shanty night,
shanty night ii,
the barrister up the rope
shanty night
The fisherman would be out working all night. She waited to make sure he wasn’t coming back for more bait or top ups and tumbled herself; quiet, bold and clumsy, straight into The Angler’s Arms.
The door so thick with oak would keep the sounds warm and safe inside. Once open, Meri felt the wet hot slap of noise hit her chest. How loud they all are? How loud and raucous and joyful? Every single one of the women inside, singing or growling or banging a table in rhythm to the strange music. It sounded like harmonised football chanting, or sonar, or the songs she’d heard certain types of women sing by the shore.
She was filled with so much energy and glee for a moment, she even attempted to sing a note before grabbing her throat in agony. Maybe it was a mistake. To come here? Maybe it was a mistake she hadn’t before. Maybe she didn't need her voice removed? Maybe she wasn't mad. Maybe they were all mad. And maybe that was okay?
She started to laugh at these ideas, one by one, so absurd and hilarious and wonderful. But no sound came out except for the echo of the piano keys, rattling through her empty voice box.
A heavy baby crawled wicked fast across the floor in front of her, grasping towards a basket of bread buns just out of reach. "GAAAAAAAA" the baby rages, her cheeks blotchy red and eyes like moons. "GaaaaAAAAAA!"
"That's our George." A voice declared from behind the bar. "She is loud because she cannot talk".
What a strange thing to say. But it made perfect sense. Perfect, insane sense. We are all loud and mad. And it is perfect. She decided to let some tears stream down her own blotchy cheeks and silently mouth along.
Gaaaa reaching for the floor as she kneels on all fours, gaaaa crawling towards George, gaaaa squeezing her milky stodgy thigh.
"GAAAAhahah!" George laughs, surprised by this strange and milkless mother suddenly at eye height and temporarily replacing her bread bun needs. Swooping her up in both arms, Meri lets her tears merge with George’s snot and soup and saliva that had found happiness smeared across her face, with Meri's arms finding joy wrapped around her torso.
We are loud and we are mad and it is perfect
Realising her grip a little too tight, Meri decided to let go and watch George pursue her original bread goal with glee. A warm, fluffy bun now stuffed, gummed into oblivion down a gurgling loud throat. Her hands now empty, Meri reached for a discarded colouring book and red felt tip. The piano gang had started up again in the corner, heavier this time, having gained more chanters and wailers and warblers. They began to sing and stomp out an old pub classic in perfect marching rhythm. Meri crashed her feet to the ground to the beat, writing a sentence over a black and white line drawing of a huge, proud whale.
🐋
shanty night ii
Meri dragged herself back to shanty night the following week when the fisherman was out late at sea again. Finding the barrister sitting alone, she sidled up next to her, listening to her sing and feeling some old joy bubble up again. Bold enough to share her sorrows with the barrister, she scribbled them onto the back of a song book.
Gabriel was there to drink wine and sing her heart out with the huge souls of women, but felt this rather quiet presence in her peripheries so clearly in need of an ear. Or an eye, as she soon realised, watching this girl scrawl down words in thick felt tip. Gabriel had met her the other week and vaguely recalled grabbing her by the shoulders to give her some unsolicited advice, merry on the Angler’s house red. She remembered seeing something wobbling behind the girl’s eyes and taking it upon herself to help. Gabriel knew that wobble all too well from her time in the courts. She waited patiently for Meri to stop writing, even though her mind was full of unfinished papers, the woes of her pupils and the misgivings of her clerks. Reading the jumbled thoughts twist and jerk off the page in front of her, she began to nudge them into some sensible chronology and watched as they confirmed her previous inebriated hunch.
“Mmm. What we have here, my dear, is a classic case of coercion. You are in an unhealthy and potentially dangerous relationship. You must protect yourself and leave him. This will require you to use that voice of yours, wherever it has got to.”
Meri gulped, the swallow scraping raw along the throat wound. She was right, of course. But how? How do you leave a person?
She nodded at the barrister.
“You always agree with me, I’ve noticed. You are a very agreeable person it appears.” She leaned in so close it made Meri blush, and pushed one eye right up into hers. Meri could feel her lashes brushing Gabriel’s cheek, whose voice had grown hushed and drawling. “But it’s okay to be disagreeable, you know.” And with one big blink she leaned back and howled with the truth of seventy judges.
Meri forgot to breathe until she got back home to the fisherman that night.
🐋
The Barrister Up the Rope
One cold evening, Gabriel decided to climb up to the lighthouse by a long thick fisherman’s rope to buoy Meri’s spirits. She’d overheard one of the local policemen writing up Meri’s report that day and thought something sounded rather off. Besides, Meri hadn’t been seen at the polling station, her name left unchecked from morning til night. This was an alarm bell for a woman in this century, in this political clime.
“Not a good look”, she mutters, noticing the windows all boarded up with plastic and hoisting herself to the top, lunging upwards at right angles.
Meri hears a knock at the back circular window and nearly jumped out of her skin, instead sinking slowly to the ground and hoping he’ll go away. She cowers slowly backwards towards the far side of the roof.
“Meri my darling, it’s me you fool!"
That voice! It was the barrister! Oh god, why was she here? What had Meri done? Fuck fuck fuck.
“Please let me in! I can’t hold this rope much longer!”
Meri’s legs took a moment to start moving before she managed to scramble towards the window and peel back the plastic. It was really her! She looked magnificent, straddling the side of the lighthouse with a huge twisting rope between her hands and legs and a rucksack perched on her back, awkwardly inching up her neck as Gabriel pressed her face at the window. Meri threw her head back and grinned so ferociously a light shot out from her mouth right into Gabriel’s face, nearly knocking her back to the ground again.
“Argh! Just let me in woman! I’ve got a cheese board in my bag.”
After listening to Gabriel put the world to rights over an array of brie and camembert and blue cheese, the women began to stomp around the lighthouse in a circle together, chanting.
“IT WILL BE OKAY! IT WILL BE OKAY! IT WILL BE OKAY!”
Meri, still voice-less, mouthed the words along with her.
Collapsing in a sweaty flop on their respective beds, Meri decides to ask Gabriel a question.
She writes it on the wall.
You know he thinks that I cheated on him with a man called Henry?
“Oh dear. And did you?”
I've never met anyone called Henry!
“Well maybe you should. Go out there and find your ‘Henry’ if you fancy such a thought. But first, my darling, you must find that voice of yours. A ‘Henry’ must be a bonus to your life, not your whole life. Do you see?”
Meri nodded with such force she’d come to regret it the next day.
Is there a Mr Gabriel in your life? She scrawls along the floor by her feet.
Gabriel smiles wistfully. “Why, yes Meri my dear heart.”
Tell me about hiiiiim! She writes excitedly up the wall.
“Oh goodness. I have known him for years through the courts, you know how it is, and we are to marry in the spring. He is charismatic and proud and ever so smartly dressed in tweeds sometimes and pinstripes at others. All the other barristers desired him. But he was to be mine, I had decided.” She throws her head back and laughs that raucous laugh again.
But is he kind to you?
“The kindest my dear. The most thoughtful. And I love him with all my heart.”
Then why don’t you want to be with him right now? Don’t you miss him? She scrawls sideways alongside the window before looking back at her, wide eyed and serious.
“Oh Meri, that is not what love is. You must live your life in full with or without them and not fall apart in misery because they are not joined at your hip. What a life that would be!” She begins batting her side at an imaginary man and grimacing, making Meri wheeze in silent laughter, as she deftly turns the gesture into a demented turkey dance around the room.
Meri joins in, their arms bent and jerking, heads bobbing in and out they chant,
WE WILL BE OKAY!
WE WILL BE OKAY!
WE CAN DO
BETTER THAN
JUST OKAY!
Meri remembers a time she had no pains and aches for a man and would splash about in the open seas without a care in her head nor a pang in her stomach. What had become of her? She would dwell on that into the wee hours as Gabriel snored softly on the twin bed next to hers.