GEMMA DAGGER

Haystacks

It was Hallowe’en.  My mother was on her knees frantically finishing my costume.  My sister Evelyn and I had been looking forward to this night all week and our mum had been working hard to make special outfits. 

 ‘But what are we supposed to be?’  asked my sister, as she danced round the kitchen with a grinning turnip head.

  ‘We’re Haystacks!’  I joked.  

‘You are not Haystacks’  said my mother as she swaddled me in a third layer of straw.

 ‘You’re wearing a guising costume.  It’s what children wear at Hallowe’en.  It’s what I wore when I was wee and it’s what Granny wore too.’ 

  I looked at my sister – triangular straw hat like a thatched roof, peaking over her tiny head; fancy woven top, and on bottom a full skirt of straw so carefully crafted it rippled like a windy field as she jumped round the room.  Whatever we were, we looked tremendous.

At half past six we waddled down to the shore like little straw ducks.  Mr Robertson was there as usual.  Never smiling - always waiting, ready to take us across to Yell and then onwards to the main island.  Evelyn was scared of him - but I liked to talk to him because he had a television and knew about things in America and Africa.  I had never been out of Shetland.  My sister had never even been to mainland Shetland. Tonight was to be her first time.  

The little boat was lit with oil lamps and two devil faced turnip lanterns.  Mr Robertson stood tall and ghostlike at the stern as we sailed across the narrow stretch of sea.  Other kids from Fetlar were also on the boat and some were wearing similar straw costumes to us.  We were alive with high spirits as we laughed and sang our way across the moonlit water.  Some days Mr Robertson said he would throw us all in if we didn’t start behaving but that night he didn’t say a word.

As we entered the school gym hall everyone turned to gawp at us.  A room of faces masked and painted: lions, wizards, clowns, ghosts and cowboys.  I had never seen such fancy outfits.  In one corner of the hall there were big iron tubs filled with water and apples for dooking.  In another corner dark scones dangled from a low washing line, slowly dripping treacle sap onto the wooden floor. On either side of the hall were two thin cylindrical pillars that rose right up to the ceiling. A group of kids had started spinning round one.  Gripping on tightly with one hand and leaning their weight on the outer side of their body as they let the momentum circle them round the pole repeatedly. 

 ‘Let’s go and do that’ said Anne - one of the girls from Fetlar. 

Anne jumped in straight away and became part of the wheel of spinning witches and monsters, Faster and faster they spun, streaks of colours and shining fabrics blurring like a spinning top.   

‘Hey!’  

A loud voice called out behind my back and I turned round to find a small group of kids gathered around us.  

‘Nice costume!’ shouted one of the girls who was dressed as a butterfly.  Everyone started laughing and giggling and I could feel hands touching and poking at my straw body.

‘The farm’s that way!’ shouted another.  ‘Watch you don’t get eaten by a sheep on the way’.  

I couldn’t speak, it was as if no words existed – my head had been carved hollow.  They all laughed again and I could feel my face getting hot so I concentrated hard to keep the tears safe in the back of my throat.  Stupid costume.

‘Where are you from?’  asked the butterfly girl.

‘Fetlar’ I said, concentrating hard on the lines of the floorboard.

‘Does everyone dress like a Haystack on Fetlar?’

Thankfully a loud clapping sound from across the room interrupted the interrogation and we all turned to see what was happening.

‘OK children. Everybody… Everybody listen.’  The room quieted down as a lady teacher stood at the front of the small stage.  ‘We’re going to start the dancing now.’  

They divided us up into sets of eight, ready to start the reels.  I felt a sense of relief –glad to be part of something organised. I didn’t like the feeling of not knowing what to do, to be free to wander round the party without reason or purpose.  It made me nervous.  I liked things to be arranged to plan.  Evelyn was the opposite.  She liked to march to the beat of her own drum.  I caught a glimpse of her across the hall; a teacher was leaning over her and she was shaking her straw head in defiance.  She could be so stubborn sometimes.  Please don’t make a fuss, I thought, but I could tell from her eyes that there was no point in the teacher even trying to make her join in the dancing. She had made up her mind.    

For the rest of the dances Evelyn sat at the side of the hall with a blanket over her head.  ‘What an embarrassment’ I thought as I was flung round the room to a cacophony of fiddle music, red faced, itchy and hot.  We joined hands to form a circle of eight and I held on for my life as the group pulled me round so fast I thought my legs would trip and my arms snap in two. I couldn’t let go for fear of being propelled into outer-space.  The girl next to me was older and had clammy, sweaty palms.  I didn’t like this dance at all.  I felt an unexpected pang of homesickness as I imagined my mother sitting in the kitchen and the smell of the warm peat fire smoke.

After the dancing the lady teacher announced there was to be break before the games.  She left the stage abruptly and went to join the other teachers at the back of the room.  They all seemed very serious and stern faced compared to the adults on my island.  The Fetlar grown-ups were a lot more cheery, well, except Mr Robertson –but he was different.  When the teachers left, the room dissolved into chaos again.  Groups quickly formed round the two pillars.  I took Evelyn and followed some others outside as I didn’t want to run into the butterfly girl again.  I wanted to be outdoors; out of the noisy hall.

Other children had also dispersed outside and were sitting about in little groups.  Evelyn and I sat under the fire escape steps and began to throw stones into an old bucket.  I could hear a group of older kids talking above us.  They must have been sitting at the top of the steps.  I could smell their cigarette smoke.

‘I want to take my costume off now,’ said Evelyn.

‘You can’t’ I told her.

‘Why not?’

‘You’re not allowed’

‘But I want to,’ she whined.  ‘I don’t like it’

The cigarette smoke was starting to irritate my nose and I was getting angry with Evelyn.

‘All the other girls have got good costumes except us’

‘Look Evelyn, mum worked all week on these costumes. Stop carrying on.’

‘I’m not carrying on.’

‘Yes you are!’

Evelyn’s eyes suddenly widened and she let out a shriek.

‘You’re on fire! You’re on fire!’  She screamed.

 The next few minutes were a haze of smoke and panic.  I remember the smell of burning straw as I frantically ran round the dark playground chased by Evelyn. I felt like a splinter of kindling flying up a fireplace in terror. Spiraling round the suffocating chimney in vain till something solid pulled me back down to the ground.  Mr Robertson was there. He must have stopped me and extinquished the fire. He was saying something but I couldnt hear - just a mouth opening and closing in slow-motion above me.   I remember lying bare chested on the ground looking up at a circle of ghostly white faces.  I was mortified - not only had I been a human bonfire but was now lying half naked on the cold wet ground surrounded by a crowd of kids in fancy non-flammable costumes.  Evelyn was crying loudly.  What a disaster. 

The journey home was the best part of the evening.  Somehow or other I’d managed to emerge from the incident without so much as a scratch.  The fire didn’t reach my skin.  The teachers gave me extra sweets to take home and I shared them with the Fetlar kids as they gathered round me, hungry for all the details of the fire.  It wasn’t till we arrived home that I realized Mr Robertson hadn’t been driving the boat back as usual.  My mother was furious when she found out what happened.  

‘What were you doing outside?’  she shouted.  ‘Where were the teachers?’  ‘Why were there children smoking cigarettes? Why was there no supervision?’  Her questions were never ending.

‘I’m speechless’ she exclaimed angrily.  ‘Only on the mainland!’ 

Later on she came into our bedroom as I was falling asleep.  ‘Least you’re home safe’ and she kissed me on the head.

The next day I woke tired and didn’t want to get up.  I had to run down the hill to the school boat dragging Evelyn behind me.  Mr Robertson hated unpunctuality and would have no problem leaving without us.  Luckily, the boat was still there although Mr Robertson was not.  He wasn’t there the next day either, not was he there any other morning that week.  My mother’s mouth went tight and pursed when I asked her why Mr Robertson didn’t drive the boat anymore.

‘I don’t know’ she said as she tidied up pots and pans and other things on the worktop.

‘Well, can we go and visit him one day?  I want to look at his television.’

‘He’s gone to live on the mainland’ 

‘Oh…but why did he not tell us when he took us to the party?  Why did he not say goodbye?’  

‘I don’t know why!  Stop asking me silly questions.  Sometimes people forget to say goodbye.  People forget things, you know.’                                                                                                                           ’Mr Robertson saved me from going on fire.  Maybe he want’s to see me!’                                  ’He did what?  Don’t talk rot - it was just you and Evelyn till the others came.’                                  ‘But Mr Robertson was there too - I saw him.’                                                                                     ’Do you not remember fainting?’                                                                                                         ‘Yes. ’                                                                                                                                                ‘Well there you go.’                                                                                                                                ’What do you mean?’                                                                                                                              ’When you faint you go unconscious and it’s like a dream.’                                                                          ’But it wasn’t a dream.’                                                                                                                    ’Look,  I have had just about enough nonsense from you today.  I want no more talk of this - do you hear me?’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        We got a new boatman called Mr Mowat.  He was very old and never remembered our names, but we liked him all the same.  Bonfire night came and went, but I was banned from going anywhere near the flames.  Next it was Christmas and then the Viking festival followed Evelyn’s 7^th birthday and then Easter.  I liked to look forward to every single celebration as not much else seemed to happen on Fetlar.  It wasn’t until the summer holidays that we went back to the mainland.  I forgot to ask my mother if we could visit Mr Robertson until we were on the boat back home – but she said that she had no idea where he lived anyway.  The next Hallowe’en there was no big party on the mainland. The Yell kids were invited to come to Fetlar for a small affair in the church hall.  Evelyn and I were both pleased as we got to wear special plastic masks bought from a shop.  I was a werewolf, Evelyn was Frankenstein and not one of the local children were dressed in traditional straw costumes after last year’s spectacle.   

It was not until years later that I found out what really happened at that awful Hallowe’en party on the mainland.  Mr Robertson had hung himself in the boatshed behind the school.  While we were all dancing together in the warm gym hall, he was outside in the boatshed.  I sometimes forget that I found out about what happened and find myself thinking about Mr Robertson the way I’d always imagined him to be.   Sitting there in his mainland bungalow watching programmes about African tribes and far away lands on his television.  And then I remember.

(g.ovens2011)