Ghost Wall(12)

When I got to the place I’d remembered it was barely knee-deep and not particularly near any trees, and the water so dark I couldn’t see what I was sitting on as I lowered myself, but I sat there anyway in oozy mud, the roots of long-dead trees poking my bottom, knees sticking up with the waterline below my navel. I tilted back uncomfortably, the pool not wide enough for me to lean, but the water stroked my sunburn, soothed away the itchy sand. I crossed my legs, tucked my feet under my thighs where the mud was slick and cool, felt cold water filter through my knickers and right inside me. I looked around again and struggled to undo my bra the way Molly had undone hers, hands behind my shoulders, let it lift away from my shoulder blades, felt my nipples harden like hers as I leant forward and dipped them in the cold marsh water. I touched them, watched the shape of my breasts change. I splashed my face, closed my eyes and saw my blood’s rose-red in the sun. I thought then about what might be around me, folded in the peat, what other limbs might be held in the same dark water, what other eyes closed, and that’s where I was when Dad and the Prof came striding over the heather. They were carrying dead rabbits hanging from strings tied around the back legs, the mouths dribbling blood onto the turf and haloed with flies. The water wasn’t deep enough to hide in, not even to cover my breasts which were after all barely large enough to qualify, and though I scrabbled with the bra straps behind my back I was too late, couldn’t do it. Dad apologised to the Prof, maybe the second time I’d heard him apologise to anyone ever, and sent him on. When he’d gone, Dad put down his rabbits – their eyes still bright, I noticed, and no obvious traumatic injuries – and hauled me out of the water which he didn’t need to do, I would have got out when he told me to. Cover yourself, he said, eyes averted in disgust, where are your clothes, and with a hand twisted through my hair dragged me stumbling through the heather and reeds back to where the tunic lay in the sun. Put it on, he said, you should be ashamed of yourself, I’ll not have my daughter a little whore, and only when I had covered myself and turned back to face him did he take off his Iron Age leather belt. Stand against that tree, he said, a rowan not much taller than me, the trunk against which I leant my forehead no wider than my face, and as his arm rose and swung and rose again, as the belt sang through the sunny air, I thought hard about the tree between my hands, about the cells in its leaves photosynthesizing the afternoon sun, about the berries ripening hour by hour, the impalpable pulse of sap under my palms, the reach of roots below my feet and deep into the earth. It went on longer than usual, as if the open air invigorated him, as if he liked the setting. I thought about the leather of his belt, the animal from whose skin it was made, about the sensations that skin had known before the fear and pain of the end. Itching, scratching, wind and rain and sun. About the flaying, the tanning. Pick up those rabbits, he said when he had finished, and don’t let me ever catch you stripping again, lying around naked like that, waiting for one of those lads I’d say, and don’t you imagine I won’t do this again as often as it takes, as long as you’re living under my roof you’ll behave yourself or else, do you understand. The belt swung from his hand. What are you standing there for, did I not just tell you to get the rabbits, are you wanting more, believe me you can have it if you are.



I walked ahead of him back to the hut, the rabbits on their string held at arm’s length. Their heads lolled, but the ears were still laid back. If there was a smell, it was faint, more of fur and digested grass than of blood. Hang them up by the fish, he said, you’ll gut them later, you and your friends. Now help your mother with the cooking, I daresay she’s behind again and folk hungry.

She was ‘behind’, and everyone else was sitting in the shade with cups of water. Well, she said, we don’t want anyone getting sunstroke and you’ve brought us a fair lot of mussels, I’ve had Molly put them in the stream, we’ll eat them later for dinner, the problem with these flatbread things, bannocks or what-have-you, you have to do them one at a time, see, can’t put a whole batch in the oven, folk’ll just have to wait a bit but your father won’t like it, the dough’s there, see, if you can shape a few more I’ll see to these in the pan. Griddle, I mean, or whatever he calls it. OK, I said, what, about this size? Ah Silvie, she said, you’ve upset him again, haven’t you? What, I said, how do you know, what do you mean. I can tell, she said, I am your mum, what was it this time? Nothing, I said, it doesn’t matter, it’s over now, you know what he’s like, it’ll all be fine for a few days now. I just wish you wouldn’t provoke him, she said, if you didn’t wind him up all the time he wouldn’t do it. I know, I said, I didn’t mean to, sometimes I do mean to but this time I didn’t. Well, she said, just don’t do it again, whatever it was, there’s enough here already mithering him.

Dad made us butcher the rabbits after lunch. Or at least, once we’d eaten; it was probably too late to be lunch. It will be interesting, the Prof said, to see how the flint knives work, they’re certainly sharp enough. Molly, could you bring the basket, please? Molly stood up. Sunburn was beginning to flame across her nose and cheeks. I’ll bring the basket, she said, sure, but I’m not cutting open any rabbits, I’m not even going to watch. Oh, said Dad, but I suppose you’ll eat them when someone else has done the dirty work, I suppose you’re not actually a vegetarian? Fine, she said, I am now, if that’s what it takes. It’s all right, Molly, said the Prof, we don’t need everyone to do everything, why don’t you help Alison, wash the cups or whatever. I’m going to wash some clothes, Molly said, this tunic’s horrible. Mum, I said, would you mind doing mine for me, if I’m cutting up rabbits, I got so hot on the beach, it’s all sandy. All right, she said, give it here, and what about you lads, if we’re doing three we might as well do six, not that I’m expecting much without proper soap but we can freshen them up and it’s a good drying day for sure.