by Lydia Syson
‘No, I can’t …’ I say. ‘The air. I cannot breathe the air in there. You must not either.’
‘Must-must-must.’
‘It nearly killed you.’
‘Go-go-go-go-go.’ Stabbing with her finger. And rising, swaying, almost falling, she blunders past me, trying to return herself.
‘No!’ I say, holding her back. ‘Stay here. I will go.’
I fill myself with clean air, as if about to dive. I am a good diver. I know how long I have before I need to breathe again. And my eyes are good.
I plunge back inside, hands out like paddles, feet shuffling, and feel my way along the cavern as it opens and narrows and becomes warmer and warmer.
Lizzie has found her voice. It follows me, but I cannot answer without losing my clean air.
‘Keep going … at the back …’
Darker and darker. Sweat-salt-stung eyes, back warm and dripping, rock-scoured, my head spinning and floating, all about to burst. What am I looking for? What has Lizzie left that she wants so much?
Force myself on. Push feelingly with foot, as underwater, and open my hands like starfish. I make my fingers wander. Here this cave is barely a tunnel. Damp, rasping stone. Runnels made long ago, narrowing into a low arch. It cannot be much further. Nearly there, nearly there. Keep moving on and on and on, too slowly. I need to breathe. I cannot breathe. My head throbs with the work of not letting this place in. Crushed chest. Bursting veins. I need to surface. I want my face to break through into light and feel the air stroke my skin. I must be quicker. I cannot be quicker. Something is in my way. My foot pushes against something that shifts, but not easily. It’s not hard, and nor is it soft. Something like wood, I think.
Something like bones.
Long bones like hollow sticks. I stumble and recover myself. I cannot fall here. I turn my back and run for air.
Blundering empty-handed into light fast fading, I try to empty my head of what my hands have seen. I can’t. I can’t. I know without sight that these are not pig bones. Lizzie blocks my way. Her eyes accuse me.
‘What have you done? Why did you leave him?’
She wants to push me back into the cave.
‘I couldn’t breathe,’ I say.
Bent at the waist, I hang my head and take in air which smells of nectar, loam and lake, but also a foul animal stink. Drops of sweat slide from my hair to make dark stars on the rock ledge.
‘We have to bring him out,’ she insists. ‘I tried …’ A wail of lamentation lets loose.
‘The air is poisonous. It must have killed him. It nearly poisoned you.’
He’s dead, I think. I can’t save him. Decayed dead. The deadest thing I ever felt.
‘I know. I know this place. I thought he knew. I’ve killed him.’ Dead voice.
I think of other bodies, in other caves, our burial caves across the sea, stopped up with stones. What if this is not her brother, but one of mine, a blackbird from my land? But the stench tells me otherwise. All the aitu have fallen silent, and I am unpossessed.
‘I will go back,’ she says. ‘Wait here.’
‘No.’ I say, sharply enough to stop her. My hand is on her arm before I know what I am doing, on her bare arm, and she does not shake it off. ‘Let me.’
Lizzie seems to shrink.
‘I don’t want to,’ she admits. ‘I can’t.’
‘No,’ I agree. ‘Better I go.’
‘It’s nearly dark.’ She looks across the lake. The sky is violet. ‘We could tell Pa. Come back in the morning?’
‘No. I’ll try again.’
I can be quick, this time, I tell myself. I know where I am going, and what I need to do. I gulp down air, and raise my arm above my head, and with bleeding forehead and bloodied elbow, I am soon at the back of the cave, where the narrowing tunnel is blocked, and my fingers feel something tough and wrinkled, like the skin of a shark dried out in the sun. My hands circle shin bones, fingers meet thumbs too fast. The roof is too low for me to pick up this body like a baby, but when I try to pull at it, I fear collapse, division, disintegration.
I cannot hold my breath much longer. So I pull off my town shirt and fold his limbs as best I can and wrap him in a shroud his mother made for me. I feel for his head. I need his head. I have his skull. I must keep my head too.
*
On the rock ledge Lizzie weeps and shivers and clutches at the dog. Outside at last, I meet her brother Albert.
34
LIZZIE CROUCHES, EYES PLANTED ON KALALA’S SWEATING face as he tends his burden, but she cannot bring herself to look down at it herself. Her open mouth hangs, drying, and flesh obstructs her throat. His face tells her something of what he sees as he straightens what is left of Albert’s twisted, wasted legs, placing knee to knee, ankle to ankle and foot to foot. Then he tidies the boy’s loose, unmannered arms. No sleeves to unroll or cuffs to unbutton. Only stained, stretched skin and cloth fragmenting at his touch. Reaching Albert’s head, Kalala’s eyes startle.
He swallows, with difficulty, and looks at Lizzie. Gently, gently puts his palms on either side of her face. With the hands that have tended Albert, Kalala moves Lizzie’s head so that she faces away from her brother entirely. There is something he does not want her to see. Something too terrible. Unspeakable. But she needs to know everything. She has to look. Quickly, just once, before she whips her head away. This cannot be him. This thing that’s nothing like her brother, and yet so clearly is.
‘Albert. Oh no.’
Albert’s skull is crushed.
‘He was trying to escape,’ she says. ‘He hit his head.’
Kalala doesn’t understand.
‘The poison. You see when Ada and I first found this cave, it used to steam, like the hot spring on the beach. We spent a night here, long ago. It nearly killed us. Something in there – when you breathe it. I don’t know what it is. That stink, that terrible smell … it can stop you breathing. Why didn’t we tell Albert? Why didn’t I warn everyone?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean the poison did not kill him. This is not your fault.’
‘Oh yes, yes, it is. I know it’s my fault. Everything’s my fault.’ Lizzie’s hands wrench and turn as though she wants to wash her skin away. He stops her and puts something in her palm. A button. Her fingers close over it and refuse to open.
‘No,’ he tells her, very quietly. ‘It’s not your fault. He did not come here by himself.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she insists. ‘He came to get warm, like we did that night, and then, when he couldn’t breathe, he tried to leave and hit his head.’
‘No. Nobody could hit his own head hard enough to break it like that. Impossible. Somebody has done this to him.’
She forces herself to look again, and her hand moves towards her brother. Her own head is thick and clogged. It must be the poisonous air. She feels as if she is breaking into the smallest pieces. Her body won’t hold together. All its parts are edging away, separating from each other, beginning to dissolve. Her mind spreads and thins like a pool of spilled oil. She has become uncontainable.
‘Well, we must look after him now,’ she says, forcing herself together. ‘We must bring him home.’
The pity in his eyes provokes her.
‘Come on, Kalala,’ she shouts, suddenly harsh, getting to her feet, distancing herself from everything. ‘Why are you waiting? I order you to bring him down from here.’
Lizzie points haughtily. It comes as a further shock, even to herself, this cruel imperiousness, coming from nowhere, born of something unrecognisable. When she sees how he recoils, it makes her despise herself all the more. Somebody has done this to Albert. She can’t think … can’t make sense of who or how. But she is to blame. She knows she is to blame. She’s certain only of that. A surge of nausea takes Lizzie by surprise. All her joints loosen at once, and she slumps, felled, on the ledge.
Kalala carries her home.
*
Flames
approach, flickering in a mess of gathering voices.
‘What have you done to her?’ her father bellows. As she struggles from Kalala’s arms, and pulls away from both men, Lizzie is taken aback by her own near nakedness. She drops to a protective crouch. Ada rushes forward with a moan and an open shawl, holding it before her like a banner, a sail, a bed sheet, a fence. She swaddles Lizzie, and both girls duck heads and flinch when Mr Peacock shoots out a sudden fist, which leaves Kalala sprawling. He coils himself into a curving wall, bare back, hands over ears, ready for the kicking which swiftly follows.
A buckle rings and leather whistles through the air.
Never before such fury. Never before such hatred in Pa’s yell of rage.
‘What have you done to Lizzie? What have you done to my daughter?’
‘Nothing!’ screams Lizzie, while Kalala gasps and scrabbles in the dirt. ‘Stop. Leave him alone. It’s my fault.’
Her father turns on her, but Ada is quick enough to swing between them and push him away, and then Billy appears from the shadows and throws himself on his father’s back. Pa hisses and spits and hurls strange words at Lizzie – hussy, slut – shocking, wounding words that make the girls judder and cower and click their shivering teeth. Staring, almost hissing herself, Mrs Peacock puts down the sputtering lantern. Still measured, just, still contained, but barely, she orders Queenie to take Gus to bed, and the baby too, pushing the little ones away from harm as she speaks. Joey’s thin wail rises and falls over the girls’ departing sobs. Then Ma steps firmly between her other daughters and their father.
‘Joseph!’ Never before such menace in her voice. If once she blazed, now she scorches. Mr Peacock has become a pacing predator, but she will not let him pass. ‘Joseph. Stop! Wait. We must find out first what has happened.’
‘Her clothes! Where are her clothes?’ roars Mr Peacock. He tries to rush at her. Ma raises her arms but stands firm.
‘Leave her, Joseph. Get away from Lizzie. Don’t you touch her till she’s spoken.’
Another voice from the shadows:
‘Mrs Peacock?’
Here comes Solomona, the peacemaker, Solomona the wise, who carries about him an invisible circle of Godliness which keeps Mr Peacock briefly at bay. ‘Let me help. Let me talk to Kalala. Let him explain himself.’
The island fellows are already gathering round Kalala, still fetal on the ground. They help him carefully to his feet, and Solomona interrogates his brother, quickly and efficiently, in their own language, all the while checking his injuries, dabbing at blood, brushing away dirt and leaves, soothing him as he winces, covering him with a shirt. He keeps a close eye on Lizzie’s father, who stamps and growls, prowls and paces round the unmarked space that surrounds them. Solomona listens and nods. The other fellows shake their heads and draw in their lips, and try not to look at Mr or Mrs Peacock. At last Solomona clasps his hands and steeples his forefingers. He gathers the fractured family with a sweeping, pitying eye.
‘They have found your son,’ he says.
Five words hang in the air. Then Ada unfreezes. She’s been cradling Lizzie all this time, but now she almost pushes her away, gibbering: ‘No, no, no. Someone else. Not Albert.’
Lizzie gropes for her sister’s hand. She presses something into it, round and hot and unmistakable. Four holes, guaranteed not to cut.
‘Where is he?’ asks Ada, turning the button in her fingers. Whispering and arguing with herself, she crawls towards the lantern, to examine it, to be sure the button’s his. Solomona puts his own jacket around his brother’s still-shivering shoulders and continues as his interpreter.
‘He is at a cave, above the lake.’
Mr Peacock stops prowling, and finally listens.
‘Albert?’ says Mrs Peacock, all fire gone. ‘My boy? My sweet, beautiful boy? But what have they done?’ She holds out her arms like a sleepwalker.
Lizzie buries her face in her hands.
‘They left him there,’ says Solomona. ‘They had no choice. Kalala had to look after Lizzie. She is alive, at least, thanks to my brother. We will have to fetch Albert in the morning. It is too dark and far too difficult to bring his body home tonight.’
‘The Oven? Oh no! But you left him?’ Ada worries at Lizzie’s arm. ‘How could you leave him? Lizzie, you left him?’
She’s angry with me because she doesn’t know, thinks Lizzie. She thinks the strange foul air stopped his breath, while he was hiding, while he was sleeping in the warmth, as it nearly stopped ours. How can she tell Ada that Albert died in pain and violence? She must not ever know about his poor crushed head, his splintered bones. Lizzie can’t allow the sight she has seen to worm into Ada’s skull, and embed itself in her mind too, taking root inside the cave of her memory. She wants to protect Ada as she failed to protect Albert. Surely that meant she could never name his killer.
‘Ada, I couldn’t …’
Solomona repeats himself.
‘Kalala had to take care of the living. Your daughter.’
‘Take care?’ says Pa, disgusted, still disbelieving, or so it seems.
Mrs Peacock stares without seeing.
‘Come with me, Ma?’ Ada begs like a just-walking child, a witless creature. ‘Come with me to get Albert? Let’s go together, now, right away?’
Abruptly, Mrs Peacock returns her mind from the darkness beyond the firelit, lamplit space, and at last remembers who she is and what she has to do. She strokes and calms her daughters, first Ada, then Lizzie, and then Queenie, who comes from the girls’ hut to be enfolded in a knot of reaching, clutching arms. Finally Billy joins them, snuffling.
‘The men will go, in the morning,’ says Ma, firmly. ‘Isn’t that right, Joseph? We must be patient. And it’s quite right, what Solomona says. Nothing to be done tonight. Nothing to be done. Nothing to be done. Another night will neither hurt or help him now. So let’s get Lizzie to bed.’ She slowly remembers the way you have to manage things, how to keep one child occupied with another. ‘Look, Ada, see how she shivers. You’ll keep Lizzie warm, won’t you? She’s had a shock, you know, a terrible, terrible shock. We all have. And now we must all look after one another.’
35
INSIDE AND OUT, I AM STIFF AND BRUISED. I HAVE LET myself slide and sidle far too far into a family I can never be part of. I could have kept myself to myself, thrown spears with the other fellows, let Solomona lead us, had more faith he would, and returned to my island, unentangled and enriched. I could have put my learning to one side. I should have played with string and stones, not storytelling. I pressed my hopes into printed words, ink, and type, and paper. One thing standing always for another, its bond uncertain.
Sleep darts away all night, a fish from a spear, and Albert’s broken skull dances before me. Dimly, darkly, I watch again and again the blow which cracked it, as if I now share Lizzie’s dreams. A blow from behind. And on the head. Think of that. How you would club an animal to death, not how you discipline a boy. Never your own child. What have I witnessed? Something almost beyond understanding or utterance.
‘Solomona?’ I whisper in the dark, knowing he lies awake as I do. ‘Will you pray that our ship comes soon?’
‘I will, and I will pray for you too.’ My brother comes to kneel beside me, as if I lay dying.
*
‘Not you,’ says Mr Peacock, in the morning, early, his arm a fallen branch, blocking our doorway so I cannot follow the gang. ‘You stay here. Do not leave your hut until we are back.’
He cuts my protest. What is this new humiliation? His daughter cleared my name last night. And our master no longer hurls lust. No talk now of fornication, nor any sign of why he pins me here alone, apart from all. I would believe this confinement the madness of grief. Some misapprehension time could clear. But I have seen his son, and my suspicions fast ferment.
‘Lizzie has told me exactly where this cave is,’ he tells Solomona. ‘Turns out Ada knew the place already too. They have both confessed as much.’ No sign he knows the
cave himself. No sign he does not. ‘Come on, boys. Pick up the litter.’
A man in mourning cannot be refused. My fellows obey in full bewilderment, looking from me to Solomona to our master. It seems Mr Peacock has been working through the night with axe and chisel – we heard the blows – fashioning a flat kind of bed with handles to bear back his son’s remains. Low-lidded, Mr Peacock looks only at me, nostrils widening as if he confronts a stench. Mine flare likewise, and my throat tightens. He is the stench, sweet sickness leaking from his pores. He has been drinking as well as working through the night. Red threads darken his eye-whites and his teeth continually clash and grind, in ceaseless conversation with themselves.
‘I will deal with you on our return,’ he tells me with disdain.
My fury surges back, and I think to push myself against him. Instead I turn to Solomona, who stands as astonished as the rest. I am certain he will speak at least a word for me before they leave. Yet he shakes his head and makes a movement with his hands like smoothing sand. Fearful, my fellows look down. I think of Mrs Peacock, and all the children, and the depth and freshness of their shock and sorrow, and I see this is no time for protest. I retreat into the shadows of our hut and try, for now, to quell my anger. There’s comfort in taking shelter behind walls we have built ourselves, and call our own. All minds must be with Albert today, I resolve. Whatever it may be, when our master issues his complaint against me, Lizzie will take my part. I cannot doubt this.
After some time, footsteps scrape my way. Billy brings me a bowl of taro porridge. Tiptoe, tiptoe, towards the doorframe, eyes down, and then he pushes the dish across without a word. Steam hazes, or perhaps my eyes mist. I feel like a vicious animal, a dog that is sick. If he had a stick, he would use it – not to hit me, but better to keep his distance. I call him back, by name – what has his father told him? – but he pretends not to hear.
Billy goes to sit a little distance from the hut, knees up, head lowered, red-faced. My keeper. The sun shifts slowly. Grief casts strange shadows, truly. It makes you see things which were never there, and also fail at first to see what is before your face. Deception – of self and others – calls with a beguiling voice. I try to trust in Solomona, and gather my resolve, think of Job and his infinite patience. I command myself to wait, feigning obedience, until the time is right, and I can see more clearly where blows this storm. Surely God will show me what path to take? I am no prisoner yet, I tell myself. If I choose to walk out of here, I can. Even if there is nowhere to go.
