NOVEMBER 2017Once again, Viola returned from her walk to find a Land Rover parked in front of the farmstead – a different one, even more ancient than the vehicle driven by the Customs Officer. It had a dirty tarpaulin hood stretched across its open back.
Viola’s mother was not in her usual chair on the veranda, the sliding temperatures no bar to her habit of sitting outside. She had found a moth-eaten sheepskin coat, left behind in one of the bedroom wardrobes, and wrapped herself in that. A scarf twisted around her unwashed hair completed the look: a grandmother from a fairy tale.
The vacant veranda and the unfamiliar truck forced a sour uneasiness into Viola’s throat. She picked up her step towards the house.
‘Don’t you be going in there!’
The gruff voice made her jump, skid to a stop.
The Land Rover, parked in the shadows of the trees, had appeared empty, but as Viola wheeled around, twisting herself in Dot’s lead, she saw the gamekeeper, his white beard framed by the window of the cab. Last time they’d met, he had threatened trouble. Viola’s disquiet began to rise.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because the doctor’s in there looking after her, isn’t he?’
His words tipped her into panic. Viola sprinted for the wooden steps, taking them two at a time, exploding through the front door, preparing herself for how her mother might have tried to do it. Their stash of paracetamol? Surely not a knife?
But in the kitchen, her mother was sitting upright, intact, rebuttoning her blouse, with no sign of disaster. At least, not the disaster Viola had anticipated. A barrel of a man in a formal navy suit tossed his stethoscope to the table, letting it snake across the top of Viola’s school books, then he leant in to finger the glands at Deborah Kendrick’s neck.
‘What’s going on? Are you sick?’ Viola demanded from the doorway, the adrenalin making her splutter.
Dot, picking up on the mood, gave a sharp, strangled yip.
The doctor turned, assessing Viola from behind his circular spectacles, a brief judgement, before going back to Deborah to boom out his conclusion.
‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.’
‘But –’
Her mother was cut off by a short jeer of objection from the doctor. He retreated into the cushions of his chin, raising a solid finger. ‘There is absolutely no reason, Mrs Kendrick, why you shouldn’t be out there. In fact, some fresh air and hard work might do you good.’
‘But on my GP records,’ Deborah continued meekly, ‘you’ll see that I’ve been prone to iron deficiencies and –’
‘I doubt it!’ The man laughed. He faced Viola now to deliver his final dismissal of her mother. ‘The greatest lesson I learnt from my training on the mainland was that doctors there go looking for problems where there are none. Live your life, Mrs Kendrick, that’s my advice. First, because worry is the biggest killer, and secondly, because Lark does not suffer malingerers. Now!’ He angled a single eye to pin down Viola. ‘Word has reached me, Miss Kendrick, that you are also claiming a sickness that is keeping you from your island duties?’
Viola’s mouth fell open.
‘One that is,’ the man continued, ‘keeping you from school?’
‘She is at school.’ Deborah Kendrick spoke more forcefully for Viola than she had for herself. ‘This is her school.’ They all looked to the papers and clutter spread across the battered kitchen table. The doctor extracted his stethoscope from the chaotic scene, winding up its tail and posting it into the stretched-wide jaws of his leather bag.
‘Your mother has been given a clean bill of health.’ He spoke as if Deborah Kendrick were no longer there; his business now only with Viola. ‘But you, young lady, have a consultation outstanding.’
‘What for?’ Her mother rose from her seat, inserting herself into the exchange, her voice combative, frightening to Viola.
The man turned to face his challenger, retaliating with condescension. ‘All young girls on the island are given a routine check-up when they come of age, Mrs Kendrick. It is our civil duty to them.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ she replied. Viola watched her mother grip the thick edge of the kitchen table to still her shaking hands. ‘And what about the boys, then?’
The doctor held Deborah’s gaze. Viola was sure she saw her mother’s mouth twitch into the beginnings of a triumphant smile, and willed for it not to come, in case it should provoke a violence.
‘The boys too,’ the doctor said flatly, eventually.
Deborah’s face fell. The tension was released – though no one was satisfied. He made for the door.
‘My surgery is on the south elevation,’ he told Viola coolly, on his way out. ‘You’ll come and see me there, tomorrow, in the afternoon, four-thirty.’
Viola automatically nodded.
‘You will not,’ her mother instructed, once the Land Rover had swung across the yard and growled away down the track.
‘Why not?’
Her mother ascended the stairs for a nap, one that would likely extend late into the evening, merging with bedtime.
‘Because that doctor…’ said Deborah Kendrick, leaning over the bannister, releasing her hair from its scarf as she chose her words carefully, ‘… is not a nice man.’
She disappeared into the black of the upstairs landing. There was the sound of her heavy bedroom door clunking shut. Viola would be lonely without her in the dark of the house, her senses on edge, Dot barking at every sound, sure that foxes were trespassing on the veranda. Yet she had to find some comfort in the way her mother had spoken. These were strong words, seditious even, but they were not the words of surrender.
Viola would not go to that appointment – if only because the late afternoons were reserved for spying. If she couldn’t get close to the Eldest Girls at school, she would have to keep her vigil at the stones, slowly building the courage to step inside the circle.
But, before that, she’d need to get rid of Michael.
His company had been valuable to her; his knowledge of the island exhaustive, his discretion completely lacking. (‘Huxley fell and snagged his bean-bags on some rigging once and they say Dr Bishy had to amputate one of them.’) Every anecdote was delivered with the self-regard of a precocious child at a spelling bee, his embellishments signposted by the rising of his voice.
‘Britta Sayers is always stopping me in the school corridors to ruffle my hair or straighten my collar, that kind of thing. She’s very… tactile.’
He was so obviously pleased with the word ‘tactile’ that Viola had snorted with laughter.
Michael defined each girl as a clear archetype – Britta was the gobby one; Anna, the angel; Jade-Marie, the friendly klutz. It made Viola wonder what easy classification he applied to her when she wasn’t there, because surely he did talk about her. This was currency – first-hand contact with the redheaded newcomer, the one with the obstructive mother who was growing as reclusive as the Earl.
Could Viola describe Michael with a cute little phrase in return? He was such a keeno, such a neek, king of all the boffins… No, nothing was quite right. Archetypes were what boys used to label girls – so they could get past the tedious business of empathy and nuance, and focus on the gawping, deciding if the art deserved a place on their wall.
When repetitions started to appear in Michael’s stories, signalling that he had little else to reveal to her, Viola made her move. She needed to break free from the way he watched her as she watched the girls, making comments on her every reaction. She wanted to enjoy the vibrations, tip her head back as the girls did, allow the sensations to shiver gratifyingly through her body.
He was her friend and she liked him, but Michael had to go.
She put it to him straight. ‘You need to leave this to me.’
They were walking back through Cable’s Wood, Dot making reckless zigzags in pursuit of rabbits, pine needles pluming in her wake. Viola had found the confidence to release her from the lead now, letting her snuffle beneath logs and mark territory as her own.
‘You have to let me watch the girls by myself.’
The boy looked at her, wounded; she’d known that he would.
‘I’d love to keep you with me, Michael, truly I would, but with the terrible fury and everything …’ He gave the faint beginnings of a nod. ‘If I’m alone, I can approach them, be part of what they’re doing, experience it. With you there, that can never happen, because we’ll always be hiding and straining to listen.’
‘But you can’t join in,’ he replied, appalled, his face pale. ‘You mustn’t participate in…’ he whispered it, ‘… witchcraft!’
Viola laughed too loudly; Michael’s wounded expression returned.
‘Look, I don’t think it’s witchcraft,’ she told him. ‘I think it’s…’
She stopped and called for Dot, rewarding her return with a scrap of cold sausage. She refastened the lead, buying herself a moment to think. Michael stood, fists in pockets, pulsing with hurt.
‘I think it’s just girls’ stuff,’ she said, a lie and also not a lie. ‘But we’ll never know for sure unless you let me get closer.’
They continued their walk, Michael still brooding. Viola didn’t want this to be a trade-off – her only friend on the island in exchange for the possibility of three new ones. She wanted to have them all.
‘But we should meet somewhere else,’ she said, ‘to compare notes.’
He lifted his head at this olive branch.
‘I think you could start an investigation of your own.’ She spoke the idea as it formed. ‘You could go and watch, I dunno …’ She sifted through the things she’d seen on her wanderings, the people she’d observed. ‘What about that guy who works in the Customs House?’
‘Saul Cooper?’
‘Weaselly-looking, white shirt with embroidered thingies on his shoulders, drives a Jeep –’
‘A Land Rover actually.’ Michael gave a little skip – another point scored. Viola was winning him back.
‘I go up to the harbour in the mornings sometimes,’ she told him. When I can’t sleep, she didn’t say, when the silence at the farmstead is suffocating and I need to see some people, some movement, anything. ‘And that guy will leave the Customs House, take the alley between the Counting House and the Provisions Store, and wait until this woman comes up the hill –’
‘What woman?’
‘I dunno. Black hair like yours, lives by the harbour, always got an armful of folders.’
‘Miss Cedars?’
‘Like I say, I dunno. Anyway, this guy, he waits in the passageway and then he steps out as if it’s a complete coincidence that he’s bumped into her – really weird it is, sort of funny – but she never stops. She does this big loop away from him, even if he calls after her.’
‘If it is Miss Cedars, she’s a teacher, you know!’ Michael was a little breathless at this news, this possible scandal. ‘She’s my teacher!’
‘Lisa, I want to say…’ Viola replayed the moment, the Customs Officer shouting her name. ‘No… Leah.’
Michael sounded it out, reverentially almost – ‘Leah’ – turning over the knowledge of his teacher’s first name like a shiny new coin.
‘We thought she was dead,’ he said, ‘and we thought they daredn’t break it to us, because she disappeared after All Hallows’ Eve, was gone for nearly a fortnight. Then she came back, different.’
Viola nodded, as if this was interesting, as if it meant something to her.
They continued on their way, lost in their own meditations – Viola thinking about the Eldest Girls and what she might do, Michael repeating, like an incantation, the names of his new quarry.
‘Leah Cedars and Saul Cooper. Leah Cedars and Saul Cooper…’