Фрэнсис Хардинг - A Skinful of Shadows

To my god-daughter Harriet,

who shares my hunger for books and unlikely adventures

The third time Makepeace woke screaming from the nightmare, her mother was angry.

‘I told you not to dream that way again!’ she hissed, keeping her voice low to avoid waking the rest of the house. ‘Or if you do, you must not cry out!’

‘I could not help it!’ whispered Makepeace, frightened by her mother’s fierce tone.

Mother took Makepeace’s hands, her face tense and unsmiling in the early morning light.

‘You do not like your home. You do not want to live with your mother.’

‘I do! I do!’ Makepeace exclaimed, feeling her world lurch under her feet.

‘Then you must learn to help it. If you scream every night, terrible things will happen. We may be thrown out of this house!’

Behind the wall slept Makepeace’s aunt and uncle, who owned the pie shop downstairs. Aunt was loud and honest, whereas Uncle glowered and was impossible to please. Since the age of six, Makepeace had been given the task of looking after her four little cousins, who were always needing to be fed, cleaned, patched up, dressed down or rescued from neighbours’ trees. In between times, she ran errands and helped in the kitchen. And yet Mother and Makepeace slept on a bolster in a draughty little room away from the rest of the household. Their place in the family always felt loaned, as if it could be taken away again without warning.

‘Worse, someone may call the minister,’ continued Mother. ‘Or . . . others may hear of it.’

Makepeace did not know who the ‘others’ might be, but others were always a threat. Ten years of life with Mother had taught her that nobody else could really be trusted.

‘I tried!’ Night after night, Makepeace had prayed hard, then lain in the blackness willing herself not to dream. But the nightmare had come for her anyway, full of moonlight, whispers and half-formed things. ‘What can I do? I want to stop!’

Mother was quiet for a long time, then squeezed Makepeace’s hand.

‘Let me tell you a story,’ she began, as she occasionally did when there were serious matters to discuss. ‘There was a little girl lost in the woods, who was chased by a wolf. She ran and ran until her feet were torn, but she knew that the wolf had her scent and was still coming after her. In the end she had to make a choice. She could keep on running and hiding and running forever, or she could stop and sharpen a stick to defend herself. What do you think was the right decision, Makepeace?’

Makepeace could tell that this was not just a story, and that the answer mattered a great deal.

‘Can you fight a wolf with a stick?’ Makepeace asked doubtfully.

‘A stick gives you a chance.’ Her mother gave a slight, sad smile. ‘A small chance. But it is dangerous to stop running.’

Makepeace thought for a long time.

‘Wolves are faster than people,’ she said at last. ‘Even if she ran and ran, it would still catch her and eat her. She needs a sharp stick.’

Mother nodded slowly. She said nothing more, and did not finish her story. Makepeace’s blood ran cold. Mother was like this sometimes. Conversations became riddles with traps in them, and your answers had consequences.

For as long as Makepeace could remember, the two of them had lived in the busy little not-quite-town of Poplar. She could not imagine the world without the stink of coal smoke and pitch that blew in from the great, clattering shipyards, the pattering poplar trees that gave the place its name, and the lush green marshlands where the cattle grazed. London lay a few miles distant, a smoky mass of menace and promise. It was all so familiar to her, as natural as breathing. And yet, Makepeace could not feel that she belonged.

Mother never said, This is not our home . But her eyes said it all the time.

When she had first arrived in Poplar, Mother had changed her baby daughter’s name to Makepeace so that the pair of them would be accepted more easily. Makepeace didn’t know what her original name had been, and the thought of that made her feel a bit unreal. ‘Makepeace’ did not quite feel like a name at all. It was an offering, a way of ‘making peace’ with God and the godly folk of Poplar. It was an apology for the hole where Makepeace’s father should have been.

Everyone they knew was godly. That was what the community called themselves, not out of pride, but to set themselves apart from all those on a darker road with Hell’s mouth at the end. Makepeace was not the only one with a strange, pious-sounding name. There was a smattering of others — Verity, What-God-Will, Forsaken, Deliverance, Kill-Sin and so forth.

Every other evening, Aunt’s room was used for prayer meetings and Bible readings, and on Sundays they all walked to the tall, grey, ragstone church.

The minister was kind when you met him in the street, but terrifying in the pulpit. From the rapt faces of the other listeners, Makepeace could tell that there must be great truths shining in him, and love like a cold white comet. He talked of holding strong against the wicked temptations of drink, gambling, dancing, theatres and idle merriment upon the Sabbath, which were all snares laid by the Devil. He told them what was happening in London and the wider world — the latest treachery at court, the plots of foul Catholics. His sermons were frightening, but also thrilling. Sometimes Makepeace walked out of the church tingling with the sense that the whole congregation were shining soldiers leagued against the forces of darkness. For a little while she could believe that Mother and Makepeace were part of something bigger, something wondrous alongside all their neighbours. The feeling never lasted. Soon they were a lonely army of two once again.

Mother never said, These are not our friends , but her grip on Makepeace’s hand tightened when they entered the church, or walked into the market, or stopped to greet anyone. It was as if there were an invisible fence running around Mother and Makepeace, cutting them off from everything else. And so Makepeace half smiled at the children the way Mother half smiled at the mothers. Those other children, the ones with fathers.

Children are little priests of their parents, watching their every gesture and expression for signs of their divine will. From her earliest days, Makepeace had known that the two of them were never truly safe, and that other people might turn on them.

Instead, Makepeace had learned to find comfort and kinship in speechless things. She understood the busy malice of horseflies, the frightened anger of dogs, the heavy patience of cows.

It got her into trouble sometimes. Once, her lip had been split and her nose bloodied for screaming at some boys who were throwing stones at a bird’s nest. Killing birds for the pot or stealing eggs for breakfast was fair enough, but pointless, stupid cruelty roused an anger in Makepeace that she could never properly explain. The boys had stared at her in bewilderment, then turned their stones on her. Of course they had. Cruelty was normal, as much a part of their lives as the flowers and the rain. They were used to the grammar-school canes, the pig-screams behind the butchers and the blood in the sawdust of the cockpit. Smashing little feathered lives was as natural and satisfying to them as stamping in a puddle.

If you stuck out, you got your nose bloodied. To survive, Mother and Makepeace needed to blend in. Yet they never quite succeeded.

The night after the wolf-story, without explanation, Mother took Makepeace to the old graveyard.

By night, the church seemed a hundred times larger, its tower an unforgiving rectangle of utter blackness. The grass was tussocky underfoot and greyish in the starlight. In a corner of the cemetery stood a little brick chapel, long unused. Mother led Makepeace inside, and dumped armfuls of blankets in a corner of the dark building.