Ghost Wall

by Sarah Moss

  I piled pale clean roots on my lap, felt the wet tunic sag between my thighs, leant down to rub my fingers in the water and watch grains of soil loosen and flow over the whorls of my skin. Dad had told me on one of our winter walks that if they gagged and blindfolded the bog people, it wasn’t so’s the victims couldn’t see what was coming, they knew fine well what was coming and it didn’t matter what kind of noise they made. No, the blindfolding and gagging were to protect the people whose job was the killing from the last looks and the curses. Makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it, he’d said, if folk believe in any of that stuff, ill-wishing and cursing and what have you. You wouldn’t want to hear owt they might say at the end, wouldn’t want it in your ears, so to speak. But didn’t the victims agree, I said, to be killed, I thought that was the idea, they ate the last meal and maybe had a few months of luxury and they suffered for it. He shrugged. We’d gone up onto the tops after Sunday lunch as usual and we were coming down the track back into town, just crossing the snow-line; behind us the sky fell darker than the gleaming moor. Happen no-one really knows, he said, some says one and some another. They don’t often find defensive wounds, but then with the drugs they’d had and the way they were tied up you wouldn’t necessarily expect it, happen they couldn’t have put up much fight anyroad. Did something new come out, I’d asked him, did one of your professor friends send you something? Over the years, Dad had established some kind of trade in knowledge with a couple of archaeologists, men, he said, who’d passed the eleven-plus and made summat of themselves, had begun to exchange his self-taught expertise in outdoor survival, foraging and mountaincraft for their answers to his questions and offprints of their research. We’d learnt to lie low, Mum and I, when these fat letters with university stamps on them crackled through the letter box. Mostly it meant a buoyant evening, silent but for the purr of the gas fire in the sitting room and the rustle of pages as Dad read and re-read his new treasure, told us new facts about British prehistory, but sometimes something upset him, maybe the thought of those other men who were paid to walk the places Dad loved and write the ideas he could have had. Then tea was late or over-salted or Mum should have remembered he couldn’t abide something he’d eaten happily enough the previous week or the least he’d hope given how little she had to do was that she’d keep a clean house. I was giving him cheek or suggesting that he and Mum weren’t good enough for me or wasting something he paid for, food or water or electricity. Then things got bad. He can’t help it, she’d say later, he always had a temper on him and of course he gets het up, stuck behind the wheel all day, a man like that, wanting to be outdoors, he weren’t meant for it and it’s a crying shame.

  There were footsteps over the twigs in the wood and I scrambled off my rock, tugged at my tunic, slipped on weed, splashed, fell and dropped the clean burdocks back in the stream. My knees hurt. I stood up slowly, the tunic wet from the waist down, and there was indeed a little blood running down my leg. I wanted to cry at the shock, the indignity. I started to pick up the burdocks. Hey, said Molly, we were wondering if you’d fallen in, your mum says if we don’t get t’burdocks int’ pan soon they’ll be hard as little green apples happen lads come home. Don’t, I said, don’t laugh at her like that, that’s just how we speak. She sat down on the bank beside me, slipped off her shoes and put her feet in the water. I looked away. No, she said, I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing, I just love it, the phrases, I’ve never really heard it before, only on TV. Yeah well, I said, we’re not stupid, just ’cos we don’t sound like you. I know, she said, sorry, Silvie, I shouldn’t have imitated her, I just really like the way it sounds. Well it’s not the way you sound, I said, so don’t. She touched my shoulder and I flinched. Sorry, she said again. Really Silvie, don’t be cross. It’s OK, I said, just don’t laugh at people’s accents, you do know yours sounds weird to me, posh. I just really like the way it sounds, I parroted, squeaky and clipped. It’s not a different country, the north of England, it’s not that far from you, we’re a tiny country to start off with, have you ever actually been past Birmingham before? Nope, she said, not even as far as Birmingham, actually, but I’m here now, aren’t I, and I do like it, the moors and the beach, I want to get my mum up here, she’d love it. Yeah, I said, well, tell her the natives can be unpredictable and don’t take kindly to mockery. I had never been as far south as Birmingham myself but I saw no particular reason to share that fact. It’s just traffic and throngs of people, Dad said, down south, everything built over, no sense in going there. So do you forgive me, she said, and I, having never, so far as I knew, been asked that question by anyone before, looked at her all rosy and fair, smelling somehow of nice soap, said yeah, sure, course I do, it’s fine.

  The men came back late and a little excited, het up. We heard their voices coming through the trees before we heard their feet; bloody hell, said Molly, do you think women have always been hearing the approach of men from two miles off, do you think it was like the football and they could tell from the calls in the woods if the woolly mammoths or the hunters had won? I didn’t like it when she talked like that, wanted to go on believing that men were also people, that there are not, in fact, two kinds of human. Women get excited too, I said, they get all shrill in groups, you can hear them laughing on trains sometimes. Mum, have they really been up there all day, without food? She’d been sitting with us under the trees, away from the heat of the dying fire, but now she got onto her hands and knees and pushed herself back to standing. Dad’s right, she really should do some exercise, I thought, go back to swimming or that keep fit class, though Dad hadn’t liked her doing either. Good thing we stewed them an’ all, said Mum, they’d be leather by now, else. She poked in the cauldron and a surprisingly appetizing smell drifted through the summer afternoon. Bring us the greens, Silvie, should be just done when the lads’ve had a wash and sat down.

  It turned out that Pete had fallen, up on the moor. They’d been crossing one of the bogs that should be mostly dry at this time of year and he’d misjudged a tussock and gone headlong into the mire. It sounds funny, he said, still dusted with dry bog, but it wasn’t, it really does suck you in. Aye, said Dad, it does that, Silvie went in a few years back, didn’t you, and we got her out fine enough but the bog kept her boot, remember now? I did. A spring day, raw and damp, snow and ice newly thawed and even through the heather the ground dull under foot. We’d had to pick our way along the beginning of the track where the dog walkers go, and up on the tops grey sky lay heavy on land in winter’s dark colours. We weren’t hurrying exactly, but the afternoon was wearing on, the days still short, and the mud had made for slow going on the way out and would be no better going down. There’s a place up there, two ridges over from the hill fort, where the path goes straight across the marsh, which is fine in summer, treacherous in winter when only the spikes of dead reed sticking through the snow tell you where to put your feet, and mostly just a pain in the backside in between. You have to pick your way from tussock to tussock, checking for the footprints of earlier walkers and balancing on one leg to poke the ground with the other foot before you trust it. I had not been careful enough, had slipped, teetered, known one of those moments of inevitability, splashed. Cold water clutched me, earth pulled and sucked. It wasn’t quicksand, I wasn’t being pulled down, but I couldn’t get up either and the instinctive struggle made it worse. Don’t move now, girl, Dad had said, I’ll get you out, don’t fret, but don’t you go wriggling, you’re fine there, it’s just water, won’t go further nor skin, and he’d heaved a stone and a bleached white branch from some long-ago tree and balanced himself on them while he knelt in the mire and got his hands on my middle. I’d been sitting not waist-deep, but even so I couldn’t help myself and it took him a long time to work me free. It hurt. The bog seals around you, and it will of course go further than skin, or at least will fill the inner skins of every orifice, seeping and trickling through the curls of your ears, rising like a tide in your lungs, creeping cold into your vagina, it will emba
lm you from the inside out. The boot it took had been firmly laced over my ankle; I couldn’t have taken it off without undoing the laces but somehow the bog managed it in the struggle without me even noticing. Dad had held me when I stood again on the heather, looked away while I took off my jeans and put on the waterproof trousers he’d been carrying for me in his backpack, made me drink the last of the tea in the thermos flask. You’ll maybe be best without that other boot too, lass, hard when one foot doesn’t know what the other’s about and we’ll be heading right back, we’ll get you off the moor now. He took my hand, then, most of the way down, steered me around thorns and even cowpats.

  Pete’s bog was smaller than the one I’d fallen in and, in August, as dry as it would ever be, but even so it had taken them a while to get him out and they’d made a mess of themselves. And we found summat, said Dad, thought for a minute we were onto – well, anyroad, it’s given us an idea, summat we can try. He and the Prof exchanged glances. Pete, if you give me that smock, Mum said, that tunic, whatever you want to call it, I’ll get it washed for you again. Can’t say it’ll be dry by morning, mind. Pete stood there. He was dry now, of course, but the rough cloth was swollen and stiff with fragments of ancient flora and water brown as bloodstains, and earth was thick under his fingernails. Defensive injuries, I thought. OK, he said, thanks Alison, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Pete, said Molly. What, he said. She should mind, Moll said, even if she doesn’t, you should, you don’t need some woman to wash your clothes for you, do it yourself. Oh, said Mum, I don’t mind, it’s no bother, not as if there’s ironing or any of that. Dan looked from Mum to Molly, as if following a ball. Please don’t do it, he’s perfectly capable, said Molly. Dad looked up. Wash the lad’s tunic, Alison, I’ve some kecks you can take while you’re about it. But give us dinner first, we’re all clemmed.

  Mum started dishing up. Dining forks were introduced to these isles a mere five hundred years ago, give or take, but we’d convinced the Prof if not Dad that there wasn’t a good reason to be sure our imaginary Iron Age diners wouldn’t have used flat wooden spoons rather than fingers for stew. The Prof had agreed that we were too many to gather around the pot in the apparently authentic fashion and allowed individual bowls. Sit down, Silvie, said Dad, and I held his gaze while I took a deep breath and sat on my usual stone. It hurt. I saw his smile. Moll was watching us. So what was it you found, I said, the thing that might have been something? Oh, said the Prof, it’s not that interesting, Victorian at the oldest, but it might have given us an idea or two, wouldn’t you say, Bill? Aye, said Dad, happen it might. An old boot, said Dan, you’re clearly not the first, Silvie, to leave a shoe in a bog. A girl’s boot. How old, said Molly, can I see it? Nineteenth century, I’d say, said the Prof, and later, let me eat first, it was hungry work up there. That, I thought, was not work, that was play, that is what my dad is paying to do with all of his holiday entitlement this year. You’ll like it, Moll, the boot, said Pete, it’s got little buttons all the way up. Not to mention a heel, said Dad, right daft thing to wear on a moor an’ all, she got no less than she deserved, that one. That girl, I thought, that Victorian girl who owned a button-hook and a pair of pretty boots, where is she now, did she deserve only to lose her shoe or is she herself still there, her coiled hair reddening in the wet, her knitted shawl and lace-edged petticoat long since dissolved into the bog while the whorls on her fingers and the down on her legs toughen and outlast us all, is she curled up in the peat with the dark water in her lungs and earth stopping her mouth, hands flung out in the final struggle or folded in defeat?

  I spat a shell of gristle, maybe a component of a leg joint, into my hand. Dad and I find ash, I said, up on the moor tops at home, people say they want to be scattered there as if scattering is making something go away entirely and then we sit down with our sandwiches and realise we’re in the middle of someone’s granny, of course they always choose the places you’d stop for lunch, somewhere on the top of a ridge with a nice view. They were all looking at me, the students. Dad was smiling. What, I said, what is it? Nothing, said Molly, never mind. Anyroad, said Dad, when it’s my turn, the lass is right, I don’t give a monkey’s where you chuck the ashes, only don’t go making a mess on the fells, you hear me Silvie? OK, I said, fine. I will dig a hole in the woods with the camping trowel, I thought, and fill it in when I’m done. Er, Professor – Jim, I said, I’d like to see the boot too, please, if you don’t mind. Of course, he said. I’ll be taking it into town tomorrow morning, see if the police have any interest and if not I’ll send it to the department, we can at least find out exactly how old it is. I was going to pick up a couple of things anyway. For a special project. He spat out a small bone. This stew is very good by the way Alison, thank you, and what are the tubers? Roots, not tubers, I said, burdock, Molly and I found them, there’s plenty more if you want them. Please, he said, they’re delicious, which they were not. Molly was picking out the greens and roots and leaving her meat. What would you sacrifice to the bog, she said, what would the modern thing be, if you were really scared or really desperate for something? Mum was eating, not bothering, assuming as usual that none of this talk was meant for her, but everyone else paused, winced, which must have been how it was when men picked up their special inlaid swords, their most beautiful amulets and broke them on purpose and gave them to the still waters of bog and grove. In Denmark they found braids of human hair very much like Molly’s cast into the bog, because you give what you most want to keep. You would have been able to see your votive objects, Dad had told me, for months or maybe years, and there were special walkways and platforms built out over pools and marshes perhaps partly for the purpose of visiting the murdered things. People too, this particular book suggested; they weren’t necessarily gone when they were put into the bog but would have lain there, dead and still present, not going, faces wavering through the clear water, mouth and skin and hair arrested in the retreating moment of loss while time continued to pass for the rest of the community. My answer was probably honestly still Owl, not because at seventeen I was unusually attached to a stuffed toy but because I had no other particular material affections, because I had so little that I wanted.

  Dan shook his head. Don’t know. My guitar, maybe. You’re crap at your guitar, said Pete. Yeah, but as long as I’ve got it I might get better, see? Anyway it was a big birthday present. What about you? Pete shrugged, but you could see there was something, something so precious he didn’t want to speak of breaking it. My father’s paintings, said the Prof, baby pictures of my kids. Old photos of my parents, before I was born. Right, said Molly, ancestors, progeny, the bodies of your tribe. Yes, he said, maybe, something like that. I felt Dad’s gaze on me and knew with a shiver what he was thinking. My daughter. Break her and stake her to the bog, stop her before she gets away. They weren’t dead, the bog people, not to those who’d killed them. They had to be pinned to their graves with sharp sticks driven through elbow and knee, trapped behind woven wooden palings, to stop them coming back, creeping home dead and not dead in the dark. A bird trilled from the bush behind me. I got up. Anyone else need more water, I said, you must have got parched up there.

  The Prof had gone by the time I got up the next morning. He reappeared whistling while Molly and I were pushing rye gruel around wooden bowls that still held the flavour of last night’s stew. He was wearing jeans and an ironed checked shirt with a plaited leather belt, and had the air of having had a haircut. Spruce, I thought, almost dapper, and I wondered if he used that intricate belt on his daughters, on Charlotte and Lucy, when they made him angry. Bet he went off to a hotel and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, murmured Molly, bet he had a long hot shower and sat over his coffee with the newspaper. Well, I said, he could hardly go off to the police station in a handwoven tunic, could he, and he wasn’t going to take a bowl of rabbit and burdock stew for his breakfast. Anyway, we had ice-creams and you bought a whole bag of stuff, what happened to that? I still haven’t had a shower, she said,
not for days. What had she expected, I wondered, from Experiential Archaeology? I wasn’t taking the course and I’d known it was going to be another holiday without plumbing or a proper cup of tea. All done, said the Prof, and Bill, I got those supplies we were talking about, I’ll show you later.

  Mum stayed at the camp again. Would you like to come too, Molly asked her, just for the walk, but she said no, she’d things to do, though I couldn’t really see what things; in our version of Iron Age life the housework was pretty minimal and there wouldn’t be much to cook until we got back. Leave her be, I thought, she was a grown-up, wasn’t she, could have joined any of us, or gone off on her own to the beach or to Spar or even on the bus into Morbury if she’d been inclined. It was cooler that day, with hills of white cloud banking blue sky, and Dan and Molly and I set off briskly. Pete went with Dad and the Prof on some mission of violence against the local fauna, not that the rabbit stew had not been very welcome.

  We dug more burdocks, and then went up onto the moor for bilberries, which was of course the wrong way round, like shopping for ten pounds of potatoes before you go all the way across town to the post office. We could just leave them under a hedge, I said, to pick up on the way back, it’s hardly likely anyone’s going to nick our burdock roots, especially with the stuff free for the taking all over the place. I suppose that’s what those caches were for, said Dan, the little stone mounds, not so much long-term storage as somewhere to leave your potatoes while you go to the post office. But we weren’t sure which way we’d be coming back or where we’d find bilberries or, in the absence of a prehistoric cist, how we’d remember which hedge we’d used, so the burdocks came too, dragging on our arms. We didn’t go to Spar, but apart from that the day felt like a repetition of the one before, the rhythms of finding and gathering, walking and squatting, talking and scattering. I found that my fingers knew how to pick the ripe berries without my mind needing to think about it, that I had learnt to see what was under the leaves or shaded by heather without consciously searching. I indulged myself with the idea that ancient knowledge runs somehow in our blood, that in time I could forget who fought in the War of the Spanish Succession and how to solve simultaneous equations, and remember how to spin yarn and grind grain, to read the flight of birds and the growth of plants to tell me what was happening beyond my sight. My father’s skills: redundant except for archaeological purposes.