19: Shells
When I was fifteen my mother tried to kill me, and nobody saw. This is Marsh Witches of the Godless Florin, Chapter Nineteen.
Previously: Anya had been wearing the Godless Florin necklace all along. When Cass finally saw it she erupted at Anya and rushed to the Storium. But the necklace didn’t open it, leaving Cass out of ideas.
Contents: Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
When I was fifteen my mother tried to kill me, and nobody saw.
I was home from school, Dad was in London, I don’t know where the others were. In a clearing on my bedroom floor I lay, hip bones pressed into the rug, elbows propping me up, one finger on the pause button of my tape deck, as I recorded the Radio One chart run down. Dad thought it was a nasty way to consume music, Jocasta just seemed to hate any music that didn’t emanate from her mouth, but I was happy to have my own, ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’, for free.
I was pretty good at cutting out the talky bits, leaving me with back-to-back songs, minus intro and outro. Number One was Tracy Chapman Fast Car - I knew every lyric. As Bruno Brookes started wrapping up the show, emphasising every third word,
“And if you fancy predicting next week’s top three then send your postcards to -”
I stopped the recording, happy with my work. Flipping the nickel switch from ‘TUNER’ to ‘TAPE’, I ejected and flipped the cassette. But when I pressed play I heard just one, maybe two seconds of Inner City before the vocals went from soulful to Chipmunk. I got, “We’re havin’ big fun,” just before the singer got sucked into the play head, like she was drowning, and then the deck squealed and the play button snapped up. I tried to open the cassette door but it was jammed. A pen, wedge into the tiny gap, forced it open but when I took the cassette out, a string of brown tape clung to the mechanism, pulling the spool.
“No!” I shouted.
Two hours focusing on hitting pause at just the right moments would be wasted unless I could unhook it. This was the cassette I’d take back to school the next morning – new term, new dorm, new mix tapes, new Walkman Sports.
Hunched in concentration, I pulled gently on the fine brown film that folded and creased into the shiny metal bits. It stretched under my pressure, and I winced, knowing that if I snapped the tape I’d have nothing. I tugged again, urging it to let go.
Jocasta’s voice jerked me from my concentration and a cold weight sunk in my chest.
As I pushed up to kneeling, I saw the clothes on the floor, the pile of untouched textbooks, the empty plate I’d promised to bring down and hadn’t, the half-filled school trunk I said I’d already packed, and I felt her take it all in too.
“What the FUCK are you doing?” she snarled.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled to the rug.
“Speak up!”
I said louder, still to the floor, “I don’t know.”
She laid into me - fists landing on my head like there was more than one of her, spitting and growling like an animal, making promises that I’d never defy her again. I took it, making myself small, which annoyed her more and she pulled me up to my feet and threw me to the bed, slapping my legs like she had since I was a toddler. My mind escaped, lifting me from my body, so I was watching the storm that raged and rained down on me from high up in the corner of the room. Inanimate objects, hopeless in their stillness, lifted and gathered above us, like the rings of Saturn spinning faster and faster around her head - the baby elephant, the empty cassette case, a French dictionary, a Rubix Cube keychain, a biro. And then she saw it.
With her reddened palm held high, ready to scald my thigh anew, she was confronted by the swirling debris. It seemed to unlock some new level of hatred. The corners of her mouth turned down and she made a noise like a wounded cat, unable to control herself, eyes blackened by loathing for me, debris like a halo, she spoke slowly.
“How. Dare. You.”
With that she ran from the room. I lay there in terror. The planetary display hit the floor and I grasped the heavy covers to pull myself up, listening for her, hearing her bare feet pound the floorboards in the hall and then she was through my door and coming at me, with a hand axe.
I rolled to the side as she plunged the axe into the covers and it bounced back at her, throwing her balance out. She grabbed hold of the bed post as I fell to the floor by the bed and scrambled to my feet. Then I was in the hall, running for the drawing room, losing pace as my socks slid on the boards, rugs shifted under me, with her close behind me, screaming words I couldn’t hear. My ears closed and my peripheral vision narrowed so that the only senses I had left were the ones leading me forward and away from an axe in the back of my skull. As I reached the top of the stairs I pulled myself round the oak post at the top, shouting behind me as I ran,
“… I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry …”
She swung for me but missed, hitting the banister, giving me distance as she struggled to pull it from the wood. I burst through the kitchen door, slamming it behind me, and my heart dropped at it’s dark emptiness. There was no rescue and no safety. With my back to the door, I listened. The door shook in its frame with a crack of the axe.
“Open this door noooowwww!”
My body shook all over as the axe kept coming, forcing me forward, away from the door.
And then I did something I will never understand.
I opened the door. Not to confront her but because I was worried about the door and she was the only person that could stop this madness, so I opened it to look at her and plead into the face of the woman who was supposed to put me first. Racked with tears and shuddering I shouted at her to put the axe down but she came at me, slicing through the air as I darted round the table and tripped on a chair leg. I went down like a pile of books, skidding to the bin, and that’s where I begged.
She scooped my long hair in her fist, pushed her face into mine so I could smell her hot peachy breath as she raised the axe over me.
I screamed, searching her wild eyes, desperate for connection, words tumbling out of me, “No, please, please, no, please, you can’t kill me, you gave birth to me, you can’t kill me, please don’t kill me. Mum!”
I’d like to say it was that last word that caught the axe before it fell but it wasn’t. What stopped her was the sound of my dad’s car rolling into the courtyard. She turned to the window, lowered the axe slowly, and let go of my hair. I froze, watching every movement on her face, waiting for I didn’t know what. Her head snapped back to me suddenly.
“Get up,” she ordered, “get up now. Go upstairs. Wash your face. Don’t let him see you’ve been crying.”
I did as I was told. I was upstairs in my room before he opened the front door, and he never knew what happened. Nobody did.
I’ve rerun the scene many times. Each time I leave the kitchen, I stand defiantly at the oak door of the great hall as he walks through. I blurt it all out - tell him how she tried to kill me, how I begged for my life by the stinking bin. He pushes me behind him and confronts her, screams into her face, sends her away and gathers me in his arms and promises that nothing like that will ever happen to me again.
Maybe I knew how impossible that would be because he was as scared of Jocasta as I was. And maybe that’s why it was safer to get upstairs and avoid being abandoned by both parents on the same day.
Just as Netty predicted, signs of spring have come early. Snowdrops poke from their rotting leaf beds and overwintering birds gather in fields and on telephone lines, ready to navigate routes home to Siberia. Maybe I should plot my own migration back to London but still I linger - caught between two worlds, neither living nor moving on – neither searching nor quitting. My role as Charlie’s replacement is going well, if being drunk is the only requirement. Inconveniently, it isn’t.
In the moments after trying the Godless Florin, I’d tipped boxes over and emptied their contents to the floor – angry and frustrated. Jocasta was fucking with me. Just like she’s always done since I was a kid. Every beating and punishment - invisible to all but me, leaving me questioning if any of it had really happened. And here I was again, questioning everything. Since then, I have tried my best to stay drunk, not rolling around drunk but floating on an even tide of whisky, just like my dad.
As I lay in front of the fire, thinking about the collection but doing nothing about it, I heard a squeaking noise and sat up. Anya, cleaning the glass cabinets. It was two days since I’d tried the Godless Florin and she’d managed to avoid me completely, which is really something, considering I was constantly tripping over her, right up until she almost burnt the kitchen down
“Oh, my goodness, I didn’t see you down there,” she said. “So sorry, I’ll go.”
Lowering her cloth, she turned to leave but I said, “wait.”
She looked down.
“Anya, you don’t have to be scared of me,” I paused and waited for a response. “For god’s sake, I’m not the one you should be scared of.”
“I’m not scared of you, Cass. I just don’t know what to say.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and said, “We need to talk about the necklace.”
She sighed and stepped forward to the high back of the Knowle settee, touching it gently like it might be hot.
“Tell me when she gave it to you,” I said.
“Soon after I first got here. I think.”
“So that’s … what, two months ago?”
She shrugged, “I’m not good at time.”
“And she said what exactly when she gave it to you?”
Plainly, firmly.
“I don’t remember.”
She plucked a spec of something from the velvet and leant her bare forearms on it, looking down at me, waiting for the next question.
I asked, “But how was she when she gave it to you? You said she told you it was worthless, or she didn’t need it, or something. It would be really good if you could try to remember.”
She pondered this and then shook her head. “I’m sorry Cass, I wish I could tell you.”
I hid my annoyance behind a thin smile and stopped my eyes from rolling. Trying for a lighter tone, I said, “Okay, where did she give it to you then? In the kitchen? Up here?”
Her brow knitted tight, and I looked about instinctively before saying, quietly, “I hate to break it to you Anya, but she gave you the necklace to piss me off. Do you get that? She’s not the … she’s not the angel you think she is.”
She recoiled at the suggestion and looked very serious.
“Oh, I don’t think she’s an angel. Unless angels are wicked.”
It made me laugh – her candour – but she held my gaze in hers and said, “I can see her, Cass. Like you do. I see her. And I see you.”
My hand went to the back of my neck to flatten the hairs that pricked from my skin. I pushed myself to standing and went to the desk, busying my eyes with the documents I’d been checking, occupying my thoughts with something else.
“Cass,” she followed me to the desk, “can I ask you something?”
I turned and leant on its hard edge. She stood too close. There are gold flecks in Anya’s eyes that move and settle when she blinks, like sugar crystals. Where her cheeks and nose meet, light freckles hint at the sun’s kisses, even in February.
“What is all this?”
I followed her eyes to the long line of cabinets.
“All this? It’s my dad’s collection. Of the occult. He spent his whole life collecting all these things and now, they’re mine.”
She nodded and wondered, looking from shelf to shelf, questions coming and going across her face. I looked for something to explain.
“Have you seen the cat?” I said.
“Cat?” she frowned, looking around for one.
I stepped backwards, towards the stairs, and pointed up to a high shelf where a black, twisted, mummified creature stood in its own glass case. It was shiny skinned with a deeply arched back and exposed fangs. She joined me by the balustrade and followed my finger up.
“Oh, it’s a cat,” said Anya. “I thought it was a … actually I don’t know what I thought it was.”
“They used to believe that a live cat, cemented into the wall of your house would protect you from evil.”
“Who’s they?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I just mean people … from a long time ago.”
I wished I had better words than ‘long time ago’. Anya’s brows pinched together as she regarded the gruesome spectacle.
“Don’t worry,” I quipped, “It can’t get you.”
“It’s just so awful,” she said, not taking her eyes from it, “that any animal would be tortured and used like that. Poor, poor thing.”
I stared at the grisly creature, seeing it through her eyes, and realised I’d never thought of it as a living, furry, meowing cat - petrified and clawing. So used to seeing it there, I was detached from the violence that made it. There was no animal left. It was just part of the furniture. Anya looked at me.
“Do you collect things?”
“Me? No. Hangovers maybe,” I said, crossing quickly to the drinks, which tinkled like little bells to welcome me over.
“I like shells,” she said, following me.
I lifted the cold heavy glass decanter of whisky and poured a few measures into a tumbler.
“As in seashells?” I said, taking a gulp.
“Yes. Anything I find on the beach that catches my eye. Sometimes stones that I think are pretty. Fragments of old porcelain or smooth glass. It’s like finding treasure.”
She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out a handful of small shells. I looked down at the meagre haul. They were mostly clams and one small stone, buffed by rolling in the waves against the sand. A strand of blonde escaped Anya’s thick bob as she bent her long neck toward the shells.
Nestled in the tiny collection was a small translucent pebble, I plucked it from her hand and held it up to the light.
“I used to love finding these. It’s amber - fossilised pine resin.”
She took it from me to see what I could see. Her long fingers are like weeping willow twigs, each one smooth and soft like the inside of her arm. I found myself grazing that same place in my own cupped hand, with my thumb.
She asked, “When did you stop?”
“Stop?”
“When did you stop loving it? Finding amber.”
“Oh. When I stopped looking I suppose.”
I opened a cabinet door and leant in to move a stocky stone figure to one side. First placing the amber stone, then the rest of the shells from Anya’s palm, I arranged them in a grid of nine in their own dedicated patch of the musty cupboard. Miniscule grains of sand stowed away with the shells, and I blew them gently to clear the space around each specimen. A white cockle shell lifted with my last puff, and I carefully straightened and realigned it.
“There. Now you can see them every day instead of keeping them hidden away in your pocket.”
“Oh, you mean to leave them there? I couldn’t do that. Jocasta would….”
“Fuck Jocasta. I say you can put them there. Okay? Anyway, she wouldn’t notice if you took every single item in this cabinet and replaced it with a shell.”
We stood there for what felt like a very long time, saying nothing, just looking at the neatly arranged shells. She spoke first.
“Let me help you.”
“Help me with what?”
“With whatever it is you’re searching for.”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say – right you do that shelf and I’ll take this one and we’ll get everything down to the catacombs because, Anya, we’ve got a magic book to unlock.
“No that’s okay,” I went back to the drinks cabinet and refilled the not yet empty glass, “sorry, do you want one?” I said, and then felt foolish.
Her eyes lowered to the array of alcohol, and she shook her head.
I shrugged, “I need one.”
I was suddenly aware of the sound of my throat closing around each gulp, and then she was next to me again, following the glass with her big eyes.
“Why do you drink so much?”
I put it down, almost choking.
“Jesus, you don’t fuck about do you?”
“I just don’t understand why you want to drink so much. And why you’re so unhappy when I think this place is magical.”
“Magical? You mean Jocasta?”
“No, I mean the marsh. And the birds. And the way the dogs follow you no matter what because they love you. And how the late afternoon sun hits the West Tower and floods the courtyard when the gates are open. And you….”
But I didn’t let her finish. The fleeting moment of being seen was gone and she was just another tourist. She’d opened a door and slammed it shut in my face.
“Okay then,” my palms stung as I clapped them together, “Good. I need to get on.”
I’d made her feel awkward. I wanted to. The leather in my dad’s chair creaked loudly as I sat. I looked down at the inventory:
23. Ceremonial boars tusk carved with pentagram
24. Indian palmistry illustration, unframed
25. Mourning ring – silver.
26. Tarot cards – Aleister Crowley
27. Death whistle – bone
I realised I hadn’t read any of it. I tried again but nothing was going in. Anya just stood there, looking down at me. I huffed loudly.
“What?”
“Let me help you. With all this. I can help you.”
“You have no clue what I’m even doing.”
“Tell me.”
“Please stop talking. I need to concentrate.”
It was rude and I didn’t mean it to be but also I wanted her to leave me alone. I wanted everyone to leave me alone, and here was this cherub faced girl, offering to help, asking me questions that shake me from myself, and challenge even my twisted standards of what’s appropriate. She nodded silently and retrieved her cloth and spray from the floor. As she went to the stairs, a shaft of late sun caught in her blonde hair and motes of dust twinkled around her.
Contents: Prologue, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24