Snake Ropes (21 page)

Footsteps thud behind me. I turn, and the door clicks shut. There in the middle of the floor is a rolled-up piece of grey fabric, the back criss-crossed with embroidery threads. It wasn’t on the floor when I came in. I can’t stop thinking of her, because she’s making me. Poor, dead Beatrice.

I pick it up and unroll the fabric. It’s an embroidery of this family’s tree. She’s stitched on all the names, embroidered leaves around them, stitched the trunk in ochre and earth-coloured threads. Shown all the connections with twigs.

There’s another name on this family tree and it links itself to Beatrice’s. Beatrice had a brother or sister. The name of their father is the same but the mother is different. The name of Beatrice’s sibling is embroidered over in thick black stitches, uneven and angry.

Jig jag.

She’s stitched them out of the tree. Mary has an aunt or uncle. She could have gone to them. With a small knife from the kitchen, I cut away the black threads. The name underneath is stitched in crimson thread.

The name of Mary’s aunt is
Kelmar
.

Annie mentioned her. The woman with white boots I saw at the graveyard. Mary’s brother is here on the tree as well, his name should be next to hers, but it’s been sewn in a little untidily. Barney. The picture of a small rabbit stitched next to him. Only three years old. So little. Mary said he was locked in the Thrashing House, somewhere Annie is scared of. She’s a grown woman. He’s far too little to be frightened.

So I have three reasons to go to the Thrashing House:

1) I want to get Mary’s brother out for her to make up for taking the Thrashing House key.

2) I really want to see what it’s like inside.

3) The Thrashing House beckoned me.

And I have three choices, so when it’s dark, and no one will see me, I’m going to do all of them:

1) Go to the Thrashing House and get Barney out.

2) Find stitched-out Kelmar.

3) Find Mary.

Just three things to do. Then I can come back to this cottage and wait for boats, and when I leave this island, I’ll do so clean and light. Unlike my father, I’ll have no guilt at all.

I’m sat on one of the twin’s beds, all clean, a damp towel wrapped around me, hiding my bindings what’re drying quick and getting too tight. My hair’s been combed and braided. The twins unravelled the tangles I thought I’d already ripped out. Four vicious hands tugged and twisted, pulled and tweaked. I feel like I’m not really here. A red ribbon pinches the top of my head; them have fixed it so firm that it stings. Them told me, ‘To be pretty, it has to hurt.’ The twins said my hair is too lovely for my dress what I’ve scrubbed clean and left hung to dry over the side of the washtub.

The one in grey – Ash, she said her name were, when yanking my hair – has gone off to get me an old dress of thems Mam’s from a dress-up box. Hazel is standing by the door watching me, kicking one bare foot against the other.

Ash comes back in with a black linen dress. I take it into the washroom where my drawers and vest are nearly dry. I put them on and pull the dress over my head. It’s far too wide but it covers me from neck to ankle.

I come out into thems bedroom and say, ‘Who did the drawing of the boy?’

Ash sits on the bed on one side of me and Hazel on the other.

Hazel says, ‘I’ll give you two answers – you have to guess the right one. My answers are: My sister. And. You did.’

‘Which sister? Ash or Morgan?’ I ask, quick.

Hazel says, ‘We’ve got a question for you, so we’ll tell you, if you answer
our
question first.’ She goes to the mirror, picks up a pink ribbon and ties it in her hair. Ash follows her and unties her own grey ribbon and hands it to Hazel, who puts it in her hair as well. Both of them are watching me in the mirror. I hear a thump in the room. Them are thinking so loud the air feels thick.

Them stare at me.

I stare back.

No one in this house has spoke to me of Morgan yet. Them tricked me into saying her name. That will be thems question:
Where is Morgan
? We’re face to mirror to face to face. Not one of us wants to speak the truth.

But I say, ‘Ask me then.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘What?’

Ash says, ‘Outside. Where you saw Morgan. What’s she hearing that we’re not. What’s she looking at. What can she smell.’

‘What’s she eating, who’s she talking to, what can she see that we can’t see—’

‘You’re not asking these like questions. Just saying—’

Ash says, ‘Too many questions stop sounding like questions when we think them a lot.’

Hazel says, ‘We can stop being friendly. Because we’re—’

‘You dun have any friends.’

‘We’ve got an axe,’ says Ash.

‘Good for you. So?’

‘We can get out whenever we want. We need to plan it—’

‘—make sure outside is better. In case Mum hammers a plank over the hole we axe out of the fence, so we can’t get home.’

I smooth my hand over the soft bedspread. ‘If I tell you what it’s like outside, will you tell me about the picture?’

‘Are there any places we can have?’

‘Houses just for us. Without a fence—’

‘—for us together.’

‘No parents—’

‘—no sisters. Only for twins.’

‘No, the cottages are all lived in. You dun want an old rotten barn, not after living here.’

‘We might.’

‘Are there mice in it?’

‘Aye, I’d have thought so.’

‘That sounds perfect.’

‘It’d be cold in a barn. No toys. No food. You wouldn’t like it. Smells of cow shit. You’d be dirty all the time. And the mice dun do being friendly. Them’d chew off your fingers when you were asleep. Tell me the truth about the picture.’

Hazel frowns at me. ‘Why haven’t
you
had your fingers chewed off?’

‘I dun live in a barn.’

‘Can we have your house then, since you’re not in it?’

‘There’s a ghost in it.’

‘Morgan will love that.’

‘Never said she were there, did I?’

Ash says, ‘You thought it.’

I glare at her. ‘What do you mean, she’ll love it?’

‘She likes ghosts. More than she likes us.’

‘Come on, she dun.’

‘Does. Wants to live with the little girl one.’

I look round the room. ‘She see any ghosts in this house then?’

‘No, she says it won’t have any, not till someone
dies.’

I say, ‘Well, you’d best keep that axe of yours safe then.’

Them glance at the wall-hanging in the corner.

I cross the room to the corner. ‘Can Morgan talk to ghosts – hear what them say?’ I stroke the fabric wall-hanging, run my fingertip over one of the silver-painted trees.

Hazel nods.

‘So if Morgan were in my cottage, and I’m not saying she is, mind, if there were a ghost there, she could ask it a question for me?’

‘Of course she could.’

‘Now, in case your Mam or Da ask, we dun talk about Morgan. And if you tell me about the picture of the boy, I won’t tell your Mam where you’ve got your axe hid.’

The twins come rushing at me, as I find the axe leaning in the corner behind the wall-hanging.

I say, ‘So the picture – who drew it?’

‘It wasn’t me,
or
Hazel
or
Morgan,’ mutters Ash. ‘It was
you.’

I tell them not to lie to me, and at least tell me something I can believe in.

Hazel says, ‘No, Mum draws the picture, but you draw
on top
of it. With your eyes.’

‘Load of skank,’ I mutter.

Hazel sighs.

I say, ‘All right. How do my eyes draw the boy?’

Hazel says, ‘Because that’s what you want to see the most.’

Ash poses, her face rests on her hand like she’s in a drawing. ‘Mum draws what she thinks she’s drawing. When someone else looks at it, they see what they really
want
to see. You saw a boy you love.’

Hazel nudges her, ‘Not what she really drew.’

I slump back on the bed. I thought someone here’d seen him. I thought … I just want to be little like this pair, and I can’t. I curl up on the bed and can hardly breathe, for the bindings are tight round my chest, and them feel like them’re coming loose as I sob. The stain from my tears spreads across the bedspread. Tears come out of my eyes, nose, mouth. I’m brimming with sea.

She crawls across the sand towards the quiet waves as I approach her. Her white hands and feet shine underneath the decaying animal pelt. Underneath the pelt, her hair is tangled and thick, the colour of ink. The crying naked woman. Still naked beneath the pelt. Still crying.

I stop next to her and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ My voice is shaking.

She twists her face towards me and hisses, ‘Get. Gone.’ The pelt slips from her shoulder, her pale skin is almost blue. She pulls the pelt around herself and old dead fur sticks to her damp hands.

‘You’re freezing.’ I squat down next to her, the pelt smells of soil and decay. I cover my nose.

The head of a seal hangs over her shoulder. Its collapsed eyehole has a fly buzzing at it.

I flick it away and say again, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing to do with you.’

‘Don’t—’

‘You’ve no right to care. Never seen you before. Won’t see you again.’

‘Someone has to.’

‘Someone does. It’s not enough. Leave me.’

‘Why isn’t it enough?’

‘Care is
selfish
.’

‘Don’t do this—’

‘You think … well, I’m not. Drowning myself. I’m releasing myself. Get. Gone.’ She rolls onto her front and crawls towards the waves.

I walk beside her.

She stops, frozen, one white arm outstretched. ‘I said—’

‘Releasing what?’

‘None of your concern. Go.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Don’t. Do. Anything.’

‘Do you need—’

‘I need to get into the sea.’

My chest aches as I walk backwards away from her. She crawls, her shoulders heave her towards the incoming tide. The pelt shifts and sways on her back, sheds dry fur and soil. The claws trail from the back of the pelt and leave scratches in the wet sand.

There’s no wind. Far out at sea, underneath the waves, the currents twist and surge. I turn away. On a distant cliff, a lone woman stands watching.

I look back at the sea. The woman crawls into the waves. I go back into Mary’s cottage, kick the door shut behind me and lock it. In Mary and Barney’s bedroom I plunge myself down on Mary’s bed.

I punch at the mattress, because the crying naked woman says it’s selfish to care and I want to stop caring but I can’t … and it might be that my mother was right and all the people here
are
mad, so I shouldn’t care about any of them, but maybe
it’s all right to care about mad people, but maybe she’s right and it isn’t, and there might be boats coming soon but I want to stop caring so I can just stay here and watch for them, and not think about someone choosing to die, and not wanting help or care when that’s all I’m able to give … and she doesn’t want these things, so I feel like I’ve got no choices because she’s making the biggest choice of all, and I feel as if I’ve been punched by her choice, but I haven’t, but this is a punch, a thud, she’s going to drown … I thump and bang my fists at the mattress till the dust clouds make me sneeze.

My heart pulses in my throat as I lean on the table and look out at the beach. A thick fog is coming in fast. A seal’s head bobs in the small waves and is caught in the ripples of the windowpane, magnified and shrunk.

The crying naked woman has drowned.

A feeling in my chest, of loss, of grief, of something I don’t have words for. Something that could drown me if I let it. I pick up the bottle of forgetting herb that I took from her house, and read the label:

One spoonful for every day that needs forgetting.
Amend dosage as required. Do not overuse
.

I put just one drop of the bitter liquid on my tongue.

Through the window, the empty sea. A beach is covered in fog. I’ve been standing here at this window … how long … I stare and stare and stare out at the fog. What’s this bottle? Forgetting herb … a herb to forget … and I’ve … forgotten I have it in my hand.

Faces come out of the fog.

Two women in shawls, their cheeks pressed against the windowpanes. Eyes uneven, cheeks twisted, lips askew. An enormous hand taps on the glass.

I shake myself, back away from the faces and bundle myself into a brown musty coat. On the table are … Annie’s letter and the Thrashing House key. I was going to do something … before … the fog came in.

The Thrashing House.

I shove the key and letter in the coat pocket. At the window, one face disappears. The front door handle rattles, so I leave the cottage through the door at the back.