When he was through with his description, which had given him a strange feeling of pride he couldn’t account for, he tossed the split head into a tub full of similar slop – heads, tails and trotters – which he boiled until the meat came away from bone which Agnes then stripped into bowls for brawn.
When the time came though, Abby didn’t watch her mother strip the heads, her interest was taken by Harold’s sows which ran free in the field behind the sheds. Soon after he had moved into his house Harold had laid claim to all the land behind the terrace, leaving only a small yard for each neighbour, though he also allowed them to string washing lines to his pig-sheds. He worked on the principle that no one actually owned any of the ground so he simply built on it, and as he expected he didn’t receive any argument. It was, in fact, owned by the coal-board, but as no one had ever been to view it, or fix a rent on it, he assumed it was his for as long as he chose. He had made it into quite a smallholding, more than Martha’s, with a substantial yard. He had also fashioned a fairly rugged track round one end of the terrace by gradually filling hardcore into the ruts he had made with his van.
It was from the track that Abby watched the sows, viewing them over a corrugated tin sheet fence. She never leaned on Harold’s fences, not because they weren’t robust, despite their thrown together appearance – everything in Harold’s yard was made from cast-off goods – but because she was never so relaxed. She always stood to attention in her father’s domain.
From the same sacks out of which Harold had produced the pig’s head he had taken flanks of fat and rind. When he spread them out on the butcher’s bench he kept in one of the sheds she expected he was cutting them up to render into pork dripping. She couldn’t quite believe it when he threw it, raw, to the sows, and she was even more surprised by the speed with which they gobbled it down. She couldn’t understand how it was that they couldn’t smell pig, it was, after all, a potent smell. It wasn’t the first time she had witnessed cannibalism – she had seen birds eat other birds, a magpie even taking another magpie’s young – but it was certainly the most intriguing.
She was still watching the sows when they came for the rat. She was only aware of them when a terrier made a lazy snap at her ankle. Surprisingly she didn’t jump, but simply turned to investigate. There were three men and six dogs, small, wire-haired terriers. She followed automatically.
When she trailed them into the yard she saw Martha standing at the other side, in front of the lean-to that served as the kitchen. Martha’s face contracted with animosity, her bitterness at her pent-up confessions being so pointlessly scattered never allayed. She was torn between a desire to outface Abby, and a need not to see her. In the end looking won the day. For one reason or another she just couldn’t finally reject her, and that failure, as she saw it, infuriated her. Seeing Martha’s attention Abby immediately announced her own name. Martha turned aside in disgust, cleared her throat and spat onto the cobbles. She always resented the fact that Abby was the beautiful singer she was.
As she was spitting Harold produced the rat. He had a number of large, semi-circular wire mesh cages placed in his sheds. The rat would enter through a narrow funnel, which led to a weighted platform, from where it would drop into the cage, the platform springing back into place. He held up one of these cages, right above his head. The rat moved around inside. He banged the side with his free hand, causing the mesh to shiver and the rat to dance from side to side. Abby quaked. She found rats repulsive, frightening creatures.
Harold put the cage down onto the ground and told the men to slip the dogs, which immediately gathered around it and began pawing and snapping at it, sending it rolling across the yard floor, the rat inside turning over and over, the mesh dripping with slurry. Harold and the men laughed at the antics. Of course, Abby couldn’t hear any laughter so how was she to know it was funny, the frustrated growling dogs and the somersaulting vermin with its piercing whistles? She wasn’t given any such permission. She began to rock forwards and backwards and call aloud, unclear in her own mind whether she was scared, pleased or enraged.
The dogs became increasingly incensed and began ripping at the mesh, so much so that blood from their jaws appeared on the wire. The cage flew around the yard, and with it the laughter grew stronger. It was at this point that Harold strode into the small pack and held them back from their quarry, sweeping them away with his boots so as not to damage them. He bent down and released the pin holding the gate in the back of the cage. The rat bolted, but the dogs instantly descended on it and within seconds had torn it into bloody shreds.
Whether Abby wanted to retrieve it, sew it back into one ugly whole, or wanted to share in its dismemberment, she never could recall, but as the dogs gathered together, licking at the ground, their heads bobbing together, licking at the stain that had been rat, she plunged amongst them and fell to the floor, her whole body twitching as if she were in the midst of a fit – epilepsy was a Shaughnessy trait, both Honor and Aidan having once had regular convulsions, which in both cases more or less ceased in adulthood, not a Sempie thing at all.
The dogs jumped and danced around her. A couple of them yelped, those pitiful squeals small dogs make indicating surprise at any level of hurt, their hindquarters scraping the ground, scraping their firm genitalia. Then they all began to growl and snarl. She was rolling on the memory of dead rat, rolling on its trace as if she wanted to be scent marked. Her contracted limbs, her muscles in spasm, struck against the six dogs numerous minor, repetitive blows. They jumped and collided, snapping and nipping each other, as they tried to avoid the thumps of her writhing body, and then they began snapping at her, at first tentative bites, the jaws not clenching, not breaking skin, just grasping, but she didn’t stop and her convulsions sent them mad. Eventually they began nipping at her clothes and exposed skin, small tearing bites. Whilst this was happening the three men were shouting, telling her to get out of it, telling her to stop acting the fucking fool, but doing nothing. Perhaps they were certain the dogs were out of their control, after all, they had just eaten hot blood, hot entrails. It was common practice to feed young dogs fresh hot liver to make them mad for the kill. They probably presumed Abby’s liver doomed.
Harold and Martha said nothing, Harold too angry to speak, Martha too embarrassed and disgusted. Already in her mind she could hear comments about the sick Sempie kid, the graphic descriptions of Abby rolling herself in the mud and chicken shit, her mouth salivating with the pleasure of it, moaning as if she were being fucked not nipped to death, and certainly Martha’s initial wish was that the dogs would finish her off, though common sense told her such small dogs probably weren’t likely to do more than hurt her. It may have been that thought that prompted her to intervene, or maybe the fact that there were witnesses to what she did or didn’t do, or maybe it wasn’t thought out at all simply automatic, but whatever the reason, she finally strolled from the end of the yard nearest the house from where she had been watching events, kicked her way through the dogs and picked Abby up bodily from the ground – one terrier dangling for a while by the tip of its teeth to her buttocks – and carried her away, dropping her at the entrance to a pig-shed. Usually Abby would have run for cover, bolting inside, but not this time. She sat upright on her knees, her backside resting on her ankles, and wrapped her arms right around herself, her palms resting flat against her back.
The men took their dogs and left. There was no word said to Harold. He remained rooted, simply gazing ahead, staring at the spot where the rat had been ripped up, angered and sickened by the irregularity of it all. Martha stood a few feet from Abby, completely still, stiff and formal, guarding her captive, her eyes flickering between Abby and Harold. The three of them remained like that, rigid, fixed objects, for some time. Harold was the first to move. He turned from his contemplation of the scene of sport and rested his eyes on Abby, looking at her steadily for a few moments, and then he pursed his lips, marched towards her, his pace slow and even, and slapped her forcefully ac
ross the face sending her sprawling.
It’s likely that might have been the end of it as Harold was obviously intent on marching straight indoors, had Martha not spoken up, asking how they were ever going to live it down. She hadn’t directed herself to Harold, simply spoken aloud, letting him hear the uppermost thought in her head. He stopped and turned back, which Martha took as a cue to commence her interrogation. She bombarded Abby with questions – what the hell was she playing at, what was she up to, why did she enjoy bringing them all down, what possessed her, why did she put on them all of the time? The logic for Martha, which she made plain to Abby, was that Abby wanted to give the Sempies a bad name, was hell-bent on it. There was something wicked, evil, maybe even devil possessed, certainly unnatural in her personality. Not only was Abby stupid and an idiot, she was a liar, a cheat and, for some reason, a thief, and also a disease. As Martha listed her insults Harold picked Abby from the floor and slapped her across the backside and legs, punishing her for each charge made against her, until Martha declared she wasn’t worth it, she was just a piece of filthy corruption, and he dropped her back to the ground. Nevertheless he stood over her for a while like a dissatisfied fighter, until Martha announced it was enough, and they left her.
When he reached the door of the lean-to he ordered Agnes inside. How long she had been there only she could say.
*
The feeling of dreams, that everything is a dream, is a terrible one, but one that is hard to escape. I always assumed it was something to do with being deaf, the world and all its habits thrown onto a screen, only to be seen and not heard, at a distance and out of reach, but that supposes touch deficient too, and I can make no claim that deficient ears lead to deficient fingers. My fingers were never frail or failing, in fact quite often they assumed a life of their own, crawling like spiders, sometimes tiny elephants – my hands like two playful mates, their trunks touching so tenderly at times it was obvious they had witnessed upheaval, the loss of herd, displacement – towards another’s unsuspecting skin, but wasn’t that another attempt to solve the dream puzzle?
Of course, everything becomes a dream because everything is a memory, the present lost and irredeemable. So, Abby lay in the mud, she prostrated herself before a lichen crowned angel, and she surveyed the horizon, decoding it, loving it, but as soon as I picture one of those images and work something out it’s gone, she’s gone, and inevitably so am I.
It calls for something special to crack a dream, but maybe it isn’t worth it. Sometimes when my delightfully vivacious hairdresser lifts my hair from my head in her two hands in the cusp between thumb and index-finger revealing the elongated, birdlike face, the mottled, tarnished skin, the offending ears, I have to admit that the face in the mirror is Judith Salt, first person, second person, third person Judith Salt, but if I consider all that Judith Salt has witnessed, it is simply a miniature on a screen. I used to think that the persistent sense I had of being in a dream meant I was devoid of sympathy, simple decency, tenderness, but I am not immune. It’s just that when you have died once but survived, you are never quite fully alive ever again.
I don’t mind. I think it would take too much stamina and courage to be entirely alive: the dream of it, the suspicion that this can’t be happening to me, seems more than sufficient.
With dreams I can be patient and tolerant; after all there is the likelihood of its sudden conclusion, its disappearance, a loss that can’t authentically be mourned. No one in their right mind would mourn something never real to begin with, however delightful, or fulfilling the moment. So, I sometimes smile at my hairdresser and gently close my eyes, or I look straight ahead and seek something on the other side of the mirror. There is usually something comic or novel to discover, such as whole forests carved like privet into the shapes of birds, a parade of Morris men on stilts dancing to a pig band. There is no end to invention, perhaps only to the point of it.
Donald often asked me what I was thinking as if he was accusing me of something in the question, some secret, some betrayal. In many ways, of course, he was right. At one time it must have been the thought that I didn’t love enough, and then later that I loved too much. So, how do I remember Donald, remember that shift from loving too little to too much, recall my playful, elephantine, arachnid fingers inching towards him, the mise-en-scène in my mind, something that may or may not have happened?
I was always weighing him up, taking in his features and figure, and wondering how they would weather and wear. How would his thick sandy hair be in a few years? Would the dull orange freckles that lay dormant in the layers of his skin, like so many dead blooms, smoulder back into life, so the old man would be stippled by stale flowers? Would the flesh that made him big and meaty go flabby on the bone so that the torso, stubbled by coarse, colourless hair, would bulge and soften like a dough ball? He was so non-descriptive in his white coat, his suit, his corduroy trousers and jumper, but unclothed, naked, very fine, a surprise, a gift, as so many people prove to be, stripped of the things that define them.
I was certain I had no right, no reason, to do such a thing, to weigh up and categorise him, to wonder about his smile and his anger, his roar and his pity. I was lucky to have him, surely anyone would have told me that, but why should anyone trust in luck, yet alone believe in it? I suppose the truth was we fought out an emotional version of equality, not political economy or class but its physical equivalent, without ever admitting we were doing it. When he prompted me, saying I needed strength of purpose, and then later applauded the fact I had strength of purpose, wasn’t he saying he was more perfected than me, not necessarily better – though the conclusion is difficult to avoid – simply more complete. I had everything to learn, and he could be my teacher, my emotional coach, the person who would brandish my deafness on my behalf: the man who would teach me to love myself. He could make me and unmake me.
We are always making and unmaking each other. We are all mimics, dabblers in make-believe, wishful thinkers, playing our parts with all the experience we can bring to it, all the ingenuity at our disposal, attempting to outthink the instinct that could debase us, expose us, show us up for the ancestral failures we are. Certainly my sisters and I spent much of our time perfecting games, making games so seamless only a true player would suspect the guile.
Players, then, Judith Salt, Grace Powers and best of all, Abigail Sempie. Abigail Sempie, I miss her so much, her life in my life, my life hers. I am dumbfounded that such sisters could be so casual as to miss the obvious danger. I dream her like words.
I don’t know how many times a person can fall in love, or how many grades of love exist, but eventually I loved Donald, not with pain and longing, but with comfort. It was suddenly like lying in a warm bath, with an overarching question of why not. Why shouldn’t things be as they were? Why should it have to be laced with a sequence of doubts, apprehensions, suspicion? Why should it necessarily be hard just to be remotely true?
I gave up on me.
I gave.
He obviously felt the weight of what occurred, but I think the equality shook him to the core of his wonderful nudity. That wasn’t in his game, that he shouldn’t have to be my cheerleader, my angry guardian, shouldn’t challenge dragons on my behalf.
There was a night when we went out to eat, opting for a small place in Kentish Town that appeared a little better than the usual day and night places we frequented. The lighting was subdued, and there were high backed chairs, almost as if it were a proper restaurant, which it, like all the others, wasn’t. The waiter smiled gravely, formally and even offered a discernible bow, and then asked what the lady would like. He asked Donald what the lady would like. Donald was incensed. I could see it in his face, could predict what was coming. He was about to give the waiter a dressing-down, threaten a complaint to the manager, followed by a very public exit, but before anything occurred I reached out, placed my palm over Donald’s forearm and declared: ‘‘I don’t mind, I really don’t mind. I’d like you to order f
or me, knowing my likes and dislikes as you do.’’
Donald was still determined to protest.
I smiled and added: ‘‘It’s very nice here, thank you.’’
Donald ordered Chicken Kiev for us both and when he cut into it and the garlic butter burst out all over his plate I expressed my surprise at his choice, given that he must see some disgustingly infected, suppurating wounds, or did he only ever bother with the bones beneath the skin?
He neither laughed nor scowled, and I can say, I didn’t mind at all.
*
The two hands can still perform the trick of elephants, wild elephants not circus creatures, beasts of mountain and plain. They clamber with slow determination over the arms of chairs, and then descend warily to the cushion below. They stand on the thigh upright, looking across vast distances as if the whole globe were revealed to them, a planet yet in its infancy but already old, already witness to mass extinction, privation and struggle. At some point they will have to find water, shelter, grazing, but more immediately they need to find each other. Sometimes the reunion is affected easily, sometimes it is tortuous, and indeed sometimes the right hand really is devoid of all knowledge of what the left is doing. Sometimes it feels as if they have been denied each other’s company for years, but no matter the length of separation, the reunion is always the same, a mannered, tender dance, the index-finger of one pawing at the other, which is immediately mirrored by the other, and then the trunk of the long middle finger carefully takes in the aroma of its partner whilst the index-finger still paws at the joints, until there is an embrace of fingers. The two then take to the hill paths and mountains, and sometimes they even come to a shore, but that is extremely rare, extremely rare indeed, it is so infrequent that their world comes to any end, even when the wilderness has occupied them for thirty-five years or so. Being truly wild creatures they have no name of any kind and are not going to look for one now, still that could never stop my recognition of them. Strange that they of all things should never have changed in all the years, but I should never forget, an elephant’s memory is legend.
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