The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace Read Free Book Online

ground the fish eggs into creamy paste and added green flour. She rolled the mixture into dumplings and heated them in sea water on the dampened fire which she had lit too dangerously close to the reedwork of her hut.
    “Watch the pot,” she said. “Don’t let it crack. And call me when they’re done.”
    “When are they done?”
    “They’ll rise and float,” she said. She took a cup of water and stooped to leave the hut. In the dull light that lingered in the distance I watched her step into the grasses with her dog and walk a little way from the hut. She wore a belted smock. She took it by the hem, lifted it up to her breasts and squatted on the ground. Beneath the smock, she was thin and naked. Her buttocks and her thighs were creased and empty like punctured water bags. The hair between her legs was long and black. The dog stood before her, its tail erect, sniffing at the ground. She took its muzzle in her hands and pushed the dog away towards the hut. Her eyes were good. She saw me watching her as she added earth to earth, and cleaned herself with the water and some leaves. “Watch that pot,” she called, and pulled a screen of grass to block my view.
    The dumplings were still boulders at the bottom of the sea. I turned my head away from the woman in the grass and looked about her home. Her child was sleeping on its mat. I could hear the snort and whistle of its blocked nostrils, the insect in its chest. The woman’s woven house had once been strong, but water, winter, sun, wind and frost had soaked and dried and split and snapped the reeds. Its coating of caked mud had cracked and fallen. Its roof required new timber. Its floor, fresh mats. The bracken fronds that she had used in bunches on the ground to keep out draughts and rats wheezed and fidgeted with bugs and roaches. Now I saw the sense in lighting fires so close. What smoke remained blew low into the hut, into my eyes, into the baby’s chest, into the bracken and kept the flies away.
    “Are they done?” she said. She was standing at the fireside, her smock in place, the dog sniffing at her hands.
    “Not yet.”
    “You’re not much use.” She shook the clay pot with a stick and the slott came up like bubbles in a pool. She tipped the pot and let the water run away until there were only dumplings and a little juice. She reached for some dry wood which was stacked inside the hut and for a while we had a golden flame without much smoke by which to eat our meal. She looked much older in that light. Sockets large and rimmed from sleeplessness, lips cracked and ulcerated, hair coarse and bunched in stooks behind her ears, white sores in clusters on her nose. I’d seen her skin before. It had the points and peaks of urchin shells. I’ve said her eyes were good. Quite clear and grey and unabashed. She handed me hot dumplings.
    “They’re good,” she said, but she did not eat with appetite. She ate as if it were a duty. She had good cause. The taste was high and tedious.
    “We had much better food,” she said, “when my husband was around. We had our pick. Crab, we had. And laver soup. And samphire, too. That tastes so good. He picked it at low tide in summer from the marshes over there.” She hardly moved her head. “You have to let the roots hang for a while before you cook. And then you strip it with your teeth. You eat the flesh and throw the stem into the fire. It whines and bubbles there like spit. We had all sorts of fish. He caught them in those baskets.” Again she hardly moved her head to indicate the fish traps, holed and ageing, hanging from the roof. Her voice woke up the baby. It was a girl. She crawled onto her mother’s lap but would not take the salty pellets of slott which her mother offered on a finger. She lived in the hope of milk and nuzzled at the smock until her mother pushed it from her shoulders to her waist and let her suck. Her breasts were scarcely more than nipples. ‘There is no milk,’ she said, and shrugged.