Sea Hearts

by Margo Lanagan

  An older man cleared his throat. ‘If you should need anything …’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be sure to ask.’

  The men drifted away back down the hill. ‘Come, Trudle,’ said Mister Baker, for the little bow-legged woman looked intent on staying and watching, and showing her displeasure some more.

  ‘What does she want here?’ I heard her say in her gargling voice as she went off with him. ‘Who would come to this place, to more than visit and go again in a day?’

  I heard the murmur of Mister Baker’s voice, but his words were indistinct. I nodded to the departing men, and some touched their cap-brims to me as they went.

  And then I turned to face the house, the dark shuttered rooms, the thick dust, the achingly plain furniture. It would be like taking up residence in my own sore heart, I thought. And I walked up the path and went in.

  I knocked on the sunny door, of the only person in Rollrock I could be said to know in the least degree.

  His father opened it, and raised his eyes from my shoes to my face as if he had never seen anything like me before.

  ‘Mister Mallett?’

  Mallett nodded, realised he ought to speak, croaked, ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Lory Severner. I wonder, might I have a word with your son Daniel?’

  Down went his eyes again, his whole face; he made away from me across the wide front room. Plates and water sounded deep in the cottage behind him. The morning sun shone warm on my back, and lounged about golden on everything. I put my cheek up to the warmth.

  ‘Don’t you touch them; I’ll finish them,’ came the younger man’s voice, and I turned back to see him, much taller than his father, ducking his head to enter the far hallway.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said while he was still a shadow there.

  He emerged into the front room. Sunlight lit him, reflecting up from the step where I stood. ‘Morning.’

  He was very tall and lanky, but he was the one, all right. He’d grown into his eyes and his mouth now. He wore work trousers and unlaced boots, a red-checked white shirt with the collar fraying and a very old, worn grey jumper, unravelling at one of the elbows. His hair wanted cutting quite badly; it was in his eyes so that he had to twitch it aside. I thought he looked lovely.

  He stopped just inside the door, waiting for my face to give him a clue. I folded my arms. ‘You don’t remember, then.’

  He narrowed his eyes, then his mouth dropped open. ‘Knocknee market!’ he said.

  ‘There you go. First girl you ever saw.’

  He nodded slowly, looking for signs of the old me that he’d met. ‘It’s many years.’

  ‘Have you seen any since?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I saw more that day, though I didn’t speak to any. And then there were my sisters.’ He looked at his feet.

  ‘Your sisters? But I thought — ’ I felt as if I had strayed into a bog somehow, was about to sink suddenly and wallow and be trapped.

  ‘In the sea.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. It might be a test, I thought, but he did not have a testing face. He was reddening, and seemed surprised.

  ‘I don’t think I saw you yesterday,’ I said, to move us along. ‘Did you meet the boat?’

  ‘Yesterday? I did not. But Toddy told me, Toddy Marten. He was there.’

  I put out my hand. ‘My name is Lory Severner.’

  ‘Daniel Mallett.’ His hand was very big, and probably very strong, but he handled mine as if afraid of snapping it off my wrist. ‘Severner? But Toddy said you were Winches.’

  ‘My mam was a Winch. Bet Winch. She married a Severner in Knocknee.’

  He took that in, thought of something else. ‘But how did you find me? For we didn’t tell our names, that day in Knocknee.’

  ‘I asked, didn’t I, down at the shop there? They said it could only be you and your father, the last fifteen years, gone to Knocknee to do business about a girl. Everyone else from here, their business stops at Cordlin. So says Mister Fisher.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ said Daniel Mallett. ‘So…you’re settled in Winches’ now?’

  ‘I’ve begun,’ I said. ‘I’ve begun on settling.’

  ‘And no one’s got that grass down yet?’

  I followed his gaze to the edge of my skirt; grass-seeds were scattered all along it. ‘No, they’ve not,’ I said, and laughed up at him. He gave me a small smile, like someone just learning how to do it.

  ‘I’ll fetch my knife, shall I?’

  I looked up in surprise.

  ‘A scythe, for the grass.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you. But I’ve never scythed grass.’

  ‘Neither should you have to. Our mams never did.’

  The mams hung between us there. It was a test, whether he meant it as one or not. I did not look away.

  ‘Leave me finish these dishes,’ he said, ‘and then I will come straight over to Winches’.’

  ‘All right, then,’ I said. I nodded in the sunshine, and he nodded in the shady room.

  So I crossed the town towards home. I paused once to look back to the sunny doorway where no one stood now, paused again crossing the main street to take in the view of the sun-bright sea there below. Daniel Mallett. I walked on, examining both sides of the hand that he had shaken as if it were a precious relic, or some kind of unknown creature, he did not know how fragile. Yes, Lory Severner, I told myself, my heart steady within me. You have made a very good beginning of things.

  We could do it all over again, I said to Miss, many a time, when things annoyed me in the town, when men kept me waiting, or did not sweeten me enough with gifts and favours. Some of the men are safe against seals, crossed front and back as you suggested, or as history learned them.But not all are. We could fix another sea-maid in the rocks at Crescent — or right here on Forward Head beach so’s we could have a good view of the fun. The men might say they are not inclined, or have no money, and such, but could they resist if one of those girlies showed herself?

  She always shook her head. There’s some who’d enjoy that, she said. Who are asking me for just that — any maid will do for them. I wouldn’t want to please those ones so well. And the others? They’re suffering very nicely, thank you, pining after the lost ones, weeping for their sons. I remember the smile she would give me then, nine parts sympathy, one part pure wickedness. That would always restore my temper.

  You dreadful woman, I’d say.

  And she’d smile broader. Let’s not change a thing.

  Pennylope helps me lift Misskaella onto the table. Ha’penny and Farthing carry a hand each, too. Tuppence is too busy crying — she likes to make dramatics, does Tuppence. Serena, I called her for her proper name, and never was a child so misnamed.

  We work the cold sweated nightgown off the body, and Penny brings the wash-water. I instruct her in doing the top half, while I deal with below. Then we put the old witch’s cleaner nightdress on. For the moment that’ll have to do.

  I open the door a crack to empty the bowl. There’s such a blow, I have to all but lay the lip on the sand so the wind doesn’t spray the corpse-water up and down me. And it wants to slap the door wide, to throw sleet in; I have quite some work to hold it and to close it.

  ‘Well, you can wait, for washing.’ I leave the bowl by the door. ‘Nobody touch that.’

  Penny is watching Miss, her hands all precious under her chin.

  ‘What’s your nonsense?’

  ‘It’s so cold,’ she whimpers. ‘Must we leave her lying in it?’

  ‘Why not? She doesn’t feel it. What would you do?’

  ‘I would put a blanket on her. I would wrap her over.’

  I’m about to laugh, but look at the poor gug’s face all turned down, and the little tears, jewels in her pretty eyes! ‘Daft Penny. Fetch a blanket, then! Keep the poor corpse warm.’

  The others are all along Tup’s bed in a row, looking out boggle-eyed at me and Pen and their dead Kaella. ‘Now listen,’ I say in the doorway. ‘I am going up the town
. You’re all to stay and look to Bartholomew when he wakes, make sure he does not hurt himself lumbering about.’

  ‘Oh, don’t leave us!’ wails Tup. ‘I don’t want to stay here with that! Let us come too!’ The other three faces change to glumly begging.

  ‘What a grand idea!’ I say. ‘Let’s all wander off and get lost in the storm, shall we? Give Kaella some company on that table.’

  ‘We’ll stay close to you! We’ll hold tight!’ Farthing is wobbling most piteously. ‘We’ll all go together!’

  ‘Oh, grand again! So I’ve to drag the lot of you on my skirts through that deadly cold? No,’ I say as her next idea starts popping out her mouth. ‘I’ll go alone, and you’ll stay here and Kaella will watch you. Oh my goodness, yes, and if you misbehave yourselves or leave your brother crying or a-mess, up she’ll get off her table and come at you dead!’ And I walk stick-legged, claws out, staring-eyed towards them, and they all scream and weep.

  ‘Oh, mam,’ sighs Penny at the door.

  I look down on the tremulating mess of them. ‘I cannot believe the sookenses I’ve raised,’ I say. ‘My brothers would have pummelled you flat in a minute. Off I go.’ I make for my coat on the door.

  ‘Please, oh please!’ Farthing smacks into me. She clings on, scrambling sideways as I walk, keeping me between her and Miss, noising like a kicked dog.

  ‘Shush this twaddle,’ I say. ‘This is your old Kaella. She sheltered and fed you since you were born, and showed you every kindness.’ What? Showed you every kindness? That’s my mam’s lies popping out of me, Mam who’s bones in the ground this last five years. That’s what happens, I suppose, when someone dies; all the other dead start to mutter as she nudges them aside, pushing down into the grave. ‘So be properly grateful and sit by her.’

  ‘That big Baker boy says it’s the men who feed us,’ Tup wails from her bed. ‘Every man in the town, he says, puts in his little bit now, to pay for having put his little bit in before.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about, Tup!’ says Penny in her sensiblest voice.

  ‘Never you mind.’ I give Pen a push, and she throws me a puzzled look. A laugh springs from my throat, and I catch it back and glance at Miss on the table. ‘Just you stay, all of you. There in that room, if you must, and bring the boy in with you if he fusses.’

  ‘It’s very cold, Mam,’ says Penny over their noise. ‘Why don’t you wear Miss’s coat on top of your own?’

  I make a face ready to retort some rude thing, but none supplies itself. Because it smells of her and will make me sad? I’d never say that aloud.

  But then when I am dressed and scarfed, coated and booted, I look at Miss’s coat on its hook, and at the window with proper snow boiling across it now. ‘Why don’t I?’ I take it down and sniff the chest of it. ‘Poargh! Oh, yes, that’s a good muddy weed-gathering smell, that is. You don’t mind me borrowing your smelly old coat, do you, Miss, to do your last will and wishes?’

  Miss lies cleaner and more dignified than I have ever seen her. Nothing can tease her now; nothing can goad her into a rage. Can it be that she’ll never rage again? Shall I never sit giggling, with my girls close about me like mushrooms in a clump, while she crashes in and out the bothy, shouting against men and women and babs, and the terrible life a witch must lead?

  ‘Don’t joke, Mam!’ Penny eyes Miss too, to see if she’s offended, to wish, like me, that Miss would stir and scowl and swear at us as usual.

  I pull on the coat and button it. Ooh, won’t I be snug. ‘Pass me that basket. No, the one with the lid, or everything will blow straight out again.’

  I strap it on and turn to the eyes from the bedroom. ‘Not a step outside, any of you!’

  ‘They won’t, Mam,’ says Pen, the sober little wife.

  The wind tears the door open out of my hand, fights my closing it, then punishes me for succeeding: a blow to the side of my head, a push at Miss’s coat and a rattle of my hems about my shins. But there, they’re shut in. I’ve shaken them off me for a while, the little limpets.

  I’ll go through the dunes, I think; I might not stay upright on the beach, and all that storming surf, oh, it’s too much this morning; this wind’s quite enough. I set out through blowing snow, and blowing sand — I must all but cover my eyes with the scarf if I’m not to be blinded, and the wind really would like to tear my basket off me, the way it batters and jerks. I cannot tell where the next gust will hit me from, the dunes chop it about so; it surprises and surprises me, and I stagger like a drunk man. ‘Perhaps I should have me a drink!’ I shout, one gloved hand sunk in a dune’s flank. ‘Plenty of wine-bottles up at the house. I should drink a toast!’

  On I stump and struggle. Showed you every kindness, I hear myself say, hear my mam say. Well, she took me in, I suppose, old Miss, and she kept me even when I turned into six people. All the little squallers, she would say as they fell and tantrummed around us, on the beach or in the bothy. I don’t know how you can stand it. I’m so glad I had none myself.

  Some sand has got in my eye. I would wipe it out if I weren’t so well sprinkled with sand the rest of me. One-eyed, I steer myself by the merest glimpses in between blinks.

  Well, she stood it, didn’t she, along with me? Often enough she’d stride out from us in a temper and stay away awhile. Plenty of times she raged against the noise and the mess and the stupidity of children — enough that the girls weren’t afraid of her shouting, unless she lashed out suddenly and startled them. But she had that room built on, didn’t she, when Farthing was coming along?

  And she stayed with us. You’ve got that whole big house up there, I told her once at the fireside, the girls blown silent to the walls by one of her outbursts. There’s no need for you to put up with us if you don’t want.

  What would I do up there? she crabbed at me.

  Have some peace, that you’re always saying you want.

  Even as I step out of the dunes into the full force of the snowy wind across McComber’s fields, I remember the look she threw me, as if I had cut her to the heart. Would you rather I went? she said. Is that what you want me to do?

  No! And it wasn’t. Not at all. But you complain so much of us.

  The look disappeared. Complain? That’s only noise. She waved it away. Up in that house on my own? I’ve had quite enough of that.

  Up the field I trudge. There’s a wall and a road there somewhere, though I can’t see either. It’s a good thing there’s a slope, or I wouldn’t know which way to turn. I could lose my bearings in the whitening, and freeze solid in a wall-corner, rob five children of their mam.

  But ‘Ha!’ Every man in town would come forth, then, wouldn’t he Tuppence, and give them a dad? ‘Ha!’

  There, look — a little part of the world keeping still. That’s the wall; that’s the stile.

  I reach town eventually. The lanes are swept empty by the wind so’s I don’t have to speak to anyone. All the men are shut in by their fires, some still solitary, many with mainland wives, breeding out the stain of the seal-wives quick as they can. Little red-head boys and girls are springing up all over the town these days, and the odd one darker and finer built, that everyone harrumphs at. Remember how frightened I was, the day the Severner girl came? It will turn into just like Knocknee, I said to Miss when I got home from Winches’ that day. Everyone prettier than us and sneering down their nose.

  Don’t you fret. I remember her queenly in her sickbed, flushed with the first of those fevers that would eventually take her off. They know now how to treat a witch on this island. They’ll not forget in a hurry.

  And it is better, a bit of life in the streets, some tumbling children not my own, some men and lads with smiles on their faces, after all those years of misery. I never thought I would prefer it, but it’s improved from the wasteland it was, with no wives at all, no women. And there’s still a man or two will have me, now and then, for old times’ sake, or who cannot afford a wife, or is beyond the whole notion of husbanding any more.
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  And who can blame them, after what the seal-girls did to them?

  When Ostler Grinny came running that morning, I remember, I thought it a scheme of Misskaella’s. That devious witch, I thought, she’s kept it secret even from me, so’s I don’t leak it to my girls and them to anyone else. We all followed them out, Ostler and Miss, along to the top of the steps to the beach, and there we could see, to the south, all the thrown-down clothes in the distance, all the men staggering about, waving their arms and falling to their knees, weeping on one another, tiny in the distance, their tiny cries floating to us on the wind.

  But there are little clothes, too, that they’re flapping! I said.

  Yes, as I said, they’ve taken the lads with them, said Ostler. Every last one! My Banter and my Toby! I’m begging you, Misskaella, if there’s anything you can do to get them back — And he fell to sobbing.

  I don’t know how they went, man, let alone how to fetch them up again. What a fine play-actor I thought her.

  You’ve schemed and equipped those ladies, haven’t you? I said, when Ostler had gone off weeping, to join the weepers on the shore.

  But, No, no, no, she said. It’s none of my doing, Trudle.

  Oh, you have too, I said, pushing her. You’ve put some charm upon the little skins to help them turn when they touch seawater.

  I never have, I tell you. How would I do that? She stared out along the beach. I never heard a word of this. All of them, and all the land-lads too!

  I remember Penny delivering Misskaella and me one of her Looks. Are you glad of the wives going?

  Glad? I suppose I am, said Miss quite seriously to her. I never thought those namby-pams would have this in them.

  It will make the mens very unhappy, said Pen.

  Ha! said I. That’s all to the good, isn’t it, Kaella?

  I cannot say it displeases me, she said very sweetly.

  I stand in the top street and stare up at the great house. It’s mine now, and that takes some thinking. Miss always said she’d leave it to me, but what did that mean? I never believed she’d really go; she was like rocks or great trees, always there, always would be there.