Snake Ropes (9 page)

Something taps on the bedroom window. I bundle up with the moppet under the blanket, and keep still.

A low voice hisses from outside. ‘Mary, it’s Kelmar.’

Mam never let her come round.

She taps again, whispers, ‘It’s important.’ Tap tap tap on the window.

I cover my head with the pillow.

Hold my breath till I can feel she’s gone.

Mam must have not liked her for a reason. Kelmar’s the only midwife, so Mam must’ve had to let her birth Barney. Kelmar’s seen Langward’s eyes. So if Kelmar’s here to tell me Da isn’t Barney’s father, and Langward is, well. That I know already.

I lie in bed thinking, no, dreaming, no, thinking of Mam, broidering the diamond markings of the diamondback addersnake what killed her. I say, ‘Mam, broider me a picture of Barney …’

Mam’s sat at the table in the main room, I’m in bed smelling the lavender sachet under my pillow, but I’m stood right next to her as well.

She’s whispering, whispering, I lean in close but can’t hear
what she’s saying. I feel my pillow on my cheek, but it’s not the pillow, it’s her hair against my skin. She sits there stitching by the window … her breath smells of lavender. Her eyes stare out of the window.

‘Mam, can you see where Barney is?’ I ask. My cheek presses against the pillow, I’m lying in bed and I’m standing next to her, I watch her stitching.

I ask her, ‘Would Da’ve given Barney to someone?’

The fabric she’s stitching stretches out of the window, all the way up to the sky. She’s lost in the stitches.

‘Please Mam,
who
would Da have given Barney to? Who would hide him from me?’ She dun reply. ‘Mam, if I dun know
who
, I’m going to have to search every cottage on the whole island …’ She’s using every colour of thread that she left behind her. Stitching diamonds full of secrets.

I start. I wasn’t asleep. Next to me on my pillow is a broiderie of Mam’s.

Threads tangled and knotted together on the back. I spread it out; the back of the picture is like a map. Threads lead everywhere, tangled together in knots and frays. I turn it over. It’s the broiderie she did of the owl with a woman’s face. The feathers are delicate and soft; shades of white, cream and honey-coloured threads. But her face is screaming, jagged black lines come from her mouth.

I roll it up and whisper, ‘Mam? Dun scare me …’ I listen, like she’ll speak, only she dun. The thought of Mam’s ghost being here makes my palms sweat though my fingers are freezing. Grandmam once told me ghosts could step inside the living and nudge the living person out. Though she made me scared of them, I still remember what she said:

Ghosts come after the living so them can possess us, step into our skins alongside us, breathe on just our in-breath, borrow half of our heartbeat, tangle half of our thoughts and choose from half our choices. But ghosts are greedy, them wants all of us. Ghosts dun get contentment with just half, them miss stupid things like thems own favourite foods, or the way them did thems hair, imagining it were better than anyone else’s. Ghosts dun want to share. If one side of a person’s face gets kissed and likes it well, what if the other side wants a kiss an’ all? Imagine if the side what got kissed was your face, and the ghost side of your face got jealous. What kind of a fight do you think that would make?

Like enough you’d never get kissed again, neither side of you
.

Dun want to share my body with a ghost – the feeling of anyone, even Mam, just stepping into me makes my skin prickle, like my body could be haunted without me even knowing.

Sometimes my body dun feel like it’s mine. It gets numb or I get an itch and dun feel how bad I’m scratching it, or I get a bruise but never felt the blow what put it there. Grandmam never meant to scare me, for she told me this story to get me to stop being grouchy. Her moral were all about folks being happier in our own skin.

From the outside, if a living person has got a ghost in them, them’d still look the same, as them’re sharing the same skin. Skin is important to ghosts, as it’s part of what them misses; to be touched. No one would notice, while them’re sharing nicely, for the ghost learns how to act like the living person them’re inside of, only once them gets the hang of it, them can just nudge the living person out
.

And no good can come of that
.

I put the broiderie of the owl woman in my drawer next to my box of keys. The box rattles. I take it out and put it on my bed. I pull Nell’s key from my dress pocket and it hums in my fingertips, sings with the feeling of her touch. I hear her voice in it:

This thing won’t go in the houses. Too wild for the indoors. Dun know how I know that, just feels right in my cockles, whatever them are. Doug’ll be angered when him comes round, only I’ve got to get him safe … that kind of wildness, it’ll tear at anyone in its path … not just the guilty … not just the tall men …

Nell’s key can’t tell me anything I need to know about Barney. Just Nell worrying over her Dougan, and thinking the tall men were guilty, as she were when she last touched it. I close my eyes and think of Barney, to make sure the metal hasn’t caught her thinking about him. But it’s blank behind my eyes. I put the key in my wooden box.

I’ve got the key from Chanty’s, but Annie never locks her door, nor Beattie, nor Jek. Them can’t think them’ve anything worth stealing. The keys in this box won’t tell me anything about Barney. But anything metal that folks have touched
since
Barney went missing, the metal will know. I need to get front door keys and listen to what them tell me. Keys will have all been touched often, and recent. And if someone has him hid, them’ll be locking thems door. So I’ve got to steal folks’ keys.

The floorboards creak as I stand up and push the moppet into my dress pocket. Dun want to sneak past Annie, so I pull on my boots, throw a thick shawl around myself and ease open the bedroom window. I climb out, drop down on the spiny grass and climb up the path to the cliffs.

I can hear the clicks, the whirrs, the creaks of the Thrashing House, only I know it’s inside of my head I hear it, like the thrashing is about to begin. It sounds like the beating of wood on stone. No. It’s my heart beating. Thudding and thwacking like there’s a judgment on
me
all the way from the Thrashing House. Is this how it calls, through a heartbeat? My heart thuds and thwacks as I climb the path and try not to slide where the soil is loose. I wonder what it feels like, to have truth thrashed out. If it hurts.

The smithy’s cottage windows are dark. I try the door, and it’s locked. There’s nothing by the door, no pot to hide a key under, so I go to the barn where him works, and listen. Nothing. I turn the handle and the door creaks open. I step inside.

The barn smells of burned saucepans. My eyes get used to the dark. In one corner is the forge, the great anvil stands next to it and I try not to trip over the tools with long handles him has left leaned up against all kinds of old blocks of wood. There’s a new birdcage hanging on a hook from a beam, all coils of metal and I think them’ve got great huge birds on the main land for the gaps between the bars are so wide. Unless them wear the birdcages like hats, for I never can tell which kind of fashion is going to take them all over from one month to the next.

On the ledge of the forge I find a box of matches. I strike one and walk back to the door. There’s no key in the lock. There’s wrenches hanging from hooks, sledge hammers leaned up against the wall. The match burns my fingers.

I drop it on the stone floor and light another. There’s a small set of drawers, the top one is full of nuts, bolts and hinges. The
match burns my fingers again so I shake out the flame and light another. In the next drawer down, there’s a clutter of chains. I spark another match and rummage in all the drawers. No sign of hims key.

Another match. There’s a box of tacks on top of the drawers. Underneath is a key. I pick it up, blow out the match and close my eyes. The smithy’s face swirls up, hims cheeks red from the fire. So this is the right key to hear hims voice in. I put the matches and the key in my pocket, creak the door open and go outside.

I walk up the hill to a long low cottage that old Jessup and her man live in. I look through the window next to the front door. A small room with a couple of stools, a great basket of raw wool, carders and a spinning wheel by the grate. I look through another window at the kitchen. There are milk pails on the table and ridged butter hands in a small washbowl. I try the front door, and them haven’t locked it. The key’s in the lock on the other side, so I put it in my pocket and close the door, quiet.

I pass a barn, the cows moan, thems hooves shuffle. Chickens squall and a cockerel shrieks and joins in, so I leg it back down the hill, past the well them all share and dun stop till I’m at Dougan’s barn. I lean on the wall till my breathing slows down, and walk, quiet.

Moira the cobbler, she’s not locked her door. Just behind the front door is her workroom. All her shoe trees with half-finished leather boots, a whole load of her tools laid out on the table, the awls what she stabs the holes in the leather with, her stretching pliers and the hammer she uses to bang the nails in the heels. She’s got leather strips piled on a shelf, and though the leather is from the tanners it’s lost the stench, for it’s been
cured. But I can’t see where she’d put a key. I go through the doorway at the back of her workroom and I’m in her kitchen. It’s all quiet. On the right of the kitchen there’s another door what’s open a crack – there’s just the sound of her breathing. In her kitchen, I strike a match. There’s a hatch to her storm room in the floor, so I open it and hold five lit matches down. There’s a stack of leather cut-offs in the corner and shelves with jars of pickled onions, cabbage and eggs. The steps on the ladder are dusty, so she’s not been down here for a while. She’s nothing to hide. I dun need her key.

Outside, I walk back towards the cliff path to go home. I’ll go out and get more keys tomorrow night.

I walk along a stone wall, there’s about nine dead moles hanging on string along the top. The farmers kill them and put them there, to show all the other moles what them’re up against. But moles are blind. That’s why them keep getting caught.

The Thrashing House looms tall and dark. I get nearer, and stop, dead.

It’s thrashing inside. Clicking and creaking and whirring and beating. It’s come alive with the thrashing. It’s made of dark wood and it stretches so high the sky spins. An owl hoots and I near scream out. It’s a pale barn owl, high on the roof. It swoops over me, wings spread wide. I turn, watch it circle over the beach and it flies off into the dark.

I take a step towards the Thrashing House, and another. This place is ancient. The arrows carved in the door point up, and down. The sounds punch through the air, it judders through the soil under my feet, the sound thwacks and beats and whirrs and
creaks like wood and I run to the top of the path what leads down the cliffs and I hit the top of the path too quick and

I trip

slide

fall,

catch my leg on a rock. Earth and sand fall away down the cliff. It’s a steep drop, right next to me. I pull myself away from the edge through damp earth, my heart thud thud thud against the soil. The soil thud thud thud against my chest. I feel with my hands, where folk’ve left footprints, for the crowd what put Da inside were stood right here. The Thrashing House creaks, groans, thwacks, but I pull myself towards it and slump on the ground. I push myself up and my fingers touch something metal. A heavy chain. It sings in my palm. There’s a link missing, the welding hasn’t held.

Something’s fallen off it.

I drop the chain and scrabble around in the footprints with my hands. The Thrashing House creaks and cracks and whirrs. My fingers find something else, cold and metal. Much heavier than the chain. It hums right through me. I sit up – it’s cold in my hands. This metal is strong. Old. I blink and the metal shows me a picture behind my eyelids.

I close my eyes, and see …

A tussle, the shoves and sounds of a crowd of people wash around me. Murmurs of ‘Speak. Speak. Speak,’ from voices of old and young, men and women. Annie’s husband Martyn’s voice. Slurred, confused. ‘No future here … not for Kieran …’ Another voice, Clorey’s, muttering over and over, ‘Better life than mine.’ Bill, Valmarie’s husband’s voice, sharp as slaps, ‘Jealous. Yes. No. Wanted her back. Got him gone …’ A picture of the Thrashing House, clicks of a lock, the door creaking open. Darkness inside. An angered shriek from a woman, the
woman wearing this key. Valmarie. The crowd pitching, pushing and shoving the men through the door, Bill’s face, turning, eyes wide, mouth like a cave …

The Thrashing House creaks and clicks and thuds.

The metal shows me a dark sky. Flashes of faces, shawls and brown boots, angered voices, the smell of trampled earth, the sea, the flames in the torches, the Thrashing House towering above, a wash of faces, colours behind my eyelids. Trapped in a murmuring crowd, elbows, knees, pushing and shoving … pushing, then … falling onto earth. Still. Silent.