PENTLAND WRITERS' GROUP

I was a member of The Pentland Writers' Group a couple of years back. It was my first venture into the adult world of writing and I learned a lot and it was fun. There were some very good writers in the group and we attracted some attention in the area. We wrote a play that was performed by the local community and reviewed by The Scotsman newspaper and it has since been printed and is available through Amazon.

As is the way of writing groups, they change. The success of PWG attracted new writers and the mix altered. That was fine, and as it should be. I left to find greater stimulation elsewhere. I have kept abreast of developments with the group and it is growing again.

This year marks their tenth anniversary as a group. They decided to run a writing competition to celebrate this milestone. I made a mental note of the details, but did not think to enter. There was an open adult section, a local writers' section, and a children's section. I was keen to see who would be there on the local podium. Then I received an e-mail invite to participate and after a rethink I thought maybe I should, to show support. Problem for me was that there was a theme that the story had to be written to: '10'. I didn't have anything to fit and I don't really like writing to themes, but the personal invite pushed me to do something. I wrote a piece called :'The Ten Loves of Lizzie Salt'. I liked the title and felt I could do something with the idea. I entered my piece into the open adult section (somehow it felt wrong to enter into the local writer section).

Today I received an e-mail to say I was the overall winner of the competition. I am so thrilled. The story is up on The Pentland Writers' Group web page. Congratulations to everyone who gets a mention for their work and many thanks to the Pentland Writers' Group for organising the competition.

Lethem

I have waited for someone to say something intelligent about Jonathan Lethem's article on plagiarism. I wrote a blog post below that asks if Lethem's article might be a hymn to plagiarism. No one seems to have taken issue with this.

I have returned to Lethem's long article and I here jot down some of his comments (I say 'his' but if you read the article you will understand that he does not claim ownership of any of the ideas or words or thoughts in his article).

"Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral caliber and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste our selves, might we not forgive it of our artworks?"

This goes against those who think that writers just make things up. Clearly they don't. They respond to the stimulation that the world and the world of ideas provides. That writers think they make things up, think that their ideas belong to them and are in some Platonic sense, original, is patently the thinking of a person of limited understanding.

Look at just a few of the names of the great, the people we esteem in our culture for the art that they produced... and yet their art owes a great or greater debt to some other work that came before them:

Shakespeare, James Joyce, Nabakov, Bob Dylan, William S Burroughs, Francis Bacon, Muddy Waters, Igor Stravinsky, Martin Luther King Jr., Leonard Bernstein, Thomas Mann, Walt Disney, Paul Simon, David Byrne... the list goes on precisely because it should include every artist that ever lived.

Lethem says in his article that 'thinking clearly sometimes requires unbraiding our language'... those who have trouble with concepts of influence in art denounce it as plagiarism, but all 'art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the fields of culture' and all art owes a debt to something outside the artist who created it. 'Plagiarism' is a word that has a lot of mud woven into its fabric... the word 'influence' is less dirty... but actually the idea behind each word is the same.

To cry 'plagiarism' and to denounce all such creative borrowings is not only counter intuitive to the proper growth of art, but is also a call to accept the second rate when it has been produced, for the second rate is then protected by a fear of plagiarism... it thus becomes a barrier to all artists, preventing them from seeking to produce the best. As Lethem says: 'Second comers might do a much better job than the originator with the original idea'. (Of course the terms 'originator' and 'original' lose their true meaning when you accept that such concepts have a certain redundancy when applied to the realm of ideas.)

I hope to read an intelligent response to this somewhere. I am, of course, thinking out loud... even if these thoughts can never really be said to be entirely my own.

PB again.

(Another Port Brokeferry piece. The second of Wednesday's. My wife visited a primary school and read them some of my children's book. They were thrilled to pieces, completely gripped and wanting more. So we have given the school four copies for their library.)

KELSO GOING IN CIRCLES

There’s a man at the far end of the village. He is young and dressed in jeans and a thick sweater that is worn at the elbows. His hair is uncombed and falls across his eyes. He leans against a truck, mindless of the dirt that transfers to his clothes. He is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, thin as thin and held between the oily nip of finger and thumb. He stares up the street towards the centre of the village, like he is looking for someone or something. He checks his watch and looks again.

His name is Kelso. He is with the fair. Fourth year he has been with them. He hates it. Always has, right from the first. The smell of it – oil and candyfloss and cooked meat all mixed together and caught in his clothes and his hair. The noise of it – the same brash music playing over and over, and screams and squeals, and the whistles blowing and the klaxons hooting, and the generators roaring into the darkness that should be quiet and should be dark. Kelso hates it.

There’s people, looking in from the outside, seeing the life he has and they think it somehow glamorous. He did once. The girls so excited and so drunk that they ask to go back to his trailer with him. Drop their pants as soon as the door closes. Never notice the dirt and the unmade bed, and never remember his name, just as he hardly ever remembers theirs. He could be anyone. Afterwards they leave without asking anything more from him. And then he leaves with the fair and it all starts over again in a new place.

Kelso remembers Port Brokeferry. Two weeks by the sea. The place so small you can walk from one end to the other and see all there is to see in about a half hour. Never so busy here, and that’s nice, he thinks. Like a holiday from the rest of the places they stop in.

There’s a girl here he remembers too. That is who he is looking for. Wallace who runs the dodgems said that last night there was a girl standing back from the green and just watching. Said she was behind the school kids that had gathered and were calling to them from the road. She was not with them. Just on her own and waiting. Kelso wonders if it was her, the one he remembers.

He drops his cigarette end on the grass and grinds it into the ground with the ball of his foot. He brushes his hair back from his face. Looks again up the street. He sees the mad one, recognises the red of his kilt and him searching the wastepaper baskets on the street. Kelso thinks his name is Martin. The policeman is with him. The rest of the street is empty.

Kelso shrugs and walks back to his trailer. Four years, he says to himself. He doesn't really know why he has stayed so long. It was an escape at first, a way out of where he was. Now it feels just as much a trap. Going round and round in circles and never getting anywhere. Kelso spits onto the grass and climbs the three steps up to his trailer. He closes his door behind him.

INFLUENCE

INFLUENCE – the effect of something on a person, thing, or event.

There is great deal of talk about the extent to which a writer can (is allowed) to be influenced by another writer. I have read some writers talk about being ‘influenced’ by something they have read… and those writers very quickly saying ‘but I haven’t stolen from any other writer’. I am interested in this and interested to know what this means. One writer I know wrote on her blog that she had been struggling with a story she wanted to tell and not getting it right… maybe even for years. Then she read something by someone else and ‘discovered’ the structure that would make her story work. She would be quick to say that her story was influenced by what she had read, but she would not dare admit that she had ‘stolen’ something from this other writer. Personally, I am not sure that she hasn’t taken something from this other writer, and if we conclude that she has, then I know that I don’t have a problem with her having done so.

So why am I bothering to raise the matter if it is one that causes me no real concern? I do so because I think there is something very important in that example, something that I feel is at the heart of the debate on plagiarism and which is at the heart of creativity. It has been said so loudly already that it seems absurd to have to say it again, but I do: we do not, any of us, create in a vacuum. We create within the world that we inhabit, and we create as a response to that world and everything in it. This includes the things we read about and the things we see on our screens and the things we hear about… everything really. There is a whole world of ideas that passes through us all. We cannot help but take from that world, sometimes not even knowing what we have taken and not knowing from where we have taken, and we create from the raw material of that world. We cannot help but be influenced by everything in that world. But what does the word ‘influence’ mean here?

The language used to discuss plagiarism is very emotive. We talk of theft and we castigate the plagiarist as thief and criminal. What the writer in the example above would not admit is that she has stolen anything, but it is clear that had she not found her structure in another’s work then she would still be struggling with her story. She is quick to give what she did a word that is less loaded: ‘found’ instead of ‘took’ or ‘stole’. But it is not clear what the difference here is. To me, at least, it is not clear.

And examples of this kind of ‘influence’ are legion in every writer’s work. There are honest writers who will tell you as much. It would be an odd work indeed that we could say of it that it was free of the influence of any other work. So, when a writer does not hide his/her borrowings, isn’t he/she just being honest about a practice that all artists do? Isn’t he/she just openly admitting the influence of another on his/her work?

Another writer I know openly admitted that a story she wrote was influenced by a great writer that she admired. But when she was challenged about the extent to which she was influenced, she got very defensive, claiming that her story was totally different and she was doing different things from the original. I happen to think that her story has some different things going on in it, but I can also see a great deal of similarity between the two stories. So what’s going on here?

Writers are people. People do not want to be publicly castigated for what they do. This woman writer does not want public disapproval, so she defends herself against the charge of ‘too much influence’. Her storyline is similar to the original (the same arc), her characters are similar, her setting is similar, her beginning and her ending are both similar. But there are marked differences. She won’t admit to any of this because to do so would take her perilously close to what others would call plagiarism. I can sympathise, especially as this same writer has publicly taken the high ground in stating what is and is not plagiarism in another’s work (actually, her confusion on the matter was evident when, after castigating someone for plagiarism of her work, she later admitted it was changed enough in this other person’s work for it not to be plagiarism!).

Why are lawyers called upon to argue cases of plagiarism in our courts? Isn’t it precisely because the whole notion of plagiarism of ideas is an artificial construct and an imperfect one and one that goes against thousands of years of history and evolution that has brought us, through the transmission of ideas, to where we are today? Isn’t it because the question of plagiarism is not always easy to define. Straight copying of another’s words is obvious and quite easily proven. But the using of another’s ideas is not only more difficult to prove, but prosecution of such goes against the whole way that art and creativity works.

The writer who found her structure in another writer’s work defends herself by saying that if the two works were put side by side then the ‘borrowing’ would still not be obvious; does that make her ‘theft’ more or less honest? The writer who admits she was influenced by a great and published writer in the story she told, was only doing what is natural for a writer or an artist, and there is no need for her to come all over defensive, even when if her story is laid side by side with her source work, the similarities are evident.

So, isn’t ‘influence’ just another word for ‘plagiarism of another’s ideas’, and a bit like calling a spade a ‘digging implement’ instead of what it is? And if we cannot ever escape the influence of the work of others in what we write, shouldn’t we be more accepting of the fact that ownership of creative ideas is not only not possible to defend, but not desirable either?

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!

A HYMN TO PLAGIARISM?

I have just read an article by Jonathan Lethem that I found referenced on another blog. It is so bloody good. But I warn you, it is a bit of a read and will need an open mind. I once thought writers had that... and maybe the 'big' ones do... but there are a lot of 'little' writers with a fragile intellectual understanding of the subject and they may find this article a challenge.

Here is a snippet that I like and gives you a taster of the thrust of the article. I dedicate this to all those who are in search of the true path in their writing:

'And we too often, as hucksters and bean counters in the tiny enterprises of our selves, act to spite the gift portion of our privileged roles. People live differently who treat a portion of their wealth as a gift. If we devalue and obscure the gift-economy function of our art practices, we turn our works into nothing more than advertisements for themselves.'

The message: be generous with your work and your words and your visions and your ideas; that is how art grows - besides, as a writer you already owe such a debt to everything you have ever read or seen or heard... as you gift to the world so has the world already gifted to you.

Here is the URL details: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387

(I am adding this comment. I added the substance of it to a blog discussion of Lethem's article and it seems pertinent to add it here:

If nothing else this article, by an articulate and intelligent writer, says one thing of real importance (I actually think it says more than one thing of importance) and that is that the subject of creative borrowing is more complex than many bloggers would have you believe.

You are, of course, allowed to disagree with Lethem. I have been discussing this subject on my own blog for several months and strangely enough have arrived at precisely the same conclusions as Lethem (and some of the same examples of creative borrowing). It is also the argument of Malcolm Gladwell (writer of 'The Tipping Point' and 'Blink') in an essay on the subject. When other intelligent thinkers and writers are arriving at the same or similar conclusions, it goes to show that (emotions aside) the matter of creative use of another's ideas is at least something that should be more carefully and less emotionally debated.

I have always said you can have my visions and ideas and characters... just don't use my actual words. Easy for me to say, perhaps, when I don't make my living by my writing. I don't mind if someone does with my idea something much better. As a political animal I am squarely in the camp that was once called socialist (where have those idealistic parties gone now?) and maybe that is the tenet of my artistic ideals.

I recognise that a free-for-all has its threat in the marketplace. I haven't an answer to that. But when so many artists (including those who speak against it) admit to influence and to borrowing then it can't be wrong. If the 'trick' is to hide the thing they call theft, not make the theft so visible, then that only seems to be an encouragement to an artistic dishonesty.

Nik Perring makes this point : "Good writers (or any other creative bods) are good because they make stuff up" and in doing so he completely misses the point that Lethem is making. We do not completely make things up. We are as much programmed as a computer is. Even our language is part of it and we are gifted that by the culture and society we are brought up with or exposed to. How can we possibly say that a story belongs to an individual when it grows out of such common ground? Plant a rose in a common field and the rose does not belong to you... it feeds on nutrients in the soil that belong to everyone and responds to the common sun and drinks in the common rainwater. Surely that rose belongs now to everyone. Put writing in the public domain and it is something the same.

When a writer is protective of his/her own ideas, this protectiveness stems from a misconception that the ideas are uniquely his/hers. As soon as we let go of that concept then any lingering possessiveness is to do with that writer's own hopes for personal gain from the idea and the threat that is posed by somebody else doing it better. Put like that, it seems to me as socialist and artist (shouldn't the two be together, the same thing?) rather petty and selfish.)

Wednesday in Port Brokeferry

(It's Wednesday so it feels right to post up the first of Port Brokeferry's Wednesday pieces today.)

LILLIAN THINKS SOMETHING IS UP WITH OLD TOM

Lillian Carey looks out from her kitchen window. It is still early, still dark. She can see that the light is on in Old Tom’s house opposite and the curtains of his bedroom are open. She considers stepping across the road to see if he is in need of anything. Time was she took any excuse to call on him. Her late husband was sometimes jealous.

‘What? Of Tom? Christ, Preston. Tom’s old enough to be my father.’

Didn’t stop her going though. A knock on Tom’s door and Lillian not ever waiting to be called in. She sat with him some early mornings, holding his hand in hers, the rest of Port Brokeferry sleeping. They talked in whispers so as not to wake anyone. Tom mostly talked of Mary. His eldest daughter. Gone to be a nurse in South America. There used to be letters every month and Lillian read them out to Tom. ‘With my love, from Mary.’ Then not letters, but postcards of trees that did not look like trees and people dressed in rainbow coloured shawls and the women looking stern as men with skin the colour of coffee, and wearing men’s hats. Then greater spaces between the postcards till they stopped coming altogether. Oh, years since the last one, so far back Lillian does not even remember herself.

Christmases Tom comes to her. Came when Preston’s health started failing and Preston was past objecting. Made no sense what Preston once thought and at the end he could see that. Now Preston is gone and Tom still comes. Every year for the past twenty or more. Lillian helps him dress now and walks him across the road at the start of the Festive day. Walks him back at the other end, even though the bed in the spare room is always made up in case he ever needs it. Tom brings scented soaps wrapped in pink or blue tissue paper, and a card for Lillian, and a handful of old letters, the paper yellow and creased, and the writing as familiar as her own by this time. Letters from a girl called Mary that Tom still remembers. He has forgotten so much, but not Mary. Lillian reads the letters after they have eaten. She has to wear her glasses these days. ‘With my love’ she says at the end of every one. She wonders what became of Mary on the other side of the world.

It is several days since Lillian saw Tom up and about. She misses seeing him.

‘You’re a good girl,’ he always tells her. Lillian in her sixties and she still likes to be called ‘good’ and a ‘girl’. She smiles at the thought.

She half fills the kettle at the sink and sets it on the stove. Behind her the radio is on. Turned low so that all the music sounds something the same. Just noise. Like the hum of bees in summer, or flies.

‘Something’s up with Tom, I think,’ she says. No husband to talk to now, so she talks to the cat. Calls him Preston sometimes and laughs when she does. The cat is at Lillian’s feet, its curl and uncurling tail stroking the calf of one leg, its small face turned up to hers as though it is listening to what she says.

Then Lillian sees Callum at Tom's window and she knows something is up.

Not even baby steps

Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words. He is reported as having said it was his best work. I think he might have been smiling a little tongue-in-cheek when he said that. I hope he was. Nevertheless, when I heard this, having been a fan of his novels in my teens, I wanted to read his ‘best work’.

This is it: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

It is maybe clever. The way that some modern art is clever. It sets up questions in the reader as modern art sets up questions in the viewer. It relies on the reader bringing something to the piece, as art does. But, just as I am suspicious of Duchamp’s urinal turned on its head, so I am suspicious of that six-word piece - and in both cases I am not altogether certain of why I am suspicious. I have heard that some think Hemingway's piece is so poignant, that it suggest so much in those shoes not ever having been worn. But just as I still wonder if Duchamp’s urinal is really art, or all those white or blue or yellow canvasses, or all those accidental spilled-paint works, so here I am left wondering if there is enough of a story here. A neat little party game, certainly, but maybe that is all.

It is no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with flash fiction. As a way of writing it seems to be very fashionable at the moment. I notice that more and more competitions have sprung up for flash fiction. It remains to be seen if this is anything more than a ‘flash in the pan’ (sorry!). Some say flash fiction better fits our in-a-rush world. I don’t know about that. What I do know is that I love writing flash. It is like sketching. The lines can be free and quickly drawn and it does not have to be complete in the way that a story or novel is. It can be like poetry, too, with every word resonating. And if what you write turns out to be rubbish, then it is no great loss of time. But I hate flash too. I hate reading flash, hate that I am left with a short taste of something, and left wanting a bigger bite. Even with pieces where I can see the craft and can marvel at the result - maybe more so with these 'wonderful' pieces. Clever and thrilling, but ultimately not enough.

I have had some success with flash fiction of my own, but I have also taken flashed pieces and explored them more fully as stories, fleshed them out. Or written sets of flashes, or a whole series of connected and at the same time separate flashes. As a writer and as a reader these are much more satisfying.

Maybe, as Adam Marek says in his essay included in Vanessa Gebbie’s textbook for the short story, I am one of those who does not have the right gland, the gland that encourages the ‘right’ response to short fiction. I don’t know.

The first story I ever wrote ambitiously attempted to create a whole Andean village in 3000 words. I think I was writing a little novel. Not just capturing a moment in the life of this Andean place, but suggesting a whole life for the village beyond the words on the page. Is that what Hemingway has done here? Suggested a bigger story beyond his six words? Are the shoes unworn because they were merely bought as a gift by a doting aunt, but bought as the wrong size for the baby’s big feet (comedy)? Are we to think that the baby shoes were bought before the birth of the baby and not ever worn because the baby was stillborn (tragedy)? Are they just the wrong colour – blue when the baby turned out to be a girl (human interest)? I could go on inventing… just as standing in front of a yellow canvas with the title ‘Yellow, 42’, I could go on ‘seeing’ things in the brush strokes. I don’t think ‘Yellow, 42’ works for me as a piece of art. And similarly this Hemingway 6 word piece doesn’t add up.

It is not a story. It is, for this reader at least, unsatisfying in its brevity. Just as unsatisfying as flash is for me. When my children were young enough that I could read to them, they wanted the stories I read to spin on and on. Not just because it meant that they were putting off sleep, but because the longer the stories went on the more complete the world they had been lead into, and the more wonderful the experience. Yes, as short story writers, we sometimes have to leave room for the reader to enter into the story and to complete it sometimes. The reader has to bring something of themselves into the reading; but they do not bring the whole story.

Duchamp’s urinal is a urinal. An artist calling it art doesn’t, in my view, make it art. Even the army of critics scratching their sage beards and nodding and saying ‘marvellous’ does not convince me. With Hemingway, the same. His 6 words constitute little more than an ad in a personal column where I am more conscious that every word costs the advertiser money than I am of any story. So, for me, not his best work by more than a few baby steps.

You are, of course, allowed to disagree.

Heather

(So, we now move to Wednesday in Port Brokeferry. If you have been following this project you will know that each new day starts with a document, official or historical. This gives texture to the place for the reader and helps establish where and what Port Brokeferry is. At the start of Wednesday we have an old letter from a visitor to PB who found the charms of the place difficult to resist.)

Port Brokeferry, September 3^rd, 1896

Dear Eloise

Forgive me if the words do not sit neatly on the page. I am brought low this night with some fit of coughing and have taken to my bed. Today we walked the several miles from the station in the rain to a small place called Port Brokeferry. I fear that I have caught a chill from the journey and may have to keep to my bed for some days. I imagine I hear your voice prescribing hot soup and a seaweed poultice for my chest. Then I hear you laughing.

Port Brokeferry is a fishing village of some twenty or so grey stone houses and a one-room school that wants for a bell to bring the unwilling children in from their play. The teacher there is a Mr Boyce, a man of stern countenance and gruff of voice. Indeed, many of the people here are short and mean looking. Misshapen perhaps, like trees that stand too close to the sea and are ever beaten down by the salt singing wind coming off the water.

Brewer sits with me tonight. The candlelight on his face makes him look almost handsome. He would laugh if he knew what I have here written. He does not have the same cough. He is reading as I write. Something from a newspaper that is at least three weeks out of date. He interrupts me with his exclamations of disbelief in what he is reading.

The lady of the house, one Mrs McAllister, is a widow. Her husband is wed to the sea now, she says, for there came a morning some years before when he did not return home, though the rest on his boat did. Mrs McAllister has a daughter who is fair of hair with skin like porcelain. Her name is Heather, which is also the name of a low-growing plant that is found clinging everywhere to the hills that are set back from Port Brokeferry. The plant has a twisted stem that is thick and pliable like stiffened rope, but the flowers are arranged like tiny bells on the plant and coloured pink or purple or any colour in between. Brewer has made a sketch of the same in his journal and I would show it to you on our return. Heather is maybe thirteen years of age and calls me ‘sir’ and curtseys before she leaves the room where we are.

Dear sister Eloise, I miss you. I wish the days here gone and the nights too. I wish my business completed so that I could in the utmost haste return to you and to the comforts of the city. Bid my father well and keep a place in your heart for me. I close this letter now and send it with God’s speed to your hand.

I am always in truth

Your Brother

Edward Balfour

(A copy of a letter sent from Mr Edward Balfour to his sister Eloise, 1896. Mr Balfour, later the very Reverend Balfour, married a young woman from Port Brokeferry. He settled in the town and preached the virtues of education and hard work. He donated money to the school for the purchase of a bell the expressed purpose of which was to bring the children into their lessons. He also gave a sum of money to be awarded each year to the best student in Port Brokeferry’s school and a silver cup that is still known as the Heather Balfour Trophy after his wife who died in childbirth at a young age. From ‘The Collected Sermons and Letters of the Reverend Edward Balfour,’ Vol. 1., 1921.)

Tuesday Evening and Another PB Postcard

(Been a busy week at work... brain feels like mince! But some more good news: was second in a writing competition and a neat cheque for £100 came through the door today. That was nice.

Here is a piece that concludes Tuesday in Port Brokeferry (remember this project is seven days in PB). We have done Monday and now that's Tuesday done. Enjoy!)

PORT BROKEFERRY – TUESDAY EVENING.

Magnus looks for Eileen coming from The Bobbing Boat. He has closed up the bank and set the alarm to ‘on’. A red flashing light tells him he has done right. He crouches down in the street, unties and ties the lace of one shoe. Then he stands again. In his head he rehearses what he will say to her when she comes.

Eileen has been kept back with the extra dishes to wash and dry. That’s how it will be for the next two weeks, Guthrie has told her. What with the fair and the visitors. He says there will be more money in her pay packet at the end of the week. For sure there will be. Eileen looks at the clock on the wall and thinks of Magnus shutting up the bank.

At the far end of the street there are kids from school. They’ve heard about the arrival of the fair and have detoured via the green just for a look. They’re late in getting home, but they don’t mind. Already there are things going on and music playing and orange and yellow and blue lights making the place seem like there’s something to see.

Evelyn is also there. A little back from the green. She’s just looking, too. She is dressed like she is going somewhere, even though she isn’t. She searches the faces of the people she sees, the men and the women at work unpacking the trucks and laying tarpaulin over the grass. She is looking for one face in particular.

Helen thinks Grace looks different tonight. It’s not just that she’s wearing the new dress from the catalogue. Maybe it’s her hair or her skin. Helen isn’t sure. She seems brighter somehow. Like there is a light in her eyes. Grace is sitting with the baby in her arms and a bottle in her hand. But she is looking out of the window.

Athol Stuart is walking Mad Martin back from the green. They aren’t talking, except that every few steps Mad Martin asks Athol if he has seen Col. Athol does not answer. His mind is on other things. He is thinking about the extra he will have to do with the fair in Port Brokeferry. He is also thinking about Grace and how she left work early this afternoon. That is not like her, he thinks. Helen didn’t offer any explanation. He wonders if maybe the baby is sick.

Callum is still with Tom and Tom still in his bed. He is sleeping and Callum hears Tom’s bag of words spilling into the dark of the room. He is in two minds about whether to call Marjory or Doctor Kerr.

Sinnie reads over what she wrote that morning. Her dream of owls and the biggest one wearing Struan Courtald’s buttoned waistcoat. She wonders what it was that the big owl laid at her feet in the dream.

The sea slaps against the side of The Silver Herring and the cables on the boat hit against each other making the sound of small bells ringing. It is Tuesday evening in Port Brokeferry.