Bird of Passage (36 page)

A sudden flurry of sound and movement from above made him jump, but it was only panic stricken pigeons, flapping away, indignant at his intrusion. The house was wasting away and would never be resuscitated now. Who would want to? It was haunted by the memory of the evil it had once contained. You wouldn’t want to live here. Wouldn’t want to spend more time than you had to. There were no ghosts here. No demons. It was just a building, a shrivelled shell and like the misery it had once contained, there was a kind of banality in it. It was a sad, bad old place. But the only ghosts were in his head.

He went out again, breathing in the chilly air with relief, clearing his lungs, leaving the door to swing open behind him. He wished somebody would come along and finish the job. Burn the place down to the ground. When he got to his car, he turned and looked back at the house. Behind the ruined building was a long, low ridge, covered in trees. It had begun to rain, heavily. But the sun, emerging from a bank of dark clouds as it sank towards the western horizon, was turning the whole sky a livid shade of ochre. A strange and wonderful sound, growing in volume, distracted him. He saw a great mass of rooks, hundreds, perhaps thousands of birds, filling the yellow sky, tumbling like so many flakes of ash from some massive conflagration, soaring above and falling towards the trees behind the house. The sight and the sound – bizarre, but wholly natural – raised his spirits. He felt his heart give a little leap of pleasure. Who would have thought it, in such a place? He remembered another time, another place. Watching the rooks fly back to Ealachan. The warmth. The weight of the greenheart rod. Alasdair teaching him to cast. Kirsty, watching. His sister. No.  His lover. Tick tock, he thought. Tick tock.

Time passed. He didn’t know how long, but when he came to himself, he saw that darkness had fallen. He got into his car and drove away without a backward glance. Another night and then he would go back to Scotland and get on with the rest of his life.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Dunshee was on the market. Eighteen months had passed since Kirsty had had that one tantalising glimpse of Finn. Two oil rig disasters – Finn’s and Piper Alpha -  in as many years, had affected the Laurence family business badly. The firm, which dealt in safety equipment of all kinds, had been forced to pay out a share of the compensation. Their standards had been criticised. Nicolas muttered about commercial pressures but they would have to sell off some property if they were to survive. Malcolm Laurence declared that he would sell Ealachan over his dead body but some of the farms would have to go. When a tiny bungalow – quite suitable as a retirement cottage - fell vacant in the village, Nicolas felt that the time had come to move Alasdair and sell Dunshee. What with the views and the beach, it should fetch a tidy sum. Somebody would surely pay handsomely for an island retreat.

‘You do realise it will kill him, don’t you?’ said  Kirsty, wildly.

 ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. I’ll even renovate the bungalow for him. You can chose the colour scheme if you like. He’s too old to be doing farm work and we can’t afford to subsidise him any longer.’

People had been coming to look at the farm, but only intermittently. One man arrived by helicopter. He said he was considering it as a meditation centre but found it much too isolated. He didn’t appear to notice the irony of this. Many of the potential buyers were in search of a Hebridean holiday home. They were all looking for peace and quiet. All of them found Dunshee too remote for their urban tastes.

‘It isn’t quite what we thought it would be,’ they said, even when they saw it green and bonny in summer. God knows what they would make of it in winter.

Kirsty insisted on being there to show people around. Her grandfather would be living there until the place was sold and entry dates agreed. The bungalow was being renovated and decorated. No expense would be spared.

‘And why not?’ said Kirsty to her husband. ‘It’ll still be your property. When he dies, you’ll have one more holiday home to rent out.’

‘Which won’t be for a very long time, I hope,’ said Nicolas evenly. She believed him, but it didn’t make the proposed move any easier. Her grandfather seemed to have shrunk in the past few months. He walked through the house with her, stroking his furniture, the old dresser, the brass bedstead that he had slept on all his married life but which would be much too big for his bedroom in the bungalow.

‘What will I do with all my things?’ he asked, querulously. ‘And what about your mother’s ornaments?’

 She knew that they should already be sorting and packing, but she couldn’t bring herself to begin. It would be better to do everything in a hurry at the last minute. That way it wouldn’t be too painful for either of them.

Her own bedroom was the hardest to bear. She showed people round and had to listen to them calling her bed ‘quaint’ and ‘sweet’ and ‘primitive.’ Some planned to keep it just as it was. Some mused that they could turn it into a big cupboard because ‘who could possibly sleep in there?’

‘I did,’ she said, and the woman turned to look at her as though she was some strange outlandish creature.

‘
You
did?’

‘Yes. This was my bedroom. I used to sleep in here when I was a child. And as an adult as well. It was very comfortable in winter. Very warm.’

You can even make love in it, she thought.

Deep misery had spawned a sort of boredom in her. She couldn’t bear to listen to these people, never mind enthuse about their plans for her old home. One or two of them even went to survey but nobody made an offer, and Nicolas’s visions of a closing date with eager bidders came to nothing. Perhaps the price was just too high. Then, in August, Nicholas’s saviour arrived, in the shape of  a smart young man, driving a red E-Type Jaguar off the ferry. He had made an appointment to view. His name was John Grainger and he called in at Ealachan and drove up to Dunshee with Kirsty beside him. He was a very charming young man and made polite conversation all the way up the track, although the wear and tear on his vehicle must have been colossal and she could see him wincing, every time they negotiated a particularly deep rut.

At the farm, he got out of the car and pulled a brand new Barbour jacket over his suit, although it was a warm day.

‘‘Yes, yes, I see,’ he said all the time. When she asked him if he wanted to go down to the beach,  he glanced at his shoes, shuddered and shook his head firmly. ‘No. That won’t be necessary, thank-you very much.’

He had brought a plan of the land and checked it over with her, against an ordnance survey map, which he produced from one of the Barbour pockets.

‘There could be more land available for rent, if need be. But I don’t think whoever buys it will want to farm it. Do you, Mr Grainger?’

He ignored the question and traced the contours of the hill at the back of the house with his fingertip. ‘So from here, behind the house, right up there and as far as the sea… all that is being sold with the farm as well? Am I right?’

‘Yes it is. But there’s no real beach on the other side. The only beach is the one on this side, in front of the house. There’s an iron age hill fort up there, and then just cliffs. There’s only one place where you can get down. A sort of stair, in the rocks.  But it’s very wild over there.’

She remembered Finn, scrambling down these rocks in search of the gulls’ eggs, which her grandfather had liked to eat when he could get them. Tern eggs were ‘like the best caviar’ said Alasdair, although to her knowledge he had never tasted the stuff. It had been a perilous occupation since the birds would attack your unprotected head. She remembered waiting, anxiously, for Finn to reappear and the relief of seeing his upturned face as he clambered back up. He was holding the eggs in a leather bag, being careful not to break them. She had taken his hand and hauled him up and over the edge, where he rolled onto the short turf, his long arms and legs starfished out, still keeping the eggs intact, laughing.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘They’re so savage. I thought they would peck my eyes out!’ 

‘Why wouldn’t they when you were raiding their nests? I would peck your eyes out as well!’

She shook the memories away with an effort. ‘Do you want to go up there?’ she asked the young man. ‘I’ll take you, if you like.’  

 ‘No, no. I’ll take your word for it.’

Her grandfather had made a pot of tea. He slammed it down on the kitchen table, along with thick white mugs and a plate of shortbread from the post office. Nicolas had suggested real coffee. He had read somewhere that the scent of it encouraged buyers. Alasdair’s reaction to this was unrepeatable. He only ever drank Camp coffee with Nestlé’s condensed milk. When Kirsty was little, she used to steal a sweet, sticky teaspoonful or two from the tin which he kept in the kitchen cupboard. She knew that Alasdair wanted to tell this smart young man to bugger off and leave him in peace. The injustice of it all rose like bile in her throat. This is his home, she thought. His home that  we are selling over his head. And I’m doing this to my own grandfather!

The young man took off his jacket, sat down at the kitchen table and drank his tea.

Partly to break the silence, she said  ‘Excuse me for asking, but you don’t exactly seem very interested in the property.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Didn’t your husband tell you? I’m acting for a client.’

‘No he didn’t tell me.’

 Par for the course, she thought. Another southerner with more cash than sense, and a wholly illusory impression of life on a small Scottish island.

‘Did he say anything to you, grandad?’

Alasdair shook his head. ‘When did your Nicolas ever confide in me?’

‘What kind of client?’ she asked, wondering if it was anybody famous.

‘Just somebody looking for a countryside retreat. He saw this place advertised and thought it might fit the bill.’

‘Not a farmer then.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well you can tell him from me,  it won’t be what he expects.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because it never is, that’s why. I can tell you right now, he’ll find it too cold, too muddy, and not half civilised enough. You’ll be doing him a favour if you tell him to forget all about it. Find him a nice cottage in the Cotswolds. That’ll be more his style.’

 Grainger looked round the kitchen and cleared his throat. ‘Will you be needing all of your furniture, Mr Galbreath?’

‘I can’t take all of it with me, if that’s what you mean,’ said Alasdair. ‘Not to a house that size.’

‘It’s just that we could perhaps negotiate a price to include whatever furniture you want to leave. If he decides to take things further, of course.’

Kirsty looked at her grandfather. ‘I suppose you might be able to leave some stuff here, grandad? Better than storing it at Ealachan. Mind you, it would have to be a separate sale; the furniture doesn’t belong to the estate.’  She frowned at the young man. ‘I know that sounds a bit odd, but I’m only here for my grandad’s sake. It’s been his home all his life, you know. And mine too. He doesn’t really want to leave.’

‘It must be quite a wrench.’ He seemed taken aback by Kirsty’s forthright declaration.

‘Yes. It is.’

She felt sorry for him. After all, none of this was his fault.

‘What’s he like then, this client of yours?’
‘To tell you the absolute truth, I’ve never met him. He dealt with my boss. I’ll report back to him and, no doubt, he’ll tell the prospective purchaser all about the place. But it’ll only be one of a whole portfolio of properties he’ll be considering. That’s usually what happens.’

‘Oh well.’ She stood up, looking down at her grandad. Her heart ached for him. ‘Do you want to see anything else?’

‘No, thank-you. I’ve had a good tour of the house, and that’s all I need really.’  Kirsty saw that they had made him very uncomfortable and felt a pang of guilt.

‘What a lovely picture,’ he said, staring at the wall behind Kirsty’s head.

She looked round and saw her own painting of Dunshee, with Hill Top Town behind. She had painted it in spring, exaggerating the dilapidation. The house was falling down but it looked as though it were falling into drifts of primroses and violets and bluebells, sinking slowly into swathes of yellow and purple that bruised the very land it stood on.        

‘My grand-daughter’s work.’ Alasdair nodded proudly at Kirsty.

‘It’s very beautiful. Quite disturbing really. Tell me – you’re Kirsty Galbreath. I mean,
the
Kirsty Galbreath, aren’t you?’

Kirsty used her own name on her paintings. As always, she was faintly embarrassed by praise of her work.

‘Why, have you seen my paintings before?’

‘Yes. In fact, we have one at home. It’s called
Machair.
My wife loves it. Well, I love it too. I bought it for her when we got married.’

‘I’m glad you like it. I’d better take you back to Ealachan. You’ll want to speak to my husband before you go.’