Impossible Causes

by Julie Mayhew

  Then Mary Ahearn was at our door, come the summer’s end, uncharacteristically thin from her grief, a summer dress hanging loose across her collarbones, Jade-Marie in her arms, a baby with springy curls and fat wrists. Mary begged my father for work and when he said that he had nothing, that what she was asking for was unreasonable, impossible, she grew hysterical, threatening. My mother lifted Jade-Marie from her arms and placed the soft animal weight of her in my lap at the kitchen table, before leading Mary into the back garden to talk more privately. Jade-Marie had snuffled and blown bubbles, staring up at me expectantly with her green-brown gaze. So, I had sung to her, because that seemed to be the answer to everything then: ‘Lord of the Dance’ – we had just learnt the harmonies in Sunday School.

  Here, my mind stalled. It couldn’t have been that song, the same one that Jade-Marie had, all grown-up, bellowed in chapel at the beginning of term. My mind was playing tricks.

  I searched my memory for details that were definitely true.

  The huge metal cross at the end of the harbour – that was real. It was still there, erected after a campaign by Jacob and Diana Crane, in memory of the drowned men, to protect the island from another fishing disaster. Single lives had been lost before but never ten men all in one go. Trawlers were usually crewed by four, maybe five. That there had been so many aboard one boat was unnecessary, maybe even dangerous. It must have been a time when we were more desperate for fish.

  That harbour cross always nagged at me; I didn’t like it. It was ugly and ostentatious. A contradiction.

  ‘Not a man has died on the boats since that cross went up,’ Diana Crane liked to boast to whoever would listen, which meant that it was nothing but a charm to appease a magpie god, no different from a rabbit’s foot, or a hag stone, or the stroke of the mane of a black-haired virgin.

  I don’t know how long I was lost to these reflections, but when Margaritte spoke, it felt as though I had been in a deep sleep and she was pulling me to its surface.

  ‘The cross wasn’t put there to stop bad things happening,’ she told me.

  I leapt up from the table, red wine splashing across the cards. How did she know what I’d been thinking? My hands went to my scalp, as if I might stop her reaching in and seeing more.

  ‘The cross was put there to keep a story straight,’ she said. No more tears. She was dry-eyed and deadly serious. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Trust your instincts,’ she instructed.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘okay.’ I backed towards the door, smiling because I wanted everything to seem fine, normal. I was lifting the carpet, sweeping it all underneath. ‘I’ll see you next week,’ I told her, leaving as calmly as I could.

  That was the first Tuesday of Advent.

  The goat was found on Saturday.

  DECEMBER 2017

  They were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the stone circle, despondent.

  Anna, Britta and Jade-Marie wore their white nightdresses over their school uniforms, coats on top. Viola was zipped up in a long, maroon padded jacket that belonged to her mother – Deborah Kendrick preferring the moth-eaten sheepskin for her vigils on the veranda. All of Viola’s mainland coats were too thin for the dropping temperatures, no matter how many jumpers she layered underneath.

  The girls had offered to get Viola a nightdress too, which had thrilled her initially as a sign of acceptance, but she had politely declined. Viola’s confession, the afternoon of their first meeting – the whole truth of it spilling out of her, the reason why she and her mother had left their old life to be here on Lark – had allowed the girls to confess in return. They were the keeper of each other’s worst experiences now – but this had reduced some of the trappings of their magic. Once Viola understood why the Eldest Girls gathered at the stones, what they were trying to achieve, she couldn’t see how a nightdress would help.

  Nothing was working. Terrible things continued to happen. The sky was darkening, the ground was cold and hard. They rested their chins on their hands, their elbows on their knees.

  Viola could feel it festering within them all – the notion of futility.

  She had to do something, say something, lift them from this abyss.

  ‘There is a reason,’ she said, ‘why none of this is working.’

  Viola poked a finger at the pebbles that they had carved into runes. Beside them was a bowl of water in which they hoped to catch the reflection of the waxing fingernail moon.

  Britta sat up, always primed to challenge. ‘Oh, yeah. And what reason’s that?’

  Viola met her gaze squarely. ‘It’s because none of us believe it will work.’

  They were all quiet in response; no quick rebuttals. She was right, their faith had wavered.

  A tealight candle flickered out in the twitching of the winds.

  ‘So,’ shrugged Britta, ‘what are we supposed to do?’

  ‘Stop dabbling at the edges,’ came Viola’s definite response.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I say we do something big.’ Viola could feel it, the sensation growing inside her – rebellion, recklessness, an appetite for fire. ‘I say we do something that will actually make a fucking difference.’

  She had never heard the girls swear and hoped that her use of the word would demonstrate her seriousness, shock them into action.

  ‘But, what is there left?’ Jade-Marie asked. ‘What haven’t we tried?’

  ‘Plenty!’ Viola recruited each one of them in turn with a fervent stare.

  She was not as steeped in all this as they were, but she had read books that they hadn’t, seen films, visited museums. She knew the extremes – where they needed to tread. An image came to her of a glass cabinet in a gallery seen on a school trip, way back. Within that cabinet a grisly offering, the bloody object of a curse, with a handwritten card explaining how it had been used.

  She relayed it to the girls, Anna looking sick at the suggestion.

  ‘But that’s a bad spell,’ said Jade-Marie. ‘We don’t do bad spells, only good.’

  ‘Says who?’ Britta replied quickly.

  Jade-Marie was emphatic. ‘No, Brit, that’s not right. We turn our cheeks, like my dad did. We respond in the right way, we don’t stoop to their –’

  ‘And how did that work out for your dad, then?’ Britta was enraged. Jade-Marie’s eyes welled. ‘Turn the other cheek?’ Britta spat. ‘Turn the other cheek! You know how the rest of that passage goes, don’t you? It says that, if they’ve taken our shirts, we should hand them our coats too. You want to do that, do you?’

  Jade-Marie hung her head.

  Britta bellowed out a great cry of frustration. Anna put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, pulling her back from the edge, before carefully manoeuvring herself towards it.

  ‘But if we were to do this,’ she said, ‘and we were acting against evil, then it would be a good thing.’ They all looked at her – cool, calm Anna, the voice of reason. ‘We would be doing God’s work even,’ she went on, ‘because, well, that man would deserve everything he –’ She paused here to glance at Viola, ‘– everything he fucking gets!’

  They allowed themselves to laugh at that. Viola thought of Macbeth, the play text she had almost given the girls, and a school production she’d seen back home where the Weird Sisters had cackled manically at the end of every scene. How she’d rolled her eyes at their performances, but just look at her now.

  ‘We have to believe, though,’ Viola put in, returning them to the seriousness of their cause. ‘It will never work, if we don’t truly believe.’

  ‘I believe,’ said Britta defiantly, as if swearing an oath.

  ‘I believe,’ said Anna.

  ‘I believe,’ said Jade-Marie.

  Viola echoed them – ‘I believe’ – because in that moment she did, or she truly wanted to, or she understood that this was all that was available to them. These girls were her family, her sisters, and there had to be a way to stop terrible
things happening to the ones you loved.

  They went sky-clad that afternoon as the light faded. Viola couldn’t remember who suggested it. Perhaps it was a collective, organic impulse, that sloughing off of their clothing, bringing themselves forward naked, ready for the next phase. No longer were they children flirting with symbols and chants; they were women with a power that no longer frightened them.

  Viola had always shielded her body in the school changing rooms but this situation did not compare. She felt free, unleashed from judgment. Of course, she noticed their individual differences as they undressed – the flatness or not of their stomachs, the shape of their thighs, the spread of their pubic hair – but she felt no embarrassment, no sense of competition, not even the fleeting, confusing sensation of desire. The girls’ bodies, she had thought, would look like they belonged on Lark. They would be country bodies, feral and tight and brown, their heels blackened from contact with the earth, but this wasn’t the case. The Eldest Girls were as inconvenient and as pale as Viola, because Lark’s landscape wasn’t one you romped across or lounged upon. You battled with it. You wore clothing like armour.

  The four girls lifted their arms to the darkening sky, shivering. It was so very cold.

  ‘We are here for you, Bethany Reid!’ said Britta. ‘You are not forgotten.’

  ‘And to the ten men gone,’ called Anna.

  ‘We defend the ones we love from evil,’ said Viola, her voice strong and loud.

  ‘No matter what!’ affirmed Jade-Marie.

  And then there was a flash.

  The girls gasped and wrapped their arms around themselves. There had been no rain, no thickening of the air to suggest a storm was upon them. Had they brought this burst of light into being with their naked conviction? Was this a sign that those on the other side could hear their pleas, that they were there now, with them in spirit?

  Then came laughter. Male laughter.

  Anna realised first; screaming, crouching low, snatching at one of the oversized nightdresses to cover herself. Another flash, and Jade-Marie, Britta and Viola were grasping for clothing too. Not fast enough. Another flash. The girls bundled together – one cold, pale animal with many naked limbs.

  The figure was indistinct, dancing within the shivering circle of light printed on their retinas, becoming clearer with every blink.

  ‘Go away!’ shrieked Jade-Marie. ‘Go away!’

  ‘Why is he here?’ cried Britta. ‘Oh, god, I can’t believe he’s seen us like this!’

  ‘He has a torch,’ said Anna. ‘Why’s he flashing us with a torch?’

  ‘No,’ said Viola. ‘It’s not a torch.’ She was the only one who recognised that smooth rectangular object in his hands. ‘It’s not a torch,’ she said, the words seeming to soothe them, though they should have done the opposite. ‘It’s not a torch, it’s not a torch.’

  FRIDAY THE 13th – APRIL 2018

  Viola fills a glass, the squealing of the tap so loud in the silence of the cottage. She pours half of the water into a cereal bowl and places it on the floor for Dot, who is panting expectantly at her feet, then walks through to the tiny living room, eyeing the fine fissures in the walls, the quality of the carpet, the small pieces of furniture, as if she were a prospective tenant.

  Through the oatmeal glow of the closed curtains, Viola can clearly make out the large paint splat coating much of the front window, the shadow of it like an oversized hand. She turns her attention to the charred stillness of the fireplace next, to the shelf above, where there is a framed family portrait. Peter Cedars, the gamekeeper, stands at the back. He is upright, smiling, would be almost unrecognisable if it weren’t for the distinctive crinkle of his eyes. Viola feels a tightening of her throat at the sight of him, at this strange, lighter version. He is holding hands with a woman – Susannah Cedars it must be, though she too is hard to recognise. Her hair is long in this picture, and Viola has only ever seen the woman from a distance, her face raw from crying.

  Leah Cedars poses stiffly, soldierly, at the front, looking around thirteen or fourteen years of age. Her dress with its velvet yoke and ribbon at the neck belongs to a much younger girl. Her smile is wide but rigid, and she has a very late gap in her teeth at the side of her mouth. The boy beside her is eight or thereabouts, wearing tailored shorts, cut high on his skinny legs. He doesn’t fit in; he isn’t even trying to smile.

  Viola finds herself staring at this boy, who is real and not real, wondering why she hasn’t met him yet, if she has failed to recognise his corresponding adult walking past her on the cobbles. But it is not just the anonymous boy that makes this picture feel off-kilter. It takes Viola a moment to realise what unsettles her: no one takes photos on Lark. On the mainland, every moment is captured, a phone is pulled from the pocket, and snap – happiness recorded, memories logged, shame inescapable forever.

  People back home complained that photos never got printed anymore, that they sat idle and unlooked-at on hard drives, but that wasn’t true. Cabinet tops were clustered with framed holiday pictures, and school portraits trailed up stair walls. Bleached-out studio sessions looked down upon kitchen tables. Viola’s mother had gone around their house after the tragedy and taken down every single picture, not able to cope with the way a gaze might catch your eye and seem so alive. She’d put them all in a box, shoved behind the vacuum cleaner in the understairs cupboard, perhaps so Viola would not find them and be tempted to put them back. Her mother did not realise that that cupboard was the first place anyone would look.

  Viola had found them, of course, taking one framed photo for her suitcase – all four of them in an open canoe, oars aloft, victorious. It was taken the summer before; the family at its zenith, joy unsullied, because no one in that picture knew that it would soon end.

  The only other photos Viola has seen on the island, apart from this staged mantelpiece portrait, are on the wall of the Customs House – historic pictures of the estate.

  And, of course, there are the pictures that Mr Hailey took.

  It occurs to Viola that Mr Hailey might have taken pictures of Leah too. It feels good to think of the teacher by just her first name. The Eldest Girls still called her Miss Cedars out of habit; Viola always hit the L hard, demeaning her, making her small.

  She heads upstairs, cautiously, as if someone might be sleeping there. The stairs are steep and the landing is but a metre squared. To the left, there is a step that leads down into a bathroom with a pastel blue curtain around the tub. Viola enters, feeling the air still misted from an early-morning shower. She opens the cabinet above the sink, finds very little, just moisturiser, aspirin, an almost empty tube of steroid cream. She presses a muddy boot to the pedal of the small bin by the toilet and is hit by the stale smell of blood. Inside are sanitary towels soaked through, bright red – too red, almost. She exclaims and backs away.

  Across the landing is the bedroom; the curtains are open here, the window framing the tallest bobbing masts of the harbour. On the outside of the glass, there is a small spray of red paint spots from the main splash of it below. A crudely carved wooden heart hangs on a length of brown cord wound around the window catch. The object is almost as lumpy and malformed as an anatomical heart, rather than smooth and symmetrical, like the symbolic one it is supposed to resemble. That Leah Cedars would display this in her home and not be reminded of all that has happened only deepens Viola’s mistrust of the woman.

  To the right of the window is a door that she pushes open, expecting to find a cupboard within, or a walk-in wardrobe. It is larger than that, though not much. There is a paper frieze of illustrated ducks dancing around the centre of the lemon-painted walls. There is space enough for a cot, but the room is bare. The emptiness of it makes Viola shudder and she shuts the door again, eager to be rid of the sight, of the feeling too.

  Leah’s bed is made just so, with cushions on top of pillows, a counterpane folded back from the duvet – Viola expected as much. She also knew she would find the full suitcase on the b
ed, ready to close, but still she tuts and shakes her head – disappointed. There is a glimpse of petrol-blue fabric beneath the piles of neatly folded items in neutral colours. Viola tugs the blue thing free – a gaudy pleated skirt – and holds it up before tossing it, watching it slide from the bed into a clump on the floor.

  She sees now the track of muddy footprints she’s made across the cream rug. The damage is done, so she lies down, right in the middle of the bed, letting her feet mess the counterpane too. She is Goldilocks with the wrong-coloured hair. Who’s been eating my porridge? Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

  Mr Hailey has slept in this bed, has done things with Leah in it. Viola closes her eyes and imagines him crawling across the blankets until he is there, above her, his mouth close, the scar fresh on his chin.

  She could never admit it to the Eldest Girls, but she understood his charm after seeing him that night at the stones – a man who feels like a boy, a boy who is so obviously a man. She pictures herself succumbing, having him press down on top of her, slide his warm hands under the layers of her clothing. Viola slips her own hands between her legs, pulling upwards against the fabric of her pyjamas, and feels the beginnings of a shiver of pleasure.

  Then Dot leaps onto her, red lead dragging, licking Viola’s face.

  ‘Get off!’ she squawks, shoving the dog onto the floor. ‘Get off me!’

  She growls at the ceiling to keep Dot at bay, to be free of the moment. She sighs. What is she doing anyway, messing around like this? Viola swings her legs to sit on the bed’s edge and picks up a tall stoppered bottle from Leah’s night table. Mercury’s Lavender reads the handwritten label. The purple liquid inside is half-drunk. Viola opens it, sniffs its pungent floweriness, puts the bottle back.

  She is wasting time, she knows it.

  The quiet of the cottage is a gift to exploit. This is her chance to hide away, to breathe, to work out every possibility that could come from Leah meeting Saul in the woods, of her seeing that body.