Revelation, 1859

by Sharon Telfer

All night the roof rattling like Old Nick himself’s dancing hobnailed cross the tiles, thunder crashing loud as doomsday, but us clammed safe in our beds, thanking the good Lord for sending such a storm at Eastertide, the cobles hauled up on the strand, trussed tight as chickens, each man counted, ganseys steaming by the last of the Saturday stove, my boys in their steady bunks, my Frank’s arms lashed fast around me not wrestling lines in some gale blasting the deep.

And morning comes, still as milk. We busy ourselves to the harbour, turned out neat and ready for hymns and hallelujahs and ‘He is risen’, the waves right where they should be, no surge up the slipway, the floor bone-dry in the Anchor, the well drawing sweet, all smiling and blesseds and handshakes, when Braithwaite’s lad, him that’s too simple to handle the nets but who can no more lie than he can tie a knot, staggers panting up the beach, sand-speckled as a pollock, yelling to shift ourselves for the Beast were risen out of the sea and the days of Revelation were upon us.

So over the breakwater we clamber, never minding our Sunday best, fret spitting in our eyes, until we are stopped, gawping: the great slab fallen, the tall rowan toppled to anemone, roots grasping at air, the shale still skittering, the monstrous marvel of it, that dreadful tail and dragonish claw, grin long as a flagpole, teeth big as bairns, crawling from what ancient darkness?, and Frank’s hand cannot warm the doubt chilling my spine, even the wheeling kittiwakes dumbfounded to silence, and nothing to hear but the shush of a tide going out and the chapel bell stuttering at the top of the torn and barefaced cliff.