Impossible Causes

by Julie Mayhew

  ‘I’m trying too hard, aren’t I?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘It’s nice. It’s great.’

  I thought of him comforting me in bed after our conversation about the Eldest Girls, when he’d told me he knew that I was a virgin. It was great! You were great! I think this is all great!

  I put down my knife and fork.

  ‘Maybe we should just go upstairs,’ I said. ‘Break the tension.’

  He looked at me for a long moment, unsure that I was serious, then grinned, made an elaborate display of dropping his cutlery and throwing back his chair. We left our half-full plates and took the music and the wine upstairs.

  We did it on the floor. A thick, embroidered rug covered the boards of his small single room, and he pulled down blankets and pillows to keep us warm. His bed creaked and moved with him in the night, he said, and wouldn’t withstand any kind of – he chose the word carefully – any kind of ‘action’.

  I thought that it would spook me, being on the ground like that, a reminder of how I’d behaved at the Customs House. Would Ben’s face become Saul’s in the midst of it? Would the spirit of that night come back to haunt me? The opposite. The similarity of our positions, the situation, the comparable fear of being heard or discovered, made the exorcism complete. This was who I wanted to be with.

  It was only as we lay back afterwards, our skin sticky with sweat, my head falling to one side, that I took notice of the things he had stuffed beneath his bed in the rush to make the place tidy. Ben had not expected us to come up here, to lie like this – he couldn’t have done. There were carrier bags under there, boxes, a crate of dusty measuring beakers, an empty rucksack. And something else, resting just beyond Ben’s head.

  I had decided to ask no more questions though; I had promised that I wouldn’t. Doubt only brought me uneasiness and misery. So, I chose not to see those two great curling lengths like dinosaur’s teeth, their ends tufted with hide and stained with the freshness of blood.

  I did not see the horns of a goat.

  ADVENT 2017

  The setting of a curfew in the midst of Advent was no way to prepare for a cheerful Christmas.

  All had been well on the last Sunday. Three candles were lit on the wreath by a youngster of the congregation, Victoria Totten from the juniors being chosen for the task. Everyone in the congregation congratulated the girl on how confidently she had held the taper – less a compliment and more a reference to the previous year when Sapphira Dean had fallen to weeping, spooked by the way the flame crept closer to her hand and the wax dripped hot down her wrist.

  Father Daniel wore brand-new vestments, beetroot-dyed and French-seamed by Martha Signal, with holly and ivy embroidery added afterwards by the handful of older ladies of the nursing home. The robes were a deep pink for the bringing in of joy, and Father Daniel’s reading spoke of a radiance in the dark, of how John had borne witness to the light so all men, through him, might come to believe.

  ‘John was not that light,’ Father Daniel told the gathered, the words accorded the emphasis of a tiny printed clause in an otherwise straightforward contract, ‘but was sent to bear witness of that Light.’

  This talk of ‘witnesses’ should have resonated with the Eldest Girls as they sat together in a pew, their white Sunday-best crisply ironed beneath their coats.

  They themselves had been witnessed.

  They had been seen moving away from the light and closer to the dark. They had been observed going naked in this descent. Photographic proof existed, according to whispers. Pictures had been taken for the purposes of confirmation and the administration of justice. (For what other purposes could there be?) Though it was not known who had pointed the camera, and who now held the images; these were details only the prurient would request.

  The girls kept any shame they felt well concealed. They lifted their voices uncharacteristically high for the hymn ‘Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus’, and during the second verse, as if taking their lead from Barbara Stanney’s organ flourishes, they slipped spontaneously into beautiful counter-melodies, smothering Diana Crane’s routine efforts to mark herself out.

  ‘A perfect three-part harmony, it was,’ Hope Ainsley remarked at the post-service gathering in the nave.

  ‘It was, in fact, a four-part harmony,’ Miriam Calder cut in, sipping delicately at her tea. ‘Rather like it is with the four gospels.’ There was a glance here to Father Daniel for his approval of the analogy. ‘The gospels are like harmonies colliding to provide us with one complete and uninterrupted meaning.’

  Hope’s voice came back sharply. ‘How it can it have been a four-part harmony, Miriam, when there’s only three of them?’

  ‘Oh, did you not realise?’ Miriam smiled sympathetically at the Lark hairdresser. ‘The red-haired girl was joining in at the back. I could make her out clearly, but perhaps I just have an ear for these things.’

  The red-haired girl, seated alone yet again, might have been the next item for discussion that morning, if not for the recent actions of the lovely Miss Cedars.

  Over the previous weeks, with the assistance of the curate, Leah Cedars had made sure Benjamin Hailey attended chapel at the weekend, as well as on school days, and this had gone some considerable distance to allaying suspicions about the handsome coycrock teacher. If Mr Hailey was guilty of holding any questionable beliefs, about faith and science and phone masts, they were merely a hangover from his mainland upbringing. With regular chapel attendance, he could so easily be cured.

  Then, that very morning, the lovely Miss Cedars had walked into service hand-in-hand with Mr Hailey and all residual doubt concerning the new teacher’s soul was instantly washed away. Because – hallelujah! – after a dearth of several years there was going to be a wedding on Lark!

  One had looked likely the summer just gone, anticipation at full sail as Tom Ainsley and Bernadette Dean prepared to leave school; the pair had made no secret of their plans to marry. Hope Ainsley staged public bridal hair-styling sessions in the Counting House, her future daughter-in-law the model, and every woman had an opinion on how the chapel should be decked out in flowers for the forthcoming ceremony. Then Tom and Bernadette had eloped, on the June ship, for a new life on the mainland. Hope had cancelled her salons for July and August, so she could hide away and nurse her disappointment. Everyone was let down twice-fold: there were no nuptials and, for the summer months, no shampoos-and-sets either.

  Martha Signal had since taken on the mantle of expectation. Her son, Luke, had grown into a dashing potential groom, in a smouldering sort of fashion, and was certain to give the Cater brothers a run for their money once those Eldest Girls left school.

  All rested on when the Eldest Girls left school.

  But now there was Leah Cedars and Benjamin Hailey – a union that would surely lead to an imminent baby. Leah Cedars was nearing thirty, she couldn’t be messing around. Pining eyes fixed on the long-dry font as the congregation in the nave discussed this exciting new romantic development, and when Susannah Cedars eventually spoke up, she did not chide the women present, though she would have been well within her rights to do so. You were falling over each other to condemn my daughter and that teacher a few weeks ago, and now here you are wanting to place a sixpence in her shoe! You fickle furies!

  Instead, Susannah said: ‘Let’s slow down, shall we!’ This mild attempt at firmness was spoiled by a creeping smile. She was excited too; she couldn’t not be. ‘You’ve got to give young love room to blossom.’

  For all the delight that Sunday had brought, for all the pink embroidered robes and beautiful harmonies and hopes of a new baby, something else was brewing on the island, something less joyous. The moon was waxing towards a full flowering. There was a pervasive tension, felt as a tightness in the breastbone, one that could only be ignored for so long.

  Mary Ahearn, Rhoda Sayers and Ingrid Duchamp did not remain at chapel to chatter, and were not usually inclined to do so. Mary and Rhoda understood themselves well e
nough to know that they would not be warmly welcomed. They each held authority, at the Provisions Store and on estate land, but did not have the status of those women who supped tea with Father Daniel. Ingrid, being married to the island’s financial adviser, might easily have participated, though she preferred to keep herself to herself – an aloofness that the other islanders excused on account of her foreignness.

  The three women left together and made the journey side-by-side towards the Duchamp residence, one of the larger constructions on the south elevation, designed with plentiful windows to drink up the meagre sunlight. These women were not friends, nor enemies, merely an unlikely gang – one woman was soft and practical, one angled and neat, the last fierce and hardy. They were connected only by the accident of their daughters’ similar ages.

  And by the pressing question of what on earth they were going to do.

  There was a meeting scheduled the following day at the school; the women had insisted upon it, or Mr Crane had demanded it, depending on who you spoke to. Either way the three mothers were seen waiting in the corridor outside his office on Monday, having agreed, it seemed, during their Sunday morning assignation to make a distinct effort with their appearance. Even Mary Ahearn, who never wore anything but her worker’s greens, or a simple blouse and trousers for chapel, had taken greater pains.

  ‘Mary Ahearn is wearing a dress!’ Miriam Calder was heard exclaiming in the staff room, prompting everyone to take their turn at the glass panel of the door to behold this spectacle. The situation had to be serious, it was decided, though the three women did not seem intimidated by what lay ahead, rather determined, warlike, in their prettiest outfits. The only thing out of place in this display was the small, rough bag Mary Ahearn carried with her, of the kind usually employed for the carrying of fresh-shot game.

  Inside, was something crucial to their testimony.

  A heart.

  It was not completely hardened, though its outer layer had dried and cracked. It was a heart about the size of your fist. A heart deliberately punctured through with nails.

  The morning after his meeting with the mothers, Mr Crane entered the staff room to address his team.

  ‘Except the Lord build the house: their labour is but lost that build it…’ These were his words as he came in; he had skipped all pleasantries to launch into a prayer of sorts.

  A circle formed automatically; heads bowed.

  This was the psalm about children being a gift, how they are like arrows in the hands of giants; a man should make sure he had a quiver full of them. The Lord had not blessed Jacob and Diana Crane with their own children; the pupils were his young. He was father to the whole island.

  Mr Crane gave a glory-be. The staff gave their amen. Then he delivered his pronouncement: ‘Jade-Marie Ahearn, Anna Duchamp and Britta Sayers –’ he had never been one to use their collective moniker ‘– are subject to a strict curfew from this moment onwards. They are to go straight back to their individual homes after school each day. If they are seen idling, congregating or taking any kind of circuitous route, they are to be challenged immediately and the matter is to be reported directly to me. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured the staff. Another amen.

  ‘I consider it part of your duties to enforce this matter even after the last bell has rung.’

  ‘Yes,’ they murmured again.

  Amen, amen.

  Were any glances exchanged – between the coycrock teacher and his sweetheart, perhaps? If so, it was done with great stealth.

  It was the three mothers who had demanded action, it was said. They had implored Mr Crane to intervene. The heart was proof that someone was harassing their daughters at the stones, leading them to darker places. None of the girls, not even the red-haired newcomer, possessed the strength or wherewithal to kill a goat and extract its heart – Mr Crane had to concede that. Then, he must correspondingly see that the Eldest Girls were not the perpetrators. They were victims. Though a curfew was likely not what the mothers had in mind when they went to the headmaster for his help. Wasn’t it protection for their daughters that they sought, not punishment?

  The opinion in the Anchor that evening – men only, it being a Tuesday – was that this was an inevitable conclusion to a saga that had been allowed to go on for far too long. It was unsavoury timing though, to be confronting this ungodly business, with Christmas just days away. As soon as Jacob Crane joined the gathering in the bar, however, judgement shifted – the timing was spot on. There were so many jolly distractions to come – carol-singing in chapel, the lighting of a tree on the cobbles, the last day of term, the baking of cakes, the lifting of wine rationing – who would find themselves dwelling upon the matter at all?

  Still, there was one nagging detail that could not be made to hang straight, no matter how you nudged it. The girls had likely not procured the heart, a female being too weak for the task, but shouldn’t they still be held, in some way, responsible for what happened to it?

  That is to say, the nails.

  Everyone on the island knew what an object like that was supposed to represent. It was the same as a poppet skewered through with a long, sharp pin, or a wax effigy tossed into a ceremonial fire. That goat’s heart was a curse upon one of their number.

  All in the bar that evening fell silent and looked around for a likely target for this hex, settling on no one in particular, though in the process it was noticed how Peter Cedars’ face had grown pale, then turned a strange shade of red. He had been quiet during all of their discussions, giving only grunts that could not be construed as disagreement or assent. Now, he was breathing heavily. Now, he was sweating. It was as if the mention of the goat’s heart and its true intent had unstoppered the bottle, unleashed the spell.

  The gamekeeper’s glass of beer slipped from his grasp and shattered on the ground. His other hand, the one that was still working, went to his shoulder and squeezed. His face pinched in pain.

  It was only when Peter Cedars fell to the floor that everyone remembered Dr Bishy’s recent talk at the Counting House, the one about the correct usage of the island’s defibrillator, and there was a common understanding of what exactly was happening.

  Reuben Springer ran for the machine. One Cater brother raced for the doctor, the other for the gamekeeper’s wife, as Saul Cooper fell to his knees on the beer-swilled floor and pumped out a rhythm on the old man’s chest.

  The heart full of nails was indeed a crucial piece of testimony.

  It was a sign perhaps that someone had led those girls to darker places, but was now undeniable proof that the Eldest Girls were witches.

  PART TWO

  LUNAR PHASE

  THE BOOK OF LEAH

  I had seen the card – the three swords piercing a heart. I had known it was coming and done nothing to stop it.

  Still, I asked him: ‘What have they done to you?’

  Shocked back to life, he’d been brought to a bed in the nursing home. A drip fed a bloated vein in his thin, grey arm. It was a charade of care. He needed a mainland hospital. He needed a boat.

  ‘They’ve done nothing,’ he told me. ‘Don’t you go accusing them.’

  We both knew who we were speaking of.

  I shook my head. ‘I will kill them,’ I said. Did I mean it? Did I really believe in such voodoo? Could a nail driven into the bloodied organ of a goat be enough to bring about this? It didn’t matter. I needed someone to blame. ‘I will kill those girls for what they have done to you.’

  ‘My heart was weak all along,’ he replied.

  I could hear my mother’s words: His father’s heart gave up on him, and his father’s before that, and his father’s before that …

  My father could hear her too. He told me: ‘You be the one to break the cycle, Leah.’ Then he said: ‘I can’t protect you anymore.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ I insisted. I ignored the tears that spilled silently down his cheeks. ‘When you get better, you’ll be there for me.’

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bsp; He shook his head, as much as he was able. ‘A wise man knows when his fortune has run out.’ His voice was like paper. ‘And now I need to confess.’

  I didn’t want to hear it; I wasn’t ready. Would I ever be ready?

  ‘A boat will come,’ I assured him, ‘and then you’ll be –’

  ‘There is no boat. I need to confess.’

  ‘I’ll fetch Father Daniel,’ I offered, but he would not let go of my hand.

  ‘I want to confess to you, Leah.’

  If I could have run from that room, I would have done, burst out into the cold air, into a winter’s day too bright for the season, too bright for what was happening to our family in the sickly yellowness of that room. I would have shielded myself from what was to come, had my father die a good man, complete, intact – the man I had always known. But I knew that these were our last moments together, that there would be no more, that I could do nothing but stay, listen.

  He swallowed hard. ‘I let the rot set in. I let a boat go down. I have watched those girls –’

  ‘Stop!’ I called out.

  ‘I have watched those girls and I know what they’re doing. We’ve turned our backs on them so they’ve turned to the devil. We cannot call ourselves Christians.’ His gaze was fervent; this passion was the only strength he had left. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not up to me, that’s –’

  ‘Forgive me!’

  His breath came as a desperate rattle. My tears joined his.

  ‘I have looked my enemy in the eye,’ he went on, ‘and shown him love, because I was afraid he’d punish you, my daughter. Forgive me, forgive me.’

  I nodded, because that was what he needed. I should have gone to the door, summoned my mother into the room, not let her miss this moment, but I could not let go of his hand; it was all that tethered him to the earth.

  ‘You need to leave, Leah,’ he said. ‘You need to go to Paul and talk to him about what is happening here, make a plan, help those girls.’