by Lucy Treloar
‘Parents are a mystery. I mystify my daughter.’
It was as if Luis hadn’t heard me. ‘I wonder about him, my father. He was home sometimes, sometimes not. He was the good guy, the hero, you know? That’s what people said. Someone important, not only to us. Important in the political sense, I mean.’
‘But you’re not sure about him?’
‘Why do you say that? I never said that.’ His voice was harsh, which was a rare thing.
‘I thought I heard it under your words.’
‘Right, right.’ He shook his head in confusion. ‘I don’t know. He was important, but there was something else, too. I would like to talk with him. I would ask him . . . I would ask him why my mother said to him once, “It will catch up with you one day. You cannot outrun the past. It will gather itself and find you.” Why did she say this? Without him, without finding my mother, I will never know.’
‘I don’t like that man, Kitty,’ Alejandra said.
‘He won’t come again, sweetheart. He has other things to do.’
When it was time to go, Alejandra ran down the steps. I took Luis by the wrist. ‘Talk to Cat,’ I said. ‘We’ve bought some time, but we should leave, I think. Don’t you feel it?’
The sound of a motorboat made me jump that afternoon. What if Andover had contacted someone before his boat was wrecked? We had been living in a fairytale world. Andover showed us that and I hated him for it. I forgot and remembered again and again, nauseous with it.
Next morning, early, I went on a preliminary scout along the coast looking for a body. I didn’t want Alejandra coming across it. Nothing would make the pretended innocence of the first months come back, but I could spare her that. It was the dying days of the year, the leaves of shrubs that had only started colouring – when, a week or two ago? – were beginning to fall, and the grasses were turning brittle. We needed our jackets even in the sun. A small flock of birds circled and circled again, looking to gather up more of their kind. Some gulls, I think, were clustered, lifting and squabbling around the place the boat had hit.
Josh passed my house around mid-morning, as fast and purposeful as if he was running late. I presumed he was going along the marsh road and determined to follow him this time. I paused only to grab my collecting bag from the makings room – an explanation if we should cross paths – and also took an old salt-pitted camera of my father’s. Once, I would have paused along the way to take shots of a heron floating above the marsh, its spidery legs trailing behind, and of the small birds that ran the road’s tideline. If there was nothing going on with Josh – and I didn’t know what I meant by that, only that I felt something was wrong with every bit of me – I had things to do and my own reasons for being out there. All those distractions. I needed some more now. I hadn’t done an erosion check in months, and there’d been the storms, and from the dull smear of cloud on the horizon there were more to come. Things had already changed – the land, the barnacled road that the water mostly covered now, the tawny marshes – yet it was utterly familiar, too. The air was thickly salt, not so bad when the wind stilled, but chill when a breeze stirred. I looked towards Andover’s boat. If it was there, I was not high enough to see it.
There is a way of moving and a way of dressing that I have learned. On a grey day I hardly exist. I passed the silent power station, which after its years of thrumming still seemed to gather quiet around it, and went on. By the time I got to the low bridge and climbed it, Josh had gone. The three tall, broken-roofed houses he had disappeared beyond were as flat as a picture slapped up on a board. I reached them, slowing on the road that passed between the houses on one side and shanties on the other, like a rider in a Western travelling a valley bottom. I felt a prickling sensation – only the past, I hoped. Girl’s ears were up.
There was the muffled thud of something fallen from a height, and I peered around the corner of Nate Strudwick’s house. The sound was coming from the next house along, Owen Jims’s white clapboard with its shingled sidings breaking away. I crept along the sodden ground close to its porch, inside a cover of thick saltbush. Not ten feet away a box crashed to the ground and split open, books exploding from the cardboard. I edged forward. The wall had fallen away, leaving the second storey exposed. Josh, facing away from me, was flinging another box and watching his strange work. I saw when he flung it, heard his grunt of effort, and watched him disappear, and after a pause return to throw more things out, armful after armful: a chair, a saucepan, a box of clothes, which splattered on the ground in unnatural colours: tangerine, mauve, lime green. Three gulls watched from the writer’s house, lifting when something landed and returning when things went quiet. Josh’s behaviour seemed deranged, and for that reason I didn’t call out to him.
A shot rang out. I made a sharp sound at that, and might have been discovered but for the two gulls that squawked and lifted. The remaining one fell broken-winged through the air, and landed flapping on the sodden grass between the houses, trying to drag away. I held Girl at the shoulder. Two more shots made us flinch. The gull sank, blossomed red and was quiet. Josh came to the front door and onto the porch. There was the shifting of his feet, his tread up and down, his loud breathing. He fired some shots at Owen Jims’s big oyster shed across the road, randomly: a metallic hail. The bullets flew about, hissing in the bushes and skittering on the road.
He brought a container from the house and took it into the oyster shed. A few seconds later the smell of fuel wafted with the salt smell of the sea. He ran a short line of fuel along the road south and lit a match and touched it to the end. It was a bright day, though overcast, the flame was thin and the line of it burning was marked more by the shimmering vapour above. It trembled and raced, rising and falling and sputtering in places where the fuel line thinned. Josh watched intently, and when the flame approached the shanty he pulled behind the side of the end house. Seeing that caution, I plunged to the back of Nate Strudwick’s house. The shed bloomed into light and sound, the air sucked and returned and crackling flames rose. Soon, the corrugated-iron sides were peeled and torn as an old pomegranate. Josh came out and stood before it and watched calmly. The first black smoke subsided. Old wood burns clean. What a waste. The tall salt-stricken fennel that lined the road had withered. It was a dismal scene. Life doesn’t always happen in big shocks, in falling towers or tsunamis or epidemics, but something loud can make you notice the whittling things already happening.
This is who Josh made me think of then, though he didn’t always: some boys from a school field trip that visited a few years back. I knew they were trouble from the way their teachers lagged behind. If they didn’t witness anything, how would it be their fault? The boys looked around with excitable eyes. One of them, in fatigues and with a red cap pressed down on his wheaten hair, had something about him you couldn’t help noticing. The other boys fell in behind him as he walked past me and Girl.
I found them trying to ride the last of the goats I used to keep, hitting them with sticks, which made a loud thwack, goats being hard and bony creatures, and chasing the kids till their eyes rolled and their mothers bleated. I told those boys to go and they did when Girl bared her teeth and advanced at them.
‘We were going anyway, bitch,’ that one boy said. He climbed the fence to avoid Girl. It made him appear weak. He saw that he’d lost some of his power then. People like him are sly and cruel and take a long view. They hold spite and humiliation close to their withered hearts.
Three months later, I couldn’t shake a feeling of unease when I docked at Wolfe after a visit to the main, despite the warm afternoon and the pleasant smell of salt and grasses. The island was so silent. I ran past the house along the road to the goat run, which is marsh now. I knew before I knew. Carrion birds were scattered on the meadow, their heads low between their hunched wings, stabbing and pulling and raking at the bodies of the goats seeping red across the summer grasses, which were bright and quiet against the b
lue sky. Girl hung back.
I’m sure the boy got back his swagger that killing day. They smashed up the house too, but the poor goats had the worst of it. I dragged them into a heap and burned them. The smell of it hung around for days, drifting off the ground when the dew dried, and again after it rained. I thought it would never be done. The ground was gaunt all winter. In the spring I sowed flower seeds there, which grew brighter than the grass around. It was cornflowers and larkspurs that I planted – blue flowers, not red. It’s turned to marsh now, as I said, but different things still grow in that one place.
That’s when I built the Watermen. I used two cattle skulls with great curved horns. I joined pieces of metal I had flattened into sheets (from cans of poison and fertiliser and fuel for the most part), traced contours onto them, and attached layers of copper and brass with hundreds of rivets formed into outlines to mimic the sinuous lines of their horned heads. They were twice the height of a man: hard to connect and hard to stand. I thought of them as the island’s guardians, but some folk read a curse or a warning in them. One of the old islanders who’d helped get them standing licked his thumb and crossed himself at the sight. I got them cake and a few beers and that seemed to reassure them of my Christian intent.
That night I dreamed that it was Tobe, not islanders, who’d helped get the Watermen standing. He came out of his quietness and his face was alive. ‘Holy hell, Mother,’ he said, and he let out a whoop when we stood back to look. In the morning when I woke it seemed like he’d left them behind to watch over me. Every evening for a long time after I went and stood by them and watched the sun drop and the darkness come, and I felt close to him at such times. Sculptures and makings of all kinds have their own life, even if they don’t breathe.
I gave the goats’ thoughts and feelings scant attention when they were alive. They were humorous animals and had friends and family. I didn’t like to think of them watching those boys approaching and being trapped. I failed them and that part of Wolfe’s history ended with me. That’s when I started carrying a gun. It’s why I nearly shot Mary Dove the day I met her. It’s hard to stop that fear and anger once it’s started in you. It’s like an engine idling, waiting for fuel.
I crept to the road when Josh had passed from ready view. He was moving neither fast nor slow, perhaps with a little spring in his step. He’d put his gun away, unless he’d left it in the house for more of the same.
I found a spent shell by the water and pocketed it, and went into the house in search of the weapon, which I did not find. Boxes were upended and slippery long-ago dresses of nylon and polyester spilled free, as bright as one of the nets of spilled fish of my childhood. All the things people end up with in their homes: a folded wheelchair, a dentist’s tray and spittoon, a drip stand, a perished oxygen mask. Someone had lived out their later years and maybe their last days here and I didn’t know who. They might have been sitting here in the dark while I talked with Owen Jims and Nate Strudwick; they might have been waiting for me to visit. The sight troubled me, but not in the same way as a boy or a hurricane or a boat breaking apart.
There was no sign of Josh on my return; there was no comfort in the quiet of my house. I thought of the many-windowed Shipley house so close to shore and of the space around it and the view Josh had of it from his shanty. I could see the whole island, as if I was hovering above it, angling a wing to peer in windows, gliding low along guts to seek him out, swooping the marsh walkway and flying beneath its silvered timbers.
I put on my jacket again. ‘Girl,’ I called and we went along the road. The clouds were building higher, bulging ahead of us past the lit windows of Shipleys. I went up the stairs to the porch, knocked on the door and let myself in. Cat was feeding Treasure before the fire. Alejandra was drawing, but stopped for Girl. Luis was repairing the hole in the wall with a piece of plaster.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘Don’t want to leave it like this, so . . .’ he said and went on.
I invited them to dinner and didn’t say more. Cat looked at me in a searching way. ‘Storm’s coming,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure when. Has Josh been by?’
‘He went past a while ago,’ Luis said. He jerked his thumb towards Tobe’s shanty.
‘I’ll ask him too.’ But when I shouted from the dock I got no answer. It might have been the wind that blew my voice away. There is that.
Dark was coming when they arrived. Each year I forgot and was reminded of the comforts of fires and curtains and locked doors and windows and a dog at my side as the winter drew in. The island fell quiet and the house closed against it. It made me think of other endings. Some rain began around the time the apple dumplings came out of the oven, and it didn’t stop.
‘You might want to stay the night,’ I said.
Cat gave Treasure to Luis and came into the kitchen, stacking plates and rinsing things. ‘Something the matter?’ she asked quietly. ‘You and Girl – both listening to what’s happening outside.’
‘I didn’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to alarm.’ I told her what I’d seen.
‘Oh shit. That gun, I should have thought. Maybe we will stay.’ She looked over at Treasure asleep in Luis’s arms and at Girl on her hearth blanket.
‘She’ll let me know if he’s around,’ I said.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘I’m worried about you all when he’s around. He’s dangerous. Would he be in trouble if he went back?’
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t been caught for anything serious. I don’t know what’s going on with his dad. They’d try and keep it quiet. Like my parents.’
‘I think it’s time for us to leave. Did Luis mention it? I asked him to.’
‘No. Who’s “us”?’
What a strange thing: I didn’t even know. They were so much a part of my life now. ‘Things are closing in, don’t you feel that? The birder with the drone – something about him. Wait, wait.’ We drifted into the living room and I sat on the fireside stool, rubbing my hands along my thighs, picking at the thinning knees of my jeans. I shut my eyes, watched the birder come along the path, his boot feet crunching, his bright khaki pants. ‘His clothes . . . equipment. All new.’ I opened my eyes.
‘Oh God,’ Cat said. ‘We should have—’
‘No point crying now. We’ll get going tomorrow.’
I got their rooms ready and took some quilts down to the sofa for Luis. Alejandra ran around saying, ‘A sleepover. We’re staying for a sleepover, Kitty.’
‘You sure are.’
‘And can we have waffles for breakfast? And can I stay up until midnight? Can Girl sleep in my room?’
‘Yes. Yes, yes, yes, Miss Alejandra.’
‘We’re having waffles, Cat,’ she screamed.
I put Cat on the other side of the landing in Claudie’s room and for a long time the sound of Alejandra and Cat’s voices threaded backwards and forwards, weaving a sound I had forgotten, and I didn’t have the heart to tell Alejandra it was time for sleep. I wasn’t in the mood for it anyway.
When I went to my room I knew someone had been there and knew who it had been and for what. The case I travelled with from island to main those years, up on top of my wardrobe, was askew. Inside, the box of shells had been opened and about half of them taken. That was a good thing in a way – he’d run out of ammunition, and it was the wrong type for his gun. He’d know that by now. But he wanted those shells for something, and what might he do without?
Treasure woke in the night with shrill and plaintive cries. I jerked awake each time. Once, I stumbled across the floor half asleep, moving through the room of a memory, and it was only the sharp pain of my knee colliding with a new chair that brought me back. I lay again with my hands across my front like a lady on a medieval tomb, listening to the rain falling away and Cat’s quiet murmuring and the baby’s sobs subsiding and turning to snuffling and gu
lping, and Cat’s voice, ‘sh, sh,’ which comforted me too, reminding me of nights of my own, sitting and reading in the well of light, the darkness thick and pleasant around us, holding us safe, me feeding whichever baby it was, Hart snoring lightly at my side, his arm flung back behind his head.
I knew in those moments two things: the purest contentment, and that I would kill anyone who hurt these people. The things you go on discovering about yourself are interesting, I think, if you care to look at them directly. I’ve known for years that there was a murderer hiding within me, and somehow I’d gone on living, and often laughed.
Chapter 14
It was only the next day, early morning, late autumn, that I heard Alejandra’s scream: ‘Kitty, Kitty,’ as urgent as a whistle. (They’d not long left for Shipleys to decide what to take.) I plunged into the fog – a smotherin’ mist – and Alejandra came rushing out of it and ran into me in her haste. ‘Kitty!’
‘What? Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Josh. He—’
‘Is he hurt?’
‘No.’ She buried her head against my front and sobbed: ‘He’s got Treasure. He’s taking her. Because Cat won’t go with him.’
‘Wait here.’ I ran back, grabbed my gun from the kitchen mantel, and we followed the road’s white shell edges down the road towards the dock, almost blind in that uncanny white. There was only our panting and the crunching beneath, and, muffled in the cloud, sounds of distress.
‘Oh, Kitty,’ Alejandra sobbed, yanking my hand as we went.
‘I’m here, sweetheart. I’m coming.’
We rounded the curve in the path and heard a scream from Cat – ‘Give her back, just give her back, oh, give her to me, please’ – and Treasure’s shrill, curdled cry, which I never wanted to hear again. Josh was making a grunting sort of sound like he was pulling against something.