Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

‘Her essence leeches into the water, dear,’ said Amelia, over consommé later that evening. At that point I had already moved into the white house and had become used to listening to her stories every day, so this seemed no different to me. She often talked of her travels, her lost loves, and her brushes with death in the same dreamy, half-remembered tone. ‘It makes the liquid from the spring potent with possibilities. We fill the barrels, then ship them out to a farm in Barnstaple. They prepare it for sale, with love and care…’ She made it sound like a rural smallholding, with rustic charm. Five years passed before she entrusted the accounts to me and I discovered the scale of the operation. Her personal fortune, inherited from her father, had dried up decades before, but the spring had made her a millionaire anew, keeping hundreds of people in jobs, allowing the island to run comfortably. Clubs, bars and pubs all over the country bought that liquid, paying a fortune for the smallest of bottles.

‘It brings happiness to all men,’ Amelia told me, in between mouthfuls of consommé. ‘They get a little taste of Moira, and she shows them what they could have been, in another era. Those dreams only last for a few minutes, but they will keep coming back for more.’

I asked her how much these drinking establishments charged for the pleasure, and she replied, ‘Oh, my, they don’t charge money for it,’ as if that would have cheapened the transaction. To this day, I still haven’t found out what happens. To be honest, I don’t think Amelia ever knew either. She wasn’t particularly interested in how the liquid was used. It was always the declarations that held her attention.

She kept reading them to the monster until her voice gave out and she could no longer make it down the basement steps. I think it had been the most pleasurable aspect of her old age, reading aloud the words of so many women, like eavesdropping on thousands of private conversations. I didn’t understand it. The monster had to be fed, but I always felt it was a betrayal of the visiting women. A necessary one, but still a betrayal.

‘I caught Moira with the stories of my life, and now I tell her the stories of other lives,’ Amelia would say to me. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

I’ve never found the monster beautiful. She is a statue: cold, sharp, carved, no softness in her. Every time I look at her, her eyes seem different, but the expression remains serene. She wants to be free, I think. Maybe she’s had enough of the stories of women, and she wants to put them back in their place, as prizes or distractions in the kind of stories she used to create. But I get the feeling she’d like to do something personal to me, something awful.

I think she wants to kill me.

I think she had a better relationship with Amelia. Perhaps she admired her cunning, her skill in trapping. Amelia was an adventuress, with a thousand stories to share. I’m just an administrator with one sad tale to tell. More of a whine, really, about how I gave up everything for someone who doesn’t appreciate it.

In the minutes before she died, Amelia knew exactly what was happening to her. The pneumonia had grabbed her hard, squeezed her dry, punched her beyond breathless. It took her an age to wheeze out that she wanted to be taken downstairs one last time. I helped her. She was so small and frail by then that I thought it would be easy, but she leaned against me with all the weight of death in her. As we struggled down the stairs I remember thinking that I would never be able to get her back up again, not without help. I put her in the wicker chair next to the monster, and I left them alone. I left the door ajar, and didn’t go back up the stairs. I waited without much patience, even tried to listen in for a while, but I couldn’t hear a word.

When I came back in Amelia was dead, and Moira was motionless. Of course she was motionless. But if I had ever expected her to move, it was then. Just to look at me, to acknowledge the moment, the realisation that we were now stuck together for good.

Skein Island had become our mutual prison.

Of course, nothing melodramatic happened. An old lady had died of natural causes, that was all, and I dealt with the paperwork, because that was my role. I read one declaration to Moira every day, and changed the barrel, and dispatched it to the farm to be bottled. I kept everything going, just as it was.

Lately, I find myself accepting the fact that I won’t change anything now. It was never my job to be a bringer of change, I think. Maybe women are born into roles, too. But still, I did one revolutionary thing in my lifetime. I had a daughter of my own. I never realised it before, but it occurs to me now that she might reach a point in her own life when she begins to feel unappreciated, and to wonder why that is. I have her address. Such things are easy to find on the internet nowadays – electoral rolls and so on. I might write to her, give her a mystery to solve, a quest on which to embark. If her life is boring, she’ll grab that quest and let it bring her here.

If she comes, I’ll be able to explain myself to her. I think I might manage that, if I work it out in my head beforehand. I suppose that’s what this declaration is, really. Practice at explanation.

I’d love to be able to see an understanding of my predicament dawning in another human being’s eyes. Maybe, if she can grasp it, it will start a new chapter in my story, and in her own. Perhaps I could even return to Wootton Bassett, if she will take my place, just for a few days. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading declarations, it’s that every woman deserves at least a few chapters of her own in the story of her life.

I put down the paper on the floor beside the sofa, and settle myself for sleep. It’s easy to relax into the pillow, to feel lethargy seep into my arms and legs, to snuggle into the warmth of the sleeping bag.

I know them now: Vanessa, Amelia, Moira, Skein Island. I understand that Moira makes men strive to go forth, to fulfil their destinies, while women go round in circles. They return to what they understand, and surround themselves with the familiar, even if those familiar people and places hold terrible memories for them. They hold close the things that they detest.

And now I hold the thought of Moira close. I will find her, and bring her back, so that I don’t have to be anyone’s victim.

But, just like all the best heroes, I can’t undertake this adventure alone. I’m going to need help.

I know exactly who to ask.

Being a hero was not as easy as it sounded.

David had only one place to look for the man who had violated his wife, and that was the library car park. But hiding in the bushes for three hours a night was not an option; the police regularly patrolled the spot now. And he was fairly certain he wasn’t dealing with a stupid adversary, so why would the man turn up here anyway? He had considered going to Sam, asking her to somehow lower the police presence, but the pain of Marianne’s departure was too acute. He couldn’t picture himself on Sam’s doorstep, begging for entry, with things leading in a direction he was not ready to revisit. So he kept his distance from both her house and the library, and as a consequence had nowhere to go and nothing to do except despise his own uselessness.

But then, one cold, dark January night, there was a knock on his front door, and time started to move forward again.

Arnie and Geoff stood there, holding each other upright, trying not to look drunk, and failing. David checked his watch. 11:48 p.m.

‘Cornerhouse just kicked out, has it?’

‘We heard a little birdie saying my daughter’s pissed off again.’

‘Who told you that?’