Ritual

by Jo Mazelis

  She’d been teaching at the Girls’ Grammar back then. The school was temporarily housed in long wooden huts, far too hot in summer and bone chilling in winter. But it had been in a nice part of the town, surrounded by the suburban villas of the middle classes. Due to its ersatz appearance the school’s nickname was the cowsheds and she had once, at a dinner-dance, been introduced to someone as one of its ‘famous cows’.

  When she heard about teaching positions at a new purpose-built school she’d jumped at the opportunity, not knowing that this wonder was to be thrown up on top of a scrubby hill surrounded by a council housing estate on one side and heavy industry and wasteland on the other. Or that the children attending would be practically feral.

  It could drive one quite mad, she thought, a situation like her own.

  There was no one at the bus stop when she got there. Not many people about so early in the day. Across the road she noticed a strange woman she had frequently seen in the area. A woman she secretly named Madame de Pompadour. The woman’s hair was dyed blue-black and styled in the most astonishing beehive, at least a foot high. Then over the hair, containing it, was a large red chiffon scarf, knotted under her chin. The hairdo was completely out of fashion and would have been outlandish even when it was in fashion, eight or nine years ago. Her make-up was more of a mask than a subtle enhancement; heavily pencilled brows, purple eye shadow, mouth drawn beyond the boundary of its natural size, the scarlet Cupid’s bow blurred by the downy hair on her upper lip, tan foundation plastered on, thick and crusted, and then great slaps of rouge on her flaccid cheeks.

  She’d witnessed this woman being stared at, laughed at, teased by children, insulted. She also seemed to frighten people with her dead eyes and muttering, which occasionally rose to wild-eyed shrieking when she was provoked too much. Poor woman, Monica thought.

  The bus came then and she climbed to the upper deck.

  ‘Why should I let the toad…’ she thought, then wondered if she’d said it aloud and glancing around she found a man across the aisle staring at her. Her nervous smile of apology set him on his feet and into the seat next to her.

  ‘’ello darling,’ he purred, the side of his body pressing into hers. Hot moist breath on her face and neck.

  No one else on the top deck. The bus now swaying as it picked up speed and sailed past St James’s Church without stopping.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ she said, rising from her seat.

  ‘Alright, darling. No ’urry.’ But instead of standing the man merely twisted his legs out into the aisle and as soon as she moved to squeeze past, his hand shot up her skirt, feeling and groping and poking all he found there; her bare skin, stocking tops, suspenders, the elastic of her knickers…

  His other hand found her breast, which he squeezed as if it were a fruit he was testing for ripeness.

  But she didn’t scream.

  His feet tangled with hers. Tree branches scraped and thudded the windows on one side of the bus. She nearly fell on him, but managed to wrench herself from his clutches. The last thing he did, quick and sly and stingingly hard, was to slap her retreating bottom and laugh.

  She nearly fell down the twisting steps. There on the lower deck all was normal, the bus conductor was sitting and reading the Daily Mirror and a cockle-woman, her plump cheeks red with wind-etched veins, a huge wicker basket on her lap, smiled at her.

  When the bus stopped at a zebra crossing she stepped off and began to walk back up Mansel Street as fast as she could go without breaking into a run. She kept looking back every few seconds to be certain the man wasn’t following her.

  The places where he’d touched her were all burning somehow, her breast, her bottom, her private parts. She wanted to rub at them, to rub and rub until his touch was expunged. Yet she also couldn’t bear the thought of touching where he’d touched and contaminated her.

  Oh, god, why hadn’t she screamed? She should have screamed and screamed and clawed at his ugly grinning face.

  The bastard, the filthy, filthy, disgusting bastard.

  She must get home. Get home and wash herself. Get home and weep with her face pushed into a pillow to smother her cries.

  Then she heard her name being called, ‘Monica! Monica’.

  She slowed and turned, terrified that her assailant was calling her; knew her by name. But instead, there drawn up by the pavement in his green Morris Minor Traveller, was Ken Roberts, Head of Science.

  ‘Hop in. We’re holding up the traffic.’

  She obeyed, blushing now and trembling.

  ‘You were going the wrong way,’ he observed mildly.

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d forgotten a book.’

  ‘Really? Well, just tell me where and I’ll turn around.’

  ‘No. No, I … I realise now it’s not The Tempest. It’s not 4I. Not 4E I mean. Not today. I should have checked my diary…’ She was talking too much, a stream of gibberish was pouring like mud from her mouth.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word came out in a croak.

  She could not tell him, could not find even the most evasive terms to describe what had happened to her minutes before. She was ashamed. So ashamed. And she had no injuries to show what had happened, no black eye or split lip. She had not screamed.

  She felt the man’s ragged fingernails scrape at her again. Bile rose at the back of her throat.

  ‘Oh, god! Stop the car! I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Ken jammed his foot on the brake and she scrambled out. They were on the road by the North Dock, the Weavers’ building seemed to lurch, then jump sideways as she fell onto her hands and knees on the pavement, seized with dry heaving and retching, until at last that morning’s tea and toast with marmalade reappeared, little changed in form or colour, but stinking vilely of her digestive fluid.

  Her bewildered colleague got out of the car, but uncertain of what to do, merely hovered near the front bumper, a checked brown, yellow and green handkerchief at the ready.

  After he’d pulled into the staff car park, he touched her arm.

  ‘My dear, are you quite sure you’re up to it? I’m sure we can find someone to drive you home. Apart from anything else, I shouldn’t like you to spread a gastric plague amongst the little darlings…’ He paused before adding his punch line, ‘some of them might quite enjoy it…’

  She exploded into laughter, then as she tried to restrain it, found that that too was unbearably funny. She saw it briefly in her minds’ eye, a nightmare of terrible children green about the gills and spewing and some of them loving the filth of it.

  Ken had laughed a little himself at first, pleased that she had understood his dark humour, but his smile faded and he grew embarrassed as she laughed on.

  Another vehicle was pulling into the car park, a white Volkswagen Beetle, the Deputy Head’s.

  Ken got out of the car wanting desperately to distance himself from this hysterical woman. He opened the double back doors of the Morris and, hefting a cardboard box full of exercise books, hissed at her shuddering shoulders and bowed head, ‘For god’s sake, Miss MacKay! My reputation!’ He slammed the door and walked around to the passenger side.

  ‘Morning, Deputy Head!’ he called as the Volkswagen’s driver emerged.

  He opened the passenger door and Monica, ashen-faced, climbed out.

  ‘Could we discuss timetables?’ he said to the Deputy Head, who nodded his assent.

  Miss MacKay set off for the steps leading to the main entrance. The men fell into step some way behind.

  ‘Is she alright?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Miss Mackay? Fine, as far as I know.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Bit off was she?’

  ‘Rather, had to stop the car for her to throw up. Between you and me she was acting very oddly.’

  ‘Oh well, shouldn’t worry, probably just … you know, old chap … women’s troubles, time of the month and all that.’

  ‘Biology, you mean.’

&n
bsp; ‘Exactly. Just up your street, Ken, eh? Better prepare the lab and sharpen your scalpel in case of emergency.’

  And they laughed, the sound echoing in the empty car park, amplified by the concrete and glass that loomed above them, then falling away into silence.

  THE TWICE PRICKED HEART

  The Year of Our Lord 1508

  So July dawns with an unrepentant sun that blazes down without mercy. The sweating sickness is upon us and strikes with the swiftness of a sword. As if mankind were standing stalks of barley or golden wheat in the field. He who rises in the morning falls down dead at noon and the mother in the very act of setting her sleeping child in his cradle goes to her final rest before he has awoken.

  Yet still Margaret’s father sits before the fire at dusk retelling his stories. Most familiar is the story of his cockerel shot through the heart by a bolt from a crossbow. This cockerel whom he had named Abel (as when still only a chick he had pecked to death another male chick) was his greatest source of pride. Nothing it seemed could destroy this bird, he had survived no fewer than five raids upon the hen house by a fox, so it was fitting that he should at last submit to death only at the hands and short-sighted vision of the King himself. In recompense her father was paid off with a purse equal to two cocks and ten hens and he presented the King with a dozen eggs and a brown hare.

  ‘Very good meat,’ said the King.

  ‘Very good meat,’ her father is wont to say. He is a good age her father, past his prime yet still in vigour. Her mother died in childbed not twelve months past and already he is speaking of another wife. She meanwhile cradles her sister in her arms feeding her at intervals with spoonfuls of bread soaked in milk and honey.

  Margaret, at fourteen, is the eldest, while Esmerelda, pink-cheeked and fidgeting on her lap is the youngest, being one year old. The others, Edmund, Robert, John, Henry, Jasper, Mary and Martha all died before their second year. And Susanna? Susanna lived to the ripe old age of five and had been her special playmate.

  ‘What of the sailor’s eldest?’ her father says.

  ‘What of her?’

  ‘Might she not marry soon?’

  ‘Nay, not her. None would have her. She has no dowry save for a spoon carved from whalebone and a shift of sailcloth. Her teeth cross over, one eye has a cast and her bosom is not raised.’

  ‘Yet these are little things are they not? She walks with grace and her hair is golden. She might find a man who looks for obedience and honesty – a man she can be grateful to. Besides, a spoon carved from whalebone is a very fine thing.’

  Margaret went and sat at his feet and rested her head upon his knee. ‘I am almost grown,’ she said. ‘I can look after the little one and the house.’

  ‘She showed me that spoon this morning. Her father has sailed to the land of ice, to deserts, to Norway. He’s seen whales bigger than a palace, birds that could carry away a grown child in its claws…’ His voice trailed off with a sigh and he gazed into the fire as if seeing there everything he’d heard. Margaret looked at him carefully. He seemed less careworn than of late; the melancholy that had ensnared him had dispersed. Her eye fell to his shirt and she noticed a dark spot there. It was his Sunday shirt that he’d put on clean to go to market. She’d have to sponge it before church in two days’ time. Her mother would have scolded him and Margaret heard the old words gathering on her tongue, a little army of complaint and scorn. She looked at his face again, so peaceful and gentle, and bit her lip. As if understanding this, he reached down and rested his hand on her head and they sat way for some time in perfect ease and silence.

  Three months passed.

  The sailor’s eldest daughter is now, in law at least, her stepmother. She is meant to replace Margaret’s dead mother giving succour and support to her new husband’s motherless children. But she is only a year, two at most, older than Margaret and shows no interest, thank God, in mothering her, but equally will have nothing to do with Esmerelda.

  ‘I have been mother to her and will be mother to her,’ Margaret says in her prayers, partly by way of barter with God.

  The sailor’s eldest daughter fastens herself to her father’s side as a limpet will cling to a rock. She hobbles him with her arms always holding his sleeve or elbow or wrist. Her green eyes fix him in her gaze even with that one eye, her left, aslant.

  At night she clings to him; there are sounds and sighs that attest to that. Which is proper for a man and a wife whose union is blessed by God, yet even God’s law cannot allow such an excess.

  It is an excess that causes the sailor’s daughter to lie abed till noon, even when there is work to be done. And there is always work to be done. The sailor’s daughter, when she is not eating, or sleeping, sits on the hearth whittling sticks with the knife she keeps in her pocket.

  Margaret’s father, meanwhile is all smiles; he is as merry as a fool.

  So the first months of their marriage pass and while Margaret works as much, if not more, since the arrival of her new mother, she bears it all in good spirits for the sake of her father.

  One day in a quiet moment she creeps into her father’s bedchamber and takes the whalebone spoon in her trembling hands. Is it a fine thing, this strange instrument? Carved along its length she perceives a number of devilish creatures with bulging eyes and sharp teeth. It is an object of sorcery, a frightening thing. Briskly she puts it back on the ledge where she found it, then without willing them she finds that her hands are wiping themselves on her apron as if befouled.

  ‘If my mother should know of this how she would weep,’ she thinks as she sweeps and bakes and feeds the hens and salts the meat and tends to her baby sister.

  Esmerelda would not go to her new mother and her new mother seemed blind to the child; once stepping upon her hand as the crawling child crossed her path. She was not deaf to her cries on that occasion, but put her hands over her ears to shut out the sound.

  ‘Take her outside, Margaret,’ said her father. ‘Her noise is too sharp.’

  Margaret dutifully picked up the crying child and took her into the garden and from there into the lane where under the canopy of the trees the light was dappled and blossoms rained upon them like gentle snow in a warming breeze. She kissed her sister’s bruised fingers and sang her a lullaby.

  In church Margaret often looked at the congregation and saw many goodly women, some spinsters and others widows who might have gladly married her father. Why did he choose the sailor’s daughter?

  Winter set in early that year and the earth hardened until it was like iron. Her father said it was time to slaughter the pig, so she set to boiling water and he to sharpening his knife. The sailor’s daughter complained of sickness and said she could not mind Esmerelda and could not stand the child’s noise, so wrapped in many layers of clothing and a blanket Esmerelda was taken to the yard and set upon a nest of straw on a barrow. The killing of the pig was easily done and Margaret held the bowl to catch the steaming blood, adding a little salt as was always done. The sky was filled with a mass of dense grey-green cloud that blotted out the sun. Together she and her father worked tirelessly, carrying the carcass to the barn where they hung it on the pig spike.

  ‘What was that noise?’ he said of a sudden.

  ‘I heard nothing.’

  Without another word he rushed back to the house. Margaret went directly to the place where Esmerelda was still sitting quietly. She touched the tip of her sister’s nose which was cold, as were her cheeks, but when she placed her hand under her neck to lift her, the child was as warm as a freshly baked pie. Snow began to fall in thick clumps like breadcrumbs as she carried her sister towards the house. Margaret stopped for a moment and looked up at the fast falling snow; she had the sense that she was flying up through it, that each snow flake was held suspended in the icy air as she rushed past them.

  Esmerelda, snow settling here and there on her face, stirred and gave a little cry that brought Margaret back to her senses. When she returned to the cottage she saw that he
r father and stepmother had retired to bed, though it was not yet night.

  She put Esmerelda in a chair and the child settled down to sleep as she sang softly to her. The light in the room was made strange by the dark sky and glittering snow. The quiet of the house seemed to swell with each passing second. Margaret sat upon the settle and took up the work basket and began to mend her father’s shirt. It was torn under the arm and this she made good before turning it over to inspect it for other signs of wear. She froze at what she saw, for there on the chest where it lay over his heart she found a small puncture hole, the edges of which were stained in a halo of what must be dried blood. She gasped to see this for to her mind such a wound was unlikely to strike the same place twice.

  A chill crept over her flesh and looking up she saw that the sun was at the lowest point in the sky and shadows filled the room. Then while she looked about her she saw a movement in the darkest corner of the room that she likened to a moving cloth, such as a woman’s cloak, for there was a sort of fluttering wavelike movement to it. Never had she perceived the like before and there was nothing in the room to cast such a shadow.

  She kept to her place too terrified to move or make a sound, then just at the moment when she had made up her mind to gather Esmerelda in her arms and flee the house, she heard a step upon the stair and there was the sailor’s eldest daughter, dressed in her shift and a wrap, her cheeks aglow, her eyes bright and her lips red and wet and swollen.

  ‘Bring me cheese,’ she said, ‘and bread and wine.’

  Margaret obeyed and cut bread and cheese and filled a cup with wine for her stepmother, setting them before her with grace.

  ‘Shall my father sup too?’ she asked.