EASTERTIDE: FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

This is the sound of a community waking slowly from a dream, not willing to call it a dream anymore. This is a piece of pure knowledge gifted from a deep well. This is a story in reverse – an island pushing away its capricious giants.

The velvet drapes are thrown open, casting a headmaster and a doctor in a fresh new light. The landlord hands over his licence, shamefaced, with muttered excuses for his allegiances – ‘You said they were willing, Jake. You said it was always mutual.’ Wives back away into the corners of the room. Three girls are lifted gently from a stage into the desperate arms of their mothers.

They ride the wave of these accusations and revelations; it carries them from the room. The collective act of confessing, of listening, has buoyed them – for now. Soon they will come crashing back to the shore – they must. The body of a boy lies silent and alone at the edge of the woods, and justice on his behalf has yet to be served.

The coycrock girl returns a stolen brooch to the palm of her enemy and is told that she must keep it.

‘It’s supposed to ward off witches but thank goodness it does not work!’

The radio is not accepted back either.

‘Hang onto it,’ says the Customs Officer.

‘But what will I ever use it for?’ she asks him.

‘Who knows?’ he replies. ‘Whatever fate throws at you next.’

So, the girl heads towards daylight, a trial still to face, her pockets full.

Outside on the cobbles, Father Daniel leads the community in songs of sorrow and mourning. Margaritte Carruthers stands alongside him, arms raised to the sky, her blouse unbuttoned enough for them all to see the upper markings on her chest. The curate with the spiky hair moves about the crowd with a wooden voting box and slips of paper, assuring everyone who offers up testimony that they may remain anonymous, if they wish.

The Customs Officer and the handsome coycrock teacher steer the headmaster and the doctor out through the lobby into the unforgiving day. The sight of the red dog lead on the wrist of the housekeeper’s daughter sends the red-haired coycrock bursting across the threshold, to be reunited with her animal familiar, to rub her face into the damp roughness of its fur.

A horn blares, deep and resonant, and heads turn to see a distant grey vessel on the horizon. The April ship.

Margaritte Carruthers takes this as her cue to raise the dead, to honour them – the fishermen drowned, the spirit of Bethany Reid, the boy whose body lies in an open grave of bramble and fern.

The crowd jostles the headmaster and the doctor in the direction of the stocks. The girl’s dog barks in her arms, offering condemnation of its own.

‘Shoot that damn’ dog, Luke! Take a shot!’ slurs the headmaster venomously into the blustery air.

It is an order that makes the coycrock girl clutch her companion even tighter, the name wrenching the attention of the three girls still locked in the embraces of their mothers.

Luke. The sacrifice. The body in the woods.

The headmaster must be delirious, they imagine, or else forgetful, using that name.

‘Let the dead rise up!’ croons Margaritte, head thrown back, eyes closed in rapture. ‘Let them see us reborn as this divine child, a new vision of God within us!’

And the dead seemingly do as they are told, because there he is – the boy with the gun, Luke Signal, flesh and blood, alive. He lopes towards them from the direction of the smokehouse.