Snake Ropes (13 page)

I heard women passing by earlier, talking of the Thrashing House key. Annie called round again, said she’ll keep looking in on me. She’s fearful about Valmarie and Kelmar calling up the owl woman. Says them dun know when to stop.

I lean the moppet on my pillow under a blanket with its face poking out of the top like it’s really Barney. Tell it, ‘Go to sleep, little one. It’s got dark quick. Not long, before the bells ring out for the dreamings.’

But them can’t.

The Thrashing House key sings in my hands when I take it out from its hiding place. I wonder whose turn it should be to ring the bells. Camery’s face is there behind my eyelids when I blink. If the dreamings dun get took, folks might just have to hang onto all the dreamings and thoughts them want to get rid of. It might mean that some folks get to talking more.

I wrap a warm blanket around me and sit on my bed next to the moppet. I hold the key in both hands and close my eyes. The key hums, almost hurts my hands. Like it wants to be held, but it’s full of a cold gale. It wants something what can really touch it, but it could just blow away, for the winds are too strong.

This key is different to other metal. Other metal just gives up what I want to know, gives me a face or an answer like it’s glad to. But this key is so old, and it’s used to the touch of so many hands, it feels like I should do what it tells me, and not the other way round.

The next question gets blown into my head: ‘Who’s watching me?’ It’s not what I wanted it to be. I try to change it, to ask about Barney, but the question’s linked itself to me. This is the question the key wants asked. It holds me locked, the gale blows my hands, them clasp on tight, the key grasps my hands back. The question won’t let me go.

So I ask it.

‘Who’s watching me?’ Behind my eyelids, darkness shifts around.

A feeling spreads out of the key; arms reach up to clasp around me, the arms dun hold me, them pass right through. I try to open my eyes but the key blows a gale over my face. My hands are blown onto the key, the key is blown onto my hands. The wind dies down.

The face is blurry and faint. Mam’s face, behind my eyelids. Her dark hair like mine, her face pointed, circles under her eyes what stare off to something distant. The key rings out her voice from the past.

Tears soak my face as I listen:

I want this child I’m heavy with to come out. Too heavy for my back. It’s funny to think of me being someone’s Mam. Ned as someone’s Da. Him will tell this child stories of the sea …

It’s my turn on the bell list and I’m so heavy I dun know how I’ll make it up all the steps. Shouldn’t have to go there yet. It should be someone else. I’ve only been of age to go to the Weaving Rooms a week, and it’s my turn already
.

So here is the key around my neck. Them say the list’s always the same rotation, dun matter whether I’m ready for it or not. All this secrecy, and perhaps I’m not seeing it the right way, but what if it’s all just a load of fuss over a matter of bells and sleep?

If this key were to unlock my belly, that would be something. Unlock me, let the baby come out gentle
.

Ned says him will catch as much fish as him can, and I’ve done so many broideries that the pictures got strange. Some of my mother’s stories crept into my hands
.

Unlock a memory … the north shore. The sun shines. Then it were dark. Too dark
.

I were a child
.

Lost. Couldn’t believe how far back the tunnels in the caves went till I were caught too deep. I found a drawing of this key on a cave wall. I’d never seen this key then, just thought the drawing must mean a door were close by. I got afraid
.

Mam were outside, under a grey sky, looking to the north. ‘Strange winds blow down from the Glimmeras,’ she said, when I finally found my way back to her. She said nothing about me being lost. Like it was only a moment I’d been wandering, far inside the caves. If this baby is a girl, she’ll never let me be so lost. Not like my own Mam did. I need a daughter to love me
.

My eyes flood tears over my cheeks. I want to keep this key forever, so I can call up Mam’s voice, this moment, years ago when she first held this key in her hands and left her imprint in the metal. She’s left a hole in the world what’s Mam-shaped and no one else fits in it. Not even Annie, though she loved Mam so she’s always been good to me. Not Beattie or Nell or any of the women I know. Because Mam brought me into the world
and there’s no one can replace someone what’s done that.

Mam sounded like she wanted me to love her more than Grandmam did. Dun think I did that enough. When Grandmam lived with us, Mam often got me to come away from her, wanted me to do something with her instead. But I loved playing with Grandmam, so I were grouchy with Mam when she wanted to teach me how to bake cinnamon biscuits, or to learn a new stitch. I never told her I loved her. Never knew she’d not be here till she weren’t. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. Now I can’t tell her that ever.

If she were here, I’d say: I loved you because we were belonging people and you made me, cooked me up in your belly, didn’t throw me out cold before I were ready. You made me live when you could have let me die, and babies
can
die, so easy. But I dun, for you must have kept me warm, loved me even when I screamed you awake.

Only a week in the Weaving Rooms and her first turn on the bells. Too young to have heard much women’s talk. That tells me why every year on my birthday she looked at me like I’d hurt her. She’d say the right words and give me a gift, a new toy, a coat or a new downy pillow or the wooden box I keep my keys in. Her eyes were telling me how much it hurt her, bringing me out of her and into the world. Only I never knew it then. I’d smile at the gift she gave me, eat the cakes she’d bake, but as soon as I could, I’d get away from her eyes, curl up in bed under my blanket and try to sleep the rest of my birthday away.

I pull the blanket tight around me. She dun look at me like that the rest of the year. Dun have to remember her eyes like that. I can blank out anything I dun want to think of. It’s easy. I just blink, and think of something else. Mam fed me soup and honey tea when I were sick. She taught me the letters and
numbers when I were so little, Annie said I wouldn’t take to it yet, but I did, because Mam believed I would.

On Barney’s first birthday, Da went off fishing and Mam went off somewhere early that morning. When she came back in, I were sat on my bed, holding Barney. I were gazing in hims eyes and him were staring back, like him wanted a proper look. Mam smiled at us, said she’d been out to pick me some flowers, ‘For you’re always picking flowers for me.’ She gave me a posy of violets and took Barney out of my arms.

Memories dun have to be real, them’re just pictures, like broideries. Just got to make the memory strong enough, the picture real. Stitch it so fine that the colours gleam. Think of it over and over, pass my thoughts through the eye of the needle, make the threads hold firm, like a herringbone ladder stitch, get the split stitches with the needle right through the middle of the thread, till it looks just the way I want it to.

Or if it dun come easy, cut it all away and stitch something different.

The question I asked the key were: who is watching me?

So it’s Mam.

Mam holding the doors shut when she wants me to stay home. Mam putting her broiderie of the owl woman on my pillow.

The windows rattle in the wind. Nothing here but me and a draught. And this key I shouldn’t have. A cold breath on my cheek. Not really. Just a draught. I need to piss. I get out of bed, wrap a shawl around me, go out the back door to the outhouse, freeze my backside, come back in through the kitchen, get the moppet and go into the main room and get under the table.

The table is like a house indoors what gets no weather. I feel younger, smaller than I really am. I can pretend I live down here with Barney, in our house under the table. I whisper to the
moppet, ‘Where are you?’ but it blows back the sound of waves in the wind.

Outside, a gale picks up. It wails around the cliffs.

I hug my knees to my chest.

Rain raps hard and the window rattles. I crawl out from under the table and stuff a cloth along the edges of the window to catch the leaks. The sky is dark, thick with black clouds. The wind rages, the waves crash, froth and roar like them’re being chased.

There’s three women with dark shawls over thems hair coming along the beach through the rain, and the women have seen me. One raises a hand but I can’t see who them are, for the ripples in the windowpanes blur with the rain.

I hide the moppet in the bedroom.

A loud knock on the front door.

I put the Thrashing House key up the chimney, on the ledge where the flue twists back, wipe the soot off my hands onto my dress, go to the front door, twist the latchkey and call out, ‘Come in.’

Them open the door. It’s Chanty, Nell and Beattie.

‘Come in, you’re drenched.’ I smile at Nell and Beattie.

Nell says, ‘We’re not here for long. Got others to see, unless—’

I gasp out. ‘Is there news of Barney?’

Beattie says, ‘The key’s gone.’

‘What key? Come in, you’re soaked.’

Chanty says, ‘Look, Mary, we all know you’re in the habit of thieving keys. You were round Nell’s and she dun find hers since she left you stood by her front door. Had to break the window, and though you’d think Dougan wouldn’t mind putting a new window in—’

Nell says, ‘Him’d walloped hims head on something, and
weren’t feeling up to it.’ She glares at Chanty. ‘Anyway, hims fixed the window, and there’s no real harm done.’

Chanty says, ‘And—’

I say, ‘I never took anything that’s not mine.’ Nell’s looking at me like she’s being kind and she’s about to stop. Rain streams down her face.

Beattie says, ‘It’s the Thrashing House key. Valmarie had it last, and it’s gone. We need it back. Now, we’re not blaming you, we’re doing the rounds. If you got anything to say, you’d best say—’

Chanty butts in, ‘Folk’ll be worse angered if
someone
turns out to have lied about it and made all us women go out in the rain, instead of being indoors.’

‘Well, I’m sorry you’re wet, Chanty. I have asked you in, but you’re not wanting any warm from me. Funny that.’

Nell says, ‘Settle, you pair.’

‘I dun know anything of the key.’ I scratch my cheek. ‘If Valmarie had it last, you’d best be going to her. She might’ve hung onto it. Want to use it to call up something more fearful than the owl woman.’ I nod at Chanty.
‘You’d
best watch out.’ I glance up at the dark sky.

Nell says, ‘Is Annie indoors? Does she—’

‘She’s not said anything to me.’

‘Keep your ears open. The bells need to be rung.’

‘I’ll say if I hear anything.’

Beattie says, quiet, ‘Do that, Mary. Soon.’

Chanty turns to Beattie and moans that I stole her key five years ago, and she had to trade for a new one from the smithy by doing a lot of stitching, and that her Mam said she were careless, but she knew it were me, and she says how she felt terrible – and poor her, and her poor Mam …

‘Oh, dun wallow in it,’ says Nell.

I fold my arms. ‘Chanty you’re half drowned. Best get indoors or you’ll get
full
drowned. That’d be a shame.’

Beattie steps away from the door. ‘Chanty, you’re of age. Act it. Come on. Annie’s next.’

Them walk away towards Annie’s cottage. I pull the door shut and lock it, quick. Can’t keep this key. But … if the bells ring out, them’ll think the key’s been found and I can keep it for longer.

For them’re right, the bells still need to be rung.

No one is up here on the cliff path. I walk around the side of the Thrashing House, the wind tangles my hair. I unlock the bell tower door and step inside. The hinge on the door creaks as I close it behind me and lock myself in.

There’s a curved wooden staircase, the steps worn from women’s feet. A box of matches and a jar of candles at the foot of the steps. I light a candle. The walls are curved, made from wood, but all in one piece, no joins anywhere. There are pictures of women painted on the wood, the colours faded. The pictures show women climbing the stairs, each holding the Thrashing House key. All different women – a bride, a pregnant woman, a dancing woman, a woman with a spade, one with a spindle, another at a loom and a stooped old woman with an axe. The staircase curves around and I touch my fingertips on the cracked face of a young pregnant woman, clover flowers painted on her dress over her bump.

A groan, from inside the wall. I climb faster, my boots stamp too loud. A creak. The pictures look angered, dark red eyelashes, all the painted eyes of the women can see me, too young to be here.

I stop and hold the candle to the nearest picture. A drip of sap comes out of the corner of one of her eyes. Mixes with the red paint. She’s crying blood.

I spin round and crash down the stairs, the candle goes out and I drop it and run so fast I wallop into the back of the door. I unlock it, take the key from the lock, get outside, away, slip and slide on the grass, get to the top of the steep path what leads back home.