Night Waking

by Sarah Moss

  ‘Surprise project. You’ll see when we get there.’ Unless I thought of something better in the meantime, an interactive lecture on Colsay Burial Practices Through the Ages.

  We could see showers moving across the sea, blurring the horizon like grease on a lens, but the sky over Colsay was silver and the grass was dry. The air smelt of seaweed and peat. I shifted Moth on to the other hip and unfastened my cagoule; the house is so cold that I often find myself overdressed when I get outside. Raphael had run ahead and then been arrested by something on a dry stone wall.

  ‘What is there?’ I called.

  ‘Moth down. Moth go see.’

  I put him down and watched him diminish across the grass. I don’t usually see Moth from a distance greater than I might cross between him losing his balance and hitting the floor, I don’t go too far to be able to smell the food in his hair and the poo in his nappy. He’s so small I could lose him in an open field.

  There were patches of blue sky by the time we came to the ruins of the church, and a hesitant reflection of the pale sun in the sea. The church is at the end of the ‘street’, the worn stones between the two rows of houses. I don’t know if there were never any pews or if they were taken out, but there is one small window high in the eastern wall and even I have to duck in the doorway. It would have been a dark place to spend summer Sundays, with the birds calling and swooping outside, the sea blue and the grass rippling in the sunlight.

  ‘Careful, Raph. We don’t know the walls are safe. It was the graveyard I wanted to look at.’

  He came out. ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought it might be interesting to see if we can read any of the inscriptions. Moth, love, don’t go through there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Moth, come here!’ I crouched behind a stone. ‘Peepo!’

  He came running. ‘Peepo!’

  ‘Why, Mummy?’ repeated Raph.

  ‘Because then we can find out about the people who lived here. That’s history.’

  He stroked the top of a gravestone, worn and tilting.

  ‘Are the bones still here?’

  ‘Probably. Bones take a long time to – to disappear.’ To rot.

  ‘Peepo!’ shouted Moth.

  Raph fingered his own eye sockets. Shadows flickered across the grass, a brighter green here than anywhere else on the island. Two ravens glided over our heads, squawked and tumbled up the sky, turning like stunt planes.

  ‘Come on. Let’s see if we can find any we can read.’

  Most of the stones had been hammered by rain and scoured by wind until it was hard to tell that they had ever been pulled from the ground and chiselled into words. There were people there whose only legacies were posterity, and perhaps the ghosts of their impatience, their bad temper, the way they never recognized their children’s achievements and were incapable of admitting error, were still whispering in the ears of parents in Colla and Newfoundland and Sydney.

  ‘Look, Raph, can you see? Even rock gets worn away by wind and rain in the end. Look how they’re so much rougher on this side where the wind comes off the sea.’

  ‘Down,’ said Moth. ‘Moth want a biscuit.’

  I pulled a foil package out of my pocket and offered him an oatcake.

  ‘No oatcake. Biscuit.’

  ‘OK. Biscuit while Mummy looks at some more stones, all right?’

  ‘Stones biscuit.’

  I gave him the ginger biscuit from under the oatcakes, which left me without a bribe for the way home.

  The newer graves are further from the church, towards the rocks.

  ‘I still can’t really read any letters.’ Raph was kneeling at one of the stones, tracing grooves with his finger.

  ‘I think this might say “Mary”,’ I said. ‘I doubt they bothered with long inscriptions. Everyone must have known who was where anyway.’

  It was seeming less and less likely that we were going to find Alexander Buchan or any other story lying in a rough grave behind a drystone wall. There were lots of mounds in all sizes, and it was hard to tell which were man-made and which natural, let alone the size of the bones underneath. I like the churchyards in Sussex, where you get names and relationships and causes of death and how the survivors wanted people to think they felt about it, but perhaps that’s just another way of denying mortality. Perhaps it would be better for the living to accept that the narrative inside our heads is finite and probably inconclusive, not to be chiselled on to stone and cast out into the future.

  Raph stroked a fallen stone. ‘This one’s broken.’

  ‘It’s probably been there a long time. The graveyard might pre-date the church.’

  I stooped over a small mound with a knee-high stone. Under the lichen, three letters were engraved, probably initials, as if passers-by might need reminding who lay there. If even the majority of those born on Colsay had died here over the centuries, there must be a lot more bodies somewhere. The ravens landed on the church roof, and one of them shouted something down to us.

  ‘Mummy? Where’s Moth?’

  My heart turned. Where?

  ‘Moth! Moth, where are you?’

  Small head bouncing off the rocks, little fingers scrabbling on falling stone. I had always deserved this.

  ‘Moth!’

  ‘Mummy, where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. Help me look. Look behind all the stones.’ But he’d have come out by now.

  ‘Moth!’

  Where would he go? Not, usually, away from me, not voluntarily. ‘Moth!’

  Raphael was running from stone to stone, as if Moth would really cower there while he called him. I climbed up the dry stone wall. This is the beginning of it, this is what it feels like to become one of those stories. Alexander Buchan’s story.

  ‘Mummy, don’t, it’ll fall.’

  He wasn’t there.

  ‘Moth!’

  In the church. No. I ran around the outside wall. I knew what came next.

  ‘Moth!’

  He was gone. Moth was gone. No sign of him on the rocks, no body bobbling like discarded plastic on the waves. No – no blood.

  ‘Moth! Moth, come back! Moth!’

  Raph let out a wail. I looked at him and had nothing to say.

  ‘Moth!’

  I didn’t know what to do next. Run for Giles and his phone, but I didn’t want to leave the place we’d last seen Moth. Keep looking, but we knew he wasn’t there. Find him.

  I heard a shout. Not Moth.

  ‘Anna! He’s all right. I’ve got him.’

  Zoe. Zoe coming up the street, holding Moth’s hand as he trotted beside her. I ran to him.

  ‘There’s my mummy.’ He sounded as if I was expected.

  I picked him up and held him so tightly I could feel his ribs flexing. My eyes filled. Never out of my sight, never again. He wriggled.

  ‘He was just pottering in the houses,’ said Zoe. ‘He was totally safe. He’s been chatting away.’

  I buried my nose in his hair. Zoe’s mouth made the shape of a smile.

  ‘He does. But I was frightened. I looked up and he wasn’t there.’

  She pushed her hair back. ‘He was there. Just not where you thought.’

  ‘Bad enough. Believe me.’

  Raph came up. There were tears on his face. ‘Can I cuddle him too?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  I knelt down, Moth on my hip, and put the other arm round Raphael.

  ‘Don’t squeeze him too hard.’

  Raph stroked my hair. ‘You did.’

  ‘Moth pulling Raph’s hair,’ said Moth. I disentangled his fingers and stood up. ‘Moth down!’

  ‘Not yet.’ My hands were shaking. I tried to take a deep breath and failed.

  Zoe looked at Raph. ‘Hello. I’m Zoe. I was just exploring your village.’

  He studied her clothes. All fashions have always looked convincing on thin eighteen-year-olds, from balloon sleeves and Leghorn hats to tight jeans and the kind of top I vaguely asso
ciate with American ball games, but she was obviously cold, her hands mottled and lips pale. Her lollipop-stick legs ended in those canvas ankle boots they all wear, which were wet and muddy. Her mother should have made her put her wellies on, I found myself thinking, as if I didn’t myself allow Raph out without a coat most of the winter. Her hair, the caramel colour often adopted by women in their later thirties but rarely seen in nature, hung in tangles around her face. I had an uncharacteristic urge to wrap her up, warm her, feed her.

  ‘Why are you exploring it?’ Raph asked.

  She smiled. ‘Because I think a deserted village is cool, and because I didn’t have anything else to do.’

  ‘I think it’s warm. The Romans could make buildings that stayed cool even in Naples in summer. I took my coat off.’

  I glanced around. Took it off and left it somewhere, but there are worse things to lose than coats.

  ‘Down!’ said Moth. I put him down but kept hold of his hand.

  ‘It is bright,’ Zoe agreed. ‘Can you tell me about your village?’

  The sun was on his face and he squinted up at her. I should have tried to inflict sunscreen. There is a rule that babies and children should not be in direct sunlight at all between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and it applies in Scotland as well as on the beaches of the Mediterranean.

  Moth pulled my hand. ‘Mummy come!’

  ‘I can tell you a bit,’ said Raph. ‘People lived in it until after the war, but not many, and then they went away and died. And we can’t read the gravestones.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I expect they’re pretty worn out by now.’

  I followed Moth towards one of the houses and stood watching outside the door when he went in. The island children must have roamed freely, but some of them must also have fallen off the rocks. And in winter they’d have been corralled inside like animals in a byre.

  ‘You didn’t feel like a walk?’ I asked Zoe.

  ‘I felt like a walk. That’s why I came here. I just didn’t feel like spending the day with my mother.’

  I nearly said that I wouldn’t either. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to have some time to yourself,’ I substituted.

  Moth came back to the doorway. ‘Up! More biscuit!’

  ‘All gone biscuits,’ I told him. ‘Oatcakes.’

  ‘No oatcakes!’

  ‘All gone biscuits.’

  He rolled on the ground. ‘Moth wants a biscuit! No oatcakes! No!’ His feet drummed my boot and I moved.

  ‘That’s pretty cool,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Yeah. I always think that.’ I looked at her. I had no hope of achieving anything until after lunch anyway. ‘Would you like to come back to the house and have some tea or something? Stay for lunch if you like, though we’re not a gourmet establishment.’

  ‘OK. Thanks. Only I’m vegetarian.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t have meat for lunch. I’m no cook.’ I scooped up Moth and clasped him as he kicked at my pubic bone. ‘Ow, Moth, no kicking Mummy. Raph! Come on, love, I think we’d better go home and make lunch.’

  He poked his finger into a hole in the wall. ‘Can I stay here? I won’t do anything silly.’

  No. Because the Neolithic wraiths will come up their stairs and drag you in. Because the sky might fall on you. Because one day those walls will collapse and therefore I don’t want you anywhere near them ever. ‘I can’t see a good reason why not. But Zoe’s coming back with us.’

  His shoulders relaxed. ‘OK. I’ll come too.’

  Moth stopped kicking. ‘Raph come too and have a biscuit.’

  It is occasionally clear to me that they as well as I would prefer a wider world.

  ‘Should I take my shoes off?’ asked Zoe.

  I stared at her. ‘Why? Your feet would probably freeze to the floor.’

  She shrugged. ‘Mum insists, at home. She says she won’t have whatever people have stepped in on the pavement walked all over her carpets.’

  I put Moth down and he stood holding my hand and looking up at Zoe.

  ‘But there aren’t any pavements. I even reckon the birdshit has probably worn off Giles’s shoes by the time he’s walked back here. Not that there’s much carpet either. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Zoe,’ said Raphael. ‘Do you like bridges?’

  She smiled at him through her hair. ‘I like standing on them watching the water. Do you play pooh-sticks?’

  He went into the playroom. ‘I like them because of the building. Do you know how they tense the caissons?’

  He held out the bridge-building book and she went over to him.

  ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ I said.

  Alone in the kitchen, I ate a dried apricot and sniffed at some out-of-date cream cheese which I was hoping to feed Zoe. It was too far gone, but there were eggs only a couple of days past the date stamped on their shells.

  ‘Do you like scrambled eggs?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Raph.

  ‘Yucky eggs,’ Moth added.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you. There’s enough soup for two.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Zoe. She was sitting on the floor between them, helping Moth push the animals into the ark. ‘But I’m not very hungry.’ She had the body of someone who had been very hungry for a very long time.

  I went back into the kitchen and broke the eggs, which seemed to be all right. I didn’t have to persuade Moth to be put down while I stirred in milk and pepper, and I didn’t have to step over Raph and his book to get to the fridge. Toy cars were not being pushed under my feet and no one demanded to play with the milk carton and its lid or push down the lever on the toaster. I could have put the radio on and heard the news or – I glanced at the clock – maybe even the Afternoon Play without concern for developing young minds. I went and looked into the playroom.

  ‘Are you OK here, Zoe? Don’t feel you have to entertain the children.’

  She looked up. Mrs Noah (doesn’t that woman have a name of her own?) was standing on the roof of the ark as if reasoning with the elephant threatening to jump off the second floor of the garage.

  ‘One, two, three, jump!’ said Moth. ‘Oh bugger ark.’

  Zoe grinned. ‘I’m having a great time. Best for weeks.’

  ‘Zoe’s been in a rainforest,’ said Raph. ‘A temperate rainforest in Canada. With bears. Not the Amazon rainforest. People keep cutting down the Amazon rainforest and it makes half of the oxygen on Earth so if they don’t stop we won’t have any oxygen to breathe and we’ll all die.’

  I stroked his hair. ‘I’m sure they’ll work something out. Someone will work something out. Was it fun, Zoe, in Canada? Where were you, on the West coast?’

  Her hair swung down. ‘Vancouver Island. It was fun for a little while. Then I came home.’

  ‘Lunch nearly ready?’ asked Moth.

  ‘Soon, Moth. I’ll get back to the eggs. I’d love to hear about Canada, I haven’t been anywhere for years.’

  *

  ‘That’s far too much for me,’ said Zoe. I tipped most of her egg back on to my plate.

  ‘Like so?’

  She shrugged. I am entirely willing to waste food in exchange for childcare.

  ‘So you’re just back from Vancouver?’ I wanted to hear about a different ocean, the smell of different trees, the sound of other accents. I put some cheese on Moth’s fork in the hope that experiments with cutlery would lead him to eat it. ‘Are you having a gap year?’

  Zoe pushed her egg around, watched by Raphael as if eating disorders were a form of avant-garde performance art.

  ‘What’s a gap year?’ he asked.

  ‘When people finish school and before they go to university they spend a year travelling on their own or with friends.’

  Zoe’s hair came down.

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘Because it’s interesting,’ I said. ‘To see bears.’ Or Save the Rainforest.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zoe. ‘Only I dropped out of mine.’

  ‘Dropped splat,’ said Moth.

  ‘Yo
u dropped out of your gap year?’

  ‘My mother doesn’t think it’s funny. She’s, like, shadowing me in case I try to drop out of Cambridge as well.’

  ‘Are you going to Cambridge?’

  She cut up some toast and pushed it under the egg. ‘I’m meant to be starting next year. She says if I can’t cope with a gap year I should go in October instead. I think she thinks they should throw someone else out so I can change my mind. Or she can change it for me.’

  ‘What are you going to read?’ I put some more butter on my bread.

  ‘Law.’

  Law didn’t seem like a mother-hater’s choice. English literature, perhaps, populated by malevolent parents (why do children tell all the stories?), or a modern language involving many months far away. The impenetrable realms of physics, or the secret kingdom of mathematics.

  ‘Are you looking forward to that?’

  She shrugged. ‘It seems too far away.’

  In fifteen months, Raph would be nine and Moth would be a person with bowel control, the beginnings of altruism and a haircut. He squeezed a piece of cheese on toast until it extruded like toothpaste through the gaps in his fingers.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Raph. ‘There are children in Africa who don’t have anything to eat at all.’

  I sat up straight. ‘There are also children in Africa who are too full for a second helping of ice cream. It’s a continent, not a refugee camp, Raph.’

  Moth began to rub the squashed cheese into the table.

  ‘Moth like some ice cream.’

  ‘I haven’t got any ice cream. We were just talking about it.’

  ‘More ice cream?’

  ‘There isn’t any ice cream.’

  He banged his plate on the table.

  ‘Moth wants ice cream!’

  ‘I know Moth wants ice cream but there isn’t any. What about a biscuit?’

  ‘No biscuit. Not like biscuit.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Raph. ‘You’re always wanting biscuits.’

  Moth’s plate and cup swept on to the floor as if a tornado had passed over the table. His feet drummed and his arms lifted as if he were about to speak in tongues.