The Brides of Rollrock Island (25 page)

“What you lads brewing?” he said, taking a step back when he saw all our eyes.

But none of us needed to answer, for he opened the yard door then, and the wind hit him to staggering.

“It’s perishin’ out there, Mister Baker,” said Grinny in just the right voice, dour and respectful.

“I’ll freeze my man off, pissing in that.” Baker squinted into the darkening yard. “I see a chap who’s frozen out there already,” he added with a laugh. “A fine upstanding chap, if I’m not mistaken.”

And out he went, banging the door.

“He sees so much as a sleeve edge, we are beaten,” said Grinny, into the quiet of our relief. “Beaten and put in our rooms and no suppers
forever
—and our mams
so
disappointed.”

We had time to hide the coats better before Baker came back. He shut the door and swayed and looked at us, all in our same places. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he finally said, and tapped his nose and went off.

And that might have ended it there and then, and everything stayed tip-top and as usual.

Except, “Come, Kit,” whispered Jakes. “You looked the perfect mam.”

So we hauled the coat out and lumped it on Cawdron again, and Jakes put the other one on, and then they made us laugh, trying to walk about like mams, trying to move their hands all delicate and their heads all thoughtful. Cawdron was the best at it, of course, being so fine-made anyway, and with the coloring. Jakes was funnier, though, being more dadlike, all freckles and orange hair and hands like sausage bunches.

“I’ve been abed for days, so mis’rable, Missus Cawdron,” he said, and the way he leaned and rolled his eyes, and his voice trying to trill and sing—we were holding each other up, it was so funny.

And then Kit joined in and, my, he was good, because his voice was not yet begun to break, and he could really sound the part. “Because I’m to have another bair-beh,” he said, and we were just about rolling on the slates there, but as quiet as we could.

“I thought you just had one, Missus?” said Jakes, through laughing.

“Oh’m, I did. But ’twas only a girl, so I took her down and drowned her.”

“It is not
drowning
, you goose!” spluttered Raditch.

But, “Grand!” said Jakes over him. “Another sea-wife for our lads to net, come sixteen summers.”

“Oh yes, but if only I could have another son like my lovely Christopher there! For it is daughters-daughters-daughters with me!”

And he was just overacting a suffering mam, staggering, with the back of his hand to his forehead, when something behind us, and up from us, caught his eye. He snatched his hand down to his side, and tripped on his coat edge, and banged up against the wall. His face was not mammish anymore, and not at all playful; he was the littlest of us, and the most frightened. He and Jakes had the most to lose, after all, with Baker’s dad there at the back of us, and Mister Grinny too come soundless from the snug to catch us at whatever.

We shrank into a bunch, back around Kit and Jakes against the wall there, staring at those men. Grinny’s dad’s face was white and stiff with the surprise, but Baker’s trembled, and red rage tided up it—jolly Mister Baker, who at any other time would have twinkled and mussed our hair as soon as look at us. Honest, I thought his head was going to burst, it swelled and stared so.

“What do you think you are up to?” he hissed into the utter silence. Someone gave a little peeping fart, and nobody even snickered, we were
all
so close to shitting ourselves, every lad of us.

Kit Cawdron didn’t make a sound. He was
glued
to the wall behind us, trying to melt away into it.

I thought Baker would wade in and belt him. Everyone expected it. Grinny’s dad expected it, and decided it must not happen, and put a hand on Baker’s arm.

“Take those off, lads,” he said, gentle as gentle.

The crowd of us loosened, but only a little. “Here,” Raditch muttered, helping Cawdron behind. There was silence except for the fumbling, Cawdron’s unsteady breathing, the slither and clop of the coats.

“Come, lads,” said Mister Grinny, holding out his hands. I could not tell what he might be thinking—how does anyone else’s dad think?—but he was not so frozen-faced now. Good, I thought, they’ll not thrash them, then. This is too wicked even for that. “Hang them coats up, lads,” he said, “and show some reverence as you do.” And he stood there, one freckly hand ensausaging Kit’s white slip of a paw, and the other on Baker’s sleeve who was steaming and readying to roar and punch something, as we hauled the cursed things into the coatroom, and managed to rehang them. Everybody was shaking like the leaves of the poplars on Watch-Out Hill; everyone was clumsy and needed each other’s help. The cupboard was full of our breaths and the coats. Beyond it, I heard Grinny say to Baker, “Fetch Wholeman. And Wholeman’s boy.”

When we were done we closed the door, whisper-quiet, and turned to face our punishment. Mister Grinny was still there holding Cawdron. “Wholeman?” Baker bellowed in the snug doorway, and the room went silent there. “And where’s young Rab?” Bottles clinked, glasses knocked on tables, chairs squeaked under shifting men.

Mister Grinny squatted among us. “You’ll not touch them skins again, all right?” he said softly, almost sadly.

“No, sir.”

“No, Mister Grinny.”

“We won’t. Promise.”

“Even if you find it unlocked,” he said. “Even if the door is swinging wide open, you will not go in. You will not lay a finger on your mams’ coats.”

“Not a finger, sir.” We shook our heads.

“Shan,” he said to his boy, “you go on home to your mam. All you boys, go on home. Look to your mams and see if they need aught. Bring in some coal. Make them a tea. Rub their poor feet. Or just sit and talk to them the way they like, about nice things, the spring, mebbe, or the fishing. Go home and do something nice for your mams, each lad of you. You’ve insulted them so, you must make up for it with them. Though they may not know it—and do not tell them, any of you, not a word—you must make amends for this, the way you made fun of them, Kit and Jakes, and the others of you for laughing—and even if you did none of that, just for going into that room and for touching!”

He stopped there, and raised his eyes, which had been steady on us boys. Until then I had not really thought how bad we’d been, being so caught up in the fun and fear of it. But at the sight of the cupboard door, firmly closed now, and the memory of what he had seen behind it, Mister Grinny’s face took on such wonderment, he looked hardly older than Kit beside him. Something of this expression I had seen now and again before, my dad looking to our mam in a quiet moment. But on Mister Grinny, who should
control his face in front of boys not his son, the bright eyes and the open mouth made the skin on my head crawl, and his sudden silence sent such a shiver down me, I worried that my bladder might let go.

Then the men’s footsteps sounded in the hall, and we all crammed together, and Grinny was a grown-up again.

Baker, still flushed red, led Rab Wholeman and his shrewd-faced dad into our sight. Rab was a big boy, all but a man himself, but when his gaze fell on the latch without its padlock, all his color went and his face sagged ancient; the light went right out of his eyes a moment there; he staggered some, though he did not quite fall.

“Who has it?” said Wholeman in a tight little voice, to all of us, his head swinging like a lighthouse lamp. The hair above my ears lifted under the sweep of his look. “Who has the lock?”

“Me, Mist’r ’Oleman,” whimpered Aran, and pushed forward, and held up the padlock in a shaking hand, which looked very small. Wholeman’s bigger one swiped the battered thing out of it. Aran flinched and stepped back in among us. Out the corner of my eye I saw Raditch touch his back, to tell him we felt for him.

But now, it seemed, we were not the ones so much at fault, for Grinny stood and turned, and Baker turned, and Wholeman’s lighthouse beam swept around upon his son. Rab met all their attentions one by one, quaking smaller with each face. “I don’t … I can’t … how did this
happen
?” he finished on a little wail. “I
always
lock after I put away the boxes! Always!” And he began working up to sobbing.

Wholeman waved the padlock full in Rab’s face, struck him hard up the back of the head. Rab swayed there blinking and absorbing the blow. “I’m
sorry
,” he said eventually. “It’s a terrible thing to have done.”

“It is,” said Wholeman tightly, as if he must almost close off his throat if he were not to break out wildly shouting, if he were not to go
mad
with anger. He smacked the lock into Rab’s chest—the hook was askew on it, and would have dug in nastily. “Put it on,” he said. “Make
sure
it’s clapped closed.”

Us lads shrank aside either way, and poor Rab walked through us, alone in his shame, bright red with it, his eyes swimming. His hands shook as he put the hasp over the loop, put the hook through it. A tear splashed on his wrist, silver in the window light. We all heard the chink of the lock, and felt the relief the sound brought us, everything returned to the way it should be.

Wholeman sighed with it too, but then gathered himself up again as Rab faced him. He put out a finger and shook it slowly, glaring through his eyebrows at his son. “If ever,
ever
—” And Baker at his elbow silently raged the same.

But Mister Grinny waved the finger down. “I think the lad realizes.”

Rab pushed past the older men, slammed out the back door.

“There’s bottles need washing!” Wholeman roared after him.

“Let him collect himself, Storn,” said Grinny.

They remembered us then, Baker and Wholeman looking us over with dislike.

“But do
these
lads realize?” said Wholeman.

“I’m sure they do,” said Grinny, and I loved him in that moment for his calm voice and his uncongested face. “They’ll all go
each to his mam now and please her somehow, and not let a word slip of this what’s happened today. Won’t you?”

“Yes, Mister Grinny,” we said, subdued.

He opened the back door. We flowed out into the wind, each of us, like Rab, marooned in his own part of the guilt. We said no goodbyes, only cut one way or the other, some of us having to hurry past poor red-eyed Rab, his back to the wall out there, clutching his elbows and staring out stonily as if he saw none of us. Thinking of Grinny, thinking of Raditch, I reached up and touched Rab’s arm in passing. He did not lower his gaze; his chin crimped as if more tears were coming, and I scurried on past to save him more embarrassment.

That morning I had raced up to school and played footer to keep warm till the bell rang. Now we lined up in the cold spring wind.

“Where are the Wright boys?” said Mister Paste with a frown.

“They are cousins, sir,” someone called.

“Oh.” He turned away to take up his position at the door.

“Cousins?” I said blankly to Eric Cartney next to me, who was stamping and rubbing his arms against the cold.

“Cousins of Tom Dressler.”

“Why, what’s happened to him?”

“Lost his wife. Don’t you know anything? All of Potshead knows.”

Lost his wife
. I pictured Tom Dressler wandering the hills and beaches, calling, weeping. “Have they gone to help look?”

Eric screwed up his eyes and twitched his head at my stupidity.

“You said he lost her,” I protested.

Eric pushed his face at mine, so hard and pop-eyed I had to lean back. “She died!” he said in a shouting whisper. “She hung herself from a kitchen beam!”

“Everyone
knows
, Eric,” Raditch said wearily over his shoulder.

“Daniel here doesn’t,” said Eric. “It has somehow managed to escape Daniel’s attention,” he added hoity-toitily—but very quietly, because we were approaching Mister Paste, and it was Mister Paste whose accent he was imitating.

“And it’s ‘hanged,’ my dad says,” said Jakes Trumbell behind us. “Not ‘hung.’ ”

Eric rounded on him. “Hanged or hung, don’t make her any less dead!” But now we were right in front of Paste, who reached in and neatly clipped Eric’s ear.

Eric veered away scowling to his desk, and I went to mine, moving out of habit.
Hung
herself,
hanged
herself—neither made better sense. Hanging was for robbers and murderers; you had to have a scaffold and a priest and a man to put the hood on, didn’t you? How did you hang
yourself
? I didn’t see how that could be done, the mechanics of it. The question of why, I didn’t even know how to ask.

I had sat on the church fence just last summer and watched Amy Dressler walk out smiling on her new husband’s arm, in the beautiful wedding dress that Mam had worn, that all our mams had worn. And I had seen dead things—fish by the millions, seagulls going to pieces in the tide wrack, Jodper’s cows and sheep freshly slaughtered, and one memorable time fourteen whales beached on the Six-Mile sands. I could put the bride next to the
dead whale right enough, but I could not seem to combine them into the one thing. A live person become a dead thing, and by her own choice? It went against all the sense that I knew.