I waited. And waited. I saw the sky go bright in a place I’d never seen bright before. So what did that mean?
Did you think it was a good idea, Mum, or not?
After the light got halfway I could see my reflection in the water under the pier.
A girl with long hair. Looking like she had a beard: her hair down in straggles, covering her face.
A reminder of who we found after we saw the painted dogs.
‘Looks like you’re facing your worst enemy,’ I say to the girl. But she wins in the end by hiding herself in ripples.
Later, I went to put flowers on the sea, to remember my friends, but the tide got me, up to my waist. That was a slip-up. I have to be more careful nowadays.
I have to think of everything.
It’s too easy to make mistakes. Two days ago, when I was on watching duty, I accidentally looked at the sun with the telescope. Since then there’s been a black moon in the middle of what I’m seeing.
Even so, I’m a smarter kid for having it. I won’t make the same mistake twice. Because the more mistakes I make, the smarter I’ll get.
Still, the thing to worry about is this: how many mistakes is a person allowed? How many mistakes can a single person make and still be? There isn’t a rule, or none that Mum ever told me.
She’s telling me the answer to her riddle. It’s time to pay attention: everything else can wait.
Now I see her, and I bury down to the bottom of my sleeping bag as the sound of her starts to become real: ‘What goes around the world but stays in the corner?’
Mum’s wearing her red and blue post office jacket. She asks the question in English so we know it’s a riddle.
We pass by Mr MacKinnon’s blue-eyed collie, the one that’s always on guard. Then the phone box. Then the forest of fifteen trees, then Orasaigh, the island where the rats used to live. Floraidh MacInnes once told me that there was a storm and all the rats came ashore and ate the annoying cats, but she’s a liar, I never believed her.
‘A shy man on a boat?’ I answer.
‘Works fine. I accept it works fine, but it’s not the answer I was looking for. Try again.’
It’s my work to get the bundles together. Mum’s fingers are inky from the packets. She whistles up for hills and down for dips. She keeps spare elastic bands in a coil around her wrist which make her hand go puffy.
‘My stand-in is coming tomorrow,’ she says. ‘He’s not been before. Early ferry, with any luck. Then that’s you and me are away on our Christmas shopping. How good is that?’
I give her the thumbs-up. It’s damp, but the heaters blast dryness. We go on the east road first, because most people live on that side of the island, then onto the north road.
My favourite postbox is the one which fills with sand in a west wind. It crackles inside like a shell.
Mum hands out biscuits to all the dogs that bark. She says that if we give enough biscuits to the barking dogs they’ll be too fat and soft in the head to chase us.
‘Chan ith a shàth ach an cù,’ she says, testing me as we drive away from another one. ‘Your mother wants to know the English translation – go ahead.’
‘None but a dog eats his fill.’
‘Apart from auld Eric in Cleit who wants to dig his ain grave with his teeth – well done.’
Mum said she learnt everything at school but the old sayings; now she wants me to know them, too.
‘Look, will you,’ she says. ‘Washing out in the rain.’
The washing is Mrs Barron’s. Mum chaps on her door. Mrs Barron is OK. Mum gets permission to take in her sheets, and when she comes back she smells of mist. Mrs Barron has handed her a letter for posting. The letter has a lovely stamp: hummingbird, green and gold.
She hands the letter to me and I put it in the going-away postbag.
‘Using up his collection,’ Mum says. ‘Since Mr Barron died. Last year it was Jubilee editions. I’m forever telling her that it’s like tearing up ten pound notes – but she has her ain mind.’
I let my fingers sift the letters in the bag. Some are smooth, others pebbly.
There’s a sheep scratching its arse on the last postbox before we get on the round back for home.
‘Fine day for it,’ Mum says, as she unlocks and empties the postbox beside the sheep. She’s mostly polite to animals in case they’re the departed returned.
When she gets back in the car I answer, ‘Stamp.’
Mum draws a tick in the air. ‘Full marks, a ghraidh! Around the world, yet stays in the corner. You got it perfect.’
‘But that doesn’t work, Mam. What if you posted a coconut? Or any round thing, like a ball? There wouldn’t be corners then.’
‘Seadh? When did you hear of anyone posting coconuts or footballs? Is that even likely?’
‘It’s exactly where your riddle doesn’t work.’
The ribbon road shines with sun and rain. Eilean Mor shows through rags of cloud.
On the drive around to the south road Mum stops to ask the cows if they’ve ever heard the like of posting coconuts.
The cows look up for a bit, before going back to their usual grass-chewing.
It’s like stones you find on the beach. Polish them, make them shine. Keep them warm in your hand.
Make a new ending. Where nobody gets sick, and the electricity comes back, like it should’ve done, like it always did when there was only a storm.
It’s a clock which wakes me, which means I’m in trouble, as the alarms were meant to be turned off.
There’s a big mess in the room. I only notice it when it gets bad enough to hide nearly all the floor. There’s dirty clothes belonging to Alex: hanging in fankles from the pram we brought in last night. I think the pram was from a game he was playing: another game where he fell asleep and had to be lifted to bed.
We began shopping for clocks to keep time. Best of all is the radio-clock which Calum Ian found, which even tells the day of the week and the date. Still though, it doesn’t remind you of what dates are important, or the dates you might forget. Alex couldn’t remember his birthday: was it the 11th
