Everything is so clear, now, standing on the edge of this place. One way there is nothing but thick green sea, silent and bristling, open. On the other side are the crofts, tumbling neatly down the valley, hollow plunks on a skeleton xylophone. From this spot, old Tom can squint and see the ferry nearing the mainland. A dog is barking at seals, fat and oily skins rubbing rocks, and slipping through green water. Down on the pier someone is whistling. Tom sees the mouth pushed forward into a round ‘oh’ but the sound of it is carried off on the wind, blown into a tumble of gulls that shriek at the dog. Tom turns from the ferry and the dog to observe his valley once more. He thinks he will always stay here, and his sons and daughters will live here, and he will die here too.
Deep down in the valley, at the slow crunch of the skeletons backbone is Tom’s Croft. Protected from the wind that whips and cracks at the hills there is smog starting to crawl out of the chimney and a flamboyant sunset peels across the sky, gaudy next to the grey house. The smog drifts towards him; it is gloomy, falling thicker than air. Tom begins his decent. He forces a rasped sigh as his boots sink into the ground.
On the peak of the cliff a stone cottage hides behind high grass. A woman waits by the window for Tom. She is stepping from foot to foot impatiently waiting for him to do something, and balances on one leg to lean a little further out. She is like a spy, she thinks, hidden behind the glass, peering out at Tom. Her skin is filmy and pallid, from not washing today or the day before. One grubby toe idles in the dust, tracing the indents in the stone beneath. Even old Tom has forgotten her, she thinks. She lets out a hiss through clenched teeth. It is meant as a regretful sigh, but with not a soul to tut and nod in approval the noise slowly expands and then fades around her. The woman thinks how she is part of this place, how she is rooted in the earth just the same as those fine threads of grass that bluster outside her window. Slight and airy in the breeze, but great long stems that fill the earth so far down they are more underground then above it. Out of the window the light is fading, she can see a wisp of dark smoke above the hill, and the fields remind her of dough that cracks as it rises.
The gentle fields end at the cottage, where the high grass begins. Here the land starts to curdle with the sea. A sharp vertical fissure the length of a skyscraper falls away to deep water. A trawler rests sleepily on the tide down there, a wide rusty barrel of iron rolling over the water. Gulls swoop as a brazen catch of herring pours across the deck. The glossy body of muscle flaps and pelts at its net, one lucky sliver escapes through a hole in the side and the boy who is watching frowns and memorises the little hole, picks up the sliver and drops it back on top of the rest. The boy watches with taciturn satisfaction as the fish quails and grinds to a slow stop. Now it only spasms occasionally, a nervous echo of animation. The quivers unnerve the boy, who likes things to always be one way or another, not this in-between-life he sees with the fishes.
Once he caught a fish, a beautiful rainbow of colours mixed like petrol on its scales, and it seemed it didn’t belong this far north, and it was somehow lost. He’d watched its hot colours fade as it drowned in the air, which also seemed upside down and spooky because air is what makes you live, not drown. He thought about throwing that one back, that lost fish.
It’s darker now; twinkles of electric light appear on the distant hump of mainland as the fishing boat slips into its little bay on the island. Everything is so still, so very quiet, thinks the boy. The hushed water here is just as silent as he imagines the very darkest inkiest fathom of the sea must be, so far down it is through to the other side of the world, this furthest deepest place.
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