Island - Softcover

Rogers, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618139311 ISBN 13: 9780618139316

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2001

Synopsis

From one of Britain’s best-kept secrets, the novelist whom the Independent said “writes better than almost anyone of her generation,” comes this brooding tale of the murderous ties that bind a mother and daughter. Abandoned at birth and shuttled among foster homes, Nikki Black decides at twenty-eight to seek out her birth mother, intent on killing her. Nikki’s vengeance takes her to a remote island off the coast of Scotland, where both the beaches and the inhabitants are full of artifacts from the past that haunt the present. Here she discovers a witchlike mother who concocts remedies in her dank kitchen and a stuttering, monstrous brother whose seemingly simple mind is filled with stories of past islanders, crofters, and Vikings. Gradually her brother’s dangerous love and strange way of seeing the world transform Nikki’s life in ways that she — and the reader — could never expect.
With her signature blend of psychological intensity and strong moral underpinnings, Jane Rogers skillfully leads us into a primal, almost mythic world where our darkest impulses and most profound fears are played out to shocking consequence. Part fairy tale, part murder mystery, ISLAND is, like the madness it depicts, terrifying, logical, and utterly consuming.

About this title

About the Author:

Jane Rogers has written six novels, including the award-winning Mr. Wroe's Virgins, which was a New York Times Notable Book and was dramatized as a BBC television serial, which aired on the Sundance Channel last winter. Rogers routinely writes for television and radio and teaches at Sheffield Hallam University. She lives in Lancashire, England. You can visit her website at: www.janerogers.org.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1
Lies
When I was twenty-eight I decided to kill my mother. Things were
going wrong and I was looking to put them right. They went from bad
to worse and I was unwilling, basically, to see the slide continue. I
needed to take control.
Nikki Black"s my third name. The Cannings called me Lily. Sweet white
name, little Lily Canning, little girl lost. Then the birth
certificate said I was Susan Lovage. But I"m not as white as a Lily,
not as blunt as a Susan, I"m nobody"s Lovage. And with no father in
the case — unknown neatly printed in his space — I fathered myself.
Black.
The other serious contender was "Ruth"; the healer I saw in Hereford
recommended Ruth, but to me it smacks of pity. Rueful, you"ll rue the
day. "There"s rue for you, and here"s some for me." An Ophelia clone.
I don"t think so. Ruth"s a bit open too. Ruth, truth. Nikki"s better
guarded. I"ll go for Nikki I told her and she said it would unleash
different psychic powers. Different how? I asked. Nikki is more
dangerous, she said.
OK fine. Dangerous suits me. Not that I believe a word of it,
obviously.
Nikki Black. With teeth. The spelling matters.
The beginning.
Lily Canning lived with Mummy Canning and Daddy Canning in a nice
house in the suburbs of Birmingham, and it was a happy family with
spade and bucket summer hols just like the reading books. But the
mummy and daddy fell out and Mummy Canning ran off with her driving
instructor. Little Lily was five years old, just starting school.
Daddy Canning was a busy man with an important career in banking so
one day he sat Lily down and told her something that would be better
for her. It would be better for her, he said, to have a mummy. And
now Mummy Canning was gone and not coming back, it would be better
for her to know that Mummy and Daddy Canning weren"t her real mummy
and daddy but had only adopted her. And now he would give her back to
somebody else so they could find her a new mummy who would look after
her properly and not run off. Because how could he on his own, when
he had to be at work all day? It wouldn"t be fair to her. And in
another house there would be brothers and sisters to play with. It
would be much better for her.
Lily Canning was taken to a children"s home (the first). There she
was a very naughty girl and fought with the other children and wet
the bed and scribbled on her books at her new school. They told her
she would never get a new mummy if she behaved like that; which was
just about the only fucking true thing they ever told her.
I"ll keep it short and simple. Lily Canning was fostered; no good;
taken to another children"s home. Went into the class of Mrs Plant at
junior school who taught her to read and told her she was clever. Mrs
Plant, who knew a thousand fairy tales off by heart and told them
each day after dinner, filling Lily"s head with lost children
miraculously found, and happily-ever-afters. Lily settled down,
reformed, got herself adopted again aged ten. Thank you Mrs Plant.
But was "sneaky, secretive, you don"t know what she"s thinking, not
open like a child should be" after a trial period with new mumsy and
dadsy. Silly Lily! She tried too hard. Pleasing and thanking for
everything, trying to say what they wanted her to, just so they would
want to keep her. So that they would like her! Thinking goodness
would bring rewards. Silly sneaky Lily.
To children"s home (the third). Smashed things up. Stole the little
kids" money. Accused the houseparent of sex abuse when he told her
off. To children"s home (the fourth). There were quite a few moves
around then, predictable stuff.
At fourteen I got clever again, and was fostered by the Marshalls.
Moved up to the top sets at school. You don"t have to be nice to be
clever. You don"t have to be liked to be clever. You can be clever
all on your own.
The Marshalls had a fat slow daughter called Louise, she was a year
older than me. She used to sit in her room and sulk. They had a
pretty cosy corny house, with flowery wallpaper and matching
curtains; a dresser with crystal glasses arranged on it, and bits of
hand-painted pottery. Oxfam calendar on the wall; they went to
church. They were as nice as pie. Suck it up, I told myself, suck it
up while you can, Nikki girl, all that middle-class cosiness. They"d
be in front of the telly of an evening, Mr and Mrs, with a glass of
wine each and her doing something useful at the same time, ironing or
putting church newsletters in envelopes or sewing buttons on. The
endless useful things these virtuous women do! She had her little
photo gallery like they all do that she had to show off to me:
"Sharon, she was with us for a year, she did ever so well at school.
She"s at college now", and "Philippa. She was so shy she wouldn"t
speak to anyone at all. D"you know what we did? We started leaving
little notes for her — what would you like for tea? and have you got
any homework tonight? and would you like to go skating on Saturday?
and she wrote us little replies. And then one day when I came in I
started unpacking my shopping and I said to her, "Philippa, read me
what you"ve put on that note, would you love, I"ve got to get this
food in the freezer." So she read it aloud to me! And after that we
got her talking."
How bleeding wonderful.
They thought I was great. I was. Compared to their pudding of a
child. I charmed them. I chatted intelligently at meals and passed
the spuds before they asked for them. I watched the news and made
remarks about world affairs. I read five library books a week. I
talked to the woman.
The man might as well"ve had a lobotomy, he pottered about the house
and got himself off to work at eight and home again at 6.30 and
cleaned his car and watered his roses and never spoke a word. That"s
where the daughter got it from. The mother was desperate. She wanted
drama. Emotion, danger, excitement. What the poor old bat wanted was
a bit of life. So I started confiding in her, the sort of stuff she
wanted. What did I tell her? Oh — about being abused at the home in
Hereford. About the girl who killed herself, who shared my room.
About my social worker having an affair with the houseparent at the
last foster home but one, and not believing anything I said because
she had to pretend I was lying about that too. About being raped by
those two boys after school, and the deputy head who said he just
wanted to help me and put his hand up my skirt. About dreaming about
my mum and thinking how happy I would be with her and how good I was
going to be because I knew one day she"d try to find me and be
pleased about how good I was; how I woke with tears in my eyes.
Oh she loved it, poor pale woman in her ghostly eventless life. I can
see her now, leaning forward on her elbows on the kitchen table, then
reaching across to pat my arm and take my hand: "Oh Nikki, I"m so
glad you feel you can talk to me. It"s so good for you to get all
this unhappiness out into the open." Parasite. Sucking up distress,
slurping up the juice of it.
Upstairs of course her fat sad daughter"s stuffing her face with
choccies (they gave her £10 a week spends and she never went out) and
making herself puke. Mrs wanted us to be friends. I could hear her
nagging fat Louise when I was virtuously doing my homework. "She"s
had such a hard life, Louise, you really should try and be kind to
her. And she makes the best of it, showing an interest in everything —
you would enjoy her company you know, if you made a bit of an
effort."
She took us to the cinema and left us to see a film together. Louise
ate a sack of Opal Fruits and four Mars Bars. She took us skating but
Louise wouldn"t go on the ice. They sat together in silence eating
toffee, watching me.
She had so much sympathy for me, that woman, she wanted to adopt me.
She talked to me about it. "I know you"re nearly fifteen now and some
would say grown up, but I just want you to know that you should
always feel at home here, I really want you to think of me as family,
as someone who"ll always be there for you. You mustn"t think everyone
is like those awful people in Hereford; there are people in life who
know what love is, and who are loyal."
What a lovely time I had. Until Louise got to the point where the
domestic supply of biccies and cakes and what she could buy with her
spends wasn"t enough, and started nicking from Mum"s purse to
supplement her binges.
I was the first to hear of it, of course.
"Nikki," says Mrs, her big brown doggy eyes shining with
seriousness. "No one"s going to blame you or be angry, no one"s going
to be upset. What"s important is that you should be honest with me.
That"s the most important thing. I don"t mind what you"ve done, I
understand. But I do want you to tell the truth. Now did you take
some money from my purse?"
I had the devil"s own job to persuade her it wasn"t me. She wept at
me, she pleaded with me, she set Lobotomy Man on me to ask me to own
up and be forgiven, she held my hand for hours, she offered me money,
as much as I wanted, as long as I"d promise never to steal
again . . . In the end I lost interest and told them to look under
Louise"s bed. She"d got all the wrappers there, everything. "Haven"t
you heard her chucking up?" I asked them. "I thought you knew she had
a problem."
Ha. They were pretty sorry for themselves. And surprise surprise all
those heartfelt words about always being someone I could turn to
melted away. Suddenly there was palpable coldness. And closed doors
downstairs, and negotiations with my social worker on the phone.
Suddenly Louise was downstairs and I was upstairs, and Lobo Man was
heard to raise his voice. He said the same word twice, I heard
him. "Cuckoo," he said. "A cuckoo."
Mrs Marshall had her very own little drama to focus on and she didn"t
need me at all any more. And so I moved on.
The social worker lectured me. "You mustn"t tell lies. You lose sight
of the truth and you don"t know what"s real —"
Can"t see any harm in that myself. Can"t see what"s so great about
the truth, that I should need to keep it in sight. Lies make the
world go round. People need something to get their teeth into. D"you
want the whole world blank and silent? Absence is nothing to talk
about. You can"t talk about a gap.
You mustn"t tell tales. Way back, Mummy Canning said that. "Tell-tale
tit/your tongue shall split/and all the little birdies/shall have a
little bit." I used to imagine that: a flock of them with their sharp
little beaks circling flapping swooping in, pecking at thin strips of
my tongue, pulling, digging their claws into my chin and heaving like
the thrush on the lawn tugging a worm out of the earth.
I like tales. Those fairy tales from junior school Mrs Plant. I like
it when Fir Apple and his sister turn into a pond and a duck to
escape the clutches of the wicked old cook. I like it when ugly
Rumpelstiltskin helps the miller"s daughter spin straw into gold. I
like the princess who weaves shirts from nettles for her seven
enchanted brothers to release them from the shapes of swans. (They"re
in such a hurry she has to give the youngest his with the sleeve
unfinished and he turns back into a fine young prince except he has a
swan"s wing for an arm. Imagine.) I like frogs that turn into princes
and old women that turn into maidens and fish that can speak and
grant wishes. I like to lose sight of the truth. Truth is shit.

Copyright © 1999 by Jane Rogers. First Mariner Books edition 2001.
Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0618139311
• ISBN 13: 9780618139316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272