*
We found Abby in the graveyard curled in front of the lichen crowned angel. She wasn’t looking at the angel, wasn’t looking at anything in particular, despite the fact her eyes were wide open. She was simply gazing at her knees and whatever fragment or patch of colour lay beyond. We didn’t realise she’d taken herself there for sanctuary; it was just one of the places where we knew we might find her, playmates wanting to play. I should have recognised immediately that something was wrong; she was after all, a creature of habit. Usually she lay coiled towards the angel, her knees and arms tucked up before the plinth, the angel’s gaze passing over her, beyond her – its gaze always enigmatic, perhaps not even a smile at all, but a frown, a scowl of disappointment, of disapproval. This time she had her back to the angel, rested right up against the plinth, and if she had cared to see anything, which by the stasis of her eyes she didn’t, it would have been the walls; but it was only when we stood over her, when we saw the tears in her skin, the small gaping wounds, the smears of blood, that we understood her change of routine was deliberate. Not that we could have guessed how deep that alteration went, that declaration of apostasy.
From a distance she seemed her old self, full of her usual defiance, snuggled in one of her spaces, despite the rain and the wind. We were sure she liked it best when it was awful weather, when the space was framed, the borders of her comfort clearly marked by discomfort. Grace was impatient as always, and even shouted Abby’s name, insisting on formality – Abigail Sempie, what on earth are you playing at? Why can’t you be a good girl? – She knew fine well Abby couldn’t hear. She would never have assumed her full name if she thought she could hear. Still, as Grace came closer, she signed her disapproval, a version of the question, why can’t you be a good girl, wagging her finger and setting her face in little masks of objection. I don’t suppose she expected Abby to see. The grimaces weren’t really meant for Abby; Grace was just practising what she had learnt, playing games.
Grace was horrified when she came up close and saw the raw wounds on Abby for which she could not account. She recognised that they were something different to the scrapes and bruises we’d become accustomed to, but she’d never seen a dog bite, or any other bite before. She started to shout, as if she could chase the effrontery away, and run about, at first away from Abby and then towards her, until it seemed she was caught by elastic, forced both to see her and recoil from her. She knew Abby wasn’t dying – a mistake she had made before, seeing her curled before the angel – her eyes were too wide, too bright and filled with depth for that to be the case, but she recognised that there was something seriously wrong and she just didn’t know what to do about it, and I couldn’t help either. Neither of us knew how to deal with such a wounded sister. We were too young. We didn’t know how to be angry, how to retaliate, how to dismiss the idea that this was normal, we only knew how to be scared and how to whimper.
So, I never stopped Grace running about or her ferocious roars, which Abby couldn’t hear at all. I didn’t know how to, how to calm her, reassure her, replace something the dogs had banished. I had to leave her be. I went and leaned over Abby. She was curled into an uneven ball like an animal in a den, her eyes wide, fixed. I assumed she wanted to be in enclosed space as always, but I couldn’t work out why she had opted not to face the angel, opted to view the nearer wall. I touched her and she flinched as if my hand was burning heat. I stroked her. She looked at me, her expression fearful, disbelieving. She had no trust in human touch, couldn’t work out its meanings. She inched away, scraping across the floor like a cringing dog, her back rubbing along the angel’s plinth, and then she leapt up and began to run. It was crazy. For some reason, despite being in known territory, she was disoriented and ran in all directions, flapping her arms as if they were awkward, flightless limbs.
Seeing her dash about, dodging between fallen headstones, stamping over broken masonry, brought Grace to a standstill. She came and stood beside me and eyed Abby as if she were some kind of carnival lunatic, her expression quizzical but relieved, thankful to be able to contemplate Abby in the old light, that of perplexing, wilful sister. She began to nod her head in rhythm to Abby’s running, and then wheeled her hands, her loosely held fists turning one over the other.
Abby didn’t need any encouragement. She ran and ran, and eventually she discovered a portal of escape. The strange thing was she didn’t choose a familiar route, didn’t inevitably find the track to the coast, to the waiting tide calling her name, calling her, but opted for a different direction completely. She found herself, after some fantastic convolutions, in the most overgrown, ruinous portion of the grounds, beneath the western tower. The most ancient graves were found there, the headstones all skewed and too weathered to provide any legible information. Nothing had been cut back there for years. She kept running, though, or tried to run, despite the fact she had to drag her feet and pull as if the undergrowth were trying to haul her down. Eventually she found a dilapidated door in the high wall, which when pushed fell to the side, hanging from a single hinge.
The moment she went through the door we followed, yet by the time we left the graveyard she was already some way ahead of us, her arms still thumping against her sides like stubby wings. From this side of the church the landscape rolled towards the interior high-ground, its features distinguished by bellying fields, inclines with streams and slender but fast flowing rivers, spoil banks and wetland. Chasing her was strange. Everything changed from soreness to pleasure. Her running was wild and random, so much what we would have expected of her, and her stamina bewildering, but we managed to keep up with her – until she went to earth, that is. It never crossed our minds that she might have felt like a hunted creature and that it was the dread of a hunted animal that kept her going. We were sisters. Surely they couldn’t have removed that. We were sure she was laughing by then. It is something I have never been able to verify. It seems naïve now, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the case; after all, we were all three naïve, three naïve sisters.
When she vanished I thought it was magic. One second she was there and then she was gone, miraculously removed. For a moment I even thought she might burst across the skyline like an avenging angel, a sudden brilliant luminosity, an incendiary. Grace was rather more down-to-earth and signed the probability that she had tripped arse over tit, and knowing her luck had ended up in some filthy crevasse. Finding no trace of her was on neither of our minds.
We stopped running and began searching, Grace expecting a casualty, whilst I expected something more wonderful altogether. What prompted that hope is difficult to say, except I had always recognised that Abby was looking for a door through time, a door to a different age. It began from the very first time Grace had let Abby look at her book The Adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and Abby had gazed with such rapt pleasure at a plate of Sir Galahad witnessing the Grail. I really hoped it might be true, never stopping to consider whether it meant we would never be reunited this side of time.
Grace executed a wonderful job of signing her impatience and pleasure at Abby, at her vanishing trick, but couldn’t wave away the fact that really she was scared. Deep down I think she wanted to go and fetch her parents, Eileen and Seamus, but somehow had already learnt, without understanding why, that Abby was our responsibility. Some of her facial expressions clearly insinuated the scale of the problem, and of course she was right. How could Abby have disappeared? What did it mean? It was all too big for us to deal with alone. Nevertheless, we plodded around looking for signs of her, aware that one sense was severely lacking, that if she was crying for help, it was something we really might miss.
The ground streamed red. In places bare rock protruded through the vegetation. Everything was saturated. Our legs were splashed with mud and ore. The rain kept coming, not heavily, but with persistence, drenching us, making us cold right through the skin. I picked up a branch and began thrashing it through the undergrowth. I don’t know what I expe
cted, but at least I was doing something. We were both aware of the fact, without having to share it, that there was no point in calling out. Abby was always beyond calling. The reality of that singular fact had never been as real as at that moment.
We found ourselves on a high, gently inclined bank, one side of a shallow valley, looking down towards a v shaped pool, into which ran a large rust encrusted tube, like some vast segmented earthworm, its head sunk in the water, its tail ashore. The bank was jagged, split boulders and sheer faces of bare red rock exposed through short tough grasses. There were numerous paths down to the pond, where the rock had been worn down to gravel. We carried on along the brink, following the separating lines of the valley, the banks to either side deepening, the pool widening, the segmented creature sinking deeper and deeper until finally it was completely submersed. The water terminated in an arcing shore of low ruined walls, tall reeds and subsequent marsh. The bank reached its zenith at the same point and then fell away to all sides, forming a hill of scrub, boulders and scree. The landscape beyond was an irregular fissured and broken outline of green and red slag, green fields and marsh. In the far distance were the broken outline of mountains, their shapes lost in cloud, colours distilled to pale turquoise and mauve. In all directions the sky had come to earth. Mist pooled in gullies and ran trails across the disorganised ground.
Without a sign we began to make our way down the bank. The rain continued to fall in a light persistent sheet. The rocky outcrops were treacherous. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was this a real crisis or a game? I desired Grace Powers’ comic impatience, without knowing how to demand it. I suppose it was all part of the growing awareness that Abby missing was frighteningly real. Silence was also space and space was immense. She was in the world, somewhere, but what was the world in. In the lap of God would have been an easy, and maybe beautiful answer, but we believed that as much as we believed in the flat world on the backs of elephants from the Book of Marvels, even if Grace would have been obliged to confirm it was indeed the case if Seamus ever put her sense of God to the test, which, of course, he wouldn’t do, wouldn’t risk.
We are in the world, but what is the world in? Is that what Abby pondered whenever she gazed tenaciously at the sheer horizon, taking in its implied line, its simulation of time, of centuries? I can only guess her answer – her signs were vague on that score – but despite the presence of sisters, however naïve, it seemed to imply solitariness, though whether awful or desired, I couldn’t say.
Eventually, after a difficult descent we reached the foot of the slope. Looking back the valley was like a funnel, its vanishing point, following the edges of the banks against the sky, lost amongst a dense concentration of shrubs and trees. The tube also disappeared into foliage. We walked ahead. The ground remained uneven, still a mixture of exposed rock and scrub, with numerous spoil banks where the ground had been quarried. Everywhere was a new nature, man-made but disowned. Before long we came to a group of dilapidated buildings, a number of low sheds and a tower. The sheds were sealed, the windows and doors bricked up, but the tower had been broken open, a metal door forced, the hinges fractured. We went inside.
There was a narrow stairway. There was a stink of rotten vegetation and clay. I was sure we would find her; after all, it was just her sort of place, a place of concealment, protection maybe. In her imagination it would have been timeless: a castle, a sanctuary, a place of wonder. It was inconceivable she wouldn’t have found it. I signalled to Grace. This had to be where she had gone. The fact that she had vanished in front of our very eyes was of no account. Somehow she would have found this. Grace nodded her agreement. We both knew her, her urge and desire. We ran up the steps.
Of course she wasn’t there. No magic had transported her.
We found we couldn’t make it to the roof; the stairs came up against a brick wall. The brickwork was a different colour to the rest, obviously erected to seal the tower’s open top. We made a quick inspection of the chamber we were in. It was regular and bare, and despite its height from the ground the floor was covered in dry clay. It had obviously been occupied as there were scorch marks on the floor and wall where a fire had been, and there were empty beer and spirit bottles, though probably too dirty to be recently left. There were two small square openings where presumably there had once been windows. On one of the ledges there was a dead baby bird, its feathers and flesh almost entirely rotted, though the shape of its head was still distinct, particularly its large bulging eyes and stabbing beak. Grace brushed it away with a grimace of disgust and it made a solitary heavy flight to the ground below.
She turned and flashed me a look of defiance, as if she expected me to object. I shrugged my incomprehension. Her expression went through a number of agonised contortions, signalling a confusion of anger, frustration and fear. Eventually she stamped her foot, brandished two fists through the air and began to cry. With tears a much smaller, younger Grace Powers worked through her features. She really did want her mother. It was too much to carry, the mystery of Abby’s going, the antecedents to its occurrence. If growing up meant the admission of bitten skin, fierce raw sores, then she wasn’t ready, in all likelihood would never be ready. It ripped away the world’s cover, its greensward, its slag, its scrub.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t make it right, couldn’t pull Abby out of a hat, no matter how much I might long for it. Like Grace I suspected something bad, without being able to formulate it. The one thing I was sure of was that I would be held somehow responsible, as would Grace, and, of course, Abby too. We were in an unknown territory, somewhere probably out of bounds. Not knowing was never a defence. We were at fault, worse than naughty. We had committed terrible wrong. Something had happened to our sister, who no one but us knew was our sister, and we would be blamed, all three. I was pretty sure that if our relationship was discovered, that we had named ourselves sisters, we would be punished. Our sisterhood was at stake. I don’t know how I was aware of it, but aware of it I was. I knew they didn’t want us together, and would seize on any reason to forbid it. I didn’t know what they feared, but I knew they did, sensed it, felt it deep within me.
Even now I don’t know what inspired that thought, what made me so fearful for me and my sisters. It was maybe just the fact that Abby was missing, that a part of us, a piece of our own body and mind was absent. Why it should have manifested as a certainty that they wanted to stop us, stop us falling in love with anyone, stop us marrying, stop us having babies, wanted to banish our language, our silence, I can’t begin to understand, unless our genes carry the code of centuries, that the experience of those I would learn of later, deaf women such as Jane Poole and Eliza Cockerill was already part of me. Somewhere inside me I knew that life is variable and inconstant, and they wanted to refute it and say it wasn’t so. I tried to tell Grace it was no good looking for help, Abby was our sister, our concern, but she was too scared to reason with and in no fit state to read my signs. Finally I took her roughly by the hand and pulled her from the tower.
I reasoned that we were being somewhat fantastical, or certainly I was. Abby had to be at the place where she had disappeared, more than likely lying in a ditch, conscious or unconscious, in need of her sisters. So with Grace’s hand still firmly in mine I skirted the hill we had just descended and made our way back to where we had last seen her racing ahead, as excited as a young deer, before vanishing and set to work to find her.
Funnily enough, despite her disarranged state – she was blubbering even as I instructed her to look into every crevice, gully or pothole – it was Grace who discovered the hole into the earth. I was put out about that. I can admit it now. Now it makes sense. I wasn’t annoyed that Grace should be the one to make such an incredible discovery, it was just that I had already taken on the role of Abby’s protector, her guardian. It should have been down to me to discover the pit she had so fervently desired. It spoke of failure rather than success, of me not Grace. It was more than obvious I had faile
d Abby so many times already, her ripped translucent skin was evidence enough of that, but how many more times would I be destined to fall short of the mark. Already in our childish ways we were mapping out the future, a future I obviously didn’t expect to hold any respite.
Grace appeared in front of me, her expression stern and disappointed, indicating that she had waved for my attention over and over, but I had chosen to ignore her. I shook my head. I even indicated my ears, my hearing, my failing. She shrugged. We didn’t know what we were saying to each other, we were too young to be able to put it into words, but ideas were being formed, ideas that would be as fixed as a gouge on the landscape. She was asking how I could have abandoned her so easily, when she was so in need, so desirous of supervision, and I was making the case that I wasn’t up to it, that I could take on and take off as I chose, not deliberately reliable or unreliable, but subject to deviation.
Grace took me by the hand. I took reluctant steps with her, as if I was as blind as I was deaf, seeing only shapes without definition or detail, everything blurred and not to be trusted. My reticence was unforgivable.
She led me to a slender cleft at the base of a hillock, a curling indentation like the whorl of an ear. She smiled and looked around, signalling pleasure and secrecy. I also looked all around, sharing her vigilance. As far as I could tell we weren’t being watched. There was a row of buildings on the far horizon used to house cattle or sheep, though rather too tall to have been originally built for that purpose, but they were abandoned so not to be considered. Grace lifted her hand into the air, her index-finger raised pointing out the trick, and then she approached the cleft, manoeuvred into it sideways, ducked down, and like a baby re-entering the birth canal disappeared head first. It took seconds but seemed instantaneous, seemed like vanishing. I waited, perhaps defiantly renouncing magic, perhaps merely jealous of the miracle of it. Grace reappeared and impatiently signalled me to follow.
My Name is E Page 11