Sea Hearts (34 page)

Quite suddenly the headland cut between us and the southern swell, and the engine was freed from climbing among the mounds of the sea. We came in at a glide, the horizon settling, and the isle looking less liable to pitch forward in its sleep and crush us. Which house was mine, in that town? I tried to follow with my eyes the path Gran had described to me, putting me to sleep when I was tiny.
A little black house,
she’d said; was it
that
little black house, just sliding behind the church tower?

The ferry slowed, churning water about its haunches. In we bumped against the wharf. All the town, it seemed, was gathered to meet us, and all the town was men, just as that visitor Tom Grease had told Mam and Grandmam — men who idled or mended nets on the sea-front, stood in groups near the store, or wandered along from the sea-front houses, or down from the town above.

I lifted down my case, put it on the seat and stood by it, watching the deckhand tie up. Beyond him on the sea-front appeared a woman, short and stout and bow-legged, hurrying towards us. She carried a baby and trailed four flame-haired daughters, various sizes, but all dressed the same in flower-printed frocks.

It couldn’t be. Misskaella? Gran had told us many a tale of that woman — she’d threatened us with her, even, when we misbehaved as children. The witch would come striding across the sea, she told us, and ladle out our punishment. I felt a stab of annoyance at Donald, that he was dead and not able to shiver as I told him I’d seen the actual Misskaella face to face.

But no, it could not be, such a young woman and so lively, and all those children. Ah, this must be that
apprentice
Mister Grease had mentioned to Gran as Mam waved me out the door. A witch, all right, but not the witch of legend; one of those wild Callisher girls, from right near us in Knocknee. Still, she had learnt from Misskaella the art of being terrifying; my childhood terrors stabbed in me as she rocked towards the boat, seeming all energy and spite.

Meanwhile the men had greeted the deckhand and helped him place the gangplank, and taken of the potato-sacks. The potatoes were for Fisher’s store, then, which stood there just as Gran had described it, the solidest building in the town besides the church. It was strange to see it, and to know without ever having entered it exactly how it was arranged inside.

Well, I could only disembark now, couldn’t I? I walked past the curious passengers for the farther islands, and out of the deckhouse to the top of the gangplank. The Rollrock men fell quiet, lifting faces mixed of two kinds to me, round or long, pale or darker, framed by red curls or silky black locks; as well, there were more weathered instances of these two types, the hair only streaked with red or black, or whitened completely. Small pale eyes assessed me or large dark ones, some sharply, others shyly — some would not meet my glance at all.

The witch pushed through the crowd of them, and took up a position right at the gangplank-end, with her free hand on her hip; her girls caught up to her, first swirling about her and then clumping close.

‘What’s this,’ she cried, in a voice like gargled stones, ‘with a suitcase? What do you think you are about?’

I brought a picture of Gran at her fiercest into my mind, the way she would
take no nonsense.
I was not here because I cared what strangers thought, remember? I trod down the gangplank as if I often had to deal with angry witches. ‘Who are you?’ I said to the little termagant while I was well above her still. I spoke plainly, without sneering or fear. I carried all those deaths in me — Gran’s, Mam’s, Dad’s, Donald’s — those four people I now represented, and they gave my voice the right weight. ‘Who are you, that I should account to you? Are you mayor? Are you police or officialdom?’

‘What business have you on Rollrock?’

‘Business? I live here. I have property.’ I stepped off the side of the plank onto the dock, and walked around the witch and the daughters.

‘Property? What property?’ she said, following.

My, they were tall, some of these boys. ‘This is the way you welcome women home, then?’ I said — not loudly, not angrily, but very clearly, every syllable. ‘Let them be harassed and harridaned even before they’ve set foot?’

‘Home? What home?’ The witch pushed in front of me.

‘Quieten, Trudle,’ said one of the older, bigger men.

Trudle Callisher lifted her chin at him, and drew herself up as much as she could. Her four daughters did the exact same thing, glaring at the man. I might have laughed at the sight, at any other time.

‘Who is your family, girl?’ the man said to me.

‘Winch,’ I said. ‘I am Lory Severner, daughter of Bet Winch, daughter of Nance Winch.’

‘Ah.’ Nods and glances and mutterings went round among them.

‘Odger Winch was your granddad, then, God rest his soul.’

‘And Naseby Winch my uncle, rest his. I hear you gave them both Christian burials?’

The younger men looked to the older, who nodded, and watched us keenly.

‘We did. You’ve been in Cordlin all this time, you Winch women?’

‘Knocknee. As far from the sea and seals as we could get. But I heard there are no more sea-wives left here on Rollrock. Is that true?’

‘It is. They all went,’ said the man. ‘Took themselves off.’

‘All of them, and none brought up since? Because if there is even a one, I’m straight back to Knocknee.’

‘There’s none,’ said the man quickly, into the silence. All of them watched, listened, as if their lives depended on it. Several of the lads might be the one I sought, but of course, he would be very much changed by manhood. They all had such
eyes
on them — had no one ever told them not to stare? — but none of them gave any sign of knowing me.

‘Oh, no,’ said a man at the big man’s elbow. ‘There’s not a one, any more. There’s not been a seal-woman here for a good seven years.’

The big man shifted his feet. ‘I would not say that they’ve been
good
years, myself.’ Into the discomfort after that, he plunged with, ‘Might we carry your case for you, up to the Winch house?’

‘Thank you. That would be very kind,’ I said.

Several of the fathers elbowed forward younger men, and silently they jostled for the case. Then we set off up the sunshiny lanes, and the witch Trudle and six or seven men came with us. Trudle’s face was still pinched up with suspicion; her daughters flowed around her; her baby boy stared at us. He looked a little odd, that one; there might be something wrong with him. The girls’ piles and flags of red hair flamed in the sunlight — my own hair, plaited close to my head and down my back, felt very contained and obedient by comparison.

The big man introduced himself as Torrens Baker. ‘Your grandmam would recall my dad, I should think.’

‘Mister Baker,’ I said, ‘I have a feeling there were cousins, from my grandfather’s marriage, or my uncle’s, who ought to have got this house.’

‘Oh, there were,’ he said.

I had
known
it, the way Mam and Grandmam had muttered with Tom Grease when he visited, while I made the tea.

‘There were several sons from those marriages,’ said Baker. ‘But no Winch lads came back, after the mams took them away. Odger and Nase were both unlucky in that. All these lads you see around you, they are what’s returned, from Crescent or the Skittles, or from sealers farther off.’

I glanced at one or two boys’ profiles, their dark hair or red; what kind of mark would it leave on you, to have lived beneath the sea? These ones seemed to move easily enough on the land; they’d more intelligence in their faces than Trudle’s boy had in his and, as far as I could see without being seen to stare, no webs joined their fingers.

‘And no daughters?’ I said. ‘But wait — ’ For the older men had one and all flinched at my words, and the younger’s faces had fallen. ‘There was something terrible about the daughters. Forgive me.’

‘Many a girl-child was born to Winches,’ said Baker, and then he paused, in the manner of a man on the point of declaring an unpleasant truth. ‘But …’

‘I heard something of it.’ I rushed on to fill in the awkward silence. ‘But it was hard to keep Gran talking about some things on Rollrock for longer than a minute; she would up and bustle away, first chance she had.’

Baker nodded at the ground. I made myself stay silent. ‘Well,’ he went on eventually, and quite softly, ‘they do not thrive on land, the daughters of a man and a sea-wife. There is more seal in them than there is in lads. They must be put back in the sea if they are not to die. They must be reared by their own people. It caused the wives great grief; many of us remember that.’

‘Not to mention the other griefs upon them,’ said a man at my other side.

‘Here we are,’ said Baker over him. ‘Here is Winches’.’

I nearly laughed, the house was such a toy. And it didn’t look straight; the slope of the land threw my eyes off so much, the house seemed to lean back into the hill — for a better hold, maybe. Grass and weeds grew thickly to the fence-tops, to the windowsills, like a bowl of wild salads. Sea pinks clumped along the fence, and sea rocket trailed between the palings into the fields around.

‘Any one of our lads can cut that down for you, Miss Severner,’ said a smaller man into my silence.

‘I’m sorry? Oh, the weeds? Yes. Well.’

I wrestled the gate part-open against the weed-sprouts in the path, squeezed through it sideways, leaving behind the several young men who had stepped forward to help me. I pushed past the growth that leaned in either side, up the weed-cracked path. I took out the big black key on its ribbon, slid it into the lock and turned it, grasped the doorhandle, lifted the latch, and pushed wide the door.

Dust curled up from the floor, leading my gaze up the papered walls to the pictures on them, two stormy seascapes, faded to mostly dark brown. Beyond the far hall door a kitchen chair-back drew its arch on the shadows; a faded curtain frayed from the kitchen window rail, worn through by years of sunshine.

‘Did you want those battens taken off your windows, Miss?’ said one of the young men as I stared in at all this.

‘Maybe in a little while,’ I said. ‘For now, I need to look about the place by myself, if you don’t mind.’

I went back for the case, which the young man passed over the gate to me. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and, looking around at them, at Trudle bridling and all her suspicious daughters, ‘Thank you very much for showing me the way.’

An older man cleared his throat. ‘If you should need anything …’

‘Oh, I’ll be sure to ask.’

The men drifted away back down the hill. ‘Come, Trudle,’ said Mister Baker, for the little bow-legged woman looked intent on staying and watching, and showing her displeasure some more.

‘What does she want here?’ I heard her say in her gargling voice as she went off with him. ‘Who would come to this place, to more than visit and go again in a day?’

I heard the murmur of Mister Baker’s voice, but his words were indistinct. I nodded to the departing men, and some touched their cap-brims to me as they went.

And then I turned to face the house, the dark shuttered rooms, the thick dust, the achingly plain furniture. It would be like taking up residence in my own sore heart, I thought. And I walked up the path and went in.

I knocked on the sunny door, of the only person in Rollrock I could be said to know in the least degree.

His father opened it, and raised his eyes from my shoes to my face as if he had never seen anything like me before.

‘Mister Mallett?’

Mallett nodded, realised he ought to speak, croaked, ‘Yes.’

‘My name is Lory Severner. I wonder, might I have a word with your son Daniel?’

Down went his eyes again, his whole face; he made away from me across the wide front room. Plates and water sounded deep in the cottage behind him. The morning sun shone warm on my back, and lounged about golden on everything. I put my cheek up to the warmth.

‘Don’t you touch them; I’ll finish them,’ came the younger man’s voice, and I turned back to see him, much taller than his father, ducking his head to enter the far hallway.

‘Good morning,’ I said while he was still a shadow there.

He emerged into the front room. Sunlight lit him, reflecting up from the step where I stood. ‘Morning.’

He was very tall and lanky, but he was the one, all right. He’d grown into his eyes and his mouth now. He wore work trousers and unlaced boots, a red-checked white shirt with the collar fraying and a very old, worn grey jumper, unravelling at one of the elbows. His hair wanted cutting quite badly; it was in his eyes so that he had to twitch it aside. I thought he looked lovely.

He stopped just inside the door, waiting for my face to give him a clue. I folded my arms. ‘You
don’t
remember, then.’

He narrowed his eyes, then his mouth dropped open. ‘Knocknee market!’ he said.

‘There you go. First girl you ever saw.’

He nodded slowly, looking for signs of the old me that he’d met. ‘It’s many years.’

‘Have you seen any since?’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I saw more that day, though I didn’t speak to any. And then there were my sisters.’ He looked at his feet.