Bird of Passage (10 page)

‘I might yet,’ said Finn, mutinously.

‘No, no. We’ll have no feuds here. They’re a bunch of idiots and you don’t rise to the bait. Do you hear me now?’

‘I do,’ said Finn, although he still looked rebellious.

Isabel brought the tea and a clean rag out of the kitchen, taking away Malcolm Laurence’s bloody handkerchief. ‘I’ll put this to soak in some bicarb. Otherwise I’ll never get the marks out.’

Alasdair watched her go and pulled a face. ‘Malcolm’s hankie,’ he said, shaking his head and grinning. Then, suddenly serious, he turned his attention back to Francis.

‘What happened?’

‘There was a group of lads and they saw us coming out of the shop and started swearing at us and calling us dirty, thieving left footers. Why do they call us left footers, mister? One or two of them picked up stones. Jimsy and the others rushed at them but I didn’t know which way to go. I thought I should help them, but I was frightened, to tell you the truth, and then one of the Scots lads said, “Here’s scabby heid,” and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, and this big car pulled up and everyone ran off.’

Francis sipped his tea. His face was a mass of pink scars this year, the skin blotched and peeling. Isabel had given him ointment to put on it but it didn’t make much difference. She worried that Kirsty might catch something from him, but Alasdair said it wasn’t infectious. It was down to nerves. Whatever the cause, the cold winds that blew over the island exaggerated the condition. And there were bald patches on his head where the hair had come out in tufts.

‘Just as well Malcolm was on the scene.’ Alasdair nodded to Finn. ‘They’d be scared of
him
, at any rate, seeing as how he’s landlord to most of them. Wet that rag at the tap and wipe his face for him, Finn. When he’s had his tea, make sure he’s put to bed. He’ll have a nice pair of black eyes in the morning. And I’ll be having words with the other men. They should never have left him behind. Wipe your eyes, Kirsty, my wee lass. There’s no harm done. I’ve seen much worse when I was a young man. You wouldn’t believe the fights we used to have on a Saturday night. Fists flying. Black eyes and bloody noses.  Something and nothing. Wipe your eyes, and come inside and give your mammy a hand to wash the holy handkerchief.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

For the rest of that summer, Finn and Kirsty made sure they kept Francis close beside them. Sometimes, she and Finn went out in the boat,
and left him sitting down on the beach. Sometimes, Kirsty wandered about and Finn and Francis, glad to be resting, watched her as she searched for treasures, things that she would take home and maybe draw later: a banded agate, a chunk of rose quartz, a curly shell.

When the weather was very fine, there were parts of the beach that became infested with pink algae that stank in the sun. It only improved when the rain came down and washed it away. But the rain made the tattie howking a misery, so nobody welcomed it.

Once they found an old green bottle with a piece of paper inside, but the water had got in and the message, whatever it might have been, disintegrated in their fingers.

‘It could have been a treasure map,’ she said, disappointed.

‘It could have been a message from somebody stranded on a desert island,’ said Francis, suddenly. ‘Maybe he was looking for his relatives. Trying to get word to them so that they could come and rescue him.’

‘So it could.’ Kirsty looked at him in surprise. It was so seldom that he said anything interesting. ‘Maybe he threw it into the sea years ago. And now it’s washed up here, but we can’t read the message.’

‘So he’ll just have to stay put,’ said Finn. ‘On his desert island. I would like that fine myself.’

‘Like what?’

‘To be cast away on a desert island.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t think I’d like to be all on my own.’

‘There are worse things than being all on your own.’

‘You’d be like Robinson Crusoe.’

‘Who’s Robinson Crusoe?’ asked Francis

‘Just a man who got cast away on a desert island.’

‘When?’

‘How should I know? He’s in a book.’

‘Have you read that as well?’ asked Finn.

‘No. But my grandad told me about him. And he said that there really was a man like that, once upon a time.’

‘So maybe this was his last message.’

‘Maybe it was. His last will and testament. And now his forgotten bones are  whitening on the sand! 

‘Don’t say that,’ said Francis, with a shiver.

‘Why not? It’s just a story.’

‘I don’t like to think of it, that’s all. I like to think of nice things.’

‘What nice things do you have to think about?’ asked Finn, brusquely.

Kirsty nudged him. ‘Don’t be rude.’

‘It was nice before my mammy died,’ said Francis, thoughtfully. ‘We had porridge in the mornings. She always lit the fire before we got up so that it would be warm for us. I think about that sometimes. But that was when I had the other name.’

 ‘What other name?’ Kirsty asked, intrigued. ‘How could you have another name? I thought you were Francis O’Brien. Only ladies change their names, when they get married.’

‘No, my name was Michael back then. But when I went to the orphanage, at first, they said they had two more boys called Michael, so I had to be Francis to save confusion. That was my confirmation name.’

‘What’s confirmation?’

‘You go into the church and there’s a bishop comes to do it and you take another name. A saint’s name.’ Finn was impatient with her lack of knowledge. ‘Do you not have that in your church?’

‘I never heard that we did.’

Francis joined in, eager to explain. ‘And then, when I went to the school, from the orphanage, they said I’d better just keep that name. Francis O’Brien. Because everyone was used to it.’ He smiled at them. There was a gap where one of his front teeth had fallen out.

Kirsty looked at Finn again, raising her eyebrows. Finn nodded.

‘It’s true.’

 ‘I still don’t feel like Francis. I feel like Michael. Besides...’

‘What?’

‘What if my sister comes looking for me? What if she does? She won’t know who I am.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

‘I had three sisters. They were all older than me.’

‘And your mother died?’

‘She got very sick. They took her to hospital and they said she’d died. I went to the orphanage with the nuns, but my sisters had to go to a different place.’

‘And your name was really Michael?’

He nodded. She turned to Finn. ‘What about you? Is Finn your real name?’

‘Tis.’

‘So if anyone comes looking for you, they’ll be able to find you.’

‘Nobody will ever come looking for me.’

‘How can you be sure.’

‘I just know, that’s all.’

The next wet Sunday, Kirsty got out her copy of The Wind in the Willows, and took it into one of the barns. She had brought her grandad’s old plaid, a long piece of black and white wool, darned in many places. She and Finn and Francis wrapped it around them and made themselves snug on a bale of hay, with the wind making music in the rafters, and she read aloud to the two boys.

‘He’s always going on about comfort and contentment,’ said Finn.  

‘So he is. That’s why I like it.’

‘You said you liked disasters.’

‘Well I do. But I like people being happy as well.’  She struggled to explain. ‘When Moley’s in the wild wood, it’s terrible, but when they find Badger’s house and everything’s alright, it’s even nicer because he’s had such a bad time.’

Francis was tucked in between them. He had been listening, snuggling down into the plaid. He was drowsy, soothed by her words. There was a smell of unwashed clothes off both boys, but Kirsty had got used to it and hardly noticed it. She looked over his head at Finn.

‘Which one would you be, Finn ?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If you were somebody in the book. Who would you be?’

‘I don’t know. Who would you be?’

‘Maybe Ratty, because he can do things. I want to be able to do things. You know? Or Otter. I might be Otter. Because he’s not afraid of anything.’

‘I’m not afraid of anything.’

‘Are you not?’

‘There’s nothing else for me to be afraid of, is there?’

Later on that evening, she related this conversation to her grandfather, when she was sitting cross legged on the rug, drawing pictures of Ratty and Mole in their boat, rowing along the river.

‘Why wouldn’t Finn be afraid of anything?’ she asked.

Her grandfather shook his head. ‘I don’t know, my lamb. Maybe so many bad things have happened to him already that he knows he can put up with whatever else they throw at him.’

‘What about Francie?’

Alasdair sighed. ‘I’m not sure. He’s not as strong as your friend Finn. Finn has a wee wall built around him. He’s a tough one. Francie looks as though he could do with a few more layers of skin, in more ways than one.’

Afterwards, she pondered this conversation. She was afraid of a great many things including hell and – to a lesser extent – heaven, which she didn’t think would suit her at all. She found the idea of sitting at the right hand of God, singing his praises faintly alarming. ‘But I can’t play the harp’ she had protested, anxiously, when she first attended Sunday school.

That wet Sunday marked the start of a long spell of rain, which lasted almost to the end of the potato harvest and the fields were awash with mud. The boys’ boots were caked with it. Worse, their hands and all their clothes were  permanently dirty. The sandy earth was so engrained in their fingers that when they washed them in cold water they bled profusely. Kirsty wanted to invite them in to use the proper bathroom with warm water and scented soap instead of carbolic, but Isabel wouldn’t hear of it.

‘It’s bad enough trying to clean it up after you’ve been in there, without inviting all and sundry in to use it!’

‘It isn’t all and sundry,’ said Kirsty. ‘It’s only Finn and Francis.’

But her mother was adamant, so the boys had to make do with the cold tap in the outhouse. Kirsty wondered if, had it just been Francis, her mother might have relented. But she couldn’t invite Francis in without inviting Finn as well, so neither was allowed.

Later that summer, just before the tattie howkers were due to leave, Kirsty wrapped up her copy of The Wind in the Willows in a sheet of fancy paper from the Post Office. She presented it to Finn, one evening, when Francis was asleep.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, surprised.

‘It’s a present for you. Don’t open it till you get back.’

‘I’ll keep it for my birthday.’

‘When’s that?’

‘October, I think. The tenth.’

‘What do you mean, you
think
. Do you not know your own birthday?’

‘Not if it was up to the Brothers. Who would tell us things like that?’

But Finn did remember his birthday. He remembered it from his first school, what he always thought of as his real school, when he had been in Dublin with his mother. Sister Rosalie used to bring in a cake when it was your birthday and everyone would have a little piece of it. And he could remember the date from her. She had written it up on the blackboard for him. She had said it was a big race track, with a finishing post to one side, and that was the number ten, and Finn had  remembered it, ever since.’

I’ll  have to try to find a hiding place for your present though or they’ll have it off me!’ he said.

‘Why would they do that?’

‘We don’t get to keep things, Kirsty. Not presents. Not even sweets. We sometimes get sweets at Christmas but they’re always taken off us. We got oranges once, and we never got a suck of them.’

‘Who gets to eat them then?’

‘How should I know? The Brothers, I suppose.’

‘What brothers? I didn’t know you had any brothers.’

He sighed. ‘I don’t. Not my brothers.
The
Brothers.’ It was all too difficult to explain.

‘But what about your own things?’ she persisted. ‘What do you do with them?’

‘What things?’

‘Don’t you have stuff of your own?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. I have a rosary just. They leave me that.’ He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a string of brown wooden beads, with a little cross on the end. ‘I had a teddy bear when I first went to the school, when I was little, but they took it off me.’

‘Who did?’

‘The people at the school. They said “A great strong boy like you has no need of a teddy bear.”  I suppose they were right.’