AT THE EDGE OF A LONG LONE LAND
The hard winter gave way to an early spring, with huge cumulus clouds cutting across the horizon and tripping over themselves, looking as if they might fall off the edge of the world at any moment. The hills and fields around us grew ripe with the golden sheen of daffodils and colourful clover, wildflowers that pushed their way up through crags and fissures, and the lively melody of birdsong. I’d watch the sea come crashing in with the tide, punishing the shore with a brutality that only the sea can bring.
We’d walk the beaches, my brothers and me, looking for hidden treasures tucked in among the rocky shore. Once in a while we’d find things—a life-ring, or a hat—sometimes it was clothing, like a shirt, or a pair of pants, which served as a reminder of the madness consuming the world around us. While my brothers frolicked and played in the sand and along the rocks, I sat with my grandad’s old spyglass, watching over them and making certain they weren’t swept out to sea.
The endless rain and harsh, blustery days spent riding Da’s bicycle on the rain-soaked tracks delivering mail and pasties were soon forgot in the warmth of the early spring. As we left the seashore to make our way back up the long, hard, trail, I saw Felicity riding her bicycle with three bags of groceries in her carrier, and carrying a fourth, when she slipped along the muddy path and fell.
She’d pulled the hem of her dress up and was looking at a bloody scrape on her knee by the time we three arrived—breathless and bent over from the long run. She was quick to pull her dress down as soon as Robbie and David came running in behind me. She seemed genuinely pleased to see us, and tried assuring me she was fine as I bent to pick her bicycle up while Robbie and David gathered up her scattered groceries.
“Oh boys, you’re a life saver, all of you. Would you like a spot of tea when we reach the top? I can make it for you? It won’t take long. I know it’s a nice day and that you’d rather be out and about, but it’s still cold, and a spot of tea would really do a world of wonders, for all of us,” she laughed awkwardly, looking up at me with a tilt of her head and a beautiful smile.
I stammered a nervous yes, and she smiled at me from under delicately arched brows, putting the last bag on top of the others in the carrier as I pushed her bicycle up the long hill.
Robbie and David purposely fell behind, looking at the path where Felicity’s house rested on a small hillock around the gently sloping bend. There was an open field littered with rocks that seemed to stretch out forever, falling into the distant sea. The wind brushed across the long grass as if it were a chop on the sea, while Robbie slowed his pace until he finally stopped, saying he wouldn’t go any farther.
“I doan wanna go up there Jackie; not to the McCreary Place,” he said. “Ye can go if ye want, but I’m not.” He was looking at Felicity who had stopped a short distance away, waiting.
“The house is haunted, Jackie,” David said with what amounted to a loud stage whisper. I knew they’d been discussing it on the way up the hill; it was the reason they’d lagged behind.
“I can’t very well leave her now that she’s invited us in, can I?” I said, in the same loud whisper David used. I looked at Felicity and half shrugged.
“We can watch out for ourselves,” David said. “I’ll take care of Robbie.”
“All right; but ye both go straight home now, and make sure ye tell Mum why ye wouldn’t help.”
“Bye!” Robbie screamed out, and started off at a quick run down the hill.
“Mind ye don’t fall and break yer necks!” I called out, as David followed Robbie down the hill. “I’ll be looking to break ‘em myself when I get back home,” I added under me breath.
I turned and followed Felicity up the hill.
“Why do the people here insist on calling my house the McCreary Place? I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but hear what your brothers said.”
“They weren’t being very subtle about it, were they?” I laughed.
“I wish more people could be as subtle as them,” she smiled.
“McCreary was a miner that used to work with Charlie and me Da’—or so me Da’ tells me. One day, he came home and found his wife with another man. The man was supposed to be a close friend. Anyway, McCreary went out to his workshop and came back inside with an axe and killed the man outright. Right then and there, without so much as a by-your-leave-guv’ner. He threw the man’s body off the cliffs. After that, he killed his wife and their three little girls.”
“His children? He killed his children?”
“He cut them up people say. I don’t know if it’s true, it’s just something they say. I wasn’t even born when it happened. But I heard he threw his wife over the cliffs as well.”
“When?”
“Twenty years ago, maybe more. It was before me Da’ left for the Boer war. Da’ said McCreary was in the Zulu wars; that’s why he chopped up the kids and put them in the stove.”
“In the stove? My stove?”
I laughed. “It’s just a story people told themselves; I doubt it’s true.”
“I’ve heard being in a war changes a man,” she said after a moment. “Do you think it’s true?”
“It helps to turn a boy into a man,” I said softly.
“Is that what you think it takes to be a man?”
“Can ye think of another way?” I asked.
“Oh Jackie,” she smiled, and lifting a sack of groceries out of the carrier, went inside.
The McCreary house sat on a large tract of land, with a weathered fence partially fallen over, and a gate hanging off to the side on one hinge. The windows stood wide open, as was the door, and I watched the lace curtains fluttering as if they were flags, as the wind swept in from the sea below.
“I thought I’d air it out while I was gone,” she explained.
“That’s fine,” I said, pulling the three grocery sacks out of the carrier.
“Do you still want that cup of tea, or do you have to go off and find your brothers?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder, smiling.
“I might be able to stay for a cup, if it’s no trouble for ye,” I said, carrying the bags inside.
She put the bag she was carrying on the small kitchen table. It was a clean, wooden table with an oilcloth, place mats, napkins, and a doily under a porcelain vase filled with fresh cut flowers. She put her foot up on a chair she pulled out from under the table, lifting her dress up over her knee and looking at the scrape.
“Pass me that dishrag over by the sink, will you Jackie?” she said, pointing at it for me. I put the bags down on the countertop and turned to her, holding the rag out. She smiled, seeing how awkward I felt.
I tried not to look at her exposed leg, but there was little I could do not to look. There was nothing else to look at, except the sparse surroundings which made me feel even more awkward. Everything was open and spacious; I couldn’t help but notice how clean it looked. The chairs were tucked neatly under the table—(except the one she had her foot on)—the china cabinet full of dishes and ornaments, with doilies scattered about and fresh cut flowers everywhere. I knew I’d have to tell Mum how everything looked; after all, this was the McCreary Place and she’d want to know, it having sat empty for so many years.
There were pictures of her and the man I assumed was her husband—both of them appearing ghostly and unsmiling, purposely posed and pedestrian—while oil paintings of large city streets lined the walls. There were two overstuffed chairs, an upright piano, and a large sofa and coffee table on a real Turkey rug. There were end tables set up with kerosene lamps, and everything about the house was neat, orderly, and organized.
“Do you play?” I asked, looking at the piano.
“Every night,” she nodded.
There was an easel in one corner with an unfinished painting of what she later told me was the White Cliffs of Dover—a view from the beach below, she said—looking up at a wide expanse of white rock filled with crags and cracks that seemed to fill the entire canvas.
“Did ye paint that as well?” I asked. I began looking at the other paintings, studying each one closely, until I came across a nude portrait of her.
“My husband’s the painter. My late husband, I should say. I suppose I better get used to saying that,” she said, dropping the hem of her dress and walking to the sink where she filled a kettle of water from the hand pump. She rinsed the bloody rag out and hung it up to dry.
“We weren’t married long enough for me to get used to the idea of being called his wife, let alone his widow,” she went on as she began to put her groceries away.
“You weren’t?”
“Six weeks,” she laughed, “and then he went off to war. He was thinking it might help him with his painting. But they gave him a rifle instead of a paintbrush.”
“Da’ said he wanted to fight, and they sent him off to join the Sappers.”
“Sappers?”
“Those are them that dig tunnels and trenches under the enemy lines. They put him there because he worked in the mines here. He was in the Boer War when he was younger.”
“Yes, so your mother said. I saw his picture hanging on the wall above the desk. He’s very handsome. It must be hard for your mother?”
“Why?”
“Have you seen him without his mask?” she asked.
I shook my head and the room filled with a hard silence that was as palpable as a dying man’s rasp before she spoke again.
“Does your mother know you’re planning to go up?”
“I never said I was.” I tried sounding indignant, but all I managed to do was make her laugh.
“No. You didn’t. But you have that look about you; the same look my husband had before he left. I’m sure it’s the same look your Da’ had.”
“All my friends have joined,” I said in my defence.
“Have they? And have any of them come back?”
I shook my head.
“And you think going off to war will make people look at you differently? That maybe they’ll call you Jack, instead of Little Jackie? Is that it?” she said with a playful smile.
The kettle began whistling and she paused to pour the water into an earthen teapot.
“People will say I’m a man,” I said with a nod, not really understanding that she was teasing me.
She smiled again and shook her head slowly, her long dark tresses quivering in the soft afternoon light spilling in through the open windows. She measured out the tea, then pushed the teapot off to the side to let it steep, staring into the distance. She stood like that for a long time before turning around to look at me.
“How old are you, Jackie?”
“Eighteen; well, soon enough. Why? How old are you?”
“That’s not a question you should be asking a woman.”
“Isn’t it? Why’s that?”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“That’s not what me Mum says.”
“No?”
“She was thinking you were older—not much older—but older all the same.”
“And people think yer older?”
“Which is why I should have no trouble signing up,” I smiled. “But I promised Mum I’d not go until I turned eighteen. That makes me a man in the eyes of the law.”
“Is it? Going off to war a boy, and coming back, is that what you think makes a man?”
“I’m not sure there’s much more.”
“And if you don’t come back? Or ye back like your Da’, or Charlie—that is his name isn’t it? The man with one arm and leg?”
“Charlie Smythe.”
“There are other ways of becoming a man.”
“Are there?”
“Let me show you what it is makes you a man, Jackie,” she said, and taking my hand, looked up at me and smiled.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said, and placed my hand on her breast. I felt the softness of it under her dress as she began undoing the buttons, slipping my hand inside and pressing it against the warmth of her flesh.
I spent the better part of that spring and summer riding out to her house every opportunity I might; endless hours spent making love and learning the subtle ways of what I thought it meant to be a man.
The first time I saw Da’ without his mask, he and Mum were in the kitchen. It was early and I stood outside the door listening, not knowing whether to go in or remain where I stood.
“T’was him, I’m telling ye Tillie, I know it. They marched us out to watch. I’ll never forget the day—it haunts me still—haunts me, I say. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since.”
“Ye can’t tell her, Jack.”
“Why not? The woman has a right to know.”
“She feels bad enough as is.”
“She has a right to know.”
“No. Sometimes a person doesn’t want to hear the truth, Jack,” Mum said softly.
I moved and positioned myself to look through the door—and turned away at the sight of him. As much as I wanted to accept whatever it was that happened, I was unprepared to see what was left of him.
Mum was wiping the empty hollow that was Da’s face. He was sitting on a chair, the mask laying on the table beside him as she cleaned his face with a cloth, something she’d do everyday for the rest of her life. She’d wring the cloth out now and again, and then turn to face him, digging deep into the crevasses where I’d once kissed his roughened cheeks. There was a purple knot that once upon a time was his chin, and a garbled line that was his mouth. He was missing his left ear I’d noticed for the first time.
Mum looked up and saw me standing in the doorway—as startled by my sudden appearance as if I’d come upon her naked—while Da’, Da’ turned his face fully towards me. I’m sure he saw the shock and horror I felt, as well as the revulsion reflected in me eyes. His left cheek and nose were wholly gone; it looked as if someone had scooped them away with a spoon and cast them to the side. His bottom lip was gone as well, his jaw line distorted to such a degree that I could see three of his teeth standing out as white as tombstones. The only thing I saw in that brief moment that was truly him, were his eyes. As he turned away I could see his shoulders sag, and his head bow, as he calmly reached for the mask.
“I’m sorry,” he said in that garbled voice I’d come to know over the months. “Now ye know,” was all he said.
“How long have ye been standing there?”
I looked at Mum, unable to say anything, and then turned to look at Da’ as he fixed the mask in place.
“It’s my birthday,” I said awkwardly.
“Happy birthday, son,” Da’ said softly.
“Yes,” Mum said, picking up the bowl and pouring the water into the sink. She didn’t turn around or look at me the entire time as she wrung the cloth out, but instead stared out of the window as she spoke, looking out at the pink sky as the sun gradually rose out of the sea and over the distant cliffs.
“Why don’t ye ride up later and tell Felicity she has mail? We’ll make a party of it.”
“Yes,” I said, trying to force a smile, but unable to do anything.
“Good,” she said, finally turning around. There were tears in her eyes. “Can ye run upstairs and wake yer brothers? I’ll get yer breakfasts ready.”
