The witch’s hat will be out there in darkness and she now wishes she had left a light burning, even the small porch light would be better than the gloom she is walking towards. Here the nights are long but are growing shorter.
She makes out the widening path ahead and knows that her house is not so far away. At the sound of a crunch and a rustle in the undergrowth Ellie remembers Mary’s story of Flannel Foot. She starts to whistle a tune she has heard played on the radio. Nat gurgles and blows bubbles to accompany her. Where is this Flannel Foot? If he exists, he has flown south for the winter following the migratory birds for sure. She wonders if the hut in the forest is his and will he return to it or is he just a folk tale? Does he have a home, or is he wandering to find a new one?
The rustling grows louder, and Ellie stops walking and shushes Nat by resting the flat of her hand on his rump. There is a movement on the path ahead, a shape with four spindly legs and head bent, grazing. It looks like an antelope, but Ellie knows this cannot be so. She makes out a slender neck and a flash of a white tail. Another beast, slightly larger, grazes beside its mate. She twists her body without moving her feet to let Nat see but she cannot quite make the revolution. She steps to the side and as she does, both heads dart up and then they are gone, crashing and leaping back into the forest. Their instincts seem highly honed even within the security of this estate.
Ellie sighs and Nat echoes in sympathy even though he did not get a chance to see the animals.
‘Yes, they have gone, my son,’ she says in her own language. ‘Maybe we will see them again; maybe they will become accustomed to us before these villagers do.’
Nat rubs his forehead between her shoulders and Ellie stands for a moment to enjoy the massage her young son gifts to her.
Her husband is not yet back, there is indeed no light glowing from the witch’s hat. Ellie unbolts and opens the kitchen door and gropes for the light but before she can move inside she jumps as a figure steps out of the darkness behind the coal bunker. She grabs the heavy torch from the back porch shelf and swings it round like a weapon while moving with her baby into the safety of the porch. She moves to slam the door when a black boot is forced into the space between the door and the doorpost.
‘Wait, I’m a police officer, I need to speak to you, Mrs Mason.’ The foot is wedged but Ellie can see fingers round the door frame trying to pull the door open. To her a uniform means trouble. Ellie’s heart thumps as she slams the torch against the fingers and hears a swearing word uttered.
‘Stop that, Mrs Mason! I am a police officer; you have no need to be afraid.’
Something in Ellie’s stomach flips.
‘My husband, something has happened to my husband?’
‘Can you please open the door?’
Ellie opens the door and is confronted with the face of a boy in uniform who has red hot and weeping spots on his chin and cheeks.
‘My husband?’
The young face wrinkles in a puzzle. ‘No, there is nothing wrong with your husband,’ he says, taking a notebook out of his pocket.
‘I was just leaving when it was obvious there was no one here. I just thought I would have a look around, I haven’t been into this estate since I was a wee boy stealing apples,’ he says with a laugh in his voice. ‘I shouldn’t admit that, should I? It seems very secluded at night, aren’t you frightened?’
‘Only when I am crept up on.’ Ellie thinks this boy is inflicted with the same verbal disease that affects Mary. ‘What is the problem here, Officer?’
He coughs and Ellie almost expects him to bend his knees as she has seen comedians do when they imitate Sergeant Dixon of Dock Green but this boy’s hat is flat and not pointed like Sergeant Dixon’s.
‘I am afraid we have received a formal complaint about you from Mr Gallagher.’
Ellie laughs, ‘This is a joke, no?’ She tries to recall the name — Mr Gallagher — but cannot.
‘Mr Gallagher claims you have been enticing his daughter to your house,’ he coughs again, ‘casting spells and giving her poison potions.’
‘Mary? Is it the child Mary that you talk of? I have spoken to the girl Mary, but that is all.’
The young man smiles and Ellie sees that he thinks this is a response of the guilty.
‘He also says that you have undressed in front of this child and fed your baby in her presence.’
‘What is this nonsense? I cannot feed my baby in my own house?’
‘Has she been here? In your house?’
‘I do not understand?’
‘Has she been here? To this house?’ he repeats slowly, making hand signals towards the house to insult her further.
‘I understand your words, Officer, but not their meaning.’
The house is cold with the door still open. Nat is struggling on her back.
‘Please come in, we will talk in here.’ Ellie pushes the door and ushers the boy in. He looks reluctant.
‘Perhaps you feel safer standing out in the dark forest,’ she says.
He steps past her into her kitchen.
Ellie pushes the overhead light on and blinks at the brightness; she moves to the stove and rattles the ashes before shovelling in coal and opening the damper to boost the flames. She then checks the water level in the kettle before placing it on top.
‘Sit down please, officer.’ She notices the remnants of her potion still sitting there, with the bowl and the cotton wool.
The boy sits and looks at her plant book on the table but does not move to open it.
‘Did you use an African spell on this child Mary?’
Ellie wants to laugh but knows she must not.
‘Officer . . .?’
‘Constable,’ he corrects her. ‘Stewart, Constable Stewart.’
‘Constable Stewart. Why are you asking me these ridiculous questions?’
He stands up and squares his shoulders as if remembering his training.
‘This is a serious allegation, Mrs Mason. Mr Gallagher informed me his daughter came home a short while ago. She was distressed, she said she had been in the forest and met you. You brought her back here and applied some African potion to her skin. She then began to quiz her mother about … about.’ He coughed and went red. ‘About breast feeding. Surely you understand why I have to investigate this. You are a …’ He bows his head and Ellie can see his pink blush spread through his spots and thinks that there is something in her book to quieten the anger in his skin, but she knows she must not mention that now.
‘You are a foreigner here,’ he continues. ‘A stranger. People jump to all sorts of conclusions at a story like this.’
‘So the conclusions they jump to are that I abduct a child and poison her skin and her mind then walk her back home to the safety of her family? Is the child ill, has she come to some harm? Do women in this country not feed their children with mother’s milk?’ Ellie slumps against the stove, her legs feel as though they cannot bear her and Nat’s weight a minute longer. ‘This is ignorant nonsense.’
‘She was distressed, and now her family are distressed.’
‘She was distressed when I found her being tortured by her friends.’
Ellie sees her hands shaking as she pours boiling water into her teapot.
‘What would you like from me, Officer?’
‘Constable.’
‘What would you like from me, Constable?’
‘An explanation of your actions.’
‘But you have already given me the explanation, Constable.’
‘So what was this African potion then?’
Ellie sits down at the table and motions the boy to do the same. She will not play games with him, she is tired.
‘The child had suffered an injury at the hands of her friends – non-foreigners.’ Ellie finds it hard to suppress the bile in her voice.
‘She is cut on her knee. I use the leaves of the thyme bush mixed with boiling water to make a poultice and to bathe the wound.’
Ellie pushe
s the bowl towards him.
The young boy sniffs the contents of the bowl. ‘This is the African potion? My Glasgow granny uses thyme in her stuffing,’ the constable says. ‘Did you tell her it was an African potion?’
‘Medicine,’ Ellie says. ‘It is African medicine. She is a child. I thought it would make the pain hurt less to tell her a little story. I wanted to turn her tears back to smiles. I see I am a stupid woman to do this. I did not think her parents would be stupid also.’
The boy stands and puffs his chest. ‘I don’t think Mr Gallagher would appreciate being called stupid by anyone. He is the pit manager and a respected member of this community.’
Respected enough to have his wall painted with bile, Ellie thinks.
‘Mr Gallagher insists that you do not speak to his daughter again.’
Ellie cannot believe what she hears.
‘I am a criminal then, to help a wounded bird? And what of this big-boned straw hair girl who Mary calls her friend? She will be forbidden to sit next to her in class, yes?’
‘Mrs Mason, that is the wish of Mr Gallagher, I must advise you to pay heed.’
‘Will that be all?’
The boy writes some notes in a small palm-sized notebook. ‘Can I have your assurance that you will not talk to her and that you will not feed your baby in front of children?’
Ellie sits down on the chair and puts her head in her palm. Her baby is resting his forehead on her back, she knows he senses her pain and wants to make her better.
‘You have my assurance.’
The constable scribbles more notes before snapping the book shut and dragging a dirty elastic band over it to hold it in place. He clicks his pen and stuffs it back in his tunic with the book. Job done.
‘Thank you, Mrs Mason, I am sorry to have bothered you and bid you good night.’
Ellie opens the door but cannot find her voice. She watches him walk along the broken path. At the gate he stops and turns. She cannot see his face but she hears his message.
‘You know, Mrs Mason, as a mother you should take more care.’
Ellie now knows that she has held her breath; at his words she gasps and chokes back her reply. What do you say against such hidden threats? She leans against the door frame and watches as he pulls a bicycle from behind the wall and pushes it along the track, back to the road. She pats her son’s bottom.
‘When will this all end, Nat?’ she says, before closing the door. Perhaps she should keep the door forever closed to the village. If the tortoise cannot escape from the vulture, he will lie still in his shell until the vulture has filled his belly elsewhere.
The Party Line
‘Did ye hear aboot auld missus MacGoldrick?’
‘Naw, whit’s happened? Is she deid?’
‘Naw, worse. She woke up in the middle o’ the night, and there wis Flannel Foot rummaging through hir dressing table.’
‘Oh my Goad!’
‘Aye, ah ken. It’s a wunner the pair auld sowl didnae hae a hert attack.’
‘Whit did he look like?’
‘She couldnae say. He hud a balaclava oan and ran away when she screamed.’
‘It’s ayeweys the same at this time o’ year, just afore the clocks chinge he hus tae make the maist o the dark nights.’
‘Eh? Onyweys, whit ur the polis daein aboot it? That’s whit ah’d like tae ken.’
‘Nithin’, ah expect. They’re too busy chasin’ the bairns fae across the burn, eh?’
‘Aye, no’ like real police work, that’s fur sure.’
‘How ur your twa bairns fairin’ these day?’
‘No bad. Charley hopes tae get a stert in the dockyard, but they say thir’s no much goan the noo eh?’
‘Whit aboot the pit or the cooncil?’
‘He’s no goan doon the pit, Ah’m no huvin’it. And the cooncil’s rubbish money, that’ll be the last resort, but ah suppose it’s better than nithin’.’
‘And Shug?’
‘Dinnae ask. A right waste o’ space that yin. He’ll be the death o’ me so he will.’
‘Och, he’s only sixteen, ah’m sure he’ll be fine.’
Chapter Sixteen
The flowers Dod had gifted to Ellie sit in a jam jar on the kitchen table but she cannot remember putting them there. When did she put them there?
‘Pull yourself up by the ears, girl,’ she says to the walls. Ellie sniffs the air; the perfume of the flowers fills the room with sweetness, diluting the foul taste of her last encounter. Ellie bathes Nat with the slowness of one in a trance. As much as she tries to enjoy his company and the feel of his soft skin, she cannot shake her mood. After she tucks him up into an early bed, she runs herself a bath and takes the radio into the bathroom with her. Her cold has almost left her, but she retains weariness in her body and cannot tell whether it is a remnant from the cold or a reaction to this place she finds herself in. Each dark morning when she drags herself from her bed, she feels as though she is preparing for a battle. Life should not be like this in this land of new opportunities for her.
Ellie found the radio while she cleaned the house that first week she moved into the witch’s hat. It crouched behind the bread bin and looked as though it hadn’t hummed a note since she was a baby. She had felt noble in her rescue of what would have been a precious object in her old life, and as she wiped off the grime and coal dust she took the same care she took with her boy. The music is different here. At home high life music fills the airwaves. Drums and trumpets thump out the beat for her generation. The nuns had allowed a radio in the refectory and although they had pretended to be disapproving of the music, Ellie often caught sight of a foot tapping time under the confines of a habit.
When she had twiddled the knobs of her latest find, Ellie was confronted with a dull click. She opened the small door on the back and found two leaky batteries welded to the connection points. James had taken it from her and cleaned it up, replaced the batteries and had it working in the time it took her to make a cup of tea. Sometimes he is most useful, this man of hers.
The morning is when she enjoys the radio most; while she empties the ashes out of the stove and cleans the kitchen. Some stations crackle and buzz, The Light Programme she finds has the best reception. She wiggles her hips in satisfied rhythm while she irons James’s shirts with her fancy electric iron. Today, she sneaks the radio in to the steamy bathroom and tunes the dials through the static to Radio Caroline, The Pirate Station.
As she lies with her head resting on a flannel at the end of the bath and her toes jammed into the taps, she tries to visualise a small bobbing boat battling against high seas while the Disc Jockeys sway to and fro trying to hold the records still on the turntable, careful to place the needle on the groove. Maybe, somewhere above deck, the crew will be fighting off the swashbucklers who clamber abroad from their superior boat, intent on capturing the music and intent on denying Ellie her few moments of joy.
The bath is cooling so she runs more hot water but not too much because she must leave enough for James. Her mind slips back to the officer and she feels her blood tingle with the earlier rage. After she had closed the door on the youth, Ellie had wanted to go to the house by the road sign and hammer on the door. She wanted to ask the skinny woman and the rough man what it was that they thought she would do to their daughter; she wanted to ask Mary why she had turned against her when she thought she was her friend? But she did neither of these things because she is a coward, she knows this. She is a coward to leave her country when they struggle against a tyrant. She is a coward to leave her nursing when people continue to die of unnecessary disease. She is a coward to believe life here would be better, but most of all she is a coward to allow her husband’s dismissal of her whenever she tackles the subject of his mother.
Her hand reaches under her ribs and tries to grab lungs and heart. She twists her thick layers of fat like wringing out a towel, twists and tugs, trying to rip the guts out of herself. She stares at the crack in the ceiling in the
shape of an angel’s wings dampening out towards the rose lamp, flaking plaster fringing the bottom of the floating dress.
She looks down at her belly, round despite her change in diet; it seems to be getting fatter. She traces the slivers of her pregnancy marks. Her thighs are now so wide they almost touch each side of the bath, wedging her in.
Hold Tight by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich bounces through the airwaves. ‘Knocked off the top of the charts,’ the Disc Jockey announces, ‘by The Walker Brothers’ The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore.’
When the smoky deep voice begins to sing Ellie feels a tear in her gut. She tries to hold tight to her emotions, but this song rips a hole in her resolve. Daft, this is what James calls her when she tells him she misses home. She is being daft. Daft; such a dismissive word.
She does not hear the rest of the words of this song. When she hears Bob Dylan’s Just like a Woman, the cringe of his cynical words brings her back to her situation. Is he singing on behalf of all men, for James? Is he singing to her?
She wipes the tears and her nose with the back of her hand, she has been silent for too long. She will not break. The smooth skin on her arms begins to pimple. The water holds only a few drops of heat. Her thighs feel cold, her nose is raw from the rubbing she has given it with the heel of her hand and her eyes are gritty with their own salt.
She hears the back door open and close and a shiver rattles her bones as if the draught has reached her in the bath. James is home from his mother’s house.
The hot scent of vinegar drifts from the kitchen and she pats the dimples on her thighs calculating the addition from the chip shop feast she is now expected to eat. She wants to curl up on the settee with him, eat her chips and watch Dr Who, but she cannot move. She will need to tell him about Mary and the police officer, but she must find out about his mother too.
There is a soft tap on the bathroom door.
‘Ellie? I’m home.’
She is expected to jump and welcome him, she wants to jump and welcome him, but something is holding her down in this cold bath. If she gets up she will have to tell him. She ducks her head in the water and remembers the time Sister Theresa kicked her into the deep swimming pool because she had refused to dive in. Deep water terrifies her, it always has. Witches float, Sister Theresa had told her, Satan will not let them drown. Ellie had touched the bottom then floated to the top but could not swim. As she thrashed the water she thought of Satan and wondered if he would not save her. One of the girls in Ellie’s class grabbed her head and chin and led her to shallow water. Ellie never did learn how to swim.
The Incomers Page 12