When I married him, I was told there would be sacrifices.
My body squeezed into the second hand dress, the modest train stamped with footprints and pulling hay across the flagstones. I was looking for a glass of water at the bar when she had pulled me close to her body, her long arm shooting out from the shadows. Her freckled chest puffed out over a sun bleached dress. I was startled by her strength and willed myself not to reel backwards when she started to speak in my ear, her breath like seaweed and fish skin.
“What a blessing. May he be a good husband to you,” The sound coming out of her mouth was reedy and she seemed to gulp between every few words. Her tongue was thin like a snake and when it darted across my ear I shuddered. She didn’t notice. Or if she did, she didn’t care.
I tried to thank her and twist out of her grip but she held firm, her nails digging into my arm, pale eyes hollowing me out. Everyone seemed to caper and frolic around us. I felt the music travel from the makeshift stage and hover over us but couldn’t hear it, my head filling with the black words dripping from her tongue. I’m sure I felt a sharp hand brush against my stomach.
“Nan!” Her hand flew from my arm. “Come on, let my wife away!” He was jovial but I wanted to hold him by the shoulders and regurgitate every word she had said to me. I inspected my arm and in the ill light I could see the marks from her grip fading. She flashed a smile at us, blinked a few times and glided away, weaving into the irregular tapestry of bodies.
“Callan, who was that?” My voice felt small and not my own and I watched his wet slate eyes widen just for a second, his bushy black eyebrows coming together in a slight glower. Someone pushed into him and his drink leapt out of the smudged glass with a wet splat on the stone and the hay between us. I thought I heard someone hiss ‘city girl’ as we were pressed together.
“Dinnae mind, eh? Ye ken we have to invite the whole island,” His breath was peppered with cigar smoke and beer. I nodded quickly, looking around me. I realise now I was trying to reassure myself.
“She’s invited. We cannae remember which part of the island she’s fae. We all just ended up calling her Nan, no-one can ken her name,” He was trying to calm me, his arms around my waist.
The air around us had changed. Sucked in and hissed out by something knowing. Something old.
For the rest of the night, I was an actor holding a crumpled stained script behind my back, nodding and laughing.
In the early morning, we shed our formalwear, set our alarms and held each other in different shapes until we fell asleep.
When I woke, Callan was already gone. His suit was stuffed behind the bathroom door, a half mug of cold tea squatted by the bathroom sink and there were toast crumbs in the kitchen sink.
Amongst congratulatory cards with dented corners and bills in brown envelopes were a few shiny leaflets for nature conservation and greenhouses. The kitchen table had become a forest of cards.
I drank dark coffee from a half clean cup and washed it down with a piece of wedding cake. I fed the dog, changed her water and told her the plans for the day.
The strange woman’s face crawled into my mind and I pushed back by stepping outside into the smirr and the bitter morning air.
The sheep, making the clover embossed hillside look like a pilling jumper, watched us with bored eyes and ever chewing mouths. Their lambs were slightly more wary, hiding behind their mother’s legs. As I slowed the quad by the fence, Kettle jumped and hurtled towards a group of moss covered rocks further up the hill, a bolt of black and white. She began to keen loudly and when I reached her, she was curled up with her head down next to a cluster of wool, skin and bone.
When I bent down to inspect it, jagged stones biting my knees, a sharp pain whistled across my abdomen but I ignored it.
My hand brushed away grass to reveal a hollowed out head. It was the remains of a large lamb. The spinal column was contorted and a few of the ribs were covered by a thin sheet of skin. I ran my finger over the side and discovered puncture wounds. When I stood, it wasn’t stones I had been leaning on but small chalk white bones.
“Kettle, let’s get away. Come!”I tossed the carcass on the back of the quad and we rode towards the barn. The sun was making an appearance but did little to warm me. Birds flew above us, chattering an ancient chorus.
I found Callan kneeling on fresh hay with a hefty ewe. A trembling lamb was tucked beside him out of her sight and as the ewe’s own lamb slid and buckled out of her, Callan quickly smeared the spare in the lambing fluids. I watched him reach for a spray bottle of iodine.
“Good morning wife. How’s the heed?” He whispered, his face ruddy.
“It’s fine. I found another one,” He turned and I raised an eyebrow, “That brings the new total to-”
“One hundred and sixty eight,” He sighed, his eyes falling to the brown bellied lambs. He took his gloves off, satisfied with the ewe and her new babies and stepped out of the pen. He walked to a nearby worker and instructed them to check on her in a few hours and watch for head butting and feeding.
“Same again. Punctures,” I led him to the quad. When he saw the remains, he rubbed the back of his head, his face a papery mask of defeat.
“Fuck! Blackloss…” Kettle came and nudged his legs. Without looking he patted the shiny crown of her head.
“Callan, who was that woman last night? I’ve never seen her. Not at the post office, the pub…”
“Dinnae mind that,” He gestured to the carcass and kept his voice low, “We’re fast rising in debt. If this number keeps rising I dinnae ken whit-”
I suddenly felt a low hum in my stomach and a small gush between my legs. Instinctively I slipped my hand under my coat, under the heavy wax overalls and under my grey once white knickers.
I heard Callan say my name but it seemed very far away.
When I brought my hand back to the surface, my fingers were red and the air filled with iron. Callan said that’s when I fell,“like a sack of tatties”.
I woke in our own bed. My hair was plastered to my face and gently I pulled out small sticks and pieces of hay. A single brown feather. It appeared to be early evening and Kettle was sleeping beside me, draped across my legs. I stroked her head and she woke, her dark chocolate eyes pleading with me.
Two hushed voices were outside the door and when I pushed the duvet cover off, and unstuck myself from the old towel that been shoved underneath me, the voices moved away. Kettle got to the door before me, her claws clicking on the wood and just before I pushed it open, I heard the word ‘young’.
Callan stood alone, his face wet and his body taking up all the space in the doorway, blocking my view of our hall and the front door. I could smell blood.
“It’s ok. It’s ok, it was only a wee thing, just a wee thing,” He wrapped my body in his arms but he smelled like iodine and decay and I couldn’t hide my disgust.
“Cal, who was just here?” I stepped back into the bedroom, Kettle butting the back of my legs with her head.
“Whit? No-one. I was just on phone to Mum. Telling her yer fine,” I started to wilt then and the room began to spin and he half carried me back to our bed. He fetched a bowl of water and a flannel and washed my face, my arms and carefully between my legs. He retrieved painkillers from the kitchen and brought in my small simple bouquet from the day before and propped it on my bedside table. He dressed my body in my favourite thick flannel nightie.
When he thought I was sleeping, he took the bucket that had been in the hall and didn’t bother to try and quiet it as it sloshed and thudded as he carried it out of the house.
And after I watched him through the gaps in our heavy hand me down curtains, stride through the icy courtyard and deliver the bucket to the woman from our wedding night, the moonlight hitting her beak, I began to wonder who I was to him.
I remembered the old family photos he had once shown me.
I crept into the cold dining room, not caring if he found me and located the old chocolate tin on a dusty shelf. I steered my body back into bed and with Kettle by my side, broke a fingernail opening the rusted tin. Photos spilled out with a whisper onto the duvet and there she was with her pale eyes. Sometimes younger, sometimes older but always the same piercing gaze towards the photographer.
Teddy, Ian, Uncle John, Nan, Martha, 1978
Kellett Wedding, 1965
The Deeming Wedding, 1992
Johnny, Martin, Nan, Carol, Deany, 1960
Hannah, Grandpa, Granny, Nan, Little Johnny, Barbara, Unknown, 1947
Bettie, Joan, Irene, Nan and Sally, 1958
Jack, Oisin, Juni, Nan, Jacob, Jamie, Sarah, Lois, Juni’s Christening, 1943
Curdie Roughan Funeral, 1918
Rhu, Matthew, Unknown Woman, Catherine, 1899
Kettle suddenly raised her head. I hadn’t heard the backdoor.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” He carefully sat on the bed not touching me. I saw in the dimly lit room that he’d taken his boots off and put his threadbare slippers on. A bare toe wiggled out. I was suddenly cross at the banality of it all.
“And you’re supposed to love me and tell the truth,” My voice was steady and I gathered up the photographs and placed them onto his lap. He let them slide down his legs onto the carpet, his eyes on mine. Kettle buried her head by my feet.
He leaned forward and lit the fire I always begged him to light on cold nights. He gathered the family photographs and carefully placed them on the bed. As the kindling fell and the flames began to make shapes on the walls he told me his ancestors would leave their dead as offerings to birds. Some in hope of good fortune, a good harvest season if they were lucky.
“The lambs?” I asked, holding my stomach under the blanket. He bent his head and nodded.
I thought of the carcass I had found on the hill that morning.
In time an entity appeared and the family understood her to be ancient and wise and descended from those first birds, soaring above their bowed heads in the sky. One who needed to be fed. For an exchange.
“Just bad timing, this time,” He tried to smile and failed miserably. “She says she’ll stop…for a few years,” He tried to find my hand and I let him. It was clammy and I could feel a stroke of dried blood on his wrist. I picked at it and he let me.
“We wind down the farm the year ,” My voice dripped slowly from my mouth like hot honey and into his ears. His eyebrows jumped and his mouth fell open but I continued, “We sell off the equipment, old and new. Sell the ewes and the rams. Keep the staff on a retainer while we set up. Look,” I untucked a shiny brochure from my breast, the words were slightly smudged but I watched his eyes move across the glossy paper.
TIME TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT CEREAL FARMING
Let’s get barmy about barley! Watched any good corn lately?