Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

Their feet crunch on the gravel path.

— So the new guy in number seven is from London as well?

— Yup, exactly like Vivienne that was his mum; he used to live with her and his gran in a cinema called Babylon.

— Really? Maybe he’s going to clean the caravan up a bit while he’s here.

Constance glances at the trampled-down thistles at no. 7 as they walk by. At the end of the path there is a man bent over into a C-shape, as if he carries the whole world on his back, as if he is Atlas and he has been conned and doesn’t know that if he just bends a knee and walks away the world will stay up all on its own.

— Good morning, Barnacle.

— Morning, Constance, this winter is going to be the death of us all! he says.

— We’ve got a new neighbour, Stella says.

— An Incomer?

— Yup.

— Is he staying?

— Looks like it.

As they walk past, Barnacle turns his head sideways to look up at Stella.

— Mum?

— Why are you whispering, Stella?

— I was wondering why Barnacle lost all his land — like what is he doing here?

— He spent all the money, he doesn’t have anything now.

— On what?

— Prostitutes and drugs, that’s what Ida told me.

Stella turns around and looks back at the man shuffling up his steps. Her mum is walking quickly as ever and she has to hurry to keep up. They walk away across to the garages and along a frozen path, over the burn and onto the farm road. Stella claps her hands together in her gloves and looks out over fields.

— Mum, have you noticed?

— What?

— Nobody’s out, not even a dog walker.

The farm road is empty and the motorway hums nearby.

The whole place feels so bare and stark for a minute it gives Stella the creeps.

Clachan Fells mountains are gold but the sunlight is already fading to grey — fields are furrowed for winter with frozen ridges of soil and a ten-foot-tall scarecrow throws his stick-arms out against the vastness. He is dressed in a bubble jacket, with furry lapels and a pair of goggles. Up on the hills there are tall sticks with fluorescent-painted footballs on top, rags fluttering. Those are rows of poor scarecrow-cousins — not like this guy! Stella shivers, the cold already in her bones.

At the school gates Constance gives her the absence note. Down in the playground four mums are chatting outside the gym. One of them looks at Stella, then turns quickly away. I have a friend in Italy. Stella says this to herself while trying not to pay attention to the flutter of fear she feels when they look at her. It is only one year since they thought she was a boy, and nobody has got used to it yet. All their robot children like their knobs and buttons shiny and silver and none of them understand what a real robot has to withstand, if they are to have so much rust but still be able to run as fast as the others on sports day or sing as loud at Christmas. The carols! ‘Little Donkey’, the verse about Mary carrying the heavy load, it always makes her cry.

— Do you want me to take the note in? Constance asks.

— No, Mum, it is fine.

— Okay, I’m only asking! Are any of those mums the parents of the boys who … you know?

— Who battered me at Ellie’s Hole?

Her mum winces.

There are tears in the corner of her eyes.

Constance Fairbairn never cries and there is nothing worse than seeing tears in your mother’s eyes and knowing you have caused them. She has to tell her something quickly to fix-it-right-now.

— I have a new friend anyway.

— Who?

— Just this guy from Italy, I met him on the trans-teen website, he sends me golden hand claps — and no, that isn’t something rude.

Stella strides toward school with the note held lightly in her hand. She tries to walk like her mother. A tall walk. Easy. Assured. Those mothers are looking at her already and they give even worse looks to her mum, because she had two lovers for decades and everybody judged her for that and now she has a daughter when she used to have a son. Some of the villagers think being a Fairbairn is the devil’s work. Stella is going to walk past them in a minute so she must keep her breathing steady. She won’t tell Constance that every one of those mothers has a son who was at Ellie’s Hole that day. The mothers know and she has to let it go because she is partly an angel but vengeance is not her job. That must be why she likes Dylan so much already. He’s a smelly, tired, broken, tattooed angel who looks like his heart has ruptured with loss, but that smile — if she were her mother, she’d not go back to Alistair, she’d introduce herself to the Nephilim’s offspring with his tired eyes, and there’s no point in thinking this because Constance always sleeps with her father again. It makes her skin crawl. She remembers reading a book about a woman who had so much love to give the whole world, enough for everyone, bundles and bundles of it wrapped in brown paper with string and enough for the mean spirits and the sorrowful and cruel. All that love. All of it to give out into a world with people like those hard, horrible women with their shitty fucked-up sons! It is not love that Stella would deliver to them in brown paper parcels tied with string.

A haar-frost mist seeps along the playground.

The women walk up toward her and their feet and legs disappear into the mist, so they appear to begin at the knees. She walks past them and through an entrance with Girls written above it in stone. Everyone is filing into the last assembly for this year but it feels like they might never have one again, with the news and the Internet scares, and she watched an airport scene on the telly earlier where everybody was trying to get out to somewhere warmer and they all looked frantic. Stella runs along a corridor to the left (away from the teachers) to post her note into the Absences box. She walks back up through the mist and Constance is looking after the other mums with her head held up high. Her mother takes her scarf off and wraps it around Stella’s neck and tucks it in and strokes her cheek with her thumb (only once).

— Are you sure you want to help me get furniture today, Stella?

— I don’t want to sit in assembly with my class.

— Okay, just this once.

They march with their heads down toward Clachan Fells Tearoom.

— We need to find as much as we can today — it might be the last trip for a little while if this weather is going to get worse? Are you okay? Did someone say something to you?

— No, Mum, can you stop worrying?

They walk past a small greasy spoon with big red star-signs in the window listing a full breakfast with fourteen items. Three truckers turn their heads to look at Constance as she walks by. Their trucks are outside, stacked with long tree trunks. It takes Stella all her focus not to take down her jeans and wee on the glass, just to stop them looking at her mother. Constance opens the tearoom door and lets Stella walk through first. Heat makes their skin prickle and the windows steam up. It smells of tea and cake. Four old women sit in front of a wide flatscreen.

— I don’t eat butter, I still like to keep my waist, the eldest says.

She pats her lumps and bumps and smiles at Stella, who is pointy-of-chin and lithe as a dancer. The oldest woman wears a cardigan and a vest top and no bra and her breasts droop down to her belly. Emblazoned on the vest top is the slogan Beauty Is Only Skin Deep . Stella grins at her and the old woman gives a toothy smirk back. The telly drones on and Constance goes up to the counter.

— It’s snowing in Israel.

A tired woman at a table in the corner says this, shakes her head.

— What?

— Look, it’s snowing in Israel.