Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  Her expression becomes guarded. I am about to relate a long and winding lie-story about why I must find my brother, but I am exhausted by the thought of it. Instead I say, ‘The boy of that ship robbed me and I wish to speak to him about the matter.’

  The barmaid lets loose a shout of laughter and claps me on the shoulder. ‘Hah! I am always happy to inconvenience a plaguey rogue, although I have no argument with the master of the Seal. He is a man of repute, you know, among certain circles.’ She flashes an impish eye and seems to expect me to understand her meaning. ‘The berth is not close by and it is difficult to tell the way, but if you give me sixpence I will call a lad to lead you.’

  ‘There I am stuck, since I am bereft of funds.’

  ‘I will give you sixpence for that pretty necklace.’

  My hand flies to the little string of pearls at my throat. I had forgotten that I was wearing Eliza’s necklace. I am surprised Madden did not pilfer it, but as it did not come easy I dare say that is why he left it behind.

  ‘These pearls cost fifty pounds!’ I cry. In fact I do not know what Mrs Waterland paid for them, but they are certainly worth a great deal more than sixpence – I would be a fool to give up too cheaply this unexpected resource.

  The barmaid shrugs. ‘Fifty pounds? I think not. They are only seed pearls.’

  Her eye catches the upraised hand of a patron and suddenly she is wading through the crowd to take his order, leaving me marooned. Might I find a pawnbroker who will give me a better price for the necklace and more than cover the loss of the moneybag? But that is an outcome by no means certain and, moreover, I quail at chancing my arm in the alarming streets of this town. I decide to try the barmaid again. I offer the pearls to her for the sum of five pounds. A wretched break in my voice betrays my desperation.

  She enjoys a rueful chuckle at my expense. ‘Sixpence,’ she says, ‘and there’s an end to it.’

  ‘All right then, I will let you have them for half a crown.’

  The barmaid winks. ‘They are worth what they are worth in the circumstances, lovey. I will give you sixpence and you may bestow it upon Billy.’

  She holds the upper hand and I have no other card to play. I sigh my agreement, and with a furtive look at the publican, who is probably her father – the freckles and the powerful forearms betray a family resemblance – the barmaid shows me into a narrow passage punctuated by several doorways – the tavern is a hive of rooms. She brings from her pocket a coin and displays it in the palm of her hand, although in the gloom I cannot make out its authenticity. Since I have no choice, I give over the pearls, expecting to emerge from this exchange the dupe, but she whistles up a lad of perhaps ten years with a frizz of yellow hair and a wiry frame and briefs him from behind her stubby hand.

  *

  I hasten to keep up with the boy and his bobbing torch as we lope through the docklands. In these dark, greasy lanes I fall prey to the terrors of a dozen different possibilities of kidnapping, rape and murder. Bristol is famously thick with slavers and I fear they trade in women as well as Negroes. Surely it was a snare at the Breeze and Feather that I walked into, laid by the chairmen who directed me there and the barmaid … Won’t this boy get a great deal more than sixpence if he brings me to a lair? How long can my poor heart pound at this rate before it bursts with fright? I would turn and run, but we are crossing a long bridge and at my back there comes a handcart, which traps me into moving forward.

  We are free of the bridge now, and the cart has gone. The boy has come to a halt and I look around suspiciously, but no one else appears. It seems this is our destination.

  It is a quay on a narrow, sequestered stretch of waterway where few vessels are moored. I can make out in the distance two or three men in smocks who are coiling ropes. One of them looks our way, but they go on with their work. The boy wordlessly palms the sixpence and I watch him leave with a familiar feeling of abandonment and anxiety.

  There are two small cutters moored upstream on the other side of the quay. I will have to find another bridge in order to reach them.

  As I walk along the quay’s edge I notice that the slop of the water begins to sound more insistent. A boat is approaching.

  Voices carry through the air together with the creaking of ropes and the crump of canvas. Sails show rust-red in the twilight as a vessel glides towards me. The fore-and-aft rig and single mast, and the rakish lines, define her as a cutter. We see many of these economical vessels at Parkgate.

  The long bowsprit draws level, giving me a close view of a side-whiskered seaman on the foredeck unlashing the jib. The depth of tide has brought the cutter nearly flush with the quay. The gunwales are hardly six feet from where I stand. As the cutter slinks by, a lean fifty or sixty feet in length, I note the swivel guns mounted on the deck railings. The boat is so near I can make out the detail of the helmsman’s appearance, his dark hair curled all around, the red-and-white checked shirt under his short jacket, his tarpaulin trousers and low shoes. A rowboat dangles from curved davits beneath the vessel’s high transom stern – and underneath the rowboat the name of the cutter is picked out in white on the black hull.

  It is the Seal.

  ‘Wait!’

  At my cry the helmsman looks up. He sees nothing but a girl diminishing on the quay. He turns away and attends once more to his course.

  I begin to run then, gathering momentum. Without pausing to argue with myself about it, I spring from the very edge of the coping.

  I rise into space, and time slows, allowing me to come at my leisure to the realisation that my jumping stratagem will not succeed a second time – and why should it? To do so would offend the laws of chance. As I float aloft, feet pedalling the air, watching my target of the cutter’s deck slipping away beneath, I recall in fitful flashes a bargeman at Parkgate …

  He misses his footing and pitches seaward.

  The master’s cargo sinks in the beer-house hole.

  A skiff sails away on the horizon.

  I am grieved to find this body of mine plunging towards the sombre surface of the water, but I hold no reproach against myself for trying so very desperately to prevail.

  The House of Kitty Conneely, Connemara

  April, 1766

  I have lost sight of the child, Nora, but do not fret. Since I turned the stones I sense their mighty influence within me and I do not doubt I have the strength in it, the ferocity of will, in fact, to bring her back now before my days on earth pass for ever. My face I have turned to the past, friend. That is where our girl was left – I will even go so far as to say that the past is where she has been imprisoned. But the turn of the stones has opened that portal. All kinds of scenes are floating towards me now.

  I can see Josey O’Halloran as large as life saluting into the house of the Mulkerrins. And the coat being taken off and himself being offered the chair. And your brother Colman watching with arms folded high on the chest in that spurning way of his, and a curdled face on him. They brought in the writing apparatus then, didn’t they? And Josey drew in a mighty shuddering breath as though the Holy Ghost itself had inspired him and next thing he had a sentence sprinting across the paper like a hound after a hare. There was not a hint of hesitation in it. A tremendous hush fell on the crowd while Josey worked the pen. And yourself could not take your eyes off him. Very moonstruck by him you were then and always.

  And do you recall Martin Lee, God rest his soul? You can’t imagine the number of times I have gone over that night when he came to your house. Don’t I wish we had listened to him. But he was as old as a field and well known for rambling talk that did not add up to much. And strong was his inclination for drink. Sure, as soon as he stopped in that night he asked if there was a drop in the place at all. You were bound to bring out the jar and invite him to pull into the fire, but you were not glad about it. You thought Martin took advantage of Josey’s generosity. It means the food and drink out of your own mouth, you would say to Josey. But Josey used to say he wouldn’t recogni
se himself if he refused a guest.

  I can see Josey pressing Martin to take a drop and Martin saying, I will do the same so, Josey, right. He said that his own jar had been taken and he knew who was to blame for that. It was the good people up to their mischief. It’s well known, he said, that they like a drop. They come down from Sligo, so they do, and steal my drink. People say you see them strolling around as if they owned the place.

  And then he warned us not to stay at home on the following day. Everyone was going to the saint’s island to pray at the well, which had begun to flow for the first time since ages past.

  Nor will I forget this: as you were seeing me out that night, we noticed a queer little breeze swirl under the covering of the doorway and nudge it a little. A thickening of the air like that was supposed to be a sign. It meant that the other crowd was near at hand. We ought to have stayed out of their way, Nora. We ought to have gone to the saint’s island.

  PART TWO

  Sedge Court, Cheshire

  February, 1758

  I think of Mrs Waterland as a fateful figure. In fact the idea of fate weighs on me. You must think me quite a blasphemer, but when I compare the powers of our Christian God to those of the Fates, I find him less compelling. Is he capable of putting events into play or of altering their course? It seems to me that he only watches, and judges, and punishes. It is fate that makes things happen. Certainly it seems to have played a primary role in the story of the Waterlands – the family that reared me. I am not the only one to believe that.

  Our scullery maid Abby Jenkins says that the Waterlands are so thwarted you would nearly think that a binding had been laid on them, although that is the kind of thing she is prone to say, since she is from Wales and they are known to be fanciful, the Welsh. You should have seen Abby when she first arrived at Sedge Court off the ferry from Flint. Her raven hair was wild and loose in the Welsh style and she wore a scarlet cloak and a round black hat like a man’s. Ten days passed before our housekeeper, Mrs Edmunds, could get her to lay that hat aside.

  I wish I knew whether there was a difference between fate and a random concatenation of circumstances. And who is it that drives us forward? I should like to believe that we ourselves, not God, nor the Fates, have the capacity to influence the actions of our lives, but I do not know how to explain persistent bad luck. For instance, many contrary events have occurred at Sedge Court and you could even say they had produced a pattern of misfortune – but is it possible to attribute them, as Abby insists, to an impost made by an unknown force upon the family?

  There was a heavy atmosphere in the house during the winter that Abby came into service, which may have set the tone of her thinking. It was an atmosphere that pressed on the nerves of everyone except Mrs Waterland, whose sangfroid was unalterable in those days. Sedge Court has its share of cooped-up, squally temperaments. The master is a snappish man, who is never easy in the house, and Downes, it goes without saying, is always as cross as a sack of cats. But everyone was jumpy that winter, even Mrs Edmunds. It was an action of hers that causes a particular day from that time, late in February, I recollect, to linger in my memory.

  As I came into the servants’ hall in the morning, bent on an errand for the mistress, Mrs Edmunds happened to be lugging a crock of milk from the still-room. At the same moment I glimpsed the kitchen cat, which was black and panicky, make a late decision to cut across her path. Our housekeeper is usually as unflappable as a fire shovel, but when the cat shot in error under her petticoat, she gave a shriek and let loose the crock of milk. The crock seemed to hang in space for a very long time before plummeting to its doom on the flagstones. The kitchen rang with a stunned silence.

  Mrs Edmunds cried, ‘In God’s name how did that happen?’ as if it had taken a supernatural force to wrench the crock from her grip.

  We stared in disbelief at the shards and spillage on the floor. In the background a joint at roast on the spit faintly seethed. Then a gob of fat fell into the dripping pan. I can still hear its hiss of disapproval. Mr Otty, who is otherwise the pattern of affability, cuffed Rorke’s ear and bellowed, ‘What in blazes are you gaping at?’ and Hester Hart burst untypically into tears. The cat, too, was confounded and dared not take advantage of the slowly dilating puddle of milk. Evidently overcome by the tension in the kitchen, she slunk into the scullery.

  I think we were all of one mind about the incident: it was an affront to the accustomed order and somehow even ominous. Now that I am at a distance from the event, it is clear to me that my life was never the same afterwards. I did not absolutely understand at the time – I was not yet fourteen years old – that my position at Sedge Court was not entirely secure, but I believe I sensed even then that the long fuse of childhood was burning down to its annihilation.

  I came out on to the driveway on that February morning in a state of sudden anxiousness, wondering why everyone was so on edge, and I recall looking back at the house a little fearfully, like someone fleeing a building rigged with gunpowder. Needless to say, Sedge Court simply sat there indifferent to my imaginings, calmly regarding its reflection in the lake. The house is built from the soft red sandstone that abounds in that part of the country, and if not as tremendous as Lady Broome’s mansion, Weever Hall, it is certainly substantial enough with its three storeys, a courtyard and many offices out the back. I will say, though, that the house always struck me from the outside as looking surprisingly small or, rather, smaller than my experience of it. The interior, on the other hand, seemed to go on for ever in order to accommodate within, I supposed, the ballooning cargo of our lives and their accompanying emotions. I once relayed that observation to our governess, my dear Miss Broadbent, and she remarked in her quietly astute way that I had too much the sensation of things that are not there. There is a lake on the right-hand side of the drive as you look towards the gates. Well, Mrs Waterland called it a lake, but actually it is an old marl pit, one of the many meres and sloughs of our perforated countryside. We are very watery in our offshoot of Cheshire, you know. Waves lap at us continuously from the Dee in the west to the mighty Mersey at our backs in the east. From the north, the Irish Sea delivers any amount of storms and wrecks.

  It was a chilly day and as I walked along I had the sense of being squeezed between petered-out winter and locked-up spring. Save for their trunks, which were smothered by dark creepers, the oaks and alders were bare – you could see the blotches of birds’ nests high in their branches. Last year’s grasses and brambles lay withered at the feet of leggy hedgerows and the daffodils seemed to be stuck, their points hardly showing above the ground. The only yellow in the world belonged to the French shoes that I was wearing. They had formerly belonged to Eliza. Their supple leather the colour of butter, their mannerly heels and winking buckles made me feel puffed up and important.

  I walked westwards until I came to the intersection of Wood Lane, where the rolling fields decline towards the shore a quarter of a mile away. From that vantage point I could see the vague outlines of several tall-masted ships congregating at anchor downstream on the lacklustre waters of the Dee. Miss Broadbent once told me that our ancestors worshipped the rivers of this land – but if the Dee is a god, then it must have been offended in some way, because it shrinks from us and prevents us from flourishing.

  The hush of the morning was disturbed by a gang of big black-backed gulls. They came swaggering up from the estuary, elbowing finches and warblers out of the way, and wheeled low over my head, screeching their usual prophecy of bad weather. The sky, however, looked quite harmless except for a dirty cloud loafing above the Welsh hills on the far side of the river. Then I remarked the source of the gulls’ hubbub. There were several buzzards approaching from the north. They sidled up to the field on the corner of the lane, where drovers sometimes park their animals before taking them to the market at Great Neston, and hovered in a sinister manner. I parted the branches of the hedge to see what had attracted them and discovered a sheep felled by the burden of itself. It
s wool had become waterlogged for lack of grease and the poor thing had keeled over in the mud.

  The remainder of the daggle-tailed flock lurked uselessly in a corner of the field, their heads turned away as if embarrassed by their fellow’s plight, chagrin their only weapon against the buzzards. I guessed that the drover was probably taking his ease in the beer-house at Parkgate. The sheep exuded helplessness. I was sorely vexed at it for slumping there under its fatally heavy fleece, which meant I must ruin my shoes in order to set it to rights, if that were even possible. At that moment a sparrowhawk fluttered on to a nearby sycamore branch and perched quietly, waiting, and I thought, well, I must try.

  I removed my shoes and stockings, hitched up my skirts and squelched across sloppy grass pockmarked with the imprints of hoofs. As I approached the inert animal, a foul miasma climbed out of the wool and rose to welcome me odiously to its host’s death – for I saw as I came closer that I was too late to be of any assistance. Froth was bubbling at the corner of the black mouth and the bleary eye oozed dark liquid. Before my gaze the creature’s life leaked away and the flank fell still beneath the dun-coloured coat. The eye filmed, the lower lip subsided into an awful grimace that exposed brown teeth. I shouted at the buzzards, waggling my arms at them like a bugbear, but they continued lazily to circle the field, laughing under their dark-fringed wings, I imagined, at my futility.

  I hastened downhill towards Parkgate and swung past the master’s storehouse and granary. The pens behind the beerhouse were empty. They usually heave with cattle swum ashore from the Irish boats, but there had been no landings for nearly a fortnight. The conditions were still light, I recall. The beer-house’s sign barely creaked and a backlog of passengers was hanging around outside the booking office. Parkgate is the terminal for traffic to Dublin and people are always twiddling their thumbs there, awaiting the caprice of the winds. The beer-house stands hard against the shore on a projection. The sight of it at full tide looking like a ship on the waves always makes my heart swell. I get the impression that it is trying to launch itself seaward, in spite of its landlubberly nature, as if yearning to be other than what it is.