Wrecker. Noel O’Reilly

know the old law that says anyone who builds a house in one night can claim the freehold?’

      ‘You couldn’t build a chicken coop in one night.’

      ‘I got some mates lined up to help. And I found the spot for it. A patch of wasteland just down from Uplong Row. There be enough ground for a one-room house and a pig sty, and a rick for furze. I been putting things by for a while, clay and poles for the walls, straw for the thatch. One night I’ll build that house and the next day I’ll carry my wife across the threshold.’

      ‘That’s your dream, is it? A one-room hovel and a pig sty?’

      He took hold of me and nuzzled his chin against my neck, chafing me. I pushed him away.

      ‘You’re strong,’ he said. I smelt the liquor on his breath.

      ‘Not surprising I’m strong, slaving day in and day out,’ I said.

      ‘You start housekeeping with me and you’ll live like a princess, I promise.’

      I rolled on top of him. I had a coming-on sort of feeling, so I kissed him with open mouth. ‘I won’t tell nobody if you don’t,’ I said, in a whisper.

      ‘I been waiting so long for this I thought I’d die,’ he said. He stroked my hair and kissed every inch of my face until I took a hunk of his own hair in my grip and pulled his head away so I could look right into his eyes. ‘It’s loving I need now, Johnenry,’ I said.

      That was all the coaxing he needed. He lifted my skirts and let his hands roam wherever they pleased. I pulled my skirts down again so no neighbour would peer out the window and see the moonlight shining on my ass. I rolled on top of him, and he ground into me like gritty sugar. I wanted to lose myself in it, forget the rest of my life had ever happened. When he was about to come to the boil, I lay quiet on him a while and put my mouth to his ear, telling him to hold off a little longer.

      Afterwards he said, ‘I have to make an honest woman of you now, I seem,’ as the cold breeze blew up my skirts and tickled my tender parts. A sudden sharp pain in my temple brought me to my senses. ‘Let go o’ me, I be about to puke,’ I said, getting up off him. I staggered away with the drunken stars reeling around my head, and the beach pitching and rolling under my feet.

      ‘We be as good as man and wife,’ he said, catching up with me, as I staggered towards the quay.

      I leant against the side of a boat, waves of seasickness building inside me. Dropping to my knees, I grasped the heavy chain that connected the boat to the quay. ‘You got me then,’ I said. ‘Go and have the banns read out, if you like, but leave me be. Right now all I want to do is urge.’

      With that I fell forward, the chain rattling in my grip. I retched, and the first of my spew splattered onto the sand.

      I was in Mamm’s old room, which smelt of damp and neglect after so many weeks left empty. She’d been sleeping in the kitchen since her breath had grown too short for her to get up the stairs. I climbed onto a chair and reached up to the rafters where I kept my secrets. The chair wobbled as I reached up to fetch an old stocking swollen with coins, jewellery and other trinkets. When I’d taken it down, I sat on the bed with the stocking in my lap. It was wrapped in yellowed newspaper that I had read so many times the print was worn off the pages. I blew away the dust and cobwebs, upsetting a black beetle that fell to the floor and scuttled a little way before I squashed it underfoot. I untied the string around the frayed worsted, then felt deep inside the stocking for the rag that covered my greatest prize. When the cloth was unwrapped, I gazed upon the hair pin and the butterfly that clung to it, more finely wrought than any lace. I’d taken it from a fine lady who’d breathed her last after a shipwreck a few years past and had never been able to bring myself to part with it, however scat I’d been. When I’d had my fill of staring upon the pin, I went over to stand before the oval mirror above the chest.

      With trembling hands I put the pin in the back of my hair and turned my head to see it glimmer in the dusty shaft of light that lay aslant the glass. My face frowned at me, every blemish and line showing. The long winter had taken its toll. My hair was coarse under my fingers. It was both a blessing and a curse, that hair, a flaming beacon to draw the eye and set me apart from the common run of mouse-haired women. I would use my share from the wreck to buy vinegar and make it shine again. A lone white hair was threaded among the darker ones. A trick of the light, I hoped. I plucked it and found it to be silver as the hair pin.

      My thoughts kept going back to the wreck, to Aunt Madgie and Loveday Skewes. At least my time of the month had passed since I’d gone with Johnenry, so that was one worry I could put behind me. To escape such dark thoughts, I let my mind drift to the man I’d seen on the beach after the wreck, the one whose watch I’d filched. If only a fellow like that were to wash ashore still alive. If not a land man, then at least a merryman. One like those who take human form on midsummer’s eve and swim ashore buck-naked after dark to mate with a woman who waits on the shore in a rage of longing, only to depart from her at dawn to return to his own kind, leaving his milt stirring inside her to grow into an infant that’s as much fish as human, and oh! how breathless I had become, carried along by such fancies. I’d forgotten I still had the pin in my hair, and before anyone caught me I hid it in the stocking and put it back in its hiding place.

      When I felt calmer, I brought out the tinder box from under the bed, sat on the chair and took out my small ration of shag, a mix of baccie and hemp I had dried on the hearth. It was mixed with a rare kind of mushroom that has a soothing effect on the nerves and brings on curious whimsies. Such herbs can be depended on to unlock dreams and let a person glimpse the other world that is only a feather’s breadth from the one we know. I took a few quick pulls on my pipe to get it smoking, releasing its incense into the air. Soon the smoke was swirling about the room and my thoughts were unfurling in its coils. The idol was at my feet, a limbless woman of stone with huge hips and breasts. I picked her up and held her in my lap. Tegen always said the idol was no more than a misshapen rock, but I knew she was an ancient goddess passed down the generations.

      Weaving patterns shifted across the idol’s face like light on water. Without speaking aloud, I asked the idol if I was wrong to keep my treasures hidden in an old stocking when I might buy medicine for Mamm. Was it wicked to indulge in idle fancies, to imagine myself as one of the fine ladies who wash up on the beach after wrecks? My heart raced at the thought of the liberties and luxuries such women enjoyed. How would I ever be rid of my lowly life in the cove, with ill wishers all about me?

      I looked down into the idol’s face. She seemed to say, ‘Take care, Mary Blight.’

      In my mind, I answered, ‘What’s strong in the heart must out some way.’

      ‘Do not overstep thyself,’ the idol warned.

      But the wreaths of smoke about me told another story. A man’s pale naked body was slowly taking form. He groped blindly in a sea of shifting shadows while fatal currents drew him to my embrace. I put the idol on the floor, her face to the wall, and sat back in the chair in a kind of fit, letting my hands fall into my lap.

3

      The very next day I was down on the strand, raking at the tide wrack with the poorer sort of women, those forced to scavenge, just as the gulls do. A ragged line of us stretched out across the strand in the swirling haze. The work was slow, my collar stiff with sweat, my scalp itching in the close heat. With an aching back and arms, I twisted the heavy sea blooms around the end of my pole, then hoisted it and shook the seaweed onto the pile, ready for the squire’s farms up on the headland. Clouds of lazy flies hovered over the seaweed, which grew more rank as it dried.

      At last the mist lifted and the sun came out. I pushed my damp hair from my brow with my forearm and looked about me. Two women were approaching, black shapes against the light. As they drew nearer, I saw it was Loveday Skewes and Betsy Stoddern, both in nice, clean frocks. They had come to gloat at us poor working women.

      ‘Here be trouble,’ said Tegen, at my side.

      The