When we ushered in that New Year, what I wanted to celebrate was the close of the last, a year when everything had changed, and so little of it to my liking. Surely 1904 could do no worse. Or so I thought as Ma and I kissed Kitta goodbye at the end of Tiller Street.

Kitta made every appearance of listening to Ma’s words about duty and respectable quines and hard work to please the Lord an’ your da, but I caught the lift of her eyes, even if Ma missed it. I didn’t think her beaming face had the world to do with hard work.

It pained me to see Kitta undistressed to be leaving us this time, and I was beset with all the worrying things I had done my best to ignore while she was home those few days. Kitta had told me about Rowescroft House and the long days in the kitchen with the cook, Mrs McBrewan, and the other kitchen girls, Benff’s Kirsten and Lally’s Janet, but for all she had shared with me, there was much she had not, and was not likely ever to. I remembered the look about her when she first came home, the look that told me, plain as flour, that Kitta had a life now that didn’t include me.

There were no tears on her face when she waved and tramped off in the direction of Gadlehead. But she looked back over her shoulder and gave me a wink that would have mortified Ma if she had seen it.

~

Come March, Da and the boys once again signed on for the herring. And again Granda Jeemsie was left behind to complain an’ fish an’ complain some more, as I heard Ma tell Mackie’s Peter when he put his head around the door to see if the kettle was singing.

Mackie’s Peter had been blind in one milky eye for a long time, and now his good eye wasn’t so good either.

Where the old gaak be?

Ma frowned as she handed him a tin mug of strong black tea. Boatie shore, an’ thank the Lord.

Well, tell him from me he’ll be needin’ another mannie for Lily Maud this year. I be too dweeble-eyed to be goin’ to sea no more. And another still, he need, for I hear young Bandy Rossie has signed to a whaler in Gadlehead and is bound for Faroes afore the week be out.

Ma sighed. I don’t know, isn’t hardly anybody left, anybody to go with him on the Lily. Bandy Rossie’s da has been to see him already, aye, and he’ll be down in the mouth to hear about your eyes, sure enough.

Down in the mouth! Mackie’s Peter cackled like a farmer wifie’s broody hen. An’ just when has Jeemsie Neish never been down in the mouth, eh lass? Eh, our Jeemsie’s Belle?

So that was how our year began, just Granda, Ma and me, with Granda fretting on how he would take the Lily Maud to sea when Roanhaven’s men and boys were leaving one by one, one way or another. And when Granda was fretting, that was reason enough for Ma and me to be fretting too.

~

I remained wary of Granda, never knowing how his temper would be. When Ma went on rounds, I would pick whelks after school until darkness forced me inside. And Granda, he was mostly content to leave me well alone, worrisome quinie that I was.

One night I crept in and found him nursing his hand, his face pained.

The tide is flowin’, quinie. Fetch me some sea water.

I took the lantern and a bucket and trudged to the boatie shore, but I wasn’t gracious about it, no. I was grumping and mumping all the way. Why hadn’t I pulled on an extra gansey or wrapped a shawl around me? I barrelled my head to the sea wind, pulled off my boots, and waded in to dip the bucket into the icy sea.

When I returned, Granda sprinkled water on his palm and rubbed it into his hand, his arm, as though it were one of Unty Jinna’s unguents and not just water from the sea. He had no time for Unty Jinna and her herbs and roots.

Ah, he sighed. And then he waved a finger at me. Mind ye never draw the water but from a flowin’ tide.

I put the kettle on the fire to boil, shivering, shivering. I didn’t want to sit there with Granda, so I pulled on another gansey, an old one of Will’s. When I took Granda his tea, I could see, by the fire’s light, that the gansey was on inside out. Ach! I went to pull it over my head, put it to rights, but Granda clamped a hand on my arm.

Stop it, ye foolish quinie! D’ye want to be takin’ the devil to the inside?

I stared at his great lumpish paw, and pulled away. I should have held my tongue. I should have.

That’s just superstition, that is. Miss Birnie says superstition is the friend of an ignorant mind.

A hush. A hush like I had never heard, ever. And then the rushing of blood into Granda’s pasty face. He seethed and he boiled.

Iggernant! Iggernant! It’s iggernant stranger-women with not an ounce of sense about them what will bring us all to ruin. The old ways is what keeps the devil from your red-heidit self, quinie. Isn’t your Miss Birnie! Pah!

A spray of disgust hit my face.

Miss Bir-nie, Miss Bir-nie. His girly mimicking voice. Wait till your da come back. We’ll see about your Miss Birnie then.

Bluster threats. Da wouldn’t be back till Christmas. But I took care to open my Forget-Me-Not Annual only when Granda was gone from the house, and not to let him see the other books Miss Birnie was lending me to read. Books of her own, they were, from home.

He’d already taken on a rage when he found me reading with a lantern in the netting shed with Crusoe one night. He grabbed the book off me and held it up, swinging between his finger and his yellow thumb.

An’ what kind of blether this be?

Oliver Twist, I told him. By Mister Charles Dickens.

Oo-hoo. An’ what kind of story has Mis-ter Charles Dickens to learn ye?

I thought for a moment and then I said, About bein’ poor. An’ about thieves. An’ London. And if he’d given me a chance, I would have thought a bit more and I might have said, It’s about what happens when ye want too much.

But Granda was shouting. Foolish quinies and folk from The Sooth with the devil in their soul and folk as’ll take ye straight off to hell and he dashed the book on the sand and waved a finger in my face.

Town folk an’ fisherfolk never do mix. An’ town folk from The Sooth are the devil’s work.

He stomped into the dark and I rescued Miss Birnie’s precious book.

Aye, I would have to be more careful.

~

He found his crew, Granda did, and a small gaggle it was, but he was content, even pleased, to have on board the Lily those who were blessed of the Lord. Better a simple one, I heard him tell Ma, who doesn’t question what be good an’ decent than a mannie with too many thoughts in his head an’ not an ounce of sense in any of them.

And while Granda sang his hymn to ignorance, I tried to gather as many thoughts in my head as Miss Birnie could give me before I reached that line of chalk marking the end of my schooling. What would I do then? Whatever would I read?