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Authors: Theresa Kishkan
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the links, finally furrowing on the slight rise of the garden.
â If ye can, just toss them big ladeens off to the side, then we can trowel the rest of âem under so.
And there were buckets of musty seed potatoes, eyes sprouting in darkness, there were fleshy cabbages, and little else to go into the ground. Maybe the occasional row of carrots that would emerge from the loam when pulled fiercely by their tops, and theyâd be burrowy with worms and woody to the taste. Parsnips, two-forked and convoluted like ancient fertility charms. Or else parsley to brighten the first pan of new potatoes, then left to dry in any sun that might occur.
In another area, lovely grainy rye for thatch, for fodder, for the secret stills of the island evenings.
I remember the rains of summer and the green shoots. After the harvest there was nothing. Dark earth and the shorn fields. The fatted calf hanging skinless from a beam.
â We will be given the Council houses next summer. That is the promise.
â How do you know?
â Some of the others, Festy and Peter, have been inquiring. They have told of the fierce cold, the old with their rheumatism, the shortage of turf and the drowning. This is not a new promise. They have been telling us weâll have the houses all right, but they are not so quick with the making of them.
The new houses, held in the future like a bright flower to make the coming winter bearable. I walked the various roads where the allocated ground held the foundations, saw the design in the one finished bungalow: square, white, and the trim a bright yellow; a barren, treeless yard; no more a part of the landscape than the power boats of the summer people seemed a part of the sea. Transplants, grafts, utterly unnatural.
â Will you be glad to move?
â Ah, when ye have spent a winter here, ye will not ask such a question.
The lanes seemed strangely empty when I walked them. The small shy children were now confined to the school-house, though still barefooted and with sun-bleached hair. And the currachs were in, black beetles in the fall days, shiny with new tar and patchy with the mending. The pots were anchored with rocks along the quay top or else were stacked in various sculleries to be restrung. Tangly nets, filling the outbuildings, reeked of fish guts and were littered with the broken legs of crabs and the dried scales of mackerel.
You will not say you were lonely. If it was conversation you wanted, then it could be found on the lane by the quay any evening. You could find your way to it by the thin smoke rising from the pipes, even in rain; you could follow the low music of voices. Or, in the kitchen of the house that was the post office (stamps in a tin box, letters bound with string), the women would be at the knitting, pausing now and then to reprimand a child. And there was the man in the narrow marriage bed, the smell of salt in his hair. In a purely simple way, you could say you were happy with your tasks.
But then youâd walk and could only pace the single mile of island ground before retracing your steps or stopping in the face of the sea. Youâd wait for a change in the shape of the land, a seasonal turning of tides. Theyâd turn and change quickly, unnoticed out the window. Spring tide, neap tide, a minimal wearing of stone under the force of the elements: mostly rain. At harvest, youâd expected riches, not the perfunctory pulling of onions from the unrewarding earth.
What you did not expect: winter. You did not expect the terrible frosts and the sly damp that filled every inch of the cottage and found its way into your bones, making the old fractures of wrist and pelvis ache under the layers of clothing you had naively believed to be a protection. Your bed was clammy and smelled of mildew. There was no fishing. The days you spent listening to weather reports on the wireless, hoping for a reprieve and drinking tea from a pot you would not allow to be empty.
â If ye can, just toss them big ladeens off to the side, then we can trowel the rest of âem under so.
And there were buckets of musty seed potatoes, eyes sprouting in darkness, there were fleshy cabbages, and little else to go into the ground. Maybe the occasional row of carrots that would emerge from the loam when pulled fiercely by their tops, and theyâd be burrowy with worms and woody to the taste. Parsnips, two-forked and convoluted like ancient fertility charms. Or else parsley to brighten the first pan of new potatoes, then left to dry in any sun that might occur.
In another area, lovely grainy rye for thatch, for fodder, for the secret stills of the island evenings.
I remember the rains of summer and the green shoots. After the harvest there was nothing. Dark earth and the shorn fields. The fatted calf hanging skinless from a beam.
â We will be given the Council houses next summer. That is the promise.
â How do you know?
â Some of the others, Festy and Peter, have been inquiring. They have told of the fierce cold, the old with their rheumatism, the shortage of turf and the drowning. This is not a new promise. They have been telling us weâll have the houses all right, but they are not so quick with the making of them.
The new houses, held in the future like a bright flower to make the coming winter bearable. I walked the various roads where the allocated ground held the foundations, saw the design in the one finished bungalow: square, white, and the trim a bright yellow; a barren, treeless yard; no more a part of the landscape than the power boats of the summer people seemed a part of the sea. Transplants, grafts, utterly unnatural.
â Will you be glad to move?
â Ah, when ye have spent a winter here, ye will not ask such a question.
The lanes seemed strangely empty when I walked them. The small shy children were now confined to the school-house, though still barefooted and with sun-bleached hair. And the currachs were in, black beetles in the fall days, shiny with new tar and patchy with the mending. The pots were anchored with rocks along the quay top or else were stacked in various sculleries to be restrung. Tangly nets, filling the outbuildings, reeked of fish guts and were littered with the broken legs of crabs and the dried scales of mackerel.
You will not say you were lonely. If it was conversation you wanted, then it could be found on the lane by the quay any evening. You could find your way to it by the thin smoke rising from the pipes, even in rain; you could follow the low music of voices. Or, in the kitchen of the house that was the post office (stamps in a tin box, letters bound with string), the women would be at the knitting, pausing now and then to reprimand a child. And there was the man in the narrow marriage bed, the smell of salt in his hair. In a purely simple way, you could say you were happy with your tasks.
But then youâd walk and could only pace the single mile of island ground before retracing your steps or stopping in the face of the sea. Youâd wait for a change in the shape of the land, a seasonal turning of tides. Theyâd turn and change quickly, unnoticed out the window. Spring tide, neap tide, a minimal wearing of stone under the force of the elements: mostly rain. At harvest, youâd expected riches, not the perfunctory pulling of onions from the unrewarding earth.
What you did not expect: winter. You did not expect the terrible frosts and the sly damp that filled every inch of the cottage and found its way into your bones, making the old fractures of wrist and pelvis ache under the layers of clothing you had naively believed to be a protection. Your bed was clammy and smelled of mildew. There was no fishing. The days you spent listening to weather reports on the wireless, hoping for a reprieve and drinking tea from a pot you would not allow to be empty.
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