Then Mother Owl pours into the air, into the glower of the dark before the sun breaks past the horizon; she flutters out on silent, insubstantial wings. It begins to hammer with rain.
59
Marie
WHEN I FLOATED to my senses I was half drowned by wings, the manic, metal whirring of feathers against air. Before my eyes were even open, I knew that she was there; my grandmother with her voiceless mind, her raw and whirling energy.
My grandmother was a storm, strong enough to tear a tree’s arm off. The spirals that made her were loosening, until she was no longer tornado but gale, growing flatter, losing her form like a slowing top. When she came to me now there was something frenetic in her, as though her power grew huger, even as she lost herself. I could see that she was dying, if dying was the correct word. I could see that she would not hold together indefinitely.
I hardly saw her now, and when I did she would stride the house like a god, throwing up loose paper and making my hair grow static; the mice all stiffened at her coming and stared like things obsessed.
That morning was hardly even made begun, and when I rubbed my face and gathered my wits I was freezing cold as my eiderdown flapped around me, and the fire in the grate was fanned to a kind of hopeless fury.
Dawn was paling the parlour and I felt insubstantial beside her, an imaginary thing next to the matter that she contained, that spilt and swirled about her streaming hair. I sat up, gazed at her. I had never seen my grandmother with her hair untied; it would have reached beyond her waist, although in that wind it flickered about her like a cape. She reached out and I took her hand; it felt like grasping stone. ‘Marie,’ said my grandmother, ‘Marie, come and see!’ and her voice was hardly human.
I battled through the air after her, struggling to keep my footing, and came through the smacking back door to stand with my grandmother in the garden. The sky was nothingy-white, as if she sucked on every real thing in the world, just to keep together.
There were birds everywhere, in every space; even the trees and hedgerows seemed to be gawping. I let go of her hand and backed away, the dew wetting my toes, the slick lawn treacherous.
‘Marie,’ said my grandmother, ‘goodbye!’ And so saying, she shattered, there and then, every tiny piece a feather. It was as if she had turned out to be an image only, a graven thing made of feathers and power; eyeless, without face or organs or bone. Even the clothes that she had seemed to wear proved suddenly to be a cunning weave of quills, grey and white and goldfinch bright, spinning out one last empty swirl. Then they settled on the lawn; littered it.
At the same moment the sky was filled with realness, fat and drenched with it, suddenly bruised with purpling clouds and the smell of electricity. The branches of the cherry tree wrenched as if some giant was throttling it by the neck, and then it clamoured with rain. The sky was filled with birds, crows among sparrows, hawk and dove and mistle thrush dancing through the throngs of each other as though they had quite lost their reason.
‘But grandmother,’ said I, ‘the coal is running out!’ My voice was lost inside that riot. Everything around me was unbearably there, and I was not accustomed to such concentration. I put my hands over my ears and sat down in the wet as the rain pummelled my back.
It rained like the end of the world as the day broke; water filled my ears and eyes until I thought that I might drown. Eventually I flinched to my feet and crept back indoors to find the mice all staring at the door as if they had been drugged. I was so flustered that I filled the kettle with water and plugged it in, as though by some miracle I might make tea. After a time I gave up, and fetched a can of Ambrosia Creamed Rice from the pantry, to fit body and soul together. Then I went to shiver before the fire and eat it from the tin.
I could not get warm that day, and neither could I settle in the parlour. I felt as lonely as could be; hours went by and the rain smeared down, and after a time I decided to go outside again and be wet. If that rain was the last of my grandmother then I would at least stand in it until she was gone.
The garden had grown calmer, although water bled from the sky as though it might rain forever. The feathers were limp against the grass like sodden leaves; I walked over them to the back fence, to look at the spot where I had buried my mother.
That was where I found the child, curled up and naked in the fence’s mean shelter, convulsing with cold. She regarded me with trouble in her face and bared her teeth very slightly. I hardly knew what to think.
I extended my hand to her, asked her name, but in reply she gently growled and shrank into the shadow of the fence. I felt as though I might faint; at the sight of her face, my brain sang with memory. I shuddered and plastered my hair from my face to look at the sky. I was not alone. I need not be alone after all.
If I left her be, this naked child would freeze to death out here. If I let her be she might never come to rescue my heart again. With a stare that I hoped seemed laden with authority, I reached towards her as she snarled, braced myself for a bitten hand.
She did not hurt me though, so I hauled her into my arms; I was as gentle as I could be, but I forced her to walk with me; in this way we two staggered towards the house. She made no sound at all. Once in the parlour, wrapped in a knitted blanket, she gazed at me solemnly as I made a huge fire with the last of the coal, and set a pan of water on the top to warm.
As the parlour grew hot, the rainwater steamed from our hair and the child’s shivering subsided. She watched me very carefully as I found soap and shampoo, and laid out towels on the hearthstone. I wet a flannel and reached towards her very slowly, making no sudden movements.
Meeting no immediate resistance, I began to wash her, soaping great muddy streaks from her flanks and her back. In time, the child seemed to relax in my company, and I dared to come up very close to dab at her face and neck, the corners of her eyes. When I had washed her hands for her I could find no clippers, so in the end I bit off her nails with my teeth.
I soon gave up with any hope of conversation; apart from her growl out in the garden, she had uttered nothing. She held out her foot for me, passive as I tried to lather out the black that ingrained her, every inch.
Her hair was dark and long; at the thought of it I almost despaired, thinking that I might never brush it, but it was lush and oily and it hardly bore a single knot. As I combed, that child seemed fairly to purr. Her cheeks grew ruddy with the heat from the fire, and the scent of lily-of-the-valley soon replaced the wet-dog odour she had carried in from the garden.
Light from the grate weaved in her eyes; when she smiled at me, I saw that she had lost her two front baby teeth. I smiled too, and dressed her in an old frock of mine, with thick woollen tights; then I braided her hair into two thick vines.
All this while the mice had been gathering, one and two and then a thousand, all assembled but hanging back, quivering and staring at the child. She looked at them too, knitting her face as though raking through her memory for something. After a very long pause, and quite suddenly, she sat up and brushed her fingers down her cheeks. I could actually hear the gasp of the mice, all at once, like tiny draughts over candles.
I did not want to share that moment with the mice, for I knew, however dimly, that I had waited such a time for this, and so I replaced the blanket round her narrow shoulders; then I lifted that little thing right up onto my lap, blanket and all, and I rocked her in my arms until we fell asleep together in the firelight.
60
Knife
THE CUTLERY IS as plaintive as viruses are, as the cancer that crawls in a lung. There are patches of the wall that are really quite thin, and for every blunted knife that snubs its teeth against the wall, two or three knife-children will spring, little and scuttling and cute as cuticle trimmers.
61
Marie
I WOKE BEFORE it was light, and for a few moments I was alone again. My arms contained nothing at a
ll and my back was crunched from sleeping in the chair. My grief was indescribable then, for in my dreams I had found my other half. I had invented for myself a childish playmate, as one conjures stories in one’s head to fend off madness. There was a minute in which I fixed my eyes to the ceiling, not moving my head, loath to tip my vision to the parlour, to the waste land of my home.
Tears rivered my face and collected at the root of my throat, at the collar of a nightdress I had stolen from my mother. My nose ran too, for my crying was not a pretty thing; I did not care, and so I simply let it run.
I could hear the house complaining softly at the ache in the scullery window; I could hear the nickel snickering of the cutlery in the dining room. There was no sound of wings, for now even my grandmother was gone.
Then I heard a sniff, a human sniff; delicate as of one breathing in the scent of violets, and I snapped my body straight, so fast that I heard my neck click and felt a sudden wash of giddiness. The child from the garden was sitting on the hearthstone, in the fire’s dying warmth.
She was surrounded by mice, perched upon from lap to head with them, every one very still, none of them looking up. She tensed at my movement, thickened the muscle of her jaw, but she did not flinch or cower. I pawed over my nose, my sodden cheeks, tried to staunch my silly tears.
We remained like so for a long time, moving only ribs and eyelids, blinking and breathing in the fire’s ruddy dawn. Eventually the sun replaced the coal as the fire burned lower, turned our precious fuel to ashes.
I had nothing in my head to say to her; nor it seemed, had she any words for me. And whilst I watched this tiny stranger in my blue denim pinafore, I found I knew her with all my heart, with the tissues of my belly and the red in my bones. I knew her better than any creature alive. The child looked back at me likewise, her little face open and wise, but wild as a tangle of bindweed.
She was perhaps half my age, or maybe a little more. We had no photographs in our house, despite the box-Brownie on top of my mother’s wardrobe. Still, looking at her was as good as a childhood snap of my own self, or a child’s drawing, uncanny and accurate, snatched away by my mother and torn up between her hands.
Nevertheless, here was she, a kind of myself, fashioned with the left hand, shaded dark where I myself was light: brown eyed, black haired, ingrained with the soil of the garden. She was tiny. I saw her there, in my own little-girl dress, and I felt waves of compassion for her, such a small thing against the bigness of the world.
I think inside there was a kernel, some peach stone of sympathy for my own self also. It seemed a tragedy that any human creature should be that small, to have such slender brittle wrists or fingers so very thin. Her eyes were terribly liquid and her collarbones so exposed; she seemed as though she might tear at moment, break against the weight of air and early sunlight. Perhaps she understood, for she sat quite motionless and seemed to wait for me to assemble my thoughts.
The mice, all this while, just crouched where they were, gripping the child with their paws and their curly tails, as a bigger creature might fling its arms and bury its face in the beloved’s shoulder, refusing to let go. Yet they did not seem jubilant, filled with ecstasy at this apparent reunion; rather they were quiet with a kind of sorrowful joy. The child seemed to comprehend this too, and she just let them be, although surely their toenails must have been jagging at her skin.
The light evolved as the sun moved and I realised that I was hungry. Then I was filled with shame, for what of this poor child? Who was to say when she last ate? I bowed my head at the thought, then inched to my feet, gently, lest I should scare her. When I left the room, her absence bit me.
We dined against the hearthstone, on tins of fish and pineapple rings, dipping our fingers into syrup and pilchard sauce. She ate like a little dog, bolting her food so ravenously that at first I felt forced to dole out food a little at a time, lest she should devour all of what was meant for us both.
The hunger in her great dark eyes strangled my appetite; I gave in and let her wolf the lot, and a can of artichoke hearts and pickled beetroot besides. It gladdened me to watch her eat, to stain her mouth dark red, to see such need satisfied so easily. When she was done, she snuffled at her fingers and then polished her face with her hands; I could have died for delight. She regarded me gravely, and I smiled, as fond as can be.
Then there was a barking of knuckles at the door, followed by a wrenching as the door was tried from the outside. At the same time, I heard the wet gribbet of a throat being cleared, and I realised with a dripping horror that it was rent day, and here was the rent man come for his dues. I scalded to my feet, tipping up the balance of the mice, kicking the empty tins behind the wash basket, out of sight.
I rushed to the hall and then up the stairs, sick at the knees, calling for my grandmother. But she was gone, turned to a rainstorm in the garden, and she could not have helped me one bit, not ever again. There would be no more gifts, no more of her queer demonstrations, no spiteful love or rattling feathers. I choked on my panic. How would I ever manage? What was I to do?
The banging on the door grew bad-tempered, and so I tiptoed back downstairs and opened the door, almost yanking the rent man right over, who had been cupping his hands at the sunburst window, peering through the red and yellow glass. He spread out his lips for me, showed me a row of teeth.
‘Ah, Marie! There you are,’ boomed the rent man with an overheated smile, gazing frankly at my chest. He had a breadcrumb adhering to the sweat on his upper lip, a shaving cut against his jowl. I lowered my eyes and smiled at the floor.
The rent man strode past me and let himself into the parlour. He shoved the door to and said that young Marie must have cash aplenty, to have been burning such a fire in the middle of the summer. I gazed around, frantic, but the child was nowhere to be seen.
The rent man parked himself in the red armchair, and asked me where was Mummy. And then he corrected himself with a favourite-uncle chuckle, saying that he’d just as soon deal with Marie herself, as she was here. Wasn’t she such a grown up now (he lowered his voice), so much nicer to look at than Mummy anyhow. I had a dreadful urge to punch the rent man.
Then I was struck with a wonderful idea; I turned back to the door, crying ‘Grandmother? Oh, you are home!’ The rent man’s face fell. And I ran to stand at the top of the stairs and conduct a conversation with myself. Finally I returned to inform the rent man that my grandmother was dreadfully sorry, but the post office had been shut and that there was no rent money for him today.
I stood before him, scarlet and shaking, and I told him that we would most definitely have means to pay him double next week. And with the most incredible bravery, I met the rent man’s ham-jelly eyes, and I held his stare, fists bunched by my sides, tall as him.
The rent man said that we would just see about this, young woman, we would just see, and his voice was huge and deep and it made the house itself cower. Then he was off, leaving the front door wide and crunching off to his car, which whined at the twist of the key.
I limped back to the parlour, scanning the empty room, hunting for the child but reluctant to call out. Anyhow, I mused, what name would I call?
Presently I began to hear a new sound, low and soft as breath over a bottle. The pitch modulated, a gentle droning. Bobbing my head, I tried to follow it, finally following my ears to the recess beneath the sideboard. There was a tiny fold of blue cloth visible from the shadows, under the scrolling mahogany. The note paled and sank again, lifting like the music of pigeons. A slow smile crept over my face. The child was singing.
62
Mice
IN THE PLAYROOM, the musty, ancient broom cupboard, sits the childling with her face all creased in wonder. Things have barely stirred in here these last years; the dust is a little thicker and more grey, and the smell of damp has matured. To the childling and the mice it is a smell like brandy, rich and brown and filled with
bright notes of mould and sombre tones of memory and sorrow.
The childling is holding her body very still, motionless as a cherry stone in the earth; as a mouseling listening in the night for the heartbeat of its missing dam. She blinks her huge eyes, as tiny a creature as ever a monster was. She could eat them all if she chose to do so. She does not belong to them; she is human after all. She like Marie, the same as the frizz-mother before she turned mouse. They are disappointed.
The mice all gaze at her, flummoxed at this big thing who had been hidden from them so long. But now it falls upon the mice to comprehend this childling, to unstitch truth from blasphemy, for she truly exists, and yet Mother Owl has reminded them of their own little place in the world. She is no possession of theirs.
Yes, it must be a further test, although this time not a test of any fairy light god. The mice sit in their concentric rings and they stare at their own sacred childling, the unwitting source of so much love and despair.
This time, this time more than any other in the endless history of mousehood, this time they must comprehend truly, must understand who or what this child is to them. And every mouse knows with a pain in his flank that he has killed for this moment, that he murdered the wretched suffering frizz-mother, all because of now, all because they supposed that she had put the childling forever beyond the embrace of mice.
They considered her their own, Mother Owl help them, they had so considered this creature their belonging, that they ripped out the mind of another animal, the frizz-mother who surely was as much worth their pity as any ruined soul of this house. There is no scent for the horror they feel, no picture in their heads nor squeak or gesture for the pain of this understanding.
The child seems to know nothing much of this, although she followed them to this prehistoric site readily enough, as if the time had simply come for her to explore, to repossess this strange old house and the universe of ceilings, after aeons of underground pit and the endless sky beyond the garden. She simply sits and sniffs the colours of the olden times whilst the mice watch. And it seems to them that in her expression, in the mute wisdom of her face, there is a hint of the owl.
The Knife Drawer Page 24