Sea Hearts

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘You can almost imagine, can’t you?’ Toddy would cry when we had it right for several moments, when we were balanced in the streaming air.

  And you almost could, though the wind was so much lighter and more fickle than tide and swell, and the bodies we put up to it were such different shapes and felt so differently from inside, so raw and rangy. They were right enough that we could convince ourselves that we were carving paths up and down the watermass, that that flap of coat was the touch of some sister, that others, large and small, sang and shifted their formations all around us. We could almost feel the excitement, the bursting of the family at its edges and the huggermuggery in the middle, the jostling, the smooth adjustments and reinings-in and spurts of speed.

  We would walk home quietened, blown clean of our sorrows.

  ‘When it comes summer,’ Toddy said. ‘When we can swim without freezing the nuts off ourselves, we will go down Six-Mile.’

  ‘Yes, that will be closer.’

  ‘So much more like it.’

  A few paces of silence. The Spine was like the top of the world, with the sky all around us.

  ‘But never quite, Toddy.’

  ‘Oh, no. I know that. But perhaps…well, the next best thing. Perhaps close to close enough, what do you think?’

  So I packed myself and set off for Rollrock Isle. There was no one to tell me not to, any more.

  I would not set foot there, said my late mam in my head, after what they did to the women. What they did to your own Gran.

  But that’s all over, said that man. Since years ago.

  Oh, not so many years. And no doubt that’s what they told themselves last time.

  But I did not listen to Mam.

  An island of nothing but men! my friend Sally had said. It sounds wonderful, and frightening! I should come and see you off at the bus — but I’ve to be at the bakery.

  Never mind — I shall see myself off.

  You are so brave, Lory. I could never do something like this.

  I was not brave, or frightened. I was not even excited as I left Mrs Mickle’s boarding house. The key to the house in Potshead, as black and rough-looking as if it had lain in the sea-bottom for years, scratched at my hand in my coat pocket. Mam’s little case that I had always loved and wanted — it was mine now, and I wished it were hers again — onto the bus it came with me filled with the clothes that I’d taken to Mrs Mickle’s. I put it in the rack and sat below, aware of it like some little cloud above me, blotting out the sun.

  Knocknee slid away. I had seen this bus leave before, full of schoolgirls headed for a picnic, or surrounded by well-wishers for a departing honeymoon couple. Today it held only shop-men who had business in Cordlin, and a mam and her daughter who must see the dentist there, and rich Mister Crowly Hunter who popped back and forth all the time to show that he had the time and the money — and me, under my cloud, with my heart inside me like the husk of something.

  We rolled out across the countryside. I tried to notice every shape of the land and every object on it; it’s the last time you’ll see this for a while, I told myself. But I could not strongly care. I was only grateful to get away from Knocknee and its four death-beds, its purse-mouthed landlord, its hard-faced carters who had tried to get the advantage of a girl in mourning eager to escape. I had held my ground with all of them, as Gran and Mam always did; I had nothing to be ashamed of. I was leaving the town cleanly; I could come back whenever I wanted. Don’t burn your bridges, Gran had said, and I hadn’t. And I had the deed in my case for the bridge she had not burned, the house on Rollrock, among those wild, sad men.

  The port town reached up out of its valley and drew us down to the water. Why were they called the Heads, those two promontories? They were so much more like arms, shielding the harbour-water from any blow or swell. Down the town we went, which any other day of my life would have been exciting in its strangeness: the fine houses, the costumed people, the little milk-truck there. But the whole world was strange now, without Mam in it, or Dad, or my brother Donald. Even the most familiar things — my own hands, my face in the mirror over the washbowl this morning — struck me afresh. I was glad of new sights, for they shook me a little out of my grief, but I was not the excited girl I had been. Or the frightened one — getting from bus to boat, which would have terrified me a year ago, would now be a small thing, after these three recent deaths, three funerals.

  The Fleet Fey, the boat was called. Even in my hollowed-out state I had to admit she was a romantic sight. Neat-painted, she moved just slightly at the dockside, seeming to ignore us as she gazed towards the Heads, towards the open sea.

  ‘Buy your ticket on board, lass,’ said the deckhand steadying the gangplank, so up I went with my case, and sat at the back where I could see all the cabin and out all the windows. With the rumble of the idling engine in my seat and up my back, I watched the mailbags brought on, and some sacks of potatoes. The clouds were breaking up, and the sunshine came and went, now trying to dazzle me with the colour and movements of the waterfront and town, now tiring of the effort and letting all fade to its proper grey again. Here I was, making this journey that I had dreamed of since I was a child, that I had never thought I would have the chance to, or the courage for, and still I felt dull and dogged, just as I had when setting about the rigmarole after Donald died. I knew what to do, all the tasks in their correct order, and grimly I was going about them, preparing myself for each upon the next, for the folk I must deal with and the tricks I ought to be wary of.

  The captain came through and shut himself into the wheelhouse. The deckhand pulled up the gangplank, and wound in the wet rope that had been cast off from the shore. The wharf slid away; the other boats glided past at their moorings. There was some relief in that, in the water broadening between me and the mainland with its graves and sorrows.

  There were more graves ahead, I knew that. The first chance I had I would visit them: Granddad Odger Winch, and Uncle Naseby, those two scoundrels, objects of Mam’s spitting hatred and Grandmam’s deepest silences.

  We passed between the Heads, the rocks piled like messy gateposts either side of us, the swell making the ship restless. The sun came out like a cheer, and the water was the loveliest colour, bright blue-green, and the foam curled like cream on some of the waves. The Heads fell behind, and there was nothing but sky and sea ahead of us, and each one’s weather. The towns and farms and all their fuss and clutter of memories, I was shrugging them off like a heavy cloak, and sailing free.

  The deckhand came around and fetched fares. ‘Would you mind telling me when Rollrock comes in sight ahead?’ I asked him.

  And I sat there in the thrum of the engine, ploughing forward into my adventure, watching everything too hard to think, until he did. Then I went and stood in the bows.

  The island rose from the horizon. It looked like nothing so much as a giant slumped seal itself, the head towards us and the bulk lumping up behind, trailing out northeast to the tail. Its slopes were greened over, its near side all cliffs and cliff pieces, chewed off but not swallowed by the sea. Every cove and cave looked alike inaccessible to me, most treacherous and unwelcoming.

  But we did not head for that rough bit of coast as we drew nearer; instead we bore westward and around the head there, and once beyond that I could see where the land lowered itself more gently, making room for a town, a small town only, on the slopes above the two long moles built out from the shore. Above the houses, fieldwalls ran about, looking as if they should topple down the slope. The fields they outlined were smaller and stonier than I was used to seeing around Knocknee.

  Quite suddenly the headland cut between us and the southern swell, and the engine was freed from climbing among the mounds of the sea. We came in at a glide, the horizon settling, and the isle looking less liable to pitch forward in its sleep and crush us. Which house was mine, in that town? I tried to follow with my eyes the path Gran had described to me, putting me to sleep when I was tiny. A little black house, s
he’d said; was it that little black house, just sliding behind the church tower?

  The ferry slowed, churning water about its haunches. In we bumped against the wharf. All the town, it seemed, was gathered to meet us, and all the town was men, just as that visitor Tom Grease had told Mam and Grandmam — men who idled or mended nets on the sea-front, stood in groups near the store, or wandered along from the sea-front houses, or down from the town above.

  I lifted down my case, put it on the seat and stood by it, watching the deckhand tie up. Beyond him on the sea-front appeared a woman, short and stout and bow-legged, hurrying towards us. She carried a baby and trailed four flame-haired daughters, various sizes, but all dressed the same in flower-printed frocks.

  It couldn’t be. Misskaella? Gran had told us many a tale of that woman — she’d threatened us with her, even, when we misbehaved as children. The witch would come striding across the sea, she told us, and ladle out our punishment. I felt a stab of annoyance at Donald, that he was dead and not able to shiver as I told him I’d seen the actual Misskaella face to face.

  But no, it could not be, such a young woman and so lively, and all those children. Ah, this must be that apprentice Mister Grease had mentioned to Gran as Mam waved me out the door. A witch, all right, but not the witch of legend; one of those wild Callisher girls, from right near us in Knocknee. Still, she had learnt from Misskaella the art of being terrifying; my childhood terrors stabbed in me as she rocked towards the boat, seeming all energy and spite.

  Meanwhile the men had greeted the deckhand and helped him place the gangplank, and taken of the potato-sacks. The potatoes were for Fisher’s store, then, which stood there just as Gran had described it, the solidest building in the town besides the church. It was strange to see it, and to know without ever having entered it exactly how it was arranged inside.

  Well, I could only disembark now, couldn’t I? I walked past the curious passengers for the farther islands, and out of the deckhouse to the top of the gangplank. The Rollrock men fell quiet, lifting faces mixed of two kinds to me, round or long, pale or darker, framed by red curls or silky black locks; as well, there were more weathered instances of these two types, the hair only streaked with red or black, or whitened completely. Small pale eyes assessed me or large dark ones, some sharply, others shyly — some would not meet my glance at all.

  The witch pushed through the crowd of them, and took up a position right at the gangplank-end, with her free hand on her hip; her girls caught up to her, first swirling about her and then clumping close.

  ‘What’s this,’ she cried, in a voice like gargled stones, ‘with a suitcase? What do you think you are about?’

  I brought a picture of Gran at her fiercest into my mind, the way she would take no nonsense. I was not here because I cared what strangers thought, remember? I trod down the gangplank as if I often had to deal with angry witches. ‘Who are you?’ I said to the little termagant while I was well above her still. I spoke plainly, without sneering or fear. I carried all those deaths in me — Gran’s, Mam’s, Dad’s, Donald’s — those four people I now represented, and they gave my voice the right weight. ‘Who are you, that I should account to you? Are you mayor? Are you police or officialdom?’

  ‘What business have you on Rollrock?’

  ‘Business? I live here. I have property.’ I stepped off the side of the plank onto the dock, and walked around the witch and the daughters.

  ‘Property? What property?’ she said, following.

  My, they were tall, some of these boys. ‘This is the way you welcome women home, then?’ I said — not loudly, not angrily, but very clearly, every syllable. ‘Let them be harassed and harridaned even before they’ve set foot?’

  ‘Home? What home?’ The witch pushed in front of me.

  ‘Quieten, Trudle,’ said one of the older, bigger men.

  Trudle Callisher lifted her chin at him, and drew herself up as much as she could. Her four daughters did the exact same thing, glaring at the man. I might have laughed at the sight, at any other time.

  ‘Who is your family, girl?’ the man said to me.

  ‘Winch,’ I said. ‘I am Lory Severner, daughter of Bet Winch, daughter of Nance Winch.’

  ‘Ah.’ Nods and glances and mutterings went round among them.

  ‘Odger Winch was your granddad, then, God rest his soul.’

  ‘And Naseby Winch my uncle, rest his. I hear you gave them both Christian burials?’

  The younger men looked to the older, who nodded, and watched us keenly.

  ‘We did. You’ve been in Cordlin all this time, you Winch women?’

  ‘Knocknee. As far from the sea and seals as we could get. But I heard there are no more sea-wives left here on Rollrock. Is that true?’

  ‘It is. They all went,’ said the man. ‘Took themselves off.’

  ‘All of them, and none brought up since? Because if there is even a one, I’m straight back to Knocknee.’

  ‘There’s none,’ said the man quickly, into the silence. All of them watched, listened, as if their lives depended on it. Several of the lads might be the one I sought, but of course, he would be very much changed by manhood. They all had such eyes on them — had no one ever told them not to stare? — but none of them gave any sign of knowing me.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said a man at the big man’s elbow. ‘There’s not a one, any more. There’s not been a seal-woman here for a good seven years.’

  The big man shifted his feet. ‘I would not say that they’ve been good years, myself.’ Into the discomfort after that, he plunged with, ‘Might we carry your case for you, up to the Winch house?’

  ‘Thank you. That would be very kind,’ I said.

  Several of the fathers elbowed forward younger men, and silently they jostled for the case. Then we set off up the sunshiny lanes, and the witch Trudle and six or seven men came with us. Trudle’s face was still pinched up with suspicion; her daughters flowed around her; her baby boy stared at us. He looked a little odd, that one; there might be something wrong with him. The girls’ piles and flags of red hair flamed in the sunlight — my own hair, plaited close to my head and down my back, felt very contained and obedient by comparison.

  The big man introduced himself as Torrens Baker. ‘Your grandmam would recall my dad, I should think.’

  ‘Mister Baker,’ I said, ‘I have a feeling there were cousins, from my grandfather’s marriage, or my uncle’s, who ought to have got this house.’

  ‘Oh, there were,’ he said.

  I had known it, the way Mam and Grandmam had muttered with Tom Grease when he visited, while I made the tea.

  ‘There were several sons from those marriages,’ said Baker. ‘But no Winch lads came back, after the mams took them away. Odger and Nase were both unlucky in that. All these lads you see around you, they are what’s returned, from Crescent or the Skittles, or from sealers farther off.’

  I glanced at one or two boys’ profiles, their dark hair or red; what kind of mark would it leave on you, to have lived beneath the sea? These ones seemed to move easily enough on the land; they’d more intelligence in their faces than Trudle’s boy had in his and, as far as I could see without being seen to stare, no webs joined their fingers.

  ‘And no daughters?’ I said. ‘But wait — ’ For the older men had one and all flinched at my words, and the younger’s faces had fallen. ‘There was something terrible about the daughters. Forgive me.’

  ‘Many a girl-child was born to Winches,’ said Baker, and then he paused, in the manner of a man on the point of declaring an unpleasant truth. ‘But …’

  ‘I heard something of it.’ I rushed on to fill in the awkward silence. ‘But it was hard to keep Gran talking about some things on Rollrock for longer than a minute; she would up and bustle away, first chance she had.’

  Baker nodded at the ground. I made myself stay silent. ‘Well,’ he went on eventually, and quite softly, ‘they do not thrive on land, the daughters of a man and a sea-wife. There is mo
re seal in them than there is in lads. They must be put back in the sea if they are not to die. They must be reared by their own people. It caused the wives great grief; many of us remember that.’

  ‘Not to mention the other griefs upon them,’ said a man at my other side.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Baker over him. ‘Here is Winches’.’

  I nearly laughed, the house was such a toy. And it didn’t look straight; the slope of the land threw my eyes off so much, the house seemed to lean back into the hill — for a better hold, maybe. Grass and weeds grew thickly to the fence-tops, to the windowsills, like a bowl of wild salads. Sea pinks clumped along the fence, and sea rocket trailed between the palings into the fields around.

  ‘Any one of our lads can cut that down for you, Miss Severner,’ said a smaller man into my silence.

  ‘I’m sorry? Oh, the weeds? Yes. Well.’

  I wrestled the gate part-open against the weed-sprouts in the path, squeezed through it sideways, leaving behind the several young men who had stepped forward to help me. I pushed past the growth that leaned in either side, up the weed-cracked path. I took out the big black key on its ribbon, slid it into the lock and turned it, grasped the doorhandle, lifted the latch, and pushed wide the door.

  Dust curled up from the floor, leading my gaze up the papered walls to the pictures on them, two stormy seascapes, faded to mostly dark brown. Beyond the far hall door a kitchen chair-back drew its arch on the shadows; a faded curtain frayed from the kitchen window rail, worn through by years of sunshine.

  ‘Did you want those battens taken off your windows, Miss?’ said one of the young men as I stared in at all this.

  ‘Maybe in a little while,’ I said. ‘For now, I need to look about the place by myself, if you don’t mind.’

  I went back for the case, which the young man passed over the gate to me. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and, looking around at them, at Trudle bridling and all her suspicious daughters, ‘Thank you very much for showing me the way.’