Folk Read online

  When the sweeping is done, Verlyn picks up a half-made creel and begins to work. Despite the wing, he is a skilful weaver of baskets, and wattle for fences. This basket is for his brothers, the next blessing that he counts. He is thankful for all six of them, for their hearts big enough to dive long and deep, and to share with their seventh brother the best of their haul brought up from the bottom of the sea.

  His one strong hand works fast in the lean-to. He built it there behind the house a few years ago when, for Werrity’s sake, he stopped working in the yard out front in view of passing villagers. He has ways of holding the willow fronds tight in his teeth and between his knees, so his fingers can make the weave. Werrity was pleased with this skill when she married him. It took years for her to grumble at the pace of his work, and point out what two hands might do with the same nimble tricks.

  As he bends and tucks the last willow fronds of the new creel, Verlyn’s final blessing, his son, Marram, comes running from the house. Despite Werrity’s fears, Marram was born with just a tuft of down poking from under one thumbnail. The first thing Werrity did with the new babe in her arms was to take his tiny thumb in her mouth and bite the feathers away.

  Now that Marram is seven years old and strong enough to squirm from his mother’s grasp, he refuses the scissors wielded at his thumb. It has always been Werrity who has snipped at him, a wing being as useless for holding a wriggling child as it is for holding a baby. It was many months after the birth that his wife first let Verlyn cradle his son against his chest. She bent close, in case Marram should writhe from his one strong hand. He forgave her this easily, for she’d once lost a bab, when young. He forgave that she would not let him support that warm little body with his wing.

  Marram is hiding his thumb in his mouth, safe from scissors. Verlyn pulls it out again.

  ‘Little man, that’s for babs,’ he says. He lifts the creel. ‘Let’s take this to the shore. Your uncles’ boat will be coming in.’

  He leads Marram out along the shore path, where damselflies drowse in the warmth. The sea glints under hazy sun. Seagulls are wheeling and crying, waiting for a catch. Down on the beach, wind buffets the marsh grass in the dunes and tweaks at the tip of Verlyn’s wing, sending ripples of ache through his shoulder and into his bent back.

  They walk until they reach the largest fishing hut. Across the front, high white letters spell out the name WEBBE. The sea is ruffled green and white beyond, with no sign of the Webbe boat.

  Marram runs away along the foamline, chasing the sea in and out. Verlyn nudges the hut door and pushes the creel into the gloom. When he turns the corner to the sunny side of the hut, the light flooding his vision, there, sitting against the wall, is a woman. He shades his eyes and sees that it is Linnet Lundren.

  Linnet Lundren eats oysters raw. The youngest of Verlyn’s six brothers, Drake, told him this, laughing. None of the Webbes will eat the oysters and scallops they pull up from the sea bed until they have been crisped up hot with mutton fat. All spring, Linnet has been coming to wait like a cat by the Webbe hut, and when Drake passes her a handful fresh off the boat, she shucks them right there on the stones. Drake is the only Webbe brother not yet married, though he is the handsomest. Verlyn has seen the way Linnet’s looks slide over his brother’s sleek limbs when he leaps from the sea.

  Linnet has her eyes closed, her round face turned up towards the sun. Verlyn is about to retreat but she opens one eye and smiles.

  ‘Here,’ she says, ‘if you’re waiting for those mer-men brothers of yours.’ She picks a small, pale green apple from the pile nestled in her lap and holds it out.

  ‘Apples won’t be ripe for months,’ Verlyn says. ‘Why eat them sour?’

  Linnet picks out another and bites hard, wincing as she chews. She is looking at him, sucking at the bitter juice. ‘Why d’you keep it tucked away?’ she asks. Verlyn glances down at the grey feathers poking from his sleeve. ‘You didn’t always. I remember.’

  As a boy, Verlyn did not cover his wing. The villagers were used to him and mostly paid no heed – except for the other children. He went along with the games in the schoolyard. Whether he played the angry dragon or the timid swan, it always ended in a crowd of children, including Werrity, squealing and scattering away from the touch of feathers. One day, a girl stayed behind when the others fled. She stood beside him, solemn, and asked to touch the wing. She ran her fingers across the long quills as across harp strings, and the sweet twinge in his shoulder bone surprised him.

  ‘Now me,’ the girl said. She stood with her eyes screwed shut and her hands tight by her sides. Verlyn swept the wing over her head, letting the feathers drift over her shoulders. She stayed very still for a long time, her chest rising and falling, and then ran away to follow the others. Afterwards, he wondered how he’d known that was what she wanted.

  Linnet Lundren is not so different now she is grown, her corn-yellow plait of hair unravelling around her curious face, and stolen apples in her plump hands.

  ‘They’ll be in soon,’ he says, turning to look out at the sea. The boat has rounded the outcrop of rock, and they watch the six seal-headed Webbe brothers pulling their oars with twelve burnished arms. They leap into the shallows and tug the boat on to the shingle. One lifts Marram on to his high shoulders and the others swing baskets up from the boat to carry them. They gleam with pride, shaking salt from their hair.

  When they reach the hut they slap Verlyn’s back in greeting with warm, sea-salty hands. He never shows that this hurts. His brothers grin, but are sheepish. The baskets they lay down by the hut have only a few shells in the bottom, resting in nests of kelp.

  ‘Sorry, Linnet. None spare,’ says Drake. He winks at Verlyn.

  Linnet holds out handfuls of apples to him. ‘I’ve these for you, though,’ she smiles.

  ‘Look worse than raw oysters,’ Drake laughs. ‘They’re not ripe.’ He wanders off to rub away the last of the salt from his skin, and spread himself in the sun with the others. Lying on the stones, they take turns to lift Marram up on their feet, where he stretches out his arms to dive.

  Verlyn takes one of Linnet’s apples. She sidles up close to him so the warmth of her round hip presses against his. She is still looking at Drake, but she whispers in Verlyn’s ear, ‘I’ve not forgotten. I wish you’d do it once more.’

  Verlyn’s brothers have told him before of Linnet Lundren’s wanton whispers in the village ale room, but still her voice sends a shiver down his neck. She bends and runs her hand over the long quill tips that jut from his coat sleeve. Verlyn drops the apple from his hand.

  At home, while Werrity scrapes scallops from their shells and scolds Marram for trailing sand across the floor, Verlyn takes a pail of water out to his lean-to. He does not mind that he is forbidden from washing his wing in the house. It is true that wet feathers smell musty and stick to the floor. He shakes off his coat and holds the wing out with effort. When he flexes, it aches. He so rarely moves it, now that he keeps it hidden. Whatever tendons used to let him raise it to feel the wind’s lift have shrunk and stiffened. It is a sad sight, the feathers matted with being pressed inside his sleeve.

  While he douses it, parting the quills at the roots with his fingers to wet in between, he recalls again the moment years ago, in the schoolyard, when he touched Linnet Lundren’s head with his feather tips. How much stronger the wing felt then, even though his body was already bent. He hears the grown Linnet’s words in his ear, and wonders at her boldness.

  He sits outside to let the breeze dry him, wing spread as best he can, and catches Werrity frowning from the casement. A moment later she comes running out, and shoos him into his lean-to.

  ‘Don’t let Marram see,’ she hisses. ‘I try all day to get him to snip that thumbnail.’ She won’t call it a feather. ‘Must you sit out brazen like that?’ She stands in the doorway and turns to look out towards the sea.

  The wing is heavy with water still. Verlyn rests it awkwardly across his workbench.


  ‘I don’t want Marram thinking he’ll turn out the same,’ says Werrity.

  Verlyn wonders if he was meant to hear.

  ‘I want him to grow up strong like his uncles,’ she says and bustles back to the house, without looking at his wing, without looking at him.

  Next day, Verlyn is carrying new wattle panels up to the High Farm for Trick and Robin, Werrity’s rough-skinned uncles, when he pauses on the lane. The wind has dropped and the sun beats down. He is sweating under his coat. The lane runs alongside the orchard, where shade pools green beneath the trees. One of the trees is shaking its branches. He pushes the orchard gate, and sees a round white arm reaching for unripe fruit, and a skirt lifted high to catch them. It is Linnet Lundren.

  ‘Not at the shore?’ Verlyn asks.

  ‘Your brother doesn’t want my gifts,’ she says. She lets the apples roll into the grass and walks towards him. ‘Why d’you always wear that coat?’ She smiles, and tugs at the sleeve that is tight with the wing inside. Her wily face comes close to his. Her skin smells of sun. ‘I’ve not forgotten. I wish you’d do it again.’

  Verlyn lets her pull the coat off him, and she hangs it on a low branch. The wing, newly washed, springs wide from his shirt where it is torn off at the shoulder. It is like unlacing a tight boot. The cool of the orchard shade washes through it.

  Linnet circles him, her gaze fixed on the long, grey feathers. ‘Will you?’ she asks, and bows her head. He raises the wing and sweeps it over her, letting the feathers brush her shoulders, her neck, her hair, letting them drift over her face. It hurts his back, but above the pain there is a sweet note that sings through the quills where they touch Linnet, and flows through his shoulder blade, up the back of his neck. When he stops, she is still for a long time. Then she opens her eyes just long enough to say, ‘Again.’

  This is how it begins. In the days, then weeks, that follow, Verlyn sets out from his lean-to with pieces of his work, or he pretends to, or he just goes walking. The village sleeps, hot in summer’s open mouth. In the orchard, in the perfumed maze of the headland gorse, or by the bank of the stream that lazes muddily now down the hill, he meets Linnet Lundren.

  She brings him gifts. Sour apples, but also warm hen’s eggs, smooth white pebbles, a honeysuckle flower, a pair of wood pigeons. Whatever these things mean, whether he wants them or not, he always gives what she wants in return.

  Through the summer, Linnet’s white roundness turns golden, her forehead and neck freckling. Verlyn’s wing grows stronger. He can open it wide now, feel the breeze take it. He washes it, fluffs out the down between the long feathers, thinking of Linnet and the way the sly wildness goes out of her when he strokes her head. The twinges of pleasure when he does this, spreading from the feathers into his shoulder and across his scalp, flow deeper and last longer. He lets them seize him. While Linnet’s eyes are closed, he looks at her neck, her soft arms, her fingers pressing together where she holds her hands at her sides. He feels a yearning for life that he has not felt since youth.

  Every morning, when he brushes out the lean-to, Verlyn counts his blessings. His six big-hearted brothers, who share their harvest dived from the land under the sea. Marram, learning to swim now, in the calmer summer waters. Werrity, who married him in spite of his wing.

  He remembers how, when he wooed Werrity, they met in places hidden from village eyes: the tumbledown cottage at the wood’s edge, the sheltered wall nooks of Murnon’s sheep fields, the curtained shade of the river’s willow trees. Now Verlyn pictures himself in these spots with Linnet Lundren. As his courtship of Werrity grew more deliberate, he tried once to caress her neck with his feathers. He knew she’d been free with her favours before, and had wanted his turn. She squealed and shook him away, and the look in her eye told him not to do it again. Since then it has only been his own hand that has touched the wing, and then only to wash it, digging his fingers deep where the feather shafts push from the bone.

  Can he count Linnet Lundren as one of his blessings now? It is because of Linnet that he holds himself straighter, braving the pain in his spine. Because of her his wing has grown strong, and he likes to look at it again, feeling the sinews stretch when he spreads it wide. He feels some of the pride he sees in his brothers, when they stride back to their hut laden with treasure. The coat, and his shirts with one sleeve torn away, lie in a heap under his workbench. Whenever he can, he wears only weather on his skin, on his feathers.

  The summer turns silver. Every moth that stirs the evening air sets Verlyn’s skin alight. The warm breeze through the marsh grass, its hush and scent of sun, makes him quiver. He meets Linnet Lundren more often in the wood, where they stand in the shade and say less and less to one another before she bows her head for feathers. In all their meetings, he has not touched her with his one, strong hand. It is only ever wing on skin, and the more Verlyn’s wing tells him Linnet’s skin is smoother than the pebbles she brings, smoother than milk, the more he wishes to feel with his fingertips.

  One hazy morning, the air thick with heat, he comes into the house bare-chested to find Werrity chasing Marram once again with the scissors. Verlyn snatches them and stands between his wife and his son. Marram clings to his side and he encloses him beneath his wing.

  ‘It’s one feather,’ Verlyn says. ‘Leave him be.’

  Werrity claws at him for the scissors, scratching his hand. ‘Cover yourself up,’ she shouts. ‘Have you no shame?’

  He pulls Marram closer under his wing, against his skin.

  ‘What’s got into your head, Verlyn Webbe?’ Werrity shouts.

  ‘Perhaps it’s pride,’ he says.

  Werrity’s eyes narrow. ‘Who’s told you to show yourself off? Is that how you’re going about all those hours when you should be at your work?’

  ‘I’ll do as I please.’

  Afterwards, in the lean-to, he fidgets with the willow fronds that slide across his sweating fingers. It is too close to breathe. He wishes Marram had a whole wing instead of only one feather, so that he might one day sweep it over a woman in the quiet cool of the wood. He wishes Werrity could see him with Linnet Lundren. He kicks away the struts he had clasped between his knees and walks down the side of the house, through the patch of withering nettles, towards the shore.

  There is no sign of Linnet at the Webbe hut. He waits a while, his wing stretched to feel the breeze, listening to the waves rake the shingle and the seagulls crying. These sounds become the crackle of Linnet’s footsteps, the curl of her voice in his ear.

  He hears the Webbe boat being dragged up the beach, and watches his brothers grin and jostle as they walk along the stones. As they come to flop down around Verlyn in a glistening heap, he sees there are only five of them.

  ‘Where’s Drake?’ he asks.

  They shrug their broad shoulders and shake water from their dark heads. He can feel the life beating in their unbent bodies, the thrum of those gigantic hearts. It is the same thrum that rises in him when his wing passes over Linnet Lundren’s skin.

  Verlyn leaves the five Webbes dozing in the sun and hunts, shirtless, through the outskirts of the village. All the places he has been with Linnet Lundren are empty – the orchard, the willow on the riverbank, the dark hollows in the wood. The heat of the day seeps into him. He walks faster, seeking out hidden shade where they have never been, but where Drake might go – the cave at the shore end, the deepest passages through the gorse on the cliff path. He feels his pulse in his wing shoulder. Sweat drips down his bent back.

  Gulls dip their arcs and rise above the glittering sea. Drake said to him once, ‘There’s nothing better than the deep dive, the swoop up through water like flight.’ There is something far better, Verlyn wanted to say, thinking of Linnet Lundren. But he remembered the way Linnet looked at his beautiful brother.

  He will find her. He will touch her with his one, strong hand, and show her he is more than feathers. He will tell her about the singing she makes in his bones.

  The sun is beginning
to dip. Werrity will be calling him in, finding his lean-to empty, tutting at the sky. Then Verlyn thinks of the darkest, coolest place there is on a summer’s day, and despite the weary heat in his limbs he runs, along the cliff path, down to the shore, to the Webbe hut. The door is ajar. The pulse in Verlyn’s shoulder quickens.

  He nudges through the gap into the gloom, breathing in the stale oyster scent. Creels and oars are piled in corners. ‘Linnet?’ he whispers, but there is no one there in the dark.

  His brothers have gone, but when he sits down on the warm stones by the hut he sees two shadows rise at the far end of the shore. They meander towards him. Their hands are joined. Every few paces they pause, their heads bending together. As they come closer, Linnet waves at him with the hand that is not clasped with Drake’s.

  ‘Idling today?’ Drake says, and grins when Verlyn goes to meet them.

  ‘I was looking for you.’ Verlyn wishes for a shirt to cover his crooked body, his pale chest that folds inwards, wet with heat. He looks at Linnet. ‘Not all Webbes have feathers,’ he says.

  Drake puts both his brown arms around Linnet’s waist. ‘No. And not all Webbes have wives. But Linnet will remedy that. Won’t you?’

  And while Drake smiles, Linnet kisses his cheek and says, right there before Verlyn, ‘Yes.’

  The heat in Verlyn’s head, from the sun, from his sprint to the shore, becomes blinding. He begins to wade into the foamy sea.

  ‘Not all Webbes can swim, either,’ he hears Drake call, followed by Linnet’s husky laugh.

  He walks until he is thigh-deep in the water and drops backwards, the cold slapping into his neck. Sodden, his wing is heavy, dragging down against the rolling shingle. Not heavy enough. He floats in the lapping saltwater. It numbs the pain where the wing twists his shoulder.