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A Novel
by Sarah Moss
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Within a few days, our feet would wear a path through the trees to the stream, but that first night there was moss underfoot, squashy in the dim light, and patches of wild strawberries so ripe and red they were still visible in the dusk, as if glowing. I squatted to gather a handful and wandered on, picking them out of my palm with my lips, kissing my own hand. Bats flashed through the space between branches, mapping depth into the flat sky, their calls brushing the upper range of my hearing. It was odd to walk in the thin leather moccasins, only a layer of borrowed—stolen—skin between my feet and the sticks and stones, the damp patches and soft places of the woods. I came to the stream and squatted beside it, dipped my fingers, listened. Water over rock and peat, leaves stirring behind me and over my head, a sheep calling on the hill. Fresh dew came through my shoes. The stream tugged at my fingertips and the heather explored my legs, bare under the tunic. It was not that I didn't understand why my father loved these places, this outdoor life. It was not that I thought houses were better.
WHEN I RETURNED to the fire, my mother was kneeling at its side, not propitiating the gods but hefting slabs of green turf from a pile. Give us a hand, Sil, she said, he says if you do it right you can cover it for the night and pull the turfs off in the morning, he says that's how they always did it, them. In the old days. Yeah, I said, kneeling beside her, and I suppose he didn't say as how there was someone to show you, in the old days, how they didn't just give out instructions and bugger off. She sat back. Well, she said, but they'd have known, wouldn't they, back then, not have needed telling, you'd have learnt it at your mam's side, and don't use language like that, he'll hear you.
We were sleeping in the roundhouse, my parents and I. The students had built it earlier in the year, as part of a course on "experimental archaeology," but they had been firmly resistant to my father's view that everyone should sleep in it together. There was no reason, my father said, to think that Ancient British households had been organised like modern families, if the students wanted a real experience they should join us on the splintery bunks they had built and padded with three deerskins donated by the anachronistic local lord of the manor. Or at least, since he lived in London and certainly didn't spend his summers in Northumberland, that he had allowed someone to donate on his behalf. Professor Slade said, ah well, after all, authenticity was impossible and not really the goal anyway, the point was to have a flavour of Iron Age life and perhaps some insight into particular processes or technologies. Let the students sleep in their tents if they prefer, he said, there were almost certainly Iron Age tents also. Skin tents, Dad said, none of this fancy nylon stuff. The tent we used on our holidays was made of canvas the colour of apricots and possibly left over from the Second World War.
I had noticed that the students had pitched their inauthentic bright and waterproof nylon tents in the clearing below our hut, screened by trees and hillside from both the roundhouse and the Professor's larger tent nearer the track where he kept his car. I could sleep in one too, Dad, I said, give you and Mum some privacy, but Dad didn't want privacy, he wanted to be able to see what I was up to. Don't be daft, he said, of course you can't sleep wi' the lads, shame on you. Anyway, privacy's a fancy modern idea, exactly what we're getting away from, everyone trying to hide away and do what they want, you'll be joining in with the rest of us. I did not know what my father thought I might want to do, but he devoted considerable attention to making sure I couldn't do it.
The bunks were exactly as uncomfortable as you'd expect. I had refused to sleep wearing the scratchy tunic that my father insisted, in the absence of any evidence whatsoever, to be the Ancient British nightdress as well as daywear, but even through brushed cotton pyjamas the straw-stuffed sack was prickly, smelt like a farmyard, and rustled as if there were small mammals frisking in it every time I moved. The darkness in the hut was complete, disconcerting; I lay on my back moving my hands in front of my face and saw nothing at all. My father turned, sighed, and began to snore, an irregular bovine noise that made the idea of sleep ridiculous. Mum, I whispered, Mum, you awake? Shh, she hissed back, go to sleep. I can't, I said, he's too loud, can't you give him a shove. Shh, she said, go to sleep, Silvie, close your eyes. I turned onto my side, facing the wall, and then back because it didn't feel like a good idea to have my back to the darkness. What if there were insects in the straw, ticks or fleas, what if they crawled inside my pyjamas, what if there was one now, on my foot, maybe all the way up my leg, jumping and biting and jumping, and on my back, coming through the sack, several of them, on my shoulders and my neck—Silvie, hissed Mum, stop wriggling like that and go to sleep, you're getting on my nerves summat proper. He's getting on my nerves summat proper, I said, they can probably hear him in Morbury, I don't know how you put up with it. There was a grunt, a shift. The snoring stopped and we both lay still, frozen. Pause. Maybe he's not going to breathe again, I thought, maybe that's it, the end, but then it started again, a serrated knife through cardboard.
Excerpted from Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Moss. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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