Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  An elderly man was making his way around the lawn, respectful of the signed instructions to keep off the grass. Gerry watched him for a few moments. Might he be the owner? But he produced a camera from his pocket and turned to take a few snaps of the huge building, then of a single wilted rose in one of the borders. He reached a castellated entrance that led to a spiral staircase to the lower levels, and to the bridge across the river. Gerry wondered whether his knees could take the descent.

  She headed in the opposite direction. A sign directed her to Refreshments.

  The cafe was within a converted barn, separate from the main hall. Inside, salads and crusty pies that appeared homemade, or at least not bought from a supermarket, filled a display counter.

  “What’ll it be, duck?” The woman behind the counter wiped her hands on her pristine apron. She had wiry, grey hair and her eyes were surrounded by creases and crinkles, like eddies in water. Gerry liked her immediately.

  “I was hoping for information,” she replied.

  “Not before lunch, though?”

  Gerry looked at her watch. One o’clock already. Her trek up and down the mountain had taken longer than she had realised.

  “Just a coffee for now, thanks,” she said. She blushed as her belly gurgled with hunger.

  The woman smiled sympathetically. “No need for diets for a stick like you. Here.” She pushed a slice of cake onto a plate. “Best Bakewell tart in the area. And yes, that includes Bakewell.”

  Gerry chose a table close to the counter. There were only two other customers in the cafe, in the far corner. One appeared to have fallen asleep with his newspaper still resting on his chest.

  “Have you worked here long?” she said. She held up a piece of crumbling tart. “This is delicious, by the way.”

  The woman fussed with the coffee machine, wiping its nozzles with a cloth. “A good while.”

  “Do you know much about the place? Its history?”

  “As much as anybody, I’d venture.”

  “And how about the owners? Do you see them around often?”

  “Not them. Her. And yes, she keeps herself busy. An industrious type, she likes to think. Always keen to muck in when things need doing.”

  Gerry pushed the rest of the cake into her mouth in one go, without meaning to. Journo fail. “I’m so sorry. You’re the owner of Ilam Hall?”

  The woman grinned. “I am that. Anise Hartwell, and very pleased to meet you. Dad was into herbs, hence the name. That lawn outside was a herb garden, a generation ago. It proved more than I could keep up with.”

  Hartwell. Gerry remembered the name from her books about the Fall. A Hartwell had been the first Lord of Ilam Hall. If Anise’s family went back that far, presumably she was a Charmer. Gerry’s eyes darted around the woman’s features, reappraising her in light of the new information. The grey hair and wrinkles suggested that she must be well into her seven-year period before her next shedding. Once she produced a new Snakeskin, all those creases would flatten and her hair would gain the colour of her youth.

  “I’m Gerry Chafik,” she said. “You have a wonderful home.”

  Anise shrugged. “It could be better. I do my best. The volunteers help. And at least the kids get their money’s worth.”

  “Your children, you mean?” Charmers tended to have lots of them. Spreading the gift, or establishing a foothold in the future of the country, depending on which way you looked at it.

  Anise laughed. “Never did have them, no. It rather relies on finding a man first, and I’ve always scared them off. No, I mean the kids out there, the youths. At the youth hostel. If you came in the front way you won’t have seen the entrance. Oh, it’s lovely. Just another barn, but the YHA have done it up terrific inside. I get letters sometimes from groups. The loveliest place to stay, they say. They hardly ever trash it. I don’t need to deal with the place much at all.”

  “I’m fascinated by the hall,” Gerry said. “I mean, partly because it’s so beautiful, and those views… But partly because of the story. The history. The Fall, way back.”

  “Ah. You have a manner about you. For some reason I didn’t take you for a tourist,” Anise said. Her posture changed and her tone became more rehearsed. “It’s certainly a story, isn’t it? Imagine all that time ago, 1808, in the depths of a summer night—”

  “Sorry, no, I’m not. A tourist, I mean. I’m interested, but I’ve already read the books.”

  Anise looked relieved. “To be honest, folks around here are happy being left alone, left to enjoy their gift.” When Gerry held up both her hands in a gesture meaning ‘no offence’, she hurriedly added, “Not me, though. Don’t you worry. I enjoy a chat.”

  Gerry suddenly realised what Anise had implied. “Are you saying that people around here are all Charmers, still?”

  “For the most part. Me too, in case you were wondering. I’m not afraid to own up to it. It’s a lovely way to be.” She tugged at her hair, as though she had read Gerry’s thoughts about her appearance. “I never do dye it. Too much bother, and I’ll be shedding in a couple of months. Shame that I’ve got the type of genes that means I’ll be grey again before my next seven years are up, but at least it means I get to change my look every so often. I’m sixty-two, you know.”

  Gerry’s eyes widened.

  Anise giggled. She twirled on the spot, flaring out her apron. “You come back in July and see me then. You’d swear I wasn’t yet forty.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry. I oughtn’t to be a show-off about it. If I was, I could hardly blame you folks for carrying a grudge.”

  Gerry paused at that. Did all non-Charmers ‘carry a grudge’? Did she herself?

  It was time to move the conversation on, if she was going to take advantage of Anise’s talkative nature. “I’m actually hoping to get more information on the Fall. Things that might have been under-reported. It sounds vague now that I say it out loud. I’m a, well, a writer. Do you know if there’s anywhere I ought to look?”

  “A writer?” Anise pressed both her hands down on the counter, raising herself to look closer at Gerry. “Oh, I see it now. You have that bearing about you. Brains and beauty?” She grinned as Gerry’s cheeks flushed. “Good for you. Good for you. And yes. I have just the thing. Wait two ticks and I’ll call Rachel up from the kitchens, then we can be off.”

  A few minutes later, Gerry found herself being led towards the main building of Ilam Hall. Anise gestured at points of interest as they passed, though these amounted to the picnic area and a new water bowl for visiting dogs. Gerry indulged her. Anise had obviously taken a shine to her, so she must milk that as much as possible.

  They entered at one of the rear doors to the hall, which was unlocked. The daylight filtering through the grimy windows provided barely enough illumination to make out the interior. Dust danced in the air, parting as Anise and Gerry made their way along the lengths of narrow rugs that formed a path across the stone flagstones. Teetering pyramids of paperback romance novels covered the surfaces of most of the items of furniture.

  Anise reached a wide, curved staircase and took the steps two at a time. If Gerry hadn’t already known about her being a Charmer, her levels of energy would have been a giveaway. Her bare legs belonged to a woman half her age, too. How long would she live to enjoy her gifts? The Charmer average was an extra thirty years, but the most fortunate could almost double their lifespans. They became less healthy as time went on, of course – the benefits of shedding diminished each time – but even so.

  She lost track of their route through a warren of connected rooms. Finally, Anise flung open a door and coughed a “Ta-da!” as dust billowed forth.

  It was the library that Gerry had hoped for. She dashed over to one shelf, blinking rapidly to dispel motes of dust. Anise threw open pairs of wide shutters and sunlight turned the air peach-coloured. Gerry traced her fingers along book spines, reading the titles. A History of Ilam, and Ilam Hall: Renovation and Rebirth, and The Fall: A People’s History.

&nb
sp; “It’s perfect,” Gerry whispered. “It’s everything I need.”

  Anise stood with her hands on her hips. “What kind of writer are you, by the way? Fiction?”

  “Factual,” Gerry replied. She felt queasy at the thought of lying to Anise. “I’m a journalist.”

  Anise hesitated for a moment, then smiled. “It’s a noble profession. Good for you, Miss Chafik. But you’ll find nothing very topical in here. Nothing salacious.”

  Gerry shook her head. “That’s not what I’m after. I promise. I think there’s a story still to be told, about Ilam. I swear I’m not here to dig up dirt.”

  “Good girl. And speaking of digging up dirt, that’s what I ought to be doing myself. Been meaning to plant some peas beside the picnic spot. I get the youth hostellers to shell them. More wholesome than them watching video nasties at home. I’ll leave you to it, then?”

  Gerry tried to hide her surprise. After only fifteen minutes of conversation, was this woman really going to leave her alone in her library, in her home?

  “I’ll be as good as gold,” she said, then regretted making herself sound so childish.

  She remembered another question she had meant to ask. “Anise. Sorry. Do you happen to know about a small building that used to be up on the mountaintop? Up on the western side, beside a rock outcrop shaped like a wave. I think it might have been there at the time of the Fall.”

  Anise frowned. “Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. There have been so many changes to the village since then. Not least Ilam Hall itself.”

  “It was built after the Fall, wasn’t it?”

  “There was a sixteenth-century building here, back then, though long abandoned. My great-great-great-or-whatever-he-was-grandad only moved in when it was rebuilt, when he was granted the lordship. Eighteen-twenties or thereabouts.”

  Gerry frowned. “So Hartwell, your ancestor, he wasn’t Lord of Ilam at the time of the Fall? In 1808?”

  “Goodness, no. I don’t suppose Ilam warranted having a lord. Don’t get me wrong, my ancestor was important in his way. A mayor, I suppose you’d call him nowadays. But he lived in a house down in the valley, more or less the same as the rest of them.”

  Gerry hadn’t considered that people had benefitted in ways other than receiving their Charmer gifts. “Ilam did well out of the Fall,” she said, more a thought out loud than a real observation.

  Anise nodded. “For a while, yes. Even the new Charmers saw the opportunity to cash in on the tourists. Before then, people would no doubt have been more interested in Eyam, nearby. Heard of it? It was the site of the plague village, where folks in the sixteenth century quarantined themselves rather than spread the disease. How the people of Eyam must have seethed when Ilam came along and robbed them of all their tourism! And Matlock Bath, of course, the spa town. But even cable cars and amusements only went so far, compared to the chance of visiting Ilam.”

  “It must have been more than simple tourism. The attention on Ilam must have been feverish at first.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. A visit to Illam would have carried a thrill of excitement that, however faint, there was a chance of it happening again. For decades people held out hope that maybe there’d be another Fall. Taking the spa waters in Matlock Bath doesn’t really compare to the possibility of granting the gift of extended life to your kiddies, does it?” Her face fell. “These days people have cottoned on to the fact that there’s nothing much here, and that the Fall was a one-off.”

  “They still come. I’ve spoken to some of them in the village.” But it was true that there had been fewer than she expected. The village was quiet for such a historic location. And, clearly, nobody nowadays believed that Charmer abilities could be gained through anything but hereditary genes.

  Anise shrugged. “People will show up anywhere there’s a cup of tea to be had. But if we’re honest, folks can get all the info they want about Charmers from documentaries on TV, or from photocopied anti-prosperity pamphlets about the prime minister being two hundred years old, or some such nonsense.”

  She turned before reaching the door. “As for this hilltop house of yours… If you want to do some detective work, that’s the bookcase you’ll be needing.” She pointed at a shelf masked by cobwebs, where a shaft of light made a yellow stripe across the thick spines. The books were rows and rows of bound census records.

  Gerry gasped. She was grateful that she hadn’t got wind of the existence of this library before she had struck up a conversation with Anise in the first place; her eagerness, or even her desperation, would have been impossible to disguise. “This is beyond perfect. Thank you, Anise. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  Anise appeared a little flustered. With a quick thumbs-up, she ducked out of the room. Gerry listened to her clattering down the stairs.

  * * *

  Throughout the morning Caitlin’s dad had made offers through her closed bedroom door – food, outings, conversation. Anything to take her mind off her dreadful embarrassment at the sixth-form college. Finally, just before lunchtime, she had heard him leave the house in defeat. He would be wandering the nearby lanes by now, swishing at the long grass with a stick, cursing at the blue tarpaulins in the cordoned-off field behind the house, perhaps wondering again if he ought, at last, to get a dog. He was an open book and Caitlin loved him dearly, but that was the precise reason why she hadn’t been able to face him this morning. She had heard the phone ring and could tell from her dad’s responses that it was Mr Pearl on the other end of the line.

  Ian had made no remarks to Caitlin about the fact that she had been suspended from college. There was nothing to be done. Caitlin had already made it clear that she wouldn’t be returning today. Still, she had preferred it when it had appeared to be her own choice.

  She had spent most of the morning working on a pencil sketch, another self-portrait. The two angled mirrors fixed to her desk produced an image of a Caitlin that moved in unpredictable directions, so that when she fidgeted it was as though she was watching somebody other than herself. The picture was coming on well. She had reworked it again and again, altering the faint pencil lines, all but restarting when the light from outside the window altered the shadows. She knew it was narcissism.

  After another hour of silence she crept out of her bedroom. She patrolled the corridors of the house, a sulking ghost.

  The largest sitting room was the coldest room in the house. Caitlin had no memory of a fire ever having been built in the enormous fireplace that funnelled wind from outside. Her dad’s old telescope was still fixed on its tripod at the floor-to-ceiling bay window. She bent to squint through it. It was her dad who had got her interested in astronomy in the first place, but it was hard to pin down why she had inherited his passion. He had never once claimed to have seen anything interesting. Caitlin sighed and pushed at the telescope, but it didn’t budge. She flicked the tightening handle on its base and pushed again. The telescope squeaked as it swung around and around. When it came to rest she peered through it. Her vision was filled with an image of Uncle Tobe.

  He was pottering around outside his wooden shed at the foot of the garden, laying out wet clothes on the backs of plastic chairs. He insisted on doing his own laundry these days. Perhaps he wanted to avoid bumping into Ian, or perhaps he was ashamed of all the semen stains.

  Caitlin wrestled with the rusted lock of the door in the bay window.

  Her uncle didn’t hear her coming. He jumped in fright as she called out his name.

  “How’s it going?” She slumped down on the only plastic chair that wasn’t draped with an item of his clothing. Tobe watched her. He held a sodden pair of jeans in his hands.

  “Okay,” he replied uncertainly.

  “I could fix you up with a washing line.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “I’ll do it later. Hey, Tobe? Can I talk to you?”

  Tobe looked around as if hoping for a distraction. “What about?”

  “Sit down
, why don’t you.”

  Tobe gazed at each of the chairs in turn, at the clothes hanging over them. Then he sat cross-legged on the floor with the wet pair of jeans draped over one knee. A dark puddle began to spread on his tracksuit.

  “My shedding’s in just over a week.”

  Tobe nodded slowly. He’d probably forgotten.

  “What’s it like?”

  “I already told your friend. It’s tickly.”

  “I don’t mean the physical feeling. If it hurt, I guess I’d have heard about that already. I mean afterwards. Do you feel weird about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “But there was another you! Just for a moment. He was there – he was exactly like you in every way – and then he was gone. Dead.”

  “Nah. Dead people don’t turn into dust. Least, not in only a few seconds.”

  “Even so. Your Skin was afraid, Tobe. Don’t you think?”

  Tobe coughed and glanced inside the shed. The bulky TV showed the pause screen of some Commodore computer game. She wouldn’t have long before he succumbed to the urge to return to whatever digital war he was waging.

  “I always thought of it as a sort of trick,” he said. “You know them mirrors at the funfair?” He paused, appearing to struggle to collect his thoughts. “No. Not that. But I saw this magic trick once. A man in a box. My mate Mousey went in – you know, as a willing volunteer from the crowd. And he disappeared, fair and square. But it was mirrors, see? He was deep in there, in the box, and it was only his reflection that disappeared. I nearly shit myself when he was gone, just for that second, but then there he was all happy and fine. Then his mum bought us both a lolly. We was only seven or eight at the time.”

  He gazed at the birch trees that marked the end of the garden and the beginning of the fields, where blue tarpaulins fluttered like flags from builders’ scaffolding.

  Caitlin had never heard Tobe speak so much in one go. “So you think it’s an illusion and nothing more? That the shedding is really about the rejuvenation, that it’s all about us, and that the Snakeskins are only some kind of by-product?”