Snake Ropes

by Jess Richards

  ‘I saw—’ I can’t say, ghosts.

  They step back, pale.

  Camery says, ‘Poor thing. You can’t even speak it. Were it fear did that to your hair?’

  I try to say no, but it won’t come out.

  Camery whistles. ‘Terror did that. So young, to have your hair turned white with shock. How old’re you?’

  ‘I think … I’m twenty-one, that’s the right age, isn’t it?’

  ‘You dun know your age?’

  ‘I must have lost count.’

  ‘Come to the Weaving Rooms. Tell all us women what happens—’

  ‘It doesn’t want me to say—’ how to get in or out, what it’s really like inside, or where the key is now. Again, my mouth won’t speak. ‘I could try to write it down.’

  Camery pulls her shawl tightly around her. ‘Do that. Come to the Weaving Rooms. Soon.’

  Chanty says, ‘She can’t come to the Weaving Rooms yet. We women have other things to talk of, she knows nothing—’

  Camery interrupts, ‘You seen a tall man up this way?’

  I turn away and point in the direction of the poisoned shore. ‘There was a man – on the cliff—’

  ‘We’ll have to walk into the storm then.’

  ‘No – take shelter – I only saw him for a moment. He could have been any man.’

  ‘Well any man’s not good enough.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘They probably aren’t—’

  ‘What’s she meaning?’ Chanty says.

  ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘You were. Heard you, I did.’

  ‘If the men can’t read or write, does that make them more … like beasts?’

  Camery says, ‘Than what? Dun see the deadtaker getting hims hands dirtied over a cow being down. Getting that cow up on its feet again, saving it, instead of sitting indoors waiting for folks to die. Our men take care of what needs taking care of.’

  ‘Don’t they want to read?’

  Chanty says, ‘Read what?’

  ‘Oh.’ ‘What?’

  ‘No books. You don’t write stories down.’

  Chanty says, ‘We’ve plenty stories. Tell them to each other.’

  Camery tells me that women read and write – the spinning and knitting stitches they’ve found to work best, about the length of threads it takes to make a cloth, getting the right recipe for lye and about the temperature needed to boil colours into yarn. She tells me that women’s trade has kept all of the islanders alive for generations. She says, ‘You shouldn’t listen to your Mam.’ She folds her arms. ‘Nothing wrong with our men.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  Chanty says, ‘Not able to talk about her.’ She opens and closes her mouth. Camery nudges her and they step to the side.

  I walk past them, turn and say, ‘It might have been your tall man I saw. All the way down there at the shore. It’s a long walk. Hope you find him.’ I throw the coat over my hair and tramp along the path through cold, still air.

  I didn’t realise how long it would take and how far it was – the distance from the peat pits to the Thrashing House, down the path from the cliffs to the beach, and through Mary’s cottage door. The view from my windows at home told me nothing of measurements. Neither did maps or geography books. They talked of inches and miles, gradients and heights, but not how long it takes to cross such a landscape in boots that don’t quite fit.

  Mary hasn’t come home.

  But someone’s been in here since I left, and they’ve turned over these rooms. The drawers with threads and needles are tipped under the table, the back door is open, knives and forks are mixed in with dry rice and sawdust on the kitchen floor.

  In Mary’s bedroom, clothes from the drawers and cupboard are strewn across the floorboards. A box of keys has been scattered all over Mary’s bed.

  On top of the keys, a scrawled note on rough white paper reads:

  Key thief.

  Give it back, Mary.

  We know it were you.

  Those distorted faces at the window when I ran out must have come in here, searched the cottage and left it like this. I know how I’d feel if someone had broken into my room and torn up my books – I’d feel rummaged. But these are not my things.

  I tie back my dimly glowing hair and gather up clothes, small jumpers, socks, trousers in a thick blue fabric, vests. Mary’s underwear, rags, dresses, about five rolls of bandages and a small mirror.

  I clean a pot and make porridge, eat a huge bowl of it and it burns my mouth, but I don’t stop eating till the bowl is empty. I wash up the bowl, the spoon and the pot and all the knives and forks from the floor, and sweep up the rice and sawdust.

  In the room with the fireplace I put everything away as it was, and sweep the floor behind the front door. Putting the broom down, I open the door to the room with the double bed – Mary’s parents’ room. Nothing’s been touched in here.

  A small carved cupboard in the corner holds a jar of buttons, a pair of white gloves, thick fabric covered in patches: they’ve been repaired over and over again. There’s a dusty glass bottle. I take out the stopper and the bitter scent of the forgetting herb coils out into the room. I steady myself and clink the stopper back in.

  Flat on one of the cupboard shelves there’s a raised piece of wood. I try to move it. It won’t shift. I take everything out and feel around the edges. I push on it. It clicks down, then opens. A secret compartment in the shelf. Inside there’s a small book with a black cover tied shut with string.

  I touch the string around the book, and my fingertips sting – they feel like they’ve been cut, but there’s no blood. I look closer at the string, at the coppery colours twisted through it. It looks like the moving seaweed from the poisoned shore. I get the white gloves out of the cupboard and put one on, stroke the string and look at the fingertip. It’s tinged yellow, smells of sulphur. I tear off the string.

  Two choices. Read. Don’t read.

  I sit on the bed and flick through the pages, entries in a tiny, even script.

  This is Beatrice’s diary:

  Him is too close. Him is never going to have me. Him comes begging with them eyes of hims, tells me him is ‘in love’ with me. I’ve told him I dun feel ‘in’ anything for him. Not ‘in love’ or ‘in hate’, not ‘in anger’. How can him talk of love like it is something to drown in, like being ‘in waves’, or ‘in the washtub’? Or perhaps it’s more like being caught. ‘In mousetrap’. Sorry. I’m ‘in birdcage’ with you so I can’t do anything but peck. Now I’m just being ‘in stupidness’.

  Not that I’m fearful, only perhaps I’m a bit in disgust.

  For it’s disgusting the way him pants at me from inside hims eyes, like there’s a stray dog living inside him.

  I flick forwards, to a few months later. I read:

  I came home to find him by Mary’s bedroom door. I’d only been outside, to talk with Annie, for she’d been sick and I’d wanted her well again.

  But him were here in our home.

  My daughter crying in her bed. Blood all over her.

  Not long thirteen.

  I went for him, scratched hims face and him grabbed my wrists, still got the bruises, for him is stronger than him looks. I screamed and cried – how could him touch my daughter how could him touch her how could him.

  But him said I should’ve let him have myself. But I never could have. Him said, what did I expect when she looks so like me?

  But though I cried fit to break, him said him would come again for her till I gave him myself.

  I said never never never and said I’d tell the whole island, and that him would be punished.

  Then I said I’d tell all the other tall men, and only then, him spoke less angered.

  Him said on the main land them do prisons and all kinds of torture in prisons and is that what I want for him?

  And I said yes. I do want that, I want you to be tortured, I want you to die for what you’ve done to her.

  Him sa
id if I’d let him have myself, him would never have touched her, so that’s what him would say to others if I ever spoke out – him would say that I traded my own daughter.

  So if I speak out, or him speaks out, we will only speak against one another. And where is my daughter in this: she has no words to speak it.

  I have sworn him my silence, so him will let both of us alone, and I never will let her alone again, never when the tall men are here.

  But it weren’t him what had to wash the blood off her. It weren’t him what had to tell her over and over, it were safe to go to sleep. It weren’t him, it won’t ever be him, what has to make her forget it.

  But a trade is a trade. Him dun know anything else, and perhaps I dun either.

  I don’t want to read this, but still my hands turn the pages.

  Him has kept to the trade, came in the boats with the others, but him stayed away from our home.

  Valmarie has given me the forgetting herb. It works. Thankful it works, I am, for Mary were in a terrible way. But she is forgetting.

  I told Valmarie the tincture were for me, something terrible had happened I needed to forget. She could see how pale I were, and I couldn’t hardly speak, though she said she’d keep silent. I were shaking myself. Dun want anyone to know. Dun want him to come back for Mary or for me, not ever again.

  My eyes feel stained, clouded. This crime was never punished. It was buried. I shouldn’t know this. Just one more page and I’ll put this book down. One page. Then I’ll stop.

  I choose the final page:

  K and V have talked Annie round – she were always too easy swayed. She’s got too many folks giving her thoughts she talks up into storms. I could change A’s mind as quick as stick a pin in a cushion if I wanted to.

  She’s been swayed to thinking that us weaving the snake ropes is wrong.

  If it were that bad to be sending the snake ropes off to the main land, for sure the Thrashing House would have called all of us women. The north shore is full of the Glimmeras’ hair, more and more comes, it creeps towards us, for it is full of thems poisons. But we cut it away, and contain it in the snake ropes. What the main land folks do with crates of snake ropes, well, that’s thems choice.

  I’ll put my own hands on a snake rope. Be the first to touch them bare – women have always been gloved. But not all the things we believe are as true as our mothers and grandmothers might have taught us. I’ll prove it to them. I’ll take my gloves off. Wrap a snake rope round myself, on my bare skin, my ankles, my wrists – prove to them the effects aren’t as bad as them’re making out. We’re not spreading poison by weaving the snake ropes and sending them away, we’re containing it.

  The last entry in a dead woman’s diary, where she had something to prove that I don’t understand.

  This book isn’t a story. It doesn’t have a beginning or an ending. It’s not teaching me anything or making me feel I could become someone else. I can’t think about what Beatrice has written in here. But I do have to think about this feeling, curled deep in my gut, that this book wanted to be found. That it needs to be read. I feel sick, knowing that a book can be a place for such painful secrets to be written onto pages, so Beatrice’s mind could be unburdened, and this crime concealed. Closed away inside a cover, placed in a hidden place, forgotten.

  I hear a sigh. Beatrice’s faint breath mists up a windowpane. Her translucent finger writes in the condensation:

  TELL HER

  I say, ‘I can’t tell Mary anything. They’re your words … I shouldn’t have read them.’ But there’s an ache in my chest. When Beatrice was alive, she chose silence over justice. A choice I’ve never had to make. I couldn’t have played my game of three choices for this.

  I lay the diary on Mary’s pillow and whisper, ‘Beatrice, I’ll look for her. Somehow, I’ll find her and bring her home. But your diary …’

  Breathing another fog on a windowpane, I write:

  IT’S MARY’S CHOICE

  A cold wind blows around the room, and stills. For the first time since I’ve been in it, this cottage feels empty.

  Beatrice has gone.

  Just a feeling, but there is something certain. It feels solid and sure, right in the centre of me, that in this empty fireplace soon there will be a burning cracking fire and two pairs of hands, mine and Mary’s, to warm at it. She’ll teach me embroidery, I’ll bake potatoes and thick stews and honey puddings. We’ll never go hungry. We’ll know each other well. Not family, not tied together. Not trapped.

  Choosing this. A choice for both of us, and it’s the only one I want.

  A woman’s shrill wail from outside. I open the curtain and a draught creeps in through the window frame. On the beach, Annie’s three dogs bolt past, turn, sniff the air and tear towards the path that leads up to the cliffs. They’ve caught a scent. There is a crowd of women, one carrying a wide-brimmed hat, following the dogs, slipping, sliding after them through thickening snow.

  Chasing towards something …

  Annie’s wail grows louder, a grief inside it like the sound of high winds. Large flat flakes of snow spiral from the grey and pink sky. I bundle myself into a coat, hide my hair with a scarf and follow the women.

  The women’s footprints lead around the side of the Thrashing House. It stands tall above me, half-white and half-dark. The snow flurries horizontally.

  I stop at the door. The key will still be there in the lock, on the inside. It should be out here, so it can be used.

  The wood of the door creaks. A sound in the lock.

  Clickclickclack of the key.

  I turn the handle and push the door open.

  A creak, a crack from the shadows.

  The ghost of a man steps from behind the door with the key in his hand. He’s wearing a woollen jumper and a thick pair of trousers.

  He says, ‘Tried to get you to see me. But them were louder. Them’d waited far longer.’

  ‘They were old ghosts. The people they wanted me to give their messages to wouldn’t even be alive any more.’

  He nods. ‘Long gone.’

  ‘But you’re from now.’

  He holds out his hand. The Thrashing House key lies across his palm. ‘Dun give this to Mary. Too much for her. Give it to someone older. But you tell Mary, her Mam did her best. Might be right. Might be wrong. But she tried. Me, I were all kinds of useless.’

  I take the key. ‘How were you useless?’

  ‘Talk of trading boys made me think to tell the tall man Barney were hims son. Him’d never known. Thought Mary’d remember what him done to her, if she still had Barney. Dun think that would’ve been good for her. But I dun know. Takes a Mam to know these things.’ He stares down at his feet. He’s wearing only one boot. ‘See – useless.’

  ‘You’re Mary’s father.’

  He nods, his eyes are tired. He glances up at me and back at his feet. ‘Relics.’ He lifts up his bare foot and puts it back down. ‘You tell Mary, I’m sorry about Barney. Thought it were right. Thought she’d be best without him. Over time.’

  I say, ‘I’ll tell her.’

  He nods again. Glances up at me as he pushes the door shut.

  I lock the door and put the key in my pocket.

  I watch from a hill as the women and Annie’s dogs flounder around the graveyard. The gravestones are coated in snow. The bushes are dark and twisted, like black-inked lung diagrams, the coiled branches and sharp twigs thicken up from the ground and disappear under piles of heavy snow.

  It’s silent.

  The dogs have no direction, they scamper, shake snow from their coats. One woman catches a dog, holds its nose to the wide-brimmed black hat. She whistles and it cuts though the air. The other dogs collide with her, and they relearn the scent.

  The dogs sprint towards a dip in the hill under the Thrashing House where a small house is covered in snow. A woman was crying. But I can’t remember her face … fog … the waves on the beach …

  Barks crack through the silence. The dogs
are at the house. Other women from all over the island are closing in. I move closer and watch from behind a small tree, push a branch out of the way and snow drops wet on the shawl that covers my hair. A woman reaches the house and peers through the window. She lets out three shrill whistles. The dogs howl, bark, scratch at the door. Five women reach them, one of them opens the door and the dogs charge in, the women behind them.

  They drag out the shadow man.

  He doesn’t respond to the women’s pushes or shouts. The women form a circle around him and release his arms. He stands up, towers above them. He doesn’t move. A woman reaches in her pocket and pulls on a pair of white gloves, several of the others do the same. One woman carries a large round basket, she walks around the circle. The gloved women reach in, draw out a length of thick rope, and another and another. They wind the ropes around the man. The other women stand back, watching.

  He gazes at the sky. The women tie his arms to his sides, bind his legs together. Still, he stares up at the sky. They wrap him in thick ropes from his neck to his ankles. One of the women, wearing a black shawl, stands in front of him, leaning on her walking stick.

  A shrill whistle, she pushes him backwards with her gloved hands. He falls, slowly. Three gloved women break his fall. Four others move in and pick up his legs. He is laid flat on their hands. The woman in the black shawl leads the way. Seven women carry him, three at each side and one at his head. The others follow behind in single file. They march away through the snow. A silent funeral procession with a living body, and no flowers.

  A low groan, deep underground. The procession of women moves along the centre of the island, over a small hill. One woman splits off in another direction, taking the dogs away.

  The procession is going to pass my parents’ house.

  I wonder what Dad would say if they asked him to bury a living body. Or what he’d say about this snow, still falling so thickly. A silence of snowflakes. I draw the coat tightly around me and follow the procession.

  Thieves. I can’t live with them again. Their stolen food would taste like dust and decay. The clothes I’ve left there would feel like shrouds on my skin, and the sound of Mum hammering would be the sound of bones knocking under coffin lids.