The leaves lie in her hand wet and fragile, their points reaching out for the life that is oozing from the veins. Although she feels guilty, she knows she has only taken a few and the bush will not suffer; it will still be able to bear flowers for the bees and fruit for Ellie and the birds. They will have a fine harvest, she thinks. That will be something to look forward to, fruit other than apples and oranges. Ellie stirs the porridge, which has stuck to the bottom of the pot, and she fears James will notice. She pours some into a bowl and balances a saucer on top then places it in the bottom oven to keep warm for her man.
The leaf held against the picture on the book confirms she is right. A tiny black spider scurries from under a stalk and runs around the table trying to find the way home. Ellie coaxes it into her hand and releases it out the back door. She runs the cold tap over the leaves and places them in a mug which she fills with boiling water and watches as the leaves float to the surface. She is sad to see another tiny spider which she spoons out, too late to save. The brew should infuse for five minutes.
‘Come on, lazy,’ she says as she pulls back the covers from James. Then she sneezes into a paper hankie swiped just in time from the bedside table.
James reaches out to her then stops and lies back on the bed.
‘Why are you wearing my coat?’ James squints up at her in the darkened room.
‘It’s raining outside.’ He pulls the covers back and swings his legs over the bed, searching underneath with his feet, for his slippers.
‘Your hair is wet. For goodness’ sake, woman, why were you outside? You’ve already kept me off my sleep coughing all night and now you want to catch pneumonia.’
‘’S ok, soon my cold will be gone,’ Ellie says as she returns to her concoction. A teaspoonful of the honey James brought in from the big hoose bees should be enough, she thinks. She strains the cooling liquid onto the honey and stirs.
James’s plate of porridge and a brew of PG tips are waiting on the table when he shuffles into the kitchen scratching his head. He looks at Ellie where she sits nursing her cup. She knows he is mad at her but she cannot help smiling. She sips the brew and can feel her throat ease. When the drink is cool enough she tips her head back and gargles for a minute before swallowing.
James looks at the book left open, the evidence of her early morning forage still scattered on the pages.
‘What the hell is this mumbo jumbo you have been up to, Ellie?’
Ellie scowls. ‘S’not mumbo jumbo.’
James scrapes his chair back and pulls a box out of a cupboard above the sink. It is the same box Green-apron tried to foist on her.
‘I do not wish to drink your bitumen powders, thank you. I have my own cure.’
She holds up her cup and takes a swig and gargles hard before swallowing and smacking her lips.
‘Ah, tastes good.’
‘It smells disgusting.’ James’ brow wrinkles as he stares at his porridge bowl. ‘You would be better turning you attention to perfecting Scottish cooking rather than messing about with this muck. My mother will be coming to visit us soon. Don’t you want to put on a good show for her?’ He pushes the book across the table as he sits back down to his tea.
‘When is your mother coming? I will begin today to prepare the house for her.’
But James is not finished with his lecture, she can feel him revving up for another go, but she will not listen. She rises and moves to lift the baby from his cot.
‘Ellie, you ask me to understand your life, but you have to try harder to fit in.’ He pushes her book further from him. ‘This nonsense does not help and you had better watch you don’t poison yourself, Ellie – or someone else.’
The Pairty Line
‘Wait tae ah tell ye this.’
‘Whit?’
‘Ye’ll never guess who’s jist been cairrtit aff tae hospital?’
‘Who?’
‘Phemie Wilson.’
‘No! Whit fur?’
‘Liver.’
‘Anither yin, whit’s happening tae this village?’
‘Ah blame the cheap drink at the club masel’.’
‘Ah suppose the bairns’ll huv tae look efter themselves, eh?’
‘Goad, they’ll sterve if they huv tae rely on that big Carol leaving them ony grub.’
‘They say the mother only fed them on broon sauce pieces onywey.’
‘Aye, well, if that’s true it’s a wonder that lassie got sae big, eh?’
‘Aye, right enough.’
‘Dae ye suppose poor Phemie’ll git help this time? She’s no long hame fae the last stint in hospital.’
‘Ah dinnae ken. Apparently they telt her if she didnae stop drinkin’ she’d dee.’
‘Mebbe they bairns wid be better aff withoot her, eh?’
‘Aye mebbes. Och I’ll huv tae go, that’s ma door.’
‘Well check it’s no they Jehovases Witnesses. They’ve jist been tae me.’
‘Dinnae you worry, ah ken how tae deal wi them.’
Chapter Twelve
The raspberry leaf is miraculous. As the day moves towards night Ellie’s throat relaxes from the raging of a bush fire to the smouldering of an evening sun. The rain eases through the morning and after her midday meal, Ellie and Nat step out to the lane to gather more leaf. At bedtime her nose still runs but her throat is doused and the spirit who stabs at her brain has gone to sleep.
On Saturday morning James leaves early to visit his mother in Perth. His talk of his mother’s arrival in their house has faded and Ellie holds back the words she wishes she could speak.
Every week the postman brings James thick envelopes which contain letters of white paper scrawled with blue ink; the handwriting slants backwards in the proud script of his mother. These letters he reads with a frown before he folds and places with care back in the envelope. They are never mentioned, never discussed and never found.
Ellie looks in his drawer, the one he keeps the prayer book in, she looks in his side of the wardrobe; she even looks in his fishing bag. This, she knows is wrong but like a child who puts her hand into a bee’s nest to collect honey, she cannot stop herself.
‘What does your mother say? When will she come see her beautiful grandson?’ Ellie had asked when the first letter dropped on the doormat soon after her arrival in the witch’s hat house.
‘No, not yet,’ he said without meeting her eyes.
‘Why not?’
‘Look, not now, Ellie.’ He rose then and left the house and did not return until the light had left the sky.
She had tried once more – a month later when she asked to be taken to Perth to meet his mother. If she would not come to them, they would go to her. He had said then it was too early for her to meet Mrs Mason. That is what he calls her, as if she is still his teacher. Ellie now knows what “too early” means. Black is not the colour of a Perth bride.
Ellie will go to the nuns’ graves and find sage. She will make a potion for Nat and see if that works better than the raspberry, but she cannot see how that might be when the raspberry is miraculous.
When she binds Nat to her she feels his cheeks are hot and her breasts tell her new teeth are cutting through his gums. That will be painful for him and for her. He is tight snug against her back but Ellie knows soon she will have to move him to a side sling, he is growing too big and his legs are becoming squashed like a bean pushing to break out of its pod. His feet remain unconstrained by shoes while he is in her wrap, but Ellie knows it will not be possible for him to run barefoot in this country; when he walks he will wear shoes.
She almost forgets her basket and scissors and has to return to the house to collect them from behind the back door. James has left the gate open again. Ellie has noticed that the gate in the walled garden has a spring that swings the gate shut each time it opens. Mrs Watson will help her find such a spring for her gate, she is sure. This one still makes a screech like a locust when it is opened. She will ask James to find oil to quieten it until it i
s fixed.
The morning rain has stopped and the blue sky is forcing fluffy white clouds down to the forest, pushing them between the trees, creating a cauldron of swirling moisture just outside her door. The path from the door is covered in damp cobwebs newly spun but this time she can take care and leave some of the craftwork in place. The song Ellie sings on the way to the meadow is the song her mother sang to her when she was a baby. She does not know she is singing until she reaches the chorus that tells the child to be happy and go to sleep for mother will keep it safe.
A prickle in her throat threatens to scratch open a wound. Ellie pats her pocket to feel for her own mother’s last letter. Do the letters from Mrs Mason carry the same love Ellie’s mother manages to place in each sentence, even though they are not written by her mother’s hand but by the hand of the village scribe? Do they tell of the goings on in the village? Of the elder who has died, leaving his second wife to care for many children she did not bear? Or of the progress of a forest clearance which causes chaos to the lives of people and animals alike?
When she reaches the gravestones Ellie feels a shiver creep down her spine. A rustling in the bush makes her turn, expecting a wild animal to appear or maybe it is the silly dog of the priest. Something is not right, and then she hears a whimper, a whimper like the ones Nat gives her when she takes him from the sling and he has to unfurl his legs like a scorpion tail. Nat is quiet; he too is listening. As Ellie places a foot forward, a squat bird with a long tail of brown and blue and purple catapults into the air inches from her face and squawks loudly. Ellie jumps and places her hand up to her breast bone to quell the beat of her heart. The bird propels itself forward with a cackling echo, its flight low and short and Ellie wonders why it even bothers to fly. James has told her these birds belong to the estate and they are shot when the time is right, and she thinks these stupid birds are maybe not too hard to hit.
At the grave Ellie kneels and digs her fingers into the vegetation to clear the surface of another stone. The surface is rough with manmade marks. Many are too worn to read. Nat begins to chatter in her ear as she picks the pale green leaves of the sage bush. Above the chatter she listens, ready to run. The scissors in her basket fall into her hand, she is prepared.
The chat stops, Ellie hears something and senses her son hears it too. A whimper again followed by a sob and then a rustle and a gasp comes from the other side of the clearing.
‘Carol?’ A child’s voice calls. ‘Carol, where are you? What’s going on?’
Ellie walks towards the voice but has to step over an old rotten tree before she can leave the clearing and go deeper into the forest. There she finds Mary, bending over, struggling to untie the shoe laces of both shoes which are wrapped round her ankles and tied together creating a binding. Mary looks up at Ellie. At first Ellie thinks she is going to smile but the face crumbles like dry earth and the girl releases a surge of tears. She falls on the damp moss, hiding her face in her lap. Ellie rushes towards her and sees that not only are her legs tied but there is a scarf dangling round her neck like a noose.
‘What has happened here?’ Ellie asks as she lifts the girl back onto the log and begins to use her scissors to open the laces.
Mary opens her mouth to speak but racking sobs escape her open mouth and she shakes her head and hides her face in her hands.
‘’S’ok, no need to tell just yet, let us take you home and clean you up before going back to Mummy.’
As Ellie helps the girl to her feet, she brushes ants from her own skirt then notices a colony scurrying, trying to repair their home. A fresh sapling twig broken from a tree lies beside the ant nest. This has been used as a weapon of destruction. It seems that whoever bound Mary had planned a greater punishment for her.
The Pairty Line
‘Whit ur ye snifflin’ aboot?’
‘Ah, it’s nithin’, ah’ve jist got this awfy cauld, eh?’
‘Whit ur ye taking fur it? Askit Pooders?’
‘Naw, ah hate them things. Ah jist take a hot toddy, that’s whit ma maw took and ma granny afor her. It works a treat.’
‘Ma man ayeweys pits too much whisky in hot toddys.’
‘Ma maw yaised whisky tae cure loads o’ things. It makes a grand cure fur the tithic. A wee dod on some cotton wool and haud it tae the sair tooth. Ah yaised tae sprinkle it oan the bairns’ dummys. It pit them oot like a light.’
‘Aye, it dis the same tae ma man. It make ye wonder whit we’d dae without it, eh?’
‘Aye, ah ken. Every three ’oors ah take ma toddy.’
‘Every three ’oors, eh? Dis it no mak ye drunk?’
‘Naw, ah jist go fur a wee sleep now and then. That helps the cauld tae.’
‘Aye, well as long as it isnae thon Asian flu ye huv.’
‘Margaret Menzies hud that, didn’t she? She lost loads o’ weight.’
‘She could stand tae lose some, eh?’
‘That’s a terrible thing tae say aboot the pair wumman.’
‘Whit? Dinnae you be sic a hypocrite, ah’ve heard you often enough oan aboot her.’
‘Aye well, she goat the last laugh wi’ her Marilyn Monroe figure.’
‘Aye, ah suppose.’
Chapter Thirteen
On the way back to the witch’s hat, while Ellie stops to wait for Mary, she pulls some leaf and places it in her basket with the sage. This, she is sure she saw in the book, will be useful when Nat starts walking and falls down and bangs his knees. She thinks that she will not have to wait too long to try it out.
Mary limps behind her sniffing. She has a smear of mud on her cheek and her eyes are large with ocean tears. She wipes the snot on her jacket sleeve then stares at it with a horrified look of one who has just desecrated a shrine. She wipes her nose again, this time with the butt of her hand. Ellie knows this is not the cold that she herself has been inflicted with but the result of the children’s cruel torture.
‘I’m never going to help that Eric Creighton with his sums ever again,’ Mary states out of nowhere. ‘Never, ever, ever, as long as I live. I hate Carol. I hate her, I hate her, I wish she would be run over by a train and squashed into the tracks, I wish the police would come and take her away and clamp a mask around her big ugly face and throw her in the dungeons.’ Mary’s voice is rising to the pitch of the crickets in the evening dusk. The tears begin again and Ellie wishes she carries with her a spare handkerchief.
Whatever happened in the forest, Ellie knows she will not have to wait long before the girl tells her story; she remembers the machine gun vocal she was given the last time this girl cried. As Sister Bernadette would say, she should bide her time, everyone knows plenty follows the drought.
Ellie is sure the girl will tell her when they reach home.
‘Home,’ she says it out loud to herself and smiles at the good sound and feel of it on her tongue. This is the first time she thinks of the witch’s hat in this way, that is for sure.
‘What?’ The girl hurries to catch her up and Ellie thinks that perhaps her injuries are not so bad after all. This butterfly loves drama, she thinks.
‘No ’s nothing. Come, we are nearly there,’ she says, unsure of the word, worried if she says it again so soon the thrill in her belly will disappear.
The girl stops and stands as if listening. Ellie hears a faint siren she has heard here before, like the President’s police cars but with the different tone.
‘Do you hear that?’ Mary says.
‘Yes, tell me what it is?’
‘The ambulance.’ Mary crosses herself and bows her head as she says ‘Amen.’
‘There must have been an accident at the pit. It’s always the same when that happens. The ambulance screams along the top road. It’s the only place it can be going; accident at the pit.’ At this the tears dry and the brows of the girl furrow. ‘Dad will be late home now and he promised to finish making my doll’s house tonight.’ Her lip pouts.
Ellie is sure the tear taps will turn again.
&
nbsp; ‘Your father’s work is important. This you must understand.’
The girl nods then shakes her head.
‘Yes, but you should see my doll’s house, it’s perfect. They had promised me this present if I was top of the class in catechism and I was but now it won’t be ready for ages.’ A satisfied mask slips down to show Ellie the pout again.
The girl looks at her and smiles the weak pathetic smile of an injured dog and then she remembers her limp and hobbles along the path.
The house is still warm from breakfast and smells of the burnt porridge. Ellie pushes the kettle onto the ring. She puts her basket on the table and begins to untie a knot at her belly. As she unwinds her binding, she reaches behind her in one move to swing her hammock into her front and lift Nat into her arms. The girl gasps.
‘Oh, it’s your black baby!’
Ellie laughs. ‘Yes, my black baby, why so surprised, you never seen a black baby before?’
His chubby legs wriggle as Ellie holds him up in front of her face. A gurgle of laughter escapes Nat as Ellie rubs her nose into his belly.
‘See, have a better look,’ she says holding the baby out for Mary to take. ‘You think you can carry my chubby baby boy?’
‘Oh yes.’ Mary tugs at his arms as if she were collecting yams from the barn.
‘No, not like that, hold him under the arms. Sit on this chair and hold him.’
Nat stares at Mary and attempts a pull at her curls. ‘Ouch.’ Mary says as she tries to push the grabbing hand away.
‘He likes to pull his father’s hair too,’ Ellie says as she shrugs her coat off and drops it on the chair back.
‘Oh, look at your dress. “Red and green should never be seen, only on an Irish queen.” That’s what my Granny Gallagher used to say to me,’ Mary says.
Ellie brushes her hand down her dress, this dress that reminds her of the mangroves and poppy flowers and makes her feel sick for home.
The Incomers Page 9