He was in the kitchen; the door was open to let in the weak September sun, and he was scouring out a skillet, daydreaming. Cooking had unleashed a new side in him, another dream, and he planned to be a chef. He would tour Europe, train with a French master and perhaps cook for the queen herself one day. He liked to picture himself with a scullery full of underlings who did the scut work, while he strutted about the great shining kitchen, the staff waiting in silence until he tasted: “Sorry, lad, needs more marjoram.” Or, to another, “This omelet wants chervil.” Of course, he himself would prepare the most complicated dishes, the fancy sauces and creamy desserts.
Now, he checked the mutton roast, and began doing the vegetables. Three apple pies were cooling on the sill.
“It’s my day.” Delia skipped down the steps. Her cheeks were flushed.
“Tomorrow is your day.” Tom saw she held a drooping bouquet of overblown yellowing tuberoses. They need water, darlin’,” he said and handed her a glass pitcher.
“Oh.” She looked up at him. “The flowers?”
“Put them in and fill it.” He watched her go out to the pump, and went back to his work. She came in and settled at the long wooden table. He looked up to see her putting the blooms one at a time into the pitcher. “They’re too tall. You’ll have to pinch the bottoms, see? Then they won’t lean like drunken sailors.” He showed her, and she laughed.
She put her face in the flowers and sniffed deeply. “No scent left.” She tilted her head back and inhaled again. “Tom are you cooking an animal?”
“It’s all right, really.”
She sighed. “I smell it.” She stuck one of her long light brown braids in her mouth. The weaving was uneven, but Tom let her do her hair as best she could.
“Don’t do that, Delia.”
“I’m hungry.”
“There’s candy in the jar.” He handed her a carrot to peel.
She scraped the crooked orange root slowly. “The peppermints, right? I don’t like them. They’re too red.” She crunched down on the carrot meant for the pot.
“What do you mean?” He opened the door and peeked at the roast.
“Red scares me Tom.”
“And why is that?” He half-smiled thinking she would take up the subject of meat again.
“I used to get red, oh, a lot,” she said confidentially. “It was red, you know, in my—between things,” she finished. “Blood, it was blood.” She nodded.
He stopped, the towel frozen in the act of wiping his hands.
“But not anymore, not for—for a long time. Don’t you think that’s better? It doesn’t hurt. And, of course, Tom, it’s not messy.” She started on another carrot.
He was going to cry, he knew it. Oh, Jesus, what an idiot I’ve been. It had happened and he hadn’t even suspected Cedric. Noreen and Ellen hadn’t been there to tell her, help her. He looked at her, at the faint, faint swell of her small abdomen, at the slight heaviness in her young bosom, and he thought his heart would break.
He came and took her face in both hands. She looked up at him, her face filled with astonishment. He kissed her brow.
“Tom, are you crying?”
“No darlin’,” he said.
Tom doused the fire in the cookstove so the roast wouldn’t burn and went up the steps to sit in the yard.
***
Hours later when he came inside, his mind was made up. There was nothing supernatural here, he told himself. Poor blighted Delia’s condition was the result of lunacy. His father was just an insane, cruel man who liked to lord power over a defenseless child…a helpless trusting child. Margaret wasn’t enough for him; no, Christ no, fifty women wouldn’t be enough, because it wasn’t a woman Cedric wanted, it was a girl-child. Something was broken inside him—inside his brain or his heart or his soul—and it would never be fixed.
Delia and his father. Ashamed, Tom shook his head; it was all so sordid, so awful. He didn’t think he could live in the midst of such horrible madness.
He was going to poison them all, and maybe himself as well.
- 6 -
Oleander was the key. Every part of the bush was lethal: the roots, the flowers, the leaves. He would grind some of the plant into a pulp and put it into their food.
He laughed to himself; what a joke May’s purchases had turned out to be. She wanted an English garden and she’d ordered two huge wooden boxes to flank the entrance, and inside the peeling green tubs were oleanders. They were drooping things, neglected as the rest of the garden, but that of course, wouldn’t matter. Tom sighed. Rose first, then Cedric and Margaret—and maybe, maybe the others.
Delia often carried Rose a cup of tea, but he couldn’t let the girl bring Rose the poison. It would be using Delia’s innocence, and that would make Tom like Cedric. That meant he’d have to find a way himself. But Rose wasn’t going to take any cup of tea from Tom’s hand, that was certain. So how? He imagined himself cramming a handful of twigs and leaves between the old woman’s lips and clamping his hand over her mouth and nose until she swallowed.
The viciousness of the fantasy pleased him, but it was too uncertain. She might make enough noise to draw the others, and this time Cedric might not aim his gun at one of Tom’s arms. Besides, he wasn’t sure how much oleander was required to kill a person, and he needed to know. He sat and thought about it: the chickens were too small to test, but a sheep or a sow would be about right.
He waited until full dark and sneaked out to the yard, hastily breaking off twigs from the center of the bush where his depredations would least likely be noticed.
Then, he crept down into the kitchen and began mashing the plant up in an old pot with a wooden spoon he planned to burn in the fire when he was done. He added water, and set it to boil. While he waited, he scrubbed his hands over and over with the strongest soap he could find.
He had a thin gruel when he was done. He was too tired to go chasing after one of the sheep, so he went to the hog pen. There was an old sow named Penny who was past breeding. She was destined to be slaughtered soon, anyway. He carried along the pot he boiled the oleander in; earlier he’d tossed in some kitchen scraps and stirred it up. Now, he held it under Penny’s snout and she snuffled it up, grunting happily at this unaccustomed late night treat.
The tension sapped his energy. Tom sat wearily against the wall of the barn where he could watch her. Nothing much seemed to be happening. In a little while, the moon came up, and he dozed lightly.
When he woke up the pig was dead.
***
Penny’s death proved how quick and fatal oleander was; the problem, Tom knew, was that his grandmother wasn’t going to wolf down a poisoned dinner that no one else was eating just on his urging. The other problem was he didn’t know how much—or what kind of—taste oleander leant to a dish. Was it nasty? Bitter? Cloyingly sweet?
He tried sniffing at the pot, but all he got was a vague peculiar odor—some bizarre smell that was like a bad combination of lavender and very old bay leaves. And then he had another thought. It wasn’t dawn yet, no one knew the pig was dead—so why not serve up Penny herself with a dash more oleander and plenty of garlic to disguise any hints of the plant’s deadly flavor?
Delia wouldn’t eat it of course, but if the rest of them were dead, who would look after her? He suddenly realized his thoughts had undergone another change. He didn’t really want to kill Margaret, and there was no reason at all to kill Donald, his cousin. And maybe—he felt his eye tic in a jerking spasm—maybe he himself didn’t want to die just yet.
***
Tom finally worked it out. He would smoke the poisoned hog meat. The next time Donald was due for a trip to one of the markets, he’d put a few bills in Margaret’s hand and send her off on the trip as well. He imagined the conversation. “Ssh, don’t tell, it’s for you. Go and buy yerself something grand.” Margaret was just greedy enough to fail to stop and think it was Tom who’d been selling her furniture. Winston was at school. That would leave Rose, Cedric
, Delia and himself. How could he prepare them something and be sure his own portion wasn’t poisoned? He couldn’t.
But if all went well, he’d leave their bodies to rot at the table, take his sister and flee. He and Delia would change their names and lose themselves in another country, another life. Tom would make sure no one ever found them.
***
The pork hung in the smokehouse all that autumn. Tom held his breath every time he checked on it. He was half afraid wild dogs or badgers would get at it, and a spate of small furry poisoned bodies around the farm would arouse suspicions. But the quartered animal hung unmolested. It was getting colder, the crops were in. Everyday, he expected Donald to announce he was going to market. Tom counted and recounted the folded notes he’d stuffed in an old lard crock in the kitchen. There was enough money for Margaret to buy a dozen Chinese robes if that was what she wanted.
He was so keyed up, he jumped at the least sound. Every day was a torture. He realized all kinds of nervous gestures had crept into his behavior. He raked his hands through his hair, talked to himself, bit his nails, pinched one cheek when he sat and thought. It was the strain of waiting, he told himself, the strain of planning two deaths, even if both people deserved to die.
He was so distracted it was as if he wore blinders or suddenly lived inside some dank underground tunnel. But he forced himself to look at Delia. He wondered if she knew, but it was too painful to think about; it reminded him of—of her that had been.
There wasn’t much belly to see, really, he told himself, but he wasn’t sure when Cedric had gotten to her. He often went to the village and lingered in the shop to hear gossip from the farmers’ wives until he could reassure himself her pregnancy wasn’t too far advanced. He knew sometimes women did things to stop a baby, but he couldn’t find out how it was done. He was afraid to ask anyone directly, and the low talk among the women never touched on the topic.
He was no midwife. What was he—what were they—going to do when the baby came? All of it seemed terrifying. He dreamed of Delia giving birth to monsters in a gush of black blood, himself helpless. He saw her death a hundred times and woke up with the sweat clinging to his body.
And then, what? How would they care for an infant?
He stayed in the kitchen cooking more food than anyone ate, beating up batters for cakes he gave to the pigs, his mind always torn between the images of the smoked pork and his sister’s swelling abdomen.
And then, he thanked God, Donald and Margaret left one dawn. Margaret took the bills Tom pressed on her and drove the wagon, heaped high with produce. Donald looked after the sheep. Tom watched the flock moving down the road. He knew the sound of their bells, their lightly trotting hooves and throaty baying would never leave him.
He ground his teeth in anxiety and walked directly to the smokehouse.
***
“It’s your day.” He found Delia fluttering her long white apron to feed the peeping chicks.
“No, tomorrow,” Delia said, returning to the bin and filling her apron with more grain.
She was right, of course. But she’d never been clear on time before. How did she know? He cleared his throat, and tried another question. “Delia, how long has it been since you saw the—ah, the blood?” He tried to sound casual. He squatted down, stretching out a hand absently for one of the stirring chicks.
“You shouldn’t ask that, it’s for girls.”
He ignored the implications. Someone—Rose or May—had told her that; so they knew. “Yes, but how long?”
“Five months.”
“Are you sure? Answer carefully, darlin’.”
“Yes, yes I’m sure, Tom!”
She was annoyed, a mood he’d never seen in her before. Christ help us, he thought. All right, just get her to make the soup. “C’mon, come to the kitchen now,” Tom said.
“No. It’s not my day.”
“So do it for me, then, I’m dying for some soup.” He couldn’t believe the word had slipped out.
She looked at him narrowly. “All right,” she sighed. “Let me get Gigi.”
He was relieved. He started toward the kitchen. When he looked back, she was following.
***
“I’ve got everything ready for you. I’ve even drawn the water.” Tom said, standing in front of the table with four green cabbages heaped on the wooden boards. “Want to put caraway in today?” He smiled as naturally as he could, but it felt more like a grimace; his mind was focused on the oleander stew bubbling in the pot behind him.
“No,” she shook her head. “Gigi hates seeds.”
“Who’s Gigi?”
“My baby.”
He didn’t know what to say. He looked at her and she pointed to a small shape wrapped in a white towel lying on one of the chairs.
“Ah, a doll.”
“She’s more than a doll, Tom.”
“Of course, darlin’,” he nodded. “Want me to help?”
“Peel the potatoes.”
“You’re the chef. I’m just the hired help today,” Tom said. He went to the basket and selected the firmest ones he could find. He set the small paring knife against the skins.
“Tom, you haven’t rinsed them.”
“Ah, you caught me there.” His mind was a whirl. “I’ll just take them to the pump. Hand me that basin.”
He went outside, unable to believe how fast his heart was beating. With each passing second, his fear grew. Now it was only hours before Rose and Cedric would be eating the poisoned meat. He and Delia would eat her soup. He pictured himself sitting at the table, shrugging, pretending he was eating it to please her. Cedric would be fooled. If only Rose would get a few mouthfuls down her goddamn gullet before she got suspicious it would work. Then, he’d get Delia out of the room, and after they were dead, away from the house.
He came back inside and turned the stew. The smell of garlic and onions made him want to retch. “Mind if I use a few of yer spuds for me own humble creation, chef?”
She laughed. “Take all you want.”
“Thanks.” He peeled four and put them in the pot. He turned the meat again so it wouldn’t stick. He ladled a small dollop of the gravy and put his tongue out.
Delia was dropping hunks of cabbage into the big blue kettle he set out for her. “See, Gigi, it’s just the way you like it.”
He nearly screamed at the sound of her voice. He jumped back. Out of habit, he’d almost put the spoon in his mouth to taste. Oh, thank you Jesus, he thought. He controlled his shaking hand and laid the spoon across the heavy rim. He closed his eyes; his heart skipped, and he put his hand to his throbbing chest.
“See, honey?”
He turned. Delia was holding the white bundle over the mouth of the pot. She set it on the table, and Tom saw something dark peeking out of the cloth.
“What is that?” He started to pick it up. “You never played with dolls.” The spoon suddenly fell with a small plop into the kettle. His shoulders twitched at the sound.
“Give her to me, give her to me,” Delia whined.
Christ, he raked his hands through his hair, you’ve got to be more careful. Suppose the spoon had fallen outward onto the floor and Delia picked it up? He better just leave it in the stew.
She snatched up the doll and cradled it against her bosom. “She’s mine. All mine.” Delia stepped back. Her face was flushed with anger. Then she suddenly hung her head. “I’m sorry. You can look if you want.”
He almost didn’t. He was still panicky at the thought of nearly eating the poison, he was worrying about what would happen later. But Delia was already unwrapping the figure.
In her arms was a stylized stone carving. The thing was a woman, knees up and splayed apart, hands between her legs to show off her, her—
“Her yoni,” Delia said aloud.
He stared at her, stricken. He shook her shoulders. “What? What did you say?”
“Her yoni.” Delia’s eyes filled with tears and they spilled in a rush down her fa
ce. “She’s magic, she’s making my baby grow, Tom. It’s a sheila na gig.”
He heard a click in his brain.
Sheila na gig.
At the words he felt himself possessed. What in the name of Christ had he been thinking about all this time? What, What, What? He must’ve been crazy, half out of his mind with grief and the plotting. And here he was, pretending that goddamn bitch didn’t exist. Didn’t count, because Tom Smith, protector of the young and future chef, ignored her. He shook his head. What a fool you are. His head moved back and forth in a slow arc. He began to laugh half-hysterically.
Delia was staring at him, horror-struck. He saw she grasped the state of his emotions. She was worried, her hazel eyes full of fear because she understood.
“Please, Tom, it will be all right. Don’t make that sound anymore.”
His sister’s sudden awareness of passing days and months, her anger, the Christforsaken cups of tea she brought the old woman—how much time had Delia been spending with the hag? Oh Jesus, he didn’t know.
His brain reeled.
He was going to kill the fucking witch with his bare hands.
He grabbed the foul thing, ripped it from the child’s arms. It was wet and slick between his hands, as greasy if it had been dipped in pitch.
“Tom, don’t. Please don’t.” She hung on him, clawing.
He shook her off.
“Don’t!”
He threw it into the fire and immediately the liquid burned bright with an oily evil flame. He seized the bellows, pumping wildly to fan the blaze, praying the heat would crack the rock. A sickening stench blew in on them.
Delia mewled, she crawled between his legs. On her hands and knees, she stretched forward to try and grab hold of it.
“No, no. It’s from Granny Rose. From Granny, Tom. She told me Ellen had one and where to find it. At the old church. Please don’t,” she wailed. “I didn’t even have to dig it out—it came to me!”
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