Musselled

My grandmother’s father Bill wasn’t a nice man, by all accounts, though the means and extent of his not-niceness were never discussed. They lived in a tiny pit village in Derbyshire, about as far from the sea as it’s possible to get. In spite of this, Bill had a taste for seafood, and for mussels in particular. Once or twice a month, he’d want mussels for his tea, and he’d get them: a little jar of mussels pickled in vinegar. He liked to eat them with a cocktail stick, one by one. After eating them, he’d ask his wife and daughter to leave him alone: slowly, his face and neck would swell and turn purple, his flesh bulging over his too-tight collar. Through all of this, Bill would just sit in silence staring straight ahead. It took hours for the reaction to subside. Month after month, year after year he did this, until one day he threw a rope over a tree and hanged himself. If anyone came to the house on one of these days, the women would tell them, “You can’t see Bill now. He’s musselled.”