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This is Wallace, intent on what might be on the water or under it. It’s rare moment on the water––me in my kayak, in the early morning, chatting to Wallace’s owner. He’s one of a long line of oyster-farmers and we bond somehow––writer and farmer––in the early morning light, enjoying together the intricacy of knots and oyster baskets, attention to tide and wind.
During the byplay of chat, Wallace stands still, looking.
The owner tells me of his struggle––the strictures of temperature, rain, a king tide that wipes out a year’s profits
Wallace gazes––perhaps at the dog in the water; perhaps at what lies beneath the reflection.
It’s good to be here with a man who spends his life, as my characters do in my novel Twin Stars, close to wind and tide, earth and water and dirt and raw oysters. It brings me closer to them––the way they must forage kill for food––something I can’t bring myself to do.
Being here, now, brings me closer to the time when my hero is exiled to a damp cold Scottish island, with no means of making fire, no shelter except under the roots of a fallen tree, and nothing to eat but shellfish prised from the rocks. It helps me to feel the now of my characters––how the tide lifts their boat, how rain stipples the surface of the water, how the water is deep and dark and dangerous beneath.
Wallace is not interested in Scottish Historical Fiction. He knows nothing of the Stone-age and its main divisions: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic. He doesn’t care that my twins lived on the Isle of Bute in the Mesolithic Period, around 6000 years ago. He cares about fish, maybe a stingray, or a blue swimmer crab, and whether this moment, here, now, will bring the fish close enough for him to stretch out a paw and nab it.
His owner, who would like to give me some fresh oysters, is shocked and bemused that I don’t like them.
Every line of Wallace stays taut with seeing, smelling, the now.
Alive, as I feel when I am taut with attention, following my characters as they do what they do, in a moment that is out of time, not then, but now, here.