第3章 The Timetable

The winter timetable hung on the wall of the cottage, the one that Bess Oram had sent up with the bread and the plums, because the old one had been water-damaged by the wet winter and the new one was printed by the harbour authority in the mainland town, in a small tight type that did not look like the old one, which had been hand-lettered by a man in the village who no longer lived there, a man whose name Iain did not know, because the man had died in the winter before the last winter, and the death was the whole of what the hand-lettering was, and the hand-lettering was the whole of what the old timetable was, and the old timetable was the whole of what the four years had been. The new one gave the tide times for every day of the year, in columns of figures that meant nothing to Iain except in the way they meant something to the boats, because the boats came in with the tide and went out with it, and the tide was the only clock the village had ever kept, and the clock was the whole of what the harbour was, and the harbour was the whole of what the village was, and the village was the whole of what the Firth was. Margot had brought a copy of the old timetable, the hand-lettered one, from the ferryman's wife, who had it in a drawer in the back of the shop, in a bundle of papers that smelled of the brine and the peat smoke and the whole of what the shop was. She had set it on the table beside the new one, and the two of them had sat for an hour, comparing the columns, the small careful figures of the old one against the machine-printed ones of the new one, and finding that they were not the same, that the old one had a way of rounding the times, of giving the tide a little more room, a little more grace, that the new one did not have, and the difference was the whole of what the hour was, and the hour was the whole of what the two timetables were. "The old one was made by a man who lived here," she said. "He knew the Firth. He knew the way the water moved past the headland, the way it slowed at the second finger and quickened at the third. He put that knowing into the figures. The new one is made by a computer in the mainland town. It doesn't know the Firth. It knows the numbers. And the numbers are not the same as the knowing." "The numbers are the same," he said. "Four-seventeen is four-seventeen." "They're not the same. The old one says the tide comes in at four-seventeen. The new one says four-seventeen. But the old one was written by a man who had stood on the headland and watched the water come in at four-seventeen, and who had put that watching into the numbers. The new one was written by a machine that had never been on the headland. The watching is not in the new one. The watching is the whole of what the old one is." He looked at the two timetables, at the small careful figures of the old one and the machine-printed ones of the new one, and he thought that the difference between them was the same difference as the one between the lamp in his wife's hands and the lens in the store at the mainland town, that one of them had been held and the other had been stored, and that the holding was the whole of what the numbers were for, and the storing was the whole of what the lens was for, and the two were not the same, and the not-same was the whole of what the light was. "Can I keep the old one?" he asked, and the asking was the first thing he had done in four years that was not the work of the lamp, and the not-being-the-work was the whole of what the asking was. "It's yours," she said. "The ferryman's wife says it's yours. She says it was made for you, or for the keeper before you, I'm not sure which. But it's yours now. The old one is yours." He put it in the drawer beside the lamp, the small glass lamp that had belonged to Maren, and the two of them, the old timetable and the lamp, were in the drawer, and the drawer was the whole of what the table was, and the table was the whole of what the cottage was, and the cottage was the whole of what the village was, and the village was the entirety of what the Firth meant. She left the cottage at five, when the tide was half in and the Firth had turned the colour of the mirror held up to the winter sky, and Iain stood at the window and watched her walk down the single track toward the ferry crossing, her coat dark against the grey, her notebook under her arm, the small careful hand of it the same hand as the letter on the table, the same hand as the two winters, the one that had been and the one that was. He went up to the tower that evening, and he carried the small glass lamp in his hand, and he set it on the table in the lamp-room, where the lens had been, where the grey was the grey of a thing that had been waiting for a long time, and he lit it, and the flame was small and steady, and the dark around it was the particular grey Margot had been looking for, the grey of the waiting, the grey of the edge, and he sat in the dark with the lamp in his hand, and he did not count the boats, because there were no boats, because the tide was in and the Firth was the mirror, and he looked at the edge of the dark, where the nothing began, and he thought that the edge was the only place in the world where a light could be seen, and that the seeing of it was the work, and that the work was not done yet. The glass was in the store at the mainland town. The dark was waiting. And the waiting was the whole of what the spring was for, and the spring was the first spring in four years that would not be the work of the lamp, because the work would be the two hands, the holding and the storing, and the two hands would be the whole of what the light was.