'Blow the Wind Down' by Sarah Mooney - Prologue and Chapter One

Blow the Wind Down (working title)

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable..." - Mary Oliver

Prologue

Cold and damp.

A side street. An alleyway in Victorian Liverpool. A woman lies in agony, white faced, groaning on the floor. 

She had just given birth.

No need to hide the lump or the puking any more.

She planned to leave the baby for dead, stagger up and get on with her life.

As the woman lay there, dazed, she could feel the lump that she had kept out of sight for nine months moving.

She did not touch it, she did not want to.

She wanted to drift into the fog of the laudanum she had taken for the pain.

The lump kept moving, up her body, a worm.

The woman in her fug of drugs and dreams allows the baby to pull on her drab dress.

Did she help her? No!... but ….. maybe.. How else could she have?

Then the baby was latched on drinking the milk that had been made for her. 

That was that.

'Una'... One. Her mum would say she called her 'Una' because it was shorter than 'Never Again' 

 

Chapter One

Eleven Years Later

Landlubbers Tavern

Death.

If this card appeared in your spread it always means the end of something. My mum knew that. 

A warning.   

Swiftly scooped up her cards and darted towards the back door of the tavern. Gone. Just in time.

The front door flew open  and a voice barked “Where is she???”

You see, my mum, she said “it was all poppycock and nonsense,” but sometimes she did get a bit carried away with herself. She would tremble and her voice would change. The things she said she didn't usually remember after. It was them things that usually got us into trouble. It was also what kept the punters coming. My mum had told people things she should never have known. Where missing money was or hidden papers stashed. She has been known to name the  faithless or the murderers. The words she said were sometimes strange but they had the knack of helping brittle women forgive and hard men relax. She would always grit her teeth if I ever spoke about it though. She always gritted her teeth before she lashed out. I learnt to stop when I saw her jaw tense and make myself scarce.

Before it all happened though, it was a night like any other.

Nothing looked different. We had been doing this for a while now. The low lights of the tavern and the dreaming power of the hops lent themselves well to my mothers particular brand of magic. It was Friday night, full moon. I could tell that without looking up at the sky. Every one of Eli's customers seemed to be brimming with moonshine. The place was heaving, heavy oak tables wedged so closely together that people had to press against each other to move about. Voices raised, beer spilt and my mum, working the room.

It was almost Christmas. Eli did not go in for decorations, although there was some mistletoe tacked to the top of the bar, as shrivelled as his dick. There was a boat due in at the nearby docks, from Australia. Wives, husbands, lovers, children, they had all been working on it. It was a hard way to make money; you never knew if your sea legs would give way half way through the contract and your pay would be docked. If you could keep your dinner down and your sea legs steady then you could come home with a decent enough pay. That was something around here.

Tonight though, the tavern was full of everyone who had been left behind. They were celebrating big. Something they loved was  coming home, and for some that was a pay packet.

 

You see, the people of the docks all had different reasons for drinking this evening. Some were spending last moments with folk who had kept beds warm whilst spouses were away. Some came to pray at Eli's altar of brews that friends were returned safely. Some, to soak up the desperate feeling that ordinary life was returning. For all the sailors' talk of sweethearts when they are out at sea, the love I saw around here was as sour as the lemons I have never seen.

I had never been aboard a boat. We stuck to working the dockside taverns because people came and went. Most of 'em needed luck to hang on to as the sea was merciless. There were many ways to die if you worked on the docks. Danger and disease all around. Mum could sell her talismans, charms, seasickness potions, and other spells no problem and most likely the buyer would be long gone before they realised they had been stung. Tonight she was reading the cards.  We both worked with cards. I liked tricks, sleight-of-hand illusion stuff. She used them to read fortunes.

  I had been watching the hawkers on the docks since I could crawl. I even heard that my mum would wrap me to a lamppost so her hands would be free to work. Maybe that is why I had the “birds' eye” - that was what old Jack called it. He said I could spot a feint, a double back or a bluff a mile off  and I can. It wasn't always like that. I used to enjoy the tricks for the wonder of them. The disappear-into-thin-air wow! The magic words like “abracadabra” and “ so mote it be” that would sounded like they belonged to ancient magic. It was not long though before the glee came from the knowing. The slip of the hand, the too-large cuffs on the shirt that could easily hide a card. The way the left hand flourishes in the air whilst the right one dived in the pocket for a duplicate card. I once heard a someone say women could not practise magic tricks because their hands were too small to handle a pack of cards, and they did not have pockets in their dresses or cuffs to hide cards. My hands are firm and broad, as for pockets, I have had fun sewing them in, more discreet and workable than I have seen on any man's jacket. I watched and I learnt. Practising until I could do all the tricks they  said only gentlemen could do. 

When we are on the move Mum makes me use these skills to lift and fiddle. A pork pie, a purse.  When we're settled (any more than two nights) we learnt to stop the thieving and stay out of trouble, if we could.

We can't wait for anyone to accuse us outright. We have learnt to notice the signs that come before then. The air around us crackling as the people stiffen. The way they look at each other intently but sideways at us. A coin left in our path a little too conveniently, a trap. 

So it was not as if we had made our home here. I don't want you to think there was any stable hearth I was ripped from. In some ways it was a bolt and run like any other. Only this time I did not see the signs, it must have been the  glow from the fire in the grate at Eli's or the warm cider, or Jack. 

Jack of all trades, master of myths. Well, that is what I called him. He took a real interest in my magic, gasping and tutting at the simplest of tricks. He always saw the magician in me. He said I would be famous one day and asked if he could be my glamorous assistant.  That was our joke, as we were both worn out, bony and threadbare.

We helped each other come alive as I delighted in his stories and he gazed in disbelief as I made a penny disappear in front of him. I would teach and he would tell. That was how it worked for us. Jack was hopeless with the magic however much I showed him, he fingers fumbled and his face gave it all away. A story though, well he could pluck those out of nowhere and deft he was when he weaved them. I had no need to go on one of those boats you see, cos Jack could take me around the world in his tales.

He told me  about Odysseus,  a hero and favourite of the goddess Athena, he sailed through treacherous waters and spent many years away from home with his crew. 

        He told me about his wife, Penelope, “she was left behind with suitors pounding at her door.” It was hard to imagine that, being wanted for something. “If they married her they would get all of Odysseus' wealth and he surely he must be dead, he had been away for so long.”Jack would pause and breath a heavy sigh, through his words I could see Penelope sighing as the sound of the knocking was relentless. “She promised them she would marry one of them when she had finished her weaving and  that settled them. Each night she would unravel her days work at the loom. It was never finished. She waited for Odysseus to return. He did, in the end.” 

        I could not help but wonder if she was happy that he had returned or not. At least the pounding on the door would stop.

At night I dreamt that my life was like Penelope's weaving, constantly unravelling, always starting from the same place. Waiting, for what? A war-torn hero who had been kept way from her bed by the lure of other goddesses. I imagined she just preferred the peace and sovereignty  her nightly unravelling brought her and wished it was the same for me. I imagined the wool getting gradually more kinked and worn each time she unravelled it. When I am listening to Jack's stories I could be anyone or anywhere. The ache in my body is even quiet, as if my tired bones can rest when he is telling and my hungry belly is fed on his words.

Jack was quiet this night. It was as though there was no room for stories with the moon so full and the people so restless. The imminent docking of the S.S Horizon  lurched everyone into the present. My mum was shuffling the cards, ready to read. She called them Tarot. Her cards had pictures on.

She wasn't psychic or a medium or anything like that. She thought that anyone who believed in any of  that “whip woo” was a gullible idiot. 

She told people what they wanted to hear with a bit of folk lore on the side. She told the drunks to stop drinking, the gamblers to look after their money and the dreamers to wake up. Tonight she was reading the cards for a timid looking woman, I had seen her around Eli's but did not know her story. My mum was giving the usual spiel about the cards. She started with how kind and generous the customer was,or she may call them misers so they would prove their generosity by tipping her. It was then that she pulled the death card and it was her turn to disappear. She entered the commotion of the tavern and was gone. I had stopped breathing when I saw the card. I saw her bolt and knew that it was easier for her she would leave me behind she would. That was why I always stole for her. I hated it but it made me useful and I did not want to wander the filthy streets alone. I had gone big recently, clothes tightening and hungrier than ever.

Perhaps this time she would leave me as she had often threatened to.

I never found out what she had said to make the black haired man so angry. I was not going to hang around to find out either. Or what he might do if he caught us.  I crawled under the table and towards the door.

Jack must have seen me cos he headed the man off in the other direction, adding “filthy wenches!” for good measure. I, like the kicked dog I felt, padded along the floor to the door and hid in the coal shed outside. There was just enough room for me to squash up against the back wall. No need to rub the black in my face as I had seen mum do. I was dark skinned, dark haired and used to hiding in shadows. 

Hours passed.

The rowdy roar of the Tavern spilled out into the streets and then petered out as the biting winter wind drove everyone reluctantly home. The freezing temperature claimed lives that night, I was so nearly one of them.

I didn't fall asleep but when Jack  whispered my name I found I could not answer, too long since I had moved and the icy air had clamped me in its grasp. The tension and terror locking my body and throat shut tight. I grasped for the words to come out and finally I rasped a,

“Jack!” 

His head poked into the shed. 

I got frost bite that night in my fingers and one of them was never the same. It was the bane of my magic career until I learnt how to use it for my advantage.

That night though I had gone beyond the cold. Out of my body I had travelled to a fire glowing deep in the earth. Warm, round-faced grandmothers feeding me chicken broth, singing soft and low. A balm to my numb heart. I can remember it now: the faces, lines on their faces as intricate as snowflakes or treasure maps. A warmth I had never felt before. Whilst my soul was getting fed, my body was slowly freezing. That is how Jack found me, stiff with cold but warmed by something other. It was as if he knew cos he started humming, a sort of droning thrum as I half-leant and he half-carried me back to his shack. That thrum was like a thread to me, it lead me back to life. Sometimes, in the future, I would visit that smiling singing circle of women in my dreams. Later in life when the finer things came to me easily I would take a tea spoon of honey to my lips and taste it in their honour or raise a glass of ambrosia to my lips in praise of them. I told Jack about them later, when I had melted by his warm fire. He nodded and took a twist of tobacco out of his pouch and offered it to the fire, I think they liked that.

He continued to hum as he built the fire up and pulled me closer to it. I sat huddled in his only chair every blanket from his bed wrapped around me, even his jacket.

His hum gave way to a story or two, I don't remember the first one too well, a girl selling matches, a turkey, and I caught a tear slipping down Jack's face at the end so it must have been a sad one. He washed the coal stains from my hands and feet. “Cor, you have made yourself proper dirty,” he said tenderly stroking away the coal from my feet.

“I know a story about a girl who lived in the cinders” 

“Tell me,” I asked dreamily, hoping for a story that would take me so far away from my life I would never have to come back. 

“Once upon a Time, there was a girl who lived in the cinders. Her step sisters were wealthy and vain."

“What does vain mean?” I asked sleepily, imagining two women with purple veins streaking all over their body and not sure I had quite got it right. 

“It means, um, all about appearances and nothing in the heart. Anyway, she was treated like a servant this girl and lived in a coal shed, just like you last night.”

 

I immediately felt sorry for this poor girl and took a real interest in her plight. 

“One day there was a great hoo ha because a Prince was riding about looking for a bride. He was going to have a big fancy ball to meet all the local lasses. Well of course, Cinderella could not go.

“Cinderella” I murmured. Of course I had heard the story, but I had never thought about her name, she lived in the Cinders, like me, a life of soot and ash.

Jack looked at me, I was worried I had knocked him of his story stride but he soon went on.. “She was not at all interested in meeting the Prince but no one likes to be left out, do they?” Jack looked at me, I loved it when he paused like this, as if he were a tailor, measuring the story up just for me.

“As any good story will teach you every girl of  hearth and heart had magic on her side. She will always receive support from somewhere. This girl had a fairy god mother. 

“Like you?” I blurted, then worried a bit because Jack might not like it.

His cheeks reddened and he sniffed a bit.

“Mmm, well, I don't know about that..” He flustered... “Any how, the fairy god mother created shoes so soft and fine her feet would need to be very clean to go in em,” as he said this he polished the last of the soot from my feet. She made a gown that was fine, warm and pretty.” As he said this he wrapped his coat more tightly around me.

We sat for a moment, both of us picturing Cinderella in her costume bright. 

A mouse ran across the floor, Jack pretended his hand was magic wand and waved it at the mouse.

“She turned the mice into footmen and a great pumpkin in the garden into a carriage for them to take Cinderella to the ball in”

He paused again..

“I am not sure I would be any good at that sort of magic!” Jack said before continuing with the story. “Cinderella was warned that the magic would only last until midnight. Imagine that Una, magic until midnight, midnight! That seemed like a life time away to Cinderella. The time went slowly at first. Cinderella walked slowly into the ball, expecting to be turfed out at any moment. She was surprised to enjoy herself so much. She had, well, a ball! She feasted on the dresses in fine velvets, satins and silks, dyed in colours that she had only seen in wild flower meadows. The jewels entranced her, hand blown beads, intricately woven necklaces even diamonds and gold.

        "She let her eyes gorge on the food, but she did not eat any, posh people eat differently, don't they? There were piping hot pastries and puffy pies, watery cucumbers and succulent strawberries, rich crunchy biscuits and meat paste."

        “And sugar mice, the pink ones," I added.. 'and those pastries that melt when you put them in your mouth that you can get from the Italian merchant if you scare the barking dogs and noisy children away from his pitch for him” I added, my stomach burning.

Jack nodded, 

“you shoulda heard the music! Clever wooden boxes with strings that people held under their chins and made sounds that soared the heart, not your folkie fiddle but sounds that put wings on yer heart and flutter you up to heaven for a bit.”

(I learnt later is was called a violin and you really had to know how to play it  to make it sound like that)

“Music that makes you dance,” I said.

“Yes dance, dance and whirl and float,” replied Jack. "She was dizzy and breathless with it all, she even danced with the Prince who seemed alright. Then, oh! The clock began to strike its 12 bells to midnight. She had to run or be left standing in her rags. She bolted for home but the stupid slippers that she had been wearing where a bastard to run in and one of them came off. She got home before her sisters, although the carriage had turned  back into a pumpkin before her stop so she did have to walk some of it. Barefoot by now, the other slipper in her hand. 

"The sisters came home reeking of themselves and the sound of their voices filled the house. Gleeful with gossip they were. The story went that the Prince has the shoe of a girl that he wanted to see again, and even, marry! He was travelling from house to house with the shoe trying to find her. If he found the person whom the shoe fitted it would be happy ever after!”

He stopped for a while then, the story seemed to lose its puff for a while. 'Happy ever after' felt like too big a fantasy for both of us.

 “Finally the shoe came to Cinders house. The shoe was too big for the sisters and they sniggered as the Prince encouraged Cinders to try it on, she had not been to the ball after all, had she, so why on earth should she get a go?

"Cinders wobbled off balance a little as she slid her foot into the shoe and the Prince held out her arm to balance her. She looked him deep in the eyes as she steadied herself and he coughed, as if he were about to say something. The sisters gasped as Cinders ignored the Prince and  stepped towards the door revealing the matching shoe from under her tattered dress. She walked out of that door, at last freed from the spell she was held under by the sisters. She walked towards her destiny, her freedom, she walked towards..."

Jack paused at this bit, sucking his breath in as if he needed to recharge before he described a wondrous ending.

“Yes? I said impatiently. “She walked towards?”

Jack was ready , “she walked towards..."

Bang!

There was a knock at the door.

I never found what fine life lay in store for Cinderella beyond the shackles of her family and I never stopped wondering.

It was my mum at the door, we both knew it. 

“You can stay here” Jack stated and I knew he meant it.

She was my mum though. Back then I only knew the part of me that was in chains and when she yanked on them, I followed.

She did weave it wonderfully, I'll give her that. “We will have a  life of splendour,” she goaded, “a chance to thrive,” she promised - “A fine life!”

And, as it turned out,  she lied.

One ticket she had, not  two. 

She did not tell me that until it was too late.

-

from the work-in-progress novel by Sarah Mooney