‘‘Advice?’’
‘‘Why not. You’ve been married a long time. Advice to a young woman.’’
‘‘I’ve never given anyone advice.’’
‘‘How does marriage work, Agnes? Is it just impulse and obedience?’’ She walked on, past me. ‘‘I just don’t understand how you did it, how you do it, cheese on toast and the rest.’’
She rounded on me, glared, and looked as if she were about to hit out, but settled for saying: ‘‘I’ve just about heard enough from you.’’
‘‘I just mean,’’ I went on reasonably, ‘‘how did you manage, Martha hating your own family so much? How do you live with that?’’
‘‘You just do!’’
‘‘Impulse, obedience?’’
She was about to reply, but thought better of it. She considered for a moment, and then very calmly suggested: ‘‘Not very real, talk like that.’’
‘‘I think you survived, but didn’t realise that mothers are supposed to do more than survive, they’re supposed to protect their young.’’
She took a step towards me. ‘‘Don’t you dare question me as a mother.’’
‘‘What, you always made sure there were birthday and Christmas presents?’’
‘‘And do you think that was easy? Are you so flush down there that you think the past was easy?’’
‘‘Why did you send her away?’’
‘‘For the best.’’
‘‘Or was it Martha sent her away?’’
‘‘Don’t be so stupid. It was all down to the school. They said it was for the best. We had to go along with what they said.’’
‘‘Why did Martha hate your family so much?’’
‘‘They’re Catholics, that’s all.’’
‘‘She said she couldn’t care less about that.’’
‘‘Well, that’s not true.’’
‘‘I’ve heard she was quite fond of your father.’’
‘‘Well, that’s not true either.’’ She shrugged and half-smiled. ‘‘She’s her own worst enemy, really. Never been to our house, never made up with my Auntie Nora, stubborn, set in her ways, that generation.’’
‘‘What was it between Nora and Martha?’’
‘‘None of your damned business,’’ she replied emphatically and immediately walked on.
I called after her: ‘‘There’s something I really don’t understand. Please.’’ She turned and eyed me impatiently. ‘‘Your father, Aidan, he was lovely with Grace, taught her to sign, taught her really well, Aidan, Peter and Paul, but mainly Aidan, and later he helped me, with sign I mean, but he wouldn’t go anywhere near Abby. Why was that?’’
She looked at me for a few moments more, and then turned away without any reply.
‘‘Do you think he’ll tell me?’’ I called.
‘‘Don’t go anywhere near him,’’ she called without turning back.
‘‘We converse in the same language.’’
She turned fiercely and called along the street: ‘‘I don’t want him bothered, not whilst she’s ill like this.’’
‘‘It was Mr Drake said she was fond of Aidan.’’
‘‘Well, who’d be stupid enough to believe him?’’
‘‘So you did know?’’
She began to walk back towards me, though stopped still at some distance. ‘‘All I know is he’ll be wanting some supper and I’m late and he won’t like that, so I suggest you go now, go right away, back to London, and stop raking up things that couldn’t be helped.’’
‘‘Could it not be helped, Agnes?’’
‘‘I told you, it was the school who sent her away, the school’s fault.’’
‘‘He will be annoyed,’’ I suggested and smiled. ‘‘He told me you’re like clockwork, said exactly what time you’d be back. To be honest I think you were a bit ahead of time though.’’
‘‘Not clockwork exactly, but that’s how they get, wanting things done at a set time.’’
‘‘Comforting, a routine.’’
‘‘They find it.’’
‘‘And you’re always back in good time to do his bit of supper.’’
‘‘That’s right.’’
I smiled broadly. ‘‘You’re very good, doing all that.’’
‘‘You do what you have to.’’
‘‘Yes, thank you, that’s sound advice, thank you. I’ll make sure I do that. And you saying you never give advice.’’
I turned and went on my way. I never heard her footsteps behind me at all, advancing or retreating, or looked back to see if I could read her intent.
I would see her again tomorrow night, alone, without fear of interruption.
I just had to wait, wait and read the signs.
*
The essential feature of language is time, which includes both tense and aspect, the ability to say where I was, where I am and where I intend to be. Time then is awareness and aspiration. In pursuit of time I have investigated the past. I wanted to know what the weather was like on the day we found Abby in the pig-yard covered in shit and snow. Did the meteorological office agree that it was indeed snowing and I hadn’t embellished the event, given it a certain story telling veneer?
In fact they couldn’t say, not on the phone, and suggested I might be better exploring local archives, the information I wanted being so particularly local. The advice was sound, of course. There was so much else that fell into the same category. Was the brick-works as large as I maintain? When did they demolish some of the large sheds and chimneys? When did St Bridget’s become a place of partial use? Who really owned the mines?
The grammar of history is chronology: presumably if we existed we had to be part of that grammar. The day they took Abby had to exist, had to have a pattern of cloud, a temperature, a quantity of light and dark.
I sign it as absence, but as I said, absence is knowledge of its opposite: so Abby’s no longer being there was part of her belonging. Her figure was always there, then, always existed for us, curled, patient and strong, beneath the negligent gaze of an angel, a crowned angel, who I would say failed entirely to be her guardian, though perhaps Abby never imposed that duty on it. She was never demanding like that.
Language doesn’t do it though, isn’t enough, just seems like a make-do, a surface to put on things, so little of it seems accurate, just a habit, a routine. A sign though is different: a sign is deliberate, meant, accurate. A sign is not given lightly.
I can still see the look on Aidan’s face when Grace told him she was ashamed to sign. At first he looked ashamed himself, as if he had been found wanting and was really quite used to the feeling, then he looked hurt, but finally indignant. It was unexpected: older generations seemed to demur so much to the younger, as if it was only natural that what they had accepted was naïve and false, but not this time. He admonished Grace, wagging his finger at her, the index-finger of his left hand, and told her she should never forget it was her language. For Grace the question have I been good girl was too strong to fight, though, and yet she was one of the best fighters among us, feisty and impulsive, but ultimately scared of embarrassment.
Language allows for culture: shame, guilt, anxiety, taboo.
We were educated in the Ewing system – not that we knew we were taught in any system – and had to accept it was right. If they said language was like gravy that had to be poured over children to make it stick then that was the truth. When they said we would never be able to work with direct access to the public, on public transport, as rent collectors, metre readers, postmen, librarians, waitresses, then they knew best.
All those months and years we spent in the woods, signing with Phillip, and out of school signing with Aidan, Peter and Paul, were acts of informal dissidence in a situation where dissidence was hopeless.
We didn’t know to say: sign has prefix, suffix and plural.
Couldn’t say: I think in sign, I dream sign.
I am not inferior, stupid, ashamed, nor do I lack anything. S
ign is not an absence: my memory is sign: my memory is retrievable and can be verified by local records. Yes, of course it was snowing when they made Abby shit herself. Of course the brick-works went through periods of growth and recession.
My memory is composed of tense and aspect.
I remember they took Abby.
They took her away, away from us, from her sisters, from herself, when she was only ten. We couldn’t complete our games. They have remained unfinished. In memory of her going I played all sorts, but Grace was unsure, so they became harsh reminders, pretending I was one of Pizarro’s conquistadors discovering all over again the Book of Marvels, and nursing poor Poppy who was left behind, watching the tide come in all on her own. I didn’t realise that when they took Abby they also took the greater part of Grace, of me, that when you remove one sister, the other sisters must suffer, be reduced, occupy a narrower world. It seems unforgivable that they took our games.
They never had any sense that things ended, that things that existed in time weren’t forever. They mindlessly swiped away her childhood, treating it to their own pointless vandalism, without ever thinking that there was no retrieving it, no second chance. One day we would want to play skipping and the next day the desire was gone, at best played out years later in a parody of ourselves, just for a second wiping away time and the rule-book, but in reality the thing is irredeemable. We don’t skip, we don’t play hop-scotch, don’t play pirates, knights templar, ladies, queens, princesses.
It’s not that Abby never came back, because she did, but by then the games were no longer ours to play.
I suppose I should have been pleased they took her away; somewhere residential, Miss Sowerby explained, hoping I think that we could explain it to her, somewhere more suitable to her particular needs. It was selfish of me to want to keep her, but she was the one with the vision, the one who understood the horizon, the face of angels and the world of insects. I thought I would be nothing without her, cease to exist, answering the world out of habit and consent.
I had failed her completely, though. I never stopped Mr Archibald cleaning her up when she became excited and forgot herself, or stopped Mr Drake from insisting on sharing his silent films with her, or stopped Harold from beating her whilst Agnes stood by.
Maybe, after all, she wanted to go. Why else would she have gone to the matriarch as she did, which was unheard of, if it wasn’t for the fact that Martha insisted she shouldn’t be taken, citing her usual complaint that if you put deaf-mutes together under the same roof then they were bound to breed and produce a deaf-mute race.
Martha sent a message that simply said: Come and get her. Harold grimaced at the injunction and thought to himself he would go when he was good and ready. Still, he didn’t take off his boots. Shortly after, the same boy – presumably someone Martha had called from the street – brought a second message: Come and get her or I’ll kill her. Harold thought that was interesting. Was she serious? He scowled at the boy who waited on the step, having obviously been instructed by the matriarch to witness that her instruction was obeyed. Harold reading the fear and uncertainty in the boy’s features growled, lifted his fist and gestured that he might club the offensive brat. The boy cringed and shrank away, pleading as he did that she had said. Harold swore at him but immediately set on his way, pushing him aside as he went.
When he reached the farm Abby was screaming. Her face was raw with the exertion. It was the first time she had been back there since Martha had rescinded her claim on her. It was a mystery to everyone why she had chosen that moment to return. The matriarch said she had gone completely mad.
The child is crazy, she screamed, possessed, a witch.
Harold seized hold of Abby by the shoulder and demanded that she shut up. She shrugged him off and screamed directly at him, glaring right into his face as if cursing him. He lifted his arm into the air, his left arm across his chest and above his right shoulder and threatened to smash it into her face. She immediately thrust her face forward and screamed ever louder. His hand came down like a catapult and struck her across the jaw. She was silenced for no more than a second, and then began the same concerted noise. Harold responded by grabbing her and smacking her repeatedly. At first she fought back, scratching, kicking and biting, the two of them flailing at each other, but then she ran out of fight and tried to cover herself. Harold kept on, until he was overcome by silence.
After he had finally stopped hitting her he held her for a few seconds then threw her down. He was breathless and stood still for a moment and then snarled aloud that it wasn’t as if the stupid bitch could hear her own commotion. He immediately reached down, grabbed her by the collar and began dragging her away. As he was leaving he heard the matriarch’s voice, slow and hushed now, saying that Abby was a child of the devil and needed sorting. Harold turned, glared at her and reminded her that she had said she would kill her. She didn’t reply. He went on and also reminded her that she was the one standing in the way of sending Abby away, something that even the authorities considered the right thing.
Harold had been home no more than a few minutes when the boy returned again with a note that said: Get rid of her, whatever.
Abby was in her element when they came for her. She knew, of course. Why else would she have fled to her most natural domain, the conjunction of water, air and earth, the round world stretching out as far as the eye could see? They sent for us to tell them where they could find her. In my memory I can’t say that the two who asked were frightening in any way, or seemed to wish her any harm. From that point of view it isn’t surprising that Grace told them she would be either with the angel or by the sea.
She was dancing, flying close to the waves when we reached her. I could sense her bewilderment that her sisters had brought strangers to such a sacred place. Grace began to sob. What else was there for Abby to do but shout her name above everything, deflecting everything with the scale of who she was? I think she would have torn the faces of the two who had come for her, so insensitive were they in interrupting her, had it not been for Mr McBride who whispered to her, words she could never have heard, but somehow sensed. I was surprised when she allowed him to touch her, but then he only took her hand, and by then we were all changing, even her. How else could it be that she left Poppy, prostrate on the sand, the waves liable to claim her.
Maybe Poppy was intended to be set free, though, given to depth, to the caverns beneath the sea, a mermaid, careless and a-wing, Poppy, Poppy, Poppy.
As they drove her away Grace turned to Mr McBride and asked: Have I been a good girl?
Thank God, he was certain she had.
So Abby was gone, an absence, someone to create.
How to denote her then, sign her: her, Sempie, non-hearing, creature of beauty, here not.
Her, she, where?
*
I would certainly have killed Mr Archibald, whose first name I think was Alistair, though I have a sneaking suspicion I’m making that up. I would have relished making him kneel before me, have him press his small fat fingers together in a sign of prayer, a sign of begging for forgiveness, a sign of terror, though there would be no God to hear, because there is no God to hear. Do you hear that, no God to hear? No, there would only have been an audience of one, the nemesis of a deaf girl, turned woman, full up with the signs of so many other deaf girls, all the girls who couldn’t find the excuse to avoid his beady eyed, fat fingered attention, but it just wasn’t to be. He died whilst we were still at school, Grace and I, falling from a ladder. I imagine he was painting at the time, an upper window, perhaps the guttering. I see the ladder going, his horrified face, the sick expression, the few seconds he has at his disposal before smashing against the ground, a spray of yellow paint all around him like a child’s drawing of sunshine – why yellow, why sunshine, who can say? Miss Sowerby announced the news in assembly in such a hushed, formal voice that we had to wait until break to discover what she had said. It was only later when I was in London and thought about it,
his body splayed out in a dash of yellow paint, that I realised she didn’t like him, in fact probably despised him. I don’t know whether I’ll ever work out whether that was forgivable or not. Still, she was safe, not least because I had absolutely no idea what became of her.
Mr Drake remained, though, sitting in the dark, his films stalling time, waiting for me, certain I would make the call, I could see it in his birdlike features.
I surprised him as he made his habitual rounds, into town every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday – something to do, I suppose, fill the time, Thursday and Saturday being market days. I would say hello but nothing else as he came out of the baker’s with his white rolls and slice of pie. I would sit in the same café he frequented, a few tables away, and raise my cup of tea in salute, which is a well-worn sign, then indicate the pointlessness of his trying to speak as I certainly wouldn’t hear a word at that distance. Even with a sign you need close proximity, a neutral background, good illumination and frontal exposure. No, there was certainly no point in trying to speak.
I could tell that he was beginning to look for me. He wanted to be ready with a smile, that signal of complacency, simple social gesturing, a nicety without meaning, without anything ulterior. Except that sharp, raptor gesture was also very much a grimace, an assault. It was disgusting really. He didn’t have a secret, just something never said; his predilections, by consent of people who should have done differently, safely under wraps.
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