimes to me like we were the same age on the inside. Though on the outside her wrinkles creased her face up, to smiles or tears like tracks in the sand.

We used to trade secrets, I’d tell her about the things I’d done and pretended I hadn’t, like when I ran away to see the pink fence when the chalk flowers were drawn on it, and then ran right back home again. Grandmam said, ‘That were a good one, take me along when you run away the next time.’

She told me the secrets of when she’d pissed where she shouldn’t have, and she’d laugh so loud Mam’d dash in for them secrets, like she could smell them. Truth is, she probably could.

It were when Grandmam were telling a story that she’d sound her age. The part of her what were the same age as me would sometimes play with the stories, find different morals and meanings from what were meant. Some of the morals she played with made more sense from her lips than the morals other folks would’ve come up with.

Grandmam lived here with us, sharing my room, for only a few years before she died. Them years were the most I’d laughed and fought and been afraid and felt like I were with someone who knew everything, but knew how to play all at the same time. My job was ‘Look after Grandmam’, and it were the best job I’ve ever been given to do.

I looked after her so well, I got her laughing till she coughed, not caring how loud she snored, eating the butter cream cakes Mam baked before anyone else had one, breaking things deliberate and helping me steal keys for my collection.