Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  I open the kitchen door, call out ‘Lunch!’ The cramps in my abdomen almost buckle me over.

  No reply, and Mum’s sulk is still thickening in the air out here in the hallway.

  I go back into the kitchen and set the table for five. Lunch isn’t really anywhere near ready yet, but no one ever comes when I call, and they’ll be longer than usual, when they’ve got to pass through the remainder of Mum’s sulk.

  I go out of the back door into the garden, draw a bucket of water from the well and carry it to the door. I lift the grille off the drain, pour the water in and it flows away. The rice has gone down. It’s not blocked. Another day, I’ll block it up. Stuff something thicker than rice down there. A bedspread, maybe. A tablecloth. Some of her clothes. Or his. Not the twins’.

  Another day soon, I’ll annoy Mum much harder. Get her to want to unlock the padlock and send me away. But not today. Not with these cramps settling in. I put the bucket on the floor in the kitchen, stand at the back door and look at the pink paint peeling on the fence.

  Mum stood in this garden and stared at her fence when she’d finally finished building it.

  Dad said to her, ‘Come inside.’ He waited. He touched her arm.

  She didn’t move.

  He put his hand on her shoulder.

  She didn’t speak.

  The stars came out.

  ‘You’re safe,’ he said. ‘Please stop running now.’

  The moon shone down.

  ‘I’ll go to bed,’ he muttered, and disappeared into the house.

  I stood here in this kitchen doorway and watched her. She stood there and the sun rose. Dad came back, watched her for a while, made himself some tea and went away. The sun set again and still Mum stood there, her back to me and her face to the fence. The wind blew, her brown hair whipped into tangles, but still she said nothing. Not a word, till the moon was at the highest point in the sky, and she finally spoke: ‘That’s just perfect. Just right. I think I’ll have a nice cup of tea. Can someone make me one please? I have blisters on my hands.’ And she pushed past me into this kitchen, blisters outstretched and sat at the table to wait for the tea to be put down in front of her.

  Of course, I made it. Just the way she likes it. Nettle tea. Three spoons of honey, not too strong but just strong enough.

  I wrapped up her hands with an oatmeal poultice and white linen bandages.

  She said she didn’t like the colour of the bandages and tore them off.

  I don’t like the colour of my rags either. Blood on bright red cloth is difficult to see to soak off. Mum gave me these rags, after she’d finished building the fence. When it was just the two of us in the kitchen in the middle of the night, drinking tea in silence.

  She glanced at me. Nodded. Stood up, went off to another room and came back in with the red squares of fabric flapping in her blistered hands. Her cheeks were almost as pink as the fence. She said, ‘Stuff these in your knickers and keep yourself clean.’ I hadn’t started my periods yet, I was too young. But I knew about them. My parents brought a lot of books with them. I read about mythology, psychology and biology, as well as picture and storybooks. I’ve learned what I need to. I know that snails don’t have periods, nor do young girls or old women, toads or moths or spiders.

  I asked her, ‘Does it hurt, bleeding?’

  She told me about her first period and how she’d come home from school because she’d been in so much pain she thought she was dying. Her mother had said that all wounds bleed, and she must shake off the pain and get back to school. Mum said she thought she was wounded then, that she had to bandage it and not let the pain show. She said, ‘I felt so much, so much …’ She searched for the word, her eyes wandering over her blistered hands. I said, ‘Shame?’ and she flashed her sharp eyes at me and said, ‘No. Not that, never. I was never ashamed.’

  I didn’t believe her. After a long glaring silence, her eyes were shining and she said, ‘Even now, my periods aren’t any easier.’ I swallowed hard. She glanced at me and when she spoke her voice was quieter. She said, ‘You’re pale. Yours won’t be as sore as mine. Mine were always the most painful, more than anyone else.’ I felt hopeful, because I thought she’d noticed I felt scared. I wanted to have my period then and there all over the kitchen chair, just so she might keep noticing how I felt. I thought if I was an adult, a woman like her, with pain to bind us, she’d know how I felt. But I checked, and there was no blood.

  Soon I’ll be out there, on the other side of that fence and across a long stretch of water, in a place I can call home. I’ll hang my red rags off some other washing line, with no pink fence to hide them from view.

  Mary

  I’ve come down to the south cliffs, and I’m looking out to sea at the three ancient cliff stacks called the Pegs. Them’ve stood there, just off the edge of this island, forever. Da always says, ‘Down the south and past the Pegs’ is the way him rows to fish, but I can’t see hims boat on the horizon. I want him to come back to shore now. If him could see on my face that I know about Mam and Langward. If him could catch at the tangles all stuck in my head, and know the right things to say. If him could … only him is never sure what to say when I’m brooding. Him gets to working rather than asking: him’ll wash down or mend, sandpaper or hammer, fix or get rid, anything to busy hims hands. We’re a silent pair, when I’m all in knots.

  The Pegs are five hundred feet high or more. Home for fulmars, not long back from the south, bougirs what’re gone till the spring and all kinds of small chittering birds. The Pegs look like giant pegs on a washing line, only the line them’re pegged on is deep down under the sea.

  I look straight down. The sea sucks and crashes, laps, then tongues, then slaps the bottom of the cliff. It’s a long way down, and so fast to get there. I step back. I wrap my arms around myself. This is where the gales blow the hardest. Sheep and cows have been blown off these cliffs, when the winds rage high. This cliff is where –

  Dun want to think about that.

  I remember seeing Mam and Da go off for a walk on Da’s birthday one year, them walked away side by side, touching at each other’s fingers. For hims birthday she’d told him to put down the nets. She said there were to be a day of no work, and there were a wind blowing her hair when she said it. Him liked her to wear it down. Them were gone for near on the whole day and I stayed indoors, playing with Grandmam.

  Out there the sea’s too deep, too rough by the Pegs where the currents are thick. The waves swash round, pitch and surge. Folks say that a huge drowned dress is pegged to the bottom of the seabed. When Grandmam were alive, she told me the dress belonged to Sishee, a giant who were pegging it out to dry, years and years before the sea were even there. Sishee were singing a song made of pictures and no words.

  My head is murky, thick with Mam and Da and Langward and Barney. Langward saying Mam wouldn’t search for Barney means I’ve got to think even harder about what she were like, so my memories of her dun get stained. Or dun get more stained than them feel right now. I can remember Mam brushing my clean wet hair, holding it at the roots and brushing the ends so she dun tug and hurt me. She loved me. She loved Barney. She would have searched and searched for him. She’d have known the right questions to ask and the right folks to answer, and she’d have been better at it than me. I saw how swift she could unpick her threads when she’d used too many colours in a broiderie. She’d find the stitch just before she went wrong and start again from there. She would have found Barney by now.

  Everyone here thinking the tall men took the boys means no one does any looking. But now there’s me and that stinking tall man looking. Dun want to think about him, but I have to. Because what if him finds Barney first? I’ve no boat to follow him and I dun know the way.

  The clouds stretch out like threads and I dun know if it’s just my eyes getting strange from this cold feeling unravelling in my belly, or if it’s real. I reach in my dress pocket, pull out the moppet and whisper to it, ‘Barney, you said the tall man
took you. But him can’t have done. For him wants to find you. But dun let him. Let me.’

  The moppet curls up in my hand.

  I ask it again, the question I’ve already asked it over and over, ‘Where are you?’ It dun speak, not even to tell me again that it’s dark. I put it back in my pocket.

  The sea looks like it’s panting with all its rising and falling. The owl woman screeches but I can’t see her – that sound must be real, if nothing else is. This white sky, so bright my eyes water. The Pegs flicker like them are shedding pale feathers, like them’re breaking apart, going to come off the line under the sea, and let Sishee’s drowned dress float up. The air feels so thin, the whole sky is going to tear open.

  Nell’s crouched next to me, leaning on her walking stick and shaking my shoulder with a wrinkled hand.

  My head thuds. ‘It were here Mam died, weren’t it? Right here on this cliff.’

  ‘Home. Now.’

  I scramble up, look out to sea, say, ‘That’s Da – down there!’

  Not far from the Pegs is a man in a small fishing boat. It’s Da for sure, in the brown tattered coat I’ve stitched up for him so many times.

  ‘Asylumfodder …’ says Nell, getting up, slow. ‘That’s what them do to mad folks on the main land. Look at him.’

  Da sees me and Nell up here on the clifftop. Him is waving from the boat. Only I look harder, and him is not waving – him is throwing hims arms around like something’s attacking him. Something’s flying around in the air, tormenting him. Only there’s nothing there. Him looks like someone I dun know. Him is angered, afraid, laughing, crying.

  Nell nods down the cliff, says, ‘Him’ll be towed back in.’

  Jek is there, in a small fishing boat. Him gets closer to Da’s boat and reaches out a chain to hook the boats together.

  I grab Nell’s arm.

  ‘Da … is him – what’s happened to him, Nell?’

  ‘Come on Mary. You look a wreck.’

  ‘What you said at yours, about the owl woman – you said them’ve done it. What them, what’ve them done?’

  She pats my hand and I let go of her arm. ‘Weaving Room talk. Can’t say. Come on.’ She hobbles away, her grey wool coat blusters in the wind.

  I call after her, ‘Why are you here?’ I have to walk fast to keep up with her and her mouth is set on staying closed. So I ask her over and over the same questions, faster and faster, but she’s still not speaking, so I change what I’m asking and ask her if she gave Valmarie the Thrashing House key.

  Nell says, ‘She were coming for me as I were heading for her. Met her halfway, and she fair snatched it off me and took off. That’s not how it’s meant to happen, but I suppose she thinks she can do what she likes right now.’ She huffs out breath. ‘Never said that, all right?’

  I ask Nell over and over if any of the women have said anything in the Weaving Rooms about Barney. She keeps her lips tight shut.

  ‘Nell, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Saw you heading this way. Weren’t having you coming here alone when I know it were on these cliffs your Mam died. Bloody diamondback addersnakes. Look at you, shivering all over. Come on.’

  Jek is towing Da’s boat north towards Traders Bay, to the beach right by our cottage. I say, ‘If Da is mad – is him gone, but still here?’

  ‘Keep walking.’

  We’re climbing down the steep path from the cliffs to Traders Bay. Nell’s staggering to stay upright and she steps sideways, leaning on her stick so she dun fall. It’s near on dusk, but the tall men are in thems boats, waiting, the oars still, just out to sea.

  Them should’ve been long gone by now.

  A skinny woman on the beach waves both her arms at me. It’s Annie, with her three black dogs bounding round her. Her husband Martyn knows Da so well. Them could help me nurse Da, them might know best what to do. Or him could stay with them for a time when them move to Wreckers Shore, away from hims boat and all the things hims hands get busy with at home. There, him could be cosseted, wrapped in Annie’s soft knitted blankets – with thems son Kieran gone two months, them have a mattress gone cold.

  Annie rushes to the bottom of the path, her dogs barking. ‘Mary, where’ve you been?’ she asks, shrill. Her hair is more of a mess than usual, and her eyes are like poached eggs, them’re that puffed up.

  Nell sits herself down on a rock at the bottom of the path, breathing hard.

  I say, ‘Look Annie, Jek’s bringing Da back in. Him is—’ I run to the edge of the sea, Annie right beside me. Her dogs bark at the boats coming in.

  Jek splashes out of hims own boat and ties it to the cleat post. Him heaves and tugs Da’s boat up onto the sand. Da’s eyes roll in hims face.

  ‘Not him an’ all!’ Annie cries, and I see in her eyes she’s been here on the beach, waiting and watching for a reason. ‘Martyn, Clorey and Bill are in this state an’ all – Martyn dun want to leave our home this morning. Only I made him. Said him were being lazy, that I needed him to do hims job so I could get to mine. Him knew something bad were to happen to him today, thought him were safer indoors. Only I never listened, I forced him to go out. If him’d only said—’

  ‘There’s others, all like this?’ I gasp, watching Jek yank at Da’s arm to try to get him out of hims boat.

  Annie says, ‘Martyn were found on the north shore. With the poisons in the sea there, him could’ve killed himself. Clorey and Bill were found hugging each other in the graveyard, talking crazed – tattling what made no sense. I been searching for your Da’s boat since them took Martyn. Everyone knows.’ She stares at Da.

  ‘Everyone knows what?’

  Da can’t see Jek trying to get him out the boat. Da’s eyes roll and hims head jerks like a puppet. Like someone else has hims strings, and them’re going to make him stand up.

  ‘Him’ll be put in there too.’ Annie grasps at my shoulder. ‘You think him is back, but him is not. Not in here.’ She taps the side of her head.

  ‘Everyone knows what, Annie?’

  She’s shaking her head, watching Da, her hand over her lips.

  Jek struggles with Da, pulls him out of the boat. Jek staggers and Da slumps on the sand. Da has a long line of drool coming from hims mouth and soaking in on hims coat. I look up the beach at our cottage. A light flashes from the end of the row of cottages, pointed out to sea. One, two, three flashes. ‘Annie, look—’ I point over.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A light, but it’s gone.’ I ask her, ‘Where are the other three men, where’s your Martyn?’

  ‘Oh Mary,’ she whispers. ‘Them’ve all been took to the Thrashing House.’

  It were Grandmam what first told me about the Thrashing House. She said:

  The Thrashing House has its own decisions and thoughts, its own judgment and consideration of what’s right and wrong. It’ll beat the truth from a liar. It’ll beat the vanity from a mirror and the sting from a grain of salt. We dun know what happens to those what gets put in, only that them never come out.

  ‘Them’re coming for your Da,’ Annie says, nodding up at the cliffs.

  A stream of people run along the cliff path carrying burning torches. Nell stands at the bottom of the cliff. She’s calling up to them, pointing her walking stick at Da. About seventy folks, more women than men, charge down the path. Them’re shouting and angered.

  I want to get indoors and hide, but Da is dribbling like a baby. I hear Grandmam’s voice in my head … them never come out. If Da could get to the main land … What did Nell say, about asylumfodder … it must be … what the owl woman’s done to him. Anything could happen on the main land in grand houses. Them might have a clever surgeoner what could open hims head and mend it. Them might make him learn to write, so him could write me a letter. Send it to me with the tall men.

  Mam told me that folks we’d barely ever seen would come from all over the island if someone were to be put in the Thrashing House, but she never said how fearful them would sound. Only one
way to get him away, with an angered crowd clashing and shoving, the air thick with thems yells and hollers all heading straight for Da.

  But out to sea, the tall men’s boats are further away. So the light flashing near the cottages were a signal, to tell them to go.

  I yell out to sea, ‘Come back! Take Da to the main land with you!’

  The tall men keep rowing away.

  I shriek, ‘Him has some chance with you, none at all here!’

  The crowd are coming down the path.

  ‘Come on Annie, help me!’

  She backs away from me, shaking her head.

  Jek stares at the crowd coming for the beach. Stumbles away from Da.

  I grip Da’s shoulders. ‘Why are them after you? Tell me what you’ve done!’ I shriek over and over in hims ear. ‘If it’s about Barney, tell me where him is! Please, Da, just one word – anything – get up!’ Him struggles and I drop him.

  ‘Jek, help me!’

  Jek legs it away up the beach.

  ‘Annie!’

  Tears run down her face. ‘No Mary, them’ve took mine. I’m not putting my neck out for this one. I’m not any part of saving someone else when mine love’s gone.’ She backs away, sits down on the sand, covers her mouth with her fingers and watches me struggle with Da. Him won’t get up.

  The crowd are on the beach.

  Folks all around me shove and push me away from Da, there’s flashes of scarves and coats, sharp nudges from elbows.

  Some of the women have got hold of Da, him is pulled up and I yell, ‘Da, tell me what you’ve done!’ but him can’t hear me. Them drag him along, hims arms flop over thems shoulders, I elbow my way nearer, but I’m shoved further away. Them’re pulling him to the path up the cliffs.

  Nell is next to me, she grips my arm and says in my ear, ‘Sorry Mary, it’s the same for all. Him has to be punished if him is guilty.’

  I pull away. ‘Guilty of what?’

  She pulls me back, says, ‘Ask that pair. Them’re calling the tides of us all tonight.’ She’s looking at Valmarie and Kelmar, who stand watching as Da is pushed and shoved and carried up the path by a wave of folks.