All the Fabulous Beasts

by Priya Sharma

*

  The Fiat waits on Park Lane. The police said Dad had forced it off the road. The first blast went through the windscreen.

  Fragments of shot and glass spread out, causing havoc with flesh and bone in its path. Sunlight catches the glass fragments that cover the interior, making the bloody splatters gleam. Each detail is fresh, as if it was only yesterday. The shot obliterated most of Mum’s head. She’s slumped sideways but her seatbelt keeps her upright. Her necklace is sticky and the front of her t-shirt is red and wet.

  Michael’s head is bowed, resting on his chest as if he’s praying. His lower jaw had been blown off. That would have been you, if you’d been driving.

  I walk around to the passenger window. You were sat behind your father. You’re not in there. The living have no place in this tableau of the dead. The seat is blood-splattered and urine-stained. An involuntary action. Who can blame you, Dad staring at you with a shot gun over his arm?

  Dad had time to kill you before the police car hurtled up Park Lane but he didn’t. I was so worried that he’d realised what we’d done that I was blind. I thought the culpability was all mine. Mum, so scrupulous about her wedding and engagement rings. They were only ever on her finger or the ring dish by the sink. Now, as I look at her bare hands, I remember how her rings were in her handbag.

  I blamed myself, thinking Dad was angry at me. He’d seen what I hadn’t. The empty glasses on the table between Mum and Michael. Mum’s flushed look. Her change of clothes. Her ringless fingers.

  Mum let me go out that day just to get me out of her and Michael’s way.

  *

  I saw you, you know. It was two years, four months and six days ago.

  You came to the food counter at Sandbach Services. I was in the back but could see through the food rack. You were ordering from Magda. I struggle to keep your image clear in my mind, but I knew it was you straight away. You had your arm around a boy’s shoulders, his head just above counter level. He didn’t look like you, Peter. I thought he looked like your dad, with the same blonde wavy hair, or maybe I’ve imagined that.

  All I could do was look at you. The right side of your face was scarred, my darling, peppered once by fragments of shot. I wanted to kiss it, to kiss those scars and stroke your face until it healed and you were perfect again.

  No wonder you and your Mum got as far away from Sandbach as you could.

  There was a moment when you looked up at me, right at me, but didn’t see me. You stared through me like I was a ghost.

  *

  So here I am, stood on the verge beside a wrecked Fiat that’s not there, crying my heart out. A group of school kids walk past me. One of them sniggers but the tallest girl in the group shoots them a dirty look and breaks away.

  “Are you okay?” She can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. She pulls a mobile from a blazer pocket. “I can call my mum. She’s a nurse.”

  I don’t know why I’m so hard on them. Maybe it’s because my time is past, my glowing moments gone and now it’s their turn. I’m the outsider in Sandbach now.

  I should move away. Move on. I’ve an untouched inheritance from Grandma Burnham. I could travel. Do a degree maybe.

  As to Sandbach, it’s not all bad. The commuters have stayed, and their children are rooted in the Cheshire soil. Buds that open in the sun. They’ll make their own small stories, which is right and proper as this is only a small town.

  Fish Skins

  My wife has brine instead of blood. She’s full of the sea. I can taste it in her sweat, her tears, her sex. She’s crafty and quick. She’s lunar. She’s tidal.

  Men look at her. I don’t need to see their wanting her to know that she’s a catch.

  *

  I get up before dawn and go down to the harbour to help my brothers unload the haul. The creeping light is grey and the mist lingers on the water. I sit on the wall and wait for the boat, listening to the gulls and lapping water.

  Then Mercy, our livelihood, lands. She’s painted red and blue. I can make out the shapes of Robert and Michael moving around her deck and John, his arm raised to hail me from the bow.

  The four of us sort the fresh, flapping fish. The shoals pour like molten silver into the crates, which are then loaded onto my cart. It judders on the cobbles as I push it, sending jolts up to my shoulders. John knows better than to offer to help me. This is my share of the family concern and I do it alone.

  “I’ll walk with you. I’m going to Silky’s anyway.”

  John likes to play the patriarch now Dad’s dead. He’s taken on Dad’s bearing, beard and Silky, the creaking, drunken widower who Dad looked out for.

  “How are things with you?” John asks.

  “Well enough.”

  The morning light’s coming in strong now that it’s decided to put in an appearance. I can see movement in kitchens and hallways as we pass through the uneven rows of homes. Stray cats lick their lips as they follow us, hoping for a fallen fish.

  “Do you miss it?” John slows his step to match mine.

  “Miss what?” I pick up my pace even though it hurts my leg, making John rush to catch up with me.

  “The sea.”

  “The sea’s there,” I motion back towards the harbour, “every time I turn around.”

  “You know I mean being at sea.”

  “No. The pitch and roll of the boat makes my leg sore.”

  It does but that’s not the real reason I won’t take to the water. When I think of being out on the rolling vastness, on a pile of planks lashed together with tar and rope, my fingertips go numb and the breath’s squeezed from my chest.

  “Pete, do you remember any of it?”

  It’s over twenty years ago but John still asks me from time to time, as if reliving it will heal me. He blames himself for the loose boom that swung across the boat. I pushed John out of the way and it took me overboard instead.

  I recall it all. The way John screamed my name into the gale. The sea sucked the air from my lungs. I twisted about, death’s hook in my mouth. The waves rose around me and the unremitting cold froze my bones and made them brittle. My leg shattered as I smashed against the hull.

  I can recall the black tug of the currents and the inquisitive fishes. My heart slowed and just when I thought the next beat wouldn’t come, slim white limbs reached for me from the fathoms.

  The doctor said it was the lack of air making me see things.

  “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “Never mind. Thank God for the fortune that washed you back ashore to us.” John slaps my back in a gesture that’s all our father. “I’ll leave you here.”

  John, all caring and considerate, who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be afraid of the job you were born to do or the pain of having to learn to walk again when your leg’s all smashed up. He takes the left fork in the street, up the alley to Silky’s shack.

  *

  So it is that I’m a fishmonger, not a fisherman like the rest of my family. Having a market stall makes me feel like my own man.

  The fish aisle isn’t for the faint hearted. It’s blood and carnage. The black and white tiles are an attempt to make the massacre sanitary. There are wet, staring eyes. Crustaceans crawl in pots, claws tied up to stop them snapping. There are suckered tentacles and armoured prawns. Smaller shell dwellers are laid out at the front. Inky blue mussels studded with barnacles. Cockles turned sideways look like ribbed hearts. Periwinkles contain sweet flesh but it’s fat oysters I like best. Their rugged, ridged shells give no clue to the smooth enamel surface within.

  I’m king here. No one’s better with a knife or shucking blade. I’m swiftest to strip the heavy scale from bass or bream. I know the trick of moving the fish’s tail, not the blade, as you pull the skin away. I understand the angles of filleting implicitly.

  I lay the glistening darlings on my marble slab. I run my blade along their bellies, scoop out the innards and pack the cavities with ice. I look a sight in rubber boots with fish guts dow
n my apron.

  “Peter, I need those pollock.” Marianne doesn’t believe in preamble. “Don’t forget the heads, bones and skins that are left. I’ll use those for stock.”

  “How many people are we feeding?”

  “You have a large family,” she shrugs, “and it’s our turn to cook for them this Sunday.”

  Marianne’s accent is guttural and vague. I listen to the sailors that land here but can never find her voice in theirs.

  “Do you want me to bring anything else home?”

  “No.”

  Then she’s gone.

  “Your wife’s not much of a talker, is she?” The flower seller sidles up to me. He looks like he’s imagining what we do with all that silence when we’re at home, alone. His salacious grin fades when I don’t join in with his smuttiness. “Oh, well, I’ll take two of them scabbard fish, if it’s all the same to you.”

  *

  I go home after the market closes, carrying fish and their remains. We live at the top of the town. Washing lines run across the alley, between the houses. Red seaweed hangs among our neighbours’ sheets and shirts. Marianne snacks on the dried stuff. I was weaned on the sea but it’s too much, even for me. The Dulse weed’s too concentrated. Too salty and iodic.

  Widow Howlett comes to her door and chucks a basin of dirty water at my feet. It splashes up my legs. She stares at me like I owe her an apology.

  “Dulse on a washing line. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  It’s been twenty years and the old woman still treats Marianne like she’s a foreigner.

  Indoors, Marianne takes the baskets from me and presses me down into a chair.

  “Your leg hurts.”

  She can always tell when it’s bothering me.

  Marianne’s foraged foods fill our larder. The seashore’s edible. Wild cabbage. Sea rocket. Samphire. Seabeet and purslane. Dinner’s delicious. I eat the mussels first and then mop up the broth with homemade bread. Marianne favours the open textured sort that’s like a sponge.

  Middle aged, afternoon lovemaking follows our meal. Marianne wears an old red shirt that rides up her thighs when she reaches for me. The cloth’s unbearably soft. I take it off.

  When I draw her down on the bed I can feel the swell of her breasts against my chest as she sighs. There’s a pause as if she’s about to speak but then she doesn’t. This is normal for Marianne but today there’s something different in her face.

  “What’s the matter?” I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

  I expect a perfunctory nothing so I’m surprised when she says, “Do you mind that there’s never been a child?”

  Marianne’s wording goes astray when she’s tired.

  “No. Not ever.”

  She’s thinking of my siblings and their prodigious children. I call the crowd that clamours around my knees the minnows. They pull me into games that involve charging and roaring but they dart away when Marianne puts out a hand to pat their heads.

  “It’s my fault.”

  “It takes two to make a baby.” I take her face in my hands and make her look at me to be sure she’s listening

  We’re not as young as we once were. Our bodies have altered. Her waist’s thicker. I have a paunch. We’re less vigorous in our pursuit of desire. None of that matters. I kiss her neck, her breasts, the scars behind her ears that look like defunct gills.

  I think she’s tired of me. She looks startled when she comes, as though I’ve called her back from somewhere far away.

  *

  My wife’s a beachcomber. Our house looks like the tide line. She brings all sorts back, except for dead seahorses which make her cry.

  Fragments of sea glass are lined up on the window sill where they glow with light. Pebbles are piled in miniature cairns on the mantelpiece. Shells decorate the walls.

  Marianne was ill soon after she first came to us. So ill that she couldn’t get out of bed. She gripped the bedpost as if seasick and nothing calmed her fever.

  “What can I do to help you?” I knelt beside her.

  “The sea,” was all she said in a broken voice.

  She looked disappointed when I brought her a shell.

  “They’re dull once you’ve taken them from the water.”

  “Wait.” I lifted it to her ear. “Listen.”

  Then she smiled.

  *

  It’s a feast day. The bell summons us to the white church on the hill. It smells of beeswax polish and stone until the priest swings the censer and fills it with incense. The candles are yellow columns of light. The stained glass casts coloured shadows on my hands.

  We never miss the procession. John’s one of the men carrying Our Lady this year. The Virgin’s lifted from the altar and hoisted onto their shoulders. She’s alabaster wrapped in flowing blue robes. Her lips are the shade of dead roses.

  We follow Our Lady out onto the street where I can see the familiar view of dark slate rooftops, peppered with strutting herring gulls. I know the lineage of the people within each house. The stone dome of the market place is halfway down. The town hall’s opposite. The statue that sits between the two looks like a toy soldier from up here. I can just make out Mercy bobbing in the harbour alongside the other boats. Then there’s the expanse of shifting, sparkling sea beyond, with worlds unseen beneath. I’ve never left this town, never had to make a life for myself somewhere else.

  When we reach the shore the bearers step into the water. Their trousers are stained dark, then their shirts as they go deeper. The water swelling around John’s chest makes me uneasy. The Virgin’s garlands float on the surface as she’s submerged.

  I clutch Marianne’s hand. Her dress flutters around her legs. The fabric clings to her skin. My serge suit is hot and itchy.

  It was on this very feast day, twenty years ago, that I was carried to the harbour on a chair to watch, my healing leg patched up with pins.

  No one was looking at Our Lady that day. We were too busy staring at Marianne who lay naked on the shingle, a piece of jetsam cast up on the shore.

  *

  “Stop whistling.” Marianne sits opposite me, peeling potatoes. She doesn’t care for them but cooks a portion for me.

  “I wasn’t.”

  We seem to be falling over one another these days.

  “You’re getting on my nerves.”

  I pick up her discarded words to rub into the wound later.

  “But I wasn’t whistling.”

  “You were. Stop it. I can’t think.”

  “What have you got to think about?” It’s not fair but I say it anyway.

  She gets up and grabs her coat. I let her go, the door left wide open so that everyone can look in and see me how she’s abandoned me. Five minutes later I get up and close it.

  I don’t understand why I’m goading her.

  *

  Married love. My wife used to look at me with unconcealed adoration.

  Marianne had no interest in bridal adornments, leaving my mother to stitch her gown and pick the flowers. She was so impatient with the rituals of marriage that she offended the priest who stared at her with bulbous eyes.

  She was eager for our wedding night. Marianne pushed me back on the bed and put her hands wherever she liked. She wasn’t a cypher for my desires. She had her own. We spent the following week entwined like seal pups in a pile.

  Then there were the monthly irritations. She wept with each menstruation, as if womanhood was a revelation. I’d always thought it was sadness at not being pregnant.

  *

  I come home to an empty house. Murky soup’s waiting on the stove. Pots and dishes are piled up in the sink. The floor’s filthy.

  I eat spoonfuls of cold soup straight from the pan and then start to clean. The feelings swelling in my chest don’t abate with physical work. I’m on my knees with a scrubbing brush when the latch lifts behind me. Marianne’s hanging up her coat and the duffle bag that she takes with her for beachcombing.

  It’s too mild
a day for a coat. She always has to do something that marks her out as odd.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Out.”

  “Where?”

  “Walking.”

  “And you’re happy to leave this mess for me after I’ve been at work all morning?”

  She looks confused. Today’s no different from any other day after all.

  “I work too.”

  She’s right. We’re an anomaly in how we live. My brothers’ wives don’t think I see them roll their eyes at one another when they visit. They shouldn’t mind if our house is a state sometimes. Nor should I. Marianne understands the mysteries of molluscs. She brings the finest shell dwellers to the stall and it’s doubled the income from which we all draw.

  “I was going to do the floor later,” she adds, defensive.

  I know I’m being irrational. One of us gets to the chores eventually. It’s never mattered who. We bump along together, managing the difficulties of domesticity.

  “You haven’t said where you’ve been.”

  “Nowhere special.”

  I fling the scrubbing brush in the bucket and kick the thing, slopping dirty suds on the clean flags. “And did you meet anyone while you were there?”

  “Don’t speak to me like that.”

  I follow her into the bedroom where she starts to brush her hair. It’s her cure for melancholy, anger and vexation. “You talk to me anyway you like when you’re in a mood.”

  I snatch the brush off her. The bristles dig into my palm. “Why can’t I do the same?”

  “Because…” Then she stops.

  “Because what?”

  “Because.” She seizes her brush back.

  “What?” I stand next to her but all I can smell on her is the ocean.

  I expect an explosion but none comes. She can’t be bothered to fight. She sounds weary.

  “Because you’re all I have.”

  *

  John thinks himself wise.

  I’m scrubbing down the marble slab. I stink of sweat and fish guts. It’s under my nails and in my pores. I’m tired. My leg’s bothering me more than usual. I want to go home and smoke my pipe.

  “What’s on your mind?” I don’t look up from my work.