The Island School

The clock keeps the time moving slowly and the heavy book emits its sour leathery smell. Jesus stares at me accusingly from his crucifix; he died just for me, I should remember that.

‘The seventh commandment is … Jemima?’

‘Thou shalt not steal, miss.’

‘Very good, child.’

I watch Jemima surreptitiously rubbing her knuckles beneath the desk, and I try not to feel grateful that it was her and not me who faced Mrs. Dwyer’s cane today. The bitch knows that the poor girl suffers with her nerves, just like her mother who had to be shipped to the nuthouse on the mainland when Jemima was a baby. Officially, she went over to help her sisters run the farm that they inherited from their parents. But word travels easily in these places. The doctor in the next village, the one who delivered me because she was a woman and mother couldn’t bear to have Dr. Bryan see up her skirts, with the midwife herself sick with the flu; well, she told her husband, who told his mistress, who told her husband, who told his fishy bearded friends at the pub. So now everyone knows that Mrs. Jasper has gone mad and been locked up in the asylum. And poor Jemima either bursts into tears or fits of laughter with almost no provocation. My father says that she’ll probably end up on the mainland too, which seems particularly unforgiving for a man in his profession.

‘Felicity, sit still! If I see you fidget again you will be made to spend the rest of the lesson in the yard without a coat. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.’

She doesn’t realise that I have bare legs beneath this skirt, and it’s the scratchy wool that’s making me uncomfortable. It’s just so hot in here. And Tom wants to go climbing after school, in those brief few minutes between being let out of class and my mother getting home. A sweet period of less than an hour each afternoon, when my parents think I’m reading the great book in the study. But if I snag my stockings on the rough bark and end up with a hole then the game will be up and I’ll be in trouble. So my legs itch and itch beneath this wool skirt, and all for nothing because the snow outside stops us climbing anyway.

Tom goes to the school next door. It’s crazy, really, with only two dozen children in the whole village, that we’re kept apart from the boys. It isn’t really any wonder, then, that when people here reach adulthood and are expected to marry, they pick altogether the wrong person and end up in all sorts of bother. I bet Jemima’s father didn’t know that his wife was batty until he married her and she started going for long walks through the village and across the fields, singing at the top of her lungs. He hadn’t known the first thing about her, just as Tom’s mother couldn’t have guessed that her future husband would need regular forays to the mainland in order to maintain the façade of being happily married, when really he preferred the company of men. She couldn’t have known that one day he wouldn’t return at all. To this day Mrs. Flannery swears that her husband was murdered whilst on a trip to the cattle market, although some of his peers equally swear that they knew it would always come to this. I have ways of knowing these details about peoples’ lives. It isn’t difficult, really. It’s all there.

‘Fiona, what were the names of Jesus’ disciples? I’d like them all in order of appearance in the good book, please.’

Poor Fiona won’t know this. She struggles in class and everyone knows her father’s a fisherman who likes a drink and never goes to church. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Dwyer picked her out. The sins of the father. It’s the belt for her, no doubt.

‘Felicity, take yourself outside. Immediately! Stay on the step until I come for you!’

I contemplate sitting on the snow-covered front step, beneath the arched doorway inscribed with St. Jude’s Girls’ School.  My legs are no longer hot and itchy, but cold and speckled with goosebumps. Mrs. Dwyer’s evil insistence that I leave my coat on the peg means that I may well end up sick, and no doubt I’ll be punished for that, too. So off I go, to the school gate, turn left and follow the brick wall around the school to the trees at the back. I kick the soft virgin snow out in front of me. Blobs of white fall from the branches above, onto my hatless head. The woods don’t have a smell today. The snow has smothered the fallen leaves, the rotting fruit and fragrant pine needles. The soft mulch underfoot has frozen and the woods have become a new place, silent and fresh. I know that Mrs. Dwyer could follow my footprints into the woods, but I don’t think she will. She’ll wait for me to return of my own free will, not that I’m allowed to have much of that, and save this misdeed for a punishment grander than any yet administered.

            As my snow angel takes shape, I wonder if I will become sick and have to be rescued, like Catherine out there on the desolate moors. My mother would be horrified if she knew that I read her books, more that she would know that I had discovered them, her dirty secret. Jude the Obscure, Vanity Fair, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hidden away from my father. I can’t imagine when and how she managed to read them. Most secret of all is the tiny key to the hidden bureau drawer resting inside the pages of Adam Bede, a story, I now know, concerning complicated love in a small religious community. After reading the letters, I realise the significance of the choice of hiding place for the key. It seems foolhardy for her to keep these documents, containing such passion and adoration as they do. Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to really consider the timing of the affair in relation to my own appearance in this world. For now, I’ll return to the classroom and face the wrath of my mother.

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom

At the foot of the cliff sits an old pub that many folks roundabout say is haunted. Not by any ghost in particular, the murders and scandals being too many to recount. At one time fishing boats would stop short of the shingle beach and spill their crew ashore for a few drinks before they headed back to the harbour. Now, though, it is mainly accessed by a lift, if you’re brave enough to chance it. Otherwise, a set of steep wooden steps criss-cross their way down the birdshit-stained rockface, definitely not to be used after rain, which is most days.

            The pub’s only customers are old men. Many wear the white beard, stained yellow with nicotine, and some still sport fishermen’s hats in the Greek style, small and boxy on the top of the head with a shallow peak to keep out the sun. A souwester would be more appropriate here, though, even on a mild day.

            When two men enter the Rock Bottom shortly after lunchtime on a dull Thursday – no duller, however, than the other six days of the week – they are not greeted with a warm welcome, or even a smile. The other man at the bar, older than them by around half a century, stares at them beneath whiskery brows and gulps his dark brew. The three men clicking dominoes at a small table next to the defunct fruit machine pause their game to watch the proceedings. After all, things like this don’t happen very often in this establishment.

            ‘Two lemonades, please. No ice,’ says the elder of the two irregulars, who has a hint of grey at his smooth temples.

 ‘Ice? What do you think this is? The bleedin’ Ritz?’ The barmaid stoops to retrieve a glass bottle from beneath the bar counter, making the journey back to vertical in two stages. The expected hiss as the top is twisted doesn’t happen, and they watch as two flat drinks are dispensed.

‘Erm … do you serve food, sandwiches …?’

‘Pork scratchings.’

‘Fine. Just the one packet, please.’

‘Four pounds twenty,’ she announces, putting out her hand, which has crusty fake tan lodged in the deep lines of her palm. They watch her drop the five pound note into her wide tabard pocket then turn to talk to the bearded customer, who she knows as Reggie, failing to produce any change. The interlopers exchange a glance before retreating to a small copper-topped table next to the cold grate.

Reggie sits on his barstool, his Guernsey-clad elbow propped on the wet teak of the bar. Smoke from his pipe spirals upwards, dissipating on reaching the wooden beams.  Glass buoys in rotting nets hang precariously above him, the fraying ropes threatening to let loose their loads.

Edmund appears through the door of the mens’ toilet, shuffling awkwardly with his right shoulder drooping, the collar of the shabby anorak slipping steadily down his right arm. He thinks that most frequenters of the bar believe he suffered a horrific injury thirty years ago whilst rescuing a member of his crew who had become tangled in the trawl and was pulled over the stern and into the icy North Sea. He thinks that this is what people believe because it is the story that he tells to anyone who glances his way. However, it is well known through the process of small town gossip that Edmund Carson sustained his injury when his wife threw him out of their upstairs bedroom window one night when he came home drunk, again, and smelling of perfume, again. That was back in the days when she cared.

            ‘Alright Ed?’

            ‘Yeah, pal,’ he sighs, parking his oversized butt on the next stool along. ‘Aye, t’rific, Reg, as usual. What’s with the two suits over there?’ He flicks his head toward the table nearest the fireplace, unlit for months yet still containing black soot and semi-charred crisp packets. Reggie swivels on his stool to face the men, who pretend not to notice him. It’s obvious that they have, though, when they both shift in their seats so that they’re no longer facing the bar.

            ‘Marge,’ grunts Reggie, summoning the woman who is still screwing the lid on the lemonade bottle, which only now contains an inch or so of flat liquid. His brilliantly white teeth are still clamped around his pipe stem. ‘What do you know about them, then? Coppers or what?’

            ‘Aye, Reginald. Our Martin, my nephew, you know the Police Inspector one …’ They both nod, beards poking forwards eagerly, ‘Well he tells me there’s been some reports of vice type stuff going on. You know: drugs, prostitution. That sort of thing. They’re doing some in-vest-i-gating. Dunno what they think they’ll find, though. Good luck to ‘em!’

She hobbles out from behind the counter and heads over to the boys, taking a long time to wipe their clean table with her beery tea towel. They regard her silently, then resume their quiet chatter as she turns back to the bar.

            ‘Couldn’t tell what they were saying, Gents. One of them had a notepad, though. He’d written a few phrases in it, like “scruffy old shit-hole” and “no cause for suspicion”. I wonder what he’ll write in there about this place …’

            Marge plonks herself onto a wooden school chair behind the bar, holding a crinkled plastic shopping bag. She removes what appears to be a semi-knitted scarf of many colours and looks at the needles for a while, brow creased and lips puckered, producing an expression like a champion gurner.

            ‘S’that, Marge? Never took you for a knitter.’

            ‘Aye, well, Reggie, I’m keepin’ my eyes on them two chaps. This is my disguise. Been knitting this scarf for fourteen years. It was for Martin. Don’t s’pose he’ll still want it. Nevermind.’

            For perhaps an hour silence pervades the bar, save for the clicking of dominoes, knitting needles and the odd belch. The phone rings twice, which Marge eventually answers each time with a ‘No, not yet, love.’ Towards two o’clock, chairs scrape and the two younger men rise.

            ‘Thanks for the … um … hospitality. ‘Bye.’

Marge and her two bar friends watch the young men leave, with smug smiles and glances. Edmund even winks at Marge.

            ‘Now, can we please get back to normal?’

At that, both men turn to watch Isobel, the other barmaid on duty that day, appear from the little door at the end of the bar.

‘They gone then?’

‘Aye,’ all three respond.

‘Come on then, Pet. It’s Thursday. You comin’ upstairs? Miss Issy’s waiting.’

She turns back to the door, and Edmund quickly squashes through it behind her, grunting incoherently, Isobel cackling in response. Reggie turns away, rolling his eyes at Marge, who, he notes, has meanwhile returned to her usual standard of professional attire.

‘Fetch us another beer, love,’ he grunts. She bends beneath the counter to pull

out a pint pot, only her pathetic grey knot of hair and slight humpback visible. She groans as she straightens back up, then pulls the decanter one, two, three times, pausing to gather her strength. The slack skin on her arms wobbles with the effort of drawing the beer. As she places the glass on the sticky counter he notices her right nipple gently plunge into the cream froth. She doesn’t flinch, the puckered brown nib desensitised from years of hard suckling.

            ‘You think we’ll see any more of the polis round here, then?’ Reggie asks, idly wandering behind the bar and fiddling with the dusty cassette player. He selects a different tape and pulls it from its box, the broken plastic making a cracking noise. Seconds later, Thin Lizzy blasts from the speakers.

‘Nah, I don’t think it’s their kind of place, ‘ she grumbles, motioning to their table which still contains two almost-full glasses of lemonade and an unopened packet of pork scratchings.’

Two men appear from the lift, one pushing a zimmer frame and the other removing a Fisherman’s Friend tin from beneath his boxy cap.

            ‘We safe, Marge?’ the Tin Man hollers.

            ‘Aye, love. And are we glad to see you!’ She shuffles from behind the bar, revealing varicose veins and threadbare carpet slippers beneath the leopard print mini skirt. She pinches his bottom, and he responds by squeezing her breast flap.

            He holds the tin aloft, the bearded man on the lid bearing more than a passing resemblance to Reggie, right down to the pipe hanging from the right side of his mouth.

            ‘Got your goodies, come and get them!’

            The three men pause their game to wander over, as does Reggie and a man slowly rubbing his eyes that has perhaps been sitting under the Ship’s Wheel all day. Notes are exchanged for little yellow tablets, as refreshing as tiny hot mints.

            ‘Let’s get this party started!’ The twin guitar solo gives way to the familiar vocals, and all of the customers save the silent zimmer frame guy yell, ‘the boys are back in town!’