She glances at her mother’s Polaroid that she’s “borrowed” from the Longing and has left carelessly on the floor of her room. Then she takes off her top. Leaning close to the small lamp, she pulls a contemplative pose and points the lens of the camera at her face, making sure her bare shoulders are in the shot. In a moment the white rectangle slides out beneath the lens. She writes on the back.
Thinking of you. Are you thinking of me? xxx
II
The GRIMOIRE of Patrick Roberts
Despite our initial failure to integrate with the community of Lòn Haven, my father’s skills gained us favor with many of the townsfolk. Most of the year he worked at sea on a whaling ship, and when he was home he liked to work as a handyman, endowed with a knack for sniffing out both the problem and solution to virtually any constructional issue by merely setting eyes on it. He had no formal training, but hailed from a long line of similarly gifted and self-schooled laborers. Before coming to Lòn Haven we lived in the house that my great-grandfather had built with his own hands until it burned to the ground, leaving us homeless and riddled with fleas and rickets. My father couldn’t solve the problem of a house turned to ash by a blazing furnace, but he could repair rooftops and chimneys, resize doors and fashion new ones, render walls and right stonework. He was often called to neighboring villages to solve their problems, too. At night, he set about building our house as we were renting and my father didn’t believe in borrowing from anyone.
On hindsight, I believe this is where the trouble started. Ironically, my father’s newfound success meant that he was away from home more often, and the vines that might have otherwise remained small buds snaked through our house, and the next, and the next, until they strangled us all.
The man’s name was Duncan. He was a church elder and owned a lot of land. I probably played with his younger sons Gordon and Alasdair a couple of times on the fen, where all the kids tended to congregate after the summer solstice nights for games. He had brought milk, eggs, and occasionally meat from his farm to my mother when she was in mourning after losing my sister, but suddenly he was at our door every day, bringing her food or assisting her in her prayers. I believe she had told him that she didn’t need his help to pray—he said she needed to pray for repentance. Even a child as young as I knew my mother had no need to repent for losing my sister—the Angel of Death had simply decided her time was up. But Duncan was persistent. My mother began to hide in the kitchen and send my brother and me to answer the door when he called.
One day he called in the morning and again in the evening. As a child I didn’t fully understand why he should be so anxious to get to my mother. She was pregnant again, and I knew that she was afraid of him, and afraid of telling my father that she was afraid of him, and within this curious quandary I was a cog turning a wheel for her escape.
“She’s not in,” I told him for the second time, and I felt my cheeks flame all the way to my collarbone.
He smiled down at me, then rested his hands on his knees and brought his nose close to mine.
“We both know that’s a lie,” he said. “Do you know what happens to little boys who tell lies?”
I shook my head. I had a horrible feeling in my stomach, and suddenly I was aware that it was late, our neighbors all gone indoors for the night. There was just my mother and my brother in the house. With my father gone, I was the man of the house.
“I’ll tell you what happens,” he continued, so close to me now I could only see that hooked nose and the pores in his skin, like strawberry seeds. “They get their bellies cut.” He drew a long finger across my stomach. “So how about I ask you the question again, and you tell me the truth. Is your mother home or not?”
I gulped and nodded. He straightened, looked past me into the house. I knew he knew my father was away for the night, in another town, fixing someone’s roof.
“Knock knock,” he said, rapping his knuckles on the door. He stepped past me, one foot at a time, across the threshold, then called out in a big booming voice that seemed to shake the walls. “Anyone home?”