Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  ‘So you think the tall men have Barney on the main land.’

  ‘You couldn’t look after him right, could you?’

  ‘Always have done, since Mam died. Hims been mine all this time.’

  ‘You’re too young. And your Da dun bother with him, Mary.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘My Kieran—’

  ‘You let them take your own son, now how come—’

  ‘Him’ll be taught to read and write, take pictures with a metal thing of what him sees. Write on a board made of keys. Them said them want boys on the main land. That’s what Martyn were told. Them said there’s a whole bunch of other things him could do, what him can’t learn here. There’s a future for boys on the main land. None for him here. All we’ve got for them is the work of thems fathers, year after year. But Kieran never took to fishing. Never took to anything at all. Tried him with Dougan, glass-making, but him only lasted a day. Smashed too much. If him dun have any skills in hims hands, what else is there for him here?’

  ‘But Barney—’

  ‘See, Mary, tall men say we’re wrong in not teaching the boys to read or write. Now we’ve always been this way, but the tall men said we’re letting them be no more than useless. No future in useless. I dun agree with them at first, but them talked Martyn into it, an’ if there’s other things him can learn … we had to think of our boy.’

  ‘Barney’s too little for anything like that.’

  ‘Them must’ve had a reason. Nothing to do with my Martyn. Tall men would’ve talked it over with your Da. Dun know what were said.’

  ‘If I tell you something about Mam, you’ll keep it to yourself?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘For you were close with her, for her sake you will?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘That tall man what’ll be thrashed, him were Barney’s real Da. I saw it in hims eyes.’

  She nods, slowly stroking one of her dogs. ‘I’ve seen hims eyes.’

  ‘Annie, I dun want anyone thinking bad of Mam. But Kelmar saw it. Should’ve seen the way she stared at me when she saw hims eyes. You knew Mam the best, did she tell you about him?’

  She puts her spoon in the bowl, drains the wine, puts her bowl on the floor and all three of her dogs leap forwards, but there’s only room in the bowl for one dog’s tongue. It growls and the other two back away.

  Annie dun notice, she’s fixed on the fire. She whispers to herself, ‘Won’t be able to move house now. Not without Martyn. Have to stay here. The new cottage. All gone. It were so lovely. I’d knitted new blankets. Can’t move now. Not without Martyn …’

  ‘Please, Annie.’ I put my hand on her arm. ‘I dun remember everything – some of it’s gone, worse since Mam got deaded. It’s all got tangled. Tell me about Mam.’

  Annie’s dirty grey dress is still damp. I put a blanket on the arm of her chair, top up her glass and she drains it again, her cheeks flush. She covers her mouth and mutters, ‘Your Mam never said anything to me about a tall man. But I weren’t in a good way. Mightn’t have listened if she said anything when Barney were born. I’d just lost another baby.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She wipes a tear from her eye. ‘No more after Kieran. Loved him too much. Not enough love in me for any other. The unborn know. Them just … slip away …’ A sad smile closes her voice away from me. Her eyes stare off through the fire.

  Annie glances at the front door and leans forwards. ‘My Mam told me about a kind of punishing ritual. She said it used a real bird, with the instincts of the bird freed up. Something to do with calling up the spirit of one of the dead, putting it inside the bird and letting it loose. She said the spell needed earth. From a grave. It makes me shudder.’

  I shiver. ‘So if the bird were an owl, it would have the ghost and the owl’s hunting instincts all mixed in together?’

  ‘Mam might’ve been scaring me. Like that, she were.’ Annie shivers again.

  The fire crackles loud, we both start. She shakes her head and gulps more wine. ‘My Kieran liked you, Mary. If you’d only have noticed, him might’ve tried harder to be good at something. Not just gave up.’

  ‘Never thought of him that way.’

  She glares at me like I’ve just called him useless.

  ‘Him were nice enough, but I dun ever want him to …’

  The firelight glints on her hair. ‘Well, him won’t now, will him?’

  My face is burning. One of her dog’s tails wags so hard it thwacks on my leg. That’ll bruise.

  ‘Oh, come on Mary. Come here.’

  I lay a brick of peat on the fire and sit down on the floor next to Annie’s feet and lean my head on her knee. She puts her hand on my hair.

  I say, ‘That tall man thinks Barney’s still here. That’s why him stayed. To look for him. So them might well have the other boys on the main land, but them dun have Barney.’

  ‘Your Mam never told you about Kelmar?’ she hiccups, puts her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Kelmar? Mam dun let her in our home.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And Valmarie, Mam said her eyes weren’t right in her face. “Some kind of strangeness in her …” That’s what Mam said.’

  Annie talks slurred. ‘I heard Valmarie eatsh fish. Can you imagine?’ She takes a glug of wine, to take the taste away. ‘Both them couples were always fighting. Not like me and … Martyn. Loved him, I did. Still do. Martyn’s more easy swisher-swayed into things than your Da, an’ Bill an’ Clorey.’ She sighs. ‘Maybe I’m too easy swayed an’ all. Not so shtrong in here.’ She pats her hand on her chest.

  I get up. ‘We could try to get the men out before the thrashing starts? Take Da’s axe?’

  ‘You dun go near the Thrashing House. It’s kept locked for a reason. You get inside that place, you’ll not be coming out.’ She slumps back in the chair and I catch the glass before she drops it.

  She gasps, ‘Dun even think about it Mary, I’m not shpeaking of it. Can’t bear to think … of Martyn …’ Tears dribble to the end of her nose and hang there. ‘I can’t get him out. There’s not a way to do it, I’ll … end up … in there …’ She sobs into her hands.

  Opening the drawer in the table, it creaks as I pull out a hankie. I think of Grandmam and what she said about the Thrashing House:

  So if you were ever put inside of it, what truth would it thrash out of you? If you know what that is, feel it glow bright inside you. Be true to who you are deep down, whether that’s a do-gooder, or a thief, and that will be the end of that, and there will be no cause for worry.

  I pass Annie the hankie, it’s got a rose broidered on the corner. One of Mam’s, finer than any I’ve ever made. It must have something of Mam still in it, as Annie stops crying as soon as she wipes her eyes. The bells ring out and she leans back in the chair. Like someone’s stroking her hair, she goes all limp.

  Annie dun stir, so I cover her with the blanket. One of her dogs is watching me as I close the curtains and go through to the bedroom and close the door.

  I stare at Barney’s empty pillow on the small bed opposite mine.

  I can’t go to sleep, though the bells are still ringing out. Valmarie must’ve been distracted with putting the men in there, so though she’s ringing late, she’s making sure everyone goes to sleep, by ringing for longer. My head feels like it’s made of twisted threads. But there’s one thread I dun want to cut. The one between me and Barney.

  I get out the moppet and lie it on my pillow. I ask it again, ‘Where are you?’

  Barney’s voice whispers, ‘It’s dark. Tell me story.’

  My eyes blur with tears, to hear Barney’s voice, so close. I lie down and stroke the moppet’s stitched-up belly. I think of the story of Sishee that Grandmam told me when the bells had rang out, but I couldn’t sleep. Da had bashed hims knee, and him and Mam were in thems bedroom – she’d made him a poultice with some herbs she’d got from Valmarie, but him were groaning, and I could hear him through the wall. Grandmam t
old me to hop in with her, so I got in her bed, curled up next to her and listened.

  Sishee’s story is of the dreams we give away. I still half believe in Sishee, because half of me feels like a child. We’ve been told this story as children, and we still believe it in our hearts.

  I tell it to the moppet:

  At night-time on this island, when the bells ring out, the giant woman, called Sishee, comes alive, treads soft over the island, looking for her drowned dress. Sishee is old, older than anything else what exists here, but she is sound in her footfall, and silent as air in an empty jar.

  She is naked, apart from a necklace she wears around her neck. She wears shadows over the parts what are secret. The necklace shines out like the moon. She gathers up all our dreamings, all our thoughts and hopes and night-time terrors and collects them in a glass jar.

  Our dreamings want to be took, so we are contented when we wake. Them want to be seen by someone what wants them, not folks what want them to go away, like we all do.

  When she is near, the dreamings rise up to meet her, float and curl and twist themselves out of our heads, out of our rooms, up into the night sky, and them twirl around the clouds, waiting for her. If them stay within us them are frightening or confusing, but when them leave us, them turn into something beautiful.

  She collects all our dreamings in case she can find something what will tell her about her dress. She’s still got hope, even after all these years. Her dress is drowned so deep below the ocean only she could ever reach it, because there’s nothing too far away to reach if you want it bad enough, and know where it is, and how wet you have to get to find it. Sometimes when you look for something so hard, you look in the wrong places.

  You must never dream of her dress; if she sees that dream, she’ll find it, and she’ll not come back to take our dreamings away again. Some say if she did find it, she’d pick up the Pegs, and without them the whole island would slide into the sea. Others, more sensible folk, like me, know that’s a load of old rot. The island’s not pegged to anything, it’s as solid and sure as all old things are.

  So when you’re in bed, you’ve got to stay put and not disturb anyone else what’s trying to sleep in your home. If our dreamings dun get took, we’ll all go mad, some quick, some slow, for the dreamings will latch onto us like limpets.

  As the dawn breaks, Sishee stares through her glass jar, holds it up to the horizon to see the light come through. Searches deep inside each dream to see if she can spy her drowned dress; the thing she wants the most. Then she shakes her head and lifts up the graveyard hill to put the jar away beneath it. Under the gravestones all our dreamings die down to nothing, leaving her jar empty for the next night.

  Morgan

  I love the sound of these bells that ring out each and every night. It’s been a way of counting time, when I could so easily miss a whole day passing. They ring all the way from the bell tower, and tonight the tall house on the hill seems like a twisted ruin.

  I curl up and hug my pillow to my belly. The bells ring on and on, reminding me that I’m not alone. That time does pass here, not just for me, but for the people who live here. There are no clocks, but these bells measure days. They remind me that time does move forwards, and it won’t always be just me and my family, that there are people living all around us who I’ve never met.

  The night is where the banished hours live. Sometimes I stay awake all night counting, just so I can check that seconds, minutes and hours are still moving forwards, and the moon and the sun work like the hands of a clock, arching over the sky.

  Often, through my bedroom window, I catch a glimpse of people in the daytime. Women in shawls and thick coats, men in baggy working clothes, herding the brown and cream sheep and muddied black cows to the fields in the morning and back to the barns at dusk, as the sky fills with funnels of chimney smoke.

  In the summer the men pick handfuls of brown and cream sheep’s wool off the bushes where it gets caught. They wash the sheep in the brook that crosses the field. They send sheepdogs to catch them, shear some of the sheep by hand, collect their wool in baskets and leave the bald sheep to roam. In winter, the sheep are thick with dirt. Time can be measured by the seasons, by migrations, by the thickness of the coats of sheep, the stages of growth in plants and the weather. There’s always weather.

  Sometimes when I see people out in the fields I wave from my bedroom window. But whether the sky is dark grey and clouds thicken and rain pelts or when the sky shifts colour and the sun shines out, or there’s nothing but white sky and a whistling gale, no one waves back. Whatever weather the sky brings, it must be reflected in the windowpanes, so no one can see me.

  I’ve found the present Mum gave me for my eighteenth birthday, instead of the padlock key. The book of blank pages and the pen that I’d hidden under my mattress and forgotten about. The padlock key would have been freedom, but this book is both freedom and a trap. There would be freedom if I could write in it. Write memories down and keep them safe. But it’s a trap for my thoughts; if I write them inside it, they will be caught.

  I open the book. Stroke the first blank page.

  Anything I write will be found and read. That’s the whole reason Mum gave me it. But what she doesn’t know, is that I realise it’s a trap.

  The pages are so clean. An invitation to choose what I want Mum to read. Pick a memory. One that will annoy her. One that she wishes she could remove like a splinter. Three choices. Counting days and time and writing about ticking clocks might annoy her a little, or writing about her promising to give me a key and then changing her mind might be an irritation, but neither of these are enough for her to want me to leave.

  I could write down a phrase from my psychology book, but I don’t know if she’d understand what I meant by writing it. I take the book from the shelf and find the page that speaks of narcissism. How strange that a beautiful flower has the same name as such an ugly disorder. This page describes exactly how my mother behaves. This page speaks of things that I can’t. Whenever I’m angry, with her, or my father, I read this and think it must be so hard for her to be like this. So hard for him to care for her. Reading this page dulls any anger I’m feeling. Reminds me that it must be much worse being her, rather than living with her. My mother, reduced to a list of symptoms. Lack of empathy, intense mood swings, controlling behaviour, self-importance, fear of change, compulsive self-preservation …

  My hand takes the lid off the pen. This feels cruel.

  This page shouldn’t be one of the three choices. I can’t quote it because I can’t tell how she might feel, reading it. It might hurt. It might make all of her symptoms real to her.

  So. Three choices. Write about: 1) Ticking Clocks. 2) Broken Promises. 3) Ghosts.

  It has to be ghosts.

  Those are the memories she really hates me to talk about. Especially the memories I have of my best friend, Anita, who lived with us in the house on the mainland. I think about her all the time. And Mum locks me in my room whenever I mention her.

  I pick up the pen and write:

  List of Leaving:

  I was seven.

  Mum wanted to leave.

  I’d watched through keyholes.

  She built emotions up inside her like a storm,

  kept them stored in her mouth.

  She exploded, threw a milk bottle full of dirty paint water at Dad.

  He thundered, locked me in my bedroom, before returning to her.

  Anita hovered, transparent.

  She flitted between floors.

  Listened in. Came back and told me:

  ‘She’s scared. Wants to run. You’re leaving with them.

  Leaving me.’

  We both cried, but she still wouldn’t let me hug her.

  I breathe fog on my bedroom window, draw Anita’s face opposite mine.

  I left Anita behind. She was the best friend a little girl could ever have. A ghost child only I could see. After Mum had stopped me going to school, I’d t
hought about other children all the time, and I’d watched them from the windows, going to school in colourful huddles. The first day I ever saw Anita, she was just there at the window, beside me, watching them. I wasn’t frightened. She’d talked about the children, what they were wearing, what they might be saying, what they would have in their lunch boxes and pockets. Anita said she’d been there in our house all the time I had, but she wasn’t sure I’d want to see her. I said she should have let me see her before, because I wanted someone to play with. She’d smiled and said simply, ‘Well, here I am then.’ And until our family left, we were rarely apart.

  We used to sit in the corridors of our house. On creaking floorboards we’d catch insects together, keep them in glass jars, feed them on ivy leaves. She wouldn’t ever let me touch her, she said she didn’t know what would happen if the dead touched the living; to her, it felt wrong. But we talked about everything, there on the floorboards in the hallways, peering at magnified insects.

  She flitted in and out of other rooms. She often said, ‘You should ask your parents where their money comes from,’ but I didn’t want to know. I was more interested in our captives, the insects, though we’d always set them free. My parents told me she wasn’t there; while she was sitting next to me at the kitchen table, the plate I put there for her was never filled. I tried to feed her my own food, but she said I needed it more than her. I ate each mouthful for her as well; somehow when my own belly got full, I could fill hers. I wonder if she’s still there. She never changed; I got taller, while she stayed exactly the same.

  At first, when I talked about Anita, my mother would leave the room, her hand over her mouth, her face pale. My father would stay behind. Watch me, take notes, ask me where Anita was, he’d squint at the corner of the room, the sofa, the chair next to me, usually just slightly to the left of wherever she really was. He would never see her. Never asked what she said. I liked him asking about her, liked being alone with him, liked his interest in someone who I’d learned to love so easily.