Bird of Passage (22 page)

‘Kirsty? What’s the matter? Is it your mother?’

‘No.  I just need some company.’

‘Are you coming up?’

‘Can I?’

‘You don’t have to ask.’

She climbed up the steep ladder. It was a long time since she had been in his room, although it had been a wet weather den and a refuge for them both, when they were younger. He was waiting at the top, where he took her elbow and pulled her into the room. The roof was at such a pitch here that Finn had to be careful, otherwise he would bang his head off the sloping sides. There were skylight windows to front and back, and the light of the now risen moon flooded the room with silver. To one side, if you stood up and peered through the sloping, salt-smeared glass, you could see the shoreline and the glittering sea; to the other, the outline of Hill Top Town, just behind the farm. Finn had been reading by the light of a lamp which Kirsty recognised as her old red anglepoise, the one she had got rid of because it kept keeling over, fainting onto the desk when she was trying to work. She looked at his book but it was nothing exciting – something to do with animal husbandry.

‘Why are you reading this stuff at three in the morning?’ she asked him. ‘In fact why are you reading at all?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I thought it might send me off.’

‘Maybe it’s what I need as well.’

She sat down on his bed. It had a lumpy mattress, a heap of woollen blankets and a shabby crochet coverlet made years before by her grandmother. She ran her fingers over its shapeless, bobbly surface and was ashamed of herself for allowing her mother to discriminate against her friend in this way.

‘This used to be mine.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I like it.’

 ‘I thought it was my mum. Putting you in your place.’

‘No. I wanted it. It reminded me of you when you were away. She put it out for the kirk jumble sale, but I brought it up here.’

‘Finn, you’re as bad as the cat. He likes my stuff when I’m away as well!’

‘I know.’

 It was some time since she had been in his room, and now she was seeing it through adult eyes. She was looking at a dilapidated garret with worn out furniture and few personal possessions. Still, he had arranged everything very neatly: his table with a few papers spread out and an old transistor radio, his chair with its faded cushion, a bedside cabinet with a pile of books, most of which had been gifts from Kirsty herself. There was a cooling mug of tea sitting on a raffia mat, a farming calendar, with pictures of agricultural machinery hanging on the whitewashed wall.

‘Oh Finn!’ she said, involuntarily.

‘What?’ He looked at her gravely but she shook her head. She had no words for what she wanted to say. She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. She realised that she had hardly paid any attention to him for all these months of summer. She had been too busy with her mother. He had just been there, going quietly about his work, and she had been glad of his calm presence.

She watched him as he closed the trapdoor. He was wearing a  pair of navy shorts. His legs were long and muscular. His arms and shoulders were brown but his thighs were white in the lamplight. Suddenly self conscious, he got into bed and pulled the covers up over himself, leaning back against the pillows so that his face was in shadow. The room smelled a little of his perspiration, but not unpleasantly so. He always took a shower after his day’s work, and his hair was still damp and scented with shampoo. Kirsty felt shy of him. He was as strange as the moon. She crossed her arms, perching uneasily on the edge of his bed, rocking backwards and forwards to comfort herself.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I’m so worried about my mum.  I don’t know what to do, Finn.  I hate not knowing what to do.’

‘What more can you do? She’s having treatment.’

‘I don’t think it’s the right treatment. I think it’s more serious than they’re telling us.’

‘You could speak to the doctor.’

‘He’s never there when I visit.’ Her mother’s consultant seemed to make a point of being absent during visiting hours. Once she had found herself trotting along corridors in pursuit of him, but he had been called away to an emergency before she could speak to him. Afterwards she had been very angry with herself for her timidity. Her mother’s illness seemed to have reduced her to a kind of infantile subordination, quite out of character.

‘Is she sleeping just now?’

‘They’re both asleep. ‘

‘But you can’t?’

‘No.’

There was a pause. He was running his finger over the stitched edge of the blanket. ‘It’s nice having you back,’ he said at last.

‘It would be nice to be back, if…’

‘If it wasn’t for your mother.’

‘She’s been no friend to you, Finn.  Why should you care about her now.’

‘She’s your mother. I couldn’t wish ill to her even if I wanted to. ‘

‘Sometimes I’ve even thought about going up to the Well of the Winds and getting some of that water. You never know.’

‘It’s good spring water, Kirsty, but that’s all it is.’

‘I know. But I’d try anything right now. Anything at all.’

He stared at her, and she saw her own desperation reflected in his eyes. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said.

‘Finn…’ she hesitated.

‘What?’

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘I was just about to go to sleep.’

‘No. What are you planning to do with your life?’

He was disconcerted by the question. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve practically ignored you this summer and I’m sorry for it. ‘

‘It  doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. But you’re in my mind you know. You’re always in my mind, in one way and another. I just feel you’re so…so wasted here.’

‘Your grandfather couldn’t manage without me.’

‘Maybe not. But  he doesn’t pay you very much for what you do.’

‘He pays me more than I was getting in Ireland. He couldn’t afford to pay me more. And I don’t need very much.’

‘That’s beside the point, Finn. You’re worth more than that.’

She had never really thought about his wages before. Now, because she had been doing the farm accounts, she had realised just how little Finn earned for all his hard work. ‘I feel as though we’re exploiting you. And you can’t just…’  She hesitated.

‘What can’t I do?’

‘You can’t spend your whole life up here, being general dogsbody to the Galbreath family. It’s not fair. It’s not right. You’re like the brownie over there!’ She nodded in the direction of Eilean Ronan, in the bay.

‘I don’t work for nothing.’

‘Well, next to it.’

‘You know what happens when you offer to pay a brownie…?’

‘Yes. He goes away. And maybe you should too. You could really make something of yourself.’

‘Am I not something now?’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Where would I go?’

‘You could go to college. Find something you want to study.’

‘With what? Who would foot the bill?’

‘You could go to the mainland. Go to Oban or Fort William. Or even Glasgow. Get a job. Do some part time studying. Learn a trade.’

‘Oh come on, Kirsty,’ he said. ‘I have no qualifications. I can do the work on the farm but I barely finished school. And when I was at the school, I didn’t learn very much. You know that as well as I do. We were taught nothing but how to avoid the blows. How to do as we were told. How to keep our heads down.’

‘I do know it, but I still think you’re worth more than just being the hired hand at Dunshee. You were always better at figures than me, and I’m doing the accounts. There’s no future in this place for you. No future in these little island farms either.’

‘You really think I ought to leave the island?’

‘I don’t want you to leave. I can’t bear the thought of Dunshee without you in it. I only thought…’ 

She shivered. What would she do if he took her at her word and went? But he would never do that. She knew it in her bones. He might go with her, but he would never willingly leave her behind.

He turned back the blankets. ‘Get in if you’re cold,’ he said.

She remembered the heather bed up at Hill Top Town, and how they had clambered into it together, giggling, scratching their legs on the stalks. She had been little more than a child. And although he had been older, too old really, and her mother would have disapproved, still, their mutual innocence had protected them. He held out his hand and she climbed into bed beside him, into the welcome circle of his arm, tucking her head into his shoulder. With his free hand he switched off the light. She rubbed her feet against his warm thighs.

 ‘Jesus, Kirsty, your feet are freezing.’

‘I forgot my slippers. I was too warm in bed and now I’m cold.’

‘So you think I should go away and better myself, do you?’ He said it ironically, his chin on the top of her head.  Now he was smiling. She could sense it in the dark.

She pressed her cheek against his body and slid her arm around him. She could feel his heart beating. She sensed a flutter of desire in herself which took her by surprise. ‘I could kiss him on the lips,’ she thought. ‘I could just turn my head and kiss him.’ She knew everything about him but the taste of him.

It would only be one more complication.  

‘My little sister,’ he said.

‘Do you remember Hill Top Town?’

‘And the heather bed?’

‘I knew you’d remember.’

‘I remember everything. It was Grania who lay in the heather bed. In the story. Wasn’t it? I like that name, Grania.’

They lay together, quietly, and for the first time in months, Kirsty felt the dreadful tangle of hope and despair slide away from her. It  didn’t go completely,  just subsided. She breathed in the familiar scent of Finn, and held onto his little finger, and his proximity soothed her.  She closed her eyes. After a while, she drifted into sleep. Her dreams were full of his grave, watchful presence. He seemed to have the ability to take all her troubles to himself for that space of time, and when she woke up a couple of hours later, she found that he had not moved, but was still there, wide awake, looking down at her in the pale light.

‘Oh Lord,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Finn. Your arm!’

‘It  doesn’t matter.’ He flexed it, restoring circulation.    

‘I should go. If my grandad finds me up here…’

‘He wouldn’t approve.’

‘I can cope with that but he’ll tell my mum and she’ll get all worked up.’

‘You’d better go then.’ He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face. ‘You off to the hospital again today?’

‘She’s got a follow-up appointment. Nicolas is giving us a lift.’

His arms stiffened at the mention of the name.

‘You didn’t say.’

‘I knew you’d go all huffy on me.’

‘I could take you.’

‘I know you could,  but the journey half kills her, Finn.  It helps that he’s here on the island and he’s got such a comfortable car. And he volunteered. It was my mum who said yes, not me.’

‘I thought he’d be back in London by now.’

‘So did I.’

She knew now that Nicolas was not returning to London or to Edinburgh. He had graduated and he planned to stay on at Ealachan House. Soon he would be taking over the management of the estate as well as working for the family firm. Finn would hate the very idea of it. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him yet. She didn’t know which was worse, telling him or deceiving him.

 ‘I’m sorry. If I didn’t have to go, I wouldn’t.’

‘You’d better get down that ladder. Your grandad’s an early riser.’

She got back to her room just in time. She heard her grandfather’s door open, and his heavy shuffle as he went to the lavatory and then clumped downstairs to make the tea. He always brought her a mug of strong tea, and left it beside her bed. She lay there, waiting for him, pretending to be asleep, thinking about Finn, his eyes, his lips, all the planes and angles of his face. She thought about his grace when they were together and his other self, the person the world saw, a big, sullen, clumsy young man with nothing to recommend him.

‘What will I do about him?’ she thought.

Finn wouldn’t leave the island, not while she was here, and she couldn’t go  while her mother was so ill. As she drank her tea, she pictured herself living at Dunshee for the rest of her life, cooking meals, doing the washing, doing the accounts, helping with all the dirty, muddy, heavy work of the farm. She pictured herself trapped here, growing old and spinsterish, unable to leave. She thought of Edinburgh. In her mind’s eye it was always springtime with George Square full of blossom and fat yellow tulips in Princes Street Gardens. She thought of Ash. What had all that been about? That frantic desire which– if she allowed herself– she could still summon, a sharp sense of arousal at the thought of his body. It had been good while it lasted, but it hadn’t been real. They had bandied the word love about as if it meant something. But now, she felt the world closing in on her as surely as the walls of her box bed. There must be some other way. Some way of helping herself as well as everyone else.  But for the moment she didn’t know what it could possibly be.