Island, p.8
Island, page 8
‘You c-cold?’
‘A bit.’
He stopped and let go my arm. His rucksack bumped against my shoulder as he took it off. ‘I’ve got a spare jumper.’ He passed it to me, it felt rough and loose and it smelt of seaweed as I pulled it over my head, but it added a layer of warmth. He held out his arm and we moved off again. ‘You were angry–’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’ There was a silence.
‘D-did you see Table Rock?’
‘What?’
‘Table Rock.’
‘I didn’t notice much at all, to be honest.’ Dense fog in your eyes upsets your balance. You want to pitch forwards into it. You think you’ll fall and fall. I tried to concentrate on his voice. The fog was definitely darkening. It was turning blue. It would be night.
‘It’s a flat rock, level with the sea. You can walk out to it at low tide.’
‘That’s nice.’ It was so easy to crush him. I felt bad clinging to his arm and ploughing through the opaque air in stupid silence. I made an effort. ‘You like going there?’
‘There’s a story. B-belonging to Table Rock. My father told me.’ Anything was better than concentrating on the deepening blue thickness, the dizzying loss of vision and of the world. His voice was something to hold onto just as much as his arm was. A thread to lead us out.
‘Tell me.’
‘It seems to float on the water at high tide. L-like a raft. But in a storm the waves crash over it – it’s awash.’ I tried to visualise the Table Rock. Its warm flat surface on a sunny day. ‘A long time ago there lived a fisherman and his wife. In a little c-cottage at the top of the cliffs. Just above that cove.’ So there were cliffs. I’d thought I was near cliffs. ‘One day when the fisherman was out in his boat, the w-wife was feeling ill. She had a baby in her belly and it was time for it to be born.’ His voice was explanatory, kindly, as if I might not know about such things. Then I realised it was perhaps the tone his father had used to tell him the story.
‘She went down to the beach and she had the b-baby there. It didn’t belong to her husband. She carried it across the shingle and laid it on Table Rock. Then she went s-slowly back up to the cottage and made her husband’s tea.’
I imagined her. Staggering around the bare little cottage, heaving the black kettle onto the fire, leaning her dizzy weight against the table as she sliced the bread. Sitting to gut the fish before she put it in the pan; staring frozen at its milky eye as if she’d never seen a fish in her life.
‘After his supper, it’s a fine c-calm evening – the fisherman goes down to spread out his nets. He hears a kind of mewing. Is it the cry of the gulls? Is it a bleating calf? Or is it the wind m-moaning over the rocks? Then he spots a little naked thing out on Table Rock. The tide’s coming in by now but he doesn’t stop to take off his boots and trousers. He wades out to the rock and gathers up the child. He carries it up the cliff path and into the little cottage, all dripping wet. He holds out the ch-child to his wife.
‘“See what I found on Table Rock. A gift from the sea! We must look after her, wife, as if she were our own.” And the woman takes the child from her husband and nods. She puts her to the breast.’
‘Is that the end?’ I didn’t want it to end.
‘Yes.’
The fog was black now, it had been midnight blue but then it went black. Not like normal darkness though because it was smothering, cold to your face. Like being under thick cold blankets and someone sits on the bed. I thought about Table Rock. I was in blind darkness being led along a lane which might have been cliff edge or skirting mine shafts, god knows what or where it was, I listened to the story and I turned it in my mind. As you turn a penny in your pocket, as you fiddle with a matchstick and use it to pick under your dirty nails. I retold it to myself.
Maybe the husband is a stupid man, brutal and dangerous. Maybe he beats his wife. And the man she loved, who would have taken her away, is drowned. When she has given birth she leaves the child on Table Rock because she cannot bear to kill it. When the tide comes in she thinks the waves will carry it away, carry it to its true father. Although she has concealed everything, her morning sickness by going out early to fetch him fresh water from the spring, her belly and breasts under tight swaddling bands, although she has even rinsed and hung out to dry her woman’s rags each month for him to see: something has made her forgetful. She forgets that Table Rock is not covered at high tide.
When he goes out after supper she clears away his plate but has to lean against the doorframe, with the stabbing pains in her womb. Standing there, panting a little, she looks down over the cliff edge to the sea. There is Table Rock. There is a tiny dot, no bigger than a seagull, in the middle of the rock. And a man wading through the water, reaching out his arms to snatch up the child.
For a giddy moment she thinks she will die. Fall down here on the floor where she stands, let the darkness into her head.
But she sits at the table and prays, and hears his heavy boots crunching up the cliff path, his breath coming short with speed and effort.
When she sees his face she realises. Relief floods her and the sudden milk gushes from her breasts so she has to cross her arms and squeeze herself, to keep from dripping on the floor. He does not imagine. It does not enter his head to imagine, either that she could have been so disobedient, or that another could have wanted her. It does not enter his head that the child is hers. The child is his, by right of finding, and she, his slave, will tend his child. She takes it from him without a word, bowing her head to hide her scalding tears. She knows she has more than she deserves. A man, a home, a child.
After another hour or so Calum began swiping his stick out to the right and after a bit it clack-clack-clacked against a fence. He let go of me to undo the gate and I stood there thinking I still would have no idea how to reach the house without him, even though we must be no more than twenty feet away. The gate creaked and he took my hand again and I heard the dull bang of a door yanked wide open.
‘Calum! Calum!’ Her voice was distanced and muffled by fog but you could tell she was shrieking. He pulled me towards the noise and a yellowish light pierced the blackness. We moved in towards the door; she was a blurry outline on the step haloed in misty light. She plunged towards us out of the light and threw her arms around him.
‘I’ve been phoning the cottage, Mudie’s hadn’t seen you. Where did you get to?’ I think she noticed then that I was there because she stopped and ushered both of us into the house and shut the door. The fog had even poured into the hall, making the light cloudy and dim, filling the place like steam. It was only then I registered we’d come back to her house, that we must have walked right past his. ‘It’s half-past ten,’ she scolded. ‘I’ve been going out of my mind with–’
‘It came on s-suddenly.’
‘Where were you? What were you doing?’
He took off his coat and I realised how wet we were. ‘At the Neck.’
‘The Neck? Why?’
Calum didn’t reply and the silence seemed long. ‘I was walking,’ I said, ‘and bumped into Calum there. Which is lucky for me because I’d never have found my way back alone …’ She wasn’t listening to me.
‘Why were you up at the Neck?’ she asked Calum. ‘I told you to go to Mudie’s for the eggs. What were you doing at the Neck?’
He shrugged. ‘I was g-going on to Mudie’s.’
She didn’t seem able to take it in. ‘Why didn’t you say where you were going? I knew the fog was coming, I could have told you–’
We went into the kitchen and Calum sat down so I did the same, I was ready to drop. She fussed with the kettle. ‘In future you tell me where you’re going, Calum. Every time. You hear? Or I won’t let you out. It’s not safe – and we’ve got no eggs for breakfast.’
‘It was lucky for me,’ I said slowly. I felt in a dream, heavy with it. ‘Calum rescued me.’ She knew the fog was coming.
She glanced round as if she’d forgotten my existence (again). ‘Oh yes. Lucky for you. Tea? Shall I put a drop of whisky in?’
We both said yes.
‘Food. You haven’t had any food. There’s some soup on the stove.’ A big black pot with something thick and dark in it, steaming dully. She went on nagging him and it was as if I wasn’t there. I was hardly there, the fog had filled my head with thick drifts and Table Rock lay there flat and firm in the horrid insubstantiality, a place of safety I couldn’t quite grasp because it was also floating, floating like a raft.
My mother made supper and bedtime drinks for me and my brother, and sent us off to bed. She even made hot-water bottles. She told him to sleep in the spare room upstairs and he didn’t make any objection.
10 A daughter
I slept deeply. When I woke sunlight was pouring in the window because I’d never drawn the curtains and the room with its white walls and blue carpet glowed with light. I considered the previous day and how Calum had saved me and I knew that I would fly and glide on that day too.
I made tea and toast and sat on my doorstep in the warm sunshine. I thought about being in the kitchen with my brother and my mother. How she hovered around him like a wasp around something sweet, how even when her hands were busy filling a kettle or stirring a pan she was glancing across to him. When she’d served us both she sat at the end of the table with a little glass of whisky, she seemed pathetic and frail. She was upset because he hadn’t done what she told him to. She was ill. Her face was pale as if she never went outside, with big dark pouches under the eyes. She moved slowly, her hands shook, she was skinny and brittle and dried up. She was horrible, like the Old Man of the Sea, she was clinging on to Calum with her bony claws.
Calum kept his good eye on his food and drink, he never raised his face to look at her. I could feel her willing him to, like she was a child who needed attention.
Right on cue she came out with a basket of washing.
‘Good morning!’ I called. Cheerily. To my mother. She just nodded and slowly started pegging things out (trousers, Calum’s). So I went over.
‘Can I help? I love hanging out washing.’ I once lived in a house where they hung out washing. I was only there three months over the summer but they had a garden and a washing line. I hung the washing on the line when I was there and I thought, one day I’ll do this, I’ll have my own garden and my own washing line and I’ll stand in the sun and peg it out, not go to the launderette or use someone else’s drier with the knob falling off and the mat of fluff under the filter and I’ll go back into my house and look out my window and my washing will be dancing in the sun. They said I had to leave because of the phone bills I ran up. In fact they wanted me to leave because they were splitting up and it was embarrassing to have me around when they wanted to fight. But anyway once they’d said it it was a week before another place was found for me so I did run up phone bills then, I phoned New York central library and a museum in Australia and I phoned the speaking clock and left it on for the eight hours they were at work.
She didn’t say yes or no so I took a few pegs and did a jumper. She was moving very slowly, slowly shaking out each garment, reaching slowly for the pegs. She was ill.
‘I wanted to ask you if you could give me a bit of advice – or help. You see, I’m doing this Open University course.’ She didn’t speak or stop pegging so I explained how I needed to find out some island history.
‘I can’t really help you.’
‘But you must know an awful lot. You’ve been here – how many years?’
‘They keep themselves to themselves round here.’ She took the peg-bag off the line and put it in the empty washing basket. She headed back towards the house. ‘They’ve a booklet on the history of the island, for sale at the post office. For the tourists.’ She went in and shut the door.
She didn’t bother to smile. Wouldn’t you think it was normal if a person’s living in your house, to show a flicker of interest? To say, ‘An Open University course, what’s made you think of doing that?’ or to offer a crumb of friendliness in the way of an anecdote? She didn’t have the generosity in her head to deal with me even when she thought I was a stranger. There was something in me that repelled her. The same thing that had made her dump me in a box twenty-nine years ago. And she didn’t even recognise that, let alone me.
Or was she a snob? Did she think anyone who needed to do a course, who wasn’t brought up with a nice roomful of books and all the trappings must be a loser? How right she was. Why wasn’t I brought up with a nice roomful of books? What system of discrimination was at work when she decided my super-intelligent brother would and I wouldn’t be?
I went back into my room and made the bed. If she wouldn’t speak to me I would do it soon. Not hang around to be insulted by the bitch. She was nothing. History. I would speak to Calum one more time. Pump him, be sure of her routines – then sock it to her.
When I opened my back door she was leaning against the shed. She wasn’t moving or doing anything, just leaning there, stooped, staring at her feet. I opened the door wider and she stayed in the same position. For a moment I thought she’s died, she’s gone and bloody died before I could kill her, then I realised she would have fallen over. I went out, close up her face was white and sweaty. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Can you help me back to the house?’ I gave her my arm and we limped in through the nearest door (mine). I sat her down.
‘What is it?’
Her voice was weak and breathy. ‘I get a pain. It’s alright.’
‘D’you want anything?’
She shook her head.
‘A cup of tea?’ I put the kettle on anyway, gradually she straightened her back and relaxed. She was nothing but skin and bone. ‘Shall I call the doctor?’
‘No. There’s – in the kitchen – a bottle above the sink.’
I went along the hall to her kitchen. Something dark red and aniseedy was boiling on the cooker, the place was full of steam. I turned it off and grabbed the medicine bottle from the shelf over the sink. The label was handwritten in Latin. She took the bottle from my hand and while I was looking for a spoon, she swigged a couple of mouthfuls.
‘Thank you.’
I made us tea and sat at the other side of the little table.
‘I’m sorry. Calum forgot the wood. He went out early …’
Oh we’re sorry now are we. Realised the piece of trash we didn’t have time to talk to has some use after all. Fine. She had fallen into my hands and now I would be oily with charm, I would insinuate myself so slimily so oleaginously into her notice that she would start to reveal herself to me without knowing what she was doing. Fate was on my side.
‘Calum was a great guide last night. He knows every step of the way.’
‘Angus taught him all the pathways and hidey-holes.’
‘He was Calum’s dad?’
‘Calum thinks of Angus as his father.’ She put her hand on the table as if to lever herself out of her chair, then gave up. ‘He’s a good boy but he lives in a dream.’
‘D’you want me to help you to bed?’ Why the hell should I help her? It would be funny if I made her like me, wouldn’t it. If I were friendly and helpful and she found me delightful; it would be funny then when I told her what I was going to do.
‘I’ll wait till Calum gets back, he can make me a fire.’ It was warm, there was no need for a fire. ‘Were you going out? I don’t want to keep you.’
No you didn’t, did you. ‘I’m not in a hurry.’
Being stuck there was good for her, it made her politer, almost human. ‘Calum could tell you as much as anyone. About the island. Except he can’t tell fact from fiction.’
‘Calum?’
‘Angus filled his head with it. Vikings. Fairies. The clearances – it’s all in there somewhere.’
‘And recent history, you must know that. When did you come to the island?’
She looked at me and there was an unpleasant kind of smile behind her expression, in the depths of her face. She was ill, she was white, but in her eyes I could see something horrible, wicked, that she was laughing and gloating and triumphing to herself. Her white sick old lady face was a mask that she was holding over something strong and rampant.
I realised in that instant that she knew. My stomach convulsed and I nearly vomited. She was watching me, I couldn’t hide it. She knew. She knew who I was. And for reasons of her own she wasn’t letting on.
I went to the sink and got a glass of water. I wanted to keep my back to her. I didn’t want her to see my face. I realised there was a logic – a clunk, clunk, clunk of logical results which come tumbling like coins out of a fruit machine when you hit the jackpot. I needed time to understand the meaning of her knowing, her being in control when I had thought that I was … But she wouldn’t let me think. ‘I rented a holiday cottage. I wanted Calum to have a nice summer. Then I met Angus.’
‘But wasn’t Calum’s father–?’
‘Calum’s father was married. He lived in Italy.’
My head was bursting with realisations, with sudden shafts of illumination. If she had known since I landed on the island, since I rang her from the call box; if she had intended when I set off to walk and the fog was coming in, that Calum should be far away from any spot where he could help me … But she was there and talking (for whatever reason and that I couldn’t analyse here and now, whether it was because I could get no good of it at all I didn’t know) so I plunged on – ‘Were you living with your family then?’
‘I lost contact with my family.’
What is she saying? There should be no contact between parent and child? Is she warning me off? ‘Why?’ I blurted at last.
‘They wouldn’t have approved of Calum.’
I could see the evil gleam in her eye again, she was up to something she was playing with me she knew things I didn’t know, I had to gasp for breath to ask my question. ‘Wouldn’t have approved of an illegitimate baby?’
‘No.’ She stared at me. I started to blush, my face was like a furnace, impossible to hide. She would know that I knew. She kept staring. ‘They didn’t approve. I had a little girl before I had Calum.’
