A Handful of Ash

by Marsali Taylor

  She dusted the egg off her hands on her pinnie, and came over to us, smiling. ‘Thanks very much for coming. It’s so hard to get judges, aabody’s related to someone.’

  ‘Thanks for asking us,’ I replied. ‘I’m really nervous. I mind how much work everyone’s mams put into the costumes when we were bairns.’

  ‘Some folk still do,’ Janette said, ‘but I think you’ll find the most o’ them are bought from Tesco or eBay. Anyroad, you just choose what you like best.’ She was one of those people who rattled off instructions without waiting to see if you’d got them. ‘There’s a prettiest, a funniest, and a most unusual for each age group. You can add a ‘special’ prize for each class, if there’s something good that doesn’t fit those.’ She handed Gavin a carrier bag of sweetie boxes. ‘We got loads, just in case. Then everyone gets a sweetie, these.’ She fished out a box of coca cola worm-shaped jellies. ‘We do the judging first, then there’ll be pass-the-parcel while you look at the lanterns. Those are just a first, second, third for each category. Then we have the lit lantern parade, and you give a first, second, and third for those – and then there’ll be another game or two, then supper, before the raffle, if you could present the prizes for that.’

  I was glad I remembered the drill for my own young days.

  ‘We’re got one o’ the teachers to do the games, so just follow along wi’ her.’ Janette gave a harrassed look at her abandoned loaf of bread.

  ‘We’ll do that,’ I said, and we went back around to the stage. The woman in eighteeth-century dress was checking through her props and laying them out on a chair: several packets of sweets for prizes, cards for the corners game, three large parcels, lists for ‘Bring me’, and blindfolds and rolled newspapers for a game I remembered as being very popular, where two contestants tried to whack each other. She looked up and smiled. ‘Are you the judges?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘I’d rather do the games any day. They’re all so good.’ She picked up her radio mike and tapped it. ‘I’ll announce the age groups, then they go round in a circle until you’ve made up your mind.’

  People were beginning to arrive now. A family-worth of mother, father, granny, grandpa and what looked like an auntie, all in traditional Shetland knitwear, ushered in a Harry Potter (complete with cloak, glasses, and wand), a spaceman with a neon-green gun, and another vampire. The children rushed straight to their friends in a waft of black cloaks and flying sparks. A toddler had its powder-blue wooly-bear suit peeled off to show an elf costume. It staggered dangerously out into the centre of the hall while its mother gossiped with a friend. Then there was a clump of folk together, a group of young mothers with a miniature Spanish dancer, a Victorian doll with bonnet and ringlets, and a black balaclava terrorist. The boys, I noticed, tended to go for costumes which meant they could run around, shout, and fire guns at people. Inga and Martin’s parents were anti-gun, and Martin always took full advantage of the Hallowe’en party to be a cowboy or a commando.

  At last, Magnie came in, behind a small boy in a green lizard suit, whose father was carrying a dinosaur head, obviously home-made papier mâché over a wire frame, and painted with what looked like best antifouling. He still had that rolling seamans’ gait even after ten years of retirement ashore. His face had been scrubbed till his cheeks were the red of a Snow White apple, his curly fair hair was sleeked back with grease, his chin shone, and the stripes of his Fair Isle gansey were blindingly white. His mother had knitted it for him just before she’d died, and he wore it only for dress occasions. It was a traditional ‘all-over’, with hoops of pattern in shades of blue on a white ground. He looked up at the stage. I saw him clock Gavin. His eyes narrowed. He paused a moment, considering, then stumped over to the steps, exchanging greetings with half the hall as he came.

  ‘Now then, Cass,’ he said. ‘I see you’re brought an extra helper. Now, boy. How are you keeping?’

  ‘I’m very well,’ Gavin said. ‘And you?’

  Magnie shook his head. ‘Keeping out o’ trouble. It’s fairly quiet up at Brae without Cass.’

  ‘It would be,’ Gavin agreed gravely.

  Polliteness duty done, Magnie turned to me. ‘Well, Cass, are you decided who we’re giving the prizes to?’

  ‘Hae a heart,’ I said, ‘the party’s no’ begun yet.’

  Naturally, it didn’t begin on time. Janette popped her head out of the kitchen every couple of minutes to clock the number of people in the hall, and it wasn’t until ten to seven that she gave the teacher the nod to officially welcome the folk. By that time I had worse butterflies than I’d have had at the helm of a four-master for the start of a Cutty Sark race. So many children, all dressed to the nines, all hoping for a prize … I didn’t want to disappoint any of them.

  The pre-school and nursery group came first. Gavin and I went down onto the hall floor to watch as they walked round in a circle to music. The elf’s mother gave him – her? – a sticky-out petals hat, popped her into a flower pot, and carried her round. A painted-face clown in a pom-pom suit stomped confidently beside an older girl dressed as a witch, with a froosh of grey hair and ragged black robes. He was followed by a miniature Charleston lady with rows of fringes, and a pink fairy with glittering wings. Both of those costumes were boughten, I reckoned. Then there was a soot-black chimney sweep, a chef with a paper salmon on a silver salver, and a vampire with a flour-white face and painted blood streaming down his neck.

  ‘I like that one,’ Gavin said. ‘He looks just like the old version of Dracula, the silent one. Nosferatu.’

  I’d never heard of it. I paused for a few seconds to contemplate the idea of Gavin as a film buff. All those long, dark winter nights – ‘Shall we put him down for – what, funniest?’

  Gavin shook his head. ‘He’s meant to be scary. We don’t want to hurt his feelings.’

  ‘Lawrence was right, you know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it was quite so witchy when I was young.’ I looked up into the rafters. ‘The balloons were just ordinary, all colours, not black, and we dressed up as all sorts of things. A good third of these are witches or vampires or such.’

  ‘Concentrate, Cass,’ Magnie said. ‘Du’s ower young to be reminiscing about the days o’ dy youth. What are we geeing prizes for?’

  ‘Prettiest. The flapper lady or the little flower – she’s cute.’

  ‘An unusual one,’ Gavin said. ‘The chef with the salmon, or the chimney sweep, both of those are good ideas.’

  ‘The chimney sweep could be funniest,’ I suggested.

  It took us ages. We settled at last for the flapper as the prettiest, the sweep as the funniest, and the chef as the most unusual, then awarded the extra prize to the vampire, for being the scariest. He beamed at us and gnashed his teeth as he collected the sweeties, and I did an exaggerated jump. The lower primary class included a flowergirl in what looked like a dress she’d been made for an older cousin’s wedding; another pink fairy (Harry’s toy shop, I reckoned); Spiderman (Tesco); the Victorian doll, now surrounded by her box; and the green lizard wearing his dinosaur head. Being older, they got to walk on their own, and the circle got tighter and tighter, then huddled to a standstill until the teacher swayed down to take someone’s hand and open it out again.

  It was strange how natural it felt, to be standing side-by-side with Gavin like this, Magnie on my other side. Magnie smelled of Lynx, and Gavin of old-fashioned soap, Imperial leather or something like that, and it felt natural to put my hand on his smooth black shoulder as I leaned up to murmur a comment into his ear. We agreed at last on the Victorian doll, the lizard, and Spiderman, and dodged the feeding frenzy for the jelly worms.

  The middle primary class were more influenced by TV and film. There was a Harry Potter group, with Harry, Hermione, a Death Eater, and Dumbledore, a pair of cardboard dominoes with backcombed and sprayed hair that I reckoned would cause a screaming match at bedtime, an old man crofter with boilersuit, staff, and toy dog, and Merida fr
om Brave complete with bow and arrows. The biggest children were definitely going for the ghoulish side of Hallowe’en: there was a ghost pierced by a bloody sword, several Twilight-style vampires, and the three crones with pointy hats and green faces that I’d seen in the kitchen. It was only when she said ‘Thank you’ that I recognised Shaela, grinning out from under the green face paint.

  After we’d done all the costume prizes, the teacher got them seated in circles, and the keyboard player started up pass the parcel tunes. We judges headed through into the peerie hall and contemplated tables groaning with pumpkins.

  ‘It’s no healthy,’ Lawrence said, suddenly coming up behind us. He’d put on a squad suit, some sort of grey furry animal. I couldn’t see what, as the head was hanging down his back. ‘All this stuff about witches and ghouls, it makes evil glamorous.’

  I was surprised he was taking it so seriously. I knew that some American fundamentalist churches were keen to ban Hallowe’en, but it had never seemed to be glorifying evil to me. We’d just had fun at the party, and went out kale-casting afterwards. I didn’t think it had led any of my classmates to devil-worship. ‘It’s just a fun,’ I said.

  Lawrence shook his head. ‘It causes trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ I asked.

  He gave me a long look, as if he was trying to judge how much to say. ‘Rachel said she’d talked to you.’ It was only then that I put this Lawrence together with the man Rachel had mentioned, her boyfriend who didn’t like his tea to be late. Yes, I could believe that. Then he added, ‘Annette.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She shoulda left this sort of thing alone.’ He gave me a stern look. ‘Have you talked to James Leask?’

  I glanced over at Gavin, over at the Primary 5-7 (without help) table. He and Magnie looked to be discussing the merits of an elaborate lighthouse turnip, complete with red stripes and matchstick railing by its carved steps. ‘Talked to him about …?’

  ‘About Annette, of course. What she’d told him. I saw them walking together the night before she died.’

  I tried to remember what John had told me. He’d said they’d met at the Scalloway Hotel on the Monday night, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned seeing her since. ‘When,’ I asked, ‘and where?’

  ‘Out along Port Arthur Road,’ Lawrence replied. His costume’s gloves were dangling from his wrists; he began drawing them on. ‘I was late working, and when I came out I passed the pair o’ them, walking the water side o’ the road.’

  The gloves he was drawing on took the breath from me. It felt as though it was suddenly silent in the hall, in spite of the squeals and paper-ripping rustles from the main hall, and the clatter from the kitchen.

  ‘I didna hear what they were talking aboot,’ Lawrence said, ‘but I could see he was trying to persuade her to something, and she wasn’t willing.’

  Gavin turned his head then, and I met his eyes and glanced down at Lawrence’s hands, then away. Lawrence caught the look. Suspicion flared in his eyes. He turned away, crumpling the half-on glove in his hand, but not before I’d had a good look at it.

  We’d talked about someone dressed as a demon. I should have remembered costumes like the one Lawrence was wearing. I’d seen them in a hundred Up Helly Aa squads. I saw again the marks on Annette’s neck, clawmarks, as though they’d been made by something gripping round her neck. There, dangling from Lawrence’s wrists, were gloves that could have been designed to make a mark just like that – big, spread pads, with straggling fur on the backs of the hands, and at the end of the grey rubber fingers were broad, blunt claws, with a sharp needle-glint at the end of each, as if someone had inserted drawing pins into the fingers. We’d called them cloors in Shetlandic. ‘ Dinna touch wir cat, sho’ll cloor dee.’ It had a thin, vicious sound. Great hands to grasp around a throat, cloors to bruise and scratch … was this what had attacked Annette?

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Gavin about it then. We presented the neepy lantern prizes from the tables, then there was a pause while each child collected its lantern and parents fumbled for matches. You could tell the smokers by the crowd around them. The teacher didn’t try to make them parade this time. Once the lights were out they all stood still, and we dodged around them in the darkness.

  My head was full of what I’d just seen: those glinting claws at the end of the hairy fingers. Lawrence said he disapproved of witches. In the dimness of the hall, orange-lit eyes and teeth leered at me. That could be good camouflage for a chief warlock, the upright citizen who was known to be a bit straight-laced about Hallowe’en. Beside me, a pair of slanted eyes had a scar like my own across one cheek, visible only because of the flickering tea light inside. Then there was Lawrence’s connection with Rachel. James Leask reckoned she was a witch. But if she was involved, why shift the body to her doorstep, and arrange that pointing hand?

  Hang on. I paused to admire a pumpkin cat’s face, complete with eyes as round as Cat’s, and pipe-cleaner whiskers each side of a huge, toothy grin. I’d taken it for granted Lawrence and Rachel lived together. Next to the Cheshire cat was one with a moon and a dozen little stars – we definitely hadn’t given that child a prize yet, which was now one of my awards criteria. Given Lawrence’s old-fashioned ways, perhaps she had her own flat. The lighthouse was gorgeous lit, with a small flashing torch inside, we had to give that a prize, even if it already had one. Supposing Rachel wasn’t living with him, maybe he didn’t know she was over with her mother. Maybe he’d been too busy covering what he was up to to ask where she’d be.

  Gavin had almost completed the circuit; his kilted silhouette was only three metres ahead of me. I’d seen Lawrence and Nate together, and there’d been a marked lack of cordiality, given they were to be brothers-in-law. I could see Lawrence’s upright work ethic condemning the use Nate had made of his talents and opportunities. So, I concluded, as Gavin and I met up, perhaps Lawrence was incriminating Nate without realising he’d involved Rachel too.

  I murmured the theory to Gavin while we were sitting on the steps at the front of the stage and waiting, teacup in hand, for the men with filled tay kettles to reach us. Lawrence had sidled towards the other end of the hall, I noticed. The children charged through to the peerie hall to be served with juice and crisps; the occasional ‘bang’ from a crisp bag filtered through their squeals. All the adults sat in peace around the hall while the workers from the kitchen came around with trays of food, urging us to ‘help yourselves’. I balanced two sausage rolls, a slice of pizza, and an egg sandwich on a paper napkin on my knee.

  ‘The grease will go through to your bonny frock,’ Magnie observed. He tugged a still-folded handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘It’s clean.’

  I spread it underneath. ‘Thanks.’ Lawrence had doled out his kettleful of tea and gone back to the kitchen without a glance in our direction. ‘So?’ I said to Gavin.

  He nodded. ‘We did interview him, because of his connection with Rachel. I remember being doubtful about whether he knew she was visiting her mother.’ He took a bite of pizza without spilling any tomato on his kilt or smearing it on his chin, and chewed and swallowed before continuing. ‘He said that he did. My impression was that he hadn’t known, but didn’t want to admit that. I thought at the time he was just loath to admit he didn’t know where his fiancée was, or even that she’d told him and he hadn’t been listening, but maybe it was more sinister than that.’

  I glanced around. Only Magnie was within earshot. ‘And Rachel?’

  ‘She couldn’t remember who knew she was there. She supposed she’d have mentioned it to Lawrence – “Why would I not have?” ’ He made it sound like Rachel’s intonation.

  ‘Because he disapproved of Nate,’ I said. ‘I remember us sitting chatting in the café once, and Nate coming to take the cups, and I noticed the atmosphere between them. I’d have put them on different watches straight away, if I’d been their captain. He’d have do
ne his best to have her seeing as little of Nate as she could.’ I hesitated, and took a cautious bite of sausage roll. I was feeling a bit nervous about the pizza; I wished I hadn’t taken the thing, for I knew I’d get tomato on my face. Sausage roll was safe, except for the crumbs.

  ‘We could refresh the two people acting together idea,’ Gavin said. ‘Rachel as the witch, Lawrence as the clawed demon who frightened Annette to death, and disposed of the body. Rachel would have had time to meet Annette after putting her mother to bed, but in that case, I don’t see why she’d have gone back to the Spanish closs, unless your interruption left her only able to dive into the house. Would you eat that pizza if I turned away and talked to Magnie?’

  I gave him an indignant look and took a carefully small bite. As I’d expected, a piece of onion instantly fell on the napkin. Gavin laughed.

  After the teas there was the dookin’ for apples, with the bairns forming long rows at two baby baths filled with water, and coming away with foreheads and fringes dripping, and a scarlet apple held triumphantly in one hand. Then, as a finale, there was the Grand Old Duke of York. The teacher in the eighteenth-century dress came down to take up a toddler, the older children formed pairs, and parents or siblings came out with the younger ones. Gavin held out his hand. ‘May I have the honour?’

  I curtsied with a swirl of material. His hand was warm as I laid mine in it. The musician struck up a chord and we were in, clapping as each pair danced up and down, following off and joining again to squeeze under the archway of hands. We were both breathless and laughing by the time each pair had had its turn of leading, and when he smiled at me, and released my hand, I wanted to lean against him. If we’d been alone then, we’d have kissed; but we were surrounded by people, and I stepped back, self-conscious, and made a play of watching the roof as the men undid the strings to let the black and orange balloons fall.

  I’d counted on the party organisers to get me out of cooking an evening meal, and they didn’t let me down. We wandered back to the marina just after nine, most comfortably replete, and with an ice-cream tub of leftover sandwiches and fancies to keep us going for the voyage back to Scalloway, as well as a thank-you bottle of wine. To save embarrassment, I changed back into my sea-going clothes in the ladies as we left. I’d just wriggled into my black Musto mid layer when Rachel came in.