Snake Ropes (18 page)

‘We’re there in the water.’

‘We’re like reflections of each other.’

Our faces blur on the surface of the water, her hair light and mine dark.

‘Morgan.’

‘What?’

‘I want to drop the Thrashing House key down the well. Then go down myself after it. See which one, me or the key, hits the bottom first. Dun let me.’

She grips my hand.

I squeeze her fingers. ‘Dun know why I said that.’

‘Come on. It’s getting lighter.’

At a crumbling stone wall near her house she lowers me down on the grass. My legs crumple. She stands behind a gorse bush and stretches her back. She says, ‘Don’t move suddenly when Mum sees you. It might be good that you look a mess, but she startles so easily. I can’t make you any kind of real promise.’

I take her hand. ‘I know. It’s up to her and me now.’

The lines on her brow disappear. ‘If she does let you in, you haven’t seen me. You’ve never met me, never spoken to me.’

She looks at my dress and crouches down on the grass. ‘I can’t leave you like this.’ She rummages in my bag and finds the box of broiderie threads and needles. She’s in and out of my bag, getting different coloured threads out, putting them back. Fumbling with her pockets, in my bag, out of my bag.

I say, ‘You can’t sew, can you?’

‘No.’

We stitch up my dress with me stitching from the top down while she works from the waist up. The light’s not yet bright enough. My hands are too cold to stitch right. There’s a great jagged seam when we’re done, from my belly to my neck, and all the buttons gone. I must look like a broken toy. One what’s been ripped apart and stitched up.

Like the moppet.

‘Give me my bag.’ My voice sounds sharp.

Morgan sits back, pink in her cheeks.

‘Please.’

She passes it to me. The moppet is curled up tight in the corner, right down the bottom, hiding itself. The first time I met Langward is when I found the shell what’s inside the moppet. What if him put Barney’s voice in there, when him pinched out my fingers … to trick me.

I want to tear up the moppet, shred the stuffing, throw it into the wind. Cut the shell out of it, scream and yell and cry my own voice into it and stamp it to dust. Only I can’t do any of these things.

It’s the only thing of Barney I’ve got left.

Morgan says, ‘I wish I’d met you … before now.’ She kisses my cheek.

I close the bag. ‘Me as well.’ I nod, ‘I’ll crawl from here to the fence and play dead. Go on, get to mine, quick.’

She nods.

‘If you see a tall man with brown eyes—’ My belly cramps, ‘—then leg it.’

‘Was he the man at the graveyard – the shadow man?’ Her voice shakes.

‘Just run.’

A tear rolls down her face. ‘He’s not a rescuing kind of man, is he?’

‘No.’

She squeezes my shoulder and goes.

Against my spine the ground feels like it’s shaking, only the shakes are trapped in me. Streaks of clouds above me, spun with pale orange threads. The sea will be reflecting this same sky all the way from the horizon, in the waves what could have drowned my brother.

I close my eyes. The wind blows over me. A gap in the wind. Someone stood right beside me, blocking the wind away. Someone crept up on me so silent.

‘Give. It. Back.’ Valmarie’s voice.

I open my eyes. There’s no one here. Just the sound of the wind. I close my eyes and listen.

Valmarie’s voice speaks again. ‘Give. It. Back.’

I open my eyes a slit. Just the sky above me. I close them again.

I think back loud.
Get gone
.

‘We need it,’ she hisses.

Did she hear me?

‘The bells need to ring.’

She did hear me.

I want to scream,
Get away from me leave me get out of my head you can’t just walk through folks minds without knocking first
…

She says, ‘I’ll find you … just as soon as I …’ The sound of digging. Digging? I open my eyes a crack. Nothing. Close them.

‘Here. It. Is. It did sing back.’

Her voice is a sob. ‘I thought … you were … lost to me …’ Her voice drifts away – them words are not for me.

Morgan’s Mam is peering out between the slats in the fence. I’m soaking through with the wet from the grass and a cold wind blows my hair over my face.

I think about what to say to her …

Love me for a short while, just because you’re someone’s Mam, though you’re not mine. Or I could pretend she’s my own Mam and say: I’m going to have to make myself believe you’d never have traded me. That though you weren’t always kind, you were good. Because to believe what him said will take so much away, it’ll be like it’s raining inside me, not just rain, but gales and hailstones and fog.

Tears roll into my ears. I need to give Morgan’s Mam something she wants. Only I dun know what that is.

She says, ‘I can tell you’re awake.’

I open my eyes and sit up. Pain shoots through my legs. I look at the pink fence, with her green eye in the narrow space between the slats.

I say, ‘Were it you what drew the flowers all over this fence?’

The eye creases up. ‘Years ago. Chalk. The rain washed them away.’

My voice shakes. ‘Them were pretty, but even real flowers dun stay that way for always.’ A memory comes. A broken ship, wooden planks as cargo. All strewn along the coast at Wreckers Shore. The planks this fence is made from. Me stood there, feeling small, looking for the deaded crew. Never saw anyone. Just a whole cargo of wooden planks in piles along the shore.

I say, ‘That’s a good strong fence. Strong planks, from shipwrecked wood. You were clever to get that, to make such a high solid fence.’

The eye squints.

‘You like flowers, then?’ I ask. ‘I could draw one for you in broiderie threads. If you’ve got some linen, I could broider you a flower with my needle.’

Her eye blinks.

I get the broiderie threads out of my bag. ‘I could do a purple one, or crimson – a campion, or blue-green? Or sea thrift, the colour of your fence.’ I hold the threads up. Her eye stares at each new colour like she wants it more than the last. ‘If I could get warmer, I could make a pretty one for you. Just need to sit at a table by a window. I’ll use lots of colours if you want. Only the rain won’t wash them off. Them’ll always be bright if you keep the sun off them.’

‘I’ve got a bedspread,’ she says, slow. ‘I could bring it out. You could pass it through when you’re finished.’

‘Can’t stitch if I’m shaking with cold. If I could come indoors, I’ll stitch it, and when it’s done, I’ll go.’

Her eye stares at the bright threads in my hand. I can hear her thoughts. Pictures. A bedspread, warm dreaming, under stems, leaves, buds, flower, full bloom. Morgan thought loud as well. Must be this family’s way, as them’ve been so locked away. Thems thoughts have got all loud, for them aren’t getting them out by talking to other folk.

I say, ‘I dun mean you harm,’ and put the threads in my bag.

‘No. I don’t like colours to be in the dark.’

‘I’ll get gone now, see if other folks want a bedspread done.’ I push the threads down, deep into the bag. ‘Plenty of folks’d love to sleep under flowers what’ll never die.’

‘No.’

‘Were you wanting one then?’

Slow, like each word saws its way out of her, she says, ‘I’ve got a table you can use. And a chair. I think they’ll like you.’

She’s all off-kilter.

There’s a rattle of something metal, jewellery or suchlike. She pushes open the gate. She stands fixed, like she’s stuck in a picture. Hand held out, brown hair blown across her face, her bracelet chink clink clunk in the breeze. She’s staring at her bracelet and she yanks the padlock off the gate. She’s wearing a dress with patchwork grey and orange fabrics. It looks like a sunset what’s been stitched all clumsy. The orange is a fine light fabric, the grey is thick. It hangs wrong. She stares all around at the hills with her mouth open a little, like she’s tasting the air for smells.

I get up, near trip, but catch myself on the fence. I lean on it with my hands and step after step, walk my legs along.

She’s stood there, eyes not settling on any one thing.

I ask, ‘Is someone watching?’

Her words crack out like stones, ‘The padlock wasn’t locked.’

I hobble past her, into her garden. She smells of honey and sawdust.

She closes the gate behind me. Frowns at her bracelet, picks at the tangle of broken chains and clunks the padlock shut.

I’m in.

She rushes ahead of me, goes up the garden path and indoors.

A door clacks shut inside the house. I hobble to the door and
look inside, but she’s gone. The floorboards creak as I go in. A corridor what smells of fresh sawn wood stretches out in front of me, bigger than my whole cottage. Wooden panels on the walls and two closed doors on each side are painted garish greens with orange and pink dots on them. Another door at the far end is painted with yellow and purple crescent moons. She’s painted the brightest colours she can find, to make a picture of a happy home.

But the colours all clash.

I close the front door behind me. No one’s going to get past that fence. No one’ll get past Morgan’s Mam neither, for she’s as locked as that padlock.

It’s rude to leave me stood here.

Maybe she’s gone off to talk to her bedspread and friendly furniture. Perhaps them’re all together behind one of them doors, arguing about whether her chair wants to make me feel comfy or not.

Morgan’s Mam shrieks from upstairs, ‘Morgan!’ A wail, a thud.

Footsteps cross the floor above me, muffled sobs.

I lean hard on a dotted door, it swings open too easy and I’m on the floor. Sharp pain hollers through my legs. I rub my bruised knees.

I’m in a room just for play. Toys scattered over red and blue painted floorboards; toy boats, tiny houses, bright-coloured blocks. A table, stencilled with red and gold stars fills near on half this room. Love hearts are scratched on the tabletop, H and A carved in the middle, HA HA. Love is laughing at me.

Three tall windows made up of eight panes each let in so much light. Nailed around the wooden walls and between the windows are huge sheets of paper with black and white drawings.

I dun breathe at the sight of what the drawings are of: Sishee’s dress pegged to the bottom of the sea; Annie’s son, Kieran; Valmarie’s son, Dylan; Valmarie’s sealskin; Kelmar’s son, Jake …

I pull a picture down, hold it close to my eyes, soak the picture into them, can’t blink in case it goes away, seeing hims face makes my heart thump. I know that even with the tall man for hims Da, the love I have for him hasn’t changed at all.

Someone has drawn a picture of Barney.

Hims face looks up at me in black and white. My chest aches, my heart thuds. Someone in this house has seen him close enough to draw him. Barney would’ve had to sit there, so still. Quiet for ages, so this picture were made just right.

Not like him were at all.

Barney could have been found washed up at Wreckers Shore or in the poisons at the north shore; at some place the currents dragged him. And him could’ve been brought here, to the deadtaker, by someone what dun know him.

This could be a drawing of Barney, dead.

My head is full of Mary, my heart feels stuffed full of feathers, I want to wrap her up. I don’t want to feel like this with everyone I meet. I just feel like this because she’s new. Everyone must feel this ache in their chest when they meet someone. How do people decide who to care about? My heart thuds. The next person I meet, I’m
not
going to care about them.

I’ve gone all the wrong ways, staring at every blade of grass, touching the branches of the small trees, avoiding thistles and climbing stone walls. I’ve passed a smokehouse and a farm with three barns, but now I’m nearing the graveyard again and can see the Thrashing House on the highest hill. I know how to get to Mary’s cottage from there. My limbs ache with tiredness, I’m rumbling with hunger, my bare feet walk me forwards. There will be a bed and food in Mary’s cottage, and soon I’ll sleep.

But the woman with long black hair comes out of the graveyard with her spade over her shoulder. I crouch down behind a twisted blackberry bush. Is she a witch, an alchemist, a dissectionist, gruesome scientist or confused vampire … out in the graveyard all night with a spade?

She goes towards a small house where a murder of crows squat along the gutter, making croaking sounds at the dawn.
The woman carries some kind of worn textured fabric. She reaches the house and leans the spade against the wall. She holds the fabric out. But it’s not fabric, it’s an animal hide. She shakes it out and earth falls in clods.

She clasps it to her. Holds it, strokes it, smells it and disappears around the back of the house. I want to know what she’s found.

I knock on the back door.

No answer.

I fumble with the catch, which clicks when I push it down. The door opens into a small kitchen, herbs and spices in jars. I pick up a small bottle with a clear liquid inside it. The label reads, ‘Forgetting herb’.

On the other side of the kitchen a door is ajar.

‘Hello?’ My voice is too quiet. ‘Hello?’

I push the door open and can’t speak, because the woman is naked.

She lies face down on the floor, on top of a decaying animal skin that smells of earth and of death. Her hands wrap what was once the face of the animal around her own face, she holds its earholes against her ears.

She sobs, her shoulders shake, she cries into the pelt, her body rolls against it, covered in soil, old fur sheds on the floor, almost dust. Her back is so pale, her black hair trails over it. She cries, clasps the skin around her face, her shoulders rise and fall, her shoulder blades clench, unclench, her smooth white skin is covered in goosebumps.

I can’t stay here and watch, because I want to step in and wrap her up, tell her
It will be all right, it will be fine
, but I don’t think it will.

Inside Mary’s cottage I lock the door behind me. The ceiling is low, the smell of damp in the air. A pair of worn brown boots stand behind the door. Coats and shawls hang on hooks.

My feet want to dance, I spin around, my arms outstretched. Bump into the table by the window, the chair by the fireplace, the cupboard. I feel dizzy, laugh and can’t stop. No one wants anything. No tea to make unless I want some. No floors to sweep unless I need them clean. No moods to understand, to placate, to ignore.

I can do whatever I want.

I twirl through each room, this one with a fireplace, a bedroom with two beds, one smaller than the other, another bedroom with a double bed, a kitchen. The furniture is all functional. Tables, a few chairs, cupboards. The only elaborate details are embroideries on every piece of fabric. On the cushions, bedspreads, pillows, curtains, blankets.

I stop spinning.

Embroideries are scattered everywhere, a tablecloth embroidered with purple clouds has been hurled over the chair, a large folded piece has been thrown in the fireplace. An empty wooden washtub in the corner of the kitchen is filled with handkerchiefs, embroidered with blue children holding hands.

A resourcefulness of embroideries.

I lie on the fabric strewn across the floor and look up at the beams on the ceiling, my arms outstretched, imagine what it would feel like to float up there, light, weightless, like a transformed creature in a storybook, a goose turned thistledown, spider turned moth, hedgehog turned butterfly. I could fly in here, float just underneath the ceiling … So I exhale, and float up to the ceiling. I drift my family and the locked pink fence out of my lungs. I fall asleep, curled next to a spider’s web between two beams.

Someone bangs on the door.

I’m on the floor.

I roll over, crawl under the table beneath the window and curl up into a ball.

A voice crashes through the keyhole. ‘Mary love, it’s me again.’ An accent like Mary’s, but older. Choked. ‘Please open the door. Mary, I’m so sorry. I’ve done wrong.’

So have I. Because I’ve stolen the Thrashing House key from Mary. It only brought her trouble. I bury my head in my knees.

Animals sniff at the door. I hear the sound of waves washing along the beach. Gulls wail.

The voice speaks again. ‘Maybe you dun hear me knock last night.’

Scratching at the bottom of the door, dogs whine. A spider spins a web in the corner underneath the tabletop.

‘I’m sorry, Mary. It’s all mixed up, ‘ent it.’

The spider lowers itself on a thread. It has detailed grey markings on its body, it lands on a floorboard and skulks across the floor. I crawl to the front door and a splinter gets stuck in my toe. Sitting with my back against the door, I ease the splinter out, reach for the brown boots and put them on. They’re too small, but only just. I stand up and open the door.

The woman jumps back. Her three dogs growl. She’s not much younger than Mum. Skinny and sharp-faced, with a shock of hair.

I say, ‘Come in.’

She steps further back. ‘Where’s Mary?’

‘She’s not here.’ I open the door wider and say, ‘But come in.’

She purses her lips. One of her dogs whines, raises a paw. Whimpers. She walks in and the dogs try to follow her. I nudge them with a boot and shut them outside.

She tugs at a button on her dress and frowns at some embroidered napkins on the floor. ‘Mary lets the dogs in.’ She folds her arms. ‘What you throwing Beatrice’s broideries around for? Who
are
you?’

‘Mary said I could stay.’

She puts her hands on her hips. ‘I’m Annie.’ Her cheeks are pink. ‘Look, I’ll come back when Mary’s home.’ She glances at the floor and rubs her hands together. ‘You should pick up them broideries. No idea Beatrice’d left so many. Them’ll be worth a lot.’

‘Well, let’s clean them up.’ I snatch up the embroideries on the floor, pile them on the back of the chair. As I walk around, the boots graze my heels. I reach into the fireplace, fish out a large embroidery, I sit down in the chair. I smooth the embroidery on my lap, it has a picture of a grey cobweb on it, the detail is beautiful, silver raindrops hanging on unravelling threads … but no spider.

Annie sighs, sits down on the stool and stares at the empty fireplace. ‘Mary gave me stew. Since then, I find it hard to swallow.’

‘Why?’

‘Can’t talk to anyone.’ She grasps at a small cloudy button on her dress and it comes away in her hand. ‘I miss Beatrice. She’d have understood.’

‘Beatrice?’

‘Funny you dun know her Mam’s name.’ She frowns at me and drops her hands into her lap. ‘Dun believe the tall man were a ghost. No need for ghost trade, passing through my hands.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Look, there’s ghost trade all over the floor! You can see it. Help me pick it up!’ She leans down and picks up something invisible from the floorboards, rubs her hand over her pockets, eyes far away.

‘There’s nothing there Annie. When will the boats that go to the mainland come?’

She whispers, ‘Where’re you from? You safe, or from a dreaming?’ Her head twitches and words rush out of her mouth. ‘Glass question mark. Smash!’ She claps. Her hands fly up in the air. She rubs them together. ‘Could be doubt. Dun know what Martyn were doubting, always seemed sure enough with me. Fragile doubt. Unsure … wanting reading taught … I never knew …’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

Outside, one of her dogs howls.

Annie leans forwards and holds out her hands to the empty fireplace. She rubs her hands and holds them out, again and again, faster and faster. She mutters under her breath, ‘If the bells dun ring. Nothing goes away. Stays here.’ She prods the side of her head. ‘In here. In my pockets.’ She slaps her hip. ‘No bells in my thoughts.’ She slaps her forehead.

Two of the dogs howl.

She looks at the embroidery on my lap and says, ‘I were beautiful on my wedding day. Beatrice broidered my dress all over with silver cobwebs. My hair piled so high, I looked like my face were floating in a cloud. I got lost in my wedding dress, but I were sleepwalking, looking for home.’ She stares at her hands. ‘Not having the dreamings took. Mam died. Aw. Missed her. Aw.’ She pouts her lips like a child. ‘She died and I got the cottage and the dogs.’

She smoothes her hands over her hair and smiles at me, shyly.

Outside, all three dogs howl.

I say, calmly, ‘I’m sorry your Mum died. When will the boats—’

‘I dun know it were
the dogs
I were missing. Not really
Mam
… Dun say it out loud. Shhh.’ She puts her finger over
her lips. ‘Everything were all right again, when I got the dogs back …’

She shakes herself and squeezes her neck. ‘I miss him. Cover him in kisses. Martyn.’ She cups her hand over her mouth. ‘Dun doubt I loved you the most. I miss you so much I can’t find words—’

‘Annie, please stop.’

She jumps up and slaps her hands on her hips. She says, ‘I need my dogs!’ and staggers towards the door.

I follow her, grasp her thin arm and swing her around to face me.

She glares at the battered rug on the floor.

I say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you mad, or is this a tangle from not sleeping? Mary said—’

She lifts up a foot and gazes at her white boot. ‘Keep-my-mouth-shut boots.’ She trips, I try to catch her but she slumps on the floor, legs outstretched.

I open the front door and her dogs charge in.

She sits up. ‘Here them are!’ Holding her hands out to the dogs she beams like a child. Three black tails wag, three tongues lick her hands, her face. She pets them, turns and frowns up at me. ‘Who are you? Where’s Mary? How did I get down here?’

Two of Annie’s dogs lie next to her, the other one rests its head on her lap, gazing up at her, its tongue dripping drool on her grey dress. She keeps her eyes on the dog, smoothing its fur with her hands. I’m in the chair opposite her. It’s as if we met just a moment ago, and the last conversation didn’t happen.

I say, ‘Mary might be a while. Maybe you should come back another time. Not today. Maybe in a couple of weeks or—’

‘What’s she up to?’ Annie frowns at me. Her fingers pinch
the dog’s ears. It shakes her hands off, she kneads its jowls. It grunts, eyes glazed.

‘I don’t know.’

Annie says, ‘Write it for me.’ Her eyes gleam. ‘Write it all down.’ She leans over the dog and kisses the top of its head.

‘Can Mary read?’

‘Mary understands the letters, aye. Beatrice taught her. Beatrice liked to write things down to remember how she felt. Never knew she’d not need to be reminded, for she died too young to forget.’ She strokes the dog’s head and sighs.

‘But you …’

‘Never got to learn, were looking after my own Mam, weren’t I? She’d gotten sick.’ She looks at me sideways. ‘Mothers teach daughters.’

‘Why don’t sons learn to read?’

‘Weaving Room talk. That’s the place for it. But some of the women …’ She leans on the table and stares at me. ‘You twenty-one yet?’

Three choices. The truth, a lie, or silence.

I silently nod.

‘That’s all right. Never seen you there. Never used to think this way. Maybe it’s best to look at things upside. Or were it down … I dun fit no more.’

‘There’s a Weaving Room – if I’m twenty-one, am I allowed to learn weaving?’

‘Of course there’s weaving. But a whole lot of women together dun do just one thing at a time. All kinds of things, cloths, tapestries, baskets, scarves and shawls, all the cloths an’ fabrics – much is woven there. And much is talked of.’ She leans forwards. ‘Do you know about the snake ropes, left on the shore in crates?’

One of her dogs barks.

We both jump.

She coughs. ‘Never said that. Come to the Weaving Rooms. You’re of age. But if you’ve not been there for the Scattering Up, I shouldn’t speak of it to you. You might find
you
fit, though by the looks of you I’d doubt it. Bit too
clean.’
She looks at my eyes.

I look at her stained dress. ‘What’s the Scattering Up?’

She says, ‘After your next monthly, keep the rags, dun wash them out. Take them along at the next dark moon. That’s when you’ll swear not to speak of the Weaving Rooms to them what dun belong there. Powerful circle, is that one. You’ll not be able to talk of the Weaving Rooms to none what shouldn’t hear.’

I cross my legs.

Annie says, ‘Write Mary this letter then.’ She rummages in the drawer. ‘Ah. Here.’ She takes out a bundle of sticks of charcoal and eases one out with her thin fingers. She pulls out a thick book made of rough paper, stitched down the side with orange embroidery thread. The book is blank, with a couple of pages torn off.