The Brides of Rollrock Island (35 page)

“They won’t, Mam,” says Pen, the sober little wife.

The wind tears the door open out of my hand, fights my closing it, then punishes me for succeeding: a blow to the side of my head, a push at Miss’s coat and a rattle of my hems about my shins. But there, they’re shut in. I’ve shaken them off me for a while, the little limpets.

I’ll go through the dunes, I think; I might not stay upright on the beach, and all that storming surf, oh, it’s too much this morning; this wind’s quite enough. I set out through blowing snow, and blowing sand—I must all but cover my eyes with the scarf if I’m not to be blinded, and the wind really would like to tear my basket off me, the way it batters and jerks. I cannot tell where the next gust will hit me from, the dunes chop it about so; it surprises and surprises me, and I stagger like a drunk man. “Perhaps I should
have
me a drink!” I shout, one gloved hand sunk in a dune’s flank. “Plenty of wine bottles up at the house. I should drink a toast!”

On I stump and struggle.
Showed you every kindness
, I hear myself say, hear my mam say. Well, she took me in, I suppose, old Miss, and she kept me even when I turned into six people.
All the little squallers
, she would say as they fell and tantrumed around us, on the beach or in the bothy.
I don’t know how you can stand it. I’m so glad I had none myself
.

Some sand has got in my eye. I would wipe it out if I weren’t so well sprinkled with sand the rest of me. One-eyed, I steer myself by the merest glimpses in between blinks.

Well, she stood it, didn’t she, along with me? Often enough she’d stride out from us in a temper and stay away awhile.
Plenty
of times she raged against the noise and the mess and the stupidity of children—enough that the girls weren’t afraid of her shouting, unless she lashed out suddenly and startled them. But she had that room built on, didn’t she, when Farthing was coming along?

And she stayed with us.
You’ve got that whole big house up there
, I told her once at the fireside, the girls blown silent to the walls by one of her outbursts.
There’s no need for you to put up with us if you don’t want
.

What would I do up there?
she crabbed at me.

Have some peace, that you’re always saying you want
.

Even as I step out of the dunes into the full force of the snowy wind across McComber’s fields, I remember the look she threw me, as if I had cut her to the heart.
Would you rather I went?
she said.
Is that what you want me to do?

No!
And it wasn’t.
Not at all. But you complain so much of us
.

The look disappeared.
Complain? That’s only noise
. She waved it away.
Up in that house on my own? I’ve had quite enough of that
.

Up the field I trudge. There’s a wall and a road there somewhere,
though I can’t see either. It’s a good thing there’s a slope, or I wouldn’t know which way to turn. I could lose my bearings in the whitening, and freeze solid in a wall corner, rob five children of their mam.

But “Ha!” Every man in town would come forth, then, wouldn’t he, Tuppence, and give them a dad? “Ha!”

There, look—a little part of the world keeping still. That’s the wall; that’s the stile.

I reach town eventually. The lanes are swept empty by the wind so’s I don’t have to speak to anyone. All the men are shut in by their fires, some still solitary, many with mainland wives, breeding out the stain of the seal-wives quick as they can. Little redhead boys and girls are springing up all over the town these days, and the odd one darker and finer built, that everyone harrumphs at. Remember how frightened I was, the day the Severner girl came?
It will turn into just like Knocknee
, I said to Miss when I got home from Winches’ that day.
Everyone prettier than us and sneering down their nose
.

Don’t you fret
. I remember her queenly in her sickbed, flushed with the first of those fevers that would eventually take her off.
They know now how to treat a witch on this island. They’ll not forget in a hurry
.

And it
is
better, a bit of life in the streets, some tumbling children not my own, some men and lads with smiles on their faces, after all those years of misery. I never thought I would prefer it, but it’s improved from the wasteland it was, with no wives at all, no women. And there’s still a man or two will have me, now and then, for old times’ sake, or who cannot afford a wife, or is beyond the whole notion of husbanding anymore.

And who can blame them, after what the seal-girls did to them?

When Ostler Grinny came running that morning, I remember, I thought it a scheme of Misskaella’s. That devious witch, I thought, she’s kept it secret even from me, so’s I don’t leak it to my girls and them to anyone else. We all followed them out, Ostler and Miss, along to the top of the steps to the beach, and there we could see, to the south, all the thrown-down clothes in the distance, all the men staggering about, waving their arms and falling to their knees, weeping on one another, tiny in the distance, their tiny cries floating to us on the wind.

But there are
little
clothes, too, that they’re flapping
! I said.

Yes, as I said, they’ve taken the lads with them
, said Ostler.
Every last one! My Banter and my Toby! I’m begging you, Misskaella, if there’s anything you can do to get them back
—And he fell to sobbing.

I don’t know how they went, man, let alone how to fetch them up again
. What a fine play actor I thought her.

You’ve schemed and equipped those ladies, haven’t you?
I said, when Ostler had gone off weeping, to join the weepers on the shore.

But,
No, no, no
, she said.
It’s none of my doing, Trudle
.

Oh, you have too
, I said, pushing her.
You’ve put some charm upon the little skins to help them turn when they touch seawater
.

I never have, I tell you. How would I do that?
She stared out along the beach.
I never heard a word of this. All of them, and all the land-lads too!

I remember Penny delivering Misskaella and me one of her Looks.
Are you
glad
of the wives going?

Glad? I suppose I am
, said Miss quite seriously to her.
I never thought those namby-pams would have this in them
.

It will make the mens
very
unhappy
, said Pen.

Ha!
said I.
That’s all to the good, isn’t it, Kaella?

I cannot say it displeases me
, she said very sweetly.

I stand in the top street and stare up at the great house. It’s mine now, and that takes some thinking. Miss always said she’d leave it to me, but what did that mean? I never believed she’d really go; she was like rocks or great trees, always there, always would be there.

Oh, it’s cold. I force on against the wind and open the gate, totter up to the door. It only opens so far against that lump in the hall, the armchair that won’t fit anywhere else. I shut myself out of the racket, into the gloom. Practically in the dark, I shrug off my basket, lay it on the chair and put the two coats on top.

This place gives me the shudders, packed so tight with furniture and trinkets. All mine now. What the blazes should I do with it all?

I sidle upstairs, catching on this box corner and that chair leg, picking my way slower and slower as the walking way narrows to the front bedroom.
There is a bed in here
, said Miss, the time she brought me, though she was hazy as to its whereabouts.

She was clear enough on what she wanted to show me, though.
See that big cupboard, with the mirror?

Oh my
, I said, at the mountain between us and the cupboard.

No, no, I have made a path. Here, look
. And she showed me the line of boxes I could move.
Into this slot here under the window, all of these will fit. We won’t do it now. Sometimes I do, though, come
up here and admire it. Right behind the mirror, it is, with the shoes below. You cannot mistake them. And then …

I wanted to be away, I remember, from all this talk of death, all this clutter. I was big with Ha’penny then; the place had made me breathless and sick-feeling. I wanted air.
And then?
I said, panting.

In the top drawer
, she said, and her gaze was on it though door and drawer front hid it.
There’s something there too. Put it in the ground with me. No one’s to know
.

I take the first box and begin the to and fro, slowly excavate the path to the cupboard. The bottom boxes are heavy, and must be slid along the floorboards—what can be in them?

At last I’m through. Look at that scrag-worn witch in the mirror. Doesn’t she look flustered, though? Rude too, poking out her tongue. I open the door to hide her ugly face.

The dress hangs inside; the shoes wait empty below.

You will think it old-fashioned
.

It’s a large dress and dark, high-necked, well made, the most dignified dress I’ve ever seen. I lift the heavy skirt, the better to see the trim around the hem, flat panels with points folded out of them—no silly ruffles for our Miss. The shoes—I turn one over, admiring the make, the buckle and kinked-in heel, the lace tied in a perky bow—they are almost little animals.
It’s all bespoke
, she said, and then she had to tell me what
bespoke
was. She went to Cordlin for these, had a dressmaker measure and sew. A town cobbler, trained in London, shaped the shoes. She chose the leather herself, and the cloth, so heavy and rich—such a shame to bury it!

I take out the dress; it falls beautifully into the folds I choose for it.
There is a parcel of underthings, very nice ones, tied up with twine
. Yes, pushed to the back there is, and I fetch it out.

I open the other door, the one with no mirror, and pull out the drawer. (Put
it in the ground with me
, she said. And then Penny bumbled in and grizzled at my knee, and I never did ask what the something was.)

Whatever it is, it’s wrapped in tissue paper, crinkled from being opened and shut many, many times.

“It will be a gift,” I whisper, pressing on the soft parcel, “from some unexpected man, someone respectable. Scandal would come of it, if I showed the town.”

I untie the faded ribbon and draw apart the tissue.

The tiniest of nightgowns lies there—for a doll, you would think. None of my babs was as small as that, even the boy, even fresh-born. To the chest, pinned with a silver pin, is a scrap of paper:
Ean
.

“Ean?” I breathe. Slowly, as if the thing will turn to dust if I’m not careful, I lift the little garment into the better light. I can spread it on a single hand.

Then, “Ah!” I snatch it to my chest. Under a smaller leaf of tissue in the parcel, blurred by it, lies another nightgown, like a ghost of the one on my hand. I lift off the tissue-leaf. This gown’s not as old, not as yellowed.
Froman
, says the paper pinned to it.

“Froman!”

Wiser now to the old woman, I bend and slide the Froman gown aside: another leaf, another ghost dress, the last.

I rustle the tissue away. Outside, the wind hurls itself about. This third gown is mainland work, finer, softer. Silk-embroidered cornflowers wander out from under the pinned paper.

Hugh
. I mouth the name, but no sound comes out. Three babs. Three boys.
No one is to know
.

I’m so astonished, I cannot think. I sit on a box awhile, whispering the names over and over.

I remember asking her, when I started to swell with Penelope,
Should I find me a midwife?

You have one
, she said.

Why, who else’s babs have you delivered? Seal-wives’? Are they made the same below?

Not seal-wives’
.

Whose, then?

She must have been laughing to herself, the answer right there before me.
People’s
, she said.
You’ve no need to worry
.

Ean, Froman, Hugh. Where do I begin, with the questions I cannot ask her?

I spread the nightgown in my lap, little Ean’s. “Perhaps you were too small to live. All of you,” I add toward the others in the drawer, “perhaps were small, or sickly. There are plenty of women that’s babs don’t thrive.”

They don’t answer, curse it. They lie as they’ve lain forever, all innocent and silent.

“But
whose
?” I say. “Whose are you? What man of this isle got you on our Miss?”

I will ask about, I vow. When I give the news of her death, I will look in their eyes. I will pry and prod, without telling what I know, until he coughs up the truth himself, this father—or these three, if three different dads there be. I will find out, if only to put my own mind at rest. She shall not have the better of me, the old coot. Who does she think she is, not saying, for all these years? The laughs we might have had at their expense, the fathers’, just
as we laughed at my girls’ dads! When we could tell which was whose, that is, of the old codgers pining for good red loving, or the skinny boys not rich enough yet for a water-wife. Why would old Missk deny me that fun?

I lay the nightgowns back together, wrap them in the tissue, take them out and close the drawer. I gather up what I’ve found, sidle back to the stair head, down to the door. I pack the shoes, the funeral dress and the parcels into the basket; I manage the coats on and the scarf. One sniff of Miss’s collar and there she is, biting the head off my Farthing, scowling out over the sea. I strap on the basket and let myself out into the snow-streaked gale.

And the wind bustles me back down the slippery streets of Potshead town. All the way it wrenches and worries the basket on my back, as if it would love to tear it open, and snatch out the three little secrets Miss wants buried with her. Toss them high, it would, if I only let it, dance them awhile in the storm, in the snow. And then it would drop them far out to sea, maybe, or inland among the crags beyond Windaway Peak—or perhaps nearby, on dune, in field, on cottage roof, in cobbled street, not caring who saw them, not caring a jot who knew.