The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan (affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Dad had made for us in that one. Tessa laid out the biscuits she kept there for ‘guests’. One butternut snap each.

Philly bit in. Took it out of her mouth and tried to break it in half with her hands. She stood up and smashed the heel of her boot on it. We all looked at the biscuit, still intact.

‘Coulda broke a toof,’ said Philly.

‘Won’t break in half,’ I said. ‘Must be somethin in the air today.’

Tim punched me.

‘I’ll just suck it,’ Philly said.

Which is what we all ended up doing.

Tessa stayed right out of it, having a different conversation with her eyes telling me to keep my mouth shut. Which I did, but only because it was all mud and cloud in my head. Why did he tell us Aunty Peg didn’t know about Mum’s appendicitis but he told Mrs Tyler it was Aunty Peg who called the ambulance? That red was building right up. A while later, Dad came around the corner of the house. ‘JJ, where the bloody hell are you, you little bugger?’ We all froze. He stood with his hands on his hips. Face wild. ‘I’ll skin yer alive when I get my hands on you.’

‘What’d ya do this time?’ Tim grinned. I ignored him and scrambled off the platform and slithered down the trunk on the far side so Dad couldn’t see me. As soon as he disappeared back around the side of the house, I ran up the other. Met him at the kitchen door.

‘Want something, Dad?’

‘That sow is birthing right this second.’

‘But Mrs Tyler—’

‘You know better than that. Your mother never abandoned the post. Not once. I thought you were still up there. What gets into you, JJ? Bloody rocks for brains. I swear sometimes there’s a bit of Peg in you.’

In an instant the red steamed up from the volcano in my belly. ‘Why did ya tell Mrs Tyler that Aunty Peg phoned the ambulance when you told us Aunty Peg didn’t even know about Mum’s attack?’

‘Listening at the door?’ He snarled and turned to spit. ‘What I tell Mrs Tyler is my business.’

‘And what I tell Mrs Tyler is my business.’

He started. I’d done a lot of things before, but I’d never threatened him. He thrust a finger in my face. ‘You say nothin.’

I was pumping red and I could feel my eyes all narrow and slitty. I just kept my stare on full beam.

He leaned into me. ‘I told that to Kathy so she wouldn’t be bothering Peg and givin her more grief and distressing her— Peg’s recovering from a turn and twisted up enough already. Satisfied?’

I was big sorry. But my mouth hadn’t caught up. ‘With all this lying you’re doing you’re going straight to hell when the devil gets his hands on you.’

I marched off before he could thump me. After a couple of steps, I looked back ready to run in case he was coming after me. But he wasn’t. He was all crumpled on the ground. The red whooshed away and I ran back. ‘Sorry, Dad. Sorry. I didn’t mean it.’

‘Get out of here,’ he said. ‘Git. If we lose any of them piglets it’ll be on your head.’

I walked backwards, eyes plastered to his bowed head, just hoping. I got even with the toilet and still there was no sign of soft in him. I turned and raced to the pigsty.

Mrs Tyler’s crocheting hadn’t been touched and she was down on her knees in the straw beside Sal. ‘Not long now.’ When I didn’t say anything, she looked up. She was up on her feet and had me gathered in an instant. She drew me back onto the straw and into her lap. It wasn’t like Mum’s lap, but it was something. I was filled up and over with no more Mum. It was all around me.

Mrs Tyler clucked her tongue like I was a chicken. She gripped me strong and rubbed my back, hard enough to stop me headbutting into her stomach.

‘Look!’ she said after a bit, like she was changing the subject.

I wiped my eyes.

‘You want to be the first to welcome it into the world?’

I scooted in quick before the next piglet landed. I scooped up the first little scrap, just bigger than my hand. I held it up to my face and stroked its soft pale skin along its side. Brand new and not knowing the world and all that was coming at it. I put it in front of its mother’s teats.

The others came fast. Little blind things, feeling their way over each other to the milk. When we had them all, I said, ‘No runt.’

‘See, love, everything’ll be all right.’ Mrs Tyler brushed back my hair from my face. ‘It’ll all be right in the end.’

We only lost one of them twelve piglets. And that wasn’t on my watch. Sal squashed it the next night when Steve, one of Mrs Nolan’s workers, was there and should have known better. ‘Bloody fool,’ as Dad said.

Still. Losing just the one was pretty good.

Maybe Mrs Tyler was right, but the end was a long way off to wait for everything to be all right.

WHAT JJ OWES JACK

Philly had a good idea. We were going to pick one thing each to put in the ground with Mum. We had to be ready by the rosary in a couple of days. Philly was putting in a runner she did for Mum last Christmas. It had hollyhocks on it and sat on the table beside Mum’s bed under the alarm clock. Philly chose hollyhocks because they were big and white and looked real nice. Reckon Mum never told Philly what hollyhocks were really about, but I read it in Mum’s book. Ambition, women’s ambition, and you just had to take one look at Philly to know she was full of determination to get things right her way. I didn’t like that it