Chapter 4 The Schoolmaster's Ledger

Barsham kept two ledgers of his own, and neither of them was the one he showed Nissa on the third morning. She had gone to the schoolhouse at the far end of the village because Isaac had told her, in a voice so low she had to lean in, that the parson would not talk but the schoolmaster might, and that the schoolmaster had kept his own record of everything that had been missing from Harnsey Wick since Merle took the book. The schoolhouse was a low stone building with a slate roof and a single chimney, and Barsham came out to meet her in the lane with a coat that had been made for a smaller man and eyes that had been made for reading small type. He was fifty-odd, thin, and he taught forty-two children from four in the morning to ten at night, which he did not boast of but did not deny either. He taught them English and arithmetic and reading from the parson's Bible and the shape of the sea around them, and he did it in a voice that never once let a child cry in front of the other children, which was his own particular talent and which the village did not say so out loud but which Nissa had heard of from a dozen mouths. "You want the missing record," he said. "I want the missing record." He looked at her. He stepped back. "Come in." The schoolhouse had one room and two blackboards. The children had not started yet. Barsham had the door behind them closed and bolted and he went to the shelf behind his desk, where there were three ledgers, all bound in cloth, all of them the size of a pocket prayer-book. He did not give her the one she wanted. He gave her the smallest, which was bound in blue cloth and titled, in his hand, *Harnsey Wick, School Attendance, 1879 to 1893.* He gave her the second, which was bound in brown cloth and titled *Harnsey Wick, Births, Marriages, Deaths, 1879 to 1893.* He gave her the third last, and he held it for a moment in both hands, and he put it down on the desk in front of her with a softness that was not necessary. "The third is not mine to show," he said. "Then let me look at it and it will not have been shown." He did not answer. He pulled out his chair and sat down and put his hands flat on the desk in front of him, and he looked at her across the desk, and there was something in the room, in the way the light came through the single high window in the south wall, that made Nissa sit down too. "Mrs. Merle told me, at the beginning of the year, that the Ledger had come to her and that she did not want any help," Barsham said. "I told her I understood. I told her that if the account changed, I would send for her." "Did you send for her?" "No." "You've got no right." "Mrs. Merle said I had no right. She said I had no right and that I would have no right and that when the account came to you I would have no right and that I would have to ask." Nissa sat up. "You were going to ask me." "I was going to ask you." He looked at her. "You were six months away from asking me. You were six months away from coming in here and sitting down and I was going to put it on the desk and I was going to tell you." "What would you have told me?" Barsham reached over with his hand and took the third ledger and put it in front of her, and he held the pen in his other hand, and he did not write anything, and he did not stop her from reading it either. The third ledger was bound in a cloth the colour of the salt pans, and it was titled *Harnsey Wick, Substitutions, 1852 to 1893*, and it was kept in Barsham's own hand, small and clear, from 1879 on, and before that in the hand of a Barsham before him, and before that in a Barsham before that, and the first entry was dated 1852 and it was written in a Barsham hand Nissa did not recognise. *One straw figure, one bundle of salt, three bundles of flannel. Sent to the reed. Recovered on the third tide. Recovered whole.* Nissa read the next entry, and the one after it, and the one after that. Every entry had the same shape. A date. A list of the substitution. A line about where it had been sent, and whether it had been recovered. Barsham had written every entry since 1879. His father had written them before him. His father's father had written them before his father. Four Barshams. Four generations. Forty-one years. "Barsham," she said. He did not answer. "Who are these Barshams?" "My father. My father's father. Three of us, going back to 1852, and we have kept this book in this schoolhouse, and we have asked the Tidewarden, at every Long Ebb, if we may send out our straw and salt and flannel, and we have been told yes, or we have been told nothing, and we have sent it anyway, because we did not want to be the ones who did not send." "The Tidewarden tells you to send it." "The Tidewarden tells us to send it." "And Merle." "Merle told us to send it. Merle told us to send it every time." "And who decided that we had to send anything." Barsham looked at her. He looked at the book in front of her. He put his hands flat on the desk. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know, and I don't want to guess, because my grandfather, who kept this book before my father, was asked the same question by a Tidewarden in 1852, and he said he did not know, and he said he had not been asked since 1813, and the Tidewarden who asked him said then we had better not guess either, and they sat at a table like this for three days before she walked out to the marsh and came back and wrote her name at the top of the book." "She came back," Nissa said. "She came back." "With what in her head that she'd lost?" Barsham looked at her. He had his hand on the book. He did not answer, and he did not have to. "She came back and she could not read," Barsham said at last. "She could not read her own book. She had to be taught the letters again, and my grandfather taught her the letters, and he kept this ledger for her until she could read it herself, and she never once forgot the shape of it." "That was Merle's grandmother," Nissa said. "Yes. That was the Tidewarden before Merle. She came back in 1852. She came back in 1852 and she was not herself for a year, and Barsham before my grandfather taught her the alphabet and she taught him how to keep the account and the two of them kept this book until my grandfather took it, and my father took it, and I took it." "Barsham," Nissa said. "If Merle had sent someone, and the sea had taken them, would Barsham's book say so?" Barsham looked at her. His hand was still on the desk. "Yes," he said. "Barsham's book would say so." "And would it have said who?" "It would have said who." "Would you have sent a child?" He put his hand off the desk. He put both hands flat on it. "No," he said. "I would have refused. And I would have told the Tidewarden I had refused, and I would have asked her to put it in the Ledger, and I would have stood in this schoolhouse until someone took me or the tide came in, and I would not have sent." Nissa put the book down on the desk. She looked at Barsham across it. "Barsham," she said. "The sheep went." "I know about the sheep." "And the parson is keeping silent." "I know about the parson." "And I am the Tidewarden, and I am twenty-two, and I am going to need you to send me the boy who can go to the marsh and look for the child who heard the bell, and I am going to need you to send him in my name." He looked at her. He looked at her again. He did not answer, and then he put his hand on his chest, and then he put his hand on the book, and he said, "I have a boy," and he said it in a voice Nissa had not heard him use in twenty-two years of teaching forty-two children. "He's sixteen," Barsham said. "He comes to the schoolhouse at six every morning. He'll come to you this afternoon." ---