Her dress clung to her like the dress of a rag-doll. Her stomach hurt and her eyes hurt and her head hurt, and she was shaking and crying and was afraid. She felt Tom touch her face, then she opened her eyes.
Her mother listened to the story and then told her to go upstairs and change; she would be up in a minute to help her. Mary left her mother with Tom and climbed the narrow staircase to the room where she slept with her brother. She had a small room of her own, but it was used more as a cupboard due to the dampness of its walls and its bitter cold in winter. The mumbled voices downstairs were too quiet to be truly calm. Mary began crying again as she pulled the ruined dress from her body and sat on her bed. She had disobeyed her mother. She had gone near the hot burn without an adult, and now she would never be forgiven. Perhaps her father would spank her with the heavy leather belt. She had disobeyed her parents, whom she loved, and that was why she cried.
She seemed to sit in her bedroom for a very long time, and she heard the front door opening and closing several times. She was trapped there. It was as if she had been told in school that someone was going to beat her, and having to go through the rest of the day in fear of the bell for going home. She stared at her dirty dress and sat and waited. Finally, a heavy noise on the stairs told her that her father was coming up. He opened the door and looked in on her. She was shivering, naked. He had the coal-dust still on him and his piece-bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes burned, but he came over and rubbed his daughter’s hair. He asked if she was all right, and she nodded and sniffed.
‘Let me get washed then,’ he said, ‘and we’ll clean you up and get you dressed.’
There seemed a conspiracy in the house for the rest of the day, with no one mentioning what had happened. Her father washed her and helped her into her good dress and she sat by the fireside while he read a book. They were alone in the house. Much later, after her father had made some toast and jam and she had said that she was not hungry and still had not been scolded, the front door opened and closed quietly and Tom came in. He sat at the table with them and drank tea. Then Mary’s mother came in, taking off her coat as she entered the living room.
‘By God, I told them,’ she said. Her face was flushed and her hands fluttered about her as she made a fresh pot of tea. ‘I told them.’
When the family were seated around the table, they began to talk. It seemed that Mary’s mother had gone round to Mr Duncan’s house and Mr McLeod’s house and had had words with each of them. Tom smiled twice as his mother told her story, but his father was quick to admonish him on both occasions.
Mary was made much of that evening, being allowed to stay up well past her bedtime. Neighbours came to sympathise and to find out just what Mrs Miller had done. These women sat with their arms folded tightly and listened carefully to their neighbour’s narrative. They looked at the girl and smiled at her. By bedtime, Mary was aware that she was not to be scolded for her part in events. She went to bed with a lighter heart, but awoke twice during the night from a nightmare in which she was drowning again, but this time the faces above her were grim and unhelpful. An old man watched her and even seemed to be holding her below the surface, while a boy stood behind him and shouted. This boy looked quite like Tom, but was a bit older. She could not hear what he was shouting, but she saw him hammering on the old man’s back. Then the hands of the goblins were upon her and she screamed through the water, waking up with her sheets knotted around her and her body drenched with sweat.
The following morning, Mrs Miller stared at the girl in horror. Mary’s hair had turned silver in the night.
2
Her mother wrapped Mary’s head in one of her own headscarves and walked with her down to the doctor’s. It was raining, and a fine mist swirled around the large house which served Dr McNeill as both surgery and home. It was early still, but Mrs Miller made it clear to the housekeeper that this was an emergency. The housekeeper looked at the weeping, frightened child for a moment, then told them to wait in the hallway while she fetched the doctor from his breakfast.
Tears had made raw red streaks down Mary’s cheeks. Her eyes were puffy and her face was confused. Her mother rubbed her shoulders, near to weeping herself. She tucked stray hairs back into the large headscarf and whispered what few words of comfort she was able to summon up from her common store.
Dr McNeill, white-haired and fifty, emerged at last from his dining room. He was buttoning his waistcoat, and had newly perched his half-moon glasses on his nose. Mary’s mother apologised for interrupting him. He waved her apology aside.
‘Well,’ he said, patting Mary on the shoulder, ‘and what seems to be the trouble here?’ He knew the two of them very well, having treated Tom and Mary over the years for the usual run of childhood ailments. He knew that the mother was averse to seeing a doctor until the old cures, the myths and the herbs, had been tried and found wanting. So it had to be pretty serious for her to be here at this time of the morning, though things, it had to be admitted, did not look serious. ‘I think we’d be better off in the surgery, don’t you, Mrs Miller?’ He guided them through the unfamiliar geography of his home until they reached the large room, full of cupboards, glass jars, table, chairs, and examining couch, where he held his surgeries. Usually you entered this room from the waiting room, which was itself reached via a door at the back of the house. Mary thought that the present journey was a bit like being an explorer, coming upon some welcome landmark. She was glad to sit on the familiar chair in front of the big desk. The smiling man with the scrubbed looking hands sat across from her, and her mother sat nervously on a chair beside her. Her mother tugged gently at the headscarf, as if it were a bandage over a healing wound, and brought it clear of the girl’s head. The doctor, coughing, came from behind his desk to examine Mary’s hair. He stroked it gently while Mrs Miller explained about the incident of the previous day. He nodded and sighed several times before returning to his chair.
Mary’s eyes had wandered by now, the adults seemingly intent in their conversation, and she studied the strange jars on the doctor’s shelves. Some of them contained purple liquid and solid, jelly-like things. She would have liked to look at these things more closely, but a shiver held her back. Jelly was not her favourite dessert. One Saturday afternoon, while her mother had gone shopping along Kirkcaldy High Street, her father had taken Tom and her down to the beach. The sand was not white. Her father explained that it was all mixed up with coal-dust By the water’s edge were hundreds of washed-up jellyfish. Tom had prodded them with a stick, and sea-water had bubbled out of them. Mary had cried and her father had had to take her up to the promenade for an ice-cream, while, in the distance, Tom had explored with his stick the length of the tainted beach.