A New Year Letter

Well, the year's almost done and looking back it has not been so bad.

I finished a second children's novel. (and we'll have to wait and see how that does)

I completed the Port Brokeferry project at close to 80,000 words.

I wrote thirty short stories and dozens of flash fictions.

I finished a special 'thing'; I wrote 50 flashes on my dad, who passed away some years back, and I did not want that he be forgotten. The whole project has the the title 'Art in Heaven' (as in 'Our Father who art in Heaven...') and was done for my brother who was celebrating a special birthday. This was a big and important project and it meant a lot to get it completed.

I scored 29 hits in competitions including 4 first and 4 seconds.

I got ideas for two novels to add two already simmering in my head, and more Port Brokeferry spin-offs beginning to excite me - lots of those. No signs then of the creative juices drying up.

Yes, so not too bad a year.

And the year ahead? Lots I HAVE to do this year. Lots of projects I need to bring to some kind of fruition. I have goals, as I did last year, and they are a little more ambitious, so I may be a little quieter here than I have been. Maybe - quiet isn't something that sits easy with me... again we'll see.

But for now, a happy new year to all who pop in here. I hope the year behind you has been equally productive and the year ahead already holds some promise.

Best to all.

D

THE END

(And here it is, the final piece for the Port Brokeferry project, and we can discover who this Col is that Mad Martin seeks after and why he is so elusive... and in my head another couple of Port Brokeferry things are percolating so it might be that this is just the beginning! If you have been following this 'story' then you'll remember that each new day in Port Brokeferry has begun with an 'official' document of some description... and so we end on the same, which rounds the whole thing off kind of neatly.)

OLD NEWS

(Below is reproduced a newspaper article pertaining to events that happened in Port Brokeferry’s not too distant past, though there are many in Port Brokeferry who do not now remember all that was said in the article and some who have never known. Those there are who cut out the article and have kept it in the back of a drawer in the kitchen, or tucked away in a box up in the attic space, and they only rarely rediscover the yellowing newsprint and read it now as one who reads fiction, not really believing that the people referred to in the article are real. One there is who keeps it in the glove compartment of his red Ford Fiesta, but he does not live in Port Brokeferry any more.)

A MOMENT OF MADNESS

In a small sleepy fishing village called Port Brokeferry situated on the north-west coast, there was a moment of madness last Sunday, when two teenage boys were involved in a high school caper that turned into catastrophe.

The boys, Colin Galbraith (16), and Martin Stuart (15), had both been drinking. It was late and the boys were still out, even though they were expected at school the next morning. A third boy, Athol Stuart (16), no relation, was with them until shortly before the incident, but he had not been drinking. He said they were ‘quite far gone with the drink’ and were at that ‘silly stage where everything is funny and a good idea’. They had earlier played ‘chap door run’ at some of the houses on the front, and they’d pulled flowers out of one of the gardens, and scattered the contents of a rubbish bin along the main street.

Athol Stuart had then said ‘enough was enough’ and ‘no harm done’ and that they ‘should call it a night’. But they had not yet finished. One of the boys had the idea to turn back time. He proposed that they wind the hands of the village clock back a few hours. They also thought that would justify their lateness the next day at school. There is a clock high on the wall of The Victoria Hotel on Port Brokeferry’s main street. Athol Stuart left at this point, declaring their plan nothing but ‘madness’.

Colin Galbraith and Martin Stuart managed to somehow procure a ladder from the garden of a local handyman and it fell to Martin to climb up to the clock. Athol Stuart afterwards said ‘Martin was always trying to prove himself, being the younger of the three, and Colin was always setting him tasks. Dares, really. And Martin always wanted to be the hero.’

Martin Stuart was successful in altering the time on the Victoria Hotel clock, but then he must have lost his balance and he fell from a height of around twenty feet. He landed awkwardly on the flagstone pavement and took a serious knock to his head that rendered him unconscious. It is thought that Colin Galbraith took fright and fled the scene, though Athol Stuart says that could not be, that something must have happened, for the three boys were the closest of friends.

The body of Martin Stuart was discovered by Athol Stuart when, with an attack of conscience, he thought better of leaving the two inebriated teenagers by themselves and returned to the main street.

A Doctor Kerr accompanied Martin Stuart to the hospital. It is not yet known what the full extent of the teenager's injuries might be, and Athol Stuart and Colin Galbraith are said to be helping the police with their enquiries.

The Penultimate Port Brokeferry Postcard

(This is the penultimate piece for the Port Brokeferry project and we have heard Mad martin looking for Col all the way through, and here is Col... but the mystery of why he keeps to the shadows will have to wait for the final piece.)

COL

It was not the first time he had been home. And he still thought of it as home. Still, after all this time away. Some years he had missed. Something had interfered with his plans in those years and had kept him in the other place that he did not think of as home. He thought all those missed years a little darker when he looked back on them, like there was nothing worth remembering in them, except what had not been. So he tried to get back more and more. Just once in the year, when Port Brokeferry was busy enough he might not be noticed in all the new people there.

He came by car and he came alone. Just for the day. He arrived in the morning early, wearing dark glasses till the town was about its business and enough people on the street that he was just one more. He came on the weekends mostly. Sometimes a Saturday, sometimes a Sunday. Depended on the weather. Wouldn’t be the thing to be walking the beach in the rain, or the streets of Port Brokeferry. Besides, in the rain the crowds were thinner and he might be known.

He came to see. How things were. How Martin was. And Athol. He came out of a sense of duty, and something else that he could not explain, even to himself. Today had been a good day. As good as these Port Brokeferry days ever get. It was busier than in some years and that had helped. He liked to get there early enough he could watch Martin down on the beach feeding the gulls from his pockets. He knew that was how the days started in Port Brokeferry. And seeing Martin in his kilt, standing just in the sea, it was like going back to a different time, when it wasn’t just Martin, but Athol and Col, too, standing looking out to where the blue-grey smudge of the sky sat on the blue-grey smudge of the water, looking and wondering what it would be like to sail away from Port Brokeferry and into the stories that Finn told when there was a drink in him.

Not much changes. Col knew that. Guthrie had taken over from his dad with ‘The Bobbing Boat’, looked the spit of his dad, too, like it could be that Col was back in that time when they were three and not easily separated, and ‘up to no good’ the policeman said then, and now Athol was the policeman. Funny how things turn out.

And ‘The Ship’ was just ‘The Ship’. And Struan Courtald was still working at The Victoria Hotel, though he’d got a waistcoat now, with shiny buttons, and a fob watch on a chain, and he was a little thicker about the middle, but still tilting his hat at Ina McAllister, used to be Ina Shale. And then there was Berlie’s, always there for the same two weeks, and though it had changed through the years – different music, and louder with more lights – some things were the same.

Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop was quite new and he did not know who Mhairi was. But today he’d stopped to look in at the window. There was a picture of Martin on the beach, a painting. And he could not pass it by. He paid for it on credit card and afterwards thought that was a mistake. Then, having stored it under a grey sheet in the back of his car, he was not sure of the sense in having bought it at all.

He came each year to see how Martin was. He knew that Athol looked after him and that was something. He kept a distance though, in case he was seen and recognised for who he was. Just close enough he could see that they were both well, Martin and Athol. Just the two of them, when once there were three.

He stayed till the end of the day, till Athol had seen Martin to his door and seen him safely inside and then closed his own door. Col knew there was nothing more to see after that. He climbed into the car and waited. Like he was catching his breath, like he was preparing himself to dive into the shock of cold water, like leaving was something hard.

He saw the woman from the hairdresser’s, Christine her name was, if the sign above the shop was to be believed. She was a bit unsteady on her feet and a man who was just as drunk was with her and they took the long way from one lamppost to the next, stopping to kiss in the centre of each pool of yellow light. And because they did not know they were seen, the man was touching her under her clothes and the woman made no protest and only laughed.

He waited till they were passed. Then Col reached into the glove compartment of his car. Folded into four was a piece of old newspaper. He carefully unfolded it and read what was printed there, even though it was too dark to really see the words.

I can see the sun going down

(This is the third last piece in this Port Brokeferry project... and a mystery visitor right at the close...)

ATHOL STUART SEES THAT EVERTHING IS JUST AS IT SHOULD BE

Athol Stuart saw to it that Berlie’s closed on time and that the people cleared from the green without incident. He kept an eye on Martin, too, and the lady he was talking with. Athol thought that maybe he recognised her, though he also knew she was a visitor to Port Brokeferry. Sometimes the young leave and later, when years are passed, they come back again to see if it is still here and still as they remember it. Maybe she was once young in Port Brokeferry, Athol Stuart thought.

The light was on in the police station. He figured that Grace was busy putting in an hour’s cleaning up after him. He never checked. He never needed to check. Some people you could count on and Grace was one of those people.

Athol Stuart walked the length of the street. Not in any hurry. There were people he knew and people he didn’t. More visitors had come in today. No trains on a Sunday, but some had come on the only bus and some had come by car. There were more parked cars on the street than usual. One had edged up onto the pavement, a red Ford Fiesta, and he thought about leaving a note to draw attention to the small infringement of the rules.

He noted the time on the Victoria Hotel clock. It was later than he’d thought. Already the street lights were blinking on, blinking yellow and orange. A man stood back from the lights. He was smoking. Athol did not know who he was or why he was not going somewhere. Athol said good evening to him, not to be welcoming but just to let him know he had been seen.

Athol Stuart saw Guthrie closing up and he asked how business had been. Guthrie said it had been a good day, but from the way that he said it Athol Stuart did not think that he meant what he said.

He stopped outside Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop. He stopped to see Martin on the beach again, the picture of him. The window was altered, the things displayed in it different. Three smaller paintings hung where the other had been. ‘Sold already, sold over cheaply,’ Athol Stuart said, and he wondered what Martin would make of the picture being gone so soon.

He popped into ‘The Ship’. He did not intend to stay. He could see that his being there, in uniform, made a difference to some. They sat straighter in their chairs, lowered their voices so as not to draw attention, and looked over their drinks in his direction, to see what he was about, when all he was about was making sure that everything was as it should be.

He noted that Dodie Bredwell was not in his usual place again. Instead, Dodie sitting with Alice in a corner. Magnus was playing chess with Eileen, but they were moving the pieces according to their own rules and laughing and she was calling him cheat. And Lachlan Davie, already drunk, was with Christine again. He had his arm around her, supporting her, and she was nuzzling his neck, and Athol Stuart knew it was Sunday in ‘The Ship’.

Then back on the street again. And in the short time he’d been inside it had become dark outside. He walked back to the green. He tested the door of the police station and it was locked, as it should be. He checked that there were no lights on in old Tom’s and he saw Lillian busy in her kitchen, her curtains open so that she could make sure that Tom was alright – force of habit. Martin was petting the dogs outside the green trailer and making noises like a dove to them. Athol Stuart got him to his feet and they walked together to Martin’s door, and Martin told all about his day.

They were observed and did not know that they were. The same man that Athol had seen smoking earlier. He was more in the darkness than before, not seen this time but seeing. He watched Athol Stuart take Martin home. Watched the policeman wait for the light to go on in Martin’s house and for the door to shut. Then he waited until Athol had gone into his own house before he walked to his car parked on the street, a little up on the kerb.

He sat for a while without putting the key in the ignition. He sat just looking ahead of him. In the back of his car, under a grey cloth, was Mhairi's picture of Martin on the beach.

Shit!

(One of my favourite cartoon strips as a child was Oor Wullie and I can still see him smiling and sitting on an empty bucket, in my head I can... no shit! Ever nearer to the end of Port Brokeferry... and some stories reach some sort of end - as much as stories ever end.)

ST AUGUSTINE AND A BUCKET OF SHIT

Kelso had stepped into the church. It was not that he was thinking to pray. He did not believe in any of that, just as he did not believe in the palm readings that old May gave at the fair. She’d read his palm for free, said things he had heard her tell to others, that there was a girl in his life who was important and that the future was clearer and brighter. And she would be like the sun in his world, this girl who meant so much. Nothing about his being a father and a child between this girl and himself. Nothing about that or his thoughts all muddled. Storm-tossed is what it felt like in his head. All May had was just words for people to cling onto, and if they’d paid money to hear what old May had said, then those words took on a false importance for them.

Inside the church it was like an escape from everything. The air was cooler and still and there was the sense of being outside when you were in. Outside and alone, shut off from everyone and everything. ‘The peace that passeth human understanding.’ It was something he had heard when he was younger. A minister had come to the school and it was something he had said, standing tall on the stage at the front of the school hall. Kelso hadn’t thought he’d really been listening, but the words came back to him now.

Kelso crept to the far end of the church, feeling like he was trespassing, creeping like a thief. He sat in one of the wooden pews at the front and just sat, looking at the smallest movement of the coloured light across the floor and up the walls, and at the same time not really looking at all.

‘I sometimes just take the time to sit,’ said the minister. ‘It can help to get things straight in my head when I am troubled.’

Kelso had thought he was alone, but the voice of the minister did not startle him. He waited for the minister to speak again, expected that he would, that there’d be something about God and God listening and understanding and a confession of help wanted coaxed from him. They sat in quiet.

Then Kelso spoke. ‘It’s all just shit isn’t it?’ he said.

There was a quiet after his words. Time enough for the minister to consider his response.

‘I think St Augustine put it in just those words, something about life being a bucket of shit that we had to carry around with us always. The same for him as for everyone.’

Kelso was surprised at what the minister said. It wrong-footed him. Then he thought that maybe the minister had intended that it should.

‘What makes a man a saint if his life is a bucket of shit?’

Kelso expected that the minister would talk about God then, and the blessing of God, and what it is to pray, to really pray. Instead the minister just shrugged his shoulders.

‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? Nothing!’

‘What is it you are looking for?’ said the minister.

‘A way out. A way to go back to the start of things and not make the same mistakes.’

‘There was a girl I knew once. Before I became a minister. She was everything to me. And I thought it was the same for her. I thought we would last. That we could survive whatever the world threw at us. All Augustine’s shit.’ The minister laughed at that. ‘But clearly we didn’t last, otherwise she’d be here or I’d be there, wherever she is.’

Kelso did not get it. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

‘In here there is an escape of sorts. But it’s only temporary. You don’t want to stay in here. Cut off. Never seeing anyone else. You have to go out again, into the world. And you carry that bucket of shit with you and it never gets any lighter.’

Kelso hadn't come in for answers. He left without any. He did not turn towards Berlie's when he left the church. Instead he headed in the other direction, back along the road that had brought him into Port Brokeferry, and maybe he carried something heavy with him, and maybe it was, as Kelso'd said, and St Augustine had said, and the minister, too: maybe it was all just shit.

BWA

If a writer publishes a book that purports to educate others in the ways of deconstructing argument, you’d expect that writer to be very careful and clever about the arguments they hang up in the public domain. It all goes to credibility, don’t you think?

Yet, in a thinly veiled attack on The British Writers’ Award, one such writer recently made judgements based on comments 'read elsewhere' and jumped to big conclusions from these unverified comments. When some of the comments transpired to have little or no foundation in fact, this writer did not make appropriate apology or address the error. Instead this writer snipped and sniped at other perceived failings in the BWA.

This writer has some experience in the publishing industry, tells you so you know, and then makes bold declarations about what is possible and what impossible in publishing, but no satisfactory argument is given to persuade us of the truth of some of these pronouncements. Apparently a book cannot be edited adequately in the space of a month, it just cannot – I think it would be like a roomful of monkeys typing the complete works of Shakespeare in a morning.

This writer jumps from suspicions held to damning judgements. This writer performs all sorts of statistical manipulations of data that are crazy at best and at worst just fabulously wrong – mostly the manipulated data is wrong! The BWA states that they made little or no profit from last year’s awards competition, that what they did make from the entry fees collected funded the financial prize to the winner. This bold writer has them pocketing nearly a quarter of a million pounds.

I do not doubt this writer’s stated credentials, but I do question the writer’s arguments, we all should, and I do not accept that this writer is the absolute font of all wisdom on the subject of publishing. This writer is someone who has published a book which purports to be a handbook on how to construct intellectual argument, and how to punch holes in the arguments of others; I am a little surprised therefore at the weaknesses in the arguments of this writer.

Are You Looking?

(Here's another piece that brings us closer to the finish line of this Port Brokeferry project.)

EVERYONE’S LOOKING FOR SOMEONE

‘Have you seen Col?’

Berlie’s was open for the afternoon. They had to close before six-thirty, but a Sunday afternoon could be good business. Mad Martin had interrupted Wallace, who was himself asking after the whereabouts of someone. Wallace looked Mad Martin up and down before taking the time to answer the question he’d been asked.

‘I have not seen your Col. Or maybe I have, for how should I know? I do not know this Col. What does he look like?’

Mad Martin was confused for a moment. Like a cloud that passes quickly in front of the sun and the shadow changes everything for just the time that it takes to blink, so the confusion moved across Mad Martin’s face. Then:

‘He looks like Col.’

And Wallace laughed, like he’d been beaten in a game by a child. There was only sense in what the kilted man had said. And before Wallace could ask his next question, Mad Martin was onto someone else and asking if they had seen Col.

Evelyn and Morag were there, at Berlie’s. They’d gone for a drink again, as they had after work the day before. Morag was keeping an eye on Evelyn, making sure that she wasn’t about to throw herself at the first available young man. They were on the dodgems, sitting together in the one car and laughing together. Bran from The Silver Herring was there, too, and they were pretending to make space between them for him. Like an invitation it looked.

‘Where have you been all my life?’ Evelyn cried. And all the words seemed joined together she said them so fast.

It was the drink talking, Bran could see that, but he kept looking back over his shoulder, to see if it was something else, too. He saw the man he thought of as Berlie, skip between the cars, and lean in close to the two girls from ‘Christine Cuts Hair’ and take their money for their next shot.

‘I was wondering,’ said Wallace to Evelyn and Morag, ‘if you had maybe seen the boy, Kelso. He works here, and as you can see here he isn’t. Have you seen him at all?’

Evelyn said something about Kelso having crawled back under the rock he’d crawled out of and something about good riddance and how he was a bastard and some other things besides, all of them worse than the last.

Wallace thought he understood and he skipped quickly from their car to the next. Morag took Evelyn’s hand in hers and said something into her ear and their attention was back on Bran and where he had been all Evelyn’s life, and they were soon laughing again.

‘Have you see Col?’ said Mad Martin and this time he was asking a lady from the Victoria Hotel, the one he’d seen sitting in the dark of ‘The Bobbing Boat’ café with Guthrie. ‘Have you see Col?’ he said again.

Moira shook her head. ‘No Martin, I am sorry but I have not seen Col? Is he lost?’

And again the cloud of confusion passed briefly across his face.

‘I know you,’ Mad Martin said. ‘I know you from before.’

Moira smiled at Mad Martin. It was, she thought, good to be in a place where she was known and remembered. That was what home should be, she felt, and Martin was just the someone she'd been looking for this afternoon. 'And I know you, Martin,' she said. And the way that she said it was kind and soft so that Martin did not walk away from her. Not for the rest of the afternoon. And every little while he turned to her and asked again if she had seen Col. And every time Moira smiled and said again that she was sorry but she had not seen Col.

Sinnie and Callum and Doves

(Here's another PB piece, and I am fond of Sinnie as I am of Corinne, and Callum, too, even though some may have thought his looking through windows was a bit sinister at first... turns out he is as 'nice as ninepence'.)

DOVES ARE SO MUCH MORE RESPECTABLE THAN OWLS

‘I never know,’ said Sinnie, ‘about Sunday. I never can tell if it’s the start of the week or the end. On the seventh day He rested, it says, and so I think it should be the end. But from here we look forward so it feels like the start, too. Isn’t it so that the Jews treat Saturday as the day of rest? They call it the Sabbath and they do not do business on that day. And that being the case would make Sunday the first day of the new week. So you see how confusing it is?’

Callum wasn’t sure how they had got onto this subject. He’d dropped in with a granary loaf and had accepted Sinnie’s offer of a cup of tea. ‘The days fold into each other,’ he said. ‘My days do. That’s what I find. Especially at this time of the year, for I am up every morning the same in the summer, and the shop is open Sunday mornings just exactly as every other day. No rest for me. So the days, my days, fold one into another, like dough when it is kneaded, folded into itself.’

‘Precisely. And so it is that Sunday doesn’t feel like the end,’ said Sinnie. ‘Not to me and not to you. For me, today, it feels like a new start. Yes, that’s how it feels to me. And maybe that is all the explanation that is needed.’

It wasn’t quite what Callum had meant, but he said that he was glad that she felt that way and that he’d been worried, not seeing her in the shop.

Sinnie leaned forward in her chair, and she touched Callum’s arm. ‘You do a good job watching over us all, Callum. Yes, you do. None of us getting any younger and there’s the comfort of you watching over all of us in the street. That’s being a good neighbour.’

Callum drained his cup and set it back in its saucer on the table. Sinnie fetched her purse and offered to pay for the bread that he’d brought. He waved away the offer and said she could maybe treat herself to extra scones next time she was in the shop and that would be money in his till.

‘That’s funny,’ Sinnie said. ‘You saying that. For there has been an end to the dreams of owls and a new dream this morning. It is something of a relief, I can tell you. Do you see what I mean? How it feels like the start and not the end. And today I dreamed of doves, not flying like the owls, but strutting like old men in frock coats, only their coats were white, and they wore shoes with spats, and they were dipping their heads, like bowing, and pecking at breadcrumbs on the ground. And there was one flew to my gloved hand and I broke a scone into pieces for it to feed on. Do you see? So maybe I will treat myself, and the birds in my garden, too, and some extra scones added to my order, if you please. Callum, I can tell you this in confidence, but I am a lot happier with this new dream. Doves are so much more respectable than owls, don’t you think?’

Callum had not ever considered the ranking of birds according to respectability. But it was easier to agree, and so he nodded and said, 'Exactly so.' Then he got up to go. He thanked Sinnie for the tea and moved towards the door. He stopped, as if he was considering something. He wanted to say how he missed old Tom and how the old man's passing was like an end of sorts, and that being the case meant today felt like the start of something different. But in the end he said nothing, not wanting to dampen Sinnie's mood, said nothing except that he wished Sinnie a good afternoon, and left.

The last we'll hear of Corinne in PB

(As a child when walking to the shops I made up games to pass the time and the walking. I raced oncomers to landmarks between us, but I couldn't run, could only walk, and walking fast so my legs were wobbly. Of course, they didn't ever know my small victories, or my failures. I play those silly games still. Not walking now, but writing. I set myself a target this year: 30 competition hits. We are in December and I heard this week of my 29th: onto another waiting shortlist. Only one more result to come in for me in December, so we'll see. Here's more from the ending of PB - and I do like Corinne.)

THE SCHOOLGIRL CORINNE LOOKS FOR MONDAY-MONDAY

The day drags its feet. That’s how it seems, this long slow Sunday. No different from any other Sunday, except what she wrote in her book. About a boy called Munro and he took her hand in hers. And now it is an age till Monday comes, and she will see him again. And she wonders till then, all the long slow day, wonders if he will take her hand again.

She keeps the door to her bedroom closed. There is music playing in the room and she is reading from the book she took from the library. And she turns to a poem called ‘To A Child Dancing in the Wind’. She holds the book in her hand, her two arms raised, and she dances, there in the small space of her room, for it says ‘Dance there upon the shore’, the first thing that it says, and it’s like he is telling her to do what she does, this poet called William. And with the window wide and the air moving in her room and the sound of the sea, faintly, and the gulls crying somewhere, it is like she could be the child. ‘What need have you to care’ says the poet, ‘For wind or water’s roar’. And Corinne, her yellow hair flying behind her as she dances, knows that he does not mean wind and he does not mean water. It is something about the buffeting of life and the poet is old and has suffered rejection from a Maudlin woman. ‘And tumble out your hair,’ she reads, and she shakes her head and her hair. ‘That the salt drops have wet’ – and she thinks of tears then, in those ‘salt drops’, and she does not make sense of what she has read, not with those tears, but it matters not to her, for she knows poetry can be like that: one moment knowing and understanding and the next lost in the words on the page.

‘Being young you have not known

The fool’s triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won.’

And she stops then, her dancing, and she is suddenly afraid, and it is something about what he has said, this sad man whose poetry book she stole from the library. And Corinne wonders if Munro will take her hand on Monday, if he ever will again. And she recalls that Mr Bredwell’s name for the boy is Monday-Monday, and Munro does not know why, no one knows, and maybe there is no reason. Except there is a song that she has heard. Not a new song. And the first line is ‘Monday Monday, so good to me’ and that lifts her for a moment, and then she thinks that there’s another line in it, the old song, something about not knowing if he ‘would still be here with me’.

But Corinne is being silly with such thoughts, and she knows that she is. The last two lines of the poem on the page in front of her say as much:

‘What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?’

And there is no reason, for Munro took her hand in his, and it was enough. That's what she wrote in her book. And the day is long, this slow dragging Sunday, and Corinne looks for Monday-Monday and knows it will be good to her when it come. And then she is dancing again and her hair tossing and she has dropped the book of poems on the floor of her room.

Another visit to PB - not many left!

(Been busy clearing my head of stories this week, getting them down on paper. Been tied up with so many projects this past six months that it is good to be exploring other stories that just stand by themselves and are not part of anything bigger. That feels good. Here's another Port Brokeferry piece.)

BLAIR DOESN’T DO DREAMS

Everyone in Port Brokeferry gets something through the mail. And Blair delivers them all. Postcards, letters, birthday cards and parcels, bills and circulars. Not on Sundays, of course, or on post office holidays. But everyone at sometime has something delivered. From one end of the village to the other; from the green at the last reach one way to as far out the other as Jess’s Ship and Pamela with her small gifts for him when she has been gone. There’s even mail for Berlie’s when it’s here, two weeks each year, and he hands those letters and small packets and filled orders for parts and bulbs, to the man called Wallace who is in charge. Blair even delivers to himself. Not posting them through his own door, that would be odd. But laying the new mail on the edge of his kitchen table until he has made himself tea and can sit with time to read what has been delivered.

Everyone in Port Brokeferry, except one. And Blair does not deliver anything to her, never has, for it is her job to sort through the mail and so anything that is for her she sets aside and does not slip into his postbag.

Blair does not always remember his dreams. Is usually in too much of a rush to get into the day and to collect the new mail that is to be delivered, door to every door. He thinks he maybe doesn’t do dreams. Would say as much if you asked him. ‘Not like Sinnie,’ he’d say. ‘Sinnie and her dreams all clear pictures and she recalls every word spoken and the colours and the smells.’ No, Blair would tell you, he does not dream.

Except he does. He wakes on Sundays and holidays and he has slept later than usual. And he lies half in sleep and half awake, and he thinks about the day ahead and the different it will be from all his other days. And he remembers his dreams then, bits of them. Only he does not believe they are dreams. Thoughts are what they are, he thinks. Fanciful thoughts on what could be and what isn’t.

But in truth they are snatches of things Blair has dreamed. And in one of his dreams he is knocking on Izzy’s door and handing her a letter. He pictures her standing with one hand outstretched, waiting for the letter he has taken from out of his postbag. And she says she has a secret and she asks him if he wants to know.

Blair holds out the letter for her to take. He shakes his head. He knows secrets about all the people in Port Brokeferry. He knows things he wishes he didn’t. He knows the minister loved a girl with blond hair before he came to the church and the minister sees that girl in Corinne Downs and he fights against what he sees. He knows that Callum looks in through windows when people are sleeping, and that he spends the longest time looking in on Margaret, his wife, turning and turning in her dreams. And he knows that Grace has waited for the boy called Kelso, a whole year she has waited, and he knows why that is.

‘It is a secret about me,’ says Izzy. In the dream, that’s what she says. ‘It is a good secret.’

And Blair knows about the order Izzy made, for a bottle of German cologne, and he knows about Johannes and Izzy’s mother and the years of postcards from a place called Koln and small parcels that stopped coming.

And Blair says he does not want to know the secret that Izzy wants to tell him. Instead he hands her the letter and something else.

And beside his bed, in the waking real world, is a small bottle of perfume that Pamela gave him, one of her small gifts to him, a bottle shaped like a cresting wave in frosted glass. She gets lots of free samples and she thought maybe Blair could gift this bottle to a girl he likes. And in the dream he hands it to Izzy, wrapped up like the small parcels that used to come for Izzy's mother. But only in the dream and in the part of the dream that the waking Blair does not remember. So the bottle sits by his bed, undelivered.

Less than ten pieces left to post!

(Onto another longlist in a competition and outside it's been snowing again. Have only just recovered from last winter! Ho hum! Hope to have this whole Port Brokeferry posted before Xmas, so here's another piece.)

HUNTLY MAKING SENSE OF WHAT HE FEELS

I see only the space where she was. At the window. Looking out of mine and into hers. Looking as I have always looked. For as long as years on years, and I have not ever counted them and so they seem without number. But she is gone from her window, when my back was turned. Only the space and a memory of her standing there. And I miss her.

I should be happy for her. Isn’t it what I have wanted for Alice Greyling? If not me then someone else. That’s every thought I had for her. And I gave up waiting, so why did it take so long for her? Find someone, I said in those first letters I wrote. Find someone to make Alice smile. Someone to stop Alice looking out to the empty sea and dreaming lost dreams and getting older faster than anyone should. Find someone, I wrote. And now she has, and I should be happy.

And I am. I must be. I am happy for Alice Greyling. The girl and the woman. Glimpses of Alice laughing these last days, and the years have slipped from her, and clocks can be turned back, it seems. Not all the way back, but a little. Alice no longer pale, no more the ghost of who she was. Instead a brightness in her and in all her steps and they seem like skips, like a young girl hop-scotching her way to and from school. And I am happy for her.

I know him, too. The man who has done this for Alice. The man who has rescued her from deep dark waters. He is a teacher, just as she is. Not from Port Brokeferry, but here time enough we think he belongs. Always laughing, was Dodie Bredwell. Never saw him but he was laughing, that’s what it seemed. And there did not appear to be a serious thought in his head. Only now there has been a change in him, too. Like he has traded some of his laughter with Alice, and taken some of her seriousness for himself. I have seen them together, hand in hand, a tight hold on each other, and Alice skipping and Dodie skipping after.

And I am happy for Alice. It’s everything she deserves. And more than I could give her. More than I give my wife, I think, with some regret. Stuck as I am. In this chair, and the wheels can turn, but it’s not like skipping. And it’s not what she thought she was getting when she married me. Lucky is what I am. Not because I love two women, but because one loves me. She has offered to take me out. It will do me some good, she says. And it will. I think that tomorrow I will take up her offer. And I will wear a brighter face and be brighter, knowing what I have. And no more Alice-letters and no more standing in my life looking into hers. I am happy for Alice even though I miss her, too. But now she is living again, and it is time for all those around her to be living, too.

And then and there, I feel something, a skipping of my heart. And I never thought to be so sensible and I laugh at that.

200th post!

(This is my 200th post on this blog and the Port Brokeferry piece below might make it seem as though I had planned for it to be posted on this day... all just a neat and clever-seeming coincidence. )

ROSE’S IDEA AND IT COULD JUST WORK

The telephone interrupted her from her work. She thought of it as work, what she was doing, and she was irritated at having to stop. She considered letting it ring, but then thought she should not. It turned out it was her sister, Carrie, checking on how she was.

‘I’m fine, really I am. Better than fine. The best.’

Carrie said that she was thinking she’d come out sometime mid-week. Just for a day. If Rose wanted. If she was feeling the need of some company. Carrie thought she could spare a day, or maybe two, and it would be good to see the place again.

‘It would be lovely to see you, Carrie. Really it would. And you would love it here. Not sure if it’s how you remember it. Different, I think, from how it is in the pictures we’ve got, but it’s still lovely. I’m enjoying the peace and being away from everything. There’s really no need for you to come. Not if it means putting yourself to any trouble. I am writing again.’

Rose hoped that last thing might dissuade her sister from visiting. At least for the moment. Rose had plans, and a rhythm to her day that she was enjoying. And the writing was going well.

‘Yes, almost as soon as I arrived. In the notebook you gave me. No, that doesn’t make them your stories…Just short pieces, but then I had an idea and I am quite excited about it. A bit early to be saying that, maybe, but I am…What’s my idea? Well, it’s being here that has given me the inspiration, being here in Port Brokeferry. I wrote something about Uncle B… no, not biographical, something imagined. Yes, you were in it and mum and me. The photograph you sent gave me the start. And it was the first I had written for a while and, though it was only a short piece, I thought it was not that bad… No, Carrie, that’s not the idea. It just gave me a nudge in a particular direction. I immediately wrote a second thing. Something more up to date. About someone else I’d seen in Port Brokeferry, and it was another short piece, like a sketch, and I wrote a title on the front of my notebook then. It just came to me. In a flash, like it can do when you are writing. And I thought I had something.’

Rose was excited and talking fast and waving her free hand in the air like she was painting a picture or drawing music from an orchestra, and she was out of breath.

‘What’s the title? I’ve called it ‘Postcards from Port Brokeferry’. And the idea is to write short pieces, about the people. Yes, short like a postcard. A hundred of them. Maybe more. I want to populate a whole imagined village, a place like Port Brokeferry, with a hotel and a café and fishermen’s cottages that can be rented for the summer, and each piece adding to the whole, but each piece short, so that you can read it on its own and it still is something, but taken together it will be like a large jigsaw that shows the place. Like making my own ‘Milkwood’. All voices and people dreaming and living. Yes, Dylan Thomas. And a whole village captured in small bits.’

Carrie said that she was thrilled to hear that Rose was writing again.

‘I think it could just work,’ said Rose.

Carrie asked how the weather had been and was she eating properly and did she need anything sent from the city, maybe some books to read or her mail fetched from her apartment.

Rose told Carrie not to fuss. She was fine. She really was. The doctors had been right, she said, and the place was a tonic, all the tonic she needed, and she was writing again, and that was something.

And Carrie agreed that it was.

Nearly

(Some of my flashes have been doing quite well recently in out-of-the-way places. But a few fuller stories are beginning to make a noise in my head again. I am on the home stretch of two projects - this Port Brokeferry thing, and another project that may find its place here in the future. For now another PB piece and the end is just that bit nearer.)

AS LONG AS DOCTOR KERR IS PAYING

They have driven along the coast. Sunday instead of Saturday. That hasn’t happened before. But then everything will be different from here on in. That’s what he thinks. He has written the letter, in pen, and the words all sitting in their place on the lines of the page, but the words all loop and swirl – hard enough for Marjory to read and she has been reading what he has written for years. Marjory typed it up and he signed the bottom and it was sent in like that, his penned copy filed away.

‘I regret to inform you of my intention to resign.’

Marjory has pulled off the road and parked her morris traveller where they can take in the sea, spread out before them. And if he closes his eyes the sea is all there is, like the car is become a boat and they are adrift on the water. They have both wound the windows down and they are drinking tea that Marjory poured from a flask. They will get out and walk in a while. For now they are just sitting, listening to the breathy rush of the waves and the small wind whispers in the grass and the noise of Doctor Kerr breathing through his nose.

‘And what of this?’ says Doctor Kerr.

Marjory does not know what he means. She leans forward and looks out of the window in case there is something there that he refers to. The beach is empty and the sand brushed flat like it is new.

‘What of what?’ she says.

‘I don’t know how many years it’s been. Indeed, I can’t remember what it was before. You and me, driving to a quiet place, and a walk to stretch the legs, and sometimes lunch in a place where we are not known and people looking at us, thinking we are man and wife though you are younger. What of this when there is no working week to escape from?’

Marjory knows he is worried. He did not speak on their drive and that was not how it usually was. She knew he was thinking things through. All the changes that were just a stone’s throw ahead of him. Maybe he was regretting the sending of the letter. And wondering now what he would do with his time when it was done. And how the days, weeks and months would be mapped out. And maybe who would make his cups of tea through the day and fetch his stick from where he had misplaced it. They were like husband and wife, that’s what she thought sometimes.

'What of this?' he says again.

‘Depends who’s buying the lunch,’ she says, trying to make light of it. And she grins at nothing at particular.

And Doctor Kerr does laugh. And he cradles the plastic cup in his two hands and tastes the plastic in his tea.

‘But seriously,’ he says.

Marjory pats his leg and tells him not to worry. She says she will still be around. He can’t be cleaning his house without her help and he’s too old to be learning to cook. And Saturdays or Sundays they will go out for a drive the same as always.

‘I’d miss this,’ she says. ‘And my days will need to be filled too. We’ll face this together, Doctor Kerr.’

He clicks his teeth together and nods his head. ‘Together,’ he says.

‘But about those lunches and who’s paying,’ she says. ‘I think we should talk about that.’

He laughs again. They both laugh.

Church in PB - after all, it's Sunday!

(Keeping going with Port Brokeferry... in case you have not followed this thread: Lynn works at the fair and she has been seen with Kyle Downs. Elspeth, Kyle's sister, visited Lynn to ask her to back off and let the man go back to his wife and family... here's the fallout of that.)

ELSPETH’S CHIFFON SCARF

Elspeth accompanied Susan Downs to church. It was something that they did from time to time, and Elspeth thought her sister-in-law needed a little extra support just now. They met outside the house and that was normal. Kyle was not one for church and prayers, never had been, and so they did not seek to include him in their morning. Susan looked bright enough, Elspeth thought. Said she’d slept well when Elspeth asked. Then she remarked on the weather, and the smell of Callum’s baking, and she noticed Mad Martin dropping breadcrumbs on the beach and gulls at his feet.

Elspeth had to be more direct. Susan was giving nothing away. ‘And how is it with you, Susan?’ she said. ‘How is it really?’

Susan looked at Elspeth, taking the measure of her question and seeing at once what she meant.

‘Kyle was home last night,’ Susan said. ‘Crept in, he did, trying not to be heard. Made a bed for himself on the sofa. Slept in his clothes. Slept fitfully by the look of him this morning.’

Elspeth thought that was all good. She said something of the sort and made a mental note to herself to do something for the woman called Lynn, something to show her thanks. She had a chiffon scarf that she’d never worn. It would hide the mark on the woman’s neck, Elspeth thought.

Susan was not sure that it was all good, that’s what she said. About Kyle being back. Wasn’t sure that any of it was good. She confessed that she’d already been calculating what it would be without him there. No Kyle, just her and Corinne. ‘It would be something harder, maybe, especially for the girl, at first, but something better, too. No walking on eggshells for either of us, no creeping around things, scared to say anything and not knowing if he is coming home or where he is if he doesn’t. And people in the street not knowing where to look when they meet me, or if they should speak, and what they would say if they did speak. She is old enough she knows what is what, Corinne does. I am not sure it wouldn’t be better, for Corinne as much as for me, with Kyle not there.’

Elspeth hadn’t expected that, hadn’t seen any of that coming. She felt a little uncomfortable at what she had done in seeing the blond woman at the fair and so did not mention it.

‘I’ve taken him back before, Elspeth. You know that, and given him another chance. Tried to forgive him, too, and that was harder. And now this, and he thinks he can come back, quiet and as quick as thought, and everything will be as it was.’

‘I’m sure he doesn’t think that, Susan.’

The minister was at the door of the church. He shook the hands of the men and women and made small observations to show that he knew them and thought of them, everyone. And they smiled back at him and passed on into the cool of the church.

‘Ah, Mrs Downs and Elspeth. Good day to you both.’

Elspeth wondered why the minister still called Susan Mrs Downs and called Elspeth by her name.

‘I am so glad to see you both,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Downs, I wonder if you could pass on my thanks to your daughter. For being with Lillian yesterday. It was very good of her.’

Susan said that she would and she and Elspeth went inside.

They took their seats and when Susan spoke again her voice dropped to a whisper.

‘I don’t want to be bitter, Elspeth. And he’s your brother and all. But maybe there’s a line should be drawn under everything and something new started. For him, too. It is wrong what we have together and we can all see that now.’

Elspeth made no reply. She bowed her head as though she was praying. But she wasn’t. She was thinking about her brother and the trouble he was. Susan was maybe right. Maybe it was time for things to be different.

The organ began playing. Elspeth looked up. The light spilling through the stained glass window was split into all colours. Like there was a rainbow thrown in pieces on the floor of the church. Elspeth thought then that she wouldn't give Lynn the chiffon scarf.

Sunday Breakfast in PB

(No news today. My Plan is to have the last of these Port Brokeferry pieces hanging here before we reach Christmas, the whole project complete. So here's another one.)

BREAKFAST WITH GUTHRIE

He let her into the café and then locked the door so that they could be alone and not disturbed. He kept the lights off too, not drawing attention to the place. He pulled out her chair so that she could sit, and unfolded a napkin and laid it on her lap. Guthrie was showing off. She could see that and she laughed.

‘It’s like a real date,’ she said.

‘Something we missed out on,’ he said.

He’d made coffee and there were fresh scones from Callum’s bakery – ‘still warm,’ she remarked – and grapefruit halves and fresh orange juice. And of course there were the flowers in the glass tumbler. She could see that he’d gone to some trouble.

‘I’ve thought about this place,’ she said. ‘Over the years. And wondered if it was still here and if you were still here. It’s funny being back and it looks the same and it looks different, too. And Eileen, she reminds me of myself as a girl. And you like your dad, slipping extra silver into the tips jar when she isn’t looking. The same but different.’

‘I’ve made some changes,’ said Guthrie. ‘And it is a good little business. Better in the summer than the rest of the year. But we do alright. I left for a while. Like you. Worked for a sour-faced man serving fancy drinks to men in suits and women in pearls. But I missed the sea, the sound of the gulls and the smell of the air. And I missed Port Brokeferry and the people here. So I came back.’

She understood. She said she did.

‘And now you’ve come back, too,’ he said.

Guthrie made to take her hand and she shrank from his touch. It was unexpected and caught him by surprise.

‘It’s different for me, Guthrie,’ she said.

She looked pale. She looked pained. Just briefly. Like she was revealed for a moment. Smaller, too, it seemed. Guthrie was dealing with his own small hurt and so did not notice. And then she was smiling again, the pretence resumed.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Breakfast with Guthrie was not meant to be like this. There was a reason she had made the arrangement and it was not for this.

‘No, it’s not you Guthrie. All this, it’s sweet and I should have come back sooner, and if I had then who knows, it could have been something else and not what it is.’ She did not look at him. Kept her eyes focussed on the plate in front of her. ‘Only there’s something you don’t know and it is why I came back and I never expected to find you here. I don’t know what I expected, really. Wasn’t thinking straight. And then seeing the name out front and you behind the counter and the girl dancing between the tables – it was like looking in on myself and how I once was.’

Guthrie did not understand. She was smiling. It did not quite fit with what she was saying.

‘Like I was not really here, except as an observer of who I once was.’

Guthrie waited for some sense to be made of what she was saying.

‘I’m sorry, Guthrie. None of this is what I want to say. It is hard for me. And I’m not getting it right, even though I have thought about this since I arrived back in Port Brokeferry.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Guthrie. ‘I shouldn’t have… it was silly… to think that you…’

She leaned across the table and pressed one finger to his lips. Like they were actors in a film, and she held the gesture as though she was waiting for the director to yell ‘cut and wrap’.

‘I am not well,’ she said. ‘There were doctors, specialists. So many of them, and they said I am not well. And it’s serious and there is not the time I thought I had. Guthrie, there is not the time. And why I have come back, it is not to do with us, with you. It is something simpler than that. It is the feeling of being home and that is a place where things begin and end. And so I am come home.’

He did not know what to say so he said nothing.

'And this,' she said, trying again to bring it all back to the moment. She waved her hand to take in all that Guthrie had done, the table and the plates and the flowers and everything. 'This feels like being home. There is time at least for this.'

Still Sunday, Still Port Brokeferry

(Apparently I get a mention in the Tehran Times and other cultural publications... for a competition win I had this year... now that feels pretty weird. Here we go with another Sunday Port Brokeferry piece.)

TALKING ABOUT GRACE

The baby had kept Grace awake. That’s what she told her mother, though Helen had not herself heard a thing. Grace said she’d not get up yet, if that was alright, and she’d try to catch up on the sleep she missed. Helen thought Grace had been crying. Something about her eyes. It was hard being a single mother so young, Helen thought, even with the support of her parents. Helen said she’d see to things and she’d take the baby with her to church and maybe that would help.

Over breakfast Helen and Edwin talked.

‘Something is not right,’ Helen said. ‘With Grace. Something is wrong. I don’t know what and I can’t explain how I know. But I know.’

Edwin was feeding the baby from a warmed bottle.

‘There’s been a difference in her these past few weeks. A good difference. Like she was getting on top of things. More like herself. Haven’t you noticed? Like she’s been building up to something. Moving towards a better place.’

Edwin hadn’t noticed, but he said that he had.

‘She’s been taking more of an interest in how she looks. Dressing nice and wearing make-up. Her hair nice, too. And a lightness in her. Even more so these past few days. Smiling, even when she did not know she was being watched. It was the old Grace back again. That’s what it felt like. Didn’t you think so?’

Edwin said that he did. He was looking into the baby’s face, so that it was like he wasn’t talking to Helen. He was nodding and smiling at the feeding baby. Helen had read somewhere that it was important to do this, had told Edwin what she’d read. Something to do with the baby getting so it recognises the faces in its small ken and feeling safe.

‘And now there’s been a change,’ said Helen. ‘Sudden. Like the bottom has fallen out of her world again. Couldn’t get anything out of her yesterday, but there was a difference in her. Like a weight is on her again. I just don’t know what it is.’

Edwin set the empty milk bottle on the table, wiped the baby’s mouth with a white cotton cloth, and passed the baby to Helen.

‘She’s been out, too. Walking, she said. Walking out by the cliffs. She was seen. Yesterday. And a lad with her.’

Helen was supporting the baby in a seated position and patting the baby’s back.

‘That’s it then,’ said Edwin. ‘There’s your answer. Boys! Boys is always trouble. And it’s a bit harder with her having the baby. She must have told him and he’s maybe run a mile. If I was sixteen and a lass told me the same, I know I’d have run. Like a frighted rabbit. You wouldn’t have seen me for dust.’

‘That’s not a help, Edwin. Don’t you go saying that in Grace’s hearing. It’s hard enough what she has to look forward to without you saying something like that.’

‘I was just saying,’ he said.

‘Well don’t.’

The baby burped and Helen said what a good girl she was and patted her back some more.

Edwin sat back in his chair. He was thinking. He wanted to say how good things had been on The Silver Herring yesterday and how Kerry had helped and seemed in a brighter place. And about the Finn story he had told and the children all listening and Mad Martin and a woman staying at the Victoria Hotel – a woman he sort of recognised, but wasn’t sure from where. He wanted to tell Helen some of this. But he wasn’t sure if they’d finished talking about Grace, so he kept a quiet between them.

Helen was turning over how things were and without realising it she was moving closer to solving the puzzle. She wondered who this boy was, the one Grace had been out walking with. She thought maybe he was with the fair. There was a boy there, about Grace’s age. And after all, the fair arriving had occasioned Grace’s wearing her new yellow dress, like it was the reason she had ordered it from the catalogue, just so she could wear it when the fair was in Port Brokeferry.

The baby burped again.

Ever nearer the end

(Still Sunday in Port Brokeferry and we move ever closer to the end of the project ... and already there is another project taking some sort of shape... that feels good (sh!). For now we have a few 'chapters of PB left before Sunday is done.)

LIKE IZZY WAS A CHILD AGAIN

It was like she was a child again. That was what she thought. There was singing coming from her mother’s room and it had been a long time since that was so. Seemed to Izzy that her mother singing had not been heard since her father had gone and now there was a song hung on the day.

‘What’s put a dance in your step?’ her father used to say. ‘What’s set all your words to music? Your thoughts all kicking and pirouetting?’

Izzy wondered if he knew. About the soldier boy still writing to his wife. About Johannes sending cologne-gifts from a place called Ursulaplatz. Izzy recalled a day when the house smelled of cologne, always more in the air when a new bottle had arrived, and always a song from her mother on those days, too. And Izzy crept through to her parents’ bedroom this remembered day. The door was not full-closed and Izzy heard her father say that he loved her and how much he loved her. And that smell, he loved that, too. And Izzy put her face to the crack of the open door and she saw them. Her father standing behind her mother and his arms holding her, close as close. They were looking out of the window and rocking gently from side to side, like they were dancing.

Izzy left her bed and still in her nightdress she tiptoed through to her mother. And it was like being six again, for Izzy smelled 4711, breathed it in. And it had been a long time since it was like that. And like before the door of her mother’s bedroom was not quite closed and like the child she had been Izzy peeped in on her mother.

Izzy’s mother stood at the window looking out on the day. No father there. But it was like there was: Izzy’s mother wrapped in her own embrace and swaying, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. And Izzy thought again that it looked like dancing, like it had looked all those years back.

‘I love that smell,’ said Izzy. And she said it quiet, not wanting to break the spell. ‘I love that smell.’

The singing stopped, but Izzy’s mother continued with her dance.

‘Your father loved it, too,’ she said.

Izzy knew that.

‘Said it was always summer when he smelled that cologne on my neck. Or maybe it was Johannes who said that and I misremember.’

And there it was, the shock of his name in Izzy’s mother’s mouth. She had never heard that before and the six year old child in her started.

‘It is a German cologne. From a place called Koln. But then you know what I am telling you otherwise I would not be wearing it again. And your father loved that smell and said that he did. And I have missed it, as I have missed your father, as I still miss him. But this morning it is like he is back again. Here in the room with me. Funny that smells can do that.’

Izzy held her breath. Stood at her mother’s bedroom door and tried to make sense of what was her mother’s words.

'Thank you, Izzy,' said her mother.

Port Brokeferry - another Sunday piece

(Port Brokeferry - another piece.)

ANOTHER CROSS ON THE CALENDAR

Athol Stuart scored a cross through another day on his office calendar. Another week behind him and another one beginning. He was not wishing the time away, or looking forward to a different time. Just a cross put through the day so he knew where he was. He noted the day, the month and the number. It meant something. He tried not to think about it.

Athol Stuart made his own tea today. Helen did not work on a Sunday and Grace only put in an hour at the end of the day. If he was being honest, he didn’t need Grace on a Sunday either, but she had the baby to think on and it was a small thing that he did in giving her the extra hour. Ordinarily it was a quieter day for him, too. But the two weeks of the fair being in Port Brokeferry meant that he had to be seen. Here and about, just keeping an eye on things and making sure people knew he was there.

It was busier than last year, he thought. Quickly busy, the season just starting. More visitors than in other years was what was being reported. That was good news for the town. The hotel would do well out of it and the small businesses, and all the cottages at the front had bookings for the summer. But strangers did not always understand about Martin and his search for Col. They pulled their children near, thinking he might mean them harm with his questions and questions. They sometimes told him to go away and later reported Martin to Athol. They said they did not want any trouble, and maybe he meant well, only there was no one with him.

They were a little better after Athol had explained and after he had reassured them that he was no threat. ‘It’s just his way,’ he said. ‘Gentle as a child really. Gentler.’

Then they were all relieved smiles and ‘sorry to have troubled you’.

‘Only he keeps asking if we’ve seen Col? Over and over. Asking each one of us, and he won’t take no for an answer. Asks us again when he next sees us. Who is this Col?’

It was better if Athol was on the street, and Martin not too far from where he was. And there’d been some disturbance last night with Lachlan Davie. At the fair and he was bending the ear of the blond woman there, Lynn or Lynnie. Not that he was meaning any harm either. Just a bit full of the drink is what Lachlan was. And there’s something between him and Christine from the salon. And he was trying to tell the Lynn woman, asking for her advice. That’s how drunk he was, asking for advice from one such as her. Like anything she said would make sense. Athol would have to look out for Lachlan, too. And Susan’s Kyle, looking out for him as well; he was with the same woman the other day, that Lynn, his trousers undone and lipstick on his shirt.

Athol redrew the cross through the day that was yesterday and shook his head, like he could shake away all the nonsense of Kyle and Lachlan and the visitors not knowing how to be with Martin. And all the nonsense that was in the Port Brokeferry streets at this time of the year, a sort of madness. It was the same every year, as far back as memory. When it was not the fair, there were dances to see out the winter and bring in the summer, and the music of pipes and drums raising the blood, and the young men were daft with drink and the girls not so careful as they should be. And today, this new day, was the anniversary of something, yet another madness, one that Athol tried not to think on.

He drained his tea. He buttoned his jacket and spit-patted his hair flat. Then he went out to watch over another summer Sunday in Port Brokeferry

Port Brokeferry - and Sunday unfurls

(Another Sunday piece from PB)

SOMETHING OF AN EXPLANATION FROM MR STRUAN COURTALD

He made a show of looking her over. Just as he had at the start, when it was all new to her and his approval was sought then every morning. Her skirt was the right length and freshly pressed. Her blouse was white and smelled of fabric softener. Her hair was brushed back from her face and a plain black band held it in place. She was not wearing eye make-up or blusher, and her ears were hung with simple silver and pearl stud earrings, something she had bought with her first pay packet. No other jewellery except for the watch he had given for her birthday.

‘Perfect,’said Mr Struan Courtald.

‘Thank you,’ said Sharon, and she dipped her knees a little so that she almost curtsied.

Then there was an awkwardness between them. Sharon was not sure if she was dismissed, and Mr Struan Courtald was stuck on how he should continue, for there was something he wanted to say to her.

‘Is that all, Mr Courtald?’ she said.

He looked at her and considered sending her back to the kitchen without any further word. But then he recalled the discussion he had had with Sharon’s mother the day before and he steeled himself.

‘Mr Courtald?’

‘There is something, Sharon. If you have a minute.’

They were interrupted by the sound of someone coming down the stairs. Mr Struan Courtald checked his watch against the clock behind the desk. It was early for a guest to be about. The lights were not yet on in the breakfast room. And it was a Sunday. Mrs Moira Fairlie said them a quick good morning and hurried on out of the hotel before Mr Struan Courtald found the wits enough to hold open the front door for her.

The quiet it was when Mrs Moira Fairlie had gone felt heavier and Mr Struan Courtald did not quite know where he was and what he had said and not said.

‘I do have a minute, Mr Courtald,’ Sharon prompted.

He took up his position behind the desk again. He fiddled with his pen and looked down at the book on the desk.

‘It was something you said, Sharon. Yesterday. I wanted to make sure that you understood. That you had not got the wrong end of how things are.’

Sharon had been expecting this.

‘About the watch,’ said Mr Courtald. ‘About your mother and my visits to her. And what you must be thinking, I do not know.’

‘I think you are a very kind man, Mr Courtald. It is not for me to think more or less than that.’

He looked up briefly to see if she was mocking him. She was in earnest.

‘There was a time,’ he went on. ‘For she was always a bonnie lass, your mother. And I did think that one day… a long time ago now… long before you were in the world…only that day passed. And then there was your father. I knew him, you know. And his early going was an unexpected sadness for everyone. And because I loved your mother, I just wanted to help. And you were the spit of her and she asked if I could see my way…and you picked things up so well. Look at you. You make her proud, and me proud, too. Then I took to visiting. More than is proper, perhaps. But it is not what you think. Not what others think. We are not… well, we are friends. And I wanted, we wanted, that you should know. And the watch was what it was, something I wanted to give you. I am sorry.’

Sharon felt again the weight of the silence that came between them, and she saw in it a signal that he had done.

‘I think you are a very kind man, Mr Courtald. There is no need for you to make apology to me. I think myself very lucky and my mother lucky, too. She asked that I tell you she has a Battenberg in for your morning tea and she hopes that you will call.’

Then Sharon made to go before adding in a voice that was all smiles, 'I think it proper that you do call, Mr Struan Courtald.'

Another win and another PB piece

(And news today is that I have just won another competition. I am very surprised with this win. I had thought the announcement must have been made and I had missed it, and then out of the blue a trophy and a winner's certificate and some cash. I have never won a trophy before, so this is loads of fun. Here's the start of Sunday (the last day) in Port Brokeferry.)

THE DAY IS SLOW IN BEGINNING

Like most places, Port Brokeferry is a little slower in starting on a Sunday. However, Mad Martin knows no clocks and is on the beach the same as any other day. Just like in Mhairi’s picture he stands with his shoes off and his socks, his feet in the lacy water’s edge. The gulls circle nearer and nearer, their eyes sharp to any movement Mad Martin makes to his pockets where breadcrumbs are and the leftover scones Callum delivered the night before.

The street is quiet and the air still. Even the boats in the harbour seem like pictures of themselves, everything still. And quiet, except for the gulls flocking round Mad Martin and somewhere, just faintly, the sound of music. Maybe there is a radio already tuned into the day.

The lights are on in the bakery, the same as always, and the smell of morning rolls and cinnamon whirls and fruit loaf drifts on the air, as if to wake those sleeping in Port Brokeferry. And Callum is talking to himself and if you listen you can hear he is saying how much he misses old Tom and he reminds himself to drop in on Sinnie later in the day, Sinnie who was not in the shop yesterday and who, when Callum chanced a look in through her bedroom window this morning, was sound asleep and not writing down any dreams in her notebook as is normal.

The Bobbing Boat café will not open until very late in the morning. The times are on the door and Sunday is the only day that is different, not starting at nine but half-past eleven. But Guthrie is there already. He has taken a clean damp cloth to the tables and given the front window the once over. He stopped to watch Pamela remove her shirt and drink from her water bottle and catch her breath before heading back along the beach. She must be a model he thinks, or an actress from films. Guthrie has one table set for two. And napkins by the sides of small plates and some picked flowers in a tall glass tumbler. It is a breakfast date that he has and he wants to make an impression.

Eileen does not wake swearing this day. Not because it is a Sunday and she is respectful of that. Eileen sleeps past waking. It is her day off. Guthrie says Sundays he can manage the café by himself, and so she did not set her alarm the night before. She and Magnus talked late into the night anyway, and so they are both sleeping late, in Eileen’s bed this time.

And Rose is up today as she was yesterday, with the back door thrown wide and a cup of tea in her hands and she is reading again some of the things she wrote yesterday: The piece about how it could have been with Uncle B, and something about a man in a kilt and a grey suit jacket looking for someone called Col and Rose has written that Col is an imaginary friend from childhood, and being grown the man in the kilt has lost him.

And Corinne. Not up, but awake. Her head on the pillow and her eyes fixed on a small blemish on the ceiling. Like a watermark, and she sees in it the shape of a fish or a crescent moon. She is thinking of Munro and wondering if he might be awake and thinking of her. Or dreaming. He could be dreaming and Corinne could be walking about in his head. He held her hand yesterday. Did not say anything, but he didn’t need to. Just holding her hand was enough and when she got home she wrote his name in her book, at the top of the list of things she loves, and she thought of crossing out Mr Bredwyn’s name, but remembered the book of poems she had taken from the library and decided to leave the teacher’s name below Munro’s and just above W.B. Yeats’ name.

Sleepy and slow the start to this day in Port Brokeferry, and it is a time for dreaming, and taking time to oneself, and finding one's feet, and not looking at the hands of the clock too closely. It is Sunday.

The Start of the Last Port Brokeferry Day

(We are at the start of Sunday in Port Brokeferry. This is the last day of our week here and things will come to a head for some of the stories. Each day has opened with an 'official' document that adds to the authenticity of the place. Sunday is no different.... so here it is.)

THE FARAWAY PLACE IS CLOSER TO HOME THAN YOU THINK – an extract from a sermon delivered by Rev. Alexander Donaldson B.D., minister of the church at Port Brokeferry 1935-39.

On Wednesday, as you all know, I shall be departing these shores to take the word of God to our mission in the North East of China. I go to a city called Ningbo. It is a seaport and the name means ‘Tranquil Waves’. What my life will be like there I can only imagine, though the place is real enough and can be found on a map of the country. The journey will take the length of two full weeks, with God’s blessing. Missed connections may see it stretch to nearer a month. I am prepared.

But when I think of Ningbo, it is, I believe, not so very different from Port Brokeferry. The men there make a living from the sea, in boats with nets that they mend by hand just as our men do. And the women bear the burdens and blessings of children and the children go to school to be something more than their parents. And the people sit around their fires at night, gathered together as families, and they tell stories of their fathers and grandfathers and the lives that they spent and the great deeds that they performed, made greater and greater with each telling of the story. I am sure that I will find in Ningbo a home from home.

I take with me the virtues of Port Brokeferry, everything I have learned here at my mother’s knee and standing by my father’s side wanting to one day be as tall as a man may be and as good. A gentleness in my manner of speaking I take with me, and a warmth in my dealings with all of God’s creatures, that is what I have learned here. A generosity of spirit, too, and a belief in the inherent goodness of man, a goodness that is everywhere in evidence here in Brokeferry, and I believe all this will be found in the fishermen and their families in Ningbo.

The world is not so big a place as it once was. Ancient cartographers drew monsters at the edges of their maps and men with no heads or with the heads of dogs. Ningbo is not such a place. The world is shrunk to something more recognisable, and people are the same the world over, the same here as everywhere.

My favourite story from The Good Book, is the tale of The Prodigal Son. I hope to one day return to Port Brokeferry, to stand again before you, dear friends, standing as I do now, and that maybe there will be a fatted-calf-welcome waiting. On that day, the things I will tell you of the place I have been, will be no different than the things I take to tell the people there. The people from Ningbo will look at their own maps and their fingers point to a place called Port Brokeferry and they will say, ‘all of life is there in that small place’. For the faraway place is closer to home than you think and God is everywhere if he is looked for. I go to show the people of Ningbo where to look.

(The above is an extract from the last published sermon from the pen of Rev. Alexander Donaldson once of Port Brokeferry. He was three times winner of the Heather Balfour Trophy and was awarded a scholarship to the University in Aberdeen where he graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity in 1932. He returned to Port Brokeferry in 1935 remaining as minister at the church there until 1939 before leaving to take up missionary work in the far East. Alexander Donaldson accepted a post at mission buildings in Ningbo in the North East of Zhejiang province, China. He quickly established himself as a kind and warm-hearted man and a befriender of the poor. In 1940 Japan bombed the city of Ningbo. They dropped fleas carrying bubonic plague onto the streets of Ningbo. The Rev. Alexander Donaldson died in the same year.)

The Last Saturday Piece for PB

(Just when I thought the door had closed on October and my haul of competition hits was complete and impressive and enough, I find there's even more! I am there on another shortlist and I am second in another competition. That's 24 competition hits for the year so far and October has been the richest month and that feels quite good. Here is the last piece for Saturday in Port Brokeferry. Sunday will be the last day of this project so we are moving towards the close of this creative exercise.)

BERLIE’S IS ENOUGH FOR WALLACE

It’s called Berlie’s but for as long as I have been a part of things there’s never been a Berlie. Tom Gough was in charge before me and a man called Cathal before him. There was a Berlie once, years and years back. A woman called Berlie, only it was spelled different and she was nothing to do with the name that hangs on all our posters.

Been on the road longer than not, I have. Suits me, really. It’s who I am. I hear some of them talking behind my back, like I might be sick and not know, and they talk about what’ll happen when I stop, but I don’t see that anytime soon. It’s all the family that I have is Berlie’s, and it is like a family and I’m the old man. I look after things. Look after them, like they might be mine. Settle disputes when they’re thrown up.

Take Lynn. I know she’s a bit loose. Likes a drink, she does, more than a drink, and I’ve told her before about the trouble she leaves behind her and she listens to what I say and for a while at least she tiptoes the straighter line. But men are just drawn to her. Like flies to shit, I have heard said, but that is unkind. She’s not as young as she is in her head. That’s what I think. And life’s for enjoying and she does enjoy life. There’s no arguing with that. But tonight there was a man deeper in his drink than she was. Lachlan’s his name. And he wouldn’t leave Lynn alone. Nothing malicious, but I could see she hadn’t an interest in him, so I had to gently move him on at the end of the night. Athol Stuart was a help in that. He’s no bother if you stay on the right side of him is Athol Stuart. Can’t always say the same for that Mad Martin. Mad is what he is, for sure, though the dogs like him well enough and there’s no harm in him.

You have to be made of a certain kind of stuff to stick the life that Berlie’s offers. It’s not for everyone. There’s May. Older than me, if anyone’s counting. She reads fortunes in the bottoms of tea cups, or in the lines on a person’s palm. It’s all hokum, and she knows it, but she looks the part and she’s good at what she does. I don’t ever see May sitting in a brick house waiting for the dark to come down. It’s not part of who she is. Been with Berlie’s since before me and she’ll be with Berlie’s till the end, I reckon.

But then there’s the lad, Kelso. At first I thought he fitted right in. He had a way with him. And with the lasses. Like he was in a sweetie shop and no one there to stop him dipping into any jar that he chose. If I’m being honest, I saw something of myself in him, I did. Not that it’s like that for me now. Things settle with the years and a man changes. I curl up with May some nights, but it’s her company I’m after.

But Kelso. There’s a difference in the lad now and I don’t see him lasting beyond this season. There’s a girl here in Port Brokeferry. She’s a looker, too. He was with her last year and maybe the change in him started then. I see he is back with her again, like they’ve picked up where they left off. Mind you, there’s one or two others still tilting their hats in his direction so maybe I don’t know it all. And this afternoon he came back with a quiet storm in him and something is not right there. I’ll maybe have to keep an eye on the lad.

You get to see things in this business. The best of places, mostly. Like seeing only the postcards of a town and snapshots of the people. That’s not enough for some. Some want more. They want to be rooted someplace, the ground beneath their feet familiar and the faces passing their windows faces they recognise. I can understand that. Of course I can. But it’s not for me, the settled life. Berlie’s is enough for me and I like it fine.

And the best time of all is at the end of the night, like now, and a quiet comes over everything and the show lights are all out and the people all gone, and I see May's light is still on in her trailer, and I take my time and enjoy a last cigarette before turning in.

More news and more PB

(October has proved to be quite a good month for me. Aside from my appearance on Schmu radio and the workshops in Aberdeen; aside from the Bridport Judges giving my work a nod and a shortlisting in one competition and a highly commended in another; aside from all those I have just been told that I am the winner in another competition. Just the ray of sunshine a writer needs at this darker time of the year. Wow! Here's more from Port Brokeferry.)

KNOWING WHAT’S TROUBLING HUNTLY

‘It tastes different,’ he says. ‘I don’t know. Not so sweet and not so peppery. Different.’ He sets his knife and fork to six o’clock on the plate and pushes his plate away from him as though he is finished without having really started.

He doesn’t come out with it straight away. Never does. But I know. There’s something on his mind. Been in his head since early doors. I know, just like I know when he’s sad and he won’t say, or confused or worried and he will not admit that he is. He says he understands when he doesn’t and I know those times, too. I’m Huntly’s wife and I know him and I know there’s something troubling him today.

I offer him something else to eat. I ask him if he’s sick. If he is not himself today. But I know the answers before he brings them out.

‘No, nothing else to eat. No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Really. Don’t trouble yourself. I just think I might be coming down with something.’

But he isn’t sick. I can see that. I lay the palm of my hand against his forehead and there is no temperature, and I never expected that there would be. I stroke the side of his face and look him in the eye and offer him a cup of tea. And he says maybe that would be good.

He’s been quiet today. Quieter than usual. More turned in on himself. And he has not really settled to anything. Even the newspaper has been unread. He opened it but I could tell he wasn’t reading. Turning the pages is all, one after the other and not taking in what was there.

I make him a cup of tea and place it before him. He looks up and smiles, but the smile is not real, just the shape that he puts his mouth to.

And I think I know what it is that’s been on his mind, for it’s been on mine, too. There’s a change in things and I do not know how this will be for Huntly. It’s about Alice. Every morning for years, at her window and dreaming of something lost, and Huntly watching her from a small distance, and these last days she’s something found to take its place. He must have seen the difference.

It’s been a long time coming, I think. And it makes sense really. Well-suited. The surprise is that it has taken so long and that they did not each see it before now: Dodie Bredwell and Alice. I’ve seen a change in her. She is suddenly brighter and I’ve seen her laughing and she moves different, like there is a new lightness to her body. Happier is what she seems. The first time for almost as long as memory: Alice, happy. But I know that Huntly won’t see it that way. Not at first. It’ll be like he’s lost something now. Something he never really had, but lost all the same. That’s what he’ll think.

‘How’s your tea?’ I ask him.

He nods and smiles and it is again just the shape of a smile. And I know him, and I know it will take some time for Huntly to adjust and he will need my help in that.

‘Maybe you’d like to go out tomorrow,’ I say. ‘It’s set to be another warm day. And it’d be good for you to get some air and some colour to your cheeks. You’ll feel better for it. I know you would. I just know it.’

And Huntly nods again, but I know what that nod means.