Impossible Causes

by Julie Mayhew

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Lark!’ Benjamin Hailey was confident in his ringmaster’s voice. Though, dressed as he was, in a pair of shiny, pointed shoes, slim-fitting trousers and a pink shirt – of all colours! – the gathered agreed he had more the appearance of a clown. ‘I know you are used to seeing a story of fairies and mechanicals and love in the woods at these celebrations every year, but as our lovely Eldest Girls will also be the Eldest Girls in 2019, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until then to see them put on that particular show. This year we have been working on, well, a pet project of ours, something a little bit different …’

  There was an uneasy rumble along the benches, turning to yelps when, on the snatching back of the red curtains, the play began with a literal bang – a blast of fire and a puff of coloured smoke – the science teacher’s obvious influence. The residual haze cleared to reveal Jade-Marie in a white ruffled shirt, brown hair scraped back, a moustache drawn on, sitting at a desk of conical flasks, concoctions and books. She spoke in a language not unlike Shakespeare, her English laced with Latin.

  ‘The reward of sin is death. That’s hard,’ she began nervously. ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there’s no truth in us.’

  Murmurs of agreement came back from the benches – this phrase was familiar, coming as it did from the First Epistle General of John.

  Jade-Marie was granted the confidence to be bolder.

  ‘Why then belike we must sin, and so consequently die.’ She looked out across the faces below her, as if expecting an answer. There was silence, except for one infant asking noisily of her mother why the girl had pen on her lip.

  ‘These metaphysics of magicians, and necromantic books are heavenly!’ Jade-Marie was strutting in a masculine fashion across the pallet stage, hands on hips. ‘Lines, circles, signs, letters and characters,’ she continued. ‘Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires.’

  Dellie Leven was heard to mutter, ‘Oh, dear Lord!’ before crossing herself.

  Heads turned, as surreptitiously as they could, towards the headmaster. Would he call a halt, now that the initial godliness of the play, like those paper programmes, had disappeared on the wind? He did not. He stared forward.

  Anna and Britta arrived on stage then in white nightdresses as the good and evil angels. The mood of the crowd softened; this would be a morality play after all. And it was, in essence. One man sells his soul to the Devil and takes the consequences – there was an admirably pious message in that. But there was also something to be drawn from the way the three girls dressed while playing the gossiping scholars – in blouses that tied at the throat, the current trend among the women who surrounded the tea urn after Sunday service. When Faustus and the Devil (a deep-voiced Britta, resplendent in a headdress of coiled goat horns) taunted the religious men at the Vatican office, the set bore a resemblance, through its particular arrangement of props, to a certain office closer to home, at the school of St Rita’s.

  For a scene in Act Four where Faustus conjures up the ghosts of Alexander and his paramour, Anna and Britta arrived on stage in dripping wet robes. This was supposed to signify their journey back across the River Styx, but they more closely resembled a drowned fisherman and a sodden little girl, than they did figures from Ancient Greece.

  Should anyone have dared to point out these parallels, though, they would only have incriminated themselves, become complicit in the accusations. The allusions were there, but also they were not.

  What transpired on the stage was absolutely a morality play, one that spoke to the deep, shared understanding of a community. The audience listened as one, that was how it felt – as one mind, one collective subconscious, both good and bad, if a clear line can ever be drawn between the two.

  When the girls delivered their epilogue – ‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight…’ – many of that audience found themselves crying, surprised by their emotions, unable to explain coherently what their tears were in aid of.

  The curtains closed to a hush; the slip and slop of the sea in the harbour the only sound. The red-haired coycrock girl left immediately, head down, scuffing away past the smokehouse, as the Eldest Girls’ mothers broke the contemplative tension, standing to clap and cheer, allowing the others around them to do the same, to have their release.

  They applauded on the left, and they applauded in the middle.

  They even applauded on the right – but how could they not?

  FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

  The brick path ends and there it is, rising up before her – an ornate gothic tower of dark stone, its windows mullioned, dead-eyed. Viola takes the mossy, flint-lined steps two at a time and arrives on a terrace where stout cannons nose out of a parapet. The place is not forbidding as such, just eerily familiar, like the setting of a long-forgotten dream. Then she remembers – she has seen the Big House before, in the black-and-white photos on the wall of the Customs House. Here is the place in full colour, though mostly it is shades of grey.

  She runs headlong at the huge, braced wooden door, chopping at the latch with the edge of one palm. There is no time for the pleasantries of knocking; the pale sun is beginning to mount the treetops in her wake, making it ten o’clock, half-past perhaps, Viola can’t be sure. She has never been able to understand the adult fascination with wearing a watch – the time is always right there, on your phone. Now she gets it.

  Viola throws open the door into the stillness of a hallway, silent but for the rasping of her own breath. It is windowless, all darkness, and she falls momentarily blind as the door clunks back on its latch behind her. Her eyes grow accustomed, and into view comes the face of a tall and decorative clock, a mechanical sun ready to take the place of a cloudy, painted moon. There is no tick, no movement; both hands rest at twelve. Ahead of her are bookshelves, rows of untouched encyclopaedias, the alphabet portioned out in gold foil on their spines.

  To her right, a stairway.

  She grabs the post, its finial carved into the shape of a pomegranate, and launches herself at the steps. Above her comes the tsk-tsk-tsk of feet striking stone – someone alerted to her presence.

  ‘Hello?’ calls a female voice.

  They meet on the half-landing, almost bump chests. The woman is short and sturdy, mother-aged, black-haired. She wears a striped linen dress, covered over with an apron.

  ‘Can I help?’ she enquires tightly, not meaning it at all.

  ‘Where is the Earl?’ Viola demands, out of breath.

  ‘Who needs to know?’

  ‘Me!’

  Viola ducks left, tries to slip past, but the woman is quick. In this half-landing of the stairway, she makes herself wide.

  ‘Eh-eh-eh-eh!’ she admonishes, as if Viola is a small child or a dog. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  Up! Viola thinks. I’m going up!

  She will prove that a red-haired girl doesn’t mean bad luck, show everyone that the good angel speaks louder at her shoulder than the bad. Everything will come together as she has promised. There may be no detective inspectors on that incoming ship, but there will be a ship, a shaft of light in the gloom, and it will herald the arrival of reason.

  ‘The Eldest Girls!’ Viola says, spluttering it, making the woman jerk in her chin. Viola has coherent sentences prepared for the Earl but nothing for his indignant gatekeeper. ‘The Eldest Girls,’ Viola repeats, ‘it’s the Eldest Girls and I’ll… I’ll…’

  I’ll huff and I’ll puff, says a voice in her head, because the time for gentle negotiation has gone.

  ‘I’ll burn this place to the fucking ground if I have to,’ Viola cries, her voice singing off the bare stone walls. ‘I will smoke the old bastard out if you will not let me past!’

  MARCH 2018

  Viola was truly sorry.

  She went to tell him so, fearful that she would find the Customs House deserted, a later search of Cable’s Wood revealing Saul’s body, swinging from a tree. He had saved her from th
e death-lick of the sea on the day of the gamekeeper’s funeral and this was how she repaid him: with humiliation. Viola had witnessed it all. Though it hadn’t really been her fault; it was that woman, yet again, stymieing Viola’s plans.

  She lifted the hinged front desk and let herself into the back office. The place was ominously deserted, the first part of Viola’s premonition coming true. A small, oscillating fan turned its eye this way then that on the edge of the counter that ran beneath the sea-filled window. It wasn’t warm outside but the sun that shone into the office became trapped, magnified. Saul’s sketchbook lay open on the counter by one of the radio consoles, its pages riffling upwards at the attention of the fan, dropping down again as it rotated away.

  Viola peered at the drawing-in-progress, a striped pencil resting in the fold of the book – proof at least that Saul was recently alive. It was a sketch of a gathering of herring gulls, a trio of them squabbling on the harbour railings, one directing its mean gaze to the viewer, one wide-beaked, mid-squawk, and another lifting into the air, splaying its improbably huge webbed feet. The drawing was good; Saul was good.

  She flipped to the start of the book to see more and found sketches of Lark’s buildings – Customs House, Counting House, Provisions Store, Anchor – with Lowry-like figures populating the cobbles, then another of the harbourside from a different angle, taking in the masts of the boats, the chimneys of the smokehouse and the sun setting behind the hills. After that came portraits, Saul practising his mastery of hands by drawing the boatmen at work on the nets. Then followed a head-and-shoulders sketch of Leah Cedars, looking down pensively, black hair falling across a shaded cheek. In the corner of the page he’d drawn her full-length, striding, carrying an armful of folders.

  Viola turned the page, snorting at what she saw next. It was a naked sketch – a cartoon fantasy version of Leah Cedars, hazy and curvy, with too much breast and thigh and hair, the eyes disproportionately large. Another naked drawing followed, altogether different. Here, the style was naturalistic and Leah was flawed, her breasts not inflated, her stomach not so perfectly flat. She was posed as if straddling the viewer, her hands between her legs, head tossed back, eyes closed. Open-mouthed, she was at the peak of pleasure.

  Viola dropped the book; she didn’t like this image. She knew that Leah Cedars was having sex with both Mr Hailey and Saul Cooper, if Michael Signal was to be believed, but it suited Viola to think of Leah as stiff, ungiving, because if she really was the woman shown in that drawing, then it meant that she was powerful.

  Viola headed back out again, across the cobbles, following the sound of familiar laughter drifting from the Anchor. The day had hit noon and the shutters and windows of the pub were cast wide to chase out the stale smells of the night before.

  She walked a curve towards the building so as not to be seen approaching, positioning herself at an angle by the window to look in. Saul was there, on a stool at the bar, tipping back the last amber splash of a pint. Jed Springer removed the empty glass and replaced it with a full one. Viola wasn’t sure what was most shocking: the sight of Saul Cooper passing time with the waistcoated landlord, one of the brothers of the Council who had conspired against his beloved Leah, or that he was at least two drinks up at lunchtime, the Customs House sitting unmanned.

  ‘Bad Angel is about fucking right,’ Viola heard Saul say.

  Jed Springer chuckled. ‘Too fucking right, and if…’ The landlord paused to look over his left shoulder, then his right, a little comedy routine – he wasn’t really worried about being overheard. He leant in close for the next bit. ‘If the mother is anything to go by, she’s got a tight Swedish pussy too, very nice, thank you very much.’

  Jed made an okay sign with fingers and thumb, nodding enthusiastically. They both sniggered, the truth not important – schoolboys at the back of the bus. The men’s bathroom door swung open at the rear of the bar and Luke Signal sauntered out, still buttoning his fly.

  ‘Who’s got a tight pussy?’ he called across the room. ‘That you, Saul?’

  More laughter. Saul gulped away the first few inches of his new drink. The mirth settled, the conversation stalled. Luke’s dark gaze wandered towards the harbour beyond the window and Viola snatched herself out of sight, pressing against the open shutters – not fast enough. There was a low, muffled exchange within and a smattering of derisive grunts. Viola peeled off and cut a slant across the cobbles, making for the stocks.

  ‘Hey!’ Saul’s voice halted her.

  He didn’t run to catch her up. He took his time.

  ‘Where’s that dog of yours?’ he said, coming to stand beside her, too close. There was a sway to his body.

  ‘At home,’ Viola said, not looking him in the eye.

  Then, quieter, he asked: ‘And my radio?’

  Viola chewed at her lip.

  ‘What radio?’ She grinned, trying to be playful, reminding him that they were friends, conspirators.

  ‘Ah, don’t give me that, coycrock,’ he slurred. ‘The radio you used to play that stupid fucking trick on me. Hand it over.’

  Her face fell, as if slapped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he sneered. ‘Don’t you like being spoken to like you’re a piece of shit? Fucking sucks, doesn’t it? Hand it over.’

  He held out his hand.

  ‘I’m gonna tell Leah you were drinking with Jed and Luke,’ she hit back. She heard how she sounded – like a child, spiteful, hurt. She wasn’t his ‘cherub’ anymore.

  ‘You tell her what the fuck you like, coycrock.’ He gave an arrogant sniff. ‘Make up whatever shit you want. You’re good at that.’

  ‘She lied to me too!’

  ‘That right?’

  ‘You two are supposed to be together! I gave you a chance to fight for that. You could have been the hero that night, shoved him off the edge of the cliff, that… that…’ at a loss for words, she stole from Saul ‘… that piece of shit.’

  He had to smile then, just a little. ‘Yeah, well…’ He sighed and turned to go back to the Anchor.

  ‘That’s it, is it?’ she said. ‘You’re just giving up?’

  ‘I’m going to finish my drink.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m thirsty, and because… what is it you say, or your mum told you? … you can’t run away from your fate.’

  ‘Fate’s fate,’ Viola muttered reluctantly.

  ‘Fate’s fate,’ he parroted.

  Something passed between them then – a sadness. Viola shook it off.

  ‘But why drink with them?’ she implored.

  He rolled his tongue across his teeth, looked out to sea.

  ‘Because I have to live here,’ he said. ‘And so do you. Which is why you hang out with that bunch of devil-worshippers, I’m guessing.’

  ‘You know they’re not. You know!’

  Luke Signal emerged from the Anchor then and Viola watched him, over Saul’s shoulder, pint in hand, settling himself against the doorframe to observe their conversation. He nodded a greeting to her and she shivered, involuntarily.

  ‘We’re not so different, you and me, kiddo,’ said Saul, placing a heavy hand on Viola’s shoulder. ‘We’ve both lost the ones we love to Benjamin fucking Hailey.’

  Her eyes were still on Luke, the two of them silently renegotiating their debt, so this summing-up of Saul’s almost flew past her ear. Almost.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her attention returned to him, the childish voice back. ‘I haven’t lost anyone.’

  ‘No?’ Saul removed his hand, shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, coycrock.’

  Then he walked away, back to his new friends, his old friends, his brothers, and Viola kicked at the stocks – hard – made the boards clatter in their frame.

  He was right; she knew it.

  In the run up to the mid-Lent play, the girls had not shown up at the stones. In the days after too, no sign. Viola threw back her covers every night at 11.30 p.m., put on her mother’s coat and sneaked out of the farmst
ead, skirting along the edges of the hallway to avoid the nosiest of the floorboards, stepping over the piles of brittle, incoming leaves. It wasn’t that she risked waking her mother who slept like the dead – an analogy Deborah Kendrick used commonly before the incident, and once inadvertently afterwards, leading to the most terrible silence. Viola’s tiptoeing was for Dot’s sake, dreaming by the stove behind the closed kitchen door. If disturbed, she would be too eager to come along.

  The girls had given Viola their excuses.

  ‘We have to go and work on our project with Mr Hailey,’ Jade-Marie had said the last time Viola had seen them. They had exchanged complicit smiles, Anna sensuously winding a piece of blonde hair around a finger.

  Viola refused to ask what the project was, or to suggest she should join them; she wouldn’t lower herself. She understood the games girls played, had observed and participated in far more than any of these three amateurs had. They were pushing her to ask the questions only to have the satisfaction of turning her down.

  Oh, we couldn’t possibly say.

  Oh, I doubt Mr Hailey could agree to anyone else joining in.

  Once she had seen this play of theirs – the ‘project’ – she knew there would be consequences. Not that Viola was apportioning any blame to the girls – she wasn’t Leah fucking Cedars. The play had done what it set out to do: prick the island’s conscience. Souls had been sold to the devil, it said, and not the obvious ones, not the souls of those who tattooed their wrists and congregated at the Neolithic circle. But that play had been a hand grenade, and Viola was appalled at Mr Hailey for pulling the pin. She was even more furious that the Eldest Girls had trusted his guidance on this, without consulting her.

  They were meeting at the stones earlier.

  Viola worked it out when she arrived one midnight to find the detritus of a ritual recently discarded. She started coming earlier too, retreating to her old position, crouching low in the ferns to watch. The girls stretched their arms to the sky more desperately than before. They called out to the goddesses of nature, time, the sea, the earth, to Bethany Reid, to the lost fishermen, to their guiding saints, Rita, Brigid, Anne – mother of Mary – and to St Jade. To everyone, anyone.