Jim Crace - The Gift of Stones

“Come on,” she called, as they approached the market green where, idle from the dearth of trade, the merchants were like owls, fat-faced, big-eyed and missing nothing. They saw the woman. It was true what they had heard. She was as wild and skinny as a stoat. Yet, like a stoat, she was a pleasing sight. I wonder what she’d do for, say, a bone of perfume, one merchant wondered in a whisper meant for everyone to hear. And then they saw my sheepish cousin in her wake. He had no choice. He became as solemn as a stone. He asked some merchants if they had good wood for hafts. They saw his hands were empty and they asked what goods he had to trade. They said that wood was not so cheap that it could be purchased with fistfuls of air. My bashful cousin blushed. No one there was fooled. His contract with Doe was as visible as if the two were sharing just one smock. Besides, the woman was beckoning and holding out her hand and calling, ‘Come on, come on, you were so hurried just a while ago.’

“Clear off,” my cousin said, to laughter all around.

“And what about the apples and the bread you paid?”

“There were no apples and no bread,” my cousin told the merchants who sat there.

“Then we are quits,” my mother said. “No pay, no play.”

All eyes — with every eyebrow raised — were now upon my cousin. They understood the tangle he was in. They saw the woman loop and tie the knots that bound him.

At last he said, “Her head’s a mushroom. She’s quite mad.” And then; “My family has been kind to her. We let her load the sled and bring us flint. We give her bread and apples for her child. For all that she’s a numskull and a clod we treat her better than a sister…”

That one word “sister” made the merchants honk. They were as merry as a swarm of grigs. The lack of clients and of trade had made them indiscreet and playful. For them my cousin, self-impaled and writhing like a half-hooked eel, was an entertainment and an excuse for jollity and smut. So when he seized the nearest object to his hand — a leather purse — and threw it after Doe, the merchants doubled up with guffaws and with stitch. And when the purse — so inexpertly thrown — merely looped and curled into the wind and fell a child’s length from my cousin’s feet, some men there wondered if their sides would hold and whether this was laughter or a fit.

For once, my Doe felt warm and welcome with these men. Her laughter was as loud as theirs. Her face was flushed and happy. They called out to her, “Good for you,” and, “Well said, sister!”

Their approbation was a sign for her to leave. She left my cousin there and, rather than retrace her steps and unravel the good humour she had woven for herself and them, she continued to that private place, the long grass on the headland beyond Leaf’s home.

You’ve heard before how, from above, the beach viewed from the clifftop is a world that’s upside down. Its gulls have backs. You’re looking down on wind. So Doe looked down on wind, and on the mirror pools which were as blue or cloudy as the passing sky. The tide was pulling back. Each wave was more tremulous and more distant than the one which went before. The sand was beating back the sea.

You can imagine what it was that summoned Doe down from her private place. The seashore is a lure for those with time upon their hands. Who can resist the bribe and charm of shells or sand or pebble-stones? Only stoneys, it would seem, too occupied with work and trade to savour all the smells and flavours of the beach.

And so my story places her right at the water’s edge. The sun was on her back, the wind was in her face. Her feet were bare. She dug her toes into the sand. And then she must have felt the shiver of a living thing beneath her feet. She curled her toes and pulled it out. It was a scallop, taking refuge from the light. She tried again with both feet now. She must have looked as if she wished to fight the wind by gripping to the shore with toes. Quite soon she found that if she stood exactly where the tide gave way to sand, the scallops, slamming shut their wings, threw out a jet of water which marked exactly where they hid. She collected for herself a dozen scallops, as many shells as she could hold and still climb up the rocks to reach the village path. She wondered at the comments she would get when she marched through the marketplace enriched by scallops and by sea.

She did not reach the marketplace, despite the orders of the wind which spat and whispered at her back, “Go home. Go home.” She heard the thunder of the horses before she reached Leaf’s house. She knew enough of horsemen to retreat. She stepped into the bracken and sat down. She placed her scallops on the ground. She heard the cries and curses of the merchants as the troop of horsemen hurtled through, knocking men and merchandise aside. She heard the snapping heather as the horsemen passed Leaf’s house and turned towards the coast. She felt as fragile as a plover’s egg, abandoned on the ground. She saw herself turned into porridge by a hundred hooves. She stood up in the bracken and waved her arms to warn the horsemen she was there. One rider, alarmed perhaps by what he took to be a sudden threat, found time to pause and draw an arrow in his bow. He welcomed the excuse to let it loose, this sharp and shiny leaf, this bronze. She saw him and she turned her back to flee. His arrow was more swift than her. It caught her and she fell.

Or else? Or else the scallops were not hers but found by someone else. A man. My cousin, let us say. Who can tell what brought him to the beach, the morning of the day she died? Of all my cousins he was the truant one. He was the one most ill at ease with brothers and with work. Perhaps that now there was less work to do and little food from trade, he thought he’d try his luck at my one skill — not telling tales but hunting with my toes. No doubt — a stoney to his heart — he will have felt forlorn upon the beach, exposed, and bored, and cold. It would have seemed to him a damp and dirty task to unearth scallops and, once his sling was full, we can imagine how he fled the sea and sand for the order of the village.

His first thought was to take the scallops home, but they would spread too thinly if he shared. If he could have found an unattended fire he would have baked them for himself. Such scallops, after all, would make a change from bread and apples and dry meat. And then his second thought was this: he’d take the scallops to the woman on the hill. For once she would not make a fool of him. For scallops she would do what she was told.

He found the woman and her girl half asleep and sheltered in the clumsy cave of stones and wood that they called home. She seemed more flimsy than she’d been when she’d survived by sledding stone. She told the girl to wait and pointed to the bracken a few paces downwind from the path.

“Let’s go there,” she said and held her hand out for the sling of shells which he had promised her.

“Afterwards,” he said. He felt triumphant and in charge. He knew how hungry she must be. Her eagerness for him and them would fade as soon as his fresh and salty bribe changed hands. He gripped the sling and pulled Doe to the ground.

That would have been the end of that. My cousin would not be the patient, careful sort. His passion was short-lived. Except the girl was calling, “Doe,” and whimpering.

“Stay there. I won’t be long,” her mother called.

“Can I go, too?”

My cousin found it hard to concentrate when the woman he had bought was shouting conversations in the wind. He pulled my mother to her feet. “Come on,” he said. “I know a private place.”

She went with him because she had the scallops on her mind. He said, “I’ll walk ahead. You follow me.”