Air Ambulance (4 page)

He was thrusting it away from him, that past which he could not really forget, forcing it savagely to the back of his mind, into the dark and despairing places where it had lain hidden for so long, but somehow Alison knew that it was not dead. He cared about Heimra, and he still cared about Margot, whom he had once loved so hopelessly that now he imagined that he hated and despised her.

“I’ll come,” she found herself promising.

During the next few days Alison began to worry about Andrew Blair. It was not that the child did not improve—the tonsillectomy had been a complete success—but the small, withdrawn silences deepened, and he seemed to take little interest in what went on around him. The children’s ward in any large hospital, especially when most of the small patients are well on the road to recovery, is always a hive of activity, and Andrew was now out of bed for the greater part of the day with most of the other tonsil cases, who had been operated on at the same time as himself.

It was not that he failed to respond to the kindness of the nurses. He accepted it gratefully, “helping” with the bed-ridden children in return, but he always seemed to be watching for someone, and he never smiled.

Alison visited him as often as she could, but she dared not mention his mother to him in case it would precipitate the breakdown she feared was lurking just beneath the surface.

When she arrived back at the hospital with the three “sitting” patients they had picked up on the far side of The Minch, Andrew Blair had had a visitor.

“His uncle came to see him,” Evelyne Burnside told her laconically. “It’s made a lot of difference to him, and he’s going back with the first plane that touches down on that island of his—Heimery, or something.”

“Heimra!” Alison said, her eyes suddenly moist. “I’m so glad
someone
came to see him.”

“He put the whole ward in confusion!” Sister Burnside snapped. “These silly nurses! Any man can turn their heads, but when he happens to be handsome and wears a kilt, then they lose control completely!”

“Andrew would be delighted about the kilt,” Alison smiled. “Does the uncle live in Glasgow?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” Evelyne Burnside told her dryly. “It’s hardly my business to go into the reasons for a
n
uncle's visit to a child in hospital, even if he has a profile that might be carved out of granite and the manner of the remotest consultant. He arrived during the regulation visiting hour, so that was all I was really concerned about.”

“Yes—yes, I’m sure.”

Alison had spoken vaguely, but as she walked away she felt happier than she had done for the past two days. Even if his father hadn’t come, perhaps Blair of Heimra had passed on the request to Andrew’s visitor, and that made her think of Fergus Blair in a slightly kinder light.

A week later she was on the plane that took Andrew home. He had been in the hospital for ten days and had spoken to her shyly once or twice about his uncle, showing her the present of books which he had brought with him, but his unexpected visitor had not returned. After a day or two, she had deemed it wise to let the uncle’s name drop from their conversation altogether, trying not to feel as disappointed to him as she was in Blair of Heimra himself.

“You’re going home, Andrew,” she smiled, when she walked into the children’s ward on the morning of their departure. “We’re going on the aeroplane again.”

The blue eyes lit up.

“You too?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m going with you.”

“And Captain Gowrie?”

“I’m not sure, I hope he will be.” She really hoped that Ronald Gowrie would be taking them back. “He says he gets on much better when he has someone to help him!”

Ronald Gowrie was walking out over the apron when the road ambulance arrived, and he saluted them smartly.

“So you go off with another guy all the way to Benbecula as soon as my back’s turned!” he joked. “I heard you had a pretty rough trip.”

“We didn’t see anything, if that’s what you mean,” Alison returned. “It makes the journey seem longer when there’s rain.”

“If you had been with me I would have taken you away out above the clouds,” he grinned. “Cairns doesn’t have any imagination! Hullo, laddie!” he greeted Andrew. “All set for another trip?”

“Yes, please!” Andrew said eagerly.

This morning the airport was very busy. A V.I.P. was due to leave in half an hour on a south-bound charter, and Apron Control wanted to get the Heron away as quickly as possible so they were soon airborne.

Andrew stood close up behind Ronald Gowrie as soon as they were able to unbuckle their seat-belts, eager to be allowed to touch the controls, forgetting to be sick now, although Alison had prepared for that small emergency.

“There it is! There it is!” he cried a dozen times before Heimra eventually came into view, rising out of the sea like the goddess of all beauty herself, and Alison knew that her own excitement was reaching out to match the child’s.

If Andrew was glad to come back, she was more than eager to see Heimra again.

Then, suddenly, she was feeling sorry for the man who had flown them here. Ronald Gowrie had taken over from his First Officer to bring them down on to the landing strip, and he sat rigidly at the controls, his face devoid of colour, his jaw hard and his mouth compressed and grim. Heimra was no longer a dream island to him. It was the home of tragedy and regret, the island where he had lost his love.

As they circled and glided down towards the pale strip of the
machar,
she picked out the tiny speck of a launch making a white arrowhead on its journey towards the shore. It had come from Heimra Beag, from the smaller island where Blair of Heimra refused them a landing place.

Andrew had seen the launch, and he clenched his hands in excitement, his blue eyes growing larger than ever with pleasurable anticipation.

“He’s coming for me! He’s coming for me! Soon I shall be back at Garrisdale,” he breathed.

Something stuck in Alison’s throat so that she could not answer him, but she took his hand as the plane came down. He had not quite conquered that stomach-emptying sensation of descent, and he clutched at her mutely.

“All right,” she soothed, “we’re levelling up now. Soon we will feel the landing wheels bumping on the sand.”

When she looked out of her starboard porthole the launch was already moored at a small stone jetty a short distance along the shore, and Fergus Blair was striding towards the landing strip.

With a sense of shock for which she could not account in tha
t
first moment of contact, she saw that he was attired in a well-wor
n
tweed jacket, with a comfortable, equally well-worn kilt swingin
g
at his knees. He wore a Balmoral bonnet, and carried an ancien
t
shepherd’s crook—a
cromag,
Andrew said it was—and he looke
d
exactly what he was—the laird of an island, the rather autocrati
c
monarch of all he surveyed.

She thought, for a moment, that he had a hard face, because sh
e
wanted to think it, and then Andrew had disengaged his ham from hers and had thrown himself with amazing force right into hi
s
arms.

Blair of Heimra lifted him bodily into the air, examining hi
m
critically under cover of a smile.

“Let me have a look at you!” he commanded. “Have they made
good job of these tonsils? The wretched things were no use to anyone.”

The child hugged him again and again without saying a word. He was so near to tears, Alison realized, so near to the sort of weakness he had been taught to guard against.

By this man? Suddenly she was meeting Fergus Blair’s eyes above Andrew’s tousled head and condemning him.

“It was good of you to return him,” he mentioned conventionally as he set the child on his feet again. “Did he travel well this time?”

“Very well.” The words were more frigid than she had intended them to be, but the fact that he appeared to have made enquiries, at a distance, about their former flight goaded her to a cold sort of anger which she could not control. “I think he was too excited about coming home to be sick,” she added briefly.

“Yes, he must have missed the island.” The grey eyes remained fully upon her. “You weren’t on duty when I visited the hospital last week,” he remarked. “I wanted to say ‘thank you’ for taking care of Andrew on the way over.”

“Oh!—” The word fled from her lips on her utter surprise. “So you did come? But I was told that only his uncle had visited him...”

Something stirred in the grey eyes and the firm mouth relaxed a little.

“What relationship did you think I bore to Andrew?” he asked. “I thought you understood that he was my nephew.”

Alison stood rigid gazing at him across the sand with the little wind of the island blowing the stray tendrils of her hair across her cheek, gazing at him incredulously for a moment before she understood.

“I thought he was your son,” she confessed almost inaudibly. “I blamed you for sending him away alone.”

For a split second he did not answer her, and she saw his mouth tighten again into the old, hard line.

“I am a doctor, nurse. I knew he was in excellent
h
ands,” he said at last. “I could do nothing at the hospital, and a woman’s touch is softer than a man’s. I thought someone would be found to stand proxy for his mother.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m sorry. I should never have judged anyone so harshly, but it seemed terribly unkind and heartless at the time—”

“I couldn’t leave the island when Andrew was due to go across,” he told her briefly. “We had an outbreak of influenza on Heimra Beag, and I was the only one who could deal with it effectively.”

“If you had needed extra help,” she said, “we could probably have sent someone from the hospital.”

“I was able to manage,” he informed her somewhat dryly, as Andrew hurried awkwardly towards the waiting launch where a large, red-bearded man was sitting on the gunwale smoking an ancient pipe. “And now I have to thank you for taking care of Andrew in the hospital, too. He was loud in his praise of you when I visited him that afternoon, but you were not to be found.”

“I was on the Benbecula run,” Alison explained. “We’re going off there now,” she added, looking back towards the Heron.

The engines were still running, ticking over impatiently, and Ronald Gowrie was still in the pilot’s seat. A moment of confusion swept over her as she met Fergus Blair’s clear grey eyes.

“I thought I might have asked you to have something to eat with us,” he said, “but you appear to be pressed for time. I’m sure Andrew would have liked to entertain you to lunch at the local inn.
”

“I should have loved that,” she said, adding swiftly, “For Andrew’s sake.”

“Perhaps, when you come again,” he murmured politely as the usual small group of spectators began to gather round the plane, which remained poised as a bird ready for flight. “We’re not a regular port of call, but we do need the plane occasionally.” Suddenly the Heron’s engines cut out.

The lack of sound seemed to transform the island, bringing its magic close, and it was minutes before she realized that something had gone wrong. Ginger MacLean, who had been smoking a cigarette and chattering to a small, dark man on the fringe of the group of spectators, hurried back to confer with the captain, and after several minutes Ronald Gowrie came down from the plane. He did not look up as Blair walked towards him.

“Can I do anything to help?” Blair asked.

“We can manage, thanks all the same.”

The reply was just short of being surly, but Alison felt that she could excuse Ronald. This unexpected contact with Blair of Heimra, which he had been trying so assiduously to avoid, must have brought him close to the tragedy of his former love with all its attendant heartache, and she wondered if Blair knew.

Then, as Andrew came up with the red-bearded man in tow, she suddenly realized that the child could be Margot’s son.

The small, limping figure dragging his foot behind him blurred before her eyes for an instant. Was it possible? Ronald Gowrie had said that Margot and Gavin had only been married for three short months, but the child could have been born after his father’s death. And there had been an accident. Gavin Blair had died as the result of an accident.

“Will she no’ go?” the red-bearded man asked when Ronald appeared at the cabin door for a second time. “I never did think much o’ puttin’ a lump o’ metal into the sky an’ expectin’ it to stay up,” he reflected, sucking at his pipe as he surveyed the stationary Heron from a safe distance. “You’d be far better with a boat and a sail, I’m thinking.” He peered shortsightedly at Ronald as the Heron’s exasperated Captain turned to look at him. “But I know you!” he exclaimed. “You’re Margot Gowrie’s son. Her second son. What brings you back to Heimra in a contraption like this?” He nodded towards the Heron.

“An emergency,” Ronald said. “Nothing more. It won’t take long to sort this out,” he added, turning to Alison. “If you’ll give me half an hour, Sandy,” he promised his critic, “I’ll let you see it fly.”