THE BOOK OF LEAHI needed a back-up, a witness, perhaps even a lucky charm. The voice of two women equals the voice of one man – that is what I had been brought up to believe. It couldn’t be the girls themselves, nor their mothers; they were too close, too vested. It amused me, I suppose, to speak for our island in the company of a coycrock redhead.
It was exactly as it had been the last time I visited the Reunyon Farmstead: she was ready with her defences. As soon as my feet crunched the gravel, she came thundering down the steps of the porch, spilling out a plea for vindication. Nothing to do with livestock this time, or the behaviour of her dog; she wanted to justify something she’d said.
‘I felt under pressure and I didn’t know what to say and I felt sorry for him and –’
‘Felt sorry for who?’ I cut in.
Her mouth clamped shut. She realised that she had done it again – spoken too soon. We looked one another up and down.
I appeared sallow and tired, I’m sure. I’d spent the past week living at the lodge, guiding my mother through her grief with very little space to navigate my own. She moved beyond shock and began excavating her anger – her husband’s promised retirement years had been stolen. He was off, as she put it, ‘lamping foxes for the rest of eternity’. This image – completely of her own creation – enraged my mother, yet it soothed me. To think that he was still out there, working the land, and at some point, when he was hungry, he would head on home for his tea.
I had decamped to the lodge with nothing but the black funeral clothes I stood up in. I’d sent Ben away; he seemed so surplus to what was going on, having never known my father. My mother was an enigma even to me. I wanted no witnesses as I failed, over and over, to find the right way to soften her pain. While staying there, I wore her clothes, along with some leftover items from my teenage wardrobe – a bobbled sweater, some wide-legged trousers with a forgiving, elasticated waist. On one occasion, I pulled a red checked shirt of Dad’s from the clean laundry pile to wear.
‘Take it off!’ my mother snapped. ‘Do you think I could even bear it?’
Moments before she had admonished me for not talking about Dad enough, for not keeping a sense of him alive. I knew then that it was time for me to go home. Her anger had cooled into an indiscriminate petulance about everything I did. I bundled the red checked shirt into my bag when she wasn’t looking, and I was wearing it – symbolically, perhaps – as I stood before Viola Kendrick in the yard of that rundown farmstead. The sleeves were rolled up, the tails tucked into one of my neat teaching skirts. On top, I’d unbuttoned my heavy winter coat and loosened my scarf. January was merciless with its temperatures, as always, yet I’d broken into a sweat from trekking up the hill.
Viola wore an oversized checked shirt too, a blue one, the coincidence feeling like a sign – a good omen. The rest of her was less appealing. Her jeans were muddy at the knee and her hair was a heap of curls, an orange candy-floss haze. I considered asking her to change, to bind her hair into a long, fat plait of the kind I’d seen her wear in chapel.
‘Viola, isn’t it?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘And you know who I am?’
She gave a nod to that too.
‘Well, I hear you’ve been hanging out at the stones with the Eldest Girls,’ I began.
This came out more accusatory than I had intended and Viola was ready with her next defence.
‘Don’t worry,’ I leapt in. ‘I’m not here to tell you off.’
She glanced furtively back at the house; her mother was there, an outline at the window.
‘What are you here for then?’ she asked quietly, rubbing at her arms, jigging in her trainered feet to beat back the cold.
‘Support,’ I said.
She had been unsure about coming with me; I’d expected that. I didn’t need to wonder what the Eldest Girls had told her. They despised me for stealing away their beloved Mr Hailey, and by rights, they could consider me in league with Mr Crane.
I had thought in the days since my father’s death of the times they had asked me questions in class, seemingly innocent things – tangents, I’d assumed, to draw us away from the tedium of GCSE exam practice. How come you wanted to teach here after being a pupil, didn’t it put you off? Is Mr Crane as strict with you as he is with us? I thought how easily I’d brushed theses enquiries aside. No wonder the girls had taken their fear and confusion to a stranger, to Ben.
Just as my father said, we, the island, had let them down.
I told Viola what I planned to do. I asked her to trust me.
She asked if she could bring her dog.
‘People think of that animal as a familiar, you know,’ I warned, ‘they don’t like it.’
But it was a deal-breaker. If Viola was to be my support, the dog was to be hers.
Our walk was illuminated by a perfect half-slice of moon, no need yet for the torches that we all, without a second thought, carried in every coat pocket. The dog gave us pause to stare out across the water, making us halt every few yards so it could squat low in the grass verge.
‘What is it doing?’ I asked.
‘Peeing,’ Viola replied cautiously, as if there might be a trick to my question.
‘But can’t it just go all at once, so we don’t have to keep stopping?’
She shrugged, suggesting there probably was a way to correct the animal, if only she had the desire to do it.
During our stuttering progress towards the harbour, I summarised my case, what I intended to say. I asked her if she was happy to back me up.
She puckered her lips in thought, then said, ‘It’s beautiful here really, isn’t it?’, which felt like an agreement, an understanding of what I was trying to do. Beside us, the waves were picked out silver by the particular glow of the moon, and I sensed that Viola was seeing this for the very first time, that she had been looking out across that ocean all these months and seeing no splendour, only distance.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘it is beautiful here, despite everything.’
We passed the smokehouse, breathing in the salty, ashy taint that it left on the air, heading onto the cobbles, well lit ahead of us. On nights when the Counting House was to be occupied, they switched on the line of lanterns, strung across building fronts and from poles around the harbour mouth. Tonight, those lights winked at us, they waved.
‘I really am sorry about your dad,’ Viola said, a rush of words, as if it was important to state this before we stepped into the ring.
I’d heard the phrase so many times in the past few weeks – I’m so very sorry for your loss – and still had no idea how to answer. Thank you. Are you? I know. Yes, me too. All responses seemed cursory, pointless; the ‘sorry’ in the first place did me no good.
‘Where’s your dad?’ I asked her.
‘Dead too,’ she replied, and I almost laughed when ‘sorry’ made its way to my tongue like a reflex.
I blocked it, asked instead: ‘And you don’t have any brothers or sisters?’
She sniffed, licked her lips and looked out beyond the boats that nestled against one another within the harbour walls.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You?’
I followed her gaze, onwards, to the straight black line between water and sky.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Same.’
We were being watched. The figure of Saul Cooper was picked out by lantern light against the front wall of the Customs House as we neared our destination. He was smoking, though he had given up years ago and become notorious for his sermonising.
‘They’ll be using the insides of your lungs to resurface the path to chapel,’ he’d yell to the boatmen who kept up the habit, saying it in good humour, but meaning it, and the boatmen would mutter to one another about how there were none so holy as the recently converted. Saul’s abstinence had led to his excessive consumption of fishermen’s mints, a sweet always sliding across the front of his teeth. The hot, peppery flavour of them had passed from his tongue to mine on All Hallows’ Eve. An intrusive thought came – what would it taste like to kiss him now, his mouth sullied by tobacco? I chased that thought away.
Viola stalled at the sight of Saul, peeling his back from the building, stubbing out his cigarette with a toe.
‘Keep walking,’ I instructed, and Viola did, making for the stocks where she would tie up her dog. She stooped low to fasten a double knot, petting and calming the animal before she was willing to stand again. Then, in an action incongruous with her earlier hesitation, she gave Saul a tentative wave. This was all the invitation he needed. He jogged towards us, the length of his oilskin coat flapping like the wings of a bat.
He nodded and greeted the girl – ‘Viola’ – then turned to me, smiling oddly. ‘Miss Cedars,’ he said pointedly. His unctuous smarm had returned and perhaps it was a blessing; soft, attentive Saul, the one who called out, ‘Leah! Leah!’ in a plaintive voice, was so much harder to handle.
I stared him down. He was not to say anything compromising in front of this girl, one whose word had a direct route back to the students of St Rita’s.
‘Where are you two ladies off to?’ he asked.
‘Viola and I are attending this evening’s Council meeting,’ I said. I put my arm around the girl and felt her, quite rightly, flinch at this gesture, at my drawing up of sides.
‘Oh, are you!’ He began to laugh.
‘I am,’ I said, stone cold. ‘Just like you.’
I could feel Viola’s eyes travelling from Saul to me, and back again. I wanted to pull from her mind, like a length of magician’s scarves, all the conclusions she was leaping to. I let my arm drop from her shoulders.
‘I don’t go anymore,’ he said airily. ‘Neither does Bob Signal, nor the Reverend.’
‘What?’ This was news to me – and I supposed to most people on the island as well. ‘But you’re on the Council, so… Why not?’
His affected lightness dissolved. He sighed heavily and looked at his feet.
‘Oh, I dunno, it became… Let’s just say, there didn’t seem to be much point.’
‘“Not much point”?’ I repeated. I was aghast. ‘“Not much point”!’ My father’s words were there, ready to direct him. Remove the beam from your eye, Saul! But the beam wasn’t there, I could see that; it was long gone. He knew decay had set in, but had chosen the path of least resistance; he had decided to look away.
‘Well, I will be attending.’ I despised myself for the childish pride in my voice, diminishing what I was about to do. ‘I shall be sitting in my father’s place.’
‘You know they won’t let you do that. His place will be open to Paul only and –’
‘Do you see Paul anywhere?’ I glanced at Viola, to see if she had been alerted to my earlier lie about not having a brother.
Saul raised his palms in surrender. ‘Come on, Leah, you know it won’t be me making that decision.’
I bristled at his use of my first name.
‘Then why are you not making it your decision?’ I demanded. ‘Why are you not banging on the door of the Big House, you and Robert Signal and Father Daniel, and forming your own Council?’ He hung his head again. ‘The Earl is the leader of this island, not that lot in there. You should be returning him to power, overthrowing this rot.’
‘Look, Leah,’ he said, weary of speech, ‘don’t you think that we –’
I didn’t want to hear it – his pessimism, his excuses – I had urgent business.
‘The reason you’re not doing anything,’ I told him, my parting shot, ‘is because you’re a coward. Your stepping back makes you nothing short of a collaborator.’
I strode away, towards the Counting House, feeling Viola vacillate behind me, before deciding to follow, matching me in step. Ahead of us, in the yellow light of the windows, two silhouetted tableaux were playing out. In the meeting room on the left, four men were taking their seats, ready to mete out justice for the consequences of a punctured heart. In the scullery on the right, a trio of women clustered, chatting and gesticulating, fussing around a tea urn.
We entered the lobby with its tired marble floor, a floor that had always made me wonder what Lark had been like when the stone was first laid, shiny and new, a hundred or more years ago.
‘Turn left,’ I told the girl, feeling her instinctively edge towards the right. ‘Turn left.’
In the meeting room, in front of the raised stage with its red velvet curtains and carved and painted Union Jack above its proscenium arch, were two foldaway tables, pushed together on the parquet floor and spread with a white tablecloth. Jacob Crane sat at the head of this table, jacket slung across the back of his chair, his top buttons loosened. To his left, was Abe Powell, our lanky harbour master, in his battered and ubiquitous Fair Isle jumper, and at his side Jed Springer from the Anchor, still in his bartender’s waistcoat. On Mr Crane’s right, Dr Bishy wore his customary navy three-piece suit, unbuttoned to allow for the distension of his belly. There were five seats empty – one for Saul, one for the Reverend, one for Robert Signal, one for our Earl, one for my father.
Jacob Crane raised his hand as Viola and I entered, a sign that we were to stop where we were. The gesture was one I recognised and had been trained to obey. Should I be called to his office at school and cross the threshold a moment too early, he would hold me in place in the doorway while he finished reading the last few lines of a document. It occurred to me only then that there never were any last lines that needed reading; the hand was a tactic, a way to exert his authority from the very start.
Viola and I halted in the doorway as Jacob Crane ran through the apologies, his voice perfunctory, ticking things off on a lined notepad as he spoke.
‘Brothers who send their absences this evening – Earl Catherbridge, Father Daniel, Robert Signal, Saul Cooper.’
‘No, I’m here.’
I was to regret my challenge of Saul on the cobbles. There he was, taking the empty chair beside Dr Bishy, not bothering to remove his large, wild coat. If I achieved success that night, Saul would want to claim a piece of it. I would owe him.
Dr Bishy reared back from his new neighbour, as if to get a view of a rare and peculiar creature. Jed Springer shook his head, amused; Abe Powell kept his gaze steady, shark-like.
Jacob Crane’s smile was stiff and he closed his eyes briefly for emphasis as he greeted Saul. ‘Thank you for gracing us with your presence, Mr Cooper.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you have an urgent message, Miss Cedars? Will that explain this interruption of the Council in session?’
This was it, this was my cue.
‘I’m here to arbitrate on the case of my father’s death,’ I told him.
Silence.
‘I assume,’ I went on, ‘that it will be happening this evening?’
I looked to Abe, Jed and the doctor in turn, each of them immediately fascinated by the white nothingness of the tablecloth.
Mr Crane’s smile grew more rigid. ‘Though you think it should concern you, Miss Cedars –’ he spoke kindly, slowly, the way he addressed the younger children of St Rita’s ‘– and I understand how you might have come to this conclusion in the midst of your sadness, for which we all here are very sorry –’ there were muttered condolences ‘– this matter does not concern you. So, you may leave.’
Viola twitched to go. I snatched a handful of her coat.
‘I was present at the last,’ I went on. ‘Dr Bishy here was not.’
The doctor spluttered righteously into speech, one finger spearing the air. ‘That was no oversight on my part, I assure you, I –’
‘No,’ I interrupted, ‘I didn’t say that it was. My father was dying, nothing could be done. But I was the one who received his final word on how his death should be recorded and Viola here –’ I regathered my grip on her coat. The girl stood up straighter at the mention of her name, ‘– she was involved in the game with the heart.’
‘Game!’ Jed Springer slapped a palm against the tablecloth, making both Viola and me jump. He laughed, quite genuinely. ‘Game!’ None of the other men joined in and his amusement puttered out.
Saul stared at me open-mouthed.
‘“Game” is the wrong word,’ I agreed. ‘They did it in all seriousness.’ Viola gave a great gasp. ‘But only as a keep-safe,’ I went on. ‘That is what they have been used for in our island’s darker history – hearts with nails – as talismans to ward off evil spirits.’
I could feel Mr Crane readying his sword to fight me, so I raised mine – higher.
‘My father was looking after Miss Kendrick here, while her mother was… is…’ I didn’t know how to phrase it.
‘Unwell,’ Viola put in.
‘Yes, unwell. My father had been ensuring this girl was safe and cared for and she is very grateful for this. She would never have wished to bring him any harm.’
Viola nodded her head in agreement. Mr Crane tried to speak; I left him no gap.
‘With his dying words, my father asked that Viola Kendrick and the Eldest Girls –’ I held eye contact with our headmaster as I gave their names, ceremoniously. This was what did it, I believe, sealed my fate, speaking of them as he was wont to do, as single charms, not one collective spell, ‘– Jade-Marie Ahearn, Anna Duchamp, Britta Sayers…’ He glared back, unblinking. I could barely breathe but knew I must go on. ‘My father said that they are not to be blamed for his death and that they are not to be punished but instead given shelter. Protection is something they tried to find for themselves with that goat’s heart.’
Dr Bishy folded his arms, chins vibrating with the shaking of his head.
‘The coincidence of his death was precisely that.’ My voice grew louder now. I was outside of my body, watching myself speak. I had let go of Viola’s coat and was observing my own hands before me, making passionate gestures. ‘He had been sick for some time, we know now in hindsight. He had lost weight, he had been under a large amount of stress and had been experiencing extreme fatigue, which made him fall asleep at work. I can bring witnesses who –’
‘Enough, Miss Cedars, enough!’ roared Mr Crane. ‘I have allowed you to speak for too long already. Should we need you as a witness, then we shall call you. Now you may leave.’
‘I haven’t finished,’ I replied.
‘Believe me –’ he beat out the words ‘– when I tell you that you have.’
I looked to Saul, desperate for him to speak, terrified that he would.
‘I will be taking up my father’s hereditary seat on the Council,’ I went on. I would say it all, everything I had planned.
‘Seats pass to sons,’ said Mr Crane as casually as he had read out the absences. He was flicking though his lined pad now, bored of me. ‘Women do not sit.’
I felt Viola reach for my coat, as I had grabbed for hers, but she was too late to stop me. I walked towards the table and pulled back the seat beside Jed Springer, planting myself down. Our landlord issued another of his amused barks. This was how he dealt with Council meetings – Saul and the others kept away, Abe Powell was present in body but vacant of mind, and Jed Springer treated it merely as entertainment on a stage. His decision to stand back and laugh was better than the alternative – the kind of horror that was playing across Saul’s face. Viola took a nervous step towards the door, as if she might run for help.
‘Get up,’ said my headmaster.
‘I shall take the minutes,’ I said, ‘that’s a woman’s job, isn’t it?’ I showed them my teeth; it was supposed to be a smile. I pulled the phone from my pocket.
Ben had told me that this was the best of his devices for doing what I needed to do, though he also told me that it was lost. We turned over cushions and pulled out drawers in our search, Ben explaining that there was a democratic attitude to possessions at the Billet House – ‘Borderline communist,’ he said. Everything belonged to everyone. It occurred to me as we searched that he was pretending to have mislaid it because he didn’t want me to take it – those mainlanders and their attachments to their phones. When I spied it, slid onto the very top of their understocked bookshelf, it felt as if it had been put there deliberately – hidden. Ben was not as pleased as I’d imagined he would be, reunited once again with an expensive phone that had been missing for weeks. Still, he charged it up, he demonstrated how to use the function I required and he handed it over.
I placed the phone in front of me on the white tablecloth. The men of the Council leaned back in their seats, while Saul leaned in, Viola too, slack-jawed.
I did a sweep of their anxious faces.
‘Don’t worry, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘I shan’t be bringing forward a proposal for a phone mast.’
No one smiled.
‘I’m going to record this,’ I told them, pressing the buttons as Ben had showed me, hands shaking, betraying my desire to appear confident, in control. ‘It’ll make things much easier to type up later.’ I cleared my throat and stumbled on. ‘My first proposal as a newly appointed member of this Council is that, with the parents’ agreement, the Eldest Girls shall be put in my charge for a time, to set them back on a godly path.’
I looked at Viola as I spoke, gauging her reaction, an indication of how the Eldest Girls would receive the news.
‘Get up, Miss Cedars.’ Mr Crane’s voice came like a rumble of incoming thunder. ‘Do not threaten your distinguished post at the school by continuing with this display.’
I did not get up.
‘I admire you, Mr Crane,’ I said, ‘for juggling the headmastership of the school, your Council duties and your numerous chapel commitments alongside your teaching of the girls.’ This script that I had written for myself, had I ever truly believed I would have the audacity to voice it? And was it really me saying these words? It felt as though the message was coming through me. This was the channelling of a spirit. ‘But it is time that the Eldest Girls returned to the bosom of Lark’s womenfolk.’
I felt power in the word womenfolk. In their mouths, it was used to diminish us; in mine, it was an amplification. I could push it no further in that meeting room, though, the idea of our collective strength, our potential. To win, I needed to bring them back onside, make them see the reason in my argument, make this the Brothers’ decision all along.
‘I am a good and godly woman, am I not?’ They were silent. ‘Make your nods loud for the recording, please, gentlemen.’
‘Aye,’ said Saul Cooper, the only man present to know this wasn’t true.
‘Aye,’ said Jed, an agreement delivered in a tone that suggested his vote meant nothing.
‘I am a pure-born Larkian and much-loved daughter of this Council, am I not?’
‘Aye, Miss Cedars,’ said Mr Crane, his voice low, pointing me to the paradox – my being a much-loved daughter made this crime of speaking up all the more grave.
‘And as someone who holds a distinguished post at the school, and as a woman, I am best qualified to tell these girls of womanly ways and how they might return to them. Do I hear any objections?’
There was only silence in the room.
Outside on the cobbles, Viola’s dog keened loudly for the return of her mistress and I felt a sudden, painful connection with the animal. I too wanted to howl, bring everyone running.
‘Then the motion is carried,’ I said, as calmly as I was able. ‘Is there any other business?’