Mary

There’s a small willow tree next to Valmarie’s back door. I crawl under the lowest branches, wriggle back in the leaves. The door is open as wide as my hand. Inside her house footsteps thud on a wooden floor. Chairs scrape. I tuck my feet in tight underneath me.

Valmarie’s voice speaks; there’s someone with her.

‘—but what came out?’

‘Stone from Clorey. A stone with a hole through it.’ It’s Kelmar’s voice. ‘Sounds right to me, like that were the truth of him. For hims stone voice banging on relentless with no bloody substance were all I ever got from him. Not like you …’ Her voice trails off.

I hunch back under the bush and listen as hard as I can.

‘Bill, what came out of him?’ asks Valmarie, sharp.

‘Well, that were strange, that were a pile of dark, dank earth. Like him buried hims truth, or hid something true deep down underneath the earth. Or it could mean that him died in hims heart, that him were already as good as buried.’

‘So it’s true.’ There’s anger in Valmarie’s voice.

Kelmar’s voice says, ‘What’s true, Val?’

Her voice is sad. ‘He buried something true in the graveyard …’

Valmarie coughs and asks, ‘What truth came out of Annie’s Martyn?’

Kelmar says, ‘A question mark made of glass. Something him wanted to know, only the answer would’ve shattered him?’

Valmarie says, ‘A secret from Annie, or her from him? I’d be surprised. Annie hopped around after him like a hare. And he thought her the most beautiful woman on the island.’

‘Can’t see it, can you? Skin and bone, and that tangle of hair. Takes all sorts. Mary’s Da were an old worn boot, just the one, and cracked. Felt all kinds of uselessness.’

I’ve got a pain in my chest, thinking of Da feeling useless.

‘What of the tall man?’ says Valmarie, sharp.

I listen, hard as I can.

‘That’s what were the strangest. Nothing left of him at all. No trace, not a shadow. Do you think him were a ghost, so him vanished himself?’

Valmarie says, ‘Seemed real enough to me when we took him there.’

‘But just vanishing. Do you think we missed it? It could’ve been so small we never got it out the hatch. A grain of sand. A speck of dust.’

So Langward’s truth vanished. I shiver so hard the leaves rustle.

Kelmar keeps talking, ‘Do you miss Bill, Val, even a bit?’

‘Not after what he did. Nothing can replace …’ She sounds tearful. ‘You’re not acting like you miss Clorey.’

‘I’d not miss him any more than I’d miss breathing if I woke up dead.’

Footsteps thud, there’s a clang of pots. Must be the kitchen behind that door. Just thinking of Langward makes my belly twist. The smell of him – but salt and dust aren’t bad smells anywhere but on him. Spending so much time on boats him would smell of salt, and him could just have musty clothes.

Even so, hims smell is haunting me.

The wind blusters through the leaves of the willow, twigs catch in my hair. I crawl out, listening close. Valmarie and Kelmar are too quiet. Maybe them can sense I’m hid out here. Some kind of knowing them’ve got … I hunch down under the kitchen window, right next to the open door. There’s a candle burning on the windowsill, so them won’t see me past the reflection.

Inside, Valmarie’s stirring one of the pots on the range.

Kelmar’s at the table chopping herbs. She says, ‘There’s too many things unpunished. Small things, mostly – thieving and suchlike what dun warrant a thrashing. But some crimes are never punished, because none will speak. We should have a way that someone can speak out just to one person, not to all. If them’ll not speak out at the Weaving Rooms, or are too young to do so, then them get no justice. None are took to the Thrashing House and there’s only silence. I wonder sometimes, what of the men? If them’re hurt, them dun tell any of us. Just sort it between themselves.’

Valmarie shakes her head and smiles at Kelmar. I’ve never seen her smile before. She says, ‘Women don’t have to resolve everything for everyone.’

Kelmar says, ‘Some crimes are unheard of for years, some are never spoke of, because the folks concerned can’t go to the Weaving Rooms to talk of it, or the crimes what are the worst – them dun want all folks to know.’

My throat’s thick, stuck. There’s something in Kelmar’s voice what makes me want to walk right into that kitchen and just cry. Fill the whole kitchen with tears till she has to swim to get me, and gather me in her big arms. But I dun even know her. Dun want to. I wrap my arms around myself, tight.

Valmarie leaves the boiling pot, puts her hand on Kelmar’s shoulder and says, ‘You’ve been told something—’

Kelmar shakes her head. ‘It’s not about our sons. Not for the chattering of neither, it’s just … some folks dun feel able to speak.

Valmarie goes back to the pot and says, ‘Well, if they won’t speak out, that’s their business. The Thrashing House feels to me like it’s made from the worst parts of us all. All brought together in one place.’

Kelmar picks up a bowl and stands next to Valmarie. She pours chopped leaves into one of the pots and says, ‘What’d you mean, worst parts of us?’

Valmarie says, ‘No, no – stop – that’s enough sage.’

Kelmar puts down the bowl and gets a wooden spoon. ‘I’ll stir it.’

Valmarie nods, steps back and wipes her brow.

‘Worst parts, Val?’

Valmarie watches her stir. ‘All of our angry vengeful thoughts, all the guilt, the blame, the sadness, jealousy. Well, that’s what it feels like, walking past it. It’s pulling those feelings in, soaking them into the wood. Anyway, I’ve never known how it came to be there. It’s ancient, isn’t it? Did your ancestors build it? It felt ancient when we unlocked that great front door, pushed the men through. Ancient and hungry.’

Kelmar glances at Valmarie and says, ‘The Thrashing House isn’t made from any part of us. It’s made from just one tree.’

Grandmam never told me about this.

‘Here,’ says Valmarie, patting Kelmar’s arm. ‘I’ll take over now. Crack the willow. It would have taken more than one tree to build the Thrashing House.’

Kelmar goes back to the kitchen table and breaks a chunk of bark into small pieces. She says, ‘That’s not what I mean. The tall trees what used to grow here were cut down long before you and I were alive. My Nan’s Grandma told her the Thrashing House grew itself. That it were the last remaining tall tree. It twisted out its branches, dug in its roots and grew so big that none would go near it to cut it down. Then it made itself into the Thrashing House, twisted and flattened out the walls and the door and the bell tower. In the top of the bell tower the bells grew like flowers, and them grew into the bells we ring out. The key grew like a fruit and it were picked by a woman on her twenty-first birthday, so that’s how the women’ve come to have it and the age of being a woman were decided.’

Valmarie says, ‘Well, we’ve got the key back. Not before time. That girl is a liar and a thief. We should—’

Kelmar says, ‘Pass it to the next on the bell list tomorrow.’

‘Do you believe that’s how the Thrashing House came to be?’

Kelmar says, ‘Well, if it’s true or it isn’t, that’s what’s been talked of in my family. I think the Thrashing House calls the folks what are needed here to this island.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I think you were called. For you’re needed, and the tall men are needed for the trade, and the few other folks what’ve ever found their way here – we needed someone to bury our dead, dun we? Him knows how to prepare the dead. She makes good solid coffin boxes. We need them, whether we like it or not.’

Valmarie says, ‘Well, it’s a good job we don’t have to like them. I didn’t hear any kind of call … I was made to stay.’

Kelmar says, ‘But you’re needed. You learned skills with herbs what none others’ve ever had before you. You can see right into a person and know just the right dose, and the herb what’s needed. You’ve got this whole house full of herbs, the tinctures you’ve made, and folks come to you to talk of what ails them, but you’ll not tell others what’s not for thems ears.’

A pot boils loud and rattles the lid. Valmarie says, ‘You’re wrong. I’ve learned things because I’ve had to. I needed to stop feeling like driftwood.’

Kelmar puts her arm round Valmarie’s shoulder and says, ‘You are needed here, Val. Dun matter how, just matters that you’re here. Well, that’s what I think. But the Thrashing House dun call the men to be put inside it. Your husband. My husband,’ she spits out the words. ‘We took them there ourselves. Maybe we wanted them gone. We should at least be honest with each other – we did want rid of our men. Come on. You never loved

Bill.’

Valmarie says, ‘You’re talking as if we named the four men.’ She clatters on a board with a knife. ‘But we didn’t. If we were acting on our own feelings, no other men would have been put in there. Just Bill and Clorey.’

Kelmar speaks slow, ‘Maybe the Thrashing House wanted that tall man. Him went in without a fight. You know, I think it really were calling him. Perhaps him needed to be punished.’ She comes nearer the window, reaches up and gets a jar from a shelf. She goes back to the table and says, ‘If it were down to just me, I couldn’t have taken any one man there on my own, shut them in. It’d be like having blood on my hands.’

‘But there isn’t any blood.’ Valmarie turns to face Kelmar and touches her cheek. ‘So, stop. We wanted justice for our boys. You’re just carrying guilt, and can’t put it down. It’s not serving you well. Come on. Get the bark in and help me strain. We’ve got to get on.’

I crawl back under the bush by the door and listen to the sound of pouring water.

Kelmar’s white boots step outside and Valmarie closes the door. I peek through the willow twigs. Kelmar has a bag over her shoulder and a bowl in her hands and Valmarie carries three candles in glass jars. Them walk up the hill towards the circle of boulderstones, Kelmar’s white boots gleam like two moons walking across a night sky.

I crawl out and watch till Valmarie and Kelmar are hunched over getting things out of the bag, thems faces lit up by the candles.

Valmarie’s kitchen smells of some bitter plant. There’s herbs hanging upside down from the beams of the ceiling. Jars stacked along the shelves. One of them is labelled ‘Mad Honey – Rhododendron Bees’, another has straggly leaves and white flowers tangled inside it and the label says ‘Hemlock’. Another says ‘Valerian, high concentrate’. I step back and bump into the table where a candle flickers. A root lies on a chopping board, sliced in half. The top half is like a screaming baby’s head, but the bottom is the stump of a wizened old man’s body.

I go into the room with the fireplace, it’s lit by three candles. There’s a wall full of shelves stacked with wooden boxes, all different sizes, from the floor up to the ceiling. The boxes all have drawings on them burned dark into the wood. There’s a picture of a heart on one, an eye on another. Some of the boxes have words as well as pictures. A flute and the word sad, a footprint and the word float. A pot of honey named revenge, a map called nonsense, a cup named company, a cracked jug called pointlessness. All the things in these boxes must be what she’s burglared from people’s homes. A noose, a comb, a bat called colony, a mirror with the word land.

I pick the one with the bat and the word colony on it and open it a crack. A tiny bat sits in the corner, quivering, eyes glinting. It flits out quick. I step back, my feet bang on the floorboards.

Sitting on a box high on the wall the bat rattles the tips of its scratchy wings against the wood. It’s got a picture of a key on the side. I drag over a stool, stand on it and reach up to get the box. It’s jammed in between all the others so I ease it out. It’s heavy and I near drop it. I shake it but there’s no sound.

The bat sits on the key box, blinks up at me as I climb down. I brush it off and it flits around the room. I open the key box, but it’s empty. The bat lands on my bag and crawls in.

Valmarie’s fireplace is a strangeness. She’s stuck shells all over it, then gone over them with a hammer and smashed them all up. On the mantelpiece is the Thrashing House key. I pick it up and it sings a high metal sound, and when I blink Mam’s face is there, on the back of my eyelids.

The key starts Mam’s voice over again:

I want this child I’m heavy with to come out. Too heavy for my back. It’s funny to think of me being someone’s Mam. Ned as someone’s Da. Him will tell this child stories of the sea …

I want to hear her again, but I put the key in my bag and look out through the uneven windowpanes, and the ripples make Valmarie and Kelmar look like them are underwater. The candles burn bright in the jars in the grass. Valmarie scatters something from the bowl. She puts the bowl down and faces Kelmar. Them raise thems hands up to the sky. Them’re dancing, spinning around in the circle. Them look like them’re swimming in air.

I close the back door, quiet, crawl up the hill and hide in the shadows between two boulderstones to watch.

Valmarie and Kelmar spin like them can’t see anything outside themselves. The dark clouds shift so fast, the night sky is spinning with them. Valmarie stops, leans over, like she’s letting out all the sighs in her at once.

Kelmar stops, holds her hands up to the sky.

Valmarie calls, ‘Come to us, tell us what is hidden.’

Them’re trying to call up Sishee.

But Grandmam said that Sishee couldn’t understand words no matter how them are said, so I dun know what them expect from someone in a story what can only understand pictures, not words.

Valmarie calls again, ‘Come to us!’

Kelmar drops her arms and shouts at Valmarie, ‘It’s not working! You’ve missed something out!’

There’s a glint of metal in Valmarie’s hand. She raises a knife and dashes out of the circle. I hunch in close to the boulderstone, shut myself away in the shadows.

Kelmar flies out of the circle and grapples with Valmarie, twists the knife from her hand.

Valmarie makes a sound like a dog, howling.

Kelmar stands firm, her chin out. ‘Dun break the circle, come on, if you forgot to do the knife bit, we’ve got to start it again!’

‘No point!’ shrieks Valmarie. ‘If we don’t believe she’s going to come, she won’t – just like I haven’t believed I’m going to find what I want, for years – not for years!’ she sobs.

Kelmar walks her back into the circle, talking low and quiet.

Something moves on the top of my bag, crawls out and up my shoulder. The bat called colony. It flits off me, so fast it looks like hundreds of bats – peeling shadows off itself into the dark sky. It flies round Valmarie and Kelmar.

I crouch down.

Kelmar stares up at it and says, ‘Try again. Something’s shifted.’

Valmarie shouts, ‘It’s only a bat!’ She slumps down on the grass and leans forwards, her fingers over her face.

I stand up and walk backwards, away from them.

Valmarie, still hunched over, moves her fingers. Her dark eyes stare at me. She screeches out, ‘Mary Jared!’ and jumps to her feet.

Running down the hill, my heart thud thud thuds down the valley and up to the graveyard hill. The blackthorn bushes along the edge of the graveyard fill it with shadows. I push through a thick cluster of twigs and thorns. I can’t see where my feet are falling.

I trip on something,

a sharp biting pain in my shin flashes red.

I fall

into a hidden place, buried under the bushes

where them won’t find me.

My eyes close.

I fall back into the fever place that is the blank dark.