by Lydia Syson
‘No liquor? No liquor?’ say Mr Peacock, his eyes blurring then fixing, his brow lining like a piglet’s nose. He sweats out a smell both foul and sweet. Some movement in the trees behind and there stands Billy, the last boy left, who has followed his father, but is now afraid to approach. He duck back and away from us not to be seen. I sense his shame.
Our heads refuse for us.
‘What, none of you?’ Mr Peacock say, rocking between anger, doubt, surprise. He think we judge him. He is not mistaken. ‘Not a little drop, when we have such celebrating to do? Such celebrating. Come on now … don’ vex me now.’
Mr Peacock speaks like a man calling to a chicken he wants to catch for the boiling. Wheedle, wheedle. Pineki has still some desire to peck – I see his unsteady feet, and he never hides his admiration for our master – but he holds himself back.
‘Not a drop, sir,’ say Solomona, shaking his head most firm, hand raised against Mr Peacock and his odours, as though he would push his body from us. I wish he would. ‘It is not our way, sir. But truly we thank God for the safe delivery of your son and we will pray for him.’
We nod and mumble, all a gang. Mr Peacock throw back his head to drink some more and his next words spit at us.
‘Well, aren’t you a Sunday school collection! Suit yourselves. I’ll thank you kindly for your congratulations, and toas’ my son myself.’
One last swig, and this bottle is emptied. He falls backwards, like timber.
21
THE WHARE SMELLS FAINTLY OF BLOOD AND EXCREMENT. The stool Pa knocked over when Ma sent him away points its legs at Lizzie accusingly, so she sets it on its feet. Her head sings. She does not want this to happen to her ever, but can’t think how to stop it. Does Ada know? And yet … the astonishment of it … the glow of Ma, whole again, lit from inside, so serene and purposeful despite her splitting. Lizzie starts to roll up the goatskin rug, to hide its dark, matted stain, but Ada, returning at just that moment with a clean bucket, takes it from her.
‘Not yet. There’s more.’
‘More?’ Lizzie’s eyes follow Ada’s to the twisting rope still visibly looping between mother and baby. The cord now looks dead rather than alive, its blue pulse stilled to white. But her brother’s breathing. She notices a few smears of blood – a small archipelago – on Ma’s inner thigh.
‘Yes … it’ll be here soon,’ Ma agrees, mysteriously, offering her vast, brown nipple to a mouth that glistens like a small, wet petal but shows no interest. ‘Come on now, come on. Just a drop.’
She milks herself efficiently with thumb and finger, and smears the baby’s lips with the oozing yellow trickle. The creature turns his head away.
‘He wants to sleep, Ma,’ says Ada. ‘Look at him. The darling. Can’t you let him sleep? He must be so tired.’
‘No, not till he’s fed, and we’re all done here, and then I’ll sleep too.’ She doesn’t say more than that, but there’s a determination in her voice that scares Lizzie.
‘Shall I make you tea, Ma?’ Lizzie asks.
‘Soon.’
Ma holds the baby up, inspects him, hungrily. His eyelids flutter, and then she turns him round to face the other breast, and strokes his cheek, very gently.
‘Try this instead. Come on now, just a little. Be a good boy for your mammie.’
‘Why doesn’t he want to eat, Ma?’ Lizzie lowers her voice. It seems to her, obscurely, that Albert is to blame. His absence hangs in the hut. Perhaps his new brother feels it too. Perhaps Albert needs to be found and buried before this child can live. Lizzie tugs at Ada’s sleeve, wanting to ask her, but then a face appears at the parted shutters: Queenie, questioning, mouthing. She wants to come and see the baby. Lizzie sends her away and tells her to leave Ma alone. Queenie needs to take care of Gussie. She retreats, whimpering, leaving Lizzie wishing the thing in her mother’s arms looked more like a baby, and less like a sea creature. His eyes are a milky version of Albert’s.
‘Is the baby … quite right?’ she asks. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, but none of you were like this. Not even Albert …’
Her voice stumbles at his name, and her breath whistles into her, as she winces at something Lizzie can’t see or feel and doesn’t want to.
‘Ready, Ma?’ says Ada.
‘Look!’ says Lizzie, before their mother can reply. ‘Clever thing!’
That tiny mouth has at last discovered what it was made for. The tiny chin begins to move forward and back in a slow, steady rhythm, and the baby’s wandering eyes find his mother’s. Before long, his lids droop, and everything gradually slows, until even a little poke can’t start it all up again. Its tiny chest fills visibly with air and empties itself, over and over and over again. It’s unmistakably alive.
Ma says ‘Ow’, half stands and hands the baby to Ada, and then up she starts again with that animal breathing and unearthly face, silently stretching.
‘Bucket, Lizzie,’ she pants. Her hand grabs at her baggy belly, as if to stop it from sliding away. Her body – soft and loose and messy – is falling apart. ‘It’s coming.’
Confused, Lizzie dashes for the pail, and helps her mother to crouch over it, standing before her so Mrs Peacock can lean on her shoulders, steadying herself in a long, drawn-out, near silent moan.
‘Twins?’ whispers Lizzie. Slowly dancing, her sister shakes her head, and rocks and soothes the baby.
Lizzie touches her mother’s forehead with her own, afraid she’s dying, hoping love and longing will keep her on this earth, desperate to bring an end to this agony, whatever its cause. Ma grimaces again, her face darkening, sweat squeezing briefly from her forehead. Something squelches out below. ‘Afterburden,’ she mutters, sucking in her breath and reaching for a cloth to dab delicately at herself. Even as Ada removes the heap of meat and membrane her mother has deposited in the bucket, Lizzie is none the wiser.
BEFORE
Lizzie and Albert followed Pa shakily, hardly knowing where they were going. Ada, waiting at the top of the cliffs with the captured nanny and her two bleating kids, jumped to her feet as soon as she registered the numbness on their faces. Nobody wanted to talk about what they had just witnessed, not right away. Who could have imagined such a stampede, or how it would end? Talking wouldn’t change it.
Still, at least they wouldn’t be coming back from another goat-hunt empty-handed. Ma couldn’t be disappointed this time, not with one for meat and one to milk.
Mr Peacock unloaded the only goat they had killed before it leapt, and creaked his head from side to side to loosen his stiff neck.
‘No time to butcher this fellow properly tonight. We’ll need the last of the light to get the milker down the cliff safely.’ He hoisted the carcass into the tree, working quickly and efficiently, checking each knot with care. Its yellow eyes stared and swung.
‘Will we all go back now?’ said Lizzie, quickly. ‘Surely we can’t leave the meat here all night?’
‘You think it’s going to run away …?’ said Pa, laughing. It was his way of lightening the air, Lizzie understood, so she tried to smile.
‘No, Pa. But you never know what might take it. Ada and I can stay and guard it.’
‘What do you think, Albert? Can the two of us get these three back on our own?’
To Lizzie’s surprise, Albert nodded.
‘Yes. I think so. If we’ve got their mother, the kids will follow.’
‘Good lad.’
Albert approached the nanny. ‘Shh … Shhh … steady on. You’ll have the tree over if you keep pulling like that.’ She stuck in her heels and lowered her head. He lowered his own, kept his hands behind his back, breathed gently into her nostrils, undismayed by her rolling eyes. Slowly, slowly, she began to calm – just a little – until she had ceased to fight her captors and merely stood and trembled.
‘That’s the way,’ said Pa. ‘We’ll rope the kids if need be.’
‘So Ada and I can stay?’ said Lizzie.
Pa gave them both a n
arrow look, then jerked his head towards the skittering kids.
‘These two are less likely to panic with fewer people around to put the wind up them. We can’t have another stampede. Though what your mother will say when we come back without you …’
She could say what she liked, thought Lizzie. It would be too late by then. A whole night of freedom ahead. Nobody telling them what to do until morning. And Ada to herself for once.
‘You girls going to be warm enough? Here – have my flint and coat.’
Pa shrugged his jacket off into Lizzie’s waiting hands. He stood in waistcoat and shirtsleeves, considering his daughters, while Albert held on to the nanny goat with all his strength. She dragged back, resistant, locking her knees against him, while the two kids pranced and danced around her, springing up with straight, stiff legs.
‘This way,’ said Pa, when Albert’s patience had calmed her again.
‘We’ll get the fire going right away,’ said Lizzie, handing the flint tin to Ada. ‘Thank you, Pa. Thank you so much. We’ll be very good.’
‘Sleep well. I’ll be back at first light. And don’t you dare move from here.’
‘Of course we won’t.’ Ada managed to sound almost bored. Lizzie looked indignant at the very thought.
BEFORE
Ada collected dried bracken for kindling and broke up twigs, and Lizzie made a circle of rocks.
‘I don’t think we should light the fire yet,’ she said.
‘No,’ agreed Ada.
‘Though maybe he’ll be back if he doesn’t see the smoke.’
‘Once they’re over the edge of the cliff, he’ll not see a thing. Anyway, he’ll need both eyes for Albert and the goats.’
‘So I reckon we can go and explore now,’ said Lizzie, with tilted head. ‘Just a little, before it’s too dark.’
Ada nodded. ‘Which way?’
‘Where Pa showed us. To the crater lake,’ Lizzie said. It was obvious.
‘That far?’
‘Let’s sleep there,’ said Lizzie, snatching up the coat. ‘What’s going to happen to a dead goat? And then we can swim in the morning too. When did we last go in the water? All the way?’
‘He did promise to take us when there was time.’
‘There’s time now. At least for us.’
‘I hope Albert will manage,’ sighed Ada. Lizzie swallowed a sharp retort. She was certain Albert managed better when Ada wasn’t around to fuss over him, and she was pretty sure Pa thought so too.
It turned out that once you were up and over the first ridge, pretty much all the goat tracks led down to the water. The girls let momentum carry them down the last stretch, as though they had no choice in the matter but to let one leg follow another, just to keep up with their hurtling bodies, lungs at full stretch with no one to hear their squawks and yells.
Ferns and loam gave way to mud and pumice and a skeleton regiment of trees, stark white and splintered. Barren devastation after the lush excess of the forest. Awed into stillness, the girls stared bewildered at jagged limbs hanging at uncomfortable angles where they had been half ripped off, branches like bones, not an inch of bark remaining, not a leaf left dangling. The eruption could have happened last year, or twenty years ago. The girls had no way of knowing.
‘Did Pa say anything to you about the volcano?’ asked Ada, uncertainly.
‘Not exactly,’ admitted Lizzie. ‘I suppose he talked of the crater lake. I never thought to ask what had made the crater.’
‘And Mr Robson?’
Lizzie had long ago confessed her early notice of their moving plans to Ada, and sworn her to secrecy.
‘I couldn’t hear everything they said. But Pa would never have brought us here if it wasn’t safe. And now we’ve got the lake!’
The ghostly forest was reflected in water the colour of bright moss. Lizzie bent to pick up a stone. Light and airy, it could hardly summon the energy to cut through the air as she hurled it into the lake. The water swallowed it with a whisper of a splash. Two red-beaked birds with purple plumage flicked their tails and staggered into flight. Lizzie pulled Ada closer to the water, hanging on to her for balance while she stuck out a heel, and then a toe, and finally plunging in a whole foot.
‘It’s warm!’ she said, delighted. ‘Warm enough. Not cold anyway. Like a giant bathtub.’
‘Any fish?’
‘I doubt it …’
‘Will it make us go green all over?’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Lizzie swung her foot into the air, and pointed and flexed it. ‘Come on!’
Ada stepped in too, and wriggled her green toes, and wobbled a few steps from her sister. They eyed each other, grinning. Then Ada pulled back one leg and swooshed forward her foot in a strong, satisfying arc which sent a bridge of droplets slashing across the water surface. Lizzie sent another out, and then Ada a third. For several minutes they stood holding up their hems and gleefully kicking the water not at but across each other, forming slow, sparkling intersecting patterns, making scoops of their green feet.
‘We’re free!’ yelled Ada, grabbing Lizzie’s wrists and beginning to spin. The sisters twirled on the strange, bruising beach, lurching and colliding and finally collapsing together in an exhilarated heap, with the sky whirling above them.
‘Nobody to tell us what to do till morning,’ gasped Lizzie. ‘Heaven.’
They lay watching the clouds slow down, enjoying their unusual liberation. Ada sighed.
‘Oh, this is lovely. Don’t you feel sometimes we’re hardly more than servants for Pa?’ She looked sideways at her sister. Lizzie contemplated the idea briefly, and dismissed it.
‘He’s our father. We have to do what he says,’ she replied. ‘Don’t we? And what Ma says too, of course. That’s always how it is. And anyway, it’s not just for him. Everything we do, all our work, it’s for all of us.’
‘Ye-e-s,’ said Ada, slowly. ‘It’s just that sometimes it seems …’
Lizzie sat up very suddenly.
‘What’s that?’
She pointed across the lake to a twisting thread of steam which rose from a crack in the pink-flushed rock face opposite. Made visible – though barely – by the cooling evening air, it vanished almost before you could see it.
No need to consult. The rough, sliding stones muttered gently as they moved hastily across them. Picking their way round the shoreline, the girls’ arms kept flying up at the sharp pain of bruised soles, but they would not stop.
Standing right below it, they could see that the steam was trickling from a crack much higher up the rock face than they’d first imagined. It opened out into a wider crevice some way below. Ada put on Pa’s jacket to keep her hands free – Lizzie told her she looked like a scarecrow – and they began to climb, up and along, up and along, edging and stretching and pointing out handholds to each other. Lizzie knotted up her tunic skirt to stop it catching and reached the ledge outside the opening first. Undeterred by the whiff of brimstone at its opening, she felt her way, cautiously, one hand raised above her head, into a narrow cave. She hallooed down it, ready to duck if necessary, but the way her voice sounded suggested that this cave opened out again inside.
‘Careful,’ called Ada. ‘How big is it?’
‘Big enough for both of us, easily, I think. Definitely bigger once you’re a little way in. And the walls are dry. Feel the rock.’
‘I’m feeling the ground,’ said Ada, bending behind her, letting a little more light in as she crouched. ‘It’s warm, isn’t it? Toasty. What do you think?’
‘About sleeping here tonight?’ Lizzie understood instantly. ‘Oh yes! I’ve never slept in a cave. And this one’s an oven. Perfect! No need to bother with a fire.’
‘We’ll be up early? We’ll get back to the goat meat before Pa, won’t we?’
‘Of course. We’ll have to. Lay the coat down here.’
Lizzie helped Ada spread it out. Old sweat and fustian and working bodies billowed up. The comforting smell of Pa.
&
nbsp; ‘Do you think they’re back home yet?’ said Lizzie, envying Albert’s triumph, exulting in her own.
‘Home,’ said Ada, trying the word. ‘Yes, I should think so, by now.’
‘I wish I could see Ma’s face. She’ll be so pleased with that nanny.’
‘And Queenie. I wish I could see hers. Two more babies for her. Though one’s for eating.’
‘Unless they’ve all got stuck on the way down? Or fallen. You know Albert’s joints are playing up again?’
She hadn’t noticed. And like Pa, Lizzie found it hard to believe in pain whose cause she couldn’t see.
‘Don’t worry so much. Pa always knows what he’s doing,’ said Lizzie, shoving her hip at Ada. ‘Move up.’
‘I wish we’d brought a candle.’
‘What do we need to see once we’re asleep?’
The sisters huddled against each other, looking out towards the tall blue pyramid of sky at the mouth of the cave which turned velvet, then darkened to navy.
‘I hope he’s not made Albert take the rope. I hope that stupid nanny hasn’t pulled him off the cliff. I hope the kids haven’t run away,’ said Ada. ‘I hope Sal hasn’t lost herself again.’
‘I hope you’re not going to spend the whole night worrying. It won’t make any difference.’
‘Really?’ said Ada. ‘Thinking makes a difference, doesn’t it? Isn’t it a bit like praying?’
‘I don’t think worrying is like praying.’ Lizzie ignored the quiet twang of guilt. She didn’t want Ada to be thinking about Albert when he wasn’t even there. ‘Anyway, right now Albert will be a hero for bringing back the nanny goat. Nobody to steal his thunder. They’ll all be singing hymns and saying their prayers down below, and the nanny will be feeding her babies, and soon everyone will be asleep, and we will be too.’
‘Maybe.’
Ada’s voice shrank. Lizzie blundered on, trying to cheer her up.