GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2021/22

CLARE FIELDER
‘That More Dear Than Hands Or Tongue’

AGNES HELPED THE RABBITS OUT OF THEIR SKINS like she was helping a child out of his pyjamas. The skins came away whole, and they piled up beside her, empty and eyeless. Agnes: speechless since her parents walked into the sea at Dungeness and didn’t come back out. She was almost a woman then, old enough to make it on her own. She’d trudged north, sleeping in fields and forests, bothies and ditches, skin worn to shreds. By the time I met her she was cooking for politicians and major generals.

I never touched anything important. I split logs to kindling at the hearth, peeled or diced or turned a spit. Agnes was kind in her way. She’d get me to check a sauce for seasoning or tap the base of a loaf, but I never found fault and I doubt I’d have said if I had. Agnes: red hands and cheeks, arms strong from kneading each day’s bread. When I asked her how old she was she just shook her head, like the answer caused her great sadness. I don’t know if it was the years that had passed, or the ones still to come that hurt her.

I was rolling pastry into sheets the size of pillowcases. The mistress had received a telegram the night before, and in only a few hours the house would be lit up, ready to welcome a party of her city friends. They came up for the weekend, paying to eat and drink and hunt the deer and pheasants and grouse. They never gave us any notice and they never asked permission; it was known that the mistress couldn’t turn anyone away.

Agnes had tacked a list of dishes above the fireplace. We worked quietly and quickly. We’d been up since three preparing. Over the weekend I’d sleep in two-hour stints, curled up beneath the butchers block. Agnes wouldn’t sleep until the guests left.

 *

Agnes finished skinning and we’d both started to gut and butcher the rabbits when the mistress came in.

How are we? she said.

Agnes nodded. I looked down at the rabbit in front of me, accidentally nudging a tendon and articulating the skinless body into a phantom bound. I made a cut around the hips and twisted the back legs out of their sockets with a crunch. 

The mistress moved around the kitchen slowly, checking our progress. She lingered at the table of shortbreads.

Have the cocktails ready for four o’clock, she said. That should give us some leeway. And they’ll come off the train hungry so have something for them to snack on.

As the mistress talked piles of organs grew beside us, intestines to the left, heart, liver and kidneys to the right. They were slippery and glistening, miniature and dainty like doll’s house versions of themselves.

Agnes, of course, didn’t answer.

The mistress plucked a redcurrant from the top of a pork pie and put it between her teeth, making two bites out of it even though it was the size of a fingernail.

Oh, Agnes, she said, I know I don’t have to tell you anything. You always make sure these weekends are just perfect. I’m nervous, that’s all. No reason why I should be but there it is.

Agnes handed her rabbit to me and went to wash her hands at the sink. The mistress turned when she heard the water running. She caught sight of me and started, as if she’d forgotten I was there at all.

Coira, she said. Would you be so kind as to bring up some ice? I need a whiskey. Don’t look at me like that, Agnes, you always fuss about nothing.

I set the rabbit down on the table and headed for the cellar. It was only when I was halfway down the stairs that I realised that, in my hurry to leave the room, I hadn’t washed my hands. Normally I would have wiped them on my skirts and had done with it, but I knew I wouldn’t get a chance to change before the weekend was over, and I didn’t fancy spending that many hours with rabbit guts souring all over me. I was stuck with my bloody hands held out in front of me. I couldn’t help but hear the mistress talking.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Agnes, she said. I’m all mixed up. Maybe it’s the seasons changing, you know how I get when the weather turns. I have a terrible feeling that something is going to happen. I can’t explain it.

She sounded quite breathless.

I know it’s fine, really. I suppose I’ll enjoy myself. They’re just so loud, Agnes. I get used to the peace when it’s just us. We make do and run a good house, don’t we? We’re not unhappy?

I stood frozen on the stairs, straining to hear. Something – a chair leg? A boot? – scraped across the floor. There was a crushing silence filled with god knows what and after it the mistress’ voice came back louder, higher in pitch like the words were frantic to get out of her.

You have enough to do, she said. I’ll be fine. Just fine. Once they all arrive, once the hunting starts. I’ll be just fine after I shoot something.

There were a few moments of quiet before I heard her leave.

I returned to the kitchen and Agnes immediately noticed my empty hands, grimy with rabbit muck.

Does she really want ice? I said.

Agnes shook her head, but she didn’t smile and she didn’t let me go back to the rabbits. Instead she sat me down at the other end of the kitchen and gave me a bowl of egg whites to whisk into meringue. It was a job that I’d feel for a week, every time I lifted my arms above my head.

 *

The mistress was married once, before she took me on. Blackwood was her husband’s family home. Two weeks after their honeymoon he was mauled by a stag in mating season. The antlers went right through him. He didn’t die then, but hung on for another year, suffering and making everyone else suffer too by all accounts. Eventually he put an end to it himself by smashing the doctor’s thermometer and drinking the mercury like it was medicine. To hear people tell it, dying was the kindest thing he could have done.

Maybe it was what she’d been through that made her more fragile than we were, than anyone I’d known really. She’d cry over the bodies of dead spiders, break out in hives if too many days passed without rain. But she’d made a home for us. We looked after her. Her aloneness was something I admired greatly. I’d never seen a woman live like that.

We had no neighbours for miles, just the emptiness of the moor on all sides. In winter it was desolate, the snow took everything from the landscape; the gradients and the colours were vanished. Spring and summer you sank calf deep into purple heather and people would come for miles to look at it stretching out into the distance, swaddling moor and glen. But you should have seen Blackwood in the autumn, when the shooting started. The whole moor rippled green and yellow and bronze, like the grass tips had been dipped in fire. The price you had to pay was the wind that got inside your clothes and rattled you around until you no longer felt solid. Midge used to put stones in the toes of his shoes just to be sure he’d stay on the ground. When spring came around his toenails would be bruised and swollen like plums.

The railway line sliced the moor in half, and once a week the train came through Rannoch looking like a toy. There wasn’t a station, just an empty platform; if you wanted the train to stop you had to wave it down. If the mist was thick chances were you were stranded. Every month Midge rode the coach down and came back with a hamper worthy of the Assembly Room banquets in Edinburgh: quince and figs, cheeses, bright spices and herbs and wines of the colour of blood and quartz.

 *

 Agnes had a pan on the stove, warming it for the rabbit meat. She could cook it so tender it wasn’t like eating meat at all, more like chewing on velvet, the occasional burst of iron when you bit into a heart. The thought of it makes me salivate like a dog, even now.  

Midge wandered in, looking like a stray as always. His eyes were pink and teary from spending too long nuzzling up to the horses in the stables where the hay made him sneeze.

You’re late, I said.

Missus said I were to get the animals ready for the hunting.

There are things for you to do here too, you know.

Here now.

I would forget that me and Midge were the same age. He was small and spindly, he said like a jockey, I said like a hobgoblin. He was hopeless. He preferred animals to people; every dog was the greatest dog he’d ever seen.

Agnes elbowed me and nodded towards the metal bowl of scraps, which was starting to overflow next to the sink.

Come on, Midge, I said. Fetch.

I clapped the icing sugar from my hands. Midge picked up the bowl and I followed him outside, collecting up the vegetable peelings, eggshells and rabbit bones that he dropped on the way.

We stepped out of the kitchen and we were on the moor. There was one track, stony and steep enough to become a stream when it rained, that went past the house. I knew there were other paths, old drovers’ trails, but the farmers and peat-cutters passed them down in their blood rather than let them be visible. There were places where the bog could suck you in and smother you. The peat would keep you whole, but you would never be found.

We followed the track as far as the stone bridge. We looked down at the water, the colour of brown glass with the light shining through it. Beyond us the track crossed the undulating moor, vanishing in the direction of the railway. Midge’d be down there later, waiting to drive the hunting party up to the house. It was a job he hated, since they were always drunk already from the bar in first class, loaded down with guns, free with their hands and making ribald jokes that Midge only understood enough to be scared by.

I allowed us to linger on the bridge, dropping the scraps over the edge in small handfuls. The trout were grown fat and lazy on what we fed them.

How was the mistress when you saw her?

I tried to say it casually. Midge wrinkled his forehead.

She’s in a mean mood, he said. She’s locked up Dandelion and Burdock. She said I were tending to them too much, and she needs me to be focused so she shut them in the tool shed. Until the weekend’s over she said.

He spoke very quickly, snatching breaths between words, and I wondered if in fact he hadn’t been in the stables that morning, but had been crying.

They’re only pups still, he said. They’ll be crying for me all weekend, I know it.

I hate that missus, he said.

No you don’t, I said. Most mistresses wouldn’t let you keep Dandelion and Burdock at all.

He sniffed, but he knew I was right.

I’ll sneak them some meat, I said. Don’t be too hard on the mistress; she’s having one of her difficult times.

Thanks, Coira. I just hope those pups’ll forgive me.

* 

They wanted pies and vegetables and steaks and scallops, bread and oil, wine, whiskey, cheese and fruits. There was no end to their cravings. The guests never brought their wives, but they would gossip about them: Millie had been banned from a hotel in Glasgow for drinking too much and trying to swim naked in the decorative fishpond; Francis’ stepchildren had smeared her bed sheets with algae. I was circulating with the whiskey bottle, invisible. The mistress had kicked her shoes off, and was sat on a low settee, red-faced men either side of her. I leant over the back of the settee to refill their glasses.

You’re best out of all that, Kit, said one of the men. You’ve got your guns, your money.

He shifted in his seat and I clinked the bottle against his glass. He winked at me and I blushed.

You’ve got yourself a household of pretty servants. You’re practically lord of the manor.

From where I stood behind them I could see what the other men couldn’t, that the man’s hand was slipped under the collar of the mistress’ shirt, one finger stroking circles around the top of her spine. I wanted to slap his hand away like it was a fly.

* 

The kitchen was hot, even with the windows open.

They don’t get tired, I said to Agnes. Or full.

She nodded and swallowed a yawn.

I crossed into the larder, which was slightly cooler. Midge was curled up asleep on the floor, but I nudged him awake with my toe.

Your hour’s up, I said.

Go away.

I kicked him harder and he stumbled to his feet, scrabbling at the shelves as he stood, disoriented and off-balance.

Take over serving for a bit, I said. I’ve got to wash up some things or they’ll be eating out of their hands.

Our hands more like, said Midge. They can’t do anything themselves.

Just get out there, I said.

I wish we were living somewhere normal, he muttered as he shuffled out of the larder.

I looked at the shelves of butter and chutney, heavy jars of root vegetables we had already stored away, preserved for winter. Carrots and potatoes lurked in amber liquid like dead things in a laboratory. Soon we would be pickling mushrooms, plunging pork into salt, ready for the months when the train was delayed by snow more often than not and we had only what was around us, saw only each other.

I tried to clear my head of the noise of the party, but echoes of it still reached me – a glass breaking, guttural laughter. The men’s feasting was vulgar. I’d been taught that gluttony was a sin, and I’d had little opportunity to be tempted into it so I didn’t understand then the euphoria that could come from taking and taking until your hungers were satisfied. I didn’t understand why the mistress put up with the men tramping all over the house in their boots, heavy with the black earth. I worried that they were all secretly laughing at her, the way they laughed at their wives as soon as they were gone.

I’d never stepped out with a boy. I’d never had my hand held or my eyes looked into. My body had never had power. There hadn’t been time. Whereas Agnes’ whole life was a myth, I was nothing special. An oldest child with a mess of siblings, sent out of the house and on the road to work before our youngest was off the breast.

 I thought of that man’s hand on the mistress’ neck and I had a feeling low down in my stomach, like soil being turned.

* 

I touched my cheeks with the backs of my hands, feeling the flush go down now that I had a moment’s peace. I slipped back into the kitchen.

Any meat for the dogs? I asked.

Agnes was sitting on a stool by the stove, stirring porridge. She had started on breakfast before anyone had gone to bed, anticipating all the men would need to recover in time for the hunting. She’d leave the porridge to thicken overnight and devote herself to the full Scottish breakfast that would bind the men’s insides with grease. She held out the wooden spoon to me and I took over stirring while Agnes slowly got to her feet. She kneaded her lower back with one fist and with the other took up a knife and carved strips from a haunch of venison that was left from dinner. It had been beautiful when I’d served it, piled with warm juniper berries that tasted of the moor itself. Now it could have been a carcass tugged at by buzzards. Agnes wrapped the strips of meat in paper and handed them to me. She tapped her wrist, telling me to hurry.

The dogs were scratching at the door of the shed when I got there, whining softly, tired. It must have been the longest they had every spent away from Midge. I knocked on the door to announce myself.

Hey dogs, I said.

They barked and the door shook as one of them threw themselves at it, sure they were being rescued. It was exasperating how much they loved him.

I looked through the keyhole, but all I could see was dark. I unwrapped the meat and I could hear them snuffling at the door. It rattled as they bumped their noses into it. Midge had spoiled them with bacon and blood-pudding from his own plate. They had never had to fight for anything and it was making them soft. Dandelion and Burdock had the easiest lives of any creatures on the moor.

I lined up the strips of venison carefully on the ground, my side. There was a small gap where the wood for the door had been cut too short. Shadowy noses appeared there. A tongue stretched under and licked a piece of meat as I edged it back. The dogs were quiet now, focused. They would work and work through the night, trying to swallow the meat that would remain just out of their reach.

* 

We’d been up so long the light was starting to creep back. Mist hid the edges of the moor and the air stuck to my hair and apron and made them damp. The shed was around the back of the house, next to the stables. I left the hungry dogs. The horses were stamping in the cold and I went closer to see when I heard a different, human sound. The mistress owned the only woman’s voice I’d heard since leaving home. I was not a woman yet. I knew it was her, then, that I could hear. There were no words that I could discern. I wasn’t afraid but there was a billhook resting against the stable wall and I noticed it had found its way into my hand. The mistress was not alone. The man, who had winked at me and made me dizzy, was in the stables with her. Neither of them should have been there. There were no words that I could discern but it had sounded like pain.

* 

Agnes, I said.

She reacted slowly and I was grateful. I felt heavy, my body on edge from lack of sleep, muscles sore from work. There was blood, but not much. Just a port-stain on one hand, a smear on my forehead from where I had reached up and pushed my hair back. It hadn’t felt like meat, not the way I understood meat to be. The billhook hadn’t been sharp and the cut hadn’t been clean. I hadn’t gone for a joint. The skull had fought against the knife.

I think she knew at once. Agnes: silent but all-seeing. She moved her pans off the heat, placing them on the flagstone hearth. Nothing would burn or be ruined. She washed her hands and wiped my face with a damp cloth. She made it all feel quite normal.

When she was ready she held on to my elbow and nodded for me to show her the way. As we walked around the house I realised that it had gone quiet. The guests had either found their way back to their rooms or they slept where they had fallen.

The mistress was curled where I’d left her, her shirt untucked from her trousers and torn at the neck. Straw stuck to her legs.

Agnes stepped over the body and went to her. Agnes held the mistress’ hands between her own and began to warm them, almost roughly.

I knew the mistress more intimately than I have known anyone else in my life, before or since. From washing and pressing her clothes I knew the dimensions and scents of her body; I knew when she bled each month, had seen the clots suspended in her bathwater like sea-creatures. I knew the foods she liked, the weather that would make her moody, how long it had been since she’d had a man’s hands inside her.

When I stepped closer to them Agnes held up a hand to stop me.

It was an accident, I said. She was screaming when I found her – them. She wasn’t strong enough to fight him off.

They looked at me, blank faces.

I only meant to make him stop, I said.

My voice broke and I looked at the floor. In the quiet the horses stamped and shook themselves. The air was sweet with damp straw and manure. I could taste it.

I had to look at the body. I’d been putting it off, but then it wasn’t as awful as I’d expected. His face was turned away from me so I don’t know if his eyes were open or closed. I hoped for the mistress’ sake that he wasn’t lying there staring at her. I’d wrenched the billhook out already, and it was laying in the straw, dull with muck.

Agnes pulled the mistress to her feet, though her legs shook like a foal’s. Out of habit I moved in to brush the straw away from her legs, smooth her shirt across her shoulders.

Agnes just shook her head and passed the mistress over to me. She leant on me heavily. Agnes crouched by the body, placed a palm on his chest. She could have been praying.

I’ll take her upstairs, I said.

As I looked back over my shoulders Agnes was removing the dead man’s clothes.

    *       

We walked past the dining room, where half-empty glasses covered every surface. The candles had burnt down, drowned in their own wax, and had dripped onto plates and tables. Downstairs the house was filled with light, but as we headed up to the bedrooms the sun was muffled by thick curtains. It was like a nursery when scarlet fever hits.

Peaceful, isn’t it? said the mistress as I helped her into bed.

I don’t know if she was joking. I tucked the sheets tightly around her.

Agnes will fix everything, she said. Agnes will know what to do.

As I tidied her clothes I picked up her ring of keys and put it into the pocket of my apron. I thought about locking her in, but that would only have led to trouble later. I left her muttering to herself, bedclothes up to her chin.

* 

Here are the problems that we faced.

There was no one else living for miles. If anything incriminating were to be found, we would be to only ones around to question. But the country was open, undulating but not dense or truly mountainous. We were visible. No pyres.

Burying was also out of the question. The peat would have made a mummy out of him, holding his shape together.

We had a couple of hours where we could be confident we wouldn’t be disturbed. After that, even if we had come up with a dignified plan, the men would be wanting things. For once we had witnesses to our actions. We needed to get rid of him.

* 

The smell in the stables had been stifling before, but familiar. Now it was unbearable. Agnes’ eyes were red from it. Her carving knives and an axe were on the straw next to her. She was kneeling over the opened body. As I watched she lifted an arm away and put it in a sack. It was just like when we butchered deer; we had a way of doing things and Agnes didn’t deviate from it.

She looked up at me. In that moment I thought her capable of anything.

Agnes rolled her eyes and waved me over. She pointed to a bundle – a horse blanket wrapped around a foul, seeping mess. We would say later that the blood was from cutting venison steaks.        

I gathered up the bundle and pressed it close to my body to keep it all in. It felt alive, a warm, squirrelly animal that didn’t want to be held. I walked to the bridge. The river was still smothered with mist, but the moor was clear now, grass blown flat by the wind. In the cold I struggled to untie the bundle, my fingers slow and clumsy. I picked and tugged at Agnes’ knots until guts were spilling out, steaming, into the river. The splash of loose organs was barely audible over the burbling water. I turned away, knowing I would never eat trout from that river again.

Midge was standing at the foot of the bridge. I didn’t know where he’d come from.

You’re up early, I said.

What was that?

Scraps.

What are you up to?

Nothing. Get the mistress her bath. I said.

You’ve done something to my dogs. They’re crying and crying.

I don’t have time for you.

I pushed past him and hurried towards the kitchen.

I’ll get you if you’ve hurt them, Coira, he shouted after me. I’m not scared. Don’t think I won’t get you.

I didn’t look back. Instead I boxed Midge away in my mind, cataloguing him as something to be dealt with later. 

* 

The kitchen smelled like crackling, like Christmas. The fire was built up and fat was spitting in the pans. It was a danger to step too close. I’d stopped making note of all the things I’d never be able to eat from again – the roasting pans and knives and tongs I’d have to shun because they’d touched the true insides of a person.

It had never occurred to me how much meat there could be on a man.  He was spread between pots, there was so much of him. Agnes’ hair was damp with sweat; she worked furiously without breaks. He stewed and roasted and filled pies. Her hands were raw from all they’d done.

I boiled water for tea and coffee, ready for when the men started to tug on their service bells for their breakfasts. Midge wandered into the doorway and stood there watching us.

What are you hurrying for?

What are you lazing for? I said.

Missus is in the bath. She’ll be wanting you for dressing.

He slunk over to the stove and stuck a finger into a pan. It came out glistening with juice. Agnes’ slap came too late and only landed when he’d already touched it to his tongue. He looked at her with trembling lip. She stared him down.

What meat is that? he said.

Agnes looked to me and cocked her head towards the door.

Outside, Midge, I said.

What’ve you done?

I dragged him out into the sunlight and round the edge of the house where no one would hear us. He was quivering like a switch brought down hard on a flank.

You’ve all done wrong, said Midge. You’re witches not women. 

He was backing away from me, angling towards the stables.

Let me explain what happened, I said.

The dogs were scratching at their door, howling at hearing his voice so close.

It was the mistress. The man was at her and she couldn’t get free.

You’ll all be got for this, said Midge. I’m not staying anymore and I’m going to tell them what you did.

Stop being a baby, I snapped.

I hid my hands in my pocket and felt the bunch of keys, the metal warmed by my body. I felt their ridges, knowing them all by shape. I couldn’t let him leave. When he turned to unlatch the horse I sprang for the shed door, put in the key and turned it. The dogs tumbled out, scrabbling over each other in a whorl of fur and teeth. Burdock recovered himself first and took off running. He streaked through the yard, body low to the ground, tearing away from his confinement. He looked like he’d never stop running. Midge paused for a moment, looking at me so I felt like a stranger, like someone without any home in the world. Then he started to sprint after Burdock. They crossed the bridge. Burdock was vanished in the long grass, his tan fur camouflaged by the autumn colours. I watched Midge as long as I could. He stumbled and shrank into the moor. He veered off from the track and into the bog and that was when I turned away. We didn’t see him any more after that.

*

I felt cold when I went up to help the mistress out of her bath. I was doing what I thought was best. The mistress came first. Agnes understood that and so did I. She had scooped us all up and given us a purpose. She had needed us and I still believe that is the kindest thing you can do to a person.

She was sat in lukewarm water with her knees drawn up to her chest. Soap flakes floated on the surface like pond-scum. I shook out one of her good, thick towels and held it out ready for her but she didn’t move.

Agnes is taking care of things, I said.

The mistress put her face in her hands, rubbing soap into her eyes and not caring. She was whining to herself, like she had a puncture.

Did you hear me?

She’ll know, she said.

Who?

Agnes. She looks at me and it’s like I have no skin.

She already knows, I said.

She looked up at me. She looked nothing like herself: weak and helpless and small. It made me hate her.

He was hurting you, I said. This is your house and you let those men parade around like they own it. I stopped him.

I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just thank me. She had only watched. She hadn’t felt what I had. A body doesn’t come apart easily. 

She’ll know what I let him do to me, she said. We were drinking. He was saying my name. Agnes never bloody says anything. I’d forgotten what it sounded like.

I felt it in my body first and the new knowledge rose up from within me and flushed my face. I remembered sheets that had smelt strange when I changed them, evenings when Agnes went for walks in the rain but came home dry. I didn’t have words for it. It was an instinct, like when you sense someone is watching you or when you know in your innards that someone feels the same way you do or when you wake up and know a terrible thing is going to happen and you can’t stop it. I felt that they had all made a fool of me.