Every Seven Years Read Online Free Page B

Not
about her dying but what she said about
being bitter. Tam looks bitter and I pity
him that. I catch a glimpse of myself in the
side mirror and I’m frowning and I look
bitter. This is not what Totty wanted for
me.
    I know this road. We’re heading for Paki
Harris’s house and I ask why. Karen lives
there now, says Tam. She was his only
blood left on the island. Karen was related
to Paki Harris. I’ve always known that.
Everyone is related to everyone here except
us incomers, but I didn’t realize she
was so closely related to Paki. Second
cousins, Tam tells me somberly, just as
we’re passing a small farmhouse by the
roadside with a “For Sale” outside it. The
sign flaps in the wind like a rigid surrender
flag.
    â€œFor Sale” signs are a sorrow on the island.
People are born, live, and die in the
same house here. A “For Sale” sign means
the house owner had no one to leave it to,
or maybe only a mainlander. Mainlanders
don’t understand the houses here. They
sell them for cash or use them as holiday
homes for two weeks a year, a long weekend
at Easter. You can’t do that with these
houses. They need fires burning in them
all the time to keep the damp out. To keep
the rot out. These island houses aren’t
built for sometimes. They need commitment.
Karen Little has taken on the commitment
of Paki Harris’s house.
    It was an accident when my mother
killed Paki. She ran him over on the main
street on a Sunday afternoon in May, just
before I was born. The Fatal Accident inquiry
found no fault with her. She didn’t
try to explain what happened. She just ran
him straight over, once, completely. She
never mentioned it to me, I heard it from
just about everyone else, with various embellishments.
But the note, that note in the
book, was the first version I ever heard
that made sense of it. Paki raped her. She
got pregnant with me. She killed him.
That’s why.
    Paki Harris was from here. My mother
was not. So the island took his side because
loyalty isn’t rational and, in the end,
loyalty is all there is in a place this small.
    In the seven years since I left I have
often imagined what it was to be my heavily pregnant mother and see a man who
had raped her day after day, standing in
church, shopping at the supermarket,
strolling on the sea front. I would have
driven a car at him. The note, though, the
note made me realize how deep the bitterness
is here. It had never occurred to me
that she had a motive until I saw that note.
And afterwards, I realized, if they knew, if
they all knew that he had raped her and
that’s why, could they not have found one
shred of compassion for her? They spat at
her in the street. She couldn’t eat in the
café because no one would speak when
she was in there. She used the library until
they banned her for “bringing food in.”
She had a packet of crisps in her bag. I’m
not leaving, she’d say, because wherever
you live, life is a race against bitterness and
staying makes me run faster.
    I feel so sad remembering it all. I feel
like a house without a fire in it. I glance at
Tam driving down the small road. He
looks as if he’s had a good old fire burning
for the past seven years in him. His cheeks
are pink, his eyes are shining. He’s upright,
sitting proud of the seat back. He’s wired
with bitterness and ready. I’m a sloucher.
    It seems so odd, us being in a car together,
driving. Neither of us could drive
back then. Tam takes a minor cut-off
road and we follow the line of the hill, out
towards the furious sea. At the headland,
along the coast, the waves are forty feet
high, smashing higher than the bare black
cliffs. The sea is trying to claw its way onto
the land and failing. Each time it retreats
to catch its breath it fails. But it keeps trying.
    Suddenly we see Paki Harris’s house, a
stark silhouette against the coming storm.
It’s one of those Victorian oddities