Bird of Passage (40 page)

 ‘Haven’t you got enough good-looking guys trailing around after you without adding one more scalp?’

‘But we all want what we can’t have. There’s something so attractive about the unattainable, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’

But what do
I
want, thought  Kirsty. She stared out of the window at the gardens. There was the faintest haze of green over the shrubs and the purple and yellow of early crocuses on the grass. Up at Dunshee though, the snowdrops would still be in bloom, drifts of white against the grey stone walls. Finn was up there, a short walk away, but it might as well be a thousand miles.

CHAPTER  THIRTY ONE

Even down at sheltered Ealachan, Kirsty could hear the wind moaning about the old pitched roofs, a hostile creature, stalking the inhabitants of the house. Spring might be coming, but the Atlantic lows were still rolling in from the west to buffet the island again and again. Lying beside Nicolas, or alone, during his increasingly frequent absences, she imagined the magnified din of the storms up at Dunshee. She thought about Finn, wakeful in her old bed, for nobody could sleep through these gales. The noise was  always monstrous up there, a relentless, deafening roar that engulfed the house and shook it to its ancient foundations. She remembered how often she had woken with a start from a restless doze, imagining that somebody or something was outside her room, tapping on the wood, desperate to gain access.

Since Christmas, she and Finn had met from time to time in the island shop, where curious eyes observed them constantly. Gossip about them had been rife at first. ‘Have you seen him? Have you seen the bike? Some change eh? What will she do? How will her husband take it?’ Then things had calmed down. People had got used to seeing Finn about the place again. But  the Christmas kiss had made her wary and for the past few weeks, they had talked only of trivialities, of things that didn’t matter: the work at Dunshee, the weather, the prospects for the coming summer.

‘He’s certainly changed for the better,’ admitted Nicolas.

‘How do you mean – for the better?’

‘Well, he seems more civilized for a start. He can hold an intelligent conversation these days.’

‘Since when did you ever hold an intelligent conversation with Finn ?’

‘We do meet occasionally, Kirsty. In the village. In the hotel.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce him to your friends?’

‘I do mean that, yes.’

But Kirsty thought that this so-called civilization was only a veneer, although she didn’t say as much to Nicolas. Her warning to Annabel had been no exaggeration.  She knew that Finn was a stunted tree, like one of the fairy thorns behind the farm. Even she, who liked to name things, didn’t have the words to describe him properly, although time and distance had given her a clearer perspective on him. Sometimes it seemed to her as though, all those years ago, a changeling had been left at Dunshee.  This feeling was quite separate from her affection for him, which ran, strong and true, through every inch of her.

In February, a Russian trawler, one of the large ‘Klondikers’ that fished these waters,  ran aground on a reef, at a place called Port Carrick on the western side of the island. All the able bodied islanders turned out to help.

Nicolas and Annabel were both away when the phone rang at Ealachan.

‘I’m sorry to waken you, Kirsty,’ said Robert Dunlop, a farmer from the north end, who was helping to co-ordinate the rescue and mustering assistance from all over the island. ‘I thought Nick was at home.’

‘No. He and Annabel were meant to be back yesterday but the ferry was cancelled because of the weather.’

‘So it was. Never mind then.’

‘I’ll come though.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Heather will be here for Flora. And we can put some people up at this house if necessary. We’ve got plenty of space.’

‘That’s very generous of you. But I think the hotel can probably cope.’

‘Well, the offer’s there. Have you phoned Dunshee yet?’

‘Not yet. But I will if you think …’

‘Finn will want to help. But do tell him not to let my grandad get involved. He’s not up to it.’

‘I’ll do that, Kirsty.’

Daylight, if this gloomy, grey haze could be called light at all, revealed the big trawler, a stranded whale, wallowing in the heaving, green seas of the cove. The lifeboat couldn’t get alongside in these conditions. They had managed to rig up a breeches buoy to take the crew from the shattered ship to the shore. Local fishermen and farmers had mustered, and Finn was in among them, lending expertise, muscle and encouragement. Watching from the shore, Kirsty felt a surge of panic, remembering that other night when she had seen him on television, after the rig disaster. 

The Klondiker would lie out there for months while the authorities haggled over salvage rights. The mackerel in her hold would rot and the stench would be appalling. Then, more gales would break her back and for a while, the seashore would be littered with bits of wood, metal, plastic and torn papers with mysterious Cyrillic script on them  - great treasure for the island children when first discovered. A winter or so later, nothing would remain, wind and water having settled the salvage problem once and for all. The crew were all saved and the islanders took a dozen or so seamen to the hotel where they could be medicated, fed and housed, until they could be sent home.

The wreck held a great fascination for the islanders and in spite of the foul weather, people lingered on the shore for a long time after the rescue, watching the surge and swell of the waves breaking against the hull. Kirsty found Finn, sitting alone, on a rock. She picked her way among boulders and hummocks of drenched heather.

‘You did a great job there!’

He looked up and tried to smile at her, but she saw, to her distress, that he was shivering. She sat down beside him and slipped her arm around him.

‘People will see,’ he muttered.

‘Nobody’s looking at us. They’re all looking at … that.’ She nodded at the wreck. ‘You can’t help but look at it, can  you?’

‘No. ‘

‘Are you OK?’

‘Not really.’

‘Have you hurt yourself?’

‘No. No I’m fine. Grazed my hand on the ropes that’s all.’

They sat together in silence for a while. ‘Does it bring it back?’ she asked eventually. ‘The rig and all that?’

‘A bit.’

‘I was thinking about it as well. It must have been appalling for you.’

‘Sometimes I dream about it. I dream about being in the water. I’m trying to cry out, but I can’t. I can’t get the sounds out. And sometimes I can just be – I don’t know - watching TV, cleaning my teeth, and it’s like somebody switches it on. Like a movie. Like a daydream, but you can’t stop yourself from thinking about it. And there I am, in the middle of it all again.’

One more thing to add to the terrible images that haunted him. His private library. Except that he had no control over what he was forced to see. The images assaulted him at random.

She tried to pull him closer, but he resisted her.

‘The worst thing was…’ he stopped.

‘What?’

‘There was a part of me that wanted to let go, stop fighting, have done with it all. Too hard, I thought. It’s too hard. I’d been struggling for so many years. I just wanted to give in. Let the sea take me. And then you came into my mind, Kirsty. I had this sudden image of you, a bossy wee girl again. I was in the water and I thought I was going to die, and the idea of not seeing you one last time was unbearable. I knew then that I had to come back and see you. One way or another, I had to come back.’

‘What are we going to do, Finn ?’

‘How the fuck should I know? I thought things would just…I don’t know what I thought.’

There was a sudden break in the weather, a patch of blue, a gleam of wintry sunshine. It would be an interval only. Already they could see the next band of clouds rolling in from the west, but Finn stood up and pulled her to her feet. ‘The jeep’s down on the track back there. There’s a flask in it. Come on. Let’s get some shelter.’

They sat in the muddy vehicle and drank milky coffee, laced with whisky. Maybe the whisky loosened her tongue. Or maybe she couldn’t bear not knowing.

‘Why did you leave me?’ she asked him, staring through the window at the driving rain. ‘Why did you do that to me? And at such a moment!’

‘Because I had to. You were right. You said I needed to get away. And I did. I could see that I would only hold you back if I stayed. You had enough on your plate. There were things I had to do. Things to sort out. I had to find my mother, for one thing.’

‘And did you find her?’

 ‘Oh, God. Yes. I found her alright.’

‘Where? Where was she, Finn?’

‘Where she is still. In a convent. She’s a nun.’

‘Good Lord!’

 ‘That’s right.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Good Lord is right. She was put to work for the nuns. In a laundry. It was virtual slavery. It happened to a lot of women. The courts committed them if they were judged to be leading immoral lives. But then, she couldn’t beat them, so she joined them.’

Even as he said the words, he was aware that they were not quite true. He had come to believe that his mother’s vocation was genuine. He didn’t like it but whether he liked it or not didn’t matter. Mary had her own path to follow. Her life had been interrupted, just as his had been interrupted and the disruption had changed her irrevocably, just as it had changed him. But he was forced to admit that she was doing what she wanted.

‘She’s Sister Dominica now. She seems happy enough. But she’s not the person I remember. You can’t trust anyone to stay the same.’

‘I would have stayed the same. I would have gone to hell in a handcart with you back then!’

‘Would you?’

‘You left
me
, remember!’

‘I thought if I went, you would go away too. Back to university, back to your painting. I didn’t want you thinking that you had to be tied to me when I had nothing to offer you. I thought your grandfather would probably persuade you to go back to Edinburgh. Once he had other help about the farm.’

‘But to leave without saying a word. Without so much as a note to tell me where you’d gone!’

‘I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know where I was going. You don’t know how often I almost came back. I planned to write to you. But time passed and then it seemed too late. I never imagined that you would marry Nicholas!’

‘Why wouldn’t I marry him? ’

Because you loved
me
! He wanted to say it, but couldn’t bring himself to speak the words aloud.

‘How did you find out?’ she asked.

He laughed, ruefully. ‘I saw it in a magazine.’

‘You didn’t!’

‘I did.’

‘Oh I’m sorry.’

 He had been sitting in a dentist’s waiting room in Glasgow with his tooth aching fiercely and he had been flicking through an old copy of Scottish Field to distract himself from the pain, when it had caught his eye. It was one of those typical ‘society’ wedding pictures with everyone grinning inanely: ‘Mr and Mrs Malcolm Laurence of Ealachan House, their son Nicolas and his bride Miss Christine Galbreath.’

 ‘I loved you so much, Finn. But you went away. What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life?  I waited for you that night. I waited for you for ages and then I fell asleep because I was so exhausted. The next day, when I found that you had gone, oh Finn, you’ll never know what it did to me. I was heartbroken. Heartbroken.’

‘But you went and married Nicolas anyway.’

‘He was there and he was kind to me. He loved me.’

‘Why so soon, Kirsty? Why did you marry him so soon?’

 I thought you had gone for good. I thought, why not?’

‘Jesus!’

‘Nothing mattered to me after that. For a little while I hoped that you would come back, but then I realised you wouldn’t, because that’s the way you are, because that’s how ruthless you are. It was as though somebody had switched off all the lights inside me.’

There was a long pause. Finn seemed to be steeling himself to speak. At last, he said, ‘You’re still not telling me the truth, are you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Kirsty! I have eyes in my head. I can see!’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Fear seized her, a terror so acute and all encompassing that she could only gaze at him, rigid with apprehension.

 ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have given me that photograph for Christmas, Kirsty. If I suspected it before, I knew for sure as soon as I looked at it. She’s the image of me, isn’t she?’