The Brides of Rollrock Island

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘What were you doing on a beach – pacing up and down and hoping? You were supposed to be selling a house, crating up two chairs, not wandering about the island looking for trouble!’ I could see how she would have scolded our children, the thin line of her lips.

  ‘I had done all I could do that day. I had had supper with Shy Tyler and Fam – his wife, their little boy …’ My voice faded on the disapproving silence.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘You are here to tell me that you don’t want to marry me any more.’ She raised a hand and dropped it, almost with a slap, to her thigh.

  ‘I wish I could marry you,’ I said sincerely, ‘to avoid you the embarrassment—’

  ‘I wish you could, too, for better reasons than that.’ Her voice was low and harsh. ‘I wish you could marry me out of love for me, love that you said you felt, and that was firmly enough set before you stepped aboard that boat to Rollrock. You are not the man I thought you, if you can be pushed so easily from the path we had laid out for ourselves.’

  ‘I am not the man I even thought me,’ I said. ‘What can I say? I am bewitched.’ I saw it cleanly, truly, then, for a moment: Misskaella’s work, Misskaella’s fault.

  ‘You are stupid,’ she hissed, ‘to have let yourself be enchanted. To have put yourself in the way of it. Two chairs, you told me. It will be so nice for us to have them, side by side, Mam’s and Dad’s. While all the time, I should not be surprised—’

  I had crossed the room to her while she spoke. ‘Kitty, it was not like that! There was no forethought, no scheming against you, I promise! I am as surprised as you!’ Though I should not be, I realized. Why else would Rollrock be so afraid of that witch, if not because she could snare us like this, whenever she chose?

  Kitty’s eyes were dead; her lips pressed together. The freckles seemed to hover just in front of her face like a cloud of russet insects. ‘Yet you emerge from your surprise with a bewitching woman, and an island full of men clapping you on the back. While I come from my surprise with what? A crowd of people to explain to, a meal to pay for – a cake, for goodness’ sake! And the knowledge that I’ve been made a fool of, that my sweetheart all these years was never mine. A mermaid had only to crook her finger at him, and he’d be gone.’

  ‘I swear, Kitty, I never wished for this! I never had such thoughts in my head!’

  ‘Oh, this is not a matter of heads, Dominic,’ she said with something of a laugh. ‘Of reason, or logic. This is not civilized. This is barely human!’

  Her tears surprised her, and for a moment her rage and horror fell away and her face held only pure distress. In that moment I could imagine loving her again, and I regretted that I could not use the power I had, to take her in my arms and set my affairs to rights once more. I had tight hold of the sea-penny Neme had given me, in my coat pocket; I squeezed it as if I wished to crumble it to dust there, and my attachment to Neme with it. At the same time I wished I could wring magical properties out of it, travel upon it as they say a witch can sail upon a nutshell if she chooses, out of this suffocating room and across to Rollrock where I belonged. The thing was done; I had betrayed Kitty and confessed to it; now I only wanted to be gone.

  She fought to contain her tears. Another fell, and she all but smacked it away from her cheek.

  ‘I won’t ask you to forgive me,’ I said.

  ‘Good!’ She flashed me a hot glance. ‘Because I won’t, ever. All the people I have to face and tell! Not to mention what you have done to me!’ And she knocked at her chest with a fist, as if trying to wake a heart stopped within.

  ‘All I can say is, I am sorry this has happened to us.’

  A silence fell in her struggling breathing. What had I said? She raised her eyes to me and they were as dry as if they had never wept, and never would again, even as her cheek carried the sheen of the tear she had struck away.

  ‘Happened to us, Dominic?’ Her voice was deep with scorn. ‘Let there be no mistake about this, Dominic: nothing happened to us. You did this thing, to me. You chose that creature above me; you left me embarrassed in this town on the very eve of our betrothal celebration. Don’t tell yourself it happened; don’t console yourself that way.’

  She glared up at me. There was no point my protesting, that indeed this had happened to me, had been done to me, as I was just beginning to see. On Rollrock, in Neme’s arms, I had thought myself to be waking from a state of confusion, my engagement to Kitty being but one aspect of my uncertainty; I had seen my destiny laid out before me strange but clear, frightening but full of beauty. I did not want to let go of that revelation in favour of this new one, of myself as Misskaella’s puppet.

  ‘Do you know?’ Kitty’s eyes glittered.

  I bowed my head to receive whatever blow she would next deliver on me.

  ‘I am glad you found her in time. I’m relieved that you showed me you are this sort of man, before I was locked to you forever in marriage. These years we were together I was well fooled, Dominic. Perhaps I wanted so strongly for you to be what you could never be – honourable, you know, and loyal, and with some strength of mind, some integrity – that I missed all kinds of tiny clues that I should have noticed, glances at this woman or that, which I thought were quite innocent, words you said that I might have read another way.’

  She paused as if to let me protest again, to deny it. But she was so entirely mistaken, and so energetic in putting together her mistaken view, and so trapped – as I had been – in Cordlin life and the Cordlin mind, that I could not see where I should begin in countering her. Besides, I did not want to; I had done what I had done. I deserved every chastisement she heaped on my head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she went on. ‘Everything’s clear now, and I see you for the weakling you are and the traitor, and the toyer with my affections. You can go,’ she said, rising. ‘And I will thank you never to approach me again, or any friend of mine or member of my family.’

  She left the parlour and stood aside from the doorway to let me pass out into the hall. Her face was chalk, her body iron; the slippers she wore had a rose embroidered on each toe, and the dressing-gown an arabesque on each lapel, but neither detail at all softened this general impression.

  I paused before her, looked her in the face. She held her gaze aside from me as long as she could, then flicked me a glance. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you here in my house.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have hurt you, Kitty.’

  ‘Well, that is very gentlemanly of you, I’m sure.’ Her voice was loud in my ear as I turned aside from her scorn. ‘But I am still hurt, and I will stay hurt longer than you will stay sorry, I’m sure. Go and find your consolation in that monster’s arms. Be sorry there. The spectacle of your sorrow makes me sick.’

  She might as well have spat on me. She brushed past me and pulled open the door. The front porch was electric-lit too; I had often rung the bell and stood there in that golden glow, waiting for the family to admit and welcome me, looking forward to the sight of Kitty dressed for dancing, hurrying down the stairs.

  I stepped out; I turned in time to see the door close with quiet finality on me. She left the light on until I closed the gate, perhaps to make the point that she still held to a system of civilized manners, however far I had left it behind.

  I walked away dazed. I took out the sea-penny and pressed it to my lips, tried to drink up some sea-scent from it, but it smelt only of my nervous sweat. I put it back in my pocket and walked on.

  I had left turmoil behind me in that house. I had never made myself so unwelcome in a place, and I stung with all the things that Kitty had said. I was shaken, unable to tell which of her words were true and which were only her bitterness colouring her view of me. I felt I hardly knew myself. Perhaps I had never known myself very well. Could I really be so evil, and have remained ignorant of it?

  I grasped after the thought of Neme for some consolation, but she scarcely seemed real; Kitty was so hard and bright and vituperative in my mind, her voice clawin
g away my confidence in myself, that I could not think past her to gentle Neme, to the moment Neme had handed me the sea-penny on the beach, to the nights Neme and I had had together. A mermaid, Kitty had called her, and a monster; how could I want to be married to a monster?

  But Neme was no such thing. She was my Neme, spelled to me as I was to her, awaiting me on Rollrock, in that humble, isolated, sparse-furnished home where I belonged. She was all I had, and all I needed. I walked through Cordlin to my aunt’s house, where tomorrow, before I left, I would deliver the same news as I had just imparted. As I walked I breathed out Kitty, and Cordlin, and the mainland fuss and frippery I had furnished my life with, and I breathed in the simplicity I was returning to, the cold wind straight off the sea, the smell of the spirit-lamps, the tang of wood-smoke – and, at last, the damp-seaweed smell of Neme’s hair. I closed my eyes and buried my face in it; I felt her slim arms around me, heard her low voice, so absent of hatred and accusation. Find your consolation in that monster’s arms, Kitty had said. But it was not consolation I was after, it was truth, the truth of myself, a man who did not pretend and strive after this fine house or this rare object or that impressive friend; a man who was complete, and steady in himself, and clear as to what he was, however shameful or regrettable that might be.

  That is what I told myself, walking closed-eyed through the Cordlin night, running my thumb-tip over the ridges of the sea-penny, recalling to my lips the touch of Neme’s warm, silken skin.

  MAM PACED BACK and forth, the blanket dragging behind her like turf pulled free of the ground and fashioned into a rough cloak. From one window, she went past the closed front door to the other. I did not try to hear words in what she muttered, in her odd bits of song, a whine here, a whisper there. They made as much sense as the swish and scratch of the blanket, or the hiss of her foot soles on the grey boards.

  She paused by one of the windows, fenced off from me by the chair-backs, a seaweedy hummock of shoulders and then her head against the glary cloud light, her hair pushed and pulled a little, some strands waving in the wind of her warmth. She applied herself to the view and was silent, and I stood in the hallway, listening to her upsetness.

  I knew better than to ask her what was the matter. Often enough she had told me in the past: I come from the sea, and I miss the sea. How could she miss the sea? I would wonder. It was right there at the bottom of the town, for anyone to visit! I would suggest, when I was smaller, Shall I take you down to the beach, Mam? It’s not far. We could bring your blanket and freshen it up in the water. I had suggested this even in November sometimes, with snow drifting down outside. No, my darling, she would say. Thank you, my darling, but no. There is nothing you can do. And I had heard the same from many other lads, that their mam was low, today or this week or these last several months, and whatever they tried they could not raise her. They had sat her in the sun, brought her any kitten or duckling they could find, walked her on the shore up and down, and nothing would console her.

  I went to Mam, stood at the sill as if I too were interested in the day outside. The same lanes as ever slanted away, the one up, the one down. The same front steps shone whitewashed like lamps along the lane. The same tedious cat sat in Trumbells’ window, now blinking out at us, now dozing. And through the gaps and beyond some of the roofs, the sea rode to the horizon, dark as charcoal, flat as slate, with neither sail nor dinghy nor dragon to relieve its emptiness.

  She turned and turned her silver wedding ring; sometimes she would do this till the flesh reddened around it. She pressed and turned, as if working it free took quite some effort, though the ring always slid loose between her knuckle and finger-joint.

  I laid my hand on her darker one. She looked down from the view.

  ‘What is it, Daniel?’

  I took her hands one from the other. I turned to the window again, and brought her ring hand over my shoulder and down to my chest. There I held it and took from her the task of turning the warm silver, moving it much more gently upon her finger than she had been doing.

  She laughed very softly, deep in her throat. ‘Sweetest boy.’ She kissed the top of my head and then laid her other hand there. And so we stood, she cloaked with the blanket and me wearing her like a cloak, turning the ring on her finger while outside the steps glowed and the cat dozed and the sea sat flat behind it all, nothing of anything changing.

  * * *

  First the mainland was a black fingernail’s-edge between the pale sea and the pale sky. I pulled Dad’s sleeve as he talked to Mister Fisher, who was crossing the Strait to buy some tins and vegetables for the store.

  ‘There it is, yes,’ Dad said to me, and gazed at it to satisfy me.

  ‘Don’t you be fooled, young Daniel,’ Fisher said around Dad’s front. ‘It may look like the land of promise, but Rollrock’s best, home is best.’

  Dad squeezed my shoulder, invisibly to Fisher. Did he mean me to listen carefully to Fisher, or to ignore him and flee to mainland as soon as I ever could?

  We stood at the rail in the biting autumn wind. Mam had combed me with hair-polish this morning; I had watched in the mirror as she made two slick curves of my hair, either side of a raw white parting. My whole head had felt scraped and cold, and now the wind had chilled my scalp and ears to a numb helmet.

  Slowly the land rose and unrolled out of the horizon: two rounded hills with others either side like attendants. The sea slopped and danced below us. The sky blued up stronger as the sun ascended, and shapes emerged on the land, forested parts and fields. Roofs and roads glinted. Then the black cliffs lifted and obscured all this awhile, before splitting apart head from head to show it all again, closer and more dazzling between them.

  Nothing, I thought, could be more exciting than chugging between the Heads. Cordlin Harbour spread out wide either side, serene and glossy after the tumbled sea, after the beating of the waves at the cliffs’ feet. Rank after rank of boats was moored alongside the piers, and others lay looser about the more open water, each ketch and trawler kissing its morning reflection, each little pleasure-boat. Cordlin Town lay thick around the harbour and on the nearest slopes, thinned away higher up the hills to single cottages and barns like drops of milk around porridge in a bowl. Closer windows winked at us and the great granaries and woolstores stood with their barred windows and red-and-white brickwork, and I saw for the first time how humble my home island was, beside this centre of wealth and commerce.

  ‘We will catch the bus,’ said Dad to me. ‘It goes right from the pier. See it there?’

  ‘So we’ll not see this town, so much?’ I said. It seemed so rich in sights, with its wall of warehouses along the front, its several steeples beyond and its flagged castle at the top. Shining trucks and motors glided along by the water.

  ‘Can you not let the lad at the fleshpots of Cordlin Harbour, Mallett?’ laughed Fisher. ‘Even to the extent of a raspberry lollipop at Missus Hedly’s shop?’

  ‘We’ve business.’ My dad shook his head and smiled. ‘Knocknee Market will have to be excitement enough for the boy.’

  All the jollity fell from Mister Fisher’s face. ‘Of course. You’re not here for treats and dilly-dallying, are you?’ He gave me a guarded look and Dad a worried one. ‘Best of luck with that, Dominic.’

  And when the boat was tied up by the pier, among the shuffle of passengers towards the gangplank Fisher let his hand fall heavily to my shoulder, as if he were seeing us off to a funeral, or to a surgeon whose treatment it was doubtful we would survive.

  The bus was a marvellous shining thing, painted cream and green, a crest on the side of it and a number-plate behind. People, Cordlin people, people who rode buses every day, sat in it waiting for Dad – and me holding fast to Dad’s hand – to climb on and pay our fares, and sit in the glossy red seats.

  The trip to Knocknee was all new sights and events, one piled on the next so that my telling of them, which at first I tried to rehearse to Mam in my head, fast became garbled and then fell to silen
ce. I hung onto the windowsill, grateful that Dad looked over me, and would see the important things, would collect any details that I might miss. Presently the overwhelming town with its too-many faces, its too-many curtains and gates and grand trees and window boxes, sank away and we were flying among fields, and this I could follow more easily, the fields in their emptiness, and the hills in their billowing roundness being much like the sea, which I was well used to gazing on.

  The engine must have been right below our seat, it shook our bottoms so. I turned to Dad: ‘Such a noisy way to get about.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘Noisier than a boat, and certainly noisier than a man’s own legs. But fast,’ he added. ‘And fast is what we’re wanting, to reach inland and back in a day.’

  Once we were at Knocknee – which was less grand than Cordlin, but busy still with the market day, and just as overwhelming to a Rollrock lad – my dad went through the crowd, asking this person and that a question. I could never quite hear what he said, but it made their eyes slide aside, their heads shake and their bodies turn away. I ran about after him, and the running, and the noticing of everything – dogs, red hairs and red faces, improbable piles of vegetables, excessive rows of meat butchered and hung – eventually tired me, and chilled me to shivering. Dad put me on a bench against a wall of the market square that was lit with the weak autumn sun. ‘Wait here while I search on, Daniel; I’ll be back to fetch you when I’ve had some luck.’

  Before long someone else was put there, at the other end of the bench, someone in skirts, and with a great deal more hair than I had. I had got my breath by then, and was beginning to thaw out in the sunshine. When we had caught each other glancing several times, ‘I know what you are,’ I said to her.

  She stopped swinging her legs. She looked at me and narrowed her eyes, which were pale like a dad’s. ‘Well, what?’