Madeline McCaw stepped down from the back of the tram, grimly holding her handbag in one hand and Bridget's hand in the other. The child kept close to the raven skirts, under strict instructions 'not to let go', 'not to talk to anybody ', 'not to misbehave.'
Brendon Pennyridge waited for the widow and the blind child to depart, and slipped into the vacated seat, still buttock warm. He hoisted a bulging travelling bag onto his lap, and wiped a view through the steamed up window, as the town he knew so well and was seeing for the last time, slipped by.
There was something sticking into his hip, and he dug out from between the edge of the seat and the metal side of the tram, a narrow wooden box. He opened it and inside was an acorn, polished and smooth, an ivory carved comb, a soft piece of blue winceyette with rabbits printed on it, two cubes of fudge wrapped in greaseproof paper, and dried rolled up rose petals, which gave off a memory of their scent. The child must have left it behind. He was about to tuck it back into the seat, and suddenly thought it would hold his documents together, so pushed it in amongst the shirts and long johns in his leather bag.
The tram took him all the way to the dock. He found a rubbish bin, and emptied out all the crap from the box. The passport, visa, and birth certificate all fitted in neatly, and he was glad they weren't crumpled up in his pocket anymore.
It was the largest boat he'd ever seen docked up, black smoke pillowing from the funnel as it worked up a head of steam. Pennyridge joined the long line of families and single men, all struggling with suitcases and boxes, possessions they could not bring themselves to leave behind. Conversation was mumbled between families, but otherwise they shuffled silently along, all knowing they were leaving their home forever, though most of them had little desire, beyond need, to do so.
A few hours later, they were at sea. The weather had taken a turn and was rolling the boat in high waves and lashing rain. Pennyridge left his bunk in a shared berth with three other men, who had begun to groan and look at their shoes, desperate not to be the first to start throwing up. Pennyridge, lucky to be born with sea legs, left them to their misery and swayed his way along the swinging, twisting corridors, for his rendezvous on deck.
There were two of them, protecting their cigarettes in cupped hands hung loosely at their side, taking the occasional puff. The collar of their jackets turned up, so they touched the baggy sides of the large caps they wore. Pennyridge asked for a light and the nearest man obliged.
"Do you have the money?" He whispered as Pennyridge leant close. He did indeed have the cash, rolled up tight in his trouser pocket, but he wasn't about to hand it over so easily.
"Do you have the address?" He asked.
"You'll be met at the port." The ship took a sudden lurch and the two had to catch onto the railing, Pennyridge stood firm, his legs locked out, suddenly feeling he had the upper hand.
"How do I know that?" One of them poked him with his cigarette, wanting to get down below out of the rain.
"They'll be there, just give us the pissing money." Pennyridge still baulked. It had taken a lot for him to get to this point, he'd done all they had asked, and now they were mucking him about when they had no need to.
"Give me the address, you must know it."
"Of course we do, but that's not our job. The fella at the port decides." Pennyridge frowned, wiping his wet face.
"Decides what? It's all arranged."
The two exchanged a look.
"Are you giving us the money or what?" One asked in a bored tone. Pennyridge paused just too long, and the one nearest punched him hard and low, so he jackknifed into their arms. They dragged him off, behind the swinging lifeboat, and gave him a kicking. As he lay coughing blood, they emptied his pocket of the money, and his neck of a gold crucifix.
Then they threw him overboard, watching him splash into the wall of a wave, and be swept away behind the boat towards death.
(For Part 1 see 'Madigan')
Sister Ophelia leant her bike against the tumbling stone wall, and began unbuckling a wicker basket from the handlebars. She heard shrill children's voices pipping across the yard from the cottage, "She's here, she's here." and looked up in time to see two grubby faces disappearing inside, from the half open stable door.
Slipping the basket over her arm, she walked through the gap in the wall, the gate hanging off and propped open on one corner. A fisherman's cottage, some lobster pots piled up in a heap beside a wall, where a net was hanging, waiting repair.
Three chickens scurried around from the back of the cottage and sauntered in front of her, expecting to be fed. She wafted the basket towards them and they skittered away again.
"Sister." Mrs McCaw stood in welcome, wiping her wet hands on her grey apron, a child peering around her wide skirt. "Come along in, that wind's cold enough to flay your skin."
The nun followed inside and, as usual, six children were lined up behind the table, in a muddle of heights and saggy, ill fitting clothes. At one end of the room was an unlit fire and opposite a dresser, with stacks of mismatched plates and various pieces of porcelain, a water jug and bowl, a charger, all brown and chipped
"Children." Sister Ophelia greeted them, putting the basket on the table.
"Good afternoon Sister." They chorused, as she pulled aside the blue and white cloth covering the contents of the basket, and revealed two loaves of bread, taken from the kitchen of St Catherine's Home for Invalids. She gave one to Mrs McCaw, and pushed the other across the table. Eager hands sprang out and amid much excitement and pushing and quibbling, they tumbled up the stairs to the bedrooms.
"Thank you Sister. Will you take tea?"
"Thank you no. I've no time to stop, I'll change your husband's dressings and be on my way." Mrs McCaw nodded.
"I've some water boiled ready."
Mr McCaw sat in the parlour, in a high backed armchair, a peat fire burning low in the grate, a blanket over his knees, his eyes closed, his hand gently stroking a stripy cat curled up on his lap.
They exchanged no pleasantries, as she unwrapped the bandage on his crushed right arm, cleaned the wound too wide to stitch, rebound it with new dressings. She checked his broken ribs weren't hemorrhaging, and then retreated to the kitchen.
Mrs McCaw was soaking clothes in a tin tub, a small girl, with her hair plaited in long pig-tails either side of her face, was sat swinging her legs beneath the table.
"No change." The nun reported.
"He's stopped coughing blood."
"Good." Sister Ophelia plonked the basket onto the table, and began to wash her hands in the bowl provided. "Hello Bridget." The child's face lit up, though she didn't look towards the nun.
"Hello Sister and how are you today?"
"Fair to better Bridget. And you?"
"Better to good Sister." She laughed, covering her mouth with both hands. Their little joke, as funny today as the first time.
"And what have you been learning at school?" Bridget twirled one of the ends of the pig tails between her fingers, brushing it against her cheek.
"We did our sixes, would you llike to hear my sixes Sister?"
."No, I've no time today Bridget." The Sister rummaged to the bottom of her basket. "I've something for you."
"For me?" A narrow wooden box emerged and the Sister slid it across the table. Bridget felt it touch her arm and her fingers carefully examined it, doing the job her eyes were unable to. She discovered the tiny key.
"Careful, it's fully wound, you must never overwind it."
Bridget pushed in the little button that released the lock, and the box opened. The serenade began its journey and Mrs McCaw came to stand beside the child, Bridget's face was first surprised, then delighted.
As the notes picked their way through the tune, grubby faces appeared at the stable door, and from around the corner of the enclosed staircase. The tune ended and the enchantment was over, the children gathered in an excited press around Blind Bridget and her music box, Mrs McCaw sensed trouble and pushed them away.
"Go away with you all, go on now. The Sister gave the box the Bridget and that's, that." She waved her hands, threatening to cuff them and they scurried away like the chickens before the basket. "Are you sure?" Mrs McCaw asked the nun, who nodded, gathering her belongings to leave.
"Thank you Sister. I'll keep my very favourite things in it." Bridget promised and carefully rewound the key.
(For Part 1 see 'Madigan')
Madigan stood in front of the long mirror,
watching himself button up the green tweed waistcoat he hadn't worn in 20 years or more. He tugged at it uncomfortably, remembering all those starched Sundays, slipped on his jacket, and tied a bow in the narrow bootlaces of the brown brogues that felt at least one size too small.
Sister Ophelia opened the door and glared down on the green suited man, holding a small box to his side. He swept a cap off his head, and stuffed it in his pocket.
"Yes?" She barked, wondering if he shouldn't be ringing the tradesman's bell at the side door.
"I've come to visit."
"Who?"
"Mary, Mary Madigan." The Sister couldn't hide her surprise.
"Mary Madigan? she doesn't have visitors." Madigan disapproved of her briskness and drew himself up tall
"Well today she has me."
As the wooden heels of his Sunday shoes clacked down the floorboards of the narrow corridor, Madigan was assailed by a variety of smells.
First cabbage, cooked cabbage, doubtless a staple for the Invalids of St Catherine's Home. Then disinfectant. Scrubbed onto the walls, the floors, the hands, swept along on a swirl of habit when a nun rushed past with a pewter jug. Finally a mixture of illness and incense. Percolating its way from the chapel and the communal room, where the Priest performed mass for those too infirm to make the pews, yet well enough to be outside their room.
Eventually Sister Ophelia paused at a door, and, without knocking, went inside. Madigan hesitated on the thresh-hold.
The room was small, wooden, bare save a bed immaculately made, grey blanket tucked in neatly, a bright white sheet turned down. Beyond a window, with a cross hanging down from the rail, and a view down the tree lined cinder path to the road A wide wing backed chair in which slumped a tiny, thin, hollow cheeked woman, in a white nightshirt and a blue wool dressing gown. A pair of tartan slippers Madigan remembered Padraig giving her one Christmas.
"Your brother Mary, come to visit." Sister Ophelia announced and beckoned him within, she went and stood by the open door, as Madigan crept in and stood beside the chair.
Mary's eyes were glassy, her mouth moved up and down as if she were chewing or reciting, but it was just movement, she gave no sign of noticing he was there.
Madigan thought he should hold her hand, but the skin was so white, the wrists so slender, full of bones and sinew. He was fearful of hurting her.
"Hello Mary." He spoke softly, then looked at the nun, asking 'is this all?' with a glance. Sister Ophelia nodded and quietly withdrew, leaving the door open so he heard her footsteps walk away, and then he sat on the bed.
He opened the music box, so the serenade played, and looked to Mary for some response, but there was none.
"You remember Mary, when Nana played this tune, and we sat eating sugar almonds and drinking coco?" He gently placed the box on Mary's fragile knee, and rubbed his lips, his eyes heavy with tears.
He rose quickly, pulling the cap back onto his head. Wanting to be away, to forget this vision of his beloved sister, wanting to picture her forever as a child running around the apple trees, as a woman shouting wildly at him for another foolish mistake, drinking stout with him and dancing while the band played.
He stopped at the door, turned and went back to her. Kneeling beside her chair while the music played and gently placed a kiss on her china cheek.
"Be kind to her Lord." He whispered.
Sister Immaculata forced the edges of the blanket under the mattress and crossed to the door, switching off the light so Mary, now in bed, fell into shadow. Light still came into the room from the corridor.
She watched as Sister Ophelia, who had drawn the curtains, went to the chair and took the music box. Sister Immaculata give her a stern look.
"She doesn't need it." Sister Ophelia tucked the box under her arm, and pushed passed Immaculata in the doorway.
Mary closed her eyes, her mouth still moving gently. A low hum started from her throat, broken, crackling, but distinctly like the tune the music box had played.
(For Part One read 'Madigan')
The traps were all empty. Madigan strode
around the worn, two mile path through woodland, across the warrens, down
towards the chalk headlands that stretches along the seafront. Checking the traps, re-
looping the twine for the snare, balancing the forked twig for the snap of the
capture, re-siting some on new tracks.
He works with quick skill, taught by
failure, practise and experimentation. He
moves with a poacher’s quietness, an untaxing
stride. He eavesdrops on the birds calling, warning one another of his approach.
Before stepping out from cover, he checks
that no-one else is walking along the cliff top, then retrieves the rope he has
hidden, staked securely beneath a briar, stop knots tied like fists at
intervals along its length.
Madigan
throws it over the cliff, then traverses down the chalk to the dark brown
sand, inaccessible by any other means. A small curl of a cove, whose tides
Madigan knows unconsciously, through the movement of the moon and the
wind.
He strips off, then slipping his canvas
collecting bag across his chest, swims out to the oyster bed and dives, knife
in hand, time and time again, while his breath allows, until the bag is full.
While he's drying himself, he notices
something white, shinning from the sand, a few feet from the wash of the
retreating waves.
Madigan doesn't know what it is, it looks to him
like a tightly curled goat’s horn. But when he picks it up from the dark water
filled dent in the sand, he is surprised by the weight, not expecting it to be
stone. He examines it, it's of no use to him, maybe Mr Parker would like it.
The brass bell has made a dent in Mr Parker's door over the years, and
Madigan's entrance carves it a little deeper, as he steps inside the junk shop
of curiosities that Mr Parker likes to label, antiques. Mr Parker emerges from
behind the Persian carpet he has hung up to curtain off his workshop. He levers
off the strange telescoped glasses he uses to repair clockwork, replaces them
with a small gold rimmed pair and smooths up the fringe of his white hair.
"Ah Madigan." Madigan nods and
places the mystery object wrapped in a cheesecloth, onto the high oak counter.
Mr Parker unwraps it. "Well, well well, Ammonoidea Cephalopod, an
excellent example, unusually large and intact, where did you find it?"
"On the beach." Madigan is none
the wiser for the explanation; Mr Parker swaps the glasses around again for
closer examination. "What'do you say it is?" Madigan needs clarification.
"An ammonite. Fallen from the cliffs
maybe, erosion, probably been there millions of years."
"I thought it were a goats horn."
Mr Parker does not laugh at such innocent suggestions, he believes he has a
duty to educate; the glasses are exchanged once more, Mr Parker's brown eyes
shinning with excitement at the find.
"It was a mollusk, like an oyster, swam
the seas many, many years ago. An animal like a squid in a shell lived in here,
it's extinct now. A rare thing Madigan, rare indeed." Rare translates
itself into 'worth a bob or two' in Madigan's quick mind.
"That's too heavy to swim."
"Indeed but this is the fossil of the
animal. When it lived, its shell was probably as light as a shrimp, but it
died, fell into the mud and over the millennia the mud solidified and became
stone, so we see it as it is today."
Madigan didn't know about squid in shells,
or shells becoming stone, he knew the price of stout, and the cost of peat. He
tapped the ammonite.
"What'll you give me for
it?"
"Ah well." Mr Parker was
temporarily fiscally embarrassed. He had a weakness for the cards, and an
ineptitude too. "You visit at a most inauspicious moment, I'm
afraid." He glanced around the shop, at times such as this, he would
happily resort to barter. Madigan recognised the nervousness and sighed
heavily, Mr Parker placated him with a wave of his hands, inviting Madigan to
examine to shop's curiosities.
"No, no now then, I'm sure we can come
to an amicable arrangement." Mr Parker retrieved a bundle of keys from
their hook beneath the counter, and walked around the glass cabinets, muttering
to himself. "There's a nice silver set, no use to you, and the Napoleonic
medals, no no, field glasses?" Madigan shook his head, "Just so, now
a pilgrims medal from Lourdes?
Or a fertility statue from Benin?
Not quite for you? There's a lovely crystal..."
"What's this?" Madigan was tapping
on the glass at a wooden box. Mr Parker raised his eyebrows.
"That? Well it's mahogany," He
swung open the door and passed the box to Madigan, "a keepsake box, for
trinkets and the like. Would take cigars by the length of it." Madigan
opened it, and a serenade began to play discordantly on the tiny drum of the
concealed music box.
"Some of the resonators are
broken." Mr Parker apologised but Madigan was entranced, he didn't hear Mr
Parker scuttle away, "not sure what the tune is, what about this decanter?"
The tune drew slowly to an end, and Madigan found the tiny key and rewound it.
Mr Parker stopped in his search and returned to Madigan's side, he sensed a
deal such as he couldn't have imagined.
"I remember this." Madigan spoke
softly, lost in memory. Mr Parker gently removed the card label, pocketing it
after a glance at the price.
"The box?" Madigan gave sour
frown.
"The tune, my grandmother played
it." Mr Parker was surprised, Madigan appeared to have been spawned by the
woods, and the concept of him surrounded by family was disconcerting. Mr
Parker's eyebrows rose further, when Madigan rewound the box a second time and
commented. "On the harpsichord."
"Indeed?" Mr Parker waited for
more information, but Madigan sank back into his usual taciturn demeanour.
"Well, of course I'm happy if you are. The music box for the
ammonite." Madigan nodded and Mr Parker held out his hand to seal the
deal.
"And £10 when I next come into
town." Madigan held out his hand, slipping the box into his bag on top of
the oysters, Mr Parker should have known he couldn't take advantage of the wily
poacher, he sighed.
"£10." He agreed and they shook
hands, rough to soft.
(For Part Two see 'Madigan and Mary'
Part Three 'Bridget'
Part Four 'Pennyright'
Part Five 'Michael Dooley'
Part Six 'The Wake'
Part Seven 'Geoffrey Cutler'
Part Eight 'Morgan'
Part Nine 'Lara Jonas'
Part Ten 'Hiroko Ito'
Part Eleven 'The Representative of Nathaniel T Bliss'
Part Twelve 'Jackson Taylor'
Part Thirteen 'Eleonora Fernandez'
Part Fourteen 'Backstage - Karmina'
Part Fifteen 'Backstage - Maestro'
Part Sixteen 'Federico Sosa'
Part Seventeen 'Ieuan The Welshman'
Part Eighteen 'Howell Jones'
Part Nineteen 'The Spry'
Part Twenty 'Bethany'
Part Twenty One Mme Florence Lefebvre )
When Charvi weaves, the loom clicks and the shuttle scuttles with a music that is made by no other carpet maker in the village, but mostly she sits listening, waiting for the fates to send their messages to her.
The pictures for her creations come to her in dreams, on the laughter of children playing alongside her veranda, in the argumentative chatter of monkeys scampering about the rooftops, and even in the taste of figs she sucks in the afternoon.
Charvi feels a twitch in her fingers and calls to her daughters to set the upright loom with a particular set of colours, dictates how they must be arranged and then settles herself cross legged before it.
She waits for the broken mosaic of her memory to put together colours and shapes in a fashion that will allow others to see the prophecy she needs convey. And then, with an uncertain air of experiment, she begins to send the shuttle this way and that, snapping the crocodile jaws of the loom, with a crack, that at first sounds like a cockroach crackling and slowly increases in confidence, until it assumes the speed and velocity of a riders whip. Villagers gather about the doorway to watch as the kaleidoscope of patterns take form and dance their way into life as the carpet grows.
When Charvi was blinded, her husband, deprived of her income, overwhelmed with providing for their eight children, walked away along the dusty road that leads towards Dhaka, where every man believes he can make his fortune.
Charvi and the children were taken in by her brother, and it was three months later that Charvi woke from a dream, and heard a mouse pitter pattering beneath her bed. She foresaw the mouse's fate, in the jaws of a snake currently curled up in a stack of stones beside the rice field, and then realised a more profound truth lurked in the murmurings of these visions.
She tried to express herself with words, but no-one listened to a poor blind widow, so she asked a daughter to lead her to where the village kept an old loom, its wood splintered and dry, un-worked, since the weavers migrated to work in unsafe tower blocks far away.
She wove for hours, until her palms bled, wefting and warping the heavy, badly spun hemp,
until dehydrated she was carried back to her bed, leaving a picture in the threads for all to see.
A man walking through the mango trees, and alongside, a shadow, camouflaged, prowling through the elephant grass. At one end of the road, a cluster of high rise buildings, at the other a woman and one, two three....eight children. Amazed as there were by her creation, no-one thought any more about the tapestry, until, a day later, word reached the village of her husband's demise, in the jaws of a man eating tiger.
Elevated to the prestige of a fortune teller, the villagers swept the building and repaired the loom, wound new hemp and dyed an entire spectrum of colours. But Charvi could not weave to order, was unmoved by money or threats. She waited for omens in the rhythm of life about her to reveal their stories, and allowed the prophesies in the threads to be found by those that sort them.
Baking bread on the fire outside our wooden hut, watching the water swirl in the river below, I consider the pasture where deer pass on migration to their birthing lands, and the mountains so far, so distant, wondering where your horse will take you, wondering when you will return.
You made that promise, tying a string around my finger, a string that's now grey and loose, fraying. In my blood I know you will come back to me, and, taking a stone carved with the proverbs of our life, of things we have done, and things yet to be done, went barefoot down the riverside and cast it into the water, amongst the sticklebacks and the mayflies.
Water holds our destiny, carrying the words in the scales of fish, to other places, far from sight, where something wonderful is hidden beyond the horizon of possibilities.
I see your reflection, distorted in the ripples. Why do you wear a crown of golden leaves, and why did you frown so, when you tied the string of a promise around my finger?
I stir the water with my foot and cast a spell of binding, of firmament, of breaking bread and blood.
Blood of thee, be mine
Blood of me, be thine
In the joining of this, our ancient spirit
In the passing of time
There is new light
Shinning through the darkness
When you bid
'Come to me'
I come
When you bid
'Go from me'
I will go
Let the blood rise
Anew in this day's dawn
Where the spirits ask
Where does your horse take you?
Where does this word guide you?
What calls upon the wind to be heard?
Nothing
nothing
save a bird.
