‘That first exiled generation built the roundhouse from the loose stone and what-all they found around the cliff and on the beach. Floundering ships spat out everything a body could want, and some things it could do without, such as French liquor or fish-nibbled bodies. In time, the house was filled with pallets and tables and pots and eating tools; filled with everything it needed to be a household. Those first cove-Marreys never went back down south, being windy of its folk until the day they died, and that old scaly Tosha outlived the lot.
‘Doolish and Tosha had seven children of which five died and two lived: that being Monty Marrey and a sister. At twenty-three, sick of knowing only weather and loneliness, the sister was set for the mainland and left with a sailor out of Shipton.
‘Being alone after the death of his parents, Monty Marrey sometimes went to Shipton to trade and drink. The Great Hunger had passed and the folk who’d wanted to kill the aged child, the ones who’d driven his parents to the mainland and exiled the Marreys to the stormy cove, had grown old and died themselves. Everybody else was in the way of forgetting once more. They welcomed Monty as though he were a brother returned, and showed him the old hospitality whenever he went among them. In fact, in time he married a southerner — something unthinkable in the days of Doolish.
‘It was Monty who started the stories to keep folk away from the cove.’ Ushag stopped now and pointed her finger at Ma, who turned away red-faced and fussed at Ulf’s rug, pulling it right up over his nose and eyes and tucking him in so tight he started struggling. ‘Stories of sea-monsters, and of unnatural things up the gorge,’ added Ushag. Ma poured a brew, spilt most of it, got up, turned around, reached for a cloth to wipe the mess and while reaching, spilt the rest. Ulf freed himself from under the rug and carefully took the cup from her hands.
‘Denk-yoo,’ he said, making a little bow to Ma, and went to sit by my aunt. He poured for her and she took the cup and drank deeply.
‘Thank-you,’ she said.
‘Folk were getting interested in the cove and they kept coming up north to “visit” Monty. I suppose he thought he had to do something. These visitors always went home again with a little something from the wreck-hoards; a barrel of grog, or some like treasure. More and more of them came every time, until it was like living in the Michaelmas Fair and with people lugging boxes and bags of booty away with them. So down at the pub Monty started telling them about Otherwise goings-on around our place; of having to fight savage merrow-men for the body of some wrecked seaman he meant to decently bury, or of being caught in a terrible undertow dragged behind a giant white eel, or titans with uncountable legs and beaks and hooks opening up the sea itself from inside of…’
‘From inside of giant whirlpools,’ I interrupted.
‘Right,’ Ushag nodded.
Ma stood up. ‘Just because Monty Marrey lied about seeing such things, and you don’t believe in them, doesn’t mean they’re not true,’ said Ma and she crossed her arms and gave Ushag the stony eye.
‘Well, never mind all that now. Sit down, Mureal. Rest yourself.’ Ushag patted the floor. Ma sighed and sat again. ‘It’s all ancient history. Monty had his reasons for spreading the stories, I know it. Those wrecks turned up all sorts over the years. The family had lived close to the dirt for years and sometimes something worth a trade at market turned up that made the difference between eating and empty bellies. Monty and the others who came later spread those stories all over, and they worked. In the end, nobody came to Marrey Cove without a Marrey on hand to guide them and by my parents’ time, folk had stopped coming altogether.
‘Monty married and his wife Creena had five children of which two died and three lived; and one of them that lived was my father, Hugo. My mother, a Shipton woman called Jinn, added the cow-byre and traded for a cow and some hens. Those from Shipton are ever looking to their purses. They have a feel for buying and selling and my mother was no idler in that; she ruled the wreck-hoard and drove hard bargains for it down south. My father was a healer, as his mother had been, and he passed it to me.
‘I was born into a family of six girls of which all lived, but not for long. First, there was your mother and then Edder and then me, and then the three littlest ones.
‘There was a new Hunger about when I was a child, and this time the Little Brothers were calling it the Last Hunger as if they knew something we didn’t. There were rumours from the mainland of people roasting rats, and of mothers eating their own babies. Edder was sent away with the missionary women and, though my father was sickened to do so, it saved her for the other three just withered away until they were nothing but bellies on sticks, and they were dead by seven years.
‘There being no boy, in time Ven was to take on our household. She was three years older than me and didn’t I just think her the bright, shining one!’ Ushag gave me a quick, shy smile. I’d never heard her speak such words, or seen a face such as the face on my aunt at that moment; she looked like a white dove had risen right in front of her and called her by name. She looked like the moon had started to sing a lullaby. She looked young. ‘My sister was a great one for stories, both the Old-ones and those from her own fancy…’ She looked like she felt foolish. ‘And I hung on her words.’
‘She told stories?’ It was a shiny titbit. But I didn’t know this Ushag. ‘And you hung on her words?’
Ma rubbed her knees and enjoyed a burst of laughter. In the silence that followed Scully stretched and grinned up into the roof and Ulf raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head and Ushag quietly carried on.
‘I was born into this place and for years I knew nothing but sea, rock, hunger, work. Hunger, rock, work, sea — and the girl. Not you. The other girl; my sister. Ven. She was a honey-tongue. Her stories and all her foolishness were to me as real as my father’s cures. I spent my days collecting for the Herbal, and drying and steeping and storing, and my evenings listening to my sister talk. I wanted nothing more from life than to live here with father and Ven and to be let alone forever. I never wanted to marry. You won’t believe me, and I don’t care if you do, but I doted on her.
‘Even as a small girl Ven was always a big one for love. Mothers and their children, clans and their kings, animals and their masters; she liked all the stories of love but those about the love between men and women were her favourites. We played at love-lost and love-found, shimmer-white ladies saving or being saved by cursed lords in the forms of beasts, and weddings and vows and suchlike. We played at her stories for days at a time, with me always the enthralled knight, the enchanted tree, the talking well or the wicked ice-hag, while she was always the sweet girl who had to do nothing but lie about in bowers waiting to be loved.’
I couldn’t have been more surprised if my aunt had told me she used to make lace, or compose poems. I suppose my face showed it because she laughed. ‘I didn’t mind. She was the sweet girl. I was happy to play at the hero — or the villain or the tree — or any other part her stories needed.
‘Then my mother died. I was nine. Ven was thirteen. We buried her down at the monastery due to her changing her mind about that god at the last moment. My father wouldn’t come to the church but he put on a wake in her honour that night at which they drank all the whisky from a whole year’s wrecking, and the fiddler was found three days later senseless in Strangers’ Croft, still stinking of it.
‘Ven took to rambling, then. She rambled all the way down to Merton and naturally enough, soon she was in love. She took to Colm Breda like he was pudding and that was it for our plays and stories. She was too old for them now, and for me. I looked out for her but she was always elsewhere with him. When she was home she spent most of her time at the well, gazing at herself in the water and putting her hair this way or that, rubbing lemon juice into her shoulder-skin, or making herself a bosom by squashing her chest upwards into her tunic. She told me to leave her alone. She told me to go away. Then, she stopped talking to me and only rolled her eyes when I said we should play.
‘An
yway.
‘Father said we’d need a man about our place after he’d gone, and he set to bargaining with the Bredas for Colm to come and live with us in the cove instead of Ven going to Merton. Him being the youngest and them having a wild crew of all boys, it wasn’t such a hard bargain to drive. Ven and Colm were wed when she was fourteen — and then you were born. Father died while she was carrying you, but he knew you to be a woman-child and spent much time with his hand on her belly feeling you move. He died with you quickening in the womb under his hand.’ Ushag stopped and took another drink. She wasn’t used to talking so much and so long, her voice cracked as she went on though her face was pinker and her eyes brighter than I’d seen for a long time. Those memories were sad but it seemed to make her happy to talk about them. ‘You were born under the same star as your mother and she passed her Scale to you, along with your face and your stories.’
‘My mother had the Scale too?’ I felt the heat start to prickle up my neck.
‘I told you that,’ said Ushag.
‘No. You didn’t!’ I replied. She looked at me with her head tilted.
‘Yes, I did.’ She looked away. ‘You’ve forgotten.’
As if I’d forget. I clamped my lips tight. I didn’t want to say anything that would make her stop.
‘Ven’s was a bit worse than yours and sometimes bled. Our father taught me to tend to it. Nobody down south had a word to say about it until the Christians started up about their Doom. Then all of a sudden she was a monster. It was a bad time in Carrick — and the entire world if you listened to the priests. The Brothers told everybody that the end of the world was coming and that, if we didn’t join up in time, we were all to burn and bleed and break our bones in their Hell just for being born. We Marreys all gave them the deaf ear, and I suppose we were lucky to be so away from it all, but there were plenty down south to listen…and not just listen but adorn the story with all their own frights and shambles. Well, you heard the Father just the other day going on about all the signs from their god. Sometimes I wonder if the Brothers live in the same world as I do.’ She drained her mug and poured another.
‘So, everybody was in a right terror and down south my sister and her scaly baby became another sign. She was followed and cursed in the streets. She was pelted by some, at the markets and in the pub. When a turnip hit you square in the head, she stopped going anywhere and stayed only with Colm and me at home. People do bad things when they’re fearful.’
‘She even stopped coming up the moaney, though I told her the Scale proved her kinship to the life of the sea and she should be proud.’ Ma stroked my head. ‘And her daughter, too.’
‘Mmm,’ said my aunt.
‘After your pa died she took to rambling again, as I’ve said before. It was her way. This time, though, she walked, and walked and walked until she wasted away from it. In time she walked her way down south again, where folk took their chance to prove themselves to the town’s new god. I’ve never heard such bile-talk as that which she told me they spat at her.
‘They said Colm had been cursed by his marriage to her. They said as how he’d gotten a taste for cold-blooded flesh from touching her scaly skin, but she was now not salty enough for him. They asked if her young husband had gone to a merrow-lover and some even made a song of it. They said he’d been disgusted by her half-bloodedness and he wanted a full merrow-wife; and that he drowned trying to get himself one. They said she had killed him as sure as if she’d held his head under water herself. She had killed him by loving and wedding him with the merrow curse on her and she only had herself to blame for the whole sorry mess.’
Ushag was finding it harder and harder to carry on and stopped to drink again. Her eyes were dry but they looked to be burning in her head. I felt a coldness rise in me against the southerners and the priests. I held my scaly arm to the rush-light and wondered how such a small thing could cause such trouble. ‘Ven knew old Monty had started those stories about the north cove merrows; as all us Marreys did. And she knew why, too, but after all her suffering I think she started to believe in them,’ added Ushag. ‘She was always too easily fooled by a good story.’
We all sat in silence and thought of Ven.
‘She couldn’t really have believed all that about her being to blame for pa?’ I said. Ma and Ushag swapped a look. Scully sighed and started to pick at his fiddle-strings. Their strange twanging and popping filled the cow-byre.
‘You mean like somebody believing in stories about drowned fathers marrying merrows, or missing mams living like salamanders in caves?’ Ushag got up and walked to the door. ‘I should finish that mackerel, and get on with the gutting,’ she said quietly, rubbing at her brow. A basket of reeds and rushes by the door caught her eye. ‘I should start that dipping. I should…’ She looked about and saw the jug and cups. ‘I should get on…’
Ma took her hand. ‘You should finish telling it, Birdie,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve started.’ Ushag pressed her fingers to her eyes. A fat unexpected tear rolled down her cheek. It left a clear track in the grime and soot, and I was left dumbstruck.
‘People do bad things when they’re hopeless,’ she said. ‘Not because they want to or because they are bad people. They think something must be done — and so they go ahead and do something. That’s what happened to Ven.
‘One day I went bagging up the gorge and left you with your mother. She’d been so harrowed by the talk it hurt just to look into her eyes, but this day she seemed brighter and so I left you with her. She said she was going to make a moon-pie.’ My aunt choked and her voice grew tight. She swallowed over and over as if trying to keep something down. ‘I came back by the cliff-path and I saw her and I knew straightways what she was doing but I couldn’t stop her. You were up the beach, playing. I was wondering why she’d left you there alone. Then from the cliff path I saw her…I saw her walk into the water. She just walked into the water.’ I didn’t like where this story was travelling. ‘It was a high tide such as I’d never seen and you know the undertows breed like longtails in those heavy tides. It was too late.
‘She looked back at you once, and then kept walking. She just kept walking.’ Ushag’s voice broke and her tears fell but I was like dusty ground — dry and hard. Ma rose and went to my aunt. She bent and touched her face, dabbing at the dropping tears and blowing gently over the hot eyes. Ushag rubbed at her face like the tears were dirty. I felt nothing.
I just had to sit there and let her finish her story; that’s all I had to do.
‘She walked into the sea. Her shawl opened all around her in the water. She took off her belt and tunic, and they all floated away in one of the smaller tows. Then she was bare except for her wedding earrings, the great silver hoops Colm had gotten as her wedding token, and that she herself had put the holes in her ears to take. She walked into the sea until it passed over her entirely: over her shoulders, over her chin, over her mouth and nose, until only her eyes stayed above the water. Her hair encompassed her, spread out all around, waving like black weed in the green water and floating on the surface even after her head had gone under. I shouted once with all my voice, all the voice I could find inside me, and the shout rang all around the cove. She didn’t hear me. That’s when I dropped the eels and started running. I knew what she was doing.
‘When I looked next, she was gone.
‘From that tall cliff I jumped in. I had no fear of the fall, no fear of the rocks, no fear of the tows. I dived and swam and searched the kelp, and even went back with nets but she was gone. The undertows had taken her. As she knew they would.’ Ushag stopped at last. Ulf tried putting his hand on her shoulder but her tears had gone as quickly as they had come and she shrugged his hand away. ‘Love, eh?’ she finally said to Ma who nodded and sucked furiously at her pipe. My aunt and I sat back and looked at each other with eyes like strange cats.
Ushag leant forward. ‘Happy now?’ she said.
Chapter Eleven
Wreckage
I WASN’T
FIT TO BE AROUND. Honour Bright, this time Auntie Ushag didn’t have to tell me to go away; I didn’t want to do anything else. Why should she tell me such a story? Was she so sick of my questioning her that she just wanted to finish it once and for all? Because plainly when somebody’s dead, any story about them is likewise. Was she jealous of her lost sister? Did she want to sicken me of stories entirely? Ushag’s terrible silence had now settled on me.
I needed to think. I felt like I might turn inside out from all the travelling storms within me. Before she could say anything else, I left our place and went straightways to the cove. Today was a day for the cool, unchanging sea if ever I knew one.
I grabbed my stone-sack and marched into the water. It was fresh and clean, and I wanted to drink it, to scour the sound of my aunt’s voice from my ears, to clear the taste of this story from my mouth and flush it out of me in a Flux. I pushed my legs hard against the currents and open-eyed sank straight to the seabed. I sat before the kelp forest, and I dwelt on Ushag’s story, and on Mam.
I thought I remembered that day on the beach but was I really remembering the sea and my mother’s face? Did I truly remember her turning back to smile as she waded out and away from me? Or was I now just remembering the story of it?
I looked upward and pictured how it might have been to sink forever into this dappling light; how its air would rise as the body sank, falling slowly, face to the sky and all above just hair and bubbles. Considering how I felt when I was getting breathless; how some force pushed me to the surface and a good fresh lungful; to think of somebody falling back willingly into the dark element gave me sad chills all through.
Secrets of Carrick: Merrow Page 9