Bird of Passage (19 page)

 ‘It’s lovely to have you back,’ said Alasdair, heaping her plate with stew. But even while they ate, Kirsty could see that all her mother’s body language still spoke of disapproval or worse, a deep seated dislike where Finn was concerned. When the meal was over, he left the kitchen without a word while Kirsty went upstairs to unpack her bag. She plumped herself down among the creamy woollen blankets. She had forgotten how comfortable her old box bed was, especially in winter. Night had fallen and her grandad had lit a fire for her. One of the house cats had come in with her, a lovely creature with silvery stripes and great green eyes. Once, the cat had had a real name, but Kirsty had called him Fish Face for so long that everyone had forgotten it. He wasn’t a very sociable cat, but he liked Kirsty. Tonight, he rolled over and bit, gently but firmly, at her hand when she tried to stroke him, but he was content to burrow among the blankets. Then he righted himself and folded his paws under him, making himself into a neat rectangle, dozing, with the triangles of his ears still alert.  She buried her face in his fur, inhaling the warm, sweet smell of him. She was glad to be home.

Christmas passed quietly enough. Kirsty had brought gifts from Edinburgh: a warm Aran sweater for Finn, a silver necklace and some tulip bulbs for her mother, a bottle of malt whisky for her grandad.  For Kirsty herself, there was an embarrassment of parcels under the threadbare artificial Christmas tree: new clothes of all kinds, make-up and perfume, as well as books, paints and brushes, paper and canvas. It was as though her mother and her grandfather wanted to show her what she was missing. Finn’s gift was a sketch pad and good pencils. He had bought them on one of his infrequent trips to the mainland.

The Laurence family always spent Christmas in London, but came back to Ealachan for New Year. Kirsty was walking past the iron gates of the house, when a big, black car headed up from the ferry. It drew to a halt and the window slid noiselessly down. Nicolas Laurence, looking very handsome,  stuck his head out.

‘Hi there, Christine! Did you have a good Christmas?’

‘It’s nice to be back. Are your mum and dad here yet?’

‘They came over yesterday. I don’t see much of you in Edinburgh.’

‘No, well. It’s a big place.’

‘Are you coming to the party?  Hogmanay.  We’ve got people coming down from London and a few from Edinburgh as well. You will come, won’t you? Your grandfather and your mother too.’

‘Not  sure you’ll ever prise my grandad out of the house on Hogmanay but mum might come.  Is Annabel here?’

‘No. She’s in Paris. With a man, I think. You know what she’s like. Eight o’clock on New Year’s Eve,’ he called out of the window as the car pulled away. ‘Don’t bring anything but yourselves. There’ll be lots to eat.’

‘And lots to drink as well, if I know Nicolas,’ said Kirsty, when she told her mother about the invitation. ‘Will you come?’

‘I’d like to.’

‘Well do. You don’t have to stay cooped up here and I certainly want to go.’

‘Your Grandad won’t go, though, will he? He’d rather stay here with Finn.’  

‘I never thought about that. No invitation for Finn.’

‘Why would there be?’

‘They’ve never been the best of friends. We used to catch him just watching us sometimes. Poor Nicolas. But we’d never let him join in any of our games.’

‘Which was very unkind of you, Kirsty.’

‘He wasn’t part of it, mum. We didn’t want him. We didn’t
need
anybody else. I know you’ve never liked Finn much, but he was a good friend to me.’

‘I liked that other lad, Francis. I just couldn’t see why you were so fond of Finn. I still can’t.’

‘We were like brother and sister. That’s what it always felt like.’

 ‘But he isn’t your brother. He’s an incomer.  Oh Kirsty,  I should have remarried, shouldn’t I?’

‘Don’t be daft. Who would you have married, mum?’

‘Well I suppose I might have found
somebody
!’ Isabel started to laugh.

‘But getting a brother for me wouldn’t have been a good enough reason to get married again.’

‘Maybe we should have moved to the mainland.’

‘Did you want to?’ Kirsty found herself slightly disturbed by the thought. ‘I mean later. When you got over losing my dad. Did you want to marry again?’

‘You never do get over losing somebody. You get through it, but not over it. It’s different for you, I know. You don’t remember him. But yes, if I’d met the right man, maybe I would have remarried’

‘I suppose you still could. You’re not old, mum.’

‘Maybe we could even have moved away. But your grandad would never have left Dunshee and I couldn’t just leave, could I? Besides, this was a good place to bring up a child. It was a good place for you!’

‘We were so free.’ Kirsty sighed at the memory. ‘We could do what we wanted, go where we liked. As long as we were together, it was alright. I felt safe. And it
was
like having a brother. A big brother, who would always look out for me.’

And yet, she thought, it had been as fragile as a cobweb. An outsider could have brought the whole thing crashing down round their ears in a moment. Back then, mentioning it to anybody else, even Nick, would have been like telling her dreams.  It was the same with her work, with ideas for pictures. If she talked about them too much or to the wrong people, they just evaporated. Her friendship with Finn was a fragile arrangement. Not to be pinned down. And once destroyed, it would be as difficult to rebuild as a robin’s nest.

‘We’re off to a party at Ealachan on Hogmanay. Me and my mum.’

Kirsty made the announcement to the table in general. But Alasdair already knew, so really, it was for Finn’s benefit.

‘And I’m looking forward to it,’ added Isabel.

‘Do you
want
to go to a party with that crowd, Kirsty?’ asked Finn.

‘I don’t see why not!’  Isabel’s reply was quick and sharp.

 Finn had stopped eating and set his knife and fork neatly on his plate, although he hadn’t quite finished his meal. ‘I notice he didn’t invite me.’

Alasdair let out a great guffaw of laughter.

‘That’ll be the day!’ he said. ‘That will be the bloody day!’

‘Alasdair!’ said Isabel.

‘Well, it will be the day!’

‘Why shouldn’t he invite Finn?’ asked Kirsty.

‘Because he wouldn’t go, would you, lad?’

‘I don’t know. I might.’

‘And because there’s all the difference in the world between being a tenant farmer and being a hired hand,’ said Isabel.

‘But you were a hired hand as well, mum.’

‘I worked for them. Nothing wrong with that. It was a pleasure to work for Malcolm Laurence. He’s a perfect gentleman! And so is his son.’

‘I’ll be off,’ Finn said, suddenly, pushing his chair noisily backwards over the stone floor. ‘I’ve things to do before dark.!’

Kirsty’s appetite had deserted her. She left most of her pudding, and excused herself from the table. She put on her coat and found Finn lurking in one of the outbuildings, pretending to polish a piece of old tack with an oily rag.

 ‘For God’s sake, Finn! Come inside. It’s freezing out here.’

‘You know I don’t give a damn about Nicolas. But mum wants to go. In fact, she needs to go. She doesn’t get much of a chance to get out of the house, and I’m going with her, whether you like it or not, and that’s that.’

‘You’ll be away back to Edinburgh soon.’

‘And that’s exactly why I want to make things nice for mum while I’m here.’

‘Do you not want to make things nice for me?’

‘I thought I did make things nice. Honestly, Finn, you don’t have to be jealous. It’ll be good for mum to go to the party and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t.’

‘Everything’s changed.’

‘Nothing’s changed. Well, not between you and me. But I can’t always be here, Finn, and I can’t always be worrying about your feelings.’ She rounded on him in sudden exasperation. ‘I could spend a lifetime trying to reassure you, couldn’t I? And it still wouldn’t be enough.’

Finn looked sheepish, kicking at the wall. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘I can’t help it but I’m sorry.’

‘Are you coming back in?’

‘Maybe later.’

‘Alright. Be like that.’

Kirsty hadn’t been inside Ealachan House very often although, once or twice, when they were children, Nicolas had invited her in for juice and biscuits. It had always seemed a gloomy place, and she had  imagined Nicolas as a lonely little boy, trailing through its chilly rooms. There were two or three enormous reception rooms with fancy marble fireplaces, gilded mirrors and chandeliers. The staircase was an elegant sweep. There was a conservatory, a library lined from floor to ceiling with books and a panelled billiard room with a carved observation gallery above.

Some previous owner had planted shelter belts for the benefit of his garden. Now, the trees grew so thickly that, even in winter, once you were in the house or even on the lawns in front of the house, the sense of being on an island disappeared.  Beautiful as the gardens were, Kirsty always found herself half suffocated by trees, and wanting to escape from them. To find the sea again,  you had to go clambering up a path which traversed a steep bank behind one of the walled gardens.  A breathless climb through dense vegetation brought you at last to the heathery spine of the island from where you could see the silhouettes of other islands, and breathe salty air again.

Kirsty and her mother arrived late. Isabel had been fussing over her  appearance, changing her dress, her shoes and her hairstyle until Kirsty grew impatient with her.

‘You look lovely!’ she said at last. ‘And if you don’t come now, I’m going without you!’

The other party guests had arrived from the mainland in a selection of sports cars and brightly painted Citroen 2CVs. Kirsty didn’t move in these circles in Edinburgh. None of her close friends even owned a car. The girls were tall and slender in Biba and Mary Quant. The young men were smartly tousled, in white shirts and dark trousers, and they all drank champagne as though it were going out of fashion, swallowed their final consonants, and narrowed their vowels so that it was hard to figure out exactly what they were saying.  

Nicolas came up behind them. ‘Don’t you look wonderful, Christine?’

Kirsty was wearing a sea green Indian cotton dress, with a high waist and little bells that jingled as she walked. She was flattered by his obvious admiration. Finn had pretended not to notice anything different about her.

‘How the other half do live,’ she said, as she and Isabel stood outside the  downstairs lavatory together, waiting their turn. ‘Mind you, they could do with a new loo.’  The lavatory, which she remembered from childhood visits, was a bleak room of immense and icy proportions with sheets of slippery toilet paper, a worn wooden seat, and a broken chain.

‘I used to clean this place,’ Isabel said, starting to laugh.

Kirsty danced with a succession of charming but not particularly handsome young men. Sometimes, in the intervals between dances, she would see her mother, standing with a glass of champagne in her hand, chatting to Malcolm. He didn’t dance, although his wife was visible from time to time, whirling through the Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow with a string of partners. Isabel seemed to be enjoying his company immensely. Occasionally, Nicolas would rescue Kirsty and dance with her himself. When the bells rang out at midnight, he was beside her. They embraced, briefly, and he gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek. She noticed that her mother was beside Malcolm and – since his wife was nowhere to be seen – she too was the recipient of an embrace and a peck on the cheek.  

In the early hours of the morning, with the party growing raucous, Nicolas offered to drive them back to the farm, but he had been drinking so much that they refused and set off to walk home by themselves. It was no more than a couple of miles but the ground was white with frost and by the time they were struggling up the last few hundred yards of the track to Dunshee, they were both exhausted. Kirsty had swathed herself in a woolly coat and tucked her dress up, so that she could walk more comfortably and she and her mother were going arm in arm, trying to keep to the grass at the side of the track to save their shoes.

Just before the farm gate, a tall figure uncoiled itself from a rock and barred their way.

‘Finn!’ Kirsty had been expecting this. ‘What are you
doing out here?’

‘Waiting for you. I was worried about you. Down among the hooray Henries.’

‘You should have known we’d be alright.’

‘So Nicolas didn’t bring you home then?’

‘He offered, but we thought we’d be safer walking,’

‘Thank God for that.’

She took Finn’s arm and slipped her hand inside his pocket. On his other side, Isabel struggled under her own steam for a while, but at last she gave in to her fatigue and took his arm as well.

‘We’ve had a lovely time, haven’t we, mum?’

Isabel, a little drunk with champagne and the happiness of Malcolm’s attention, agreed. ‘It was a nice party.’