Snake Ropes (2 page)

In our bedroom, I stuff the pillow from Barney’s bed in my arms and squeeze, hard. If I squeezed him this hard I’d stifle the life out of him, but my arms need to do something. Tears pinch up in my eyes. I dun have the time for this, got to move, else there’ll be no chance to do anything – the tall men will be gone and there’ll just be a blank hole in the world what Barney’s fallen through.

I dun know what to do.

What did Annie next door do, when her Kieran got took? I must have known. Weren’t long ago. Kieran, fourteen years old, nose thick with freckles, just like hims Mam. What happened then, what did Annie do?

The front door thumps and rattles.

Da’s voice hollers, ‘Mary, where are you?’ all gruff. Him is back much earlier than usual.

I’ve got to get out before Da sees Barney is gone and decides Barney being gone is all for the best. One less mouth to gannet down not enough food.

Hurling down the pillow, I run to the kitchen, click the latch and get out the back door, around the side of our cottage and down to the beach where the tall men are loading crates and boxes onto thems boats.

My boots slip on the shingle, get tangled in the spiky grass, sand gets in the holes and near trips me. I get close enough to
one of the tall men, grab hims wrist as him is picking up a crate of ropes, wearing black gloves. Hims cold wrist feels like him is dead though him is up and walking. Touching hims skin sends a judder right through me.

Him drops the crate. We both jump back. Him turns and glares at me.

I yell at him, ‘My brother, give me him back! Him is only little – what use is him for you? Him is mine, the only one I’ve got!’

Him leans forwards. ‘We don’t have him. We don’t have the others either. If your parents can’t afford to feed you, we can’t be answerable for their actions, or their blame. We’re here for trade as we always have been.’

‘We have to go,’ says one, shadows in hims eyes.

The tall men load up thems boats, like I’m not here. I clamber over the boxes and check each boat, all the baskets, every sack. There’s nothing being loaded but fish and flour, brown boots from the cobbler, horseshoes and birdcages from the smithy, weavings, woollens, tapestries, stitchings, broideries and ropes. Clothes and cushions for the fancy women’s houses what them must change as often as thems fashion.

No brother.

All the crying what’s stuck in me finds the blank place in the world what him has fallen away through. I fall on the sand, can’t see a thing through the tears. Been looking after him so hard since Mam died, I feel like hims Mam myself. I draw my arms around my chest, only there’s a hollow where him should be. Tears fall into it; him is not there to cradle. I want to be strong for him, only I can’t when him is not here.

A tall man leans over me. Him has brown eyes, not like the others. Him looms against the grey sky, like a giant gravedigger. I grasp a stone lying in the wet sand and raise my fist, to hurl it at him.

Him grips my wrist. I try to shriek but my throat’s stuck. Hims touch sends shivers all up my arm and I can’t move my hand. Him pinches out my fingers. It’s a big white shell what’s in my palm, not a stone at all.

Him lets go. ‘You can’t hurt me with
that.’
Hims voice is low and cold. A glimmer of gold flecks around the pupil in hims right eye. Puts me in mind of the gold flecks in Barney’s eye. Him smells of salt and dust. Something in the smell makes the sky blink dark for a moment. Then it’s grey again. A sharp pain cuts through my belly.

Him turns and walks away. The tall men are done with me. Done with all of us till next month. Them push the boats off the beach and the long oars stir up the waters.

Barney is not in the boats.

Not in our home.

Not in my arms.

My throat gets unstuck and I howl and scream like my heart will clean break out of me. So loud Da comes out of our cottage.

Da gets to me and I feel a sharp bite on my shin. A thick rope lies next to my foot on the sand. It’s moving, twisting, glints of teeth woven through the strands. Da pulls me up on my feet and I punch hims big chest and bury my head in hims neck.

‘Barney’s gone!’ I shriek. ‘Him’s been took.’ And everything goes blank and dark.

Da sits beside my bed on the wobbly stool. Slumped over, wearing all greys, him looks like an empty canvas bag.

Him says, ‘You’ve got a fever, Mary. Been talking strangeness
what makes no sense. Brown eyes and blue eyes and bruises. Ropes tied all over you an’ the whole island. You know where you are?’ Hims tired eyes look at me like I’m going to be gone any moment.

I roll away, face the cracked grey wall and whisper, ‘Want him back.’

Da’s voice sounds loud. ‘Him is gone, Mary, and it’s not your fault.’

I know it
is
my fault. Shouldn’t have let him get away from my eyes, not for a moment, not even to be hid where I thought him’d be safe.

The ropes come up over the bed. I’m tied to the island and all twisted. I scream and here’s the blank dark place again.

I hear my voice … ‘Da, find him …’

‘Him is gone …’

In the blank dark, blue eyes are everywhere, staring at me.

I shout at them and ask them and cry at them, for Barney.

The back door to the cottage slams.

I’m carrying a fish eye out of the cold room on the tip of a broiderie needle. I grip the needle with all my fingertips to hold the eye steady. The eye blinks. I judder and the eye falls off the needle into a barrel filled with ice. My head is burning hot. Someone wipes a cold cloth over my forehead.

The back door slams in the distance.

‘Mam,’ my voice says, ‘can you see Barney?’

Da’s voice is loud in my ear, ‘Mary, you’re in a fever. Mam’s buried.’

‘No … no … no.’

Mam’s voice is here. ‘This fence is made of threads. Woven with broken lost things. Everything they want to forget.’

‘Dun tell me to forget Barney!’

Something cold on my face. A hand, a cloth, a piece of ice …

Da’s voice, ‘Shush up Mary, you’re shouting …’

I call out, ‘Mam, can you see where him is?’

Da’s voice says, too loud, ‘Mary stop it, it’s a fever you’re in. Mam’s gone. Settle now, settle.’

Mam’s still talking. ‘Forgotten things
will
make a person sick …’

I’m crying.

She’s gone.

Da wipes the cold thing over my face, says, ‘Have a drink, come on, there’s meadowsweet in this water.’ Hims arm holds up my back, tilts a cup to my mouth. I clench my lips tight shut, water rains all over me. Wet all over … Da bangs the cup down, and says, ‘You dun even
want
to get better.’ Him lets go of my back, I fall. Down through cloud, rain, fog …

Hands reach out from the sky, hold out food, bowls of soup, plates of steaming vegetables, stew, I’m getting fatter and fatter from eating and I punch my huge belly. It unravels, like stitches on a broiderie. All the stitches twist, wriggle like maggots, twirl and squirm themselves into the shape of eyes.

I’m in a tunnel of blue eyes.

The back door slams.

Da’s voice calls my name from the day Barney got took, calls again. Over and over, ‘Mary, where are you? Mary, where are you? Mary …’

Him never called Barney’s name.

The blue eyes blink.

Him knew Barney weren’t here …

Da puts hims cold hand on my cheek. ‘Come back Mary, come home, come back.’

This morning the sun is bright. Da opens the curtain so the light gets in. I sit up slow. Him looks like someone I dun even know.

Da folds hims arms. ‘You’re through the worst of it. I need to go fishing so we can eat – the tall men’ll be coming back in a week or so. Is tha’ all right, but?’

‘Aye Da, you go, I’ll be fine right here.’

Him is polishing a battered compass with hims jumper sleeve. Hims eyes are so tired. Like them’ve seen a thousand monsters just sitting here with me. But Da knew Barney weren’t here … the day him were took.

‘Go Da. I’ll be fine. Da?’

‘Aye, Mary?’ Him puts the compass back in hims pocket.

‘I’m sorry about Barney.’ I watch hims face. It dun change.

Him picks at a hole in hims jumper. ‘Aye,’ him says, quiet. ‘So am I.’ Him gets up, stretches, cracks hims neck and goes. Him dun mean it. Hims life will be easier with just us two working, with no boy he dun love, to teach to catch fish.

So the tall men are coming soon. I’ve been in bed for over two weeks.

Days and nights and days of fever.

Dun believe I’ve lost this much time – Barney missing, with me not able to look for him. I want to cut and rip and unpick all the days what’ve gone, thread them back together so them’re made all over again, but I can’t feel my hands.

Nights and days and nights of not looking. Of no one looking.

I try to stand but the floor shifts around and my legs trip me back on the bed. I try again. And again till I’m all stood up. It takes a while, but I get over to the bedroom door. I go through to the main room with the cupboard with Barney in it, only him isn’t in there. I open the cupboard and look at all the boxes and baskets full of threads and linen. It’s dark in there.

Blank dark.

Ice in barrels. I blink, and it’s just the cupboard and all the broiderie stuff Mam had. All the hoops and frames. All the linen she never put pictures on. That’s what I do. I make broideries on the linen and the tall men come and take them away. Them take a lot of things away. Them dun take my brother, though that’s what everyone’ll say, but I know, because I looked.

On the floor by the cupboard, there’s a white shell what looks like something I should remember, so I pick it up. I grip hard on the shell. I remember the eyes of the tall man who pinched out the fingers of my hand when Barney were took. Brown eyes. Not like all them others. The gold flecks around the pupil in hims right eye. Just like Barney. Maybe Barney got took into hims face somehow and kept hims own eyes. The smell of the tall man fills my nose. Salt and dust. I snort it out.

I put the shell to my ear.

Listen close; the sea comes in, so close, like it’s in the room with me, so close, like it’s in my head, filling it with waves.

Barney’s voice speaks inside the shell, ‘Mary, where’s moppet?’

Just hearing him I cry out.

This shell is precious.

The floor goes crooked. The wall hits against me. I go into our bedroom. Barney’s moppet lies on hims bed, its long ears unravelling, one eye hanging off and a squinty mouth.

I bring it to the table in the main room by the window and sew on the eye, only it seems even more wonky.

Getting my broiderie scissors, I cut the whole belly open down the middle. I take some of the stuffing out and put the shell inside. Stitch it up again, like a surgeoner.

Secret now.

I put my ear to it and hear Barney’s voice in the shell inside of it. ‘That’s better Mary,’ him says. ‘All better now.’

I want to speak back, only my voice is gone.

Too secret to speak of.

I lie down on Barney’s bed, curled up with the moppet next to my ear, hear Barney’s voice sing la la la like the baby him still is. I listen close, hims voice talks and I hear a dreaming place of Barney’s. Not the blank dark place in the fever – Barney’s dream is all light and the wind blows us up in the sky like butterflies.

Barney’s dream is in hims voice:

In this place you an’ me dun have to be big or growed up acause we’re small like flutterbees. We both little up in the sky. Mam and Da is big. Them creeps out of a tunnel in the grass
.

Them runs round round round looking for us, we doing hidings in the sky. Them looks up high and sees us. Them pulls fishing net out thems hair. Them doing chasings after us. Me and you, Mary, we got our own flutterbee wings, real ones
.

We go up in the clouds acause we doing laughings what makes the wings flap hard
.

Mam and Da is leaping – jumping up and up to catch us in nets. Them sees us with brave wings, an’ shrieks in thems mouths so loud thems eyes roll around and all around
.

We laughing Mary, doing laughings so loud
.

Mam and Da is leaping higher and higher, eyes all big mad. We not afeart; we know them can’t catch us
.

Mum has emptied her plate of parsnip stew. She looks at me with narrowed eyes across the kitchen table. ‘Why aren’t you eating?’ she asks. ‘Is it an attention thing?’

The twins watch her.

Dad eats painfully slowly.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I answer.

Mum says, ‘Yes, it was like that when I cooked too. This is why I prefer eating. Cooking’s awful. I eat it through my nose, just smelling it I get the taste, and by the time it’s ready, I’m full.’

‘Yes, it’s like that,’ I reply. But it’s
not
. After I’d called them the first time, then finished cooking, I dished it all up and ate mine. I called them again, waited for them to come. Emptied their plates back into the pot, warmed it, sat and tapped on the table and dished it back onto their plates when I finally heard their footsteps coming along the hallway.

Mum stands up. She says, ‘You like me again,’ as she walks out of the kitchen.

Dad glances at me, nods just once, chewing.

The twins scurry out after her. ‘Mum, can we—’

‘—have a story tonight?’

‘The one with the flying rats …’ A door bangs shut and their small feet run up the stairs.

I clear their plates and put them in the washbowl. Dad sits at the table, still slowly chewing, his curly grey hair tied back in a black bow. He looks like a pirate, but smells of cologne.

‘Dad, they’re
my
books, they’re the only things I …’ I turn to face him.

He stares into his plate, his eyes like marbles.

I pull out the chair next to him and sit down.

‘Dad, if she reads one of my books to the twins, will you make sure I get it back?’

‘What?’ He swallows almost painfully and shakes his head. ‘Oh.’ He looks surprised I’m here. ‘Yes, it’s very good. More peppery than usual. I’d prefer even more, next time. But yes, very good. Thank you.’ He puts down his spoon though he hasn’t finished his meal. ‘Right. You’re all right?’ He glances at me and back at his plate. ‘Good. I’ll go and take over from your mother with the twins.’

‘Thanks. But Dad, could I talk to you—’

‘Good. Very good.’ He doesn’t look at me as he leaves the kitchen.

I put on a block of peat, stoke up the fire in the range.

Pick up a bucket and go out of the back door to the well in our garden.

And back into the kitchen and pour

and pour

back to the well

back to the kitchen

and pour –

fill four huge pans with water.

Put them all on the range together.

When they’re boiling, I get all the small sacks of rice out of the cupboards.

I put the rice in the boiling water.

When the rice has puffed up, thickened and starchy, I go outside, put a bath towel over the drain by the back door and strain the rice.

Haul the rice back into the kitchen, wrapped in the towel.

And again. And again.

I cover the whole table in rice, a glutinous thick layer and I stand in the corner of the kitchen and watch the steam coming off it.

When the steam has gone, I get a wooden spoon and a mixing bowl and stand on a chair.

I scoop out the rice so the table shows through where I carve the words into it:

I AM HUNGRY BUT
NOT FOR FOOD