Bird of Passage (18 page)

 ‘A boyfriend? No! But I have my family. Well, my mum and my grandad. My dad’s dead.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to be. It was a long time ago.’

‘Is it a nice place?’

‘It’s the most beautiful place on earth. I’m going to miss it all the time. But I want to do this. Don’t you?

In the middle of her first term, Kirsty met Nicolas Laurence in the library cafeteria. She had heard he was at the university, but she hadn’t seen him for years. He had been spending his summers away from the island, and she was disconcerted to find that she hardly recognised him. He looked much more like a lecturer than a student. He was perched on one of the low stools, dressed in jeans and a sports jacket and a very white shirt. Everything about him looked expensive, from the gold watch at his wrist to the soft leather desert boots on his feet. He looked wholly at ease with himself, in the way that wealthy people so often do.

‘I wouldn’t have known you,’ she said, hugging him and then turning to introduce Molly. ‘Nicolas is the big cheese on our island. Aren’t you, Nick?’

‘Not at all!’ He was faintly embarrassed.

‘Well, his dad is, and Nick will be, eventually.’

Molly looked puzzled, so she added ‘He’s our landlord. He owns us all, body and soul. Don’t you, Nick?’

‘She’s joking.’

‘Only partly.’ She turned to Molly. ‘He pays the occasional flying visit, so that he can check out what the lower orders are up to, seeing as how he’s the gentry.’

 ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ he said mildly.

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘Wind him up maybe?’ said Molly, always the peacemaker.

‘I’m not winding him up. It’s true. He’s our landlord. And he’s loaded, aren’t you, Nick?’

‘My father’s your landlord, Christine, not me.’

‘It will amount to the same thing. Eventually. We’ll all have to do what you tell us.’

‘You’ll always do whatever you like. You damn well know that.’

She relented and patted his knee. ‘I know. Don’t take me so seriously! I’d forgotten you were here. Although now I come to think of it, your father mentioned it to my mum when I got my acceptance. What are you doing here?’

‘Geography. Third year.’

‘And then?’

‘I’ll probably go into the family firm.’

‘How could you not?’

He went away, bought coffees for them and sat down beside Kirsty.

‘Shove along,’ he said. ‘What about you? What are you doing?’

‘Fine Art.’

‘I might have guessed. God but you’ve changed.’

‘Not really. I’m the same old Cairistiona.’

‘Well, you don’t look it. I always think of you as a little girl with plaits and ankle socks. And now look at you!’

‘You’ve changed quite a bit yourself.’ She grinned at him.

‘Are you going home this term?’

‘I’ll probably just wait for Christmas. It’s such a trek. And I can’t really afford the fare.’

‘We’ll be there for Christmas. And Hogmanay. My parents are planning a big party. Will you come?’

‘If I’m asked.’

‘I’m asking you now. They must be missing you at Dunshee.’

‘I  phone my mum every week.  But they’re used to me being away.’

 ‘And whatever will Finn McCool do without you? Faithful Finn!

‘Don’t talk about him like that. You know nothing about him.’

‘Why are you still fighting his battles? You’ve outgrown him and you know it.’

Kirsty looked at her watch. ‘Don’t you have a lecture or something?’

Nicolas stood up. ‘I do indeed. Best get on. We must have a meal sometime, Christine.’

‘That would be nice. Give me a ring.’

‘I will.’ He bent down and would have kissed her on the lips but she turned her head to one side, so he found himself clumsily brushing her cheek instead.

She watched him go. ‘Get me another coffee, Molly. I’ll pay you when I’ve been to the bank.’

‘I think I can stand you a coffee. But only if you tell me all about
him
.’

Molly brought the coffee back and sat down in Nicolas’s place.

‘Why didn’t you mention him before?’

‘Because he hardly ever crosses my mind. I haven’t seen him for ages.’

‘You’ve got this rich, good looking friend in Edinburgh and he hardly ever crosses your mind?’

‘His father owns the island. He’s our landlord. They divide their time between the island and London. Nick used to be sent up to Scotland for his health.’

‘He doesn’t exactly look fragile.’

‘No. Well it must have done him some good, mustn’t it?’

‘I think he fancies you.’

‘No he doesn’t. Apart from the fact that I’ve known him since we were kids, I don’t have the right sort of bank balance.’

‘Why does he keep calling you Christine?’

‘He always has done. He could never manage Cairistiona, and he doesn’t much like the name Kirsty.’

‘Who’s Finn McCool then?’

Kirsty smiled. ‘It isn’t Finn McCool.  That’s just Nick, trying to be funny. It’s Finn O’Malley. And will you stop the inquisition? He’s just somebody on the island. An old friend. Another person I’ve known forever.’

‘Your Nicolas doesn’t seem to like him.’

‘He isn’t
my
Nicolas. And believe me, Nicolas never gives Finn a second thought. He only said it to wind me up.’

The truth was that Finn was private. She didn’t want to talk about him at all, even to her closest friends, Molly and Anne, a history student from Devon, who lived down the same corridor. The girls had become a threesome. Winter Sundays were very quiet in Edinburgh and the girls were often forced to spend time studying from sheer lack of anything more entertaining to do. Most Sunday afternoons, Kirsty, Anne  and Molly would take a break from their books and trudge down the Royal Mile to the Fudge House, where they would sit and drink hot chocolate and nibble home made fudge.

‘So come on,’ said Anne, on one of these long, chocolate-soaked Sundays. ‘Tell us all about this Finn person.’

‘He’s just my friend.’ Kirsty was eating whipped cream off the top of her chocolate with a spoon. ‘We used to go about together all the time. Do kids’ stuff.  We’re not cousins, but that’s what we’re like.’

Anne rummaged in her bag of fudge. ‘This place is almost as bad as home on a Sunday, but at least it’s only one day a week. God knows what you found to do on your island, Kirsty. Aren’t you supposed to go to church for hours and hours on Sundays and do nothing else?’

‘You’re thinking of the Wee Frees.’

‘The wee what?’

Kirsty giggled. ‘The Free Church of Scotland. But it’s not so strict where I live. Besides, there are a million things to do. We just ran wild.’

‘I didn’t think your island was that big.’

‘No, but there’s only a couple of villages and a handful of farms and crofts. The rest of it is moorland. Peat bog. White beaches. You can walk for miles if you want to.’

‘Exciting stuff,’ said Anne. ‘So what else do you find to do there?’

Kirsty gazed at her friends across the table. How could she ever explain?

‘Oh, we go out in my grandad’s rowing boat. Sometimes we go and lift his creels for him. Or we go fishing.’

The thought that Finn was there, on the island, waiting faithfully for her return, was obscurely comforting. But talking about these simple pleasures, here in the city,  reduced them, made them seem humdrum and stupid.

 Kirsty kept a tiny black and white snapshot of Finn in her desk drawer. But she hadn’t showed it to anybody else. Just occasionally, she would take it out and look at it, finding the sight of him comforting.
She had taken the picture herself, had caught him looking down at her, smiling his rare smile, from the top of a drystone wall, his hair blowing into his eyes. She had borrowed her grandfather’s camera because she had wanted to take photographs so that she could sketch things later. She had been afraid of breaking the camera, which was one of her grandad’s prize possessions, so she had put it back into her rucksack and then clambered up after Finn. She remembered his cold hand reaching down for her, hauling her up beside him. The summer was almost done. There was the astringent scent of leaf mould, the sudden stink of fungus. They had been feasting on the plump brambles which jewelled the island hedgerows, but she had been stung by a wasp. The pain had brought tears to her eyes, but he had sucked the wound clean and then sweetened her tears with fruit.

 ‘Don’t cry,’ he had said. ‘Don’t cry,’ and she had said ‘I’m not crying. I never cry. Not for an old wasp sting.’

She remembered clambering onto the wall, thorny stalks thrashing about her knees. She remembered grazing her legs on granite and wild rose whips.  And then they were on top of the wall, clutching each other, balancing as stones skittered about them while the wind blew bitter flurries of rain in from the west.

But once she had left the island, everything had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again. And now, whenever she looked at the snapshot, she had a fleeting but powerful sense of regret, wishing just for a moment that she was back there, balancing on that wall, Finn’s hand in hers. My friend, she thought. My big brother.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kirsty went home for Christmas, travelling most of the way by bus. On the ferry, she swung on the rail like a child, trying to make the little vessel move faster. As they neared the harbour, she began to look out for Finn, running  from side to side to get a better view, craning her neck, unable to control her excitement. At last, as the ferry moved closer to the jetty, she caught sight of him. He was leaning against the jeep, arms folded, long legs stretched in front of him. He wore a black wool jacket and filthy blue overalls and his boots were caked in mud. He pushed himself into an upright position and walked slowly towards the boat, his eyes searching among the passengers.

She leaned precariously over the side and waved madly. ‘Finn! I’m here!’

He looked up at her. His face was grimy, his hair uncombed.  Ashore, she ran to him, and hugged him. For a moment, she held him close, setting her cheek hard against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, with the wool of his coat prickling her skin. His long arms went round her and they stood very still, his lips just touching the top of her head. When she stepped back from him, holding him at arm’s length,  it wasn’t his muddy overalls that distracted her.  It was as though this sudden proximity had made them both shy, recollecting them to some sense of a reality which – just for a moment – had been transcended by both of them.

 Finn carried her bags up to the jeep. Kirsty clung to his arm, hindering his progress with questions, but she was in control now, her conversation friendly, with nothing of the intensity of that first embrace. On the way up to Dunshee, he said, ‘I thought you might come home for a visit, in the autumn. You said you might.’

‘And it’s a long way, Finn.’ She threaded her arm through his, as he drove.

‘Don’t,’ he said, changing gear. ‘What’s that smell, Kirsty?’

‘It’s my perfume. Patchouli. Don’t you like it?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not much. Smells like fly spray to me.’

‘How are they?’ she asked him, after a pause. 

‘They’ll be all the better for seeing you,’ he said, gruffly. There was the mildest of reproaches in his tone.   

Kirsty felt a pang of irritation. She had expected an unconditional welcome.  

‘Did they expect me home sooner?’

He looked straight ahead, concentrating on the road.

Kirsty frowned and bit her lip.

‘I had things to do, Finn. I couldn’t help it.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m here now, that’s the main thing.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re here. That’s the main thing.’

At Dunshee, Isabel embraced her daughter.

‘You’ve turned into a hippy’ she said, with grudging admiration.

In the kitchen, the table was already laid with blue and white plates and a loaf of crusty bread. Soon they would be joined by the big two-handled pan of stew, a dish of floury potatoes and another of mashed carrots and turnip with plenty of butter and pepper. 

 Finn went off to wash his hands.  When he returned, Kirsty was touched to see that he had made a rudimentary attempt to comb his hair.  He had discarded his shabby overalls to reveal equally shabby, but rather less grubby jeans and a blue cotton shirt, threadbare and faded from too many washes.