The Brides of Rollrock Island (24 page)

“Oh no,” said Sumner, but softly, as if he knew he had no power over this bustling person from Cordlin. He turned to glance up to Wholeman’s, where some of the dads were, all unsuspecting because the boat had come in so early; he sought out someone at Fisher’s, but all the men there were in conversation with the Fey’s captain, their backs to us.

The man unfastened the box and pulled out the front of it, folded like a concertina, and shook out a black cloth over the box and legs. I could not take my eyes from him, he was so energetic and mysterious. What might he do next?

But then Misskaella whistled.

“Oh, what is that?” said the ladies.

“What? They’re not done,” said Os Cawdron down from me. “They’re hardly even begun.”

But Misskaella had not whistled to signal the end of the washing. The dads on the wharf turned. They saw the box man and came running. Up at Wholeman’s men pushed out the door and along the rail, and two of them spilled under it and began to run down.

“Oh dear, Mister Thornly,” said one of the ladies, “I think they don’t want you taking photographs of their women.”

Ah, photographs—Mister Paste up at the school had told us about those. This, then, was a camera—a box for keeping light out, with an eye for letting light in.

“Now, excuse me, sir,” called out Mister Bannister, rounding off the seafront onto the mole. “We’ll have none of that.”

The camera-man straightened from his fiddling with the box, and watched our menfolk hurry at him. They stopped a few yards away, and the townswomen slightly clustered and clutched together at the sight. Beside these Cordlin clothes, our fathers’ dress looked dark and not quite clean; beside their small smooth faces, our dads’ were crumpled, darkened also. But that is not dirt, I protested to myself; that is sun and wind and weather—and whisky, for a couple of them, I admitted.

The man stood hands on hips. “But I came here specifically to make a photographic record.”

“And I’m sure we’re very happy for you to do that,” said Bannister, smoothing down the air while some of the men bristled behind him. “But we weren’t expecting you so early, and the women were planning to have this blanket work done before the boat came in. They’re not respectable, and we don’t want you taking unrespectable pictures back to mainland, do we?”

“We certainly don’t,” said Bern O’Day crisply, and a touch threateningly.

“And showing them about,” said Bannister. “And Cordlin people thinking we let our wives get about like that, all bare-legged.”

The mams eyed each other’s water-thickened shins, exchanged baffled looks.

“What is wrong with legs?” muttered Oswald, bending his head to look at his own. The sunshine fizzed in the red bristles on the back of his head.

“We don’t wish to offend, I’m sure,” said the pink-cheeked
lady loudly. “But Mister Thornly here is both an anthropologist and an artist. I think you can rest easy that he will make no inappropriate use of his pictures.”

“Can we, now?” said Corbell snakily, back in the crowd.

“I’m sure we can,” said Bannister, smoothing the air again.

“It is his project,” the lady trumpeted on, giving a little flick of her parasol as if to say she would not allow herself, or any of her people there, to be trifled with, “to document all the customs and habits of the people of these isles, for posterity.”

“I think your wives are beautiful!” said the camera-man. How white he looked after our dads, like a man made of china—and how could he think they wanted to hear such a thing from his mouth? Misskaella was walking slowly toward us from the mole end; Trudle danced along behind her as if bored. Everything was so unusual, I did not think it improbable that Misskaella would pick up the man, or his photographic camera, and smash one or the other of them on the rocks.

“And while they are engaged in this traditional …” The man looked at the blankets properly for the first time. “What is it, exactly?”

The younger lady said very distinctly and flatly, “They are soaking and mending their private blankets.” I heard the tiniest snort from the lady next to her, and another of the younger ladies turned my way to cover her laughter, saw me looking and brought her parasol down over her face, where it shook a little. Very suddenly I wanted to snatch and throw that parasol, or poke her with its sharp point, or wallop her head free of its little ornamental hat.

“Private blankets?” said the camera-man, as if all the wind had gone out of him. “Well, then, I suppose …”

“Oh, but I’m sure this has never been recorded before!” cried one of the young ladies, from sheer mischief—just look at her swaying there, her wide eyes.

“Of course not, Georgette,” said Missus Pink-Cheeks, putting a heavy hand on Georgette’s arm. “Because it is
private
.”

“I’m only saying, it is a valuable anthropological record—”

“Hush, now.”

And the camera-man folded his black cloth—very precisely, and you could tell from the folds that he always folded it exactly this way. When he was done, he collapsed his camera into its box and gathered its legs together.

The dads’ shoulders had dropped, and Job Cress and Michael Lexly were walking away back to the boat. Misskaella had stopped halfway to us. The mams sat quietly, watching the ladies, and all us boys glanced about like chickens looking for seed, keeping an eye on everyone.

“Well, where is a good prospect for capturing some scenic views of the island?” said the camera-man. “If you’ve no objection to
that
.”

“Watch-Out Hill, I should say,” said Bannister.

As he described how the man should reach there, the Cordlin ladies took a last look at our mams there in the shallows with the blankets nodding and bubbling all around them, and drifted after the menfolk.

Seal-ladies
. Why had they called our mams seals? They had strange ideas, mainlanders, and they were not shy to spread them about.

John Abut trickled out of the group of dads and round to Misskaella as she moved up again, to resume her usual pacing
beside the blanket menders. “Be as quick as you can,” I heard him mutter to her, “and get them out of sight.”

“
I
did not bring the
Fey
early,” she said. I was glad I was not Abut, the look she gave him.

“Of course you didn’t. But we don’t want any more busy-bodying, that’s all. Cordlin people making fun.”

“Why should you care?” said Misskaella, quite loudly, though the Cordlin people had already wandered too far along the mole to hear. “Why should it matter what Cordlin people think, when you have the most beautiful wives in the world?”

One cold, windy afternoon a gaggle of us took shelter in the back of the pub. The first snow had fallen, but that was days ago, and it was only rotten bits lying in the shade of walls, nothing useful. We had made a man of what we could find in the yard at the back, but he was not much more than a snow blob, it had gone to such slop—although we had given him a fine rod, the brace of a broken bar stool that Wholeman had put out the back for mending, so you knew at least he was a man blob.

Anyway, it was beastly cold and the wind had begun to nip and numb us, so we came in the back door, and it felt like heaven, just the little heat that had leaked out into the hall from the snug. No one was about, to tell us to hie on out again before our ears turned blue from the language we might hear, so we milled there thawing out and being quiet.

I had hold of the lid of the chest against the wall and was
about to see if I could haul it open, when Aran Bannister said, “Hey, lads,” in a soft voice that made us all look up. He stood at the storeroom door, its padlock in his hand.

“How is that?” whispered Raditch. The door stood a crack open. All the bigger boys were stilled, frightened by the sight—and perhaps by the smell that spilled out, seawater, sour and cold.

“Wholeman must have left it,” said Raditch. “Wholeman must store other stuff in there.”

“What stuff?” said Johnny Baker. “Would there be food, mebbe? Would they notice a little gone? Peanuts or something?”

Aran’s frightened look changed to hopeful naughtiness, and he pulled the door wider. We crowded forward to see, but none of us went in. There seemed hardly room for us.

“Lemme see!” Kit Cawdron pushed among us to the front and stopped there, baffled. “Why, it’s full of … coats, are they?”

“Of course they’re coats, you gosling,” said Aran. “They’re the mams’ coats.
Your
mam’s is in there somewhere.”

“My mam’s coat is on the hook at home, thank you very much,” said Kit. “Why would she wear one of these?”

“Hush, Kit,” said Raditch, “or the dads’ll hear and belt us. You should shut this, Aran, and lock it properly.” But he craned his neck just as hard as the rest of us.

“It’s her seal-coat.” Aran bent to Kit and spoke most carefully and quietly, as if Kit were very stupid. “From when she was in the sea. That she shook off to have you and Os.”

I stared in at the things. Now I could see their shapes better in the dimness. I shivered. “I don’t like the way their heads go.”

“They’re more capes than coats, aren’t they?” said Angast beside me. “They’ve no arms, that I can see.”

“No, they come in at the bottom,” breathed Toddy Marten at my shoulder. “That’s not like a cape.”

“They’re not capes
nor
coats,” said Grinny sturdily. “They’re skins, off seals, and so they look like seal.”

“Off our
mams
?” said Kit, disbelieving.

But I knew it was true. With a thump like a storm wave’s onto Forward Beach it came true for me.
I come from the sea
, Mam said. I had always thought she meant from a boat there; I had imagined each mam of ours had her own boat, that she stood at the helm of, her hair streaming on the wind, her face joyful with being afloat and in command. But no, it was this; I could tell from the sea-smell, and the other with it, of animal. It was exactly the smell of my mam when she lay with her tears-blanket. Except that she was warm then, whereas this smell pouring from the door chilled us, froze us all together in a lump.

Deep in among us, Johnny Baker hissed, “Can anyone see the
peanuts
?”

And that unfroze our solemn-ness, him thinking of his stomach. A couple of snorts sounded, and a
John-ee, show respect!

“Come, let’s have a look,” said Aran, pretending to be brave, and some of us followed him in—not many, for the skins filled the room up pretty thoroughly.

“Ain’t they strange?” said Angast among the glimmering, glooming shapes. “Like people themselves.”

“They’re
pretty
,” said Raditch. “All different speckles. And smooth. Have a feel.”

“Pretty and smooth, just like a mam,” said Grinny from the door. Some giggled, and some jumped on Grinny and started quietly fighting.

“I wish I could
see
,” said Raditch. “I’m sure the heads should not look so frightening. What have they done to them?”

“Bring one out,” suggested Angast, “to the better light.”

I was glad to go out ahead of him; that room was too much for me, the heavy things pressing us, rustling, hung so closely. They made noises as we pushed among them, as if they were alive—they sighed and squeaked and clicked in their throats. And the unhappy smell weighed in my chest more like water than air.

We managed to get one of the smaller ones out. Aran took the wooden ball from where it had shaped the head skin, the hook protruding out the mouth hole. We passed it boy to boy, while each had a stroke of the coat-stuff, sheeny and dark, the markings more faded than on a live seal. And each boy tried the skin on awhile, except Kit Cawdron, who would not. I cannot describe to you the feeling of putting it on. It was as if you found yourself suddenly right down in the slime at the bottom of the sea, with nothing above you but black water.

“How do they
swim
in these things?” said Raditch, elbowing inside so that the flipper flapped.

“It is bonded to them properly,” said Aran. “And the water holds them up,
you
know. You have seen seals aplenty.”

Jakes Trumbell was the only one who pulled the hood over his face, and we made him stop when he looked out the eyes and lurched at us, for he had dark, mam-type eyes, and it was too eerie.

“It
smells
,” he said, taking it off. I sniffed the arm of my woolly
to see if the smell had stuck. It was hard to say. The whole air, the whole hall there, was greenish with latening afternoon and seaweedishness. Would Mam smell it on me later? Would it send her into a mood?

“Cawn, Kit,” said Aran to Cawdron, “let us see you in it; you will make a great little mam, you’re so pretty.”

“Not on your nelly,” Cawdron said. “It’ll drown me, that will.”

“Come on; it will suit you so well.”

And seeing as there was nothing else to do but persuade him, we set to it, and Jakes hauled out another bigger coat and put it on, and urged some more, and before too long we had weakened the poor lad sufficiently to drape the thing on him, dark and gleaming.

Along the hall the snug door opened. We scrambled to hide what we were doing. Somehow the coatroom door got closed and the coats were hid behind legs and we were all lounging idle and innocent when Batton-and-Johnny’s dad passed us on his way out to the pisser.