by Julie Mayhew
He was standing at the very edge of the high north cliff when I arrived, craning for a better view of the dramatics of the sea. The winds were calm enough that day to allow it; any other time he’d have been swiftly buffeted to his death.
‘There’s a terrible fury going on down there, regardless of whether I walk into the middle of those stones,’ he said with a smile, in place of a greeting. He pulled down the hood of his heavy blue parka and leant in for a kiss.
I leant away.
‘Who told you that,’ I said, my voice dry, official, ‘about the fury? The Eldest Girls?’
He considered me with amused confusion; my tone, my rejection of his kiss, they were merely a riddle to be solved.
‘Those girls are…’ he searched our surroundings for the right words ‘… full of stories!’
I knew that line, he wasn’t the first to deliver it: girls make things up; they tell fibs, are prone to embellishments and fantasies; they don’t know their own minds.
‘I threw your phone down the well,’ I told him.
‘Shit!’ he said. He looked genuinely distressed, as if it truly had been gold or the body of a forsaken wife. ‘What, by accident, or –’
‘On purpose,’ I said.
‘But… why would you –’
‘Because I found naked pictures of the girls on it.’
Below us, rocks bowled and seethed as the sea recoiled.
He nodded slowly, sighed.
‘The girls already told you?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Another sigh. ‘But you do know that was Luke, don’t you?’
‘If the girls are to be believed,’ I said blandly.
‘Come on, I told you what they’re like at the Billet House. Luke’s the worst, always taking bits of my clothing – like this coat. He helps himself to my deodorant and aftershave. When you bring home any food, you have to…’
‘Did the girls help you come up with a story about the goat horns too?’
I folded my arms against the cold.
‘Excuse me?’ he said, all equanimity wiped away in an instant, replaced by an expression I’d never seen on his face before, something hard-edged, volatile. ‘What is this? Why have you dragged me up here? So you can give me some kind of dressing-down in the freezing fucking cold? I’m not one of your pupils, you know. You’re not at the front of class anymore, Miss Cedars.’ He spat out the sibilance of my name, disgusted with it.
This was what I had been digging for all this time, been sure I would unearth – the real Ben, the surly, poisonous individual hiding beneath that charming, affable façade. Did I think I would feel victorious when I found it? I was only frightened, too scared to shout back at him: It was you who dragged me up here! I took a step back, another accusation in itself.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! You’re afraid of me now? Who do you think I am?’ He threw his hands to the sky. He began to pace. ‘This island!’ he said, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘This fucking island, it’s so…’
I edged backwards again. I wanted to go, but he wasn’t done. He flew at me and I cried out, cowering as he put his face intimidatingly close. His words were brittle. ‘Luke Signal left the horns on my bed one night as a joke, okay? Left a great bloody stain on my pillow, thank you very much. I don’t know what happened to them after that – am I supposed to? Were the girls wearing them in these naked pictures I’ve never seen? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know!’ He was yelling now, had hold of me by the shoulders. ‘You know that phone was lost for weeks and weeks. You know that! You know! Because you found it. You did! I won’t apologise for something I haven’t done, Leah, I won’t do that, because I am not the problem here. I am not the problem!’
There was a sudden strike, a loud crack in the air, and Ben was gone.
For the briefest instant I suspected a lightning bolt, a divine response, or that the wind had delivered him to the hungry sea below. No.
He was at my feet, in the grass, jaw cranked wide in shock, his hand filled with spit and blood. Beside me stood Saul Cooper, in shirt sleeves despite the cold, breathing fast, opening and closing his just-used fist. The radio on his belt let out a phlegmy cough.
I couldn’t piece the moment together. I spun around, expecting an audience of some kind.
‘What are you… What… ?’
Saul moved to place an arm across my shoulders; I jerked away.
‘I heard that you were…’ His voice petered out, eyes examined me all over, searching for injury. Kind Saul was back, gentle Saul. ‘I thought you were in some kind of trouble, Leah, and…’
Ben got to his feet, squeezing his eyes shut and flaring them, reclaiming his sight. He worked his head left and right, then thrust himself chest-first in Saul’s direction.
‘What the fuck, pal?’ he said, the last word an insult.
‘You need to leave,’ Saul said in his Customs Officer voice. He held up his palms to show that he was the calm one.
‘Oh, I need to leave, do I? I need to leave, eh?’ Ben butted his forehead against Saul’s, held it there, tensing his bloodied jaw, pushing the man backwards, closer and closer to the overhang.
‘Stop it, Ben!’ I cried. ‘Stop it, both of you!’
The prospect of that fall was horrifying. I grabbed Ben’s hand and pulled him backwards, away from the brink, the touch sobering him.
‘Oh, I’ll leave all right,’ he said, shaking free of my grip, leaning into Saul once more, no contact this time, just the threat of it. ‘When’s the next ship home?’
‘Friday the thirteenth of April,’ Saul replied.
Ben barked out a laugh. ‘Unlucky for some!’ He turned away to brush himself down. The front of his coat was spattered with blood. ‘But not for me.’ He gave me the merest of glances, a brutal stab of the eyes, as he strode past, back towards the woods.
I felt Saul move closer.
‘Wait!’ I called, following Ben. ‘You’re leaving? Is that what you came here to tell me?’
He stopped. ‘I came here because you asked me to, Leah.’ His anger was gone, sloughed away, beneath it something raw, bruised. ‘I didn’t expect a bloody ambush with –’ he gestured to Saul ‘– lover boy here.’
I winced at the description.
Ben turned back towards the wood.
‘Wait!’
I ran to catch up with him, snatching hold of his hand. He kept on walking as if I wasn’t there, but he didn’t pull away. He let me keep pace. He hated me; he wanted me.
Saul chased behind us, calling, ‘Leah! Leah!’, telling me to be careful, warning me that Ben was a madman.
‘Don’t leave,’ I said urgently, close to Ben’s ear. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you left.’
This was how I felt. This was the truth.
‘I have to.’ He kept his eyes forward as we were swallowed by the darkness of the wood. ‘This place…’ He shook his head. ‘It’s so fucking messed up.’
‘I know!’ I said. ‘I know it is, but you’re the only good thing in it. You and… You and… this…’ I took the flat of his hand and placed it against my abdomen. He turned in the mud of the path to look me in the eyes. I nodded.
‘Oh, god,’ he said. ‘Oh, shit.’
This wasn’t upset, nor delight, certainly fear.
‘But didn’t you… Weren’t you…’
I shook my head, not understanding.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said again. ‘Shit!’ But sounding lighter now, astonished.
Something complicit passed between us – oh, look what we have done!
We turned to the interloper in our private moment.
Saul Cooper had stopped, frozen, a few paces behind us, his eyes cast low, horrified by the sight of Ben’s hand resting against me. Ben sent him a stare that told him he wasn’t welcome. I was cruel.
‘Go away, Saul,’ I said. ‘Go away. This has nothing to do with you.’
He looked at me beseechingly, desperately, and I couldn’t bear it.
‘Just fuck off, Sa
ul!’ I said. That word had never left my mouth before; I’d saved it to wound Saul Cooper. ‘Just fuck off and leave us alone.’
Ben pulled me in to his chest and I watched Saul stagger backwards, looking about him dizzily, as if others might be witnessing his humiliation. The radio at his belt coughed, making excuses on his behalf. He didn’t take the path back to the stones but blundered into the thick of the trees instead. I should have called after him, made sure he was all right, but I was selfish.
‘I can’t bring up a child here,’ I told Ben as we stood there alone in the dark. ‘When you leave on the thirteenth, will you take me with you?’
LENT 2018
The headteacher was locked out of his own school, the most senior pupils carrying wooden batons to enforce the revolt. This happened every mid-Lent Monday.
The weapons this year were in the hands of Britta Sayers, Anna Duchamp and Jade-Marie Ahearn. They beat them against the doorframes to keep a rhythm to the chant.
Out you go, and stay you out,
We’re claiming back the day,
Say yes to fun, and in you’ll come,
Oh, master – whaddya say?
Every classroom window with a view onto the playground was colonised by faces, little noses pressed against the glass. The children’s fierce and uncompromising headmaster occupied the centre circle of the netball court, arms folded, foot tapping, about to get a taste of his own medicine. The younger ones squealed and giggled, watching this act of revenge unfold – a revenge that fell within the bounds of safety, the headmaster being in on the joke.
The sound of the Eldest Girls thumping their batons was thrilling in its barbarity. Boom boom boom boom – they counted the student body into another round of the chant.
Out you go, and stay you out,
We’re claiming back the day.
Say yes to fun, and in you’ll come,
Oh, master – whaddya say?
It was customary for Mr Crane to hold his ground for three renditions of the chant, then, loudly, playfully, he would agree to close the school. At this, everyone would spill from the building towards the chapel, so the festivities could begin. Mr Crane was well rehearsed after thirteen years in the post; he roared out his given line with Santa Claus good cheer: ‘Oh, all right then, let’s take the day off!’
But – boom boom boom boom – the Eldest Girls counted the pupils in for another round of the rhyme.
Then another.
Then another.
By the seventh turn, the girls were chanting alone and no one was smiling, Mr Crane especially. The little children were confused and growing anxious.
‘What’s going on? Why aren’t we letting him back in?’ asked a tearful Second Year infant.
Their teacher, Barbara Stanney, exchanged worried glances with her assistant, Faith Moran, before hurrying to the main doors, where Ruth French and Benjamin Hailey were already trying to prise batons from the unrelenting clutches of Anna and Jade-Marie.
Britta, meanwhile, orchestrated an end to it all, flipping the lock of the double doors that led onto the playground, before kicking those doors wide open. She held her baton aloft for one brief, triumphant moment, then released her grip, letting it drop from this great height with a clatter, an action that only the handsome coycrock teacher seemed to find amusing.
Anna and Jade-Marie relinquished their batons in similar fashion – a high hold, a noisy drop – and before anyone could ask what on earth they were playing at, the girls called out to the younger years, who ran cheering from their classrooms, the tiniest ones grabbing the hands of senior pupils as they went. This small but buoyant gang poured out across the playground, flowing around their headmaster, still stranded there in the centre circle, not giving him a backward glance, as they made their way to chapel carried along in joyous song.
‘Look at them,’ Ruth French was heard to mutter, not disparagingly, ‘the Pied Pipers of St Rita’s.’
For the clipping of the church some adults were required, otherwise there would not be a long enough loop of arms to reach all the way around the chapel’s exterior. The teachers who had, by now, caught up with their excitable charges, joined in, along with the three holy sisters – Agnes, Sarah and Clare – and some mothers of children from the younger years. The circle in place, Father Daniel began the hymn, one they knew the verses of without the aid of their books – ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ – and above them the bug-eyed gargoyles, with their horns and wings and fangs, stuck out their tongues in approval.
The singing done, the clipping could commence, and they advanced towards the grey stone walls in their circle, elbows drawn in, hands held high, before retreating, arms at full stretch. Advance, retreat, advance, retreat. The younger children oooh-ed and aah-ed in time with the motion.
Then it was time for the play.
When the weather was fine, as it was that day (by Lark standards this meant when the rain was not heavy and no storm was lashing), the play was held outdoors at the harbour. Rufus Huxley had set aside his school-caretaking tasks for the morning to construct the makeshift stage – a series of pallets screwed together, a pole frame on top, from which hung red silky curtains, fishing-net weights in the hems so they did not dance with the wind.
The committee of unusual suspects, who had been meeting at chapel in the preceding weeks to plan the Easter celebrations, these mid-Lent festivities included, set up a refreshment stall at the front of the Provisions Store, offering hot tea and coffee in mugs, orange squash for the children and a batch of freshly baked hot cross buns.
It was manned in rotation by Cat Walton and Ruth French, Martha Signal and Reuben Springer, Mary Ahearn and Ingrid Duchamp, while Rhoda Sayers ran back and forth, refreshing the sugar pot and the squash jugs. At one point, Margaritte Carruthers stood serving and custom slowed, word trickling across the cobbles that she had spiked the drinks with truth tinctures and love potions, or even a hallucinogenic dose of belladonna. Still, the usual women of the committee, Diana Crane and Elizabeth Bishy, Eleanor Springer and Miriam Calder, stood in line for their drinks and a sticky bun, only so they could say, with absolute authority, that the quality of the buffet was definitely not as good as last year.
‘Once the sun is past the yardarm,’ Eleanor Springer reassured her clan, ‘Jed will open up the Anchor.’ Then she bit into one of Martha Signal’s hot cross buns and pretended not to like it.
Dellie Leven was expected to take to the stage to introduce the annual production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, having taught the girls for much of the year, until Leah Cedars’ departure required her to pick up the slack of the Fourth and Fifth Year seniors. But it was the handsome coycrock teacher who leapt up onto the pallets, announcing that he was to be the day’s Dionysus, leading them all in a celebration of theatre, merrymaking and ritual madness.
Raising his voice above the chatter on the harbourside, he urged everyone to settle onto the benches that Huxley had arranged before the stage in crescents. The view from these seats took in not only the performance, but the expanse of a sea neither moody nor calm – a critic reserving its judgement perhaps, until the final curtain fell.
Parents with younger ones lined the front rows to ensure the best view. Before they sat, they removed the leaflets placed along the benches at regular intervals, held down by pebbles with holes in the middle, whittled by the action of the sea.
This was a new addition to proceedings – a programme.
Some cooed their appreciation of the A5 sheet headed THE PLAYERS. On the front was the novelty of a new photograph, sharply focused, taken no doubt with one of the coycrock teacher’s fancy mainland devices. It was a group image of the Eldest Girls, the three of them leaning against the mossy wall of the graveyard, the low glow of a sunset warming their faces, the sea grey and soupy behind them. On the back of the pamphlet were individual headshots of each girl, also new and seriously posed. Beneath these were typed strange little biographies – Jade-Marie Ahearn first got a taste fo
r the stage playing ‘third sheep from the left’ in the celebrated St Rita’s Nativity play when she was just three and a half years old. Since then, she has gone on to become Lark’s most talked about alto-contralto, turning down endless offers to appear at the Albert Hall.
Others deemed these programmes unnecessary, wasteful even, especially when the wind snatched a few, sending them swooping out to sea.
The usual suspects – the headmaster, the doctor and their respective wives; Jed and Eleanor Springer, Miriam and Frank Calder, etc. – commandeered the benches on the right. Sister Agnes led her holy comrades, Sister Sarah and Sister Clare, to sit on this side too, though towards the back so that their starched white wimples would not obstruct anyone’s sightlines.
The ‘unusual suspects’ – Rhoda and Ingrid, Martha and Ruth, etc. – took the left benches, forcing the middle-grounders to choose sides. Dellie Leven, Hope Ainsley and Sarah Devoner all opted for the relative safety of the right, immediately questioning their decision – if the angling of their necks was anything to go by – when Father Daniel took his seat on the left next to the flowing white hair and flowery skirts of Margaritte Carruthers.
Abe Powell did not sit, refusing Reuben Springer’s encouraging pat of the bench space beside him, choosing to stand instead, cradling a lukewarm cup of tea. The coycrock girl was seen arriving stony-faced with her dog, unwilling to insert herself in the throng. She was avoiding the doctor, everyone knew, was overdue a medical examination, and that was likely why she took a seat, off to one side, on top of the stocks. Only the younger Signal boy, Michael, made a move on her, leaping up from his spot beside his mother, Martha, to sit on that splintery top board too, the girl edging away, creating an appropriate gap between them.
Saul Cooper observed all this from the Customs House, leaning against the white render of the building, smoking a cigarette. In the last moments before curtain-up, as the Cedars women arrived – Susannah and Leah, perching at the very end of one of the empty back rows on the left – Saul strode over decisively and took his seat on the right, next to Diana Crane.
