Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  I remember checking into my bungalow. The décor was utilitarian, the other women uninteresting. The first two days of my holiday were spent taking part in macramé and yoga workshops. It didn’t occur to me to not attend the meditation sessions or the knitting circles, even though I hated them and still do now. I didn’t want to draw attention to my differences by refusing. The truth is, I’ve always imagined myself to be less of a woman for not liking such things, and I’ve never wanted anyone else to find out.

  This is a strange thing to admit. I’ve been denying it to myself for years, but I’m just not fond of the company of women. Ironic, I know. When I was younger I thought maybe I hadn’t met any of the right sort of women yet, and that one day I would find a whole pack of them, just like me. I hoped they would turn up on Skein Island. But now, after years of waiting, I’ve begun to accept that all women are the same. I include myself. Didn’t I simply go along with the herd? Didn’t I make the choices that were easiest for me? When did I ever stand up and say, actually I don’t give a flying fuck about yoga or manicures? I only ever thought it. There must be millions of us thinking it. But we never act on it, do we? We never take over the magazines or shoot the fashion designers. We’re all too goddamn good for an actual war.

  I’ve only ever met one woman who took on the world, and that was Amelia Worthington.

  I met her on my third night on the island, and was enthralled by her. We all were. By sheer luck I’d been given the seat next to her at dinner in the white house. She was elegant and loquacious, charming enough to accept my gushing speeches of adoration with good grace. At the end of the meal she offered to give me a personal tour of the house, and took me around the upper floor, where the artefacts were kept. It was an exhibition of pieces she had rescued from around the world: Egypt, Greece, Turkey. ‘Rescued’ was the term she chose to describe them. Others were not so keen on her euphemism. When I became her personal assistant, just two days later, the first task she allocated to me was the answering of letters from collectors and curators, often demanding that she release details of her hoard and return those that she had stolen. I responded politely. It was never going to happen, of course; she had so many powerful admirers, celebrities and politicians who kept her safe. It was a protected, cosseted life by then, but she had earned it. At least, that was what I thought back then. I saw her as a woman who stood alone, fighting the establishment, carving out a haven for all women. I didn’t find out the truth until six months later.

  So I took the job under the illusion that I’d be doing some real good, I suppose. But it was more than that. A seduction took place. Amelia told me that she needed me, that nobody else could do the job, and I wanted so badly to believe her. Years later, towards the end, I asked her what she had seen in me that hadn’t been present in all the other women who stayed on Skein Island. She said, ‘Nothing, my dear. I picked you at random.’ That’s a difficult thing to accept. Like winning the lottery or surviving a concentration camp, it’s these things that happen out of the blue, without any logical explanation, that never make sense to us, that puzzle us to the end. The guilt of such luck is enormous. But Amelia always liked to tell stories, right until the very end, so I like to imagine that just wasn’t true. Maybe she said it just to shut me up, so she could get on with her nap. I wouldn’t put it past her. No, she must have seen something special in me. My tenacity, my ability to do the worst jobs, make the tough decisions. My gullibility.

  That first time, when she took me down into the basement and introduced me to the statue, I didn’t dare to question her story. I never have. Of course, the business was up and running by then, and my role within it was laid out for me. I had to change the barrels once a day. That was my first duty. They had become too heavy for Amelia.

  ‘Her essence leeches into the water, dear,’ said Amelia, over consommé later that evening. At that point I had already moved into the white house and had become used to listening to her stories every day, so this seemed no different to me. She often talked of her travels, her lost loves, and her brushes with death in the same dreamy, half-remembered tone. ‘It makes the liquid from the spring potent with possibilities. We fill the barrels, then ship them out to a farm in Barnstaple. They prepare it for sale, with love and care…’ She made it sound like a rural smallholding, with rustic charm. Five years passed before she entrusted the accounts to me and I discovered the scale of the operation. Her personal fortune, inherited from her father, had dried up decades before, but the spring had made her a millionaire anew, keeping hundreds of people in jobs, allowing the island to run comfortably. Clubs, bars and pubs all over the country bought that liquid, paying a fortune for the smallest of bottles.

  ‘It brings happiness to all men,’ Amelia told me, in between mouthfuls of consommé. ‘They get a little taste of Moira, and she shows them what they could have been, in another era. Those dreams only last for a few minutes, but they will keep coming back for more.’

  I asked her how much these drinking establishments charged for the pleasure, and she replied, ‘Oh, my, they don’t charge money for it,’ as if that would have cheapened the transaction. To this day, I still haven’t found out what happens. To be honest, I don’t think Amelia ever knew either. She wasn’t particularly interested in how the liquid was used. It was always the declarations that held her attention.

  She kept reading them to the monster until her voice gave out and she could no longer make it down the basement steps. I think it had been the most pleasurable aspect of her old age, reading aloud the words of so many women, like eavesdropping on thousands of private conversations. I didn’t understand it. The monster had to be fed, but I always felt it was a betrayal of the visiting women. A necessary one, but still a betrayal.

  ‘I caught Moira with the stories of my life, and now I tell her the stories of other lives,’ Amelia would say to me. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

  I’ve never found the monster beautiful. She is a statue: cold, sharp, carved, no softness in her. Every time I look at her, her eyes seem different, but the expression remains serene. She wants to be free, I think. Maybe she’s had enough of the stories of women, and she wants to put them back in their place, as prizes or distractions in the kind of stories she used to create. But I get the feeling she’d like to do something personal to me, something awful.

  I think she wants to kill me.

  I think she had a better relationship with Amelia. Perhaps she admired her cunning, her skill in trapping. Amelia was an adventuress, with a thousand stories to share. I’m just an administrator with one sad tale to tell. More of a whine, really, about how I gave up everything for someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

  In the minutes before she died, Amelia knew exactly what was happening to her. The pneumonia had grabbed her hard, squeezed her dry, punched her beyond breathless. It took her an age to wheeze out that she wanted to be taken downstairs one last time. I helped her. She was so small and frail by then that I thought it would be easy, but she leaned against me with all the weight of death in her. As we struggled down the stairs I remember thinking that I would never be able to get her back up again, not without help. I put her in the wicker chair next to the monster, and I left them alone. I left the door ajar, and didn’t go back up the stairs. I waited without much patience, even tried to listen in for a while, but I couldn’t hear a word.

  When I came back in Amelia was dead, and Moira was motionless. Of course she was motionless. But if I had ever expected her to move, it was then. Just to look at me, to acknowledge the moment, the realisation that we were now stuck together for good.

  Skein Island had become our mutual prison.

  Of course, nothing melodramatic happened. An old lady had died of natural causes, that was all, and I dealt with the paperwork, because that was my role. I read one declaration to Moira every day, and changed the barrel, and dispatched it to the farm to be bottled. I kept everything going, just as it was.

  Lately, I find myself accepting the fact th
at I won’t change anything now. It was never my job to be a bringer of change, I think. Maybe women are born into roles, too. But still, I did one revolutionary thing in my lifetime. I had a daughter of my own. I never realised it before, but it occurs to me now that she might reach a point in her own life when she begins to feel unappreciated, and to wonder why that is. I have her address. Such things are easy to find on the internet nowadays – electoral rolls and so on. I might write to her, give her a mystery to solve, a quest on which to embark. If her life is boring, she’ll grab that quest and let it bring her here.

  If she comes, I’ll be able to explain myself to her. I think I might manage that, if I work it out in my head beforehand. I suppose that’s what this declaration is, really. Practice at explanation.

  I’d love to be able to see an understanding of my predicament dawning in another human being’s eyes. Maybe, if she can grasp it, it will start a new chapter in my story, and in her own. Perhaps I could even return to Wootton Bassett, if she will take my place, just for a few days. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading declarations, it’s that every woman deserves at least a few chapters of her own in the story of her life.

  I put down the paper on the floor beside the sofa, and settle myself for sleep. It’s easy to relax into the pillow, to feel lethargy seep into my arms and legs, to snuggle into the warmth of the sleeping bag.

  I know them now: Vanessa, Amelia, Moira, Skein Island. I understand that Moira makes men strive to go forth, to fulfil their destinies, while women go round in circles. They return to what they understand, and surround themselves with the familiar, even if those familiar people and places hold terrible memories for them. They hold close the things that they detest.

  And now I hold the thought of Moira close. I will find her, and bring her back, so that I don’t have to be anyone’s victim.

  But, just like all the best heroes, I can’t undertake this adventure alone. I’m going to need help.

  I know exactly who to ask.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Being a hero was not as easy as it sounded.

  David had only one place to look for the man who had violated his wife, and that was the library car park. But hiding in the bushes for three hours a night was not an option; the police regularly patrolled the spot now. And he was fairly certain he wasn’t dealing with a stupid adversary, so why would the man turn up here anyway? He had considered going to Sam, asking her to somehow lower the police presence, but the pain of Marianne’s departure was too acute. He couldn’t picture himself on Sam’s doorstep, begging for entry, with things leading in a direction he was not ready to revisit. So he kept his distance from both her house and the library, and as a consequence had nowhere to go and nothing to do except despise his own uselessness.

  But then, one cold, dark January night, there was a knock on his front door, and time started to move forward again.

  Arnie and Geoff stood there, holding each other upright, trying not to look drunk, and failing. David checked his watch. 11:48 p.m.

  ‘Cornerhouse just kicked out, has it?’

  ‘We heard a little birdie saying my daughter’s pissed off again.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I’ve got a library card,’ said Geoff, in a very loud voice, standing to attention.

  ‘Is it true?’ said Arnie.

  An upstairs light in a house across the street winked on.

  David said, ‘You’d better come in.’

  Arnie and Geoff wobbled into the living room, not taking off their shoes and coats, and David shut the door and followed them. They sat side by side on the sofa, hands in their laps, attention fixed on the television screen and the end of the film David had been watching.

  ‘Rocky,’ said Geoff. ‘Brilliant.’

  Sylvester Stallone was sweaty, desperate, having his eye cut so he could continue to see the killer punches coming. David took the remote from the arm of the chair and switched it to mute. ‘Marianne’s gone back to the island,’ he said. ‘She’ll probably write to you, once she’s ready.’

  ‘I’m not reading any letters from that place,’ said Arnie. He had a patchy grey beard that made him look even more unkempt than usual, and the smell of beer wafted out from him in waves. ‘Listen, come to the pub with us.’

  ‘It’s closed.’

  ‘Not now, boy.’ Arnie shook his head at Geoff, who tittered. They had become a circus double-act, stuck together, gurning at each other for their own amusement.

  ‘Listen,’ said David, ‘it’s really late—’

  ‘The way I see it,’ Arnie said, ‘that bastard hurt Marianne, am I right? He hurt my daughter. I’ll be honest, I might not have cared about it much five or six years ago. All I cared about was the cubes. I’ve mowed Mags’s lawn, if you get my drift, every Saturday for the past decade because of losing on the cubes. But I don’t owe her any more favours now and I don’t need the cubes any more. I used to need them to know stuff, but now it comes to me anyway.’

  David sat down in the armchair. Rocky had just lost the match and was calling for Adrian, his pulped wreck of a mouth hanging open. ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Other people. I’d drink the medicine down, and then I’d go in the back room and see other people living their lives. Marianne, in her library. Vanessa reading, in the darkness, always reading. Like mother like daughter. And now I see it in my dreams, at night. I saw what happened to her. I saw that man come into the library. I know his face. I know how to get him. Into cameras, isn’t he?’

  ‘Once, with the cubes, I was watching a big fight,’ said Geoff, his eyes still fixed on the screen. The credits were rolling. ‘There was one in red trunks and one in blue, and I was in the corner, with the stool, waiting for the bell to ring. I don’t know what it meant.’

  ‘We can stop him,’ said Arnie. ‘Well, you can. With our help. Before he does it again.’

  ‘He won’t use the library,’ David heard himself saying, while another part of his brain shouted about the ridiculousness of it. ‘The library staff are never alone now. And it’s being staked out by the police.’

  ‘It’s not bloody America here yet, mate. They don’t have the staff to keep that up for long. Give it two weeks and they’ll have to call it off. Then you’ll be ready to step in.’

  ‘What makes you think he’ll come back anyway?’

  ‘That’s what he does. Besides—’ Arnie tapped his nose. ‘He won’t be able to resist it. We’ll make sure of that.’

  David stood up. He couldn’t reach a decision. Was some sort of plan forming? Arnie and Geoff were the last companions he would have picked for this mission, but they did seem to be committed. They were both sitting up straight now, looking more focused. Maybe having something to think about other than the cubes was doing them good.

  Arnie raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’

  He could tell them to go, and they would. Probably without much of an argument. But did he really want to do this alone?

  ‘I’ll put on some coffee,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to sober up if we’re going to really talk about this.’

  ‘White, two sugars,’ said Geoff.

  ‘I’ll take it as it comes, son,’ said Arnie, with a smile. ‘And then we’ll talk about what you need to do tomorrow to kick this thing off.’

  ‘Isn’t tomorrow a repatriation day?’

  ‘It is. It’s too much for him to resist. You’ll see.’

  The credits had finished rolling, and the late news had started. David turned the volume back up, and let the sounds of battles and blood from around the world reach him as he went into the kitchen, switched on the kettle and waited for it to boil. Things were escalating. It wasn’t his imagination. Hatred was growing, proliferating, and it was his job to stop it.

  * * *

  The feeling in the crowd was different.

  Usually, on repatriation days, there was a quiet air of solemnity over the town. People spoke in lowered tones, and many of them wore dark col
ours. It had become a tradition, and although David was aware of the undercurrent that existed between the serial mourners who turned up just for the catharsis of the occasion and the true locals who tried to go about their daily lives in the packed high street on such days, this level of tension was new to him. It was heavy, blanketing the people as they waited for the hearses, nine of them, the most amount of deaths to make up a cortege. The faces in the crowd were beyond sad. They were angry.

  David stood back in the chemist’s doorway and wondered how Arnie had picked it up before it had even begun. Could there have been talk in The Cornerhouse? But then, nobody went there any more. Instead, apparently, all the drunks were out on the streets at night, hanging about, breaking car windows, stealing when they got the chance. The local paper had dedicated its front page to the ‘crime spree’ that had hit Wootton Bassett, warning locals not to go out at night until the police had cleared up the problem.

  A rougher element had descended on the town: bikers, that was the general gossip going around at David’s office. But he didn’t see any new faces waiting for the hearses that afternoon. They all looked familiar, set in intensity, each one wearing the same expression as the next in the row along the kerb. There were very few women and children. Men stood alone, and the sense of danger was thickening, intensifying, until it was as palpable as a storm waiting to break over the street.

  The first hearse drove past.

  Something terrible was about to happen. He could feel it. The second car in the cortege was level with him when the banners went up, three of them, painted red words on ripped white sheets, waving back and forth, so the only words he could make out were WAR, FUCK, DEATH – and then the crowd rumbled, pulled back and sprang forward as one to engulf the banners and those that held them.