The Brides of Rollrock Island Read online

  ‘What are you up to, Able?’ He had been one of the teases, up at the schoolhouse. He had poked my belly once with his grubby finger: Here’s a nice fat chicken, he’d said. Plenty of flesh on this one.

  But now he was tall and a young man. ‘I’ve a word with you?’

  I let him in, waved him towards the fire. He perched himself on Dad’s sunken chair. It was a startling thing, to have a live young man in the house.

  Cautiously I sat opposite. He leaned forward at me. ‘You go down Fisher’s yesterday and see that mere-girl?’

  ‘I did, as did everyone.’

  ‘I went down again this morning. A lot of us went down, for another look at her.’

  Good. They were well and truly fascinated, then. ‘And she had slept well, in her land-bed?’

  ‘She had not,’ said Able. ‘She had got out, and taken her coat from the cupboard where Fishers hid it – she bled all over, fighting her way in to find it. She took herself back to the sea, and Fishers all sleeping so soundly above, you’d have thought they had seven pints apiece in them, even the women.’

  I was only relieved that his sneering was for Fishers, not for me. ‘That was careless of them,’ I said gently.

  ‘Very careless,’ said Able self-righteously.

  ‘So now she is gone, and we can all go back to living as we lived before yesterday.’

  ‘Like heck we can.’ He would have uttered worse than heck, had he not wanted a favour of me.

  I tipped my head and refrained from smiling. ‘Well, I can. What is wrong with you?’ Able held my eyes a long glance, but I made sure they told him nothing. ‘Come along, Able. You have never come uptown to gossip with Misskaella Prout before. What is it you’re after?’ I wanted to see him in discomfort, begging.

  ‘Well.’ He was not embarrassed at all, the insolent thing. ‘People say you have the gift. I wondered if you could fetch me a seal.’ And when I did not answer, he added, ‘A woman out of a seal, I mean, like that one yesterday.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  I looked into my hands, still a little earthy as they were from pulling radishes. So different, this was, this bald question, from the nightful of sea-shush and magic, and the bull-seal hefting himself up the rock.

  ‘Because if you can’t, I’m wasting my time.’ And he scraped his feet forward and took hold of the armrest to push himself to standing.

  I let him start on that bluff, then said, ‘Why would I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He plumped himself down again.

  ‘People are uneasy enough with me – if I start bringing up sea-wives, they’ll take against me good and proper.’

  ‘It could be secret.’

  ‘Could it?’

  ‘I could tell a tale. I could say she came up like this first one, by herself.’

  I gave a little snort, examined my earth-smeared apron. ‘And once you have her, what then?’

  ‘What then? Why, I’ll be happy then. And you’ll be well paid.’

  ‘Oh, and that’ll be all, will it? No other men will want a pretty, when you start parading yours about the town?’

  ‘They’ve got the girls here, no? They don’t need one. I am driven to this; none of these bitches wants me.’

  ‘None?’ I said. ‘I don’t recall your ever asking me.’

  That was amusing, to watch him wake to me, then blush, then look about at everything else. ‘Listen,’ I said, full of scorn. ‘Every lad in town is spelled stupid by that maid. That’s a fairy lass you’re talking of there, Able; you see her, you want her, and one of our girls hasn’t a chance against her.’

  He grinned. ‘That’s part of the charm of it,’ he said. ‘That other lads should want her, and only have our island girls to choose from. It’ll send them mad.’

  ‘And where do you think they will come in their madness? Right where you have come in yours: up to my door.’

  ‘This is not madness; this is a well-conjured scheme. Listen.’ And he mentioned a sum of money.

  ‘Why, that’s paltry!’

  But he had his hand up. ‘I know. I would give you more upfront, but I will need the rest to set up our house and to pay the parson to wed us.’

  ‘Parson Rightley? He’d as soon marry you to that hearthstone there as to seal-kind. You will have to go abroad, Able, for the formalizing of it.’

  ‘Curse it, yes I will.’ He thought a while, then mentioned a half of the previous sum. ‘But,’ he said, waving aside my laughter, and he promised me this and this of his earnings in the two years coming.

  The effect within me as he laid out these terms was a great relaxing, of a tension I had not even known I was suffering. It was one thing not to want a husband, I realized; it was quite another not to need one for the roof over your head, for your meat and bread, for the shoes on your feet and the coat on your back.

  ‘And this you would pay me,’ I said, keeping my voice hard, ‘even should she escape you, find her coat and run off back to the sea? Or sicken to a burden, like my mam there, or my dad before her? Or die on you, childbirthing or otherwise? Or catch some land-disease, that she cannot fight off? The effort is the same for me, whether she stays or goes, Able. And you might gain not very much, if you don’t take care. But I cannot have your caretaking, or luck, or acts of God’s hands, be a part of the bargain. I can only extract the girl into your keeping. You undertake, do you, to pay me the same, good luck following or poor?’

  ‘Every penny,’ he said, ‘I promise.’

  He put out his hand, the way men do to make a bargain.

  I looked at it. ‘I don’t know, Able,’ I said. ‘Give me a day and a night, to sit with this, with the gains and the losses to me. It is no small thing.’

  He pulled back his hand, annoyed. ‘How could you be worse off?’

  I met his contemptuous eye. ‘Do you want this, Able?’

  He looked aside and clicked his tongue.

  ‘If you want it, you’ll perhaps think twice before insulting the person who can get it for you.’

  He cleared his throat, watched the floor between his boots.

  ‘Come back tomorrow. I’ll tell you yea or nay.’

  And I showed him out, my face serious, my heart as light as a floating feather.

  In the night, though, Mam slipped her moorings worse, going from wedding-day terrors to a full fight against all her imaginings. Such a strength came on her, most of the night I spent pinning her down, dodging her fists and feet and trying to calm her; in the end I had to tether her to the bed, and even then I could not bring myself to leave her to find some sleep myself, for fear she would struggle free.

  Morning rescued me from that nightmare at last, and I sent for a sister and for the Widow Threading for one of her sedative teas. Through the fuss of all that I saw Able loitering in our lane, unwilling to come knocking while others visited. I sent Lorel off, to go and tell my predicament and our mother’s to Grassy and Bee, and once she had gone out the lane-end I gave Able a sharp look and he toddled across to me most eagerly.

  ‘I will do it,’ I said, ‘what you asked for. But my mam’s beginning her dying now, and you must wait until she’s gone, for I won’t have the strength.’

  ‘Will she be long about it?’ he said.

  ‘She might go tomorrow, or fight on another month yet, is what the Widow said. Can you keep yourself in your trousers that long?’

  That sent him away blushing.

  Two weeks more Mam dragged on. From that night until the very end she fought away food, fought away sleep, struck out at any person who came near her, snarled and bellowed. And she nearly sent me mad along with herself; in my exhaustion and fear of her, I reached a point where I could barely remember a more human Mam, a woman with sense behind her eyes, and from whose mouth came recognizable words. One night in her struggles she pulled her shoulder-bone right from its socket, though, and the pain of that injury tamed her somewhat. She shrank and weakened quickly, then, sna
rling less and weeping more, and finally one dawn I woke from where I had collapsed asleep with my head on my arms on her bed, and found her dead before me. I watched her a long time, waiting to feel something more than the enormous relief of her leaving; then I rose and sent for my sisters.

  As soon as Bee arrived, I claimed the need for fresh air, and set out to Crescent Corner. There they all were, sleek soggy mams and furred sprightly babs, carpeting the rock and all but covering what little sand there was. Down the cliff path I went, and hurried across the rocks to the blunt sea-maiden I had drawn. I loosened my bands so that I should see her clearer, and the seals lifted and cried to me. Each dot of her outline still streamed with invisible smoke. But her work was done, with the coming and departure of the mere-girl; all further transactions with the seals I wanted to conduct myself. I bent and extinguished her, dot by dot. It was like crushing out small coals with my fingertips and knuckles. She had not been very finely worked, but still I cursed the number of burns I must sustain to erase her. Clumsily I re-knotted the bands at my shoulder, and walked home shaking both hands to ease the pains I had given myself unmaking the spell.

  We buried her. My sisters agreed that I should have the use of the house, which was only fair, seeing as I had been nursemaid of both our mam and dad, and otherwise one of their child-crowded houses would have to take me in. But they took their time deciding, holding long and pleasurable discussions in my hearing about what should be done should I ever marry, or should Billy return with a wife to settle. The most they would promise me was that I could live there as long as these things did not happen. If either did, they said, all this talking would have to be done over again. Perhaps I could be maid to Billy and his foreign wife that they had invented? Perhaps we could pay the sisters rent, me and my unimaginable husband? I said not a word; I would not give these bargainings energy by protesting. Whenever they asked me my opinion, I would say, ‘You work it out among you. You decide what you think is fair. I’ll not live with any of you resenting this decision.’ For how could I care, even, with my fortune staring at me from over their shoulders, in the form of Able and whoever else would traipse along behind him? Let them go on; let them have one last boss and blurting-out of righteousness, before their world went to splinters. I would end up best-off of them, though they talked of me now as their burden, to be shared out among them, and shrugged off if they could.

  We waited a few weeks more for the moon to come to the full.

  Able brought clothing, some boots for the girl, and a bulge in his coat pocket that must be my money. We went early, so as he could carry her straight off on the Cordlin boat that morning, and marry her respectably as soon as he could.

  I was entirely prepared, starved but for bread and teas and only the tiniest meat these last three days. You’re looking well, Bee had said, suspiciously, the day before when she had met me unexpectedly down the town, so anticipation of the magic must have gone to my skin and hair and carriage, too; I could not keep it a secret. Even a man or two had glanced at me, taken aback, this last day or so. What was it about me, I could see them wondering, that I was not so ignorable as usual, not so repellent?

  I was like a banked-up fire. I was glad of the bands crossing my chest, containing what was in me.

  I met Able at Lawson’s stile, so we should not be seen together and commented on. We walked out unspeaking, not at all the way any other lad walks out with a girl of Potshead town. Soon we stood at the top of the cliff at the Crescent, looking down on the many silken bodies lying ashore like poor-piled bolsters, sand-bags, jelly-bags.

  ‘Which one of these, then, is your wife?’ I laughed, hands on my hips. Someone flapped her flippers below; some seal-bab croaked and yowped after his mam, and the mother crooned back, somewhere between dog- and person-sound.

  ‘Does it matter?’ he said. ‘Aren’t they all equal of beauty inside that lard?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and laughed again. ‘But beautiful or ugly as a sow’s backside, you are only getting the one. If she ends up the Misskaella of seals, that is your trouble, and the price remains the same.’

  ‘There’s worse than you,’ he said kindly, because he was feeling kind towards everything this day.

  ‘There is, and worse we might see. Be prepared.’ I had no fears, not really; but I could not, now we were so close, resist testing our bargain yet again, just to watch it hold. Several ways I had begun to spend that money in Able’s coat, that the wind was bouncing against his belly. New boots I would have first, not Hardbellow’s clumpers that all of Rollrock wore, but something Cordlin crafted, of softer leather and sweeter style.

  ‘Come, then,’ I said. Now that we were on the point of this, I did not want him turning to straw on me, or bringing to mind some nuisance pronouncement of the parson’s. I waved him to the head of the path. ‘Lead me the way.’ If he decided at the last chance to run, I wanted to be behind him to block him, slap him, maybe, bring him to his senses – or rather, keep him from coming to his senses, for this was not a sensible enterprise. I wanted to keep him dreaming, then, and dazzled. I wanted him foolish and greedy and fixed ahead on his magical wife.

  ‘Which, then?’ he said as I ran into the back of him, stepping down onto the sand. ‘Near or far? Or middle?’

  ‘I’m not to know – whatever takes your eye. Pick a healthy one, a nice specimen, a model of its kind. There. Or what about that one?’

  ‘Gad, they stink, don’t they? Will I have to train her to the toilet?’

  ‘Have I ever trained one?’

  ‘You might have, for all I know.’

  ‘Did you ask Fishers, whether they had to clean up any mess of her?’

  He made a face. I slapped his arm. ‘Dolt. As if you’ll care, once she rises up naked from her trammellings. Come along now, Able, make your pick. Let’s get on.’

  At last my expecting and gesturing brought him to heel, and he concentrated, walking where he could among the slumped bodies, some of which cared as he passed them, nosing after his smell, fixing him with their dark-wet eyes, others who lay only stunned, sacks of sun-warmth, barely more alive than the rocks they lounged on. Off away among the crowd of them, the bull heaved himself up, but it was not our intrusion that bothered him, but another bull, rearing from a little gang of them that sulked in the shallows. They closed to duel, clumsy lumps of rage that they were; how could my springtime lover have emerged from such a beast? And little Ean, son of that spring moon, where was he now? Could I have dreamed it all, the birthing and the nursing of him, the knotting-up of his weed-blankets? I wished I had, but I ached all through me at the thought of him, at the sight of his father’s ignoring me, busy about his beast-life. I knew all too well it was true.

  ‘This one. This will do.’ He had chosen one slightly more brown than grey. He put his hand on her to claim her.

  ‘Let me look at her. All of a piece, is she? Neat as new-made, this one. She’s a fine choice. Now stay by. I should not want her bonding with me like a new-hatched duckling, if you are not in her waking sights.’

  I undid the bands. The seals’ attention veered towards me like a change in the wind.

  ‘What’s all that?’ said Able fearfully, eyeing the crowd of them.

  ‘Nothing to worry about.’ I tangled the seal’s gaze with mine. How much surer of myself I felt, this time! A hugeness of mind and a benevolence came upon me, as I looked for the girl within the beast, and brought the grains or runnels or sparks of her inward. She began to form pale at the centre like an almond in its fruit, and the seal-ness shrank outward to become fruit-flesh, to become coat. I went very carefully, and sought and sought for lights I might have missed in her. Then I raised my two hands into a point, summoned my resources, cleared my throat and clove the seal-skin top to bottom.

  ‘Come and stand here,’ I told Able, and I put him where I was. I went to the head, propped it up with my knee and pulled apart the seal-skin there.

  Able’s face blossomed. ‘Ivy!’ he said
joyfully, and put his hands out to her. And up she sat, her black hair tumbling, then spreading on the long shaped back of her and into the wind, her bottom as neat as a boy’s. She put her long white hands into his befreckled ones, and stood unsteadily on the coat, which was thick and slippery as yet. She stepped off it, onto the safer stone. She coughed; she coughed out words: ‘What have you done to me?’

  I rolled up her skin; it thinned and dried and dulled a little as I went. I was wobbly from the effort of transforming seal to girl, and with relief that she had come out right, that she was whole, that she could speak, that she was fastening to Able – and he to her, cooing and exclaiming.

  ‘Put on these under-drawers,’ he said to the girl, ‘and get yourself modest, before someone happens along the cliff and looks down.’

  ‘What is modest, Able Marten?’ she said as she stepped in.

  ‘Why, it is something you will need to learn of smartly.’

  I bundled and tied the seal-coat; we had agreed, he and I, that I would take and mind it for now, so that his girl could not easily retrieve it, and escape. Now it was no more than a blanket-bundle, though not so heavy as that, and smoother, quite different to the touch. Different to the mind, too, with all its lights drawn off it, all its seal-life stifled flat. Quickly I tied my bands into crosses again, so that I should not feel so sharply the skin’s suffering there at being so reduced, its hopeless straining after the girl who had stepped from it.

  Able had the dress on his Ivy now. He sat her on a rock and showed her the shoes, brushing her small feet clean and remarking on their whiteness, their well-madeness, their lack of use. He slipped the shoes on and tied their stiff new laces, explaining all the while.

  ‘They do feel strange,’ she said politely. ‘This all feels strange, to be so bound inside, away from the weather.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Able. ‘Warm against the weather and the wind. And the shoes, against stones, you know, on the ground, and sharp shells, and thorns should you walk in grassed places.’