Herring Girl Read online

  All we’re doing is kissing, after all, though a more creature thing I can’t imagine. For now we’re breathing together, all it takes is a mite more opening and his tongue’s meeting mine and he’s kissing me inside, and I’m tasting him properly, which is the closest thing I’ve ever done with a body – even Mam when she’s been bad, even the bairns when I’m bathing them. And I’m wondering, how can a lass give her mouth to any lad she doesn’t love?

  Flo said she’d to be alert for Tom’s hands all the time, to keep them from opening her blouse and tugging up her skirt. But I can’t see how I could ever find enough calmness to think of such things. For kissing Sam feels like a door unlocking, and once it’s unlocked, all I want is to go into the room. And if his hands want to lead me there, well, all I want is to let them, and—

  I can’t confess it! Woman my age – what will he think of me? But it’s only if you can’t remember a sin that you don’t have to confess it. ‘For these and all my other sins which I cannot now remember.’ Otherwise you’re lying, aren’t you?

  I keep on going back to that night; what he wanted me to do. Dear Lord, forgive me, but I can’t help thinking I made the wrong decision.

  It’s the funeral that’s set me off. Seeing Mr M. laid into Your consecrated ground – after everything he’s done, all his sins of the flesh. And what that new priest said, about how Jesus knows what’s in our hearts, and that’s what He meant when He said, ‘Let those who are without sin cast the first stone’.

  And all those folk at the church and at that do after – talk about Sodom and Gomorrah! I hardly knew where to put myself. But they all had something good to say about Mr M., didn’t they? They showed me a side to him I never saw before, and it’s really churned me up.

  So I started thinking about Mary Magdalen and all her sins of fornication, and how Jesus loved her best of all his female apostles. And that other Mary, who never lifted a finger round the house when Jesus came to call, while poor Martha was rushing about making things nice. But it was Martha he chastised, wasn’t it? For prioritizing the wrong thing, that’s how I’ve always understood it. For doing her duty, when the occasion called for her duty to be set aside.

  That Mary spent all their money on a pot of ointment for His feet, and washed them and dried them with her own hair. I’ve always thought that’s not a very clever way to dry feet, that maybes the translation’s gone a bit wonky there, and what she really used was her headscarf. But washing His feet, drying them – a woman doing that for a man, well, it’s not decent either is it? But He said that was the right thing to do.

  I keep thinking back to when Alfred went off. And he was crying, and begging me to hold him, because it might be the last time. And there was this queer feeling in me, a sort of hunger, but lower down. I’d never felt like that before and it made me feel ashamed. I thought maybes he could tell, and that’s why he was pressing me so hard. I thought, this can’t be right, this must be a sin; this must be how a lass falls into the sin of fornication.

  So I pushed him away, didn’t I? I was like Martha, when I should have been like Mary.

  Right, she’s come out and it’s my turn.

  He’s been smoking, I can smell it. Father O’Brien never smoked or took a drink. Folk say we’ve to move with the times, but isn’t that what the Bible’s for? To keep us on the right path when things around us are changing?

  ‘Hello, there,’ he says. ‘Jesus is listening, and He’s ready to forgive.’

  Why doesn’t he stick to the proper words?

  ‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned,’ I’m saying. ‘It’s been three weeks since my last confession.’ But what I want to say is: why can’t you stop changing things all the time? Why did you get that guitarist for Mass last week? How can I talk about having impure thoughts when the box stinks of tab smoke?

  ‌Chapter Twenty-One

  2007

  ‘…three, two, one—’

  Mary reaches for Ben’s hand. ‘Hello, you,’ she says as the blue eyes waver open. ‘Are you OK? We seemed to lose Annie for a few minutes back there.’

  ‘That was so weird,’ says Ben, slowly focussing. ‘I was in this sort of box thing, right, like one of those old red phone boxes, only really dark and made of wood, and that man talking to me was behind this little screen thing in another box, so I couldn’t see his face. And he was Irish, least that’s what he sounded like. I was kneeling on this hard cushiony sort of thing, and holding these weird beads for some reason. And my hands were all wrinkled – right old-biddy hands, with sticky-up veins and knobbly knuckles and that.’ He looks up, becoming aware of Ian and his father standing just inside the door. ‘Do you think that was Annie, when she was really old?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ says Mary carefully. ‘But I think if Annie had lived to a such a ripe old age we might have encountered her before now.’

  ‘So that was someone else, right? Like, from another life?’

  ‘That would be my guess, yes. And when Ian’s finished his film, it might be instructive to visit that old lady again to see what she can teach us.’ She clicks off her old cassette tape-recorder and shuffles her notes together. ‘Let’s take a break there, shall we?’ she says. ‘I’ll ask Laura to rustle up some tea.’

  Ben turns to his father. ‘When did you come in?’ he asks, a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Right in the middle of all that lovey-dovey stuff,’ says Paul, grinning down at him. ‘Your Annie’s really hooked on that lad, isn’t she?’

  ‘You’re not going to show all that love stuff on the telly, are you?’ Ben asks Ian.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll let you see the whole thing before it’s broadcast,’ he says blithely. ‘You can even sit in on some of the edit sessions if you like. Come down to London, take a look behind the scenes. See how much we throw away.’

  ‘Excuse me, can I borrow Ian for a moment?’ Mary interrupts. She leads him outside to a bench overlooking the Fish Quay, out of earshot of the house. ‘Was that all right?’ she asks, proffering her Gitanes.

  ‘Are you kidding? That was bloody fantastic.’ Relief floods through her. Until this moment she hadn’t realized quite how tense she was.

  ‘So you think the format’s going to work.’

  ‘No question. You were brilliant and that boy’s an absolute gift. It’s quite uncanny hearing that girl’s words coming out of his mouth – like watching a spirit possession.’

  ‘Yes, that’s one of the features of this work that convinces me we’re looking at real phenomenon.’

  ‘But who on earth was that old woman? Is it normal to jump about between incarnations like that?’ He lights up and inhales deeply, then exhales in a series of quick puffs.

  ‘That particular transition was somewhat more abrupt than I’m used to, but it’s not unheard of for clients to visit several previous lives in a single session.’

  ‘How on earth do you sort them all out?’

  ‘Well, the progression is normally more orderly,’ she says, lighting her own cigarette. ‘If I sense a need to travel further backward – or forwards – to a different incarnation, I usually guide the client back to the “hallway”, or whatever it is we’re using as an imaginary conduit, and suggest pushing open a different door.’

  ‘So the channel-hopping’s under your control.’

  ‘To some extent, though occasionally one overshoots, as it were, and the client will report that they can’t see anything, or that it’s gone dark – which usually means that the incarnation in question has died.’

  ‘Like pressing the “off” button. How bizarre.’

  Mary flicks ash and leans back, enjoying the hit of nicotine. She’s beginning to feel quite absurdly elated. The more she considers it, the more she thinks that this documentary could be exactly what she needs.

  ‘I suspect it might be Annie’s burgeoning sexual feelings that triggered the sudden shifting of “channels” we just witnessed,’ she remarks. ‘Sex would appear to be quite a conce
rn for that God-fearing old lady. She was in a Roman Catholic confessional box, had you worked that out?’

  ‘Poor thing. Talk about repressed.’

  ‘Sex isn’t everything, you know,’ she says tartly.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ He grins at her.

  ‘If you recall, Freud was of the opinion that satisfying work was equally important for the human organism’s wellbeing.’

  ‘And he ended up dying of mouth cancer.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘That if he’d had a more satisfying sex life, he wouldn’t have smoked so many cigars.’ He examines the tip of his cigarette. ‘He was obsessed with eels, did you know? Apparently he spent years dissecting them looking for their testicles. When he couldn’t find them, he switched disciplines and discovered the unconscious instead.’

  She laughs. ‘And you deduce from this an unhealthy obsession with phallic symbols and, ergo, unresolved sexual issues.’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘I think that testosterone is a very powerful hormone,’ she says, ‘and that it’s rather a shame that our planet is run almost entirely by individuals under its influence.’

  He slips the cellophane wrapper off her Gitanes packet and burns a series of neat holes in it. ‘It must be strange to inhabit your world, Mary Charlton,’ he muses. ‘To believe all this stuff about past lives, and souls reincarnating in little batches for sessions in some infinite exercise in group therapy.’

  ‘Actually I find my world view a great deal more reasonable and reassuring than the alternatives on offer.’

  ‘That’s the trouble though, isn’t it? It’s all a bit too reassuring. A bit too good to be true.’

  ‘How is it that people can accept that a quantum particle can be in two places at the same time, or that two particles can influence one another without any measurable means of communication – and yet find the idea of reincarnation beyond the pale?’

  ‘So what about us?’

  ‘What about us?’ she says, bracing herself.

  ‘I mean, have we met before? Apart from glimpsing each other on the Long Sands in 1967.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What do you mean, “probably”?’ The cellophane ignites briefly and he stamps it out.

  ‘I mean that you were very significant to me at a certain time in my life—’

  ‘You broke my heart, Mary.’

  She sighs and flicks more ash. ‘I agree that there was a certain intensity to our relationship,’ she says carefully. ‘And that, in my experience, tends to suggest that an earlier agenda might have been being played out.’

  ‘Ha!’ he exclaims triumphantly. ‘I knew it! Maybe I was a dog you were particularly fond of in the sixteenth century.’

  Despite herself, she laughs. ‘It doesn’t work quite like that. A soul wouldn’t just crop up repeatedly in another soul’s life as a love object.’

  ‘OK, so tell me. How does it work?’

  ‘You’ve heard of the concept of karma?’

  ‘What goes around comes around.’

  ‘Yes. Well, though it’s not necessary to a scientific account of reincarnation, I’ve found it quite useful therapeutically – which makes me suspect there may be some merit in the concept.’

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ he interrupts, getting up abruptly. ‘You don’t mind if I record this, do you? It might be useful later when I’m structuring our discussion for the programme. Wait here while I nip back for the DAT.’

  He returns a minute later, ripping open a Velcroed pocket in a complicated black nylon backpack. Mary leans back against the bench while he fiddles with a chunky little machine, worth thousands of pounds no doubt, and places it on the slats between them.

  ‘OK, nineteenth of August, interview with Dr Mary Charlton. Right, where were we?’

  ‘I was talking about karma.’

  ‘How about a proper definition for the record? Karma is punishment for acts committed in a past life, right?’

  ‘I prefer to talk about it as “unfinished business”, because that suggests the idea of personal growth, as in “these things are sent to try us”, rather than crime and retribution per se as in the popular understanding of the concept.’

  ‘So each new incarnation of the soul is like one of those army endurance courses, is it?’

  She smiles. ‘I see it more as a degree course with various modules, which one might have to resit if one hasn’t achieved the appropriate grades. So if a person is incredibly vain in one incarnation, then they might suffer from eczema or psoriasis in a future incarnation.’

  ‘To be taught a lesson about inner beauty, you mean.’

  ‘Exactly. And how they respond to that challenge will determine whether they’ll need to resit the “vanity course”, if you like, in a subsequent incarnation.’

  ‘So you’re my specialist subject.’

  She sighs again. ‘One of many, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘And we have to resit one another until we’ve learnt our lesson?’

  She can feel his eyes on her, but she stares out at the river, where a party cruiser is heading seaward blaring some brutish disco music from its loudspeakers. ‘You could put it like that,’ she says.

  ‘I wonder what the lesson is.’ He’s teasing her, but she refuses to be drawn.

  ‘With Ben, for example,’ she says, ‘there’s obviously an issue about gender identification. So that would be his “specialist subject” in this incarnation. At this point in his life he’s grappling with his thwarted desire to become a woman, coupled with a horror of the adult male form as it’s beginning to manifest in his own body.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the logic of karma could suggest that in a previous life his soul might have been very attached to the notion of being female. Which would fit in with what we’re learning about Annie: that she’s an ugly duckling who’s just discovered she’s a swan; that she’s in love for the first time, with a boy who adores her; that she’s simply bursting with love and desire and excitement, and teetering on the very brink of womanhood.’

  ‘Then something happens.’

  ‘Yes. We don’t know what yet, but all the indications are that she never lived to experience her female nature to the full.’

  ‘Because she was cut down in her prime.’

  ‘No, not in her prime. That’s the whole point. It’s quite possible that she and Sam never made love properly. You heard her yourself – so passionate but so gauche and nervous at the same time. I see Annie as a butterfly, newly emerged from her chrysalis—’

  ‘But she never got the chance to fly. And you think that’s why Ben wants to be a woman.’

  ‘That’s what I suspect, yes. But obviously this is pure speculation at this point. And as Freud was so fond of pointing out, these things are multiply determined.’

  ‘So he could never be proved wrong – crafty old sod.’

  ‘Annie’s “unfinished business” with becoming a woman doesn’t entirely explain the extent of Ben’s alienation from his own anatomy. I’ve treated quite a few transsexuals, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a boy who has actually attacked his own genitalia with a knife.’

  A florid rotund man walking a minuscule Chihuahua glances curiously towards Mary as she enunciates the words ‘genitalia’ and ‘knife’ loudly for the recording machine. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Ian chuckles. Then, turning back to Mary. ‘Go on. You’re doing fine.’

  ‘Well, with some transsexuals the desire to be a woman can be as much a repudiation of masculinity as a desire for femininity per se. They feel they have been born into the wrong body – literally. In the sense of a bad body, a body that commits acts of cruelty and aggression.’

  ‘All men are rapists, you mean.’

  ‘Not exactly. In my admittedly limited experience, it’s not a generic hatred of patriarchy that’s being expressed in these cases. It’s more a visceral rejection of a particularly unsavoury previous incarnation: a wife-beater, for example, or a
serial rapist; a paedophile or a vicious homophobe; a soldier who’s committed some appalling sexual atrocity.’

  ‘So they’re born not wanting anything to do with the apparatus that performed all those dirty deeds?’

  ‘Yes. And that horror is often coupled with an intense identification with the female victims of their crimes. So the desire to become a woman can sometimes be accompanied by a need to experience some of the violence and ill treatment those victims experienced at their hands.’ Mary pauses for a moment, reflecting on what she’s just said. It crystallizes a theory of masochism she’s been formulating for some time. She wonders whether there might be a paper in it.

  ‘You changed the subject.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘We were talking about our previous incarnations – yours and mine. And you were going to speculate about the lessons we might need to learn.’

  ‘Was I?’ she says, deliberately vague.

  ‘You mentioned the term “specialist subject”.’

  Really the man is incorrigible. ‘I think it’s time we were getting back, don’t you? The others will be wondering what’s happened to us.’

  ‌Chapter Twenty-Two

  1898

  It’s Monday now, and we’re at the farlane, and I’m that skittish after yesterday that Mrs G.’s had to have a word. Even Flo’s been on at me to simmer down and mind my knife. Which I know I should, for fat Sally’s had to have that thumb off, and there’s worry about the whole hand if the poison doesn’t abate.

  The day’s a drizzling one, that sprays our faces with wetness and coils hair into wispies. The fish are more slithery than ever and soon the damp’s seeped into our shoulders like a cold shawl, so we’re glad of our tea come two o’clock. Cupping my hands round the hot tin, I get to thinking of all the roadster lasses out in Potts’ fields, scrumbling in the mud for wet taties, with feet bare as a bairn’s and sacking for a skirt, and nowt but a dusty barn loft to lodge in. Which makes me solemn for a spell, wondering what union organizer there is to speak for them, but soon my mind’s wandering back to the trysting hill, and here’s that ginger-beer welling up again.