Number Thirty-One on the Nail Board

Ava Reed mended boots at the near end of Blueglass Fen, and mended them in order.

The order hung on a board behind Ava’s bench. It had thirty-one nails in rows, and on every nail a brown card tag with a number and a name. A tag went up when a pair of boots came in, and it came down when they went out. Asking nicely did not move a tag up. Neither did asking crossly, or asking with a cake. Somebody had once tried it with a cake. Ava ate the cake, said thank you, and did the boots on Thursday, when they were due.

The last nail was for the shop’s own work, to be done in a quiet week. For five weeks the last nail had held tag thirty-one, which said, in Ava’s own square capitals, AVA. LEFT BOOT. TOE. It was the wet season on the fen, and there had not been a quiet week in it yet.

So every morning Ava put two socks on the left foot, on the theory that the outer one would take the worst of it. Every evening the outer one came off and went to hang by the stove. The theory had held for five weeks, more or less.

At first lamp on Tuesday Ava was wrapping Keir Blueglass’s boots in oilcloth. They had new soles cut from the good hide, and three coats of wax worked in by hand. Wax like that wants a whole night beside a warm stove to cure hard, and it wants to be dry while it does it. Rain on fresh wax turns it cloudy and soft, and then the work might as well not have been done. Keir lived at the far end of the boardwalk and walked the fen before dawn. Ava had told Keir Tuesday, before supper. Supper was in an hour.

Ned Withy put his head round the door just as the string was tied.

“Mine done?” he said.

“You’re number fourteen,” said Ava, without turning round to look at the board. “Thursday.”

“Only they’re letting in a bit.”

“Describe a bit.”

Ned thought about it. “Damp toe.”

“A damp toe waits its turn,” said Ava. “A wet sock is need, and I’ll move you up. A foot through the sole, I’ll do while you stand there. In order, please.”

Ned looked down at Ava’s left boot, which made a small wet sound at every shift of weight. He had the sense not to mention it. He went home to wait for Thursday, and Ava tucked the parcel under one arm and went out onto the boardwalk.

* * *

The boards ran out across the fen on short posts, with a lamp on every tenth one. The pools lay on either side, flat and still and deep blue, like plates set out for a supper nobody had served yet.

Glim was at the third pool.

Glim was always somewhere on the boardwalk at dusk, finding out something nobody had asked about. Glim had a notebook, a watch, a row of tins, a large furled umbrella, and a small kettle on a smaller burner. Tonight the kettle was steaming.

“Ava,” said Glim, very low, because a loud voice was bad for the pools. “Good. Take this.”

It was a tin of warm water from the kettle, held out by its wire handle. Ava took it, because it was being held out.

“Over the pool,” said Glim. “Lower. There. Don’t pour it. Just hold it.”

“Why?”

“If I tell you why, you’ll hold it differently.”

So Ava stood with Keir’s boots under one arm and a tin of warm water in the other hand, holding it over the third pool and not pouring any. The sky was the deep, clear blue it goes just before the first star. There was nothing in it yet.

There was a star in the pool.

It came up under the tin, small and white and perfectly steady, as if it had been waiting at the bottom for somewhere warm to stand. Then another came beside it. Then a third.

“Three,” said Glim, and wrote it down. “Under the warm, and nowhere else. Thank you. You can put it down.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means three. I’ll know what it means when I’ve seen it nine times.”

Ava set the tin on the boards and took a proper grip on the parcel. “In order, please. I’ve got these to get to Keir’s before supper.”

“Of course,” said Glim. “One more thing.”

The one more thing was the loose board.

Everyone on the fen knew the loose board. It was the fourth one past the third pool. It rocked when it was stepped on, and the pool beside it shivered, and people stepped over it out of long habit without even looking down.

“Stand on it,” said Glim.

“Nobody stands on it.”

“Nobody stands still on it. That’s the trouble. The pool is filling and I’m counting. Every time someone crosses, the stars jump about and I count some of them twice. If you stand on it, it can’t rock, and nobody else can use it.”

Ava had a pair of boots to deliver and an hour to do it in. Ava also had, it turned out, a weakness for a job described properly. Ava stood on the loose board.

It sank, just a little, at the near end. The fen came in at the toe of Ava’s left boot, cold and sure of itself, like a customer who has been told Thursday and comes on Tuesday anyway.

Ava did not move.

The third pool was filling with stars. They arrived one at a time, here and there across the water, with no fuss at all, as if each one had been there all along and was only now being noticed. The sky overhead still had none. Glim counted in a whisper. Twenty. Forty. Fifty-three. The left sock went from damp to wet, and then to a kind of wet there is no polite word for, and Ava stood on the loose board like a post.

“Seventy-one,” said Glim at last. “That’s all of them. You were very good. Most people sway.”

“I don’t sway,” said Ava. “May I go?”

“Yes. Well. One more thing.”

“In order, please.”

“It is in order. It’s the last one. Watch the pool and say now when the top starts to dimple. I have to watch the watch, and I can’t watch both.”

So Ava watched the pool. Seventy-one stars lay in it, as still as tags on nails. Then a small ring opened in the water near the edge, as if a drop had landed there. Then another. Then rings all over the pool, opening and spreading, with a star shivering in the middle of every one.

Nothing was falling. Ava put out a hand to be sure. The air was as dry as a shelf.

“Now,” said Ava.

Glim checked the watch and wrote. “Eleven minutes, then.”

“Until what?”

“Rain. The pools feel it first. Everybody knows that much, and nobody has written down how much first. It’s been eleven minutes four nights running. If it’s eleven again tonight, I’ll believe it.”

Ava looked at the rings on the pool. Then at the parcel under one arm. Then along the line of lamps going away into the blue. At the very end was Keir’s hut, a small square of yellow window. And in the parcel was wax that had not yet had its night.

Out of the apron pocket came the stub of boot chalk, the one for marking soles, and Ava wrote 11 on the inside of one wrist. People were forever standing in the shop doorway asking whether it would hold off. Now they could be told how long to wait.

Then Ava unbuttoned the coat, put Keir’s boots inside, oilcloth and all, and buttoned it again up to the chin. Oilcloth was for a drizzle. A coat was for being sure.

* * *

Ava walked briskly. The right boot said nothing at all. The left boot said squelch at every other step, past the fourth pool and the fifth, past lamp after lamp, all the way to Keir’s door.

The door opened before Ava could knock. Keir had heard the boot.

Ava unbuttoned the coat and handed over the parcel. Keir untied the string, folded back the oilcloth and looked at the soles, then at the wax, then at the stitching round the welt. Keir ran a thumb along it once.

“Dry,” said Keir.

“They want a night by the stove,” said Ava. “Not on it. By it.”

“By it,” said Keir, and stood them on the hearth at a careful distance. Across the floor from the door ran a row of small wet prints, every one of them from Ava’s left boot. Keir looked at them, once, and pulled the other chair up to the stove.

“You can sit here while your boots dry.”

Ava had come to deliver boots, not to sit down. But the chair was there, and the stove was there, and that left foot had been damp for five weeks and wet for a quarter of an hour. Ava sat. The boot came off and went on the fender, where it began straight away to steam. Both socks came off after it, and Keir took them without a word and hung them on the rail. Then Keir went to a drawer and came back with a dry pair, grey, darned at the heels in a different grey.

“They’re clean,” said Keir.

Ava put them on. A boot-mender makes a great many things for keeping feet warm, and is seldom so glad of one somebody else made.

Keir sat down with the new boots on the hearth between the two chairs and said nothing for a while, which suited them both. Ava looked at the 11 in chalk.

Then the rain came.

It came all at once, a soft, steady drumming on the roof and the window and the boards outside and every pool on the fen. It came eleven minutes after Ava had said now, exactly as Glim had said it would. Back at the third pool, under the large umbrella, Glim was writing it down for the fifth time, and believing it.

Keir looked at the window. Then at Ava’s socks on the rail, which were dripping steadily into the hearth.

“That’s a wet sock,” said Keir.

Everybody on the fen knew Ava’s rule. Ava said it at the shop door a dozen times a week. Ava looked at the sock for a long moment.

“So it is,” said Ava.

The rain stayed half an hour. The boot on the fender steamed, and then stopped steaming. Keir made tea and asked nothing, which was exactly the right amount to ask. When the drumming stopped, the boot went back on over Keir’s grey sock, and the wet socks went into the oilcloth. Keir lent a lamp for the walk home, and stood in the doorway holding a second lamp until Ava was past the third pool. There Glim was packing up the tins, and said, very low, “Eleven.”

“I know,” said Ava, and stepped over the loose board like everyone else.

* * *

At home the shop was cold and smelled of wax. Ava lit the lamp and stood in front of the nail board.

Keir’s tag came off the top nail, because Keir’s boots were done. Then tag thirty-one came off the last nail, where it had hung for five weeks, and went up on the top nail instead, above everyone.

“In order, please,” said Ava to the board.

The 11 stayed where it was, for the morning. Keir’s grey socks went to hang by the stove, to go back to Keir clean. And in the morning, before anybody else’s, Ava mended the boot on tag thirty-one. It took twenty minutes. Then Ava took down the next tag and got on with the rest of them, in order, with ten dry toes.