(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.
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