Snake Ropes (14 page)

Back in my cottage, breathing hard, I put the key on the table and loosen the bindings around my chest. Through the dark, through the wind, the bells ring out. I dun lock the bell tower door behind me. That’s all it is.

Someone’s gone in there and is clanging out the bells.

The rain rattles down on the roof and I get under the table and put my hands over my ears, and even when the bells stop, I stay here, listening to my breathing.

Someone knocks on the door.

I call out, ‘Come in!’ Scrabble out, see the Thrashing House key lying on the table and put a cushion over it as the front door opens. I spin round. It’s Beattie, her hair still wet, clinging to her plump cheeks.

I say, ‘The bells rang – someone must’ve found the key.’

‘We looked – no one were ringing them bells.’

‘How—’

‘Mary, I’m done in. Dark in here, but.’ She glances around the room. ‘I’ve got to get home. Sleep. But the women are pointing the finger at you. Chanty’s stirring.’

‘I dun ever take—’

She sighs. ‘See, Mary, old Jessup says her key’s gone as well, and she swears she left it in her door, on the inside. So folk’re talking.’

‘If the bells ring by themselves – what does that mean?’

She shudders. ‘Dun know. But the bell tower door were
open
. Camery’s gone off, says she knows where she can get a strong plank to hammer it shut.’

Tonight, my bedroom door isn’t locked. I look out of the window. A woman wearing a pale shawl thrown around her head and shoulders is surging forwards through the fields in the dark.

I wave.

She doesn’t see me. But she’s coming this way. Moving like the wind is blowing her here, the rain, lashing her face. She’s still closer, and disappears behind the fence.

I tiptoe out of my room and downstairs, turn the key in the front door and dash outside.

My bare feet are cold in the wet grass.

She stands by the gate, I can see her between the slats in the fence. I put my eye to a gap.

She’s got red fingers and they’re clutching a small sack of rice.

I ask her, ‘Have you come for me?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a witch?’

‘No.’

‘Well, what do you—’

Dad is right behind me, in his satin dressing gown. He pulls me away from her. ‘Quiet, child.’ He asks her, ‘Has someone died?’

Her voice shakes. ‘None are dead. But we need a plank. Just one. Need to seal up a door.’

‘A door?’ he asks.

‘Can’t say more, but it’s to be done tonight. Now. Look, I’ve brought you another sack of this stuff.’

I press my hands on the fence and look at her between the slats.
‘You’ve
been leaving the rice here – is it some kind of message?’

Dad pulls me away, frowning. His face shines with rain. He says, ‘Morgan. Indoors.’

The woman says, ‘It’s forwards trade, I want a good coffin box, solid, polished wood, flowers and everything, but if I can have a plank, I’ll ask the tall men for another sack of this stuff, and bring it the next time …’

‘No, don’t,’ Dad says, glaring at me. ‘We don’t have any use for it.’

Pulling Dad’s sleeve, I say, ‘Get the padlock key from Mum, let me get the plank, I’ll go with her – she’ll need help to carry it.’

‘Dun need help,’ the woman says. ‘Only a plank is all.’

‘Dad?’

‘No. You can’t. Indoors,’ Dad says. ‘Now.’ Rain drips from his nose. He glares at me.

My soaked hair sticks to my face as I walk to the side of the house and watch him from the corner. I listen. He says to the woman, ‘I’ll get you one if you take it quietly, and don’t come back for another. My wife’s asleep – I don’t want her disturbed. I’ll pass it over the fence. You’re strong enough?’

‘Aye.’

He glances up at the windows and goes indoors.

I go back to the gate. ‘Can you get me out? Can I stay with you?’ I whisper.

‘Got no room at mine. Can you stitch?’

I shake my head.

‘Knit? Weave? Spin?’

‘No.’

She steps towards the fence and looks closely at me between the slats. ‘Any good at hooking?’

‘What?’

‘Crochet.’

‘No.’

‘Well, what
can
you do then, hidden daughter? What’re them doing, keeping you indoors, wrapping your soft toes in petals?’ She comes still closer to the fence and her eye stares through the gap at my bare feet.

‘I can read, cook, sweep – I can tell stories, I know
some
things – I’ve read—’

‘You’d need to trade.’

‘Trade?’

‘Trade with your hands. Or have your belonging people,’ she nods at our house, ‘let you grow with useless fingers?’

‘They’ve taught me all kinds of—’

The front door opens.

Back at the side of the house, I watch Dad lean a dusty plank of shipwreck wood up against the thirteen-foot-high fence. He lifts it and tilts it over with a push. The woman must have caught it as the end of the plank rises, then slides down, disappears on the other side.

She says to Dad, ‘I’ll leave this here anyway.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘We don’t need any rice. Tell me, is there news about those men?’

‘Ta for this.’ I hear her dragging the plank away through the grass.

Dad glances up at the windows again and goes back in through the front door.

I’m feeling too useless to find any choices at all, so I stare up at the dark sky and let the rain soak my face.

‘You’re different to my other keys. I’m
borrowing
you. I might sound mad and crazed talking to you but it helps me think and no one’s listening. So this is what you’ve done.

‘You’ve made me remember Grandmam’s stories for comfort, so that makes me think there’s something bad I’m going to find out.

‘I know that Da took Barney, and that’s why him were sent mad.

‘But I dun think Barney were took to the main land by the tall men like the others, for Langward were searching for him here. So Da must have given him to someone.

‘And you’ve told me Mam’s watching me.’ I swallow, hard. ‘Is it
that
I were meant to hear?’

The key lies there, silent.

‘Look, I know I’ve got to give you back.’

Think.

I stare at the key. ‘What do I need to know from this whole day you’ve made go too fast? Memories and stories and voices …’

Think.

Mam in the caves on the north shore. The loneliest place, furthest from all our homes. Caves and tunnels what stretch
back so deep under the island, no one knows how far. That would be the best place on this island to hide someone, if you dun want them to be found.

Think.

Da went up to the peat pits not far from the north shore near on every week of hims life. If I were Da and I dun want to hurt Barney myself, but I had to hide him so well him would
never
be found, that’s where I’d choose.

My belly feels hungry-sore. I rummage in the kitchen cupboard and cook up some kale and onions in butter. Kale’s good for strength and I’ll need that if I’m to go up to the caves. I throw an egg in the mix and the smell of it makes me shake I’m so hungry.

As soon as the food’s ready, I sit on my bed with a spoon and the pot, like me and Barney did when Da were out fishing, and gannet it all down. The moppet lies on the blanket next to me. It dun move and won’t talk. There’s not even the sound of the sea inside it. On the blanket is a small light coil of hair like the finest thread. One of Barney’s. I put the pot on the floor, pinch the hair off the blanket and twist it around my thumb.

Someone taps on the window.

‘Mary? It’s Kelmar again.’

‘Get gone.’ I whisper. I put the hair under my pillow.

Kelmar taps again. ‘It’s important.’

I scrunch down under the blanket and shut up my ears with my hands. Mam were important. Mam dun talk to her, and I’ve got to have one belonging person I can trust, even if she’s deaded. I push my hands even harder over my ears and close my eyes.

I start awake, see the moppet’s raggedy face on the pillow. Dun mean to fall asleep.

The bedroom door rattles. I hurl myself out of bed and swing open the bedroom door.

In the main room the curtains blow up. The window is open. There’s a lit candle guttering on the table. Valmarie’s been here. The room looks the same: Mam’s chair, the empty table, the worn rugs … the tongs on the hearth …

I put my hand up the chimney and run my fingers over the empty ledge. I put my hands over my ears and crouch down on the floor. Groan so loud it echoes below me through the floorboards, comes back up at me from the storm room.

The Thrashing House key has gone.

I get a bag and put in the moppet, a blanket, a sharp knife and a small box of broiderie threads and needles of Mam’s. Dun want to be away for long without something of hers with me. I blow out the candle, put my coat on and sling the bag over me.

I try the front door, but it won’t open. I whisper, ‘I know that’s you holding it shut Mam, stop scaring me.’ I make sure it’s locked, take out the latchkey, climb on the table and get outside through the window.

I take the latchkey to the cold room. I close my eyes to the dark and the ice and the barrels and whisper to the latchkey, ‘I’m leaving you here, for I dun know how long I’ll be away for. But if I get lost in the caves, and if Barney’s found by someone else, be here for him. Let him safe into our home.’ I put the latchkey on the ledge near the cold room door.

I’m going to thieve the Thrashing House key back and go up to the caves on the north shore. Because if I’m wrong about Da
hiding Barney in the caves, I’ll still need the key and all the women’s voices in it.

I’m going to burglar Valmarie’s house.

It’s a long climb up the path, and in the dark after the rain the grass and rocks are all streaked with silver and shadows. The night makes everything different colours. Puts me in mind of a broiderie of Mam’s. Stars up above and all these dragonflies skittering around green and grey flowers, what grew and stretched towards the moon.

I bit my lip and told her, ‘The colours are wrong.’

She said, ‘It isn’t wrong, it’s just different, for there’s a sliver of a moon throwing shadows around.’

I thought hard about it and decided she meant that the moon is like a fisherman, up there disguised in all that deep blue, catching stars in a net. Only it catches shadows as well, and throws them back down to us.

From the circle of boulderstones, I can see the graveyard hill. Starlight glints on the granite headstones. Mam’s buried in the graveyard, a headstone with her name, Beatrice Jared, and mine and Barney’s names carved below it. When Barney and me die, the deadtaker will score out our names from Mam’s grave and we’ll get our own graves.

I remember the coldness of Mam’s skin in her coffin box. I kissed her brow to say goodbye, and she were covered all over in sea thrift with pink flowers. The flowers seemed so alive, though them’d die all over her when them were sealed up and under the soil. I felt sorry for them flowers.

A sharp wind whips my hair across my face. I crouch in the
wet grass next to one of the boulderstones. I can feel the cold of the stone on my cheek. Just below the Thrashing House, with a clear view of the graveyard hill, Valmarie’s house is tucked in a hollow.

My hands look like white gloves. I cover my fingertips with my mouth, breathe on some warm. Closing my eyes, I think of the Thrashing House key. Just to be sure. I think of its shape, the heaviness of the metal, the pattern of arrows in it. And it
is
Valmarie’s face what swirls up behind my eyelids. The key is back where it belongs and perhaps that’s where it should be, so the bells get rung, so the women can pass it between them, night after night after night, and everything can be as it always has been … but the palms of my hands feel empty. My hands still want the stories trapped in the key.

I look down the hill at Valmarie’s house. A candle sparks alight in her window. She’s not asleep.

A cough. I wipe my eyes and look up. Dad stands in the dark at the other end of the kitchen table. He says, ‘I didn’t hear you go back to bed.’

I say, ‘You look like a ghost.’

He says, ‘Light a candle.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t tell your mother—’

‘I don’t tell her anything.’

‘—that I gave away a plank.’

I push my hair back and smooth it down neatly. I choose to try being a psychologist. ‘You don’t want her to be disturbed.’ I put my palms together.

‘No.’ He sighs.

Psychologists make people talk. I wonder if he will. He isn’t looking at me. I say, ‘Does she think there would be damage if we weren’t so trapped?’

He sits down opposite me, puts his elbows on the table. He glances at me, and away. He looks like he’s been caught. He says, ‘She wants to live like this.’

‘It’s some dream, to know no one.’

‘She can’t cope with other people’s emotions.’

I nod, wisely. ‘I’ve noticed.’

‘She finds them unsettling.’

‘It’s unsettling that we’re alone and you’re talking like her.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a word for that – mirroring? It’s in the psychology book.’

His voice is louder. ‘It’s not an appropriate word when she’s not here to mirror. So you’ve read a book and you think you can diagnose her?’

We stare at each other in the dark.

I look away. ‘I don’t want to.’

He says again, ‘You think you
can
diagnose her?’

Outside the window, I can see the pink fence, dim in the dark. I say, quietly, ‘Have you heard of narcissism?’

Now he’s looking at the fence through the window. He says, ‘You’d do better just to see her as vulnerable, in need of our care, rather than fitting her to a list of symptoms. She needs empathy.’

‘She
needs empathy?’

‘What point is there in analysing her?’

‘I need a case study. Our family might be my only one. If it is, I won’t be a very good psychologist.’

‘We don’t need one.’

I lean forwards and he looks back at me. I say, ‘Did she ever see a
real
psychologist?’

‘She wouldn’t have wanted to. She doesn’t want to be … dissected. Sampled or discussed.’

‘Well, she’s probably deeply happy that we live on an island with no psychologists. Unless everyone who lives here is a psychologist. But then, I wouldn’t know, would I?’

‘She has every right to expect our understanding.’

‘And I don’t?’

‘She needs to feel safe.’

‘If I was a real psychologist, I’d say,
there’s no danger.’

He pauses. ‘Don’t attempt to diagnose her. It won’t do her, or you, any good.’

‘Has she always been this focussed on herself – is it her ego—’

‘Her ego?’

‘—or her id?’

‘What about them?’

‘That make her this … emotionally—’

‘I don’t want to discuss her like this.’

‘But we never discuss anything.’

‘We’re talking now.’

I stare out of the window again. ‘So, this is you, speaking to me. And you’re still not telling me anything.’

‘She’s become more … fragile over the years. Her emotions have been jarred, become set at some young age when she was too often left alone. Some parents are more … attentive than others. These things are learned through generations.’

‘So, what is she passing on to me, and Hazel, and Ash – that parents should have temper tantrums whenever their children do anything that upsets them?’

‘You could at least try to understand her.’

I sigh. ‘I am trying. She felt unloved. Is she loved enough now?’

‘We bring towards us, so often, that which we are most afraid of.’

‘Is that a quotation?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You asked that woman, the plank woman, about—’

‘Don’t tell your mother that either. She’ll find it …’

‘Disturbing. That someone wanted something from us other
than burial. Disturbing that you know something that’s happening here. So tell me. I won’t be disturbed.’

‘They don’t teach boys to read here. Your mother finds that idea threatening. She thinks that if men are treated like simple beasts, that’s how they’ll behave.’

‘Has she ever encountered a simple beast?’

‘In her nightmares.’

‘She has nightmares?’

‘Always.’ His eyes stare at his hands. His fingers drum on the table.

I ask, ‘What do they do?’

‘Who?’ He raises his eyebrows.

I spread out my palms in a psychologically open gesture. ‘The beasts in her nightmares. What do they do?’

‘Turn their backs—’

‘That doesn’t sound like a nightmare, it sounds like body language.’

‘—because they want to eat her up, but they don’t love her enough. They would rather die of hunger.’

‘Are you saying she wants to be eaten?’

‘Have you ever had a dream where you’re shouting and screaming for something you desperately need, only to find that all the people turn away, and their backs are hairy, ridged, frightening to you?’

‘No. There’s no point in analysing my dreams. They’re all the same thing happening over and over again.’

‘Until you do, you won’t understand her.’

‘Do you?’

He shudders. ‘She says our dreams are tied together.’

‘And are they?’

He meshes his fingers, glances up at me. ‘What?’

‘The men who live here. The men who can’t read. Are they
really like beasts? When you bury them, are their backs hairy, from a lack of literacy? Is there a collective noun for men with hairy backs?’

‘Keep your voice down. Not that I’ve encountered.’

‘In the garden at home. Our real home, do you remember telling me that earthworms were …’

‘I may have said they were cautious.’

‘You said they were
discreet
. You’ve forgotten.’

‘You’re testing me.’

‘I’m just confirming whether your long-term memory is working or not. Or perhaps testing my own. I was trying to ask, what were you saying to the plank woman about some men?’

‘The drain was blocked.’ He pauses.

I tap my fingers on the table.

He says, ‘Your mother sent me out to the smithy – she needed a rod to unblock it. The smithy talked. And I’ve overheard passers-by, whispers—’

‘So
you
don’t deny the whispers are there?’

‘She says the people on this island don’t understand her. She believes
we
don’t listen. No wonder she needs this safety. Can you imagine how it must feel for her, believing no one ever hears her?’

‘But she talks all the time.
She
doesn’t listen, so she can’t tell when we hear her.’

‘Give her time.’

‘How many years does she need?’

‘As many as it takes.’ He slides his chair out and stands up. His dressing gown is still wet from the rain.

I say, ‘Aren’t you cold?’

He says, ‘I
do
understand how you feel. It might not always seem that way, to you, but—’

‘It doesn’t. You side with her. Is there a shadow side of both of you – has her shadow put yours in a corner, to play with?’

He stands in front of the kitchen doorway and I can only just see his face. He says, ‘You
have
been reading that book, haven’t you?’

‘Devouring it.’

He glances over his shoulder at the doorway, coughs and says, ‘In the past, I persuaded her into situations I shouldn’t have. As a child, my family had nothing. I saw opportunities and was blinded by my own … greed. The outcome was … she became … terribly frightened. Fear can become trapped within someone who is already vulnerable, even if the actual danger was eradicated, by us leaving the mainland.’ He nods at me, ‘And yes, sometimes feeling this amount of guilt is not unlike having a shadow.’

‘I think I
would
be a good psychologist. Thank you for telling me
something
. What situations did you persuade her into?’

His face fades into the darkness of the hallway and his feet creak away up the stairs.