CURSES IN PORT BROKEFERRY

(And another Port Brokeferry snapshot. This is Susan, mother to the schoolgirl Corinne, wife to Kyle. It is still Tuesday in Port Brokeferry.)

SUSAN PEGGING OUT HER CURSES

Susan hates him. Hates the smell of him. The sound of him. The thought of him. Today she does. She is hanging out the washing. Pegs in her mouth as she pins his shirts to the line. In her head she says she hates him. He’s a bastard. For what he did. That’s what she thinks. She wishes he was gone. Not sleeping in her bed again.

She hates the dark and everything quiet and his hands reaching for her. Like it was nothing what he did. Like it could all go back to what it was before. Like he has forgotten. She hates that too. All so easy for him. In her head there's screaming sometimes and he does not hear it.

It comes to the surface some days and her words all flung and stony hard. He recoils from her then. Trades with her, word for harsh word. Could be blows they hurt so much. He should just take it, she thinks. It is his fault, after all. He sleeps in the front room on those nights. But she still hears him. Through the wall. His breath slow and heavy. Hears him moaning as he curls and uncurls into sleep on the sofa.

She wishes him gone. The clap of her hands and he is not there. Like some sort of trick. Abracadabra; open the bedroom door and he is not there on the sofa. They can make whole elephants disappear. She’s seen it on the TV. A little bit of razzamatazz, the curtain raised and nothing there anymore. How much simpler, she thinks, for him to not be there.

Only, there's a part of her feels different. Some days it does. A part of her wants him there, too. For Corinne’s sake, she tells herself. He is Corinne’s father after all and he has a job to do with her. Some days it is not so bad. Some days she forgives him and seems to forget the wrong in him. Kyle holds her hand on those days and kisses her hair. She closes her eyes and imagines how it used to be. Makes believe she is back in the days before. Days she felt safe and sure and filled up with smiling.

He’s a bastard for what he did, she thinks. The last pegged out shirt releases her tongue and she says what she thinks then. Sets free the words. Small mouthed curses that she pins on the air, and the wind moving in off the sea blows them from her and carries them into the street of Port Brokeferry.

Maybe this is what Blair hears when he walks up the path to deliver the mail. He tries not to hear. Wishes he didn’t. For what he hears is something else that will keep him silent in The Bobbing Boat when Eileen serves him his bacon roll and a cup of coffee.

He’s a bastard, says Susan again.