Salt Read Free Page B

now.’
    â€˜It’ll wash.’
    The longshoreman pulled out a bit of driftwood from his pocket: ‘And that’s a bit of wood.’
    He chucked it on to a pile of similar-shaped wood and other bits of flotsam, looked up and nodded at Hands, pushed himself upright from the gate, leaned forward into his stride, and left.
    And wrapped round the length of driftwood was a strip of fabric - part of the fine cream of a German silk parachute, woven in Dresden, found in a creek bed, hurriedly buried. Or so the story usually went, spoken either by my mother or my grandmother over the years. Though even this is uncertain: there are irregularities, details that change, inconsistencies in chronology. That fish, for one, seems likely to have been a red herring. Sometimes it’s a plaice - a flatfish, admittedly - but other times it’s been a whiting, a John Dory and, once, a mackerel. Whiting are never caught at that time of the year, and the longshoreman’s bag of tackle never carried mackerel feathers.
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    Hands knew from the start he’d bitten off more than he could chew. However hard he worked, however many things he put right and made level, he knew the woman would sweep him out of the house with her broom one day. And so, up on the roof, I imagine he gazed long and hard at the gleaming roll of parachute silk against the muddy lawn, before turning his attention to the horizon, way beyond the marshes.
    That little glimpse of him up on the roof is my invention, I admit, but here my story goes along with my grandmother’s: Hands liked looking at the horizon. Long-sighted, dreamy-expressioned, whatever you want to call it, she noticed it and didn’t like it one bit.
    She had a problem on her plate. She had a man in her suit and he was already looking into the distance. What to do? Well, her solution was to regard it as a fault in his eyesight. She made him work on things close at hand, made him hunt for pins on the floor, pointed out a speck of dust and asked him what it was, made him search for crumbs under the table, made him inspect the moles on her back. He peered closer each time, completely unaware that his lovely long sight was being reeled in from the horizon like a sleeping fish at the end of her line. Unaware that his world was becoming her cottage. Eventually, she made him thread needles, night after night, with candles placed further and further off, until he rubbed his eyes and massaged his temples to get rid of the headaches. And after several months she put on his nose a pair of glasses she’d apparently had ready for him since the start, sat him in his chair in the dark and told him he looked a real turkey .
    She had him by the eyes and she had him by the belly. Early in the mornings he’d be rushing over to light the fire, to clean the skillet, to put two gleaming plates on the table. He’d get the block of porridge off the shelf and put a knife next to it. Oatmealy vapours overran his dreams. Hands would guide the marshwoman to the hearth while she was still practically asleep. He’d put the wooden splice in her hand and ease it through the softening lard. He’d flick the fat on to the hot skillet, and as the sizzle and smell rose, her drowsiness would evaporate. Perhaps here he’d get a whack with the splice for being so meddlesome. A pretty little routine, until one morning, when my grandmother decided to be sick on his clean white plate.
    Staring down at the mess, his hard-working and super-efficient hands had for once not known what to do. They rose slightly in the air and his fingers stretched out to grasp the things he didn’t understand.
    â€˜Thass your fault filthy cud, stickin’ me up you sly old devil. Thass what you deserve no less. And don’t get no ideas about no runnin’ off now you hair. Thar’s no more porridge cake for you and no lordin’ it round the house neither. I’ll have a quilt to keep me warm and