Bird of Passage (33 page)

‘The kids were always tugging at it. I couldn’t keep up to it.’

‘I loved your hair.’

‘It’ll grow again.’

He looked at her critically. ‘I can’t say it doesn’t suit you, because it does. But you’re much too thin you know. You used to be such a lovely, voluptuous girl. Not that I don’t like you just the way you are,’ he added, hastily.

‘I’m as fit as a flea.’

‘It’s all that walking you do. But I did love your hair, you know.’

 ‘I just wanted a change.’

‘Fair enough. But next time, ask me what I think first, eh?’

She had come back from the London trip to find that Nicolas had converted her workspace so that it filled the whole of one of the old stables. There was an upstairs studio with perfect light, and plenty of storage. Downstairs, there was a gallery, where he had hung a selection of her work. The rooms were warm and  welcoming. There was even a tiny kitchen and shower room.

 ‘Do you think it will inspire you?’ he asked her, anxiously.

 ‘It
should
inspire me.’ She grinned at him. ‘But I’ll need to rehang some of them, you know.’

‘Whatever you like. It’s all yours. I thought we could open it to the public for a bit in the summer. And if you’re busy painting, we can pay one of the youngsters from the village to come and mind it.’

‘We’d have to do that, yes. I’m no saleswoman.’

‘You used to do it in Edinburgh. Do you remember that awful artist you were going out with?’

‘Ash? He wasn’t awful. I liked him a lot. But he sold out, right enough.’

‘Is he still painting?’

‘Yes, but he does magazine illustrations and greetings cards and limited edition prints of sexy ladies. I read about him sometimes.’

‘Is that such a bad thing?’

‘No. He’s very good at it. And he has a family to support.’

She had seen him just once, at an arts conference of some sort. Another woman was ushering him this way and  that. He was a distinguished visitor. But Kirsty was quite a distinguished visitor as well by that time. She noticed that the woman was fluttering a little, the way women always did when they were around him, because he had an extraordinarily potent physical presence. She wondered uneasily if she had once fluttered like that?  And hadn’t he always been much too fond of acolytes? Nothing had changed. Like waters stirred at the bottom of a still pool, memories bubbled to the surface. His smile. His face. Joyful times and sad. But also, a great many lies, so many lies that love had buckled beneath the weight of them like a car in a crusher.

He had seen her and come over to speak to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he had said. ‘Sorry I put you through all that.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Not now.’

Ash had been clever and charming and she had loved him. He had taught her a great deal and helped her with the first tentative steps in her career, for which she would always be grateful. But she saw that she could have done it all without him. He had run her ragged for a year. He hadn’t been worth the emotional energy.  No man was. Not even Finn. He had much greater claim to her affection, but she could live well enough, without even him. Even him. She had proved it, hadn’t she?

‘Kirsty, your hair!’ said her grandfather, when she went up to Dunshee, with India in tow.

She put her hand tentatively to her shorn head. ‘I know. It’s a bit strange for me as well.’

‘Who cut it, lass?’

‘Annabel made an appointment for me, so I told them to hack it all off, and they did. Well, they did a bit more than that, actually.  It cost a fortune: the cut I mean. Annabel insisted on paying.’

‘And where’s the baby?’

‘She’s down at Ealachan with Nick. India and I escaped while they were taking a nap. Thought I’d bring her up to see you and show you my hair!’

‘I think you look very pretty.’

‘That’s what Annabel keeps telling me.’

‘Is she here as well?’

‘No. She’s off in Italy somewhere. With some man. Annabel and her men. I get quite jealous of her.’

‘Do you?’

‘Not really. But she’s just so free to come and go.  You should see what India does if I try to go out for the evening. Histrionics isn’t in it.’  Kirsty looked fondly at her elder daughter who was sitting in her own old baby chair with Fish Face on her lap. He was growing old and cantankerous, but he liked India.

‘That won’t last for long. You should count your blessings.’

‘Usually I do. I’m easily pleased, grandad. My kids, my studio, the gallery. ‘

‘It seems like quite a lot really, Kirsty.’

‘You mean Nick spoils me?’

‘He does.’

‘Well, I would agree with you. But then, I work hard. I take my work seriously, even if Nicolas doesn’t.’

‘Of course he does!’

‘I don’t think so. I think he says all the right things, but he sees it as a hobby. I enjoy it too much for it to count as work. And I don’t make much money. He can’t take me seriously.  He sees it as a way of keeping me happy.’

‘And isn’t that what it does?’

‘Yes. Of course. But I don’t think he understands how driven I feel. It’s more than a hobby. It’s my life. I can’t
not
do it. But I get the sense that in Nicolas’s world, it’s just a way of  passing the time. It keeps me out of mischief. We have friends who come and stay. They say things like “Are you still painting?” As if I could ever stop. They would never ask if I was still banking? Or being an architect. But it’s Christine’s little hobby. That’s the way they see it.’

‘I’m not sure you’re right about Nicolas. I think he admires what you do more than you realise.’

‘Well, maybe so. But I reckon the family business comes first. It always has and it always will.’

 Fish Face was twitching his tail. He had had enough of India’s over- enthusiastic caresses.

‘Leave him alone, India. He’ll scratch you.’ Kirsty came to Fish Face’s rescue. She took the child onto her own knee, but India squirmed off, clambered onto a chair and got down Alasdair’s old fiddle.

‘Can I, grandad? I’ll be careful!’

‘Aye, why not? Let your mammy hear you.’

Alasdair tuned up the fiddle and India, standing between his knees so that he could help her, scraped a tune from it. Alasdair was fairly bursting with pride.

‘Would you credit it?’ he said. ‘Isn’t she just wonderful?’

‘That’s very good, my wee lamb!’ Kirsty beamed at her daughter, genuinely impressed. ‘She’s a natural! Not like her mother. Do you remember the way you always used to want me to learn,’ said Kirsty. ‘But I was never very keen.’

‘She’ll be good.’ He put the fiddle back on its nail. ‘She wants to go fishing as well, don’t you my wee lass?’

India nodded, vigorously.

‘She found your old rod in a cupboard, Kirsty, the last time she was here. You know how she likes to rummage. Much too big for her, but I could root out a smaller one. I said I would have to ask you and Nicolas first.’

‘Oh I expect it will be alright. You used to take me fishing all the time.’

‘Aye. You were good at the casting.’

‘Tick Tock.’

‘Tick Tock. You should take it up again Kirsty.’

‘Maybe I will some day. She reminds me so much of myself. I get the feeling she’d far rather be up here on this hillside than down in the gardens.’

‘And what about you Kirsty? Have you got used to living down there?’

‘I suppose so. But if I couldn’t come up here, I don’t know what I’d do.

‘And Finn. Do you ever think about him at all?’

‘Oh yes. Yes, of course I do. But I try not to.’

When she thought about Finn now, it was with a sense of regret for the loss of his friendship. But when she tried to remember his face, she found that it slid away from her and she could never piece it together clearly. Once or twice, over the years, she had dreamed about him, vivid dreams, full of a sort of desperate eroticism, dreams that disturbed her peace for several days afterwards. She told nobody. Who could help dreaming?

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

When India was eight years old – much  to Kirsty’s dismay - Nicolas began to talk about sending her away to the mainland, to prep school.

‘She’s certainly not going to live in a hostel and go to the comprehensive. ‘

‘It didn’t do me any harm.’

‘Maybe so, but you were exceptional, darling.’

‘India seems pretty exceptional to me.’

She was willowy and pale skinned, with long dark hair tied back into a ponytail. The single teacher at the island school said that she was ‘a very bright child.’

‘Well, well. I suppose we don’t have to worry about it for a little while yet.’

Alasdair had begun teaching India to play the fiddle properly while she was very young and had found her a willing pupil. Now, she could string together a succession of reels and jigs, playing with her eyes closed and her face rapt, as she listened to the music in her head. Kirsty felt that Nicolas disapproved, ever so slightly. He had been investigating the Suzuki method of learning the violin, and wondering where they could find a teacher who would be prepared to travel to the island.

‘The whole principle is that it should be fun, second nature, like breathing,’ he said.

‘I agree. Just the way my grandad has been teaching her.’

But Nicolas wanted India to learn classical violin. He didn’t think that Alasdair’s traditional music was the real thing. He had been secretly sending away for prospectuses for mainland schools that specialised in music.

 ‘Why does she have to go so soon?’ asked Kirsty.

 ‘Annabel and I went at eight.’

 ‘I know you did. But I still think it’s too young,’ she said stubbornly. ‘We never discussed boarding schools before they were born, did we?’

‘I just assumed they would go away when the time came. You couldn’t possibly have imagined anything else.’

‘I didn’t imagine anything at all. What if I don’t approve?’

‘How could you know? It will do her the world of good.’

‘I just don’t approve of having children and then sending them away from home. You gentry can’t wait to get rid of your kids. Us lower orders quite like having them around.’

‘It’s a necessary evil,’ he said, reasonably, laughing at her vehemence. ‘Living where we do. If we lived in Edinburgh or Glasgow it might be different. You had to go away from home as well, didn’t you?’

Sensing that she was getting nowhere, she changed tack. Nicolas was not as easily swayed by her arguments as he had once been. Much as he loved her, she could see that there were times, nowadays, when he just dug in his heels. But he always kept his temper. Sometimes she wished that he would have a proper argument with her. When she was in a temper, she wanted to fling things: cushions, vases, knives even, at his head, but she knew that he wouldn’t respond. He would just go out of the room, close the door on her and leave her to cool down. It was infuriating.

 ‘Think how much Flora would miss her,’ she said. ‘She needs her big sister for a while longer at least.’

 Flora was just five and had started at the village primary school the previous month. When she went trotting down the driveway beside her big sister, she reminded Kirsty of herself, with her shiny red hair, her freckles, her pleated skirt, her scuffed sandals (they never stayed new for longer than a day) and ankle socks streaked with dust where she habitually rubbed one foot against the other.

Nicolas’s face softened. ‘Well. Maybe another year then,’ he said. He loved his little Flora and would go a long way to avoid upsetting her. ‘I suppose we could manage another year. But next September, India will be nine and I think she’ll have to go. I was thinking about St Andrews. Miranda was very happy there.’

Although the family had lived in London, where – presumably – there were excellent schools if you had the money, both Miranda and Nicolas had been sent away to school at what Kirsty saw as a horrendously young age.

‘I’ll miss her.’

‘We could always have another.’  He said it blithely, and she laughed. But she knew he didn’t mean it. He would hate all the disruption that a new baby would bring, and she felt strangely repelled by the thought of another pregnancy.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘Think of all the time you’ll have for your work when she’s gone.’

‘I have plenty of time now.’

She could see that he was doing his best to be nice to her, now that he had won the skirmish. ‘What are you working on?’ he asked. He seldom came to her studio these days, although he talked about her work with great pride, whenever they had visitors.

‘Dunshee. A series of studies of Dunshee. The way it was in the past and the way it is now.’

The truth was that her beloved Dunshee was growing more unkempt with each month that passed. There were holes in the barn roof. The window frames were rotting slowly.  There were mice in the loft. Woodlice ambled slowly about the kitchen. Ants thronged the flagstones from springtime onwards, busy with their own pursuits, and there was mould on the walls. Nature was reclaiming the house by degrees. Billy, the lad who was supposed to help about the farm, kept skiving off to the village, to drink in the hotel bar or, more seriously, to his room at the top of the ladder, where he kept a bottle of whisky. There was no reason why he shouldn’t keep whisky in his room, but he shouldn’t be drinking it during working hours. Kirsty knew that he did, because she had occasionally smelled it on his breath in the afternoon: the sudden, sour whiff of it that made her want to retch.