Joan: A story.

There was a little girl called Joan. She lived in a land with no trees, just grass and hills and peat and rock. And the sea. The sea had claimed her father, and her stepfather, as was its habit in those days. The men of the island didn't get buried there. The graveyard by the little church was full of women, and babies, but only a handful of men. Joan could see the church from the front door of the croft where she lived with her mother, and sisters, and her grandmother, and her great grandmother. It was a very small church, and Joan used to think of it as being hunched against the wind. Today, Joan was looking at the church, and the beach, and the waves, and wondering whether she would see them again. She promised them she would come back, one day. Joan didn't want to leave, but the living was hard in those days, on that island, and her mother couldn't support Joan and her three sisters with the money she got from sewing on the island. They would have to move. Not down to the big town, on the other island, but away, away south, to the really big city, full of dirt and dust and smoke.



Joan's mother had promised her that there she would be able to go to a proper school, and have proper shoes. But Joan didn't want to go to a proper school, or wear proper shoes. She liked the walk across the hills to the tiny corrugated iron school with its old oak desks. She liked the warm fur bootees that they made themselves, with the extra bits of fur to tie round their legs in the winter to trudge through the snow.

"Joey!" Joan's mother called her from inside. Joan's grandmother was called Joan too, so although Joan was her proper name, her family called her "Joey". She hated it. With one last look at the blue water and gleaming white sand, she turned back inside to help her mother pack their meager belongings.

~~~

Joan stood in the playground of the big school. It was intimidating: a big, grey imposing building, full of other little girls running around. There were boys too, but they were in a separate bit of the playground, and had their own door. The little girls here weren't very nice. They teased Joan because of her accent; she spoke with the soft, singsong dialect of the Islands, while they spoke "proper", like everyone in the Big City. Joan was slowly learning to speak like they did. She didn't want to lose the soft burr of the islands, but no-one here understood it.

But, as hard as it was fitting in, Joan enjoyed school. She got to learn the English, and the French, and Mathematics. She enjoyed English the most, because they learned poetry. Each day they had to go home and learn a verse, and then recite it in class the next day. Joan was clever, and her teachers said she would do well. Perhaps, they said, she should go on to take the exams, and maybe become a teacher.

Joan found herself a quiet corner of the playground, and took out her poetry book. She was learning another poem, not one from class, but one which she liked the sound of. A shadow fell over her book as she murmured the words to herself. She looked up.
"Joey Moar? Hello. I'm Margaret Black."
"Hello." Joan said cautiously.
Margaret sat down beside her, and glanced at her book. "Oh!" she cried, "Do you like that poem? I love it, I've been teaching it to myself."
Joan laughed. "I love it too, it sounds so good. I've been teaching myself too."

Every day, the two friends would sit on the playground wall at breaktime, holding hands and reciting poetry together. But they were getting older. Margaret was the oldest of ten children, and although her father was alive, the living was hard for her parents. They couldn't afford to keep Margaret on at school. She would need to find work.

It was the same for Joan. Although there were only four children, Joan was the oldest, and her father and stepfather were dead. Her mother couldn't afford the uniform and the school fees. Joan would also have to find work.

So, one day, when they were fourteen, they said goodbye to each other, and to the school playground, and to their dreams of teaching. They promised to recite the poems to themselves, every day, so that one day, if they met again, they would once more be able to hold hands and say the words they knew so well, and maybe recapture some of the innocent dreams of childhood.

~~~

Joan is an old, old lady now. She's got married. She's had children. Some of them died, and some of them lived. She's seen a war, and rationing, and she's been bombed. Her daughter has died. She's seen her husband die, and her sisters. She's watched her other daughter live, and grow. She's seen her meet a boy, and she's been the Mother of the Bride. Her daughter has had children of her own. Joan dotes on her grandchildren. She's done well with her life, with the chances she was given. But now, her health is failing, and she must be looked after. So she is moved into a home. A nice home, but still a home.

One day, she meets one of the other residents, Maimie. They get to talking about where they grew up, and where they went to school. They found out they went to the same school, and were even in the same year.
"But," says Maimie, "I didn't know a Joan. I did know a Joey Moar though."
"That's me!" exclaims Joan. "But I didn't know any Maimie. I did know a Margaret though, a Margaret Black."
"That's me!" exclaims Maimie.

And so there they sit, the two old ladies, who have seen their lives pass, their friends and family live and die, who have survived a war, and bombing, and who have raised children, and grandchildren. They sit in the sitting room, and hold hands, and recite poetry from those long ago days. They both remember all the words, perfectly. Here, in the impersonal surroundings of the care home, at the end of their lives, they have a friend from the very beginning, with whom they will see the very end.

And when Joan's granddaughter comes to visit, they tell her the story, and they recite the poem from that day in the playground, Margaret with her "proper" voice, and Joan with a trace of the old, soft accent from the islands. They hold hands, and they know every word.


~~~Fin~~~


Joan is my Grandma. I love her very much.

Moonlight II

Later on, the moon has moved round enough that its full light is shining through the window. This time, it seems that the footstool has picked up the occasional table's bad habits, with the added cunning (on its part, at least) that it is low enough to remain unseen in any light coming through the window.

I sit on the windowseat, and look out, and it seems that for a little while, my body is stopped by the beauty of the scene. The moon's light is now hard, and vibrant, lighting up the wet sand where the tide has gone out, and picking out the little white wavelets that are coming in from the sea. The water itself reflects the sky; a dark greyish-navy colour. The islands - little more than jumbles of rocks with an iron post on top to warn daytime sea-farers - stand out black against the water, as does Cave Point. In reality, it's Point Garry, but to a child, Adult Names have no real significance. Far better to describe things as they really are; but these names seem to stick even into adulthood.

There appear to be no clouds in the sky at all, but there are no stars either. The moon is far too bright. Sheilding my eyes with my hand, the stars eventually begin to appear. Orion has moved round, and now a small, bright star, twinkling red, has taken his place.

Opening the window again, the smell of woodsmoke has gone; everyone else is in bed at this hour. I'm the only one up, the only one awake to feel and see the beauty of the scene. I like it that way. I can be at peace with the world. There is only the noise of the waves, an occasional insomniac sea-bird, and nothing else. No cars speeding past, no groups of youths shouting to outdo each other, or girls with high-pitched neighing laughs. At this time of night, there's just me, and the beach, and Time, marked every minute by the lighthouse's neverending turn. The light doesn't seem to flash on an off; the beam picks up the moisture in the air, and you can see it, like a searchlight, as it plays over the rocks, and sand, and putting green.

I have the desire to slip outside and down onto the beach. First I'd feel the hard, chilly wood of the steps, then the colder dry sand at the top of the beach. I'd walk down below the tide-line, watching as the moonlight glistened on the water seeping into my footprints. Before going home, I'd sit for a while on the Marooned Rock, a boulder that sits some way below the high tide mark, alone on a sandy beach. It's a good rock for climbing up on as the tide comes in, rushing around it, higher and higher, until eventually it's deep enough that you can claim to be properly marooned. Then you can jump off, splashing water up inside your skirt - I, the girl who hated skirts, always wore one on the beach. It was good for carrying sand.

I'm beginning to get cold, and sleepy. I avoid stubbing my toe on the footstool again, but bump into the occasional table, which has somehow moved round to the other side of the chair since my last visit. I quietly promise vengeance upon it, then, limping slightly, I head back to bed.

Moonlight

Slipping into the darkened room, I skirted the chair and coffee table, and managed to outsmart the small, engraved occasional table that lately had developed a habit of lying in wait for me, in the shadow of the windowseat, just exactly where I would trip over it, sending the table and surface contents crashing to the floor.
There was a parallelogram of moonlight draped over the far end of the windowseat as I sat down, plumping the cushions. I always thought paralellogram was such an odd word; I would forever think of that shape as a squished rectangle, which is what I'd named it when I first met it, a long time before paralellograms entered my world.

I looked up and to the left, through the window behind my head. The moon, although bright, wasn't quite full. Tonight, it seemed to be alone in the sky. There were no stars near; only two could be seen over the bay. I knew from their positions that they were the bow and feet of Orion the Hunter, although his distinctive belt was hidden behind a loincloth of cloud. There was a breeze coming through the crack in the window, and I wrestled with the ungainly, willful locking mechanism (installed, no doubt, to keep The Tenant's Sprogs from trying to throw each other out the window). Holding it with one hand, I turned the old metal handle and swung the window open. It was very cold outside, and the scent of woodsmoke from the cottage below-and-across-the-garden (my childhood name) tickled my nose. Walking home from the station, you know you're nearly there when you can smell the woodsmoke on the breeze. If it's an easterly wind, you can smell the smoke all the way from the church at the bottom of the road, which is a bit of a cheat, I feel. Although the waves that come with an Easterly more than make up for it; they are tall, and foamy, and dangerous. I've seen them take a yacht from its moorings in the bay, and deposit the remainders - foam, woodchip, pieces of fiberglass, and one lone red plastic cup - on the beach. I've even crouched under one when it broke over the harbour wall, feeling the unexpected weight of water on the back of my neck. If you stand up, you'll be swept over the wall and back out to sea, they used to tell us, though we knew that was a lie. You only got swept out if you were fool enough to stand on the wall.

Tonight there is a westerly wind. The tide is almost fully in; the streetlights light up the water as it breaks at the foot of the wall beyond the cottage. In the dark, it can look like there are people walking back and forth on the beach, in front of the lights, as the successive breakers don't reflect the light. The bay is lit up with the moonlight; I can see the land perfectly black, outlined by the water which is ever so slightly grey-silver. The lighthouse beam turns placidly, lighting up a path that seems to go from the slates on the roof outside the window all the way to Fidra. When I was little I always wondered what it would be like to walk along that path, how fast you'd have to run to get there before the light went out. If you went at the right time of year, the puffins would greet you with their raucous calls.

The moonlight didn't just light up the bay. There were streaks of cloud coming into view, silver against the rest of the sky. There was a ribbon of cloud that went right across the bay; an airoplane was flying into it. Above my head were three short, fattish sticks of cloud. As I watched, they were thinned out by the wind, two of them falling behind, until I could quite clearly see the Enterprise. I wondered how geeky that made me. I'd heard somewhere that no matter where you look, the Enterprise will always be somewhere in the sky. It's the natural state of clouds, apparently. I wasn't so sure about that latter bit; as for the former, I didn't have a habit of seeing Enterprises, so I couldn't comment. As I thought about the Enterprises, I heard the church clock on the highstreet beginning to strike ten.

The sound of the waves was beginning to make me thirsty. I realised I had left my bottle of water on the kitchen table, and thought idly about going downstairs to get it. I ought to be going to bed. I was preparing to close the window, when I heard the church bells again. This time they were much closer: evidently Blackadder's church had a bell too, although I hadn't heard it since I was a child, despite it being nextdoor-but-one. It stuck ten, fully two minutes behind the other one. Very like Blackadder, I thought. I did know (had had it explained to me when I was little) that Blackadder's kirk didn't belong to one Edmund Blackadder, but the association made in childhood had stuck irrevocably.

I got up to fetch my waterbottle, and tripped over the occasional table. This added to my theory that it did actually move around to trip me up when I wasn't looking. Idly plotting the table's demise, I left the room, closing the door behind me. Out in the bay, the light continued to turn, and the waves continued to break, while around the outskirts little people got on with their little lives.