Night Waking

by Sarah Moss

  I put the gear lever back into neutral. Could the very small chance of getting this job be worth the psychological damage Giles might accomplish in forty-eight hours?

  ‘You said you’d never say that to them,’ I said. ‘You said you’d never hit them and you’d never threaten them with boarding school.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never hit them and I’m not threatening them. And you’ll get anxious about missing your train if you sit here winding them up much longer.’

  I checked the time. ‘No, Giles, I’m miles too early.’

  Raph sniffed. ‘The car clock’s still on Greenwich Mean Time, remember. You wouldn’t let me change it.’

  ‘But you do need to go,’ said Giles. ‘Go on. Mirrors, signal, manoeuvre. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.’

  Raph waved, but Moth didn’t raise his head as I drove away, watching him in the rear-view mirror. I drove past Spar, between the parked cars along the village street and out past the library. The road widened, a reel unwinding in front of me across the green hillside, but I drove slowly, the engine hesitating as we came to the hill. I could feel the cord, the filament, that joins me to Moth and Raphael, stretching and thinning and thinning. It is unnatural to go away from your own children. It hurts. I changed down a gear. Maybe I didn’t want the job. It is a myth, anyway, that work makes us free. Why do I imagine that paid employment is the road to fulfilment? I checked the mirrors. Because I know that motherhood is not, that’s why. Because Marx, who never asked what women want because it did not occur to him that it would be any different from what men want, who saw that equality extending to responsibilities as well as rights was the basis of a just society, is a better friend to me than Freud. The road levelled out and I accelerated across the moor.

  The filament lay more lightly when I got to the station. Nobody refused to get out of the car until he’d finished the chapter, nobody got stuck trying to squeeze through the gap between the front seats while I was arguing with his brother, nobody lay on the pavement screaming because I wouldn’t let him write on the car with the keys. I turned off the engine and there was silence. I didn’t have to go round the back of the station to find the pushchair ramp or restrain small children from leaping on to the track while we waited for the attendant to conduct us across the lines because you can’t get a pushchair over the footbridge. I walked up the stairs, bought myself a tuna sandwich and a bag of crisps, went back when I remembered that it is possible for a solitary adult to carry cups of hot coffee as well as lunch and a bag, arranged myself on the platform as far as possible from the parents with a double buggy and a school-age child who was already jumping off the benches and trying to chase pigeons on to the track, and when the train arrived, auspiciously on time, boarded it without squabbles about who pressed the button to open the doors, who set his foot first into the carriage and whether the toy car had fallen down the gap. I did not have to judge close enough proximity to a toilet to allow me to leave Raph in situ while changing Moth’s nappy and yet distant enough to prevent Raph making unnecessary visits for the sake of novelty plumbing. I awarded myself a window seat at an empty table where I intended to sit quietly with my laptop for the next four and a half hours. It was, I thought, already worth the effort of applying for the job.

  The train jolted and the grey stone streets of Inversaigh began to slide away. Most of the gardens backing on to the railway had plastic slides and the sort of sandpit that cats interpret as a toilet. A more optimistic woman than I am was hanging out washable nappies with one hand while holding a baby of about eight months in the other. Alexander Buchan’s mother must have had to do that, day after day, drying them over the stove most of the time. Which, I wondered, discounting such trivia as antibiotics and the welfare state, is the best invention of the twentieth century, the washing machine or the pill?

  Houses ceded to fields, and then hills with the bracken already turning bronze, interrupted by a rectangle of Forestry Commission pine trees, dark and spiky as any of the woods in the fairy tales Raph won’t listen to. They should be back on the island now, and should have no reason to cross the Sound again until I came back. Giles should be able to distract Moth from my absence, if he thought to try. If he didn’t let his eyes slide towards the newspaper, or his computer, and ignore the children’s questions. I have heard Raph ask Giles the same question, admittedly about the inner workings of a certain kind of 1970s space suit, twelve times without an answer better than a grunt, and Moth is more easily discouraged than that, might in fact give up on language altogether if left in Giles’s care for too long. Where Mummy, he would ask. Where Mummy and where Mummy and where Mummy, and when Giles didn’t answer he’d think I’d gone, left him as I have so often longed to do. My eyes filled and I took out my phone, dialled. I stared out of the window, waiting for Giles to pick up. If they were upstairs, he wouldn’t hear it on the mantelpiece. Reception is unreliable, though I imagine it to be influenced by the weather, which was a perfectly ordinary British grey. Eight, nine. Raph usually hears it. Eleven, twelve. Hello, this is the voicemail of Giles Cassingham. I ended the call. The train was climbing, following the line of a rust-coloured river across the heather. A tall bird rose from the water and flapped away, legs dangling. Giles was probably just changing Moth’s nappy, or maybe they were on the beach or – or – would a person’s phone ring if it were underwater? Is what the caller hears the actual sound made by the other handset or some kind of electronic substitution? I could send a text, but since I refuse to write anything that doesn’t have correct syntax and punctuation it takes me longer to compose text messages than it would to catch and train a carrier pigeon, and anyway Giles wouldn’t reply. There was probably just no reception on Colsay today. They were probably fine.

  I opened my laptop. The Reverend’s endless citations of the Highland Commission report had at last led me to look it up, something I would have done as soon as I suspected that Eve might have been born and buried in the nineteenth century if I’d known, as any historian should, that it existed. I’d found it online, digitized by the Gaelic further education college, and I thought I would have a quick look to see if it included anything about Colsay before I revised the conference paper on children and public space which I was planning to recycle as an interview presentation. My document files were superimposed on a picture of the children on the swings by the river in Oxford, the only picture I’ve seen in which they are both smiling. I think I chose it as wallpaper because it is the sort of picture that someone who would rather be with her children than working would use. Maybe Giles had taken them for lunch at the pub before they went home, in which case they might be in the boat now, where I’d much rather Giles didn’t answer his phone. I opened the Highland Commission report, and then my phone rang.

  ‘Giles.’

  ‘You rang. Is everything OK?’

  We were high up now, crossing the bare moor like a ship on the open sea.

  ‘I just wanted to remind you to bring the laundry in. Because of the rain.’

  I heard Moth singing ‘Little Boy Blue’ in the background.

  ‘Oh, is it raining where you are?’

  No. ‘Just started when I rang you. And I remembered the laundry.’

  Giles started laughing. ‘Anna, the laundry’s in the kitchen. Where it always is.’

  ‘Is it? I thought I put it out.’

  I heard Raph. ‘Daddy, can I talk to Mummy?’

  ‘We’re all fine,’ said Giles. ‘Here’s Raph.’

  ‘Mummy, do you want to hear my idea. If aeroplanes flew in formation like birds, they’d use less energy, wouldn’t they? And we’ve already got air-traffic controllers so they could move the planes from one formation to another, only the airlines would have to take turns who went at the front because that one would use more fuel than the ones behind, and you’d probably need some new safety features to keep them the right distance apart. Mummy, Moth wants the phone.’

  ‘Moth pressing a buttons!’

  The call ended
.

  I woke my computer. I hoped Giles knew that now mobile phones recognize both 112 and 999, the chances of a toddler calling the emergency services are even higher than they were in Raph’s infancy. I hoped he knew the importance of calling someone else as soon as one has apologized to the emergency services, to prevent the toddler using redial to repeat the offence. I finished my coffee and opened my laptop.

  Highland Commission, Colla, Tuesday 17th May, 1888

  James McPhee, Crofter, examined

  For how long have you been a crofter?

  I have been paying rent twenty-eight years at Michaelmas.

  Have you lived on the island of Colsay for all of that time?

  Yes. Except I was away for the fishing sometimes.

  Away where?

  Out of Aberdeen.

  You lived in Aberdeen?

  I went for the winters, to earn a little.

  So the crofting does not keep you and your family?

  Not in itself, no. Not now.

  Have you and your family ever been able to live on the croft?

  Not without the greatest hardship.

  How large is your family?

  There are seven of us in the house, including four children under eight.

  Do the children do well? Are they warm and well nourished?

  They are no worse than the neighbours’ children.

  Are they warm and well nourished?

  No. No, I cannot say that they are.

  When did you last eat flesh meat in your house?

  I cannot tell. We have never had flesh meat.

  What do the children eat?

  We can buy a little meal in the spring but it is only from Mr Dunnet’s goodwill that we have credit there.

  Mr Dunnet owns the store in Colla?

  Yes.

  And you have debts there?

  We try to pay what we can.

  Do the children have milk?

  No. We have no cow.

  Are there cows on the island?

  Yes. But they belong to Henryson.

  Henryson is Lord Cassingham’s factor?

  Yes.

  Did you ever keep a cow?

  My father had a cow. Before the pastureland was taken from us.

  And did the children have milk in those days?

  Yes. The children did better then. I remember it.

  Mr Henryson took the pastureland from you?

  From my father. From all of us.

  And was there any reduction in the rent at that time?

  Rather an increase.

  He reduced your land and increased your rent?

  Yes.

  Why did he do that?

  I do not wish to answer that. I cannot tell another man’s reasons.

  That is a shame. Do you fear any consequences of speaking the truth here?

  I do not wish to find a fire in my house at Michaelmas.

  I cannot speak to the distress of my people without also speaking to the cruel ways of certain persons.

  It is your impression that stating your independent opinion would expose you and your family to danger from the landlord or his representatives?

  I have heard of others so served.

  Mr Henryson is not here, and we are not empowered to offer you any assurances on his behalf or that of Lord Cassingham, but I will tell you that it is our sincere hope, as representatives of Her Majesty’s government, that every man should feel free to tell us the truth without fear of reprisals from those with power over him, and that we express that hope most freely to your landlord and to his agents. That being said, do you wish to give further evidence to this commission?

  I will continue, yes.

  Do the children have blankets for their beds?

  No. Not even hay, this year, for we could not grow enough grass for an ass to bite. They are sleeping under the sacks from last year’s meal.

  Your harvest is less than last year?

  It cannot be termed a harvest. A three-years child could gather it in a day.

  Do the children attend school?

  Sometimes. When they have clothes to their back and the burn is not in spate.

  They have to cross the burn to reach the school?

  Yes. It is safe enough in the summer.

  There is no bridge?

  It was swept away last year.

  Did the children used to be schooled more regularly?

  We had no school until the Education Act.

  But you are a literate man?

  I can read and write.

  And your grandchildren?

  I cannot say that they can.

  I sat back. Pale sun glinted off black water broken by grey rock, and scree-covered slopes rose so steeply from the water that it seemed as if the vibrations from the passing of the train should send boulders cascading into the loch. It must be very deep, that dark water, its surface barely rippling because the hill blocks the wind off the open sea. I imagined groups of people picking their way across this land towards ships waiting to take them across the Atlantic, people huddled in worn cotton clothes because they couldn’t keep sheep and spin wool any more, toddlers whining and refusing to walk and the old slowing everyone down until it seemed that even the young and fit would die in the rain and wind before they reached a makeshift shelter.

  The train turned inland, along an empty valley. A bird of prey hovered in the white sky as if hung from the ceiling of an art gallery. There was part of a dry stone wall scribbled with yellow lichen, and then a scattering of stone that might once have been a habitation, for people or for sheep.

  Alexander M’Caskill, Crofter

  Do you pay road tax?

  These ten years and more.

  Is there a road on the island?

  No.

  Where is the nearest post-road?

  To Inversaigh. There is no road in Colla.

  So when you wish to transport goods or letters to the south, what means do you adopt?

  We are obliged to carry on our backs whatever we would send, or pay the carriage.

  Do you have a horse or ass?

  No.

  Do any of the crofters have such an animal?

  No. We cannot keep cows and are not likely to try such a thing.

  Do you pay for a doctor also?

  Yes.

  There is no doctor on the island? Is there a doctor at Colla?

  No. At Inversaigh.

  And you have no nurse?

  No. A girl was sent some years ago, but she did not stay.

  Is the doctor able to get to Colsay when you have need of him?

  Perhaps. If the ground is not too wet and the weather fit for a passage across the Sound.

  But you wish for the services of a doctor?

  We wish for a road, or at least not to pay for a road that we do not have.

  And have you expressed this wish to the landlord?

  To his factor. To Mr Henryson.

  What was his response?

  That we might stay or go, just as we pleased. That if we thought we might do better elsewhere we were quite at liberty to depart as soon as we should have paid our debts.

  How many people now occupy the land?

  There are now twenty-five crofting families here, and perhaps ten cottars.

  And have these families come here by natural multiplication or by immigration from elsewhere?

  They were moved here from the land at Killantilloch and Shepsay when those places were cleared.

  They did not choose to come here?

  No. No one would choose to come here, with the land so poor and the living so hard. Their houses were burnt over their heads if they did not leave. A great many went to Canada and into the south, but those who remained, who would perhaps be mostly the older and weaker of the people, were sent here and our crofts divided with them.

  And your rents were not reduced at this time?

  Our rents were increased.

  Did you object to this increase?

 
Some of us did.

  Did the landlord hear your objections?

  He offered our passage to Canada if we did not like our situation here.

  But you did not choose to go to Canada?

  We had mixed reports from those who had gone. We want only to be able to subsist on our own lands where we have always been.

  Why would you not want to get out? He was describing people with nothing to lose, in a situation which they themselves acknowledged could not get worse. I would have tied Moth to my back and taken Raph by the hand and headed for Glasgow and then New York. The train slowed. A road cut across the bracken on the hillside, and then there was another wall, a terrace of stone houses. We stopped, the doors opened to let in the smell of outdoors, heather and diesel, and closed. We trundled on.