(I do well enough in the writing competitions I enter, but it comes as the pleasantest surprise to find myself on a shortlist where my writing was entered by someone else. My children's book, 'The Chess Piece Magician' has made it to the shortlist of a neat award. Results are not till next May, but it means that lots of children will get to read my book as they decide which book on the list gets the winner's prize. Win or lose, this just feels so good to have made the shortlist of five. And below another Port Brokeferry piece... a bit sad, this one.)
THE CONFESSIONS OF GRACE AND KELSO
They met outside the village. Way out above where Douglas’ Prayer Cell was cut into the red stone cliff face. They walked there separately, so that they were not seen, seeming to come from two different directions. Grace had got her mother to mind the baby and Kelso had begged a couple of hours off, even though Berlie’s was already thumping when he’d left.
They met with things to say and neither of them sure of how they would tell the other or what would happen once they had. They met at first pretending that nothing was any different, not fearful of what was ahead. The moment was all there was. And what would be was a way in front of them.
Maybe she said his name and he said hers. They embraced and held onto that, not counting the time that passed, not caring if all time stopped then and there.
Maybe that is too fanciful: they embraced and held that embrace for some minutes without a break. Then when time was something between them again, still they held onto one another, not sure of what they were about to do.
‘I have something to tell you,’ said Grace. Maybe she said it quiet. Maybe he didn’t hear. ‘I should have told you before. On that first night you were back in Port Brokeferry. I should have told you then. But I wanted it to be like it was. A year ago. I wanted to go back to that time, when it was easy and there was just you and just me. It is different now.’
‘I have something to tell you, too,’ said Kelso. His voice was serious and his words not certain. It was, as she’d said, all different. Thinking of coming back to Port Brokeferry had kept him with Berlie’s, it was everything that had kept him there, and now he was back and Grace was Grace, and he did not think he could leave when the fair left. Not this time. But staying meant something hard, too. He had to tell her about the girl called Evelyn carrying his name scratched onto her arm and how it meant nothing and was something that was before Grace.
‘There’s something you should know,’ he said. And the words were what she had wanted to say next and that confused her. ‘There’s a girl called Evelyn. She works at the hairdressers.’
Grace knew Evelyn. She sometimes cut Grace’s hair. She was nice enough. Grace did not know why Kelso was talking about her.
‘And last year, before you and I, before we were what we were, well, Evelyn and me, we…’ And he wasn’t making much sense. Grace broke from him then. Held him at arm’s length and looked him in the face.
‘It was the one time,’ he said. ‘We were drunk and it was the one time. And she has my name tattooed onto her arm. That’s how drunk we were. But it meant nothing; it means nothing. Grace, you have to believe what I am telling you.’
Grace understood and she did believe him. She had to. There were bigger things to be borne. She stroked his face with the flat of her hand and Kelso felt it was alright again, that it was not so different after all, that they had gone back to how it was.
‘Kelso, there’s a child,’ Grace said.
He didn’t understand.
‘It’s yours,’ she said. ‘Mine. Ours. I should have written to you, but I kept it to myself. No one knows. I wanted to tell you on that first night. I tried. I said a lot can happen in a year, remember? And it has. But you said you didn’t want to ever be trapped again and this felt then like it might be a thing to trap you.’
He wasn’t holding her now. And she wasn’t holding him. It was different again, just when he thought it was the same. For a long enough time they stood with space between them. Not speaking. Not anything. And time was again something that held no importance for them.
‘It’s not a trap,’ she said, bringing them back to the moment.
Kelso didn’t say anything. He had not the words for this.
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