Sea Hearts (28 page)

‘It’s true, Ed, that is no fair choice,’ said Gordon Crockett.

Edward eyed Misskaella too. ‘Still,’ he said, through teeth clamped tight against chattering. ‘Still, they never ought to’ve done it. They didn’t belong here. They belonged under the waves, and they still do.’

‘They belong with
us
, their
lads
,’ said Kit Cawdron hotly, and ran off to his mam so as not to hear more. I could feel my fellows around me wishing we were young enough to do that; instead we must stay near the bigger lads and pretend that their remarks did not upset us.

Against the green-grey of the sea and the mottle-grey of the stony beach, white Aggie glowed. So did the pale feet of the men preparing to pull her from the shallows. The water nosed and nudged her where she lay, as if it were proud of what it had done and wanted us to praise it. At its little distance, the coat lay, glossy and almost black, like a shadow that had fallen off her, curling and useless without her, kicked by the wavelets. The men and some of the mams now picked their ways across the beach, all caps and coats, boots and dark skirts, with a brighter shawl here and there. All were well-protected except Aggie; her nakedness lay at the centre of them, unembarrassed, the men now turning to it, now turning away.

Misskaella hurried across, a snarl of red and white hair above a filthy black coat, ashy handprints about the hips. The blanket draggled out either side of her, until she reached the sea-edge, and threw it out. It fell and covered Aggie, making her decent for the men to rescue her.

And now it ceased to bother me what the big boys or my fellows thought of me — I must see my mam, and she was not among these mams flowed down from the town to spectate. She was under her blanket in bed, and no cries from the street would have stirred her out of it.

I hurried up the hill, away from the crowd and the witch and the disaster. I did not care if Mam talked or wept or slept or hid from me under her seaweed; I wanted only to be in the room with her, to see the mound of her and know she was not drowned and naked, with all of Potshead looking on.

I let myself into the house, went in and sat by her window. My breath, which as I walked had turned ragged and sobbing, before long was soothed quiet, quieter than the wind outside, than the sea, rushing, pausing, falling on itself. Mam’s breathing was quieter still — I could not hear it, only see its rise and fall.

Now and again the sun broke through and lit the sea, and the ceiling swam with silver reflections. The furniture sat plain and solid in its places; the rug that I remembered Mam making — her twisting fingers with her singing face above — lay by the bed as it had always lain, as it always would. The table bore up her shells, and her stones that meant something to her, and her pieces of sea-glass, red and blue and powdery white, smoothed harmless, beaten to beautifulness by the sea. Looking on these things I ceased to think about the Bannisters, about the mams generally, and the men.

Mam woke, or became aware of me, and she turned to me suddenly out of her hair and blanket. One cheek was printed with hair-swirls and weed-weave and pillow-creases. She had not put on a face for me; there was a moment when she seemed not to even recognise me. And then she did. My mam was there again behind her eyes, although a long way in.

‘Is there anything I can do for you, Mam?’ I said — and I heard myself speak lightly, as if I were much younger and more innocent. I always spoke this way, I realised, in this room, to this blanketed Mam. ‘Can I make you some tea, nice and sweet? There are still some of those biscuits there, that Dad and I baked, remember?’ I could not seem to stop talking, offering, and in this silly voice.

She shook her head. ‘I am not hungry or thirsty, Daniel.’

‘I can rub your feet, perhaps. I could comb your hair — look at the mess of it.’

She shook her head again amid that mess, the black wild hair that I could not tell apart from the green-black woven weed. She smiled at me. ‘No, sweet,’ she said. ‘There is nothing I need, right now. I am quite comfortable.’

With a great sigh she sent herself back to sleep. I watched her, her words echoing gently in my head. She had lied to me; she had lied herself free of me. She was not comfortable — she was miserable. Like Aggie, like Amy Dressler, like all the mams, all the wives, she was more unhappy than I had ever been; they were unhappy beyond any unhappiness that a boy like me could imagine or fathom. And Dad was miserable too; all the dads were — for who could be happy with his wife in such a state?

The reason for all this distress about me was equally slippery and outsized to my mind.
They belonged under
the waves, and they still do,
Edward had said. It had stung me, as it had stung Kit. How could my mam belong anywhere other than in our house, or at my back as I stepped out into the town, into the world? But of course it was true — she had told me often enough, hadn’t she?
I come from the sea
.

I could not mind Mam’s lying to me now. Indeed, I was grateful that unlike Aggie or Amy she strove to keep her sorrow from burdening me. My own lightness, my own cheer, was something of a lie too, was it not? My voice might take on that high, sweet, helpful tone easily, but that made it no less a pretence. Who did I hope to fool by it? I was unhappy, too — all of us boys were, seeing our mams so miserable. And though we combed our mams’ hairs and pointed out finches and brought cats and cups of tea, how could such tiny activities lift the weight of misery from our parents’ backs, and from our own?
There is nothing you can
do,
Mam had said, often enough, to me and to Dad and to both of us embracing her together.

Who
could
do something, then? I sat back in the chair, my eyes on the sun-blotched sea, resting from the sight of my sad mam. The smell of the damp weed-blanket was warmer, cosier than the powerful sea-smell of the coats we lads had pushed among in Wholeman’s cupboard. It was the same smell, though, sure enough, and when I smelt it I could not help but think of them. Oh, it was a terrible thing we boys had done, was it not, in the light of Amy, in the light, now, of Aggie? How had we been so brave and frivolous as even to enter the same room as those coats, let alone take them down and put them on? They were not
costumes
; they were peeled-off parts of our mothers; without them, how could our mams be themselves, their
real
selves, their under-sea selves, the selves they were born into? They walked about on land with no protection, from the cold or from our dads falling in love with them, or from us boys needing them morning and night.

I remembered Aran standing shocked at the cupboard door, the padlock in his hand, and all of us staring at it. But it was not the padlock keeping the skins in that cupboard, it was what had hooked and locked it there in the first place: the whole island’s agreement.
Let us take
these coats, by force or by trickery, from their rightful owners,
Rollrock men had decided,
and forever keep them apart
. They may have thought this would gain them their own happiness, but they might as well have vowed,
Let us all
stay miserable together — dads, mams and lads alike — to the
ends of our days!

And
all
the men had agreed this — even a man as kind as my own dad. Against so many grown men and what they wanted, what hope did one boy have of bringing relief, of bringing maybe happiness, even!, to our poor mams, to our poor dads?

From the black tangle on the pillow came another sigh, and Mam’s voice: ‘Well, perhaps a cup of tea.’

I knew she did not want one, that she was saying so only to make me feel useful. Still I rose from my chair, ready to do her bidding, as eagerly as I’d always done. But when I spoke — ‘I will fetch it.’ — my voice was my own, not at all forced or sweetened.

Next day after school, with the boats gone out, I decided I would not head for home just yet, to sit oppressed by my mam’s sorrows another afternoon, with no Dad to busy about and keep cheerful for. I strolled instead down to the sea-front. It was quite sunless, and a raw wind gusted, strongly enough to knock me off balance now and then. I hardly met a soul along the way, and those I did were scurrying between one shelter and another. My town had become an entirely charmless and cheerless place, and the shadow of Aggie’s death hung like low cloud over it, or like sea-fog rolled into the streets.

I reached the harbour beach and leaned on the rail, watching the far waters heaped up grey. They seemed higher than my head, yet by some miracle they did not tumble forward and drown me. Here, closer, the water threw itself onto the stones as if cross with them, and it was hard not to see again white Aggie and her black coat caught near her in the edge there.
Free of suffering,
that mam had said in the crowd of us, as if there were nothing else for Aggie on this island, no man who loved her and no boys depending on her, no beautiful birds, no laughter with her sisters, nothing that could make up for the pain of living out of the sea.

The wind made my ear ache, so I turned my face into it and plodded past the northern mole to where the larger sea stretched away, and the proper sandy beach, the dunes’ fine hairs blown back from their foreheads, opposite the lumpy water. The witches’ house was buried in among them somewhere, with Misskaella in it, and Trudle hardly less fearsome, and Trudle’s two wild daughters, who did not come to school and were not made to. I shivered at the thought of them, wild in that weird cottage.
They
could put an end to all our sorrows, those witches. They could refuse to bring wives out of the sea. They might terrify the men into agreeing that the coats be unlocked. Or could they magic them some way? I hardly knew what they were capable of. But if anyone could change the way marriage was done on Rollrock, those two women could.

But why would they? For it suited them, all the money they made from the bringing out and the blanket-knitting. Why would they be moved by a boy’s plea for his mother, to restore her to her home and happiness, to set things right for her? Misskaella had no heart at all, and was training Trudle up to have none either. She had not yet managed to shift Trudle’s interest from any full-grown man who wandered by, but sea-wives and children they were both pleased largely to ignore.

I stared again out to sea, to the horizon, and the sky bleached of all promise above it. But then in among the mole-rocks an arm lifted and dropped. I worked out a bit of black, which was hair flopping in the wind, and a pale spot that was boy-face. I didn’t care who it was; it was not a mam or a dad or a witch, and greeting this someone would bring me out of my downcast mood. I slithered down the sand to the beach, and walked along beside the mole-rocks to below him. It was Toddy Marten, seated in there where he could see forever and not be seen unless he chose. He swayed and he sang, wandering in his own head, swimming his own private ocean. Then he lifted something up from between his feet — ah, it was a spirit-flask — and drank from it.

‘Dan’l Mallett!’ he cried as he distinguished me from the other rocks climbing towards him. ‘What brings you here this fine day, sirrah?’ And he put out his hand like an old gaffer from a village seat.

I shook it, cold frog that it was. ‘What are you up to out here?’ I sat my bottom to the wet sand in the cavity next to him and saw the attraction of the place. Potshead might not exist, the mole hid it so well behind us.

‘What am I up to? Why, I am drinking.’

‘So I see. Won’t your dad thrash you, taking his spirit?’

‘Maybe he will,’ said Toddy cheerily. ‘Maybe I will thrash him back — and maybe my granddad too — and maybe my
great
-granddad, for having made the mess we’re all in. Here, Daniel, have a slosh of it. It is like carrying hot coals in your stomach. It warms all of you, right out to the toenails.’ He twisted out the cork and offered me the flask.

I lifted and tipped. The air off the stuff rushed out the neck and nipped my nose; the spirit itself ran cold and stinging across my tongue; a little spilled out the side and dripped to my collar, leaving a line of cold burning down from the corner of my mouth. ‘Wo-hoah.’ I gave it back to him, and wiped my chin.

He swigged again. ‘And it makes you forget. It blurries out your brain. You can just sit here and sing. And then a friend comes along!’ He flung his arm about my shoulders and growled with satisfaction, and we both laughed at his pretending. ‘And everything is just fine and champion! Look at the lovely — the water, Daniel. And is that an albatross I see? Isn’t that good luck?’

‘An albatross is, but that is a gannet.’ I was still negotiating the spirit into myself; it felt as if it were eating holes in my gullet, making lacework of it.

‘’Tis a fine bird, your gannet, no?’

‘It is a very fine bird.’

‘’T’s a
very
fine bird.’ He took his arm away, so as to smack the cork back into the neck. Then he collapsed somewhat. ‘How is this, Dan’l? It is in-
suff’
rable the way things are, do you not think?’

‘With the mams, you mean?’