Twenty-One Baskets, Twenty Loads
Field notes of Hazel Coldwater, charter, sent up from Kettlebridge to copy the dock-ward registers.
Monday. Arrived at the Chart Room at eight o’clock with one bag, two pens, one pencil and a letter saying who I am. I have come for a week to copy out the dock-ward registers. These are four fat books listing every ward card under every ship on the quays: which card, which copy, who mended it last, and whether anybody has spilled anything on it. Ilex keeps the harbor’s books. She read my letter twice and the date on it three times, and then she found me a stool.
Ilex is not pleased to have a lodger.
I wrote that last line in ink. A charter’s field notes are filed with the work, so Ilex reads mine at five o’clock each day. At five o’clock she drew a neat red line under it and wrote in the margin: Inference. Pencil.
Then she told me the house rule. Fact in ink, inference in pencil.
“If you saw it, ink,” she said. “If you worked it out, pencil. If you aren’t sure which it is, it’s pencil.”
She keeps a pencil behind each ear. The one on the left is hard and gray, for a strong inference. The one on the right is soft and black, for a hunch. I have not seen her use the right one yet.
I would like to finish this week without any more red. I would also like to learn the rule properly, which I think will be harder. (Pencil.)
Lunch: bread, one egg, and an apple, which she cut into eight.
Over her desk hangs a small brass bell on a wire, and the wire runs all the way down to the West Mooring. Each time a cargo basket lands, the bell rings, and Ilex makes a tick in the ledger without looking up. I have been writing down the time of every ring. Charters do that. If a thing happens the same way twice, somebody may want to put it on a card, and the first thing they ask is when.
At six Sorrel came up from the mooring with the tally slate. Sorrel runs the basket down there and makes a chalk mark for every load. Sorrel talks very fast, was eating hot potatoes out of a paper packet, and offered me some before saying hello.
“Twenty-one,” Ilex said, looking at her ticks.
“Twenty,” Sorrel said, looking at the slate. “Lovely day. Do you want the rest of these? You want the rest of these.”
The packet went on the desk, and Sorrel went down the stairs to supper.
Ilex added her ticks again, then added them upwards. Then she wrote nothing at all. I think that cost her something. (Pencil.)
Tuesday. Ilex sighed at my handwriting eleven times. That is in ink, because I counted. Three of the sighs may have been about the fog, which lay under the harbor all morning. (Pencil.)
Under her desk is a row of brown volumes labeled Harbor Dues, Old Series. I reached for one to see how the old clerks ruled their columns. Ilex said, “Not that one,” before my hand was halfway there, and then, “Or those.”
At noon Sorrel brought up a hot packet Ilex had not asked for, and a flat parcel in brown paper. Ilex said thank you for the parcel and nothing about the packet. She slipped the parcel inside one of the Harbor Dues and read it with her lunch. At twenty past twelve she said “Oh, no,” out loud, to nobody. Harbor dues do not usually make a person say “Oh, no.” (Pencil. I pressed hard.)
Lunch: Sorrel’s potatoes, all of them.
Evening. Ticks, twenty-one. Slate, twenty. Second day running.
Wednesday. Ilex checked her sums for Monday, Tuesday and today. Down the column, up the column, then in threes. They were right every way. At six the slate said twenty again.
She took her pen and wrote in the margin, in very upright letters: Mooring tally short by one; error at the mooring.
In ink.
“The ledger goes up the stair on Friday,” she said. “It does not go up with a one in it that nobody can account for.”
I copied Wards 40 to 77. Ward 52 is a Holdfast, fourth copy, mended with green thread, with a coffee ring in one corner and somebody’s initials inside the ring. I copied the initials. I did not copy the coffee.
Thursday. Ilex went down to the West Mooring to watch the tally being made, and I carried the ledger.
The mooring is the loudest place I have ever stood. Baskets come down out of the open air on long ropes from the ships overhead, and below the rail the cloud lies as flat as a made bed. Sorrel was at the basket rope with chalk in one hand and a pasty in the other.
“You came down!” Sorrel said. “Nobody comes down. Do you want to work the basket? You want to work the basket.”
“I want to watch,” Ilex said.
“That’s what I said.”
Ilex stood at the rail with the ledger open. For every ring of the bell she made a tick, and for every tick she looked across and saw a chalk mark go on the slate. She did this all morning without speaking.
Then, at fourteen minutes past eleven, with a basket halfway down its rope, she turned around and looked at the cloud.
I asked what was the matter.
“Purple ink on that tag,” she said, still facing the cloud. “That’s Pell’s. Pell writes on tags. In the spring I read one that said THIS SIDE UP, THE COOK IS THE LOST HEIR, and that was chapter nine gone.”
The bell rang behind her. She ticked it without turning around.
I read the tag. It said FRAGILE: PLOT. Sorrel lifted the basket out with both hands, took out a flat brown parcel, tucked it under one arm, and made no mark on the slate.
I looked back through my notebook. Monday, a ring at 11.15. Tuesday, 11.15. Wednesday, 11.15. The other baskets come whenever a ship happens to be overhead, and their times wander about. This one does not wander. It has now happened the same way four times, which is twice more than a charter needs.
While Ilex was still looking at the cloud, I asked Sorrel why there was no chalk mark.
“That’s not a load,” Sorrel said. “That’s Pell’s chapter. Pell sends it down the west line because nothing on the west line has ever been dropped. Not once. Ask anyone. I take it up to Ilex with lunch. It’s a favor, and a favor doesn’t go on the slate.”
I asked whether Pell had said not to count it.
“Pell didn’t have to say. I knew.”
Then Sorrel gave me half the pasty, which I had not asked for, and I ate it, because Sorrel was right about that too.
At noon Ilex compared the ledger with the slate. Twelve ticks. Eleven marks. She looked for a smudge on the slate. She ran her finger along the bell wire. She added the ticks again.
“Every mark I saw go on was a basket,” she said, “and every basket I saw got a mark.”
This is true. She did not see the one.
I did not say anything on the quay. It is one thing to know a person is wrong in her own ledger and another to say so in front of the cargo crew. Also, the tag was involved, and I did not know how much of a tag I was allowed to say out loud. (Pencil, but nearly ink.)
So I have put it here, where Ilex will read it at five o’clock with her red pen in her hand. I have tried to do it properly.
Fact: a basket comes down the west line at a quarter past eleven every day, and has done since Monday. Fact: it carries Pell’s chapter, and its tag says FRAGILE: PLOT and nothing else, nothing about any cook. Fact: Sorrel does not chalk it, because Sorrel has decided it is a favor. Fact: Ilex counts its bell and does not look at it, because of the tag. Fact: both counts are right. Fact: the line in Wednesday’s margin is in ink.
And underneath, in pencil, as lightly as I could press: I think that line is an inference.
Friday. First, what happened at five o’clock yesterday, which I was too busy watching to write down.
Ilex read Thursday’s page twice. Then she went pink. It started at her ears, between the two pencils, and went down from there.
“You might have told me on the quay,” she said.
I said she had been looking at the cloud.
“I was,” she said.
She took the hard pencil from behind her left ear and held it over Wednesday’s margin for some time. Then she put it back and uncapped her pen. She did not rub the line out. She did not scratch it into a black square. She drew one straight stroke through it, so it can still be read, and underneath she wrote: Both counts correct. Twenty-one baskets; twenty loads; one chapter.
In ink. It was a fact by then.
“If I rub it out, the ledger says I was right all along,” she said. “It mustn’t say that. I wrote down what I thought in the color for what I knew. That is the whole mistake.”
Then she ruled a new column at the far right of the page and headed it Not cargo. She made the first entry herself: 11.15. One chapter (Pell). Contents not examined. She put the time first. That is my habit, not hers. (Ink. I watched her do it.)
There is no red on my Thursday page. There is one word in ink beside my pencil line. It says Correct.
At noon today Sorrel came up with the parcel and a packet of something hot, saw the new column, and was delighted.
“A column! Pell will be thrilled. I’ll tell Pell. No, I’ll let Pell find it. No, I’ll tell.”
“Tell Pell whatever you like,” Ilex said. “But bring the tag up with the parcel. It goes in the column.”
“You want me to read it out to you.”
“Face down,” Ilex said.
The ledger went up the stair at four, and it reconciled.
Saturday. The registers are finished. Four books, every ward on every quay, initials and all.
Red in my notes this week: four lines, all before Thursday. None since. Sighs at my handwriting today: one, and she was smiling at the time, so I am not sure it counts. (Pencil.)
Before I went down to the ferry, Ilex took the soft pencil from behind her right ear and gave it to me.
“For hunches,” she said. “Yours are good. Write them in the right color.”
Then she reached under the desk and brought out the first of the Harbor Dues.
“Volume one,” she said. “It isn’t dues. You worked that out on Tuesday, in pencil. You may put it in ink now. Bring it back, and don’t read the tags.”
At the door she said, “The next time they send somebody to copy the registers, I shall ask for Miss Coldwater by name.”
That is a fact. I heard it.
I am writing this last line with her pencil.
Inference: she likes me. (Pencil.)
