More Questions than Answers: Schooners and Smacks

Barrawah is a town on the south coast of Trowenna: a quiet fishing village which used to be a logging port. Now it is home to schooners and smacks, and the occasional skiff. I have been coming here since I was about seven: my father has a boatshed down here and although Imshi, the boat he and my grandfather built themselves, is now long gone the shed remains.

It is cold today, but having just arrived in Trowenna from my new home in Albion I cannot remember whether it is the winter arriving early, or staying late...I find the seasons so confusing these days, and not just those of the climate. I pull my scarf across my chest once more, a long pink twist shaped like a breast-cancer awareness ribbon it crosses my breasts between my overcoat and my jumper, and should be keeping my chest warm. I have Australian flu, (I’ve been coughing up green and gold all morning), and I don’t want to be put to bed: I don’t have long here this time.

I pull my beret down on my head, which is not how it is supposed to be worn, but I’m too cold to be bothered by jaunty or chic. Not that Trowenna is known for such things anyway. We are a culture of food: Atlantic Salmon, cheese, gourmet beer and wine, and the ubiquitous fruit of our history; but we’ve never been ones for fashion beyond the occasional Aran style sweater or a "My XXX went to Trowenna, and all I got..." style garment in some of the waterfront boutiques. There is a plague of them in our capital, Georgian warehouses beneath brooding Unghanyaletta and its silent “Organ Pipes” which remind me of Kaapstadt and a boyfriend I’d rather forget.

The wharf is how I remember it: wharfish, (dwarfish?), and certainly neither a pier or a jetty. There is no funfair at the end of this boulevard of tar and treated pine, neither does it “jet” but rather it runs parallel to the shoreline; indeed it is suspended above it. An old steamer slumps painfully on screaming ropes just ahead of me. Nothing changes, this place has always been old and forgotten. I look beyond the bollards and gulls and see that the pub is still there: and it has been resurrected into something not quite modern, yet nothing like it was. It will have been “gastrocised” now, all Trowennan new-builds are, but I hope it will be homely. I always loved Barrawah’s waterside pub; and I am certain that even after four years since my last coming there is a schooner with my name on it.

I smile with childish delight, and look down at my hands. There indeed it is, a frosted beer glass with the cursive legend across it Caoirstig Saoirse, (what the hell were my parents thinking?): literally a schooner with my name on it. I maintain the smile and show it to the young man behind the bar. I’m sure we had a cheeky snogging session about fifteen years ago, but like most of the boys of summer he’s probably married now.


“You right Kirst?”

(Am I right cursed? Undeniably so.) “Yes thank you Peter.”

“S’bin ages since you bin’ere”

“Four years I believe.”

“For years?”

“Four years, one-two-three-four.”

“Agh so.”

Agh so. My mum says that, I’d forgotten Peter was of Northern Irish stock too, so he is.

“What cha doin’ in Albion now?”

“Fuck knows really.”

He laughs. “Na Kirst, not why you there but what cha do? Fer workin’ at?”

I smile again. “Still in school.”

“Geography wasn’t it?”

My smile broadens, “yes it was, but now it’s Religion Education.”

Peter explodes in a fit of Ulsterism, “fer fook’s en croyen’s sake Caoirstig, now what would ye be goin’ and doing a ting loike dat fer?”

An ever broadening smile, “it’s all much the same thing Pyedor,” (I say in my best Inis Ceithleann accent), “geography, history, RE are all about the reality of a world bigger than ourselves. I hope to show kids how to look beyond their own world, not just for adventure but for society’s sake. Religions Education is the cure for selfishness.”

“Agh so, so is a good hard slap across the backside.”

“Well, since you’re offering...” I give him a wink.

“Cheeky girl.”

“Quite, so I am.”


I am back on the wharf, and so is the rain. I cannot pull down my beret any further for fear of obliterating my view so I huck up my collar and fold my arms across my chest. I stamp my boots on the wet cement: for all the world looking like a little girl in a defiant hissy fit. (For which the cure is the same as that for selfishness.) My car is just over there, but I actually like the rain so I’ll stay out a bit longer. I see Peter locking up the pub; surely only for a moment as although it is getting dark it is still only mid afternoon. It is definitely winter here, I remember now.

Lashing and belting. Which are words to describe heavy rain? I would have been a champion at Jeopardy if ever Trowenna TV had screened it here. I love rain, it always makes me feel special: I’m rather in the mood of a bit of lashing and belting and even though I am wet I am giggling. The water cycle is such an amazing thing, and even as a Geography teacher, (and therefore destined ever to wear brown corduroy ) I never tire of reviewing its miracle. This water running down my jacket and skirt: most of it down the outside of my boots, has been so many places and been used for so many things. I love how rain connects me to the basics of the humanity of strangers: of drinking and cooking and washing. The smacks and skiffs are bobbing about on the water beyond the wharf: there is no wind in this rainstorm so there is nothing to flatten the waves as the tide meets the river on its journey down from Swanport. The schooner sits far more contrite: (as indeed I would in the presence of such wild smacks): its larger size allows a decorum in the midst of tempest which is a lesson for me in the maze of my imagination right now. If only home weren’t so far from life. I need recalibration.

When I was seventeen I began a summer job at the Antiquarian bookseller in Swanport, and at twenty (and University) I was made mistress of the market stall in Barrawah. Now the store itself has moved to Barrawah, and it is here I choose to seek shelter from the inundation. I love rain, but I hate being wet, and in fear of my Australian flu turning Aotearoan, (where you’re coughing up all black), I go inside. The man for whom I worked in the dark and distant nineties is now gone, his daughter was at Ladies College with me and she now sits amidst the dust and flyspeck at the neat yet loaded counter to the left of the door. She greets me with a peck on each cheek, a warm smile, and the correct pronunciation of Saoirse. We’ve not seen each other since graduation from university, me as Mistress of Teaching, she as Spinster of Education (with Honours). Does she remember the books we used to read?

“Caoirstig Saoirse, how lovely to see you darling. I have read of your exploits, and indeed have read from your writings as well. I see that you still...”

I smile nervously and look down at my hands. Men usually find that becoming in me, but does she think me wanton for the substance of my writings?

She smiles back. “I also...yet I cannot hope to write as you do. My husband...dead...and my parents moved to the north island. Alone...just Peter...and sometimes your mother comes to tea when she and your father are down at their shed, but...no-one since you lwent from here and...”

The dark secret, never shared, (only us). Before we found our men folk (...dead...) we had found each other.

“And now Caoirstig Saoirse, you write of it with loneliness.”

“There is no-one, and I have not felt the need to.”

She sighs and a tear forms. “Oh dearest departed I had hoped...”

I reach for her hand, but she is standing too far from me so I abort the attempt. “Describe for me the rain,” I ask her.

“The...”

“Rain. I write with loneliness because I feel lonely. Tell me what you feel. Describe for me the rain.”

“The rain is heavy.”

“Go on.”

“The rain is falling.”

“And yet...”

“Caoirstig Saoirse, the rain is belting. Look out on the water, on the river. Look at the skiffs bobbing. Look at the schooners and smacks! Oh, Schooners and Smacks...do you remember?”

I nod and smile congratulation at her. “Schooners and Smacks...innocently describing the two most common watercraft of Swanreach, Swanport itself and of course Barrawah...yes also words in the Trowennan cant which describe...”

“A tall glass of New South Welsh beer, and also...well...”

“Smacks?”

“Yes, well we always thought that was pretty self evident.” Her smile fades. “So lonely Caoirstig Saoirse.”

“I’m not surprised dearest, it’s a bit isolated down here, out the backside of Unghanyaletta.”

“I meant you.”

There are no secrets that can be hidden from your first love. Not when you write an online story blog under a very thinly designed pseudonym. Even Trowenna, even Barrawah, has t’internet.

I shed a tear.

She takes my hand.

We lock the door of the shop, but do not pull the blind. We go around the end of the row where the travel books are kept, (the holiday aisle), and she pulls out a step used for reaching the uppermost shelves.

She offers me the seat. I pause for a breath, then sit.

She smiles down at me then lays herself across my knees.

Over the course of time I steadily beat her to tears...a rhythmic smack upon smack, each cheek, each sit-spot; the untamed wilderness of her skirt a well covered continent of exploration by the time I can no longer lift either of my exhausted arms. She is sobbing rather than crying, wracked and compliant she’d not hesitated under my rain but only writhed in response. My hands are swollen and my arms are heavy. My heart, even heavier. This hasn’t helped at all...I feel ever more lonely and ever more lost. This is no longer who I am. She has sensed this, and this is part of why she is crying. She has waited eleven years for me to return to her, and she has failed me.

She rises painfully, and looks again down at me. Her eyes are puffy, her lipstick smeared clownishly on her left cheek and also her shoulder. She is incapable of sitting, and I wonder if she wonders as I do...what if she’d taken the seat at the outset and I'd...

I stand, embrace her, kiss her. I’ve half a mind to lick that smear of lipstick but that passes. I turn and walk out of the shop, pausing to nod to a young woman who had been waiting at the locked door. It is only as I turn down the street and hear her asking for a copy of Raskolnikova that I realise she probably heard us going about our reintroductions inside. I also recognise her voice as that of my cousin with whom I shared a tent when we were eighteen.

But that is another story...