Snake Ropes (4 page)

The tall men are at our door and I’ve little from my hands. Just a few thin white pockets I’ve broidered with grey rabbits. Them dun say anything about why there are so few broideries. Them hold up the pockets and one says, ‘Good size for mobile pouches, but they’d prefer owl motifs.’

I take what the tall men offer, which isn’t a lot.

Them give me another box of
exotic fruits
and some ice.

I dun tell them that one box of fruits isn’t enough to trade on for what we really need: all the milk, eggs, meat and vegetables what we get from the farms.

I say, ‘What’re them dried maggots you gave me the last time – what’re them meant for?’

The tall men look at me blank, so I show them the small sack.

‘It’s rice. From China,’ one says, like that should mean something.

Them heave the two barrels of fish down the beach to the boats. I put the ice in the cold room. Them bring back the empty barrels and leave them outside.

I go back into the cottage and the front door closes behind
me. In the box, there’s a great rough fruit with spikes of leaves on the top of it. It smells sweet enough but I dun know how to crack it open or how it should be cooked. And these small fist-sized fuzzy things again. Them have small round labels what say kiwi, and the picture of a fat bird. Dun think them’re eggs of any kind, but. I’ve still got some of these from last time, and them’ve just wrinkled up and stank the cottage out with the smell of piss.

Through the window I watch the tall men loading the boats. The crates of ropes are out there on the shore, the tall men pick them up, wearing thick gloves, and put them in thems boats, careful. The ropes are left on the edge of the beach before the dawn breaks. No one talks about them. Mam wouldn’t tell me – I asked, only she said, ‘Dun ever,
ever
touch the ropes – them’ve some bite in them.’ And she laughed like she dun mean it. Even when I’ve been up early, I’ve never seen who brings them, but the tall men always take them away.

There’s poison in the ropes. Them look like snakes with no heads, and them move, twist and coil. Little glints of sharpness are tangled through them, like teeth, but not shut away in a mouth where them belong. My shin is still bruised from where I got bit.

Some of the women are on the beach with baskets and boxes of cloths and linens, knits and weaves. Camery and Chanty carry a rolled-up tweed fabric them must’ve made in the Weaving Rooms. Chanty’s not long twenty-one, so she’s done well to learn that quick to make it. Or stuck out her lip and whinged enough to get a whole lot of women to help her with it more

like.

Jek’s caught eight barrels of fish and him helps the tall men drag them down the beach. Him passes my window, carrying a great sack of goods back to hims cottage. Camery follows him with a smaller bag, she pulls out a great big can with a blue label and shows it to him. Dun know how she’s going to get that can open. Never am sure about cans. I hardly ever open the ones I’ve got in the cupboard, unless we’re low on food, and I’ve sharpened a knife. The knife goes blunt getting just one open. Sometimes I’m not sure that what I find when I’ve opened the can is worth eating, for them’ve got the strangest foods on the main land. Chanty stomps past the window, carrying a small box of fruits.

Some of the tall men head to the path up the cliffs, off to the folk what dun come down to this beach. So everyone else is still getting thems trade done. I think of the tall man with Barney’s eyes. The salt and dust smell of him sticks in my nose. There’s something locked in the smell.

I get the moppet from the bedroom and go back to the window. Holding it up to my face, I stroke my cheek with its scratchy paws. I say, ‘What should I do?’

Barney’s voice speaks, ‘Tall man took me.’

I grip the moppet, hard. ‘Which one?’

‘Brown eyes.’

‘But I looked in the boats the day you were took and you weren’t there. Barney?’

The sound of the sea in the shell washes hims voice away.

I hug the moppet to me.

It can answer questions. So it’s real.

I pull at the front door, only it wants to stay shut. It’s all jammed up so I try the back door. I tug and kick at it but it dun want to let me out. I hear doors slamming and put my hands over my ears, only I can still hear them. I climb on the
table, open the window and jump out. I push the window shut.

Annie’s talking outside her cottage next door with one of the tall men. She looks like she’s been crying, only she’s stood up straight and sure enough with her jaw out. Her three black dogs stand behind her, them dun leap at him. The tall man gives her a hessian sack. She must’ve done a lot of knits this month. She’s still talking, like she does.

The tall men are shifting boxes and crates onto the boats. A stack of handmade paper, a small gate from the smithy, a basket of woollens. Everyone says the tall men all look the same as one another, but I can see thems faces are all different. I get closer, but not too close. I want to see thems eyes but my legs feel like them’re wading through thick water.

I blink hard, for the sky seems full of creases. I’m still too sick from the fever to be here on the beach. Lines of clouds on the horizon spread and split like strands of thread. The sun shines bright.

A sound of wings flapping. I look round and a barn owl is coming right at me. Usually barn owls fly silent, but this one is blustering, buffeting like it’s learning how to fly. Only as it gets closer I see its face. A woman’s face. Round like the moon, but angered and bruised, thick with frowns. It flickers and changes, like light jumping on the waves from the sun. An owl’s face. A woman’s. Owl’s.

I blink hard. My eyes aren’t right. I’m skittering back into the fever place again.

An owl’s face. Her head turns and her vicious eyes stare at me, like I’m an insect she’s hungry for. She hovers above me. I fall back on wet ripples of sand, my head too hot, my heart thud thud thud.

She swoops down so her face is close to mine.

Her white and golden feathers, hair, feathers, is all in tangles.

She screeches.

Her eyes burn. The sun shines white, too bright.

I shout, ‘Are you real?’

A couple of the tall men glance over at me but I dun think them can see her.

Her shriek is a tearing sound. Her woman’s face is cloudy and blue-grey, covered in bruises, or maybe that’s the colour of her skin. Can’t see her face for bruises, and it keeps flicking from owl to woman.

She lands on the sand next to me. Her breath stinks of blood. There’s a rattle in her throat what sounds like tiny bones breaking. She flicks her talonclaws in and out. She looks at me with longing … or hunger? She breathes so hard, the light feathers on her breast quiver. She’s searching for someone … not me. My hand reaches out to touch her feathers and I pull it back … she’s just an owl. Her voice screeches like it could tear the fur off mice. She leaps up into the sky and flies off, a flurry of pale wings, out to sea.

I’m breathing too hard. Two tall men carrying a heavy hessian sack walk up the beach towards me, heading to the path up the cliff. I scramble up, my dress soaked, my legs shaking with cold.

One of them is the one with Barney’s eyes. Him trails them eyes down my body. I wrap my arms around myself, step backwards into a deep puddle and the sea soaks into my boots.

I stutter out, ‘You—’ I try to say something else but my mouth won’t speak.

Him glances down my body again and says, ‘This one looks just like her dead mother.’ Him stares right at my eyes. I look away.

So him knew Mam.

‘Leave this,’ says the other. Them walk away up the beach. I wonder if … I wonder if Barney … I watch them struggle with the sack to the foot of the path what leads up the cliff. I wonder if Barney will ever be a grown-up, and look
just like him
.

But Mam can’t have bedded him. She couldn’t want to bed a tall man. Not Mam. Not ever Mam. She were a broiderer. The best broiderer. Everyone says so. If she’d bedded him, them’d never speak of her at all. Mam and Da fought sometimes, like any other pair, but them loved just as loud. Da would’ve smelled that tall man on her, for him stinks. Da would’ve smelled him and turned from her. But though she’s dead, Da loves her still.

Seawater soaks up my dress. My boots are full of freezing water. I stamp out of the puddle and onto the sand.

The other tall men are emptying barrels of fish into the boats – them never even saw the owl woman. Mam did a broiderie of an owl with a woman’s face, screaming. It were fearful. That broiderie is stuck in my head, twisting around. No real owl woman. Just a barn owl.

But that tall man’s eyes are really Barney’s. I watch him and the other tall man carry the sack up the path to the cliffs.

I dun look up at the Thrashing House while I pass it, dun breathe too loud neither. No one’s been put in there since I’ve been alive, but we all know to be careful. I keep following the two tall men south, along the cliff path.

Them turn off the path by a crumbling drystone wall. I follow them down the slope and up the next hill to the stone track, past a cluster of cottages and barns. Them are going to the track
what leads to the smithy, the cobbler’s and the glass-maker’s cottage and barn, where the furnace chimney blusters smoke into the sky.

As I walk, my damp dress sticks to my legs. I practise saying, ‘You … took Barney. Did you bed …’ But my throat’s closed up tight. I try, ‘Tell me tell me tell me,’ for I know I’m good at that, but I can’t speak louder than a whisper.

The tall men rap on the door to the cobbler’s and Moira opens it, her dark hair under a brown woollen shawl. She sees me and calls out, ‘Mary, you’re drenched, get yourself home – you’ll catch your death!’

The tall men put the sack down by her door. It has the word
lime
printed on it, and I’ve seen them sacks at Dougan’s furnace, so I think it’s for glass-making. Them’ll be going to Dougan’s barn after Moira’s done her trade. One of the tall men glances over hims shoulder at me, shakes hims head and turns back to Moira. She lets them in and shuts the door.

The wind blows against me and I’m freezing from the waist down, like there’s half a ghost living inside me. The chimney at Dougan’s barn is smoking. I walk over and bang on the barn door. Dougan screeches the door open, a rush of warm air floods over me.

‘Can I stand by your furnace? I’m soaked.’

‘C’mon then.’ Dougan wipes the sweat off hims bald head, steps back and I go inside. It’s all dark apart from the fire from the huge furnace. Him scratches hims grey beard and draws a chair up next to the fire. ‘Set yourself down there, I’ve got to get on, but.’ Him heaves an open hessian sack, which has the word
silica
printed on it, across the rough floor.

There’s a row of small glass squares on the table next to me. I say, ‘You’re making the windowpanes thinner, but the ripples are still there.’

Dougan says, ‘Takes years to learn to get the glass this thin and them’re still not even. Still like water, whether them’re thick or thin. My Dad never could get them all smooth, though him tried for near on forty years. Your panes holding firm Mary? Not had your Da round, not since the last storm.’

‘Them’re good strong windows at ours, the glass is thick.’ I look at hims big belly. ‘Dougan, Da is my Da, right enough, you never heard any of the men talk of it being … someone else?’

‘Now what’d make you say that? You know your Da’s your kin. You got it in your head you dun look like him or what?’ Him drags another opened sack of silica across the floor. ‘I should make you a proper mirror, girl.’

‘You’re all right, I’ve got a little mirror of Mam’s. But listen, there’s more women than men what live here – how do we know each Da is our own, for all of us? What if there’s not enough Da’s to go round?’

‘What’ve you gotten into your head? You got soaked down that there beach and come wandering – you getting all feverish? Just more women, for women have more daughters than sons is all. Heard you were sick. Should be in bed.’

‘But is him mine?’ I ask.

‘Course hims your Da, daft one.’ Him drags another open sack across the floor.

‘What about Barney?’ I ask. ‘Is him Barney’s Da too?’

Him lets the sack drop, the fine sand spills onto the dirt floor. Him stretches hims back, comes over and frowns at me. ‘Now what’s got you to thinking like this? What’s rattled you? It’s sad Barney were took, but what—’

‘Nothing.’ I pick up one of the windowpanes from the table and look at him through the ripples.

Him takes the glass from my hand, puts it back on the table.
‘Something’s done the rattling, not every day a girl comes round asking if her Da’s really hers …’ him says, quiet.

‘Think I’m seeing things. Now I’m sat by your fire, it feels like it were all in my head.’

‘Seeing things is it? My, you’re still sickly, but. Here.’ Him goes to the corner, snatches at a pile of cloths, comes back and throws a thick woollen checked blanket at me. ‘Wrap up in this and get yourself home. Your Da should get Valmarie to check on you. Get you some of her herbs.’

‘No, I’ll be right.’ I wrap the blanket around myself. ‘You getting a sack of lime from the tall men? Them’re next door.’