第11章 The Ledger's Second Column

Nissa opened the Ledger on the eighth morning, after Timea had gone to the schoolhouse to write her own page. She opened it with her hand on the front clasp. She did not open it to the page she had marked, or to the page with the substitution. She opened it to the first page, the one with her own name on it, signed in Merle's hand. The Ledger had a second column. She had not noticed it before. She had read the entries in the first column and taken the substitution lines to be the second, when in fact they were the second line of the first column. The second column was empty on the page she had read the morning before. It was not empty on this page. It had been written in, in a hand she did not recognise. She read the first line. *The child comes to the parson.* The second: *the child comes to the schoolmaster.* The third: *the child comes to the boatman.* The fourth: *the child comes to the folklorist.* The fifth: *the child comes to the boy.* The sixth said *the child comes to the Tidewarden.* Nissa put the Ledger down on the table. She did not read any further on that page. She turned to the next, and the next page had the same six lines in the same hand. The next had them. The next. And the next. All the way back to 1852, the first Long Ebb Merle had kept. Sixty years of the same six lines, in a single column, in a single hand. Not Merle's hand. Not Barsham's. Not Cuthbert's. Not Nissa's. Not the hand of any woman who had been the Tidewarden of Harnsey Wick, and not the hand of any man who had been the schoolmaster, or the parson, or the boatman, or the fisherman. Not the hand of any child who had been on the marsh. She put her hand on the Ledger. She did not open the book any further. She sat at the table and thought about the six lines, and about the six people who had been in rooms around Harnsey Wick that week, and about the parson who had not opened his door in seven days, and the schoolmaster who had not told her the boy's name, and the boatman who had not come to the kitchen since Friday, and the folklorist who was sitting at her kitchen table writing in a notebook, and the boy who had not come home, and the Tidewarden who was twenty-two and had signed a book she did not yet understand. She thought about the shape of the writing in the second column. It was not Barsham's hand, which she had seen on the school attendance book. It was not Merle's, which she had known for forty-one years and had known in her own handwriting as an older woman. It was not the boy's, which she had seen on Barsham's slate in the schoolroom. It was not the parson's, which she had read on the notice board outside the church in the spring. It was not Isaac's, which she had seen on a note in the kitchen drawer years ago. It was not hers. It was not Timea's, either, which she had seen on the notebook in the morning. It was not the child's, either, which was a seven-year-old's hand and which Nissa had seen on the slate and which had been on the slate and which was on the slate still. She did not recognise the hand. She put her hand on the Ledger. She did not open the book any further. She took up the pen. She wrote on the seventh line of the Ledger, in her own hand, *the marsh is going to Barsham.* She set the pen down. She closed the Ledger. She put it on the shelf with its back to the wall. The second column was the account. The first column was the bookkeeping. The first column was what the Tidewarden wrote down. The second column was what the account wrote down. The first column said *one sent, not returned.* The second column said *the child comes to the parson.* The first column said *substitute accepted.* The second column said *the child comes to the schoolmaster.* The first column said *the bell heard inland.* The second column said *the child comes to the boatman.* She looked at the page in front of her. The first column was Merle's writing. The second column was not. The first column was kept for the village. The second column was kept for something else. The first column was kept in the book. The second column was kept in the marsh. The first column was the record of the account. The second column was the account itself. Timea came in from the schoolhouse at ten. She did not look at the Ledger. She sat down at the table and wrote, and by eleven the page was full, and she put the pen down and got up, and she left the notebook on the table, and she went out to the marsh, and Nissa sat at the table with her hand on the Ledger, and the Ledger was closed, and the Ledger had a second column. She went out to the marsh with the tide at low slack. She walked the reed to the first step and stood on it. The water was still and brown, and going out. Then it was not. Then it was going in, and out again, and she stood on the first step and did not go further, and did not write anything in the Ledger, and did not decide anything. She went home to the Saltwyke house. She sat at the table. She put her hand on the slate. The slate had gone warm in the morning, and had held that warmth through the noon hour and into dusk. It had the seventh line on it in her own hand, and the seventh line read that the marsh was going to Barsham. She held the slate in both hands for a long time. Timea did not come back. The slate stayed warm. ---