Anna Smaill - The Chimes

‘ Sing a song of sixpence ’ — her voice is like gravel — ‘ a pocket full of rye .’

I stand there baffled, with my heart banging and my arms held up against my chest as if I’m bracing against something.

‘ Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. ’

Her voice is full of mirth, as if she has told a wonderful joke. I look around. Junk. A house full of junk and a crazy old woman. We were fools not to listen to Netty. To hope that we would find some answer or help here, some mystery that would equip two pactrunners to bring an end to the Order.

‘ When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing ,’ the old woman croons, and it seems as if she intends the song to reassure me. Her cracked voice falls from song into chant. ‘ When the pie was opened ,’ she says louder now, insistent, motioning with her head toward me. I look around to see if I can leave without pushing past her, as I don’t want to get close to those fingernails again. My throat stings where she grasped me. To my left is a kitchen. Like the hallway, it is crammed with junk, the only clear space the narrow bench and sink. An old gas oven sits next to the bench, its innards removed, a fire kindled inside it, a kettle atop and a cast-iron tureen directly on the coals. There is no other way out.

‘The pie, lover, the pie! All the darling birdies. Must let them out. Time to let them sing. You hungry, my love? Whistle up a cuppa, will you? Brown Betty’s behind you.’

I twist round fast. There is nothing behind me but a tall ladder of shelves stacked with eggcups, toast racks, candleholders, plates. She comes up behind me, a dark shape in her cloak, and reaches down a large brown teapot covered in a wool cosy. Then she kneels in front of the stove, gathers her hands in folds of the cloak.

‘Tea, tea, tea,’ she says under her breath. ‘Tea for two and tea for memory. Leaves are in the lolly box, lovely.’

On the shelf, there’s a tall red mettle tin with a picture on it. For a moment I am sure I have seen it before. The woman removes the green iron tureen from inside the cookstove. Then she takes the kettle hanging over the stove’s mouth. She puts the teapot and the tureen on a small table and gestures to the mettle tin again. In a dream, I reach and take it from the shelf. Bright red, beaten mettle. A strange old man in a black suit hacks into his cloth-covered fist. Where have I seen it? From a cupboard below she removes two plates, two forks and two cups, and puts them on the table.

Then she turns and grabs me. She holds my arms down and brings her face right up into mine.

‘Let’s have a good look at you, my dearling.’ Her eyes close to mine, her lips creased in a grin. ‘My dearling, my darling, my lily-livered starling.’

She smiles and then she whistles a tune into my face. The tune is our comeallye. I start back.

‘Scared, are you? Surprised, are you? Why should you be? Bells tolled to tell me you were coming. No knowing of mine. Memory’s my toll, not telling weather.’ She shakes her head. ‘Cloudy, though, very cloudy I’d say your outlook was. Don’t need much to telltale that.’

I pull my arms out of her grip.

‘Do you know a woman named Netty? She told me to find you.’ Her word mess is getting into my ears. I shake my head.

‘Netty. Netty?’ She pauses as if to ponder. ‘No… Don’t know no Netty. Not a Netty in the pretty lot of them. Not a one in the net, you know. And you should knot a net to keep it. Keep it from slipping out, dear.’ She looks at me as if she has said something final, conclusive.

Then she continues, ‘No Netty. But he hasn’t a worry, not he . A bird in the net’s worth two in the bush. Or in the moon,’ she says brightly, flinging a hand toward the window as if to release something clasped inside.

Then she turns back. ‘Tea, that’s the thing. That’s the stuff to patch it.’ And she breaks into song again.

‘The fishers of Galilee,

they never had enough tea.

With a net and a line

and a stitch in good time,

there’d be more than enough for all three.’

She looks at me as if expecting a response.

‘Yes?’ she asks.

‘I…’

‘Your fellow, your pretty one, waiting under the tree out there. Tea for him?’

‘No,’ I say.

No, I think. Let Lucien rest for a bit. Let him think we are moving ahead.

‘Right, then.’ She pours tea and opens the tureen and dishes what is in it onto the plates. ‘Drink up. Eat up,’ she says. ‘Remembering is hungry work, you know.’

I hesitate, smell the pie, thinking of her rhyme about blackbirds. But under the crust is a gravy with mushrooms and potato. The sauce steams and the smell is savoury. I feel my mouth fill with water. I can’t remember the last time I ate.

She watches me for a while; then she eats too. We drink tea without milk from the big teapot. After we have eaten, she gets up. She holds a hand out to me.

‘Now we’ve broken bread, you can’t go back, my dear. Only way out is through the belly of the whale.’ Her palm held out, wrinkled. Her nails long and clawed. I take her hand and let her lead me. I follow her through the kitchen to the cluttered hall.

The room we enter is a maze. Boxes form corridors that stretch above my head. Cloths hang down and filter the moonlight that is falling from somewhere, a window high above us. Twists and turns of boxes and finally into a clearing. In the middle of the room, there is a space of cleared floor and on it a woven rug of many colours. A solid bookcase leans against the back wall behind. Ahead is a skeleton leaning slack against a mettle stand, his legs bent in a strangely casual way, from the hip. The skeleton wears a woman’s straw bonnet with faded red grosgrain ribbons and tuberoses made of starched silk. Above him, propped against a machine like a tiny klavier with codeletters instead of keys, is a boar’s head, the mouth open and eyes glazed in surprise. Next to that is an immense stoppered jar filled with glass beads of all sizes. I wonder how it survived Allbreaking.

‘Sit, sit,’ Mary says. ‘Or kneel. Knee to heel. Kneel to pray. Pray to heal. Have you ever seen anything so lovely?’ She gestures at the mess all around us. ‘No! Never!’ she answers for me. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

I watch her move lightly around the room, darting, alighting, swooping from place to place. She ducks down corridors, returns, flits off again. As she goes, she touches objects. At first I think it is at random, a sort of crazed dance, but then I see there is intention in it. She moves across and reaches an arm to grope up to a piece of fabric that hangs down from the ceiling. Then back to a patchwork-covered cardboard box that sits next to me on the floor. She pirouettes over to the skeleton, bows at the waist, then reaches up to tip his flowery bonnet. Subito a picture flashes up of something I saw once; it must have been in Essex. An old memory, at our crosshouse hall. Exhibition Chimes and an organist brought in from the Citadel to play along on our hall organ. A small man in his white robes darting light like that, like a butterfly, changing the stops, tapping the bass out with his feet, the same look of rapt, joyful attention on his face.

As she goes, her eyes flit and shift, open and close. Expressions enter and then leave. Joy, wonder, humour, affection, love, pride, contentment and a constant stream of patter…

‘Oh, the beautiful boy, yes, eyes only for him, a mouth like a knife and hair like sunset, ah, my darling. Come, unbutton here. Loosen your collar a bit, that’s it. Yes, of course I remember. Hopscotch and the daisies out. A fine time we had. Five under your feet and it’s springtime. And in the swim we were. In the Isis. You carried me home the whole way, soaked to the skin, never stopping for a breath…’