Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  Oh, stop, Em. What flagrant nonsense. Did Miss Broadbent teach you nothing in regard to imagination’s overbrimming of good sense?

  I try to heed her advice, but my nature loves the metaphysical. I am always straining after the immaterial, or listening out for a call, and yet at the same time I know that my hearkening is futile and that the voice I seek to hear lies beyond the frequency of human audition.

  *

  I must have slept a little, because I dreamed I was hanging on to the roof of a house in a flood. It has taken me some minutes of puzzling to recall the origin of that image, but I have nailed it down. It belongs to one of those rather admonitory Dutch paintings that hang in the master’s library at Sedge Court. I must have seen the picture countless times without paying it any special attention. It shows a town half under water and a scattering of hefty burghers clinging to steeply pitched roofs. In the background a fork of lightning is striking an inundated church.

  Why did I dream of that scene?

  Because I have been thinking of Sedge Court, and of its library. Johnny and Barfield playing billiards there. Johnny scorning Barfield’s shots in that deliberately listless tone he liked to use: ‘How pitiful this fellow’s game is. He must needs cannon, but instead he fizzed.’ And Barfield mock-sulky, bottom lip outthrust, ‘Perhaps I meant to fizz.’ There was something ritual about their repartee. Johnny pretending to know it all and Barfield pretending to be hopeless. They were always figuratively leaning back on their heels as though to get the full measure of the ironic distance that gaped between them.

  There was a brass stand in the library mounted on four clawed feet, half lion, half wading bird, oddly. It was a repository for walking sticks. I can see Mr Waterland bent over the stand examining first one cane and then the other, as if the world depended on his making the correct choice, while Mrs Waterland implored Johnny to treat his guest with greater courtesy. Johnny only made the retort that Barfield was quite stupid and minded nothing but fox hunting. He wiggled his fingers at me, pretending to be a bogeyman, and drawled, ‘Watch out, wench, or he will uncouple his beagles and come after you,’ and he called me to come to the table and make a shot to demonstrate how facile the game was.

  I shrank from the invitation, but Eliza cried, ‘I will do it, Johnny.’

  Johnny ignored her tremendously.

  He began talking to his mother instead about a moneymaking scheme. He and Mrs Waterland liked to discuss money. I paid attention to those conversations. I knew that many people were frightened of money, of the possibility of its loss, and I wondered if Johnny had discovered how to make money flow. If he had that power, Sedge Court would never be in trouble again. Johnny began telling his mother that he had been to see the dean of the cathedral in Chester. The dean hoped to raise funds for the church by selling a portion of its property at Abbey Square in the town. Mr Waterland’s eyebrow lowered and he muttered something about alienating the ladies with masculine talk, but the mistress impaled him on a pointed look and asked Johnny what he had up his sleeve.

  Johnny wanted his father to secure a loan from the bank to buy the land. His idea was that they would build townhouses in the square or in some of the old lanes and sell them on.

  Mr Waterland interrupted Johnny’s flow again, dismissing the proposal as mere speculation.

  ‘There is nothing mere about it, sir,’ Mrs Waterland retorted. ‘The improvement of property has made many fortunes.’

  ‘Speculation is all that Chester is good for,’ Johnny said. I remember he and his mother smiling at one another out of matching almond eyes.

  Mr Waterland remarked that if the difficulty of the Dee could be overcome, Chester might give Liverpool a run for its money once more.

  ‘Oh, the Dee!’ Johnny turned to Barfield. ‘My esteemed father is infatuated by the river, don’t you know, but it is the merchants of Chester who are the difficulty. This is an age of commerce and they are behind the times. The guilds are too much concerned with maintaining their privileges to be capable of mounting a challenge to Liverpool. But Chester’s bricks and mortar can be relied on to swell in value. Uncle Felling has shown that.’

  I remember Mr Waterland swivelling then towards that painting of the doomed burghers and Barfield remarking with that poorly tuned voice of his that the picture reminded him of wily old Rotterdam.

  Mr Waterland said, ‘It is not Rotterdam, Mr Barfield. The subject is the drowned land of Reimerswaal in Zeeland.’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Barfield said.

  ‘Most of it vanished in a storm a long time ago. Its loss is blamed on the lord and landowner for his neglect of a creek that scoured at every tide. The town was left marooned on an island for several years until one day it disappeared beneath the waves entirely.’

  *

  I am plagued by nightmares. Someone stuffed me into a compartment and filled my head with stones. They kept grinding against one another and banging at my temples. My throat was blocked by debris and it hurt to swallow. I had the feeling that a storm had passed through me, leaving all kinds of wreckage in its wake: broken branches, smashed grasses, a meadow scoured. And then, too, I was sinking in a swamp and no matter how long and hard I screamed for help, nobody came to my assistance. I am afraid to close my eyes again. Has morning arrived? Down here in the hold I cannot tell. My stomach turns and I feel the gripe of nausea. An unpleasant smell of suet hangs in the air. It might have stolen down here from the pot they keep on deck for coating the lanyards. Or perhaps a tallow candle is still burning in one of the lanterns. I pull the berth’s curtain aside cautiously.

  It is still night, damp and everlasting. The captain is asleep in his chair, his hat pulled down upon his face. I creep from the berth, cesspail in hand, and climb awkwardly above. I mind to close the hatch. A blast of ocean air buffs my face. I can make out a figure at the helm and another forward on his watch, hauling out a line on a sail until it stands flat on the wind. How embarrassing it is to have to do my business in the open like this, but I manage it, grateful for the covering of darkness, with the bucket concealed beneath my petticoat. Then I let down the pail on its rope and rinse it in the spray. There is a terrifying beauty to the scene – a limitless sea of heaving black satin and flashes of spindrift under the moonlight.

  Above, the enormous dark sails graze the sky and its breathtaking spill of stars. I notice a sailor swaying at the top of the mast. He is lashing the heel of the topsail, I think. I admire the feat of sailing this touchy vessel. She is forever yawing and pitching and even a landlubber such as I can tell that it is not easy to keep this unsteady creature under rein.

  The sound of splashing draws me forward and I grope along the wet deck, wincing at the clang of my pail on the boards. Something luminous arches out of the water. A porpoise! A school of them of them is frolicking at the bows of the cutter, their silhouettes aglow with a pale blue light. What a wonderful sight! My gaze follows them until they disappear and then it swoops up into the starry canopy. I believe that when we see something beautiful in nature it lends us a moment of feeling completely satisfied, which is a state as rare as it is recuperative to most souls. It uplifts me to think that no matter how poor or dispossessed I am, the beauty of the world is not lost to me – and that, if I give myself over to the genius of these spectacles, I may enter, no matter how briefly, the experience of peace.

  As if to make a mockery of my pretty sentiment, my stargazing is terminated most abruptly. A grasping hand seizes with great force my shoulder. Straightaway I strike out at the darkness with my fist – and I am mortified to find it has collided with Captain McDonagh’s cheek. He releases me at once and we are both of us dismayed. He steps away from me and says with a stiff bow, ‘Forgive me, madam.’ Then he growls, ‘Leaning out like that, you might have gone overboard.’

  ‘I was only looking at the porpoises.’ There is a tremble in my voice. ‘I am sorry to have struck you, but you startled me.’

  ‘Will you go below, now, please?’ His voice is
tight.

  ‘The fish were lit up like flares, you know. I have never seen such a sight.’

  He says shortly, ‘That is not so unusual. Some creatures have the luminescence in themselves, but like most amazements, it does not last.’

  His chilly demeanour provokes me to say with some indignation, ‘It is not necessary for you take responsibility for my safety, Captain McDonagh. I am quite capable of holding on to a rail.’

  He bends down to me and says then in a low but heated tone, ‘Safety? For God’s sake, girl, you have no notion of the word. Have you any idea what might have befallen you had your impulsive leap brought you among a less disciplined crew? You may treat my protection lightly, madam, but do not expect me to indulge your foolishness.’

  *

  In my berth, unable to sleep. Captain McDonagh’s admonition lies heavy on me for I do indeed feel foolish. How could I have wound such a mesh of make-believe around that stranger at Parkgate? He and the captain may be one and the same, but there never was a luminary walking the strand that day. It was only a smuggler out for his own gain and, watching him, a girl who seems to have made a bad hash of things.

  The past is all chopped up and I struggle to put it back together. The only certainty is that my thoughts, tethered to the place like a ball to its cup, keep returning to Sedge Court.

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  April, 1766

  Does the child remember at all her people at home? I wonder. The Blacks and the Lees and my sister, Mary Folan, although that sister has turned her back on me. The Molloys and the Maddens. The Naughtons and the McDonaghs. Galore of them gone now, one way or another. It pierces me to be alone, but so I have been for an age, ever since Mike died, God have mercy on his soul. You had Josey and your child. The dear knows you and Josey were a heart match. I saw the way his eyes would meet yours even when company came at your place and there was a conversation running all around in it. You could have blown the house sky high with that look. I was jealous of your happiness, I will admit.

  It was to the stones I went today, Nora. I have a great fancy for that place. What a restless world it is up there with all kinds of sharp gusts shredding the clouds and the gulls hurling themselves about. I came to the stones and petted them as is my habit now and reminded them of their commission.

  I turn, and turn again

  I turn the dark mass

  I turn the charm

  I turn the spells

  I bestow, I bestow a binding

  On the woman of the hat and her daughter.

  Let me tell you this, my friend: the daughter who belongs to the woman of the hat has been brought away and she is on the path to her doom. It is only right that she should pay the penalty for her mother’s actions and cleanse the ungood. But you know that.

  It is a taking and a redeeming.

  While I was at the stones the thought of Connla McDonagh came to my mind. Away from us he was for many years but he comes now and then in and out by sea with the wine and the tobacco. You might remember seeing him on the strand when he was a lad, harvesting wrack with his mother, God rest her soul. That was before the great cold came and took his people.

  There is silence from you, friend, I have noticed. Ever since I turned the stones. Your voice comes less and less to my mind and I wonder why that is. Don’t you want me to bring our child home?

  You never said so, but it occurs to me now that you never liked to share her affection with me as much as I thought. Isn’t that true? My favouring of your daughter: sometimes you were kicking against it, weren’t you?

  I think you might have been a little afraid of me, Nora. Lookit, you are right to be so. I did things you never knew, I will confess that now. I made a false charm without a jot of power in it for you when the sickness came on your children and I made a charm against my husband with too much power in it altogether. Filled with fury I was when he looked with a soft eye on my sister and I asked the stones to turn Mary Folan away from him. From his face, from his eyes, from his mouth, from his belly, from his cock, from his anus, from his entire body. From his heart and his soul.

  Perhaps you think I am selfish and that I bring back the girl for myself alone and not for you. But she is in need of a mother’s love, and it would be hard to find a woman more gifted for the treasuring of a child than myself. Seeing as you cannot. She grips my heart, Nora.

  It is not easy to influence events at a distance, but I declare to the devil that I will bring her to me and that fellow McDonagh will help me do it. He is bound to abide by my wishes, although he does not know it. In the roar of the sea his boat will hear my summons.

  The Orchard and the Stables, Sedge Court

  March, 1758

  The day after Eliza and I had danced in the library for Barfield I was in a troubled state of mind. It was clear to me that Mrs Waterland had not been gratified by the clumsy manner in which Eliza and I had brought the minuet to its conclusion, but I felt weary of toiling to be agreeable. I might have appeared on the surface to be a meringue, but if anyone had looked into me, he would have found, in place of sugary froth, any amount of unsweetness, of resentment and envy liquefying into bitter waters. I worried that before I grew much older, the effort of attractiveness would defeat me and my choler would be exposed – and what should happen to me then? I knew very well that Mrs Waterland owned numerous treasures that had once commanded her eye but now were shelved in dusty storage or banished altogether.

  When I received the order the following morning to work in the summer house, the assignment seemed less a boon than a sign that the mistress wished me to be out of sight. I applied myself for several hours to the shellwork, gluing an endless number of cockles, and no one came near me, not even Abby with bread and cheese for my dinner.

  I had no sense of foreboding about the tragic event that was taking place while I was pasting shells to the stone walls of the summer house. That, on top of everything else, causes me additional anguish and bewilderment. You have heard me speak probably almost incessantly about my alertness to little signifiers in my surroundings. Why did not an alarm ring for me then?

  I did feel nervous on my own account, however, as I set off in the early afternoon to return to the house. I remember looking back over my shoulder at the summer house and noticing that its conical roof poked out of the trees like a witch’s hat – but that was not the source of my unease. I had a distinct sensation of being watched as I walked along the path that leads to the kitchen garden. It winds through an old orchard with unkempt pippin and pear trees in a bind of ravelled branches. Behind them taller trees haunted the sky with branches that looked like skeletal arms.

  There was a disturbance in the undergrowth that made me pause. It came from a thicket of coppiced ash that encroached on the orchard some thirty yards away. I scanned the trees, but could see nothing. I took a few steps and stopped again at the sound of a sort of snickering. I had the impression of vegetation being pushed aside. Then the insidious rustle sounded again, only closer to hand this time. It was somehow more determined as though a fox or a dog was snuffling about. I walked on, paused again. The sound was louder than a fox and it was no longer rustling …

  He was not sneaking. He was barging through the trees, making straight for me. The postilion in his ugly livery. Except that it was not the postilion.

  He – Barfield – stepped on to the path in front of me and my heart jumped so hard it knocked the breath out of my throat. ‘Your servant, lovely,’ he said, with a smirking gesture at his livery, and my flesh crawled. I dropped a queasy curtsy and sought to creep on, but he caught my arm. ‘What, no how-de-do? Where are your manners, wench?’ His humid breath smelled of drink. The pressure of his fingers frightened and angered me and I tried to pull away. He tightened his grip and shoved his hand in the opening of my mantle. I struck at his face. He grabbed my wrist and jerked my arm behind my back with such force I thought the bone would snap. He threw me down then and as soon as I hit the ground h
e sank on top of me with a crushing weight that made me gasp for air. I realised then that he was serious in his attempt to harm me. At once it was as if all the signs of life in me began to shut down. I felt very cold. Even if I had been able to scream, I do not think I would have done so. I think the thought in my head was to disappear. That if I seemed already to be dead, there would be no point in his prolonging the assault. I also remember thinking that I would do anything as long as it meant that I should survive the attack. I use the word ‘thinking’, but there was nothing cerebral about my responses. They were primitive, instinctive reactions of self-protection. He grunted something into my hair and began to rub himself against me as he fumbled at my petticoat. He pulled my shift above my thighs and … I thought that my ribs would splinter under the mass of him and I would suffocate. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw the movement of a booted foot. The boot wedged against Barfield’s shoulder and I heard Johnny Waterland laugh, and say, ‘Ain’t you a crude beast, man?’

  Barfield told him to go hang, but the thrust of Johnny’s boot forced him to loosen his grip on me. I sought frantically to haul myself out from under his bulk.

  ‘Leave her, Barfy,’ Johnny ordered in a tone that was almost disinterested. Barfield rolled off me and I wriggled away like an animal into the drift of dead leaves on the path’s verge.

  ‘It is only I am in the country and I thought myself to plough,’ Barfield giggled.

  I groped around for my cap and my mantle and found them lying rumpled further back on the path. They looked humiliated, it seemed to me, and I snatched them up.