by Mary Edward
THEY didn’t like me, the lassies in the soap works. It was my nearly white hair and my pale eyes. They called me a witch. But I was born like that. Still, witch or no, I think they were jealous when I got myself a bonny laddie.
He’d arrived on a whaling ship. It had anchored near his village to take on water or fish or the like, and he’d hidden himself below deck until they sailed away through the frozen wastes. For Scotland, and Leith. The women looked forward to the boats coming back after months at sea, because they brought sweethearts home with pockets full of siller for buying trinkets. But me? I just liked watching the goings-on at the harbour. And then I met John.
The stink of blubber on the docks was foul that day, but it was either suffer it or go home and make porridge for my auld faither, so I hung about after my work. Then I saw him coming off the ship. I was dumbfounded at the sight of him marching down the gangway carrying that big harpoon. With his long black hair and his weird dress I took him for a savage. Closer up I saw the suit was sealskin. I knew it as the stuff made into hats and capes for captains’ wives and the like… the ladies. But I’d never seen it on a man.
I backed away when he tried to speak to me - his horrible beads clacking round his neck were the teeth of some poor creature or other. But his black eyes drew me in: they were like shiny new coals, and they warmed me. He’d learned some Scotch at sea and that made him more… kind of human. I told him my name was Ann. He smiled and said, ‘Ann’, with his funny way of speaking, then he touched my white hair.