More from Saturday in Port Brokeferry

(Another Port Brokeferry piece.)

ONE BUTTON ON STRUAN COURTALD’S WAISTCOAT, UNDONE

Not in the garden this time, though it was a bluer brighter day and there was no wind. Sinnie and the women from the fair, the one dressed in black with coloured cloth tied to the ends of her crimped hair and her wrists all heavy with jangling bracelets. Her nails looked bitten and still dirty, her fingers marked too, like she had been fixing one of the generators maybe. And they were sitting inside, Sinnie and the woman, at the table in the kitchen, and all the doors closed.

‘Just between ourselves?’ Sinnie said. And she was fingering the edge of the tablecloth and her voice almost a whisper though they were alone. ‘Because I wouldn’t want this getting out. Only you were such a help the last time and I just don’t understand.’

The woman from the fair helped herself to sugar, three teaspoons like before and like before she did not stir the cup.

‘No clothes on this time,’ said Sinnie. ‘Two nights in a row and sitting on the back of the waist-coated owl and I am wearing no clothes. I think it is what you said and I blush to think of it. Me and Struan Courtald. Known him since he was boy in short trousers and I was a slip myself. Struan! Why Struan? It makes no sense. He’s with Ina McAllister, everyone knows that. Everyone except maybe Ina’s girl, Sharon.’

‘There’s sense in dreams and nonsense, too. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t,’ said the woman and she reached across for a digestive biscuit, lifted the plate and offered one to Sinnie who waved the offer away, her impatience barely disguised.

‘I can’t look him in the eye. Not anymore. Said good day to me this morning, there in the street, and all my words came out tangled together and he looked at me funny and asked if I was alright. I pointed to one of the buttons on his waistcoat – it needed fastening.’

The woman nodded and her face was serious.

Sinnie got up from her chair and immediately sat down again.

‘Is there more tea?’ asked the woman from the fair.

‘More tea?’ said Sinnie.

‘Just if it’s no trouble. I’m a bit dry, you see.’

Sinnie checked the pot. There was more tea. She put milk into the woman’s cup and filled it to the lip. Then she set the teapot down on a ceramic tile that showed a white bird like a seagull or a dove. She watched the woman heap three more teaspoons of sugar into the cup and once again the woman did not stir it.

Then the woman sat back in her chair, waiting for Sinnie to continue.

‘And last night he said something.’

‘Who said something?’ said the woman.

‘Struan Courtald. The owl. In the dream he did. There I was sitting on the back of Struan Courtald and wearing no clothes and he spoke. I remember the words precisely. Woke up soon after and wrote them down in my book. It’s better to write them down as soon as you wake, otherwise they become confused or forgotten.’

There was a quiet then. Like Sinnie was drawing breath. Or pausing for dramatic effect, as storytellers do. But then there was nothing. The woman from the fair sipped at her tea and looked out of the window at the sea, flat and as smooth as glass, she thought. Then not glass but the pavement when it is wet and the sunlight on it turns it to silver. Still Sinnie did not pick up the thread of where she was.

‘And?’ said the woman after a time had passed. ‘What was it that he said?’

Sinnie, unable to give utterance to the words, opened the book and pointed to what she had written when she woke. She held one hand over her mouth and watched for a reaction in the woman’s face.

In a voice that was unmistakably Struan Courtald’s, the waist-coated owl said, ‘Sinnie, I will wear my waistcoat unbuttoned for you.’

'Do you see?' said Sinnie. 'And then a button on Struan Courtald's waistcoat, this morning, undone. What could it mean?'