Dead Man's Tongue

The water rattles away through metal pipes, and the towel thrums off the rail at her brisk tug, hands and face scrubbed dry. The door hinges sing again, and then comes the distant scrape of wood on the kitchen floor, the creak as she settles her weight atop a stool. I cannot hear, but imagine the grunt of breath as she bends to unlace heavy boots.

The stove rattles, checking on the fire within; I lit one, shivering in the cold house, when I arrived. The kettle clinks, and bare feet slap back to the bathroom. More water, and the basin clanks as she sets it on the floor to soothe tired toes and soles.

My belly coils tighter. Sometimes, it’s all she can do to arrive home and ask for my help removing her boots, thank me for brewing tea and making a simple meal, and fall into bed exhausted, holding me to her chest.

She is not so tired today.

The whistle of the boiling kettle is replaced by the clatter and chime of teaspoon and mug, and finally, finally, the bedroom door squeaks open and she is here, two mugs in one careful hand, the other forearm braced casually on the doorframe. She leans like the waterfront lotharios of my mother’s country, arrogant and sexual, her eyes meeting mine where I peep from her bedclothes. Stray drops of water sparkle in cropped rust-red hair. She leers.

“Hello, stranger,” she says, her voice enough to dry my mouth and set my heart stuttering.

“Hello, Babs,” I say meekly. She allows me to come here and make myself comfortable, to wait for her; so long as when she arrives, I am obedient to her.

I am very obedient.

She sets both mugs on the bedside table, and picks up my shoes, neatly lined up beside the bed. My dress, folded and laid over the back of a chair, goes over her arm, and she pads out of the room for a moment. I will find the dress hanging by the door, my shoes below it, when I leave; until then, I have been forbidden them. Between the sheets, I still wear fine white stockings and slip; she likes unwrapping me.

My hands have been clenched in anticipation since I heard her unlock the door. My nails, short and blunt, score lines on my palms.

She returns empty-handed, and I am allowed only to watch as she unbuttons her shirt enough to pull it over her head, leaving her in her soft, sweat-stained vest. Every jingle of her belt buckle makes me shiver all over, my eyes locked to the turn of her hands as they release the one, two, three, four buttons of her trouser fly.

The stiff fabric rumples down her legs, revealing stout muscle. Babs is tidy in her habits, but knowing I am watching, steps out of her trousers and leaves them where they fall. She turns away to fetch one of the soft flannel shirts she sleeps in, and with her back still to me, reaches to strip off her vest, the only fabric hiding her small, high breasts. I stare wistfully at my fleeting sight of her sculpted back, the easy flex of her shoulders, until she hides her skin from me again, shrugging into the sleeping shirt. Babs is shy of her body and her pleasure; I am allowed neither.

Finally, she slips off her practical white underthings, dim from a thousand washes, and turns back to the bed. The shirt’s fall barely hides the curls between her thighs, and I must school my eyes back to her face, dark eyes and the gleam of teeth in her smile, for fear of misbehaviour.

She slides between the sheets, fussing with the pillow so she can sit back against it, then relaxes with her back against the headboard, sighing in satisfaction.

“How’ve you been, Donnie?” she says, reaching out with gentle, unstoppable hands to rearrange me to her satisfaction. I am pliable as a rag doll beneath her callused palms.

“Busy,” I sigh as she settles me between her legs with my back against her, her arms around me. There are places in the city for people like us, women’s women; we see each other every Friday in the Hawthorn, an unobtrusive public bar peopled with factory women and Babs’ fellow immigrant labourers. We are regulars, she and I; but that is a different life for both of us, where we are only barstool acquaintances. We play dominos, buy drinks in our turn, exchange our news and timeworn jokes, and go our separate ways at closing time, or when the threat of a police raid hangs heavy.

“So tired,” I add, my eyes closed, nestling into her, my head tipped back on her shoulder. Her hand rubs soothing circles on my belly through the thin fabric of my slip.

“Poor little darlin’,” she consoles. “You need it, don’t you?”

“Yes, Babs.” Oh god, yes.

She kisses my temple, then takes her hand from my body to reach for the bedside table. “Your tea’s going cold,” she says, and dangles the cup in front of me until I take it.

I drink my cup while she drinks hers. I do not taste a mouthful, winding tighter and tighter under her casual hands. She tells me about her day, the abrupt, unconnected facts of it; unused to talking. Someone burned his hand on the dip tank, someone else picked a fight in the canteen. Finally her cup is empty and she sets it down, takes mine from my hands and lines them up neatly, and sends a roving hand up under my slip.

“You’ve got no knickers on,” she says, as if this is a surprise. She really was — shocked, I think — the first time I came to her this way, but she liked it, oh, how she liked it, and I am dressed for her.

“No, Babs.” Her hands are delicate, impossibly delicate for their size, marked by heat and tools and sparks. My voice wavers in time with her infinite precision.

“Nice girls don’t go around with no knickers on,” she says thoughtfully into my ear. My hands clutch the sheets, back arching. “Are you a dirty girl?”

“Yes!” In this bed, shame cannot touch me.

Her favourite words, low and burred with heat: “Say it.”

“I’m a dirty girl, Babs,” I pant, and feel it.

“Filthy little thing.”

“I’m a filthy little thing.”

Her hand rearrange me, up on my knees. “Arms up,” she murmurs, and slowly draws my slip up over my head, leaving every inch of skin it touches shivering; and then into the familiar position, face down across her lap.

“How many do dirty girls get, Donnie?”

I whimper, more naked in stockings than only skin, fistfuls of quilt tight in my hands, her fingers gently stroking the backs of my thighs, and give her the proper, necessary, and wrong answer: “I don’t know, Babs.”

“Oh, me darlin’,” she says, rich and affectionate. “This could be a long night.”

“That’s a big fat grin on your face there, Babs,” Big Sian says, ploughing a spoon through a mug of sugar wetted with tea.

“Eh?” I squint over my canteen slop, making out she’s talking shite (which would not be remarkable.)

“Got it away last night, didn’t she?” says Agnes.

Remembering sweet little Donnie under my hands is a nice way to pass the day, all right, but damned if I’m telling these gobshites about it. I scoff at them, shovelling in a forkful of friend beans-cabbage-and-best-not-to-ask.

“How does she do it, though?” Big Sian waves a spoon at my face. “My ugly mug’s no worse than that, and every pussy from here to the Auld Country hangs out a ‘Closed’ sign when it sees me coming.”

Big Sian’s a sackful of shit when she’s drunk, and she’s drunk when she isn’t at work, so that’s be why. I hold my peace from respect for a fellow pervert. That, and they say she fled the Auld Country because she stabbed a man in the eye.

“It’s the blarney on her,” Agens says, shaking the pepper pot until her slop turns black. “They say yes to get her to stop.”

“Ah, fuck both of yez,” I say, friendly-like.

I got myself a bit of a reputation, fresh off the boat. The Hawthorn’s a home away from home, but there’s other places, easier to find for a girl new to the city — expensive on the wallet, cheap every other way. Starting a new life in a place where you can lie with a woman and walk down the street afterwards without literally every fecker pointing and throwing stones, a girl might feel like celebrating; and I’d be there, Oul’ Babs, the warm welcome to every woman’s woman scraping the mud of the Auld Country off her face.

I got tired of it, but by that time everyone knew Oul’ Babs was a dirty great slut.

“Sian was saying about that steamer this afternoon,” Agnes says, chasing a glistening lump of best-not-to-ask round her plate.

“Oh?”

“My cousin’s two eldest are on it.” Big Sian tips in a mouthful of tea-stained sugar. “Promised their Ma I’d met them.”

“Show the lads their new digs, is it?”

“It’s a lad and his sister. Nineteen and sixteen.”

Sixteen year old girl, fresh off the farm? I smell a wind-up. “Keeping an eye out for ‘em? That’s nice.” Auntie Sian? Faith, and I thought my aunties were the worst in the world.

“Oh, he’ll be the same as these feckers,” Big Sian says, waving around with her fork. “Out from under his Da, he’ll figure he’s man o’ the house. Six months, he’ll be drinking every penny and belting her to keep her quiet, and she’ll be lifting skirt for the landlord to keep ‘em under a roof. I’ll have that sorted, right off,” she adds with grim satisfaction.

“What, lop ‘em off with a cleaver?” Agnes cackles, grabbing her crotch in case we miss her meaning.

“No, you daft cow.” Big Sian swats her with the back of one hand. “Told ‘em I’ve got room for her, but my landlady won’t take a man, so he’s in digs and I’ve got her where I can keep an eye on her. So if you,” she points her fork at my face, “see a young thing around with me, you can keep your hands to yourself.”

“I’ll be sure to make an exception when I’m bedding through the passenger list.” I slurp oily stewed tea.

“What she means is, thank you kindly for your help carryin’ the girls trunk up from the ship,” Agnes says, picking her teeth.

“Ah, sure. What’s a tea chest between friends after welding all feckin’ day?” I say sarcastically, and stuff in my last greasy forkful of cold fried slop.

The two policemen in the Regulars’ blue uniforms hold back a few gawkers, while Livingstone and Wheeler, in the black-and-scarlet of the Thaumaturgicals, lay down two lines of chalk sigils. Wheeler inscribes the backbone of each parallel in white, thin hair matted with sweat. His blind left eye tics rhythmically. Livingstone details in yellow chalk, thin frame held fastidiously away from the pale dust.

My palms are wet, but I cannot wipe them dry, cannot show my fear; the same refusal that stiffens my spine and seals my mouth. I can only watch their preparations as they rise, Wheeler brushing the dirt of the street from his knees, and screw together the iron-shod tripod, adjust its stance with thumbscrews and careful attention to inset spirit levels. The dense crystal rods are broken free of wax seals, the paper labels wrappe around them inked with cryptic procedural detail. Both are seated firmly in the slotted rowan box containing the recorder’s workings, which is clamped atop the tripod.

“In your own time, Donnatella,” Livingstone says, my name a casual, loathsome intimacy on his lips.

There is nothing magical in what I do. The dea speak, and I am of the few with ears to hear. Perhaps that is why the thaumaturges cannot replicate my feats, why I am necessary, and must step between the lines and interlocute.

I have always had a special affinity for victims.

The man who dies here was a carter, unloading barrels for the public house we stand outside. He was assisted by the landlord, who swears the load shifted by accident; witnesses claim a quarrel. The police have determined, therefore, to speak to the dead man. I maintain the vague pretense that my living is made as a secretary to a shipping clerk; in fact, my gifts, so acute that I can scarcely set foot in graveyards or visit even ancient battlefields, command a small fortune in freelance fees.

The money is no comfort.

“I am beginning now.” I step toward the delineated space, my pace slow to allow time for the recorder to begin. It takes a moment for the hand-cranked gears to reach the proper speed, parts within mimicking the hand-waving of a humna thaumaturge, tireless; the operator need only provide puissance and the device will cast, with exactitude, the spell to reproduce this scene as miniature phantasm within the substance of the crystal rods. Not just once, as a flesh-and-blood practitioner might, but a constant seven-times-seven times for every heartbeat.

If I have any other reason for hesitance, nobody need know.

Even before stepping within their marks, I am aware of the dead man, and aware that he is not at sufficient peace to tolerate speaking to me. I have known speakers to the dead who could turn away the unsatisfied shades who would take their hands and mouths to speak for themselves, but I am not among their number. Beneath the sun, in dry and clear air, a cold mist spreads from me, precursor to my possession.

I have been told how it seems to onlookers, and witnessed recordings made by the police department, but as ever my experience of the event is peaceful and ineffable as the onset of sleep.

The crowd comes off the boat and mills about. There’s some shouting, some weeping, people searching for each other. Big Sian, yard of lard that she is, sets herself solidly on a bollard, sucking on a bit of barley-sugar.

“They know what I look like,” she says. “I’m not running about in that lot.”

“You’re a princess, so you are.” I haul up and stand on a crate, looking over the heads of the crowd, searching for a couple of scared children with the misfortune to bear her a family likeness. Wherever they are, they’re hidden in the press of dirty, starved families with hope and terror on their faces.

“Wait till all these feck off,” Big Sian says.

“Ah, come on, they’ll be worried when they can’t find their auntie.” I shade my eyes. “Do you not remember steppin’ off the boat yourself?”

“I asked a sailor where I could get a drink and he toul’ me. I spent the night in a gutter,” Big Sian says, with something like pride.

“Faith, you’re a nice girl.”

“Aye, yer a saint yourself.” She crunches barley sugar and stretches her legs.

True enough. I look over the crowd again, and my eye fals on a likely pair; the sister’s a little grey dishrag of a thing, but the lad’s the spitting image of Big Sian, with the mean little eyes and all. They’ve a trunk between them, which the two can barely carry with one on each end.

“You sit there a minute,” I tell Big Sian, as if she’s likely to up and run a marathon, and climb down to wade through the crowd on the quay. Like a trick of the eye, the pair of them look smaller up close, tired and scrawny. I take my cap off, as if that will make me look a little less tall, and smile at them.

“You wouldn’t be Peggy and Thomas, looking for your auntie Sian, would you?”

The lad tries to look larger, and say yes, yes they are.

“Babs Hennessy.” I solemnly shake his hand, then his sister’s. “Your auntie’s just over there. She’d have walked over herself, but she’s that tired from bein’ in the factory all day.” The workin’ day’s a hard thing for a lazy cow. “I’ll give you a bit of a hand, there.”

I swing their trunk onto my shoulder with no trouble at all, and take them over to Big Sian, feeling like a mother duck with especially ugly ducklings. “Get off your arse, you, I’ve found ‘em.”

“Don’t mind the gob on her,” Big Sian says to them. “Oul’ Babs was raised in a barn.”

“Pride of the village, the Hennessy barn — roof on top, and everything. It’s that good, we put on airs with folks livin’ in cowsheds.” Big Sian’s never yet got a rise out of me, but not for want of trying.

“Faith, the mouth on you.” She hauls to her feet. “Come on, then.”

The streets clog up, further in; I glimpse a copper’s uniform, suck my teeth. It’ll be nothing wise to pay too close attention to.

Big Sian, having no such compunctions in the name of sense nor manners, cranes her neck as we jostle nearer. “They’ve got a Dead Man’s Tongue out,” she cackles gleefully. “That’ll be a murder, then—”

I try to mind my own business, really. But I’ve never seen a Dead Man’s Tongue, not a real one at work, and dart a glance sideways as we pass. The coppers, the Red-and-Blacks, the sorcery of it all; the sheet-covered lump on the cobbles — I barely see a thing of it. Fog-wreathed and blank-eyed, mouth movements silenced with distance and the muffling grumble of the crowd, the pale figure in the middle of it all arrests every bit of my attention. I swear it’s Donnie. Poor sad little Donnie, who never says a word about herself without flinching like she’s put her fingers to a hot stove, always desperate to be touched.

Big Sian spits casually on the cobbles. “Used to burn ‘em, back home,” she says with malevolent nostalgia.