Mary

Somehow time has passed. Nights have washed through the sky like a dark blue dye, and rinsed out into days. The broiderie needles feel like them’re covered in salt. So do the linens and the threads and the table. So does the washtub, my blankets, Da’s fishing nets, the tatties and Barney’s bedsheets. Salt is used for the fixing of dyes, but I dun want the world to be fixed like this.

While Da is out fishing, inside this home I have to somehow keep, somehow live, no one else breathes this air, no one else eats or sleeps. No one stares from the window, washes or cleans, makes messes or broiders, loses or finds things, mends broken torn dropped things, cooks or tells stories, smiles, shouts or curses, unless it is me.

Barney’s toys are faded, bleached and pale from missing hims touch.

About one hundred and fifty people live on this island and if I have to ask every single one of them if them know where Barney is, I’ll lose my voice and my legs’ll fall off from walking to them all.

So I’ll have to do it a bit at a time.

This morning I can walk better, so I leave our cottage, turn left and walk as far as the furthest cottage on this row.

Rap on the door.

Chanty answers. ‘What you knocking this early for?’ Her hair is curly on one side and flat on the other. She’s got the Thrashing House key on a chain around her neck; it’s her turn on the bell list so I’ve got to talk nice to her today.

‘Excuse me, Chanty, for interrupting your sleeping. Thought I’d get your Mam. Have you seen or heard anything of my Barney?’ I ask, my arms folded.

‘Course not. You still sick? Been took. Tall men dun it. Ask anyone.’

‘I’m asking you. Please.’

‘Ah, get gone. Got too many things to do before the bells.’ She shuts her door.

I might have to talk to her polite, but I can think whatever I want. Bloody rude cow.

I hammer on the next door.

Beattie’s got her sleeves up. Her arms are red.

‘Have you heard anything of Barney?’ I ask.

‘You’ve been in bed the longest time. All right now? Come in, I’ve got eggs and tattiecakes on the go. You look like you could do with a bit of mothering.’

‘No, you’re all right Beattie. You heard any talk?’

‘No doll, no talk of the boys. Or nothing new or for certain. Get back indoors, it’s going to rattle down any moment.’ She peers up at the thick grey clouds.

It dun rattle down yet.

I bang on the next three doors.

Merry is sat just behind hims front door on a wooden stool, sharpening the paring iron and slane what him uses up the peat pits. Him dun bother answering me as him is old and miserable. Him dun ask folk questions anyway, so him won’t have been told.

Jek’s fixing hims fishing nets and asks me how come the women have took to putting buttons on the necks of the jumpers, and him shows me how easy them get caught in the nets. I tell him it’s probably to do with main land fashions, for Annie told me a few years back that the tall men wanted jumpers full of holes called the grunge, but now them want cable or ribbed.

Old Nell’s walking stick is leaned against Camery’s door, so she must be visiting her. I can hear them inside, arguing. Nell’s saying, ‘… them’re a danger to us, could’ve killed her. We have to keep getting them took …’ and Camery’s saying, ‘… so them’re a danger to folks further away? Well, why are we not bothered about them? Just because we dun know any main land folks, it dun mean them’re any less …’

I knock and Camery answers her door. She cries out and tries to hug me, but her pale ragged shawl stinks of chicken shit, so I get clear fast.

The last door is Annie’s cottage, right next to mine. If anyone’ll talk, she will.

She opens it before I get near enough to knock it. Her three great black dogs charge out and one thuds me spinning. Annie kicks the front door shut behind her, sweeps her frazzled hair off her face.

‘Oh Mary, come on. Glad you’re better. Gave me a fright you being sick so long. Let’s us two walk on the beach, the dogs need it.’

‘You’re all right, Annie, my legs’ll not do more than what them’ve done this morning. You heard anything about your Kieran yet, or my Barney?’ I lower my voice. ‘What are them saying in the Weaving Rooms?’

‘Shush now. I’m not telling you Weaving Room talk. Look, whoosh! Them’re off!’ She strides after the dogs down the beach, her brown coat swashes in the wind. She calls over her shoulder, ‘I’ll pop round yours later, Martyn’s fixing up our new cottage at Wreckers Shore. Him’ll be gone all day.’

‘You’re moving Annie?’

She turns round and smiles. ‘Aye, but it’s lovely. More space all round it. We’ll grow tatties and onions and kale, it’ll be perfect. Dun be sad! I’ll still visit you. You get indoors afore the rain.’ She strides away. She could do with one of Beattie’s breakfasts – she’s just as skinny as me, and twice as tall.

I go back indoors to our cottage, sit down and let my head unravel in Mam’s old rickety chair. The rain rattles down on the roof and makes the beams seem too low. I’m too small to see anything, to find anything so little as Barney, when there’s this huge sky what takes over the whole island by hurling down all this rain.

So none of my neighbours know anything about Barney.

Or no one’s saying anything at any rate.

I keep the moppet hid from Da. The moppet fills a small part of the gap what Barney’s left, for it gives me hims voice. Not always; sometimes it’s just the sound of the sea, but sometimes it’s Barney’s baby talk I hear, before the waves wash hims voice away from me. I ask it over and over, every day, ‘Barney, where are you?’ But hims voice always says, ‘It’s dark.’ That makes me cry more than anything else.

Da dun speak about Barney. I keep asking him questions, I know him has got an answer somewhere hidden in hims head, only him won’t tell me it. I dun like it here with just me and him. Him is out at sea all day and some of the night, thinking solid thoughts what always draw him back to land. And when him comes home, him wants me to fix the fishing nets while him eats dinner, then him washes the smell of sea and fish off himself and goes to sleep on Mam’s side of thems bed.

Each morning Da says, ‘It’s best to carry on as usual,’ before him takes up the nets and leaves. I wait for him to say something different, but him dun.

Tonight, Da comes in, pulling the smell of the sea behind him.

I say, ‘Tell me what happened to Barney.’

Him dun speak.

‘You just want me to broider. You never cared for Barney and you dun want me to find him. You …’

Him takes off hims coat and thrusts it on the hook behind the door.

‘You know something, but you dun want to tell me it, because we need less to live on, now him is gone.’

Him folds hims arms and says, ‘It’s best to carry on as usual.’ Him goes to the kitchen, picks up a bowl, ladles in the chicken stew, sits down and fills hims mouth with it so there’s no room for any answers to come out.

I’ve thought really hard about how to get an answer out of Da’s head and I think I can do it with just two words.

Da is going to be home for the whole day today, for him says the waves are white and high, which means the sea’s too full of wind and danger for fishing.

I practise while I get dressed and while I wash my face and tie back my hair, and the more I say it I know I can keep saying it because I dun think I can stop. In the kitchen I make our porridge and say it while I stir the pot.

Da walks in and I feel hims eyes on me.

I say, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me …’

‘Stop it, Mary.’

I keep saying it.

Him takes hims porridge into the main room, sits in Mam’s rickety chair by the empty grate and ignores me.

I eat my porridge in the kitchen and between mouthfuls keep saying it.

When it comes to mid-morning, him shouts, ‘You’re driving me mad! Shut your bloody sodding mouth up!’ Him glowers at me like him wants to stick a fish hook in my lips, so I whisper, ‘Tell me tell me tell me,’ all the afternoon, all the while him goes in and out of the kitchen through the back door, and all the while him tidies up out the back, and all the while him gets water from the well and washes down the kitchen floor, and all the while him cleans and oils our boots, even Mam’s old ones she’ll never wear again, and all the while him shuffles in and out of the main room, all the while I try to teach my hands to broider again, all the while I peel potatoes and chop leeks for soup, and all the while I sit opposite him and watch him eat it without filling the empty bowl I’ve put in front of me.

Him gets up from the table, hims hands thump down.

I look up at him, say it louder, ‘Tell me tell me tell me.’

Him leans over me, says, ‘Forget Barney and get on with your broideries. What’s wrong with you? You’re skittering in some kind of madness and you’ll not be pulling me in there with you!’ Him gets hims coat and stamps off outside, hollers that him is off to the peat pits to do something useful, and the door bangs shut behind him.

Even without him here I keep on saying, ‘Tell me tell me tell me,’ because now I’ve been saying it all day long, I really can’t stop. The words are in my ears and my mouth and my head.

I keep saying it and the bells ring out, but Da still isn’t back. I say it at the moppet but it just stares back at me, all wonky and silent. I put the moppet on my pillow. The moppet rushes the sound of the sea into my ear, but I keep whispering till I fall asleep.