Tidetown Page 2

  Angelica places the twins in the ring opposite the two lawyer dolls.

  ‘Court in session!’ she shouts.

  The case of the Fishcutter twins, the most lauded of all Tidetown’s scandals, has fascinated Angelica from the moment she first heard of it. At fourteen years old the twins were the same age as she, and were accused of committing an act she’d held only as a wild fantasy: the murder of a father. Her nighttime reading of Gothic novels, horror and true crime stories was replaced by scouring her father’s newspapers for updates on the trial. She slavered over all the little details. She kept every cutting, every photo, every artist’s impression of the courtroom. On the day when Judge Omega, the highest lawman in the land, decreed sentence would be passed, Angelica left home before dawn, rode her beloved horse to town, settled him in livery and waited at the gates of the courtroom. When the Fishcutter twins were brought up from the cells she almost fainted at the sight of them in the flesh. Then the light bulb of a camera flashed in her eyes. Next day, the photo that took up half the front page of the Tidetown Chronicle showed a mesmerised Angelica beautifully positioned between the twins. Her father, putty as always in her hands, used his standing and influence in the community to obtain the original and had the picture gilt framed and hung above her bed (carefully out of sight of adult visitors).

  After the Fishcutter twins were convicted and imprisoned Angelica pleaded with her father to become their penpal. As with all her requests he soon acceded, even though it cost him a case of vintage sherry from his much coveted wine cellar to convince the old prison governor to stretch the rules. So, ever since the first month of their sentences, the twins would receive a weekly letter from Angelica. The twins replied, albeit sporadically, for they were more than wise and cunning enough to see potential future value in nurturing a relationship with the daughter of the mayor. Their letters were short and carefully worded to avoid controversy and to sidestep the displeasure of the prison authorities.

  One note, which Angelica keeps under her pillow and which was written on handmade paper she had sent to the twins on the one-year anniversary of their conviction, makes her heart jump every time she reads it.

  We have come to believe, Angelica, by virtue of your name, that you are a special messenger who has been sent to us from on High. Yours in Fellowship, Perch and Carp Fishcutter.

  ‘Call the one and only witness,’ demands Angelica (judge, narrator and voice of all). ‘Bring on the ghost of Mr Fishcutter, the so-called victim,’ she shouts to the invisible Clerk of the Court.

  From under her bed she drags the bedraggled toy skeleton, its bones hanging limply together by cotton threads, its bloodied head lopsided and wan across its chest. Angelica holds the sorry figure upright, lifting its skull to reveal eyeless sockets and a gaping mouth.

  ‘Your witness, my honourable friend for the defence.’

  Justice Cruela leans back and begins her questioning.

  ‘Is it true that your actions, your sins, your guilt before God, and all that is right and wholesome and just, led you to beg your devoted daughters to free you from this mortal coil?’

  ‘Objection,’ shouts Prosecutor Harmony, ‘a leading question.’

  ‘Overruled,’ proclaims Judge Angelica.

  ‘From that land from whence no traveller returns? True or false?’

  ‘I did, it was I,’ from the gaping mouth of Skeleton Fishcutter.

  ‘Objection,’ pleads Prosecutor Harmony.

  ‘Objection overruled,’ commands Judge Angelica, picking up Prosecutor Harmony by the neck and plunging her head into a nearby flame, singeing and scorching her frizzy hair. ‘Be quiet or be damned.’

  ‘And so, they are innocent, your daughters, the benign, benevolent, dutiful daughters, Perch and Carp Fishcutter. The murder of which they are charged, patricide as some learned folk would say, was at your request, at your cajoling?’

  Prosecutor Harmony remains silent, head bowed, hair smouldering and severely shortened.

  Skeleton Fishcutter rattles his bones, gapes wider his toothy jaws, then falls to his knees.

  ‘Oh, damned am I among fathers,’ he sobs his tearless sob. ‘No, do not call me father, do not call me man, for I am not worthy of such noble appellations. Call me ghoul, call me spectre. Kill me over again, daughters dear. And then forgive what I have done.’

  Judge Angelica blows across the candles to set the flames a-dancing, casting wild shadows against the billowing curtains.

  ‘Let us be clear, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I will ask the witness one last question.’

  ‘Object …’ murmurs Prosecutor Harmony, before thinking better of it after receiving Judge Angelica’s pincer gesture suggesting eye gouging.

  ‘Bloodied Skeleton,’ continues Justice Cruela, ‘ghost of the ethereal remains of one Mr Fishcutter, formally of the parish of St Anthony of Tidetown, who do you say was responsible for your murder?’

  ‘It was I,’ says the hollow bony mouth, to the gasps of the courtroom gallery, ‘by trickery and demonism, beguiling and bewitching my own pure and innocent daughters. Wrench the skull from my wretched neck, scrape my bones of their sheaths, suck out the marrow and feed me to swine, but free my darling children from this loathsome charge.’

  Skeleton Fishcutter clatters and falls to the ground in a crumpled heap of ribs and thighs, remorse and self-loathing.

  ‘Jury, what is your judgement?’

  ‘Not guilty,’ says the tortoise, his head popping from his shell at the opportune moment.

  ‘Clear the court, free the prisoners. To my chambers to celebrate,’ exclaims Angelica, as she swoops up the twins, leaps onto her bed and snuggles deep under the covers with her sisters in arms.

  It is lunchtime in the women’s prison. Sitting alone and composed at her desk, the governor looks out the window and across the courtyard. She drains the dregs from her glass of milk. When Georgina Burgess (Georgie to her family, Madam to her staff) took up the post of governor at the Provincial Women’s Maximum Security Prison she resolved to achieve two goals by the end of her third month in the post. One, to read all the notes on each prisoner, including court and coroner’s reports; and, two, to interview them all, in their cells, unaccompanied by a guard. This was her style: be thorough, be accessible. She had said as much to the panel charged with replacing Governor Bridges (who finally retired, grieving the loss of gifts and bribes much more than the end of salary and position). She had no sentimental notions of being friends with the prisoners, but she wanted to understand them and for them to understand her. Her thirty years in the penal system have taught her a number of lessons. Not least of all, and one she often reminds herself of: put thought between impulse and action.

  Today is the final day of the third month and she has left Perch and Carp Fishcutter until last. Not because their case is the most gruesome or dramatic. That accolade, she feels, should be shared by Molly Beaumont and Mrs Marchmont. The former had slain her six children and then mummified and left them as if sleeping in the beds inside their isolated croft. Of equal notoriety was Mrs Marchmont, owner and manager of the highly reputed Oyster Emporium. On the day that would lead to her life sentence she added arsenic to her fiercely guarded sauce recipe. The lunch she then served to the ladies of the town at a charity event for the Women’s Institute (which had turned down her membership request due to her ‘immoral ways’) resulted in seven dead through poisoning and a further sixteen hospitalised with serious long-term medical complications. No, the Fishcutter story intrigued rather than appalled her. She was familiar with the trial of five years past: the peculiar motive linked to their messianic religion, the singularity of thought and action of the twin girls, and the way they had embroiled and engaged the young boy, Oscar Flowers, into their plans.

  The previous night she re-read the transcripts from the trial, stopping to pause at each twist and turn. How, she wondered, could any religious doctrine convince two young girls that murdering their father would bring him hope and resurrection? What powerful hold had they on Oscar Flowers, such that he would willingly participate in the murder? Sitting in the old armchair in her private residence on the top floor of the prison, the thick folder of the trial report on her lap, she could hear the shouting out of the women locked away for the night. She liked the closeness, the proximity. It was a kind of balm and comfort to her, like the rustle of the pages of a newspaper being turned, or the sound of a dog crunching on a bone. It was well past midnight before she finished her reading. Snug in bed she pulled the blankets up to her chin and considered who among her staff might be able to throw more light on the mystery of the twins. Soon enough she fell asleep. It came as no surprise to her dreaming self that the images to join her were of burning bushes, drowning men and the agonised Jesus on a flaming cross.

  Her first impression upon entering the cell of the Fishcutter twins is how sparse it is. The walls are blank. No photos, no pictures, no attempt at decoration of any description. The twins sit at the table beneath the small barred window. Each wears a floor-length grey prison smock; their long black hair is tied in ponytails. In unison they look up at the visitor as she places her chair at the table.

  ‘As you know I am Governor Burgess, the new governor of the prison,’ she says, looking into the eyes of each twin in turn, trying to get a measure of them. ‘I believe it serves a useful purpose that we get to know each other.’

  The twins exchange glances.

  ‘And you two? Might you introduce yourselves?’

  There’s a brief silence. The twins stare at this new person in their cell. From somewhere in the exercise yard comes the howl of someone unhappy.

  ‘I am Perch Fishcutter,’ says the sister on the right.

  ‘My name is Carp,’ says the one on the left.


  ‘Excellent, that’s good to know. Now I’ll be able to tell you apart,’ says the governor cheerfully, though she’s not sure she believes what she says.

  The twins eye her suspiciously: looking for weakness. The older woman senses the joined-up thoughts of the twins.

  ‘Let’s be clear from the outset,’ she says in an authoritative voice. ‘I do not aim to befriend you. I have friends enough. It is not my intention to empathise with you. I am not a murderer. I do not aim to sympathise with you. You have been convicted by a jury of your peers and you are paying for your actions. I am simply here to better understand who you are now and where you stand in relation to your crime. It will enable me to respond to questions from outsiders. The members of the Parole Board, as a prime example.’

  The twins look up from looking down. It is a clear sign of interest, one the governor has seen many times before. Still they stay silent. The governor, well versed in the criminal mind, is not easily unnerved. She is more than happy to match their silence with her own. She stares up at the window above their heads. The tiniest patch of blue sky. Of hope. Of possibilities. When she was a little girl she slept in the attic with her baby brother and older sister. At night they would look out of the small window in the slanted roof, point to a star and take it in turns to tell the story of the people and animals that lived there.

  ‘We know what we did was wrong,’ says Carp.

  ‘Ah … wrong,’ says the governor, still looking up at the sky, tracing a skein of cloud on the wind.

  ‘Yes,’ says Perch, ‘we have denounced the religion, the Truth that is not.’

  ‘So I read,’ says the governor, ‘from Warden Harris. She wrote in a recent report that you have realised that the beliefs you once held prompted you to actions you now regret. Am I right?’

  ‘Regret indeed,’ says Carp.

  ‘In the deed we regret,’ echoes Perch.

  ‘And the boy?’ asks the governor.

  ‘Oscar Flowers?’ asks Perch.

  ‘Yes, your codefendant.’

  ‘We persuaded him of the righteousness of our cause and the need to commit the act,’ says Perch.

  ‘To conspire to trap and murder your own father,’ says the governor, always eager to lay the blunt facts before her prisoners. To test remorse. To evaluate contrition.

  Perch looks to Carp. There are no tears. No furrowed brows.

  ‘You may well have heard that the Judicial Commission, set up after your trial, banished your former religion, your cult, from the Province,’ says the governor, looking for a new avenue to a response. ‘Oscar Flowers has found his own way. You will be aware that he spent some time with the monks on the Island of Good Hope and is now a sailor at sea.’

  ‘Everyone needs to find their way through this world,’ says Perch flatly.

  ‘And you two, Perch and Carp Fishcutter, need to find yours.’

  Perch looks to Carp: this is not the time to tell anyone, least of all the prison governor, of the visitations from the Archangel Gabriel.

  The governor glances from one to the other. In silence. She holds her gaze, looking for some sign of differentiation. Carp blinks, looks away, then looks back again. Yes, thinks the governor. Yes.

  By the time the cart arrives at the monastery most of the monks are in the field tending to the crops, or else engaged in various activities in the outhouses. Brother Moses, sweeping leaves from the porch, hears them approach and watches the cart as it enters the gateway and trundles up the pathway to the main door. He notices the passenger, not the first nor the last to find his way to sanctuary and the humble offer of a warm bed and a hearty meal. Brother Paul jumps down and with a bow and a sweeping gesture of his hand invites Zakora to a first view of his new home.

  ‘Ever the showman,’ says Brother Moses with a smile.

  Zakora, still weak and now lying on the bench seat of the cart, looks up at the imposing building. It is nothing like anything he has seen before. So tall, so solid. So majestic. From its walls he senses the chants of ages; from the chapel that he has yet to see, he hears lingering refrains of praise and songs of adoration. Later that night, with his strength restored, in the dark and alone, he will put his hands on the walls, press his cheek to the rough stone. He will feel, he will touch, smell and hear: a kinship, a connection, a deep comfort, even all these hundreds of miles away from home. And when he is ushered to the Great Hall to share an evening meal with the monks he will be as surprised by the uniformity of their brown habits as the monks will be by the colour of his skin. But the Brothers are schooled in compassion and acceptance, and many a strange and bizarre traveller has sat at their table. Zakora will be warmly introduced to one and all and soon the breaking of bread and the sharing of jokes and asides will make him feel welcome and at ease.

  It’s been five years since Mrs April watched the galleon take Oscar Flowers away to sea. Now, standing on the jetty, the faintly familiar feeling of aloneness wafting over her, she remembers the mast disappearing over the horizon. She shields her eye against the glare and shimmer. There’s the line, the empty space, where sky meets sea. She recalls that day as the prow of the boat carved through the waves, set on course to quit these shores. Oscar, the young boy, the son she never had, off to faraway lands.

  As she watches the waves part at the jetty she remembers another goodbye from this pier. A lifetime ago, it seems. Kissing her sailor husband, holding him as tight and close as could be. Away to the war he went, never to be seen or kissed again. Deep and smothered at the bottom of a foreign ocean, down with his ship, captain, cook, sailor boys and all. ‘One more last kiss,’ she pleads in a whisper at the memory, ‘please before I let you go, but one last kiss nevertheless.’

  Two seaward departures. The first a man, the other a boy. Two losses. Lost thoughts. Lost loves.

  The wind is cold and unfriendly. The sky is sad and grey.

  Looking out from the snug of The Sailor’s Arms, Midshipman Hawkins swills his beer and puffs on his pipe. Through the window he sees the woman he recognises as Mrs April walking slowly back along the jetty.

  ‘The surprise is she’s stayed on in this town. What can there be for her now?’ he says, nudging his companion in the ribs, pointing to the solitary figure, ‘No work or place in this town for her these days and just the monks for company.’

  John Delaney, the harbour master, shifts on his bar stool and grunts.

  ‘My wife says she would have been burnt at the stake in her mother’s time.’

  ‘For less.’

  ‘For far less.’

  ‘She may not have done the deed, but evil enough were her actions.’

  ‘As good as a murderess herself. An adulteress for sure. The mistress of the murdered man, and not, so my wife tells me, her first time playing that role. Full of guilt, she is.’

  ‘As if she had lit the fire.’

  ‘And taken her lover’s life with her own hands.’

  ‘With the knife, you mean?’

  ‘There was a knife?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed there was a knife. It all came out in the trial. To despatch the poor man. One of the twins took a knife to him. As if the flames were not enough of themselves.’

  ‘Children slaughtering their own father.’

  ‘In the name of religion.’

  ‘A truly crazy one at that.’

  ‘What is the world coming to, Harbour Master?’

  ‘Demise, Midshipman Hawkins, demise and dismay.’

  ‘Evil all around. And the Oscar boy?’

  The old sea salt puffs on his pipe, billows of blue smoke shrouding his face.

  ‘Not the first to be led astray,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Better away, he is. The sea is a great forgiver.’

  She sees them watching her through the window of The Sailor’s Arms. Their talk, she ponders, like all the tittle-tattle of this town, will be small and narrow and barbed. Hold my head high, despite the sharp wind. This is my town too. My life to be lived too.

  Walking along the familiar laneways, up and away from the harbour with its boats and cranes, fishermen and sea squalls, she feels the cobblestones beneath her feet. What tales could they tell? These stones. Trodden by smugglers and brigands, stained by the tears of the sea widows, clattered by the marbles and sticks of children at play. All with hopes for a life less ordinary, a life less tragic. At the top of the town, the square, with its statue of Billy Bones the cabin boy, opens up before her. She turns and peers over the rooftops to the bay and the sea stretching out to touch the hem of the sky. All is empty, no galleon in sight. The huge expanse of salty water, gently shifting in its bowl, awaiting the wind and tide to coax it back to life. So many chapters in a life, is what she thinks. All chapters: opened and closed. The thought of whatever may come next brings a gentle smile to her lips and an extra skip to her step. A near middle-aged woman, smiling and skipping her way back to her cosy cottage, a cup of tea and buttered toast in the waiting.