Bird of Passage (23 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

After Christmas, Isabel spent six weeks in a mainland hospital. She lay there, attached to a drip and a feeding tube,  getting steadily worse, while Kirsty and Alasdair  tried to persuade her consultant to transfer her to a specialist unit for a second opinion. They kept saying they were ‘trying to expedite her transfer.’

‘No they aren’t!’ said Kirsty in despair. She was at Ealachan, having coffee with Nicolas who had been in London over Christmas.   

‘Just think. Last year we were at your party. Now she’s wasting away, while they keep doing one test after another and saying they aren’t sure what’s wrong. Even the nurses know it’s serious. I’m desperate, Nick. I’ve actually thought about discharging her, driving her to Glasgow and leaving her at the other hospital. But my mum won’t have it, of course. She says they’re doing their best.’

‘Do you want me to see what I can do, Kirsty?’

‘What can you do?’

‘I have contacts. Well, dad does. And he’s asking after your mother all the time. He was very fond of her when she worked down at Ealachan, you know!’

‘I know. She had an almighty crush on him!’

‘Did she?’

‘Don’t tell him. It would embarrass the life out of her if he knew.’

‘The doctors might listen to me, where they won’t listen to you.’

‘If there’s anything you can do, I’ll be grateful.’

After that, Nicolas took charge, became assertive in that confident, low key way he had.  He got the estate secretary to phone up and make him an appointment with the consultant. He set up a meeting, but he wouldn’t let Kirsty come. Soon after, Isabel was moved to a hospital outside Glasgow and the specialist there diagnosed her within a day or two. She had a massive tumour. They thought that the cancer might be too advanced for treatment, but the surgeon suggested an operation to make her more comfortable, help her to eat again.

Alasdair and Finn turned the downstairs sitting room into a bedroom for her because the stairs had become too much for her to manage. She moved between her bed and the kitchen, which was where she sat all day, dozing beside the warm range, talking to Kirsty as she did the housework in the morning; listening to the radio or reading in the daytime; watching TV in the evening. 

As she had grown more ill, Isabel had started to look more youthful. Contrary to expectations, the years had fallen away from her, as though stripped by some invisible force. Illness had softened the sharp edges of her personality. She was thin and pale, but oddly beautiful, her skin almost translucent.

One day, sitting gazing out of the window, while Kirsty sliced vegetables for the evening meal, she said, ‘Nicolas looks like a man in love to me.’

‘Who with?’

‘You. Has been for years hasn’t he?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You could do worse, you know!’

‘I still kind of want to go back to Edinburgh.’

‘Well, there’s that too. But what about Ealachan? Who wouldn’t want to say yes to a place like that? I’d have given anything for...’ she trailed off.

‘I don’t want to play at houses. I want to paint.’ Kirsty spoke more sharply than she had intended. ‘That’s all I really want to do.’

‘You could always do both. Has he asked you to marry him?’

‘No! Of course not.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he does, Kirsty. What would you say?’

‘I can’t think about anything until you’re sorted, mum.’

‘You’d be mad to turn him down.’ It would have been her dream, thought Isabel, imagining a proposal from Malcolm.

‘I’d be mad to say yes if I didn’t love him.’

‘You just look right together. You’re good friends and that’s what matters in the long run. Besides, who else are you going to find in this place?’

‘I don’t intend to stay in this place.’ Kirsty faltered. ‘Mum, I want to paint. I want to do more than get married and have babies. But I can’t think about anything except you, right now, and then there’s grandad. He isn’t getting any younger either.’

‘Finn. There’s always Finn. He’ll help with the farm.’

‘That’s not fair. It isn’t his responsibility.’

‘But he wouldn’t walk out on your grandad, would he?  Listen Kirsty, if I’d had someone as rich and lovely as Nicolas Laurence who wanted to marry me, and I liked him the way you so obviously like him, I’d have bitten his hand off!’

 ‘I wonder what Finn would say?’

‘This has nothing to do with Finn. It’s none of his business. He’s had a good home here all these years. Better than he deserved, I’m sure. But you’ve outgrown him.’

‘You don’t outgrow your real friends, mum.’

‘However close you think you are, he’s still the hired hand. Not a bean to his name. And no prospects either. I know it shouldn’t matter, but there’s a world of difference between the two of you now.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this any more.’

‘And it isn’t as if your grandad could leave him the farm. That belongs to Nicolas.’

‘You sound as if I’ve thought about marrying Finn. I never have. Why would I?’

‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

Sometimes, Kirsty felt as if she wanted to pack a bag, get on the first ferry of the day and never look back. She would go to Italy or France, and paint, make a new life for herself, forget about all of them. She couldn’t do it, of course. But the prospect of leaning on Nicolas instead seemed very attractive. He was making himself indispensable, and she loved him for his kindness, his gentleness, his concern for her. It seemed churlish not to return such affection.

Isabel had been right. When Nicolas asked Kirsty to marry him, he didn’t exactly get down on one knee but they were in the conservatory at Ealachan, sitting in green Lloyd Loom chairs, and he leant over, took her hand and said, ‘Christine, my darling, you will marry me, won’t you? ‘

She looked at him in dismay. ‘Nicolas, I can’t possibly make up my mind while my mother is so ill.’

He was crestfallen. ‘I do realise that, and maybe I shouldn’t have asked you just yet.  But I want you to know my feelings.’

‘I do know your feelings. You’ve made them quite clear.’

‘Have I?’

‘Of course you have.’  

He looked so uncertain that she leant over and kissed him. She suddenly felt  very fond of him and very sorry for him.

‘Well,  just so long as you know. And please – take all the time you want. But I think we could be very happy. I adore you, Christine, always have done.’

 ‘As soon as I can think about something other than my mum, we’ll talk about it.’

He seemed satisfied with that. Perhaps he thought that it was a foregone conclusion. Of course she would marry him. She would be crazy to turn him down, wouldn’t she?  

To all intents and purposes, the operation had been a success. Isabel could eat again with some semblance of normality, but the doctor had told Kirsty and her grandfather that the tumour itself was inoperable. Isabel knew the truth about her illness, but never acknowledged it. She sat outside in the garden, watching things grow and blossom. She kept talking about what she was going to do in the future, ‘when I’m better’ but they could see that she was getting weaker by the day. She complained of aches and pains in her legs and in her shoulders. The district nurse came along and said it could be rheumatism, but Kirsty and her grandfather knew it wasn’t rheumatism. Kirsty was very frightened. She had to be brave for all of them: herself, her mother, her grandfather who seemed bewildered by imminent tragedy.

Which was why Ealachan House was such a refuge. And Nicolas was so kind to her when she was there. Nothing was too good for her. He gave her flowers from the gardens and he sent baskets of fruit to tempt her mother’s appetite: apricots from the greenhouse; strawberries and raspberries from the fruit cages. When he went to the mainland, he always fetched a gift of some sort: scent, jewellery but also good drawing paper and canvases, expensive brushes, packs of charcoal. 

 Finn carried Isabel about like a child, wherever she wanted to go, and sometimes she said, ‘Thank-you Finn. You’re a good lad you know.’

The first time this happened, he looked so surprised that Kirsty almost burst out laughing, but Isabel’s change of heart was disturbing. He had always been a cuckoo in her nest. Kirsty would have been happier with the old abrasive Isabel.

One evening, Finn came into the kitchen and put a glass lemonade bottle down on the table.

‘What’s that?’

‘Spring water. From the Well of the Winds. I managed to find the place again. I nearly got lost, and it was getting dark, but I found it.’ He had been racking his brains for anything that might lessen the burden on Kirsty.

‘Oh Finn…’

‘Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Anything’s worth a try.’

‘How do you think I should give it to her? Do you think I should boil it up and make tea with it?’

Finn shrugged. ‘Mightn’t that…’

‘Spoil it? Maybe I’ll just make it up into orange squash for her. She’ll never know.’

Isabel never knew. But the water didn’t help. Afterwards, Kirsty and Finn wondered if they should have told Isabel what they were giving her. Perhaps that would have made all the difference. Perhaps knowing that she was drinking the water of the Well of the Winds would have helped. Or perhaps not.

Nicolas’s sister, Annabel, and a couple of his  old school friends came visiting. Annabel was tall, slender and elegant as her mother, with sleek blonde hair.  She wore sunglasses perched on top of her head, even on the island, and chiffon scarves that blew out in the wind. Nicolas took the visitors down to the hotel for a meal. He had invited Kirsty too, but she cancelled at the last minute because her mother was having a bad day. The newcomers were in the bar afterwards, and Finn was there as well, just sitting by himself, having a quiet beer.

 ‘Take a break!’ Kirsty had said to him, forgetting that Nicolas and Annabel would be in the hotel. ‘Go for a walk. Have a drink. No point in all of us taking the strain at once.’

Finn could only muster a little compassion for Isabel. She had never been kind to him but he found the change in her disturbing. He knew how he ought to feel, saw the people around him feeling love and sympathy, but he couldn’t identify those feelings in himself, and that alarmed him. He was truly sorry for Kirsty. If he could have taken her pain upon himself, he would have done it without a moment’s thought. But he found himself struggling to give her words of comfort. Instead he would work quietly and diligently, as he always had, hoping that his actions would speak louder than Nicolas’s words. He was jealous of Nicolas, jealous of his easy manner, his money, his influence, jealous of all the ways in which he could be of help to Kirsty.

His mood wasn’t improved when Nicola, Annabel and the London visitors started whispering and glancing over at him.

He heard one of them say, ‘The natives certainly are revolting tonight!’

Even when they were trying to be quiet, they had voices that would cut through glass. And tact was never their strong suit.  It didn’t seem to cross their minds that Finn might be hurt by their comments. Or perhaps they didn’t care.

He tried to ignore them, but then he heard Annabel say, ‘What in God’s name does your lovely Christine see in that moron, Nicolas?’ Finn was more upset by the way she said ‘your Christine’ than by the word moron. He had been called worse. Much worse.

‘Oh well, I don’t suppose she sees anything in him at all,’ Nicolas replied.  ‘But my Christine isn’t one to ignore her old obligations when she’s going up in the world.’

Afterwards, Finn didn’t remember how he got there, but he suddenly found himself squaring up to Nicolas. He’d have knocked him down if he’d had the chance. Nicolas was fit, but Finn was bigger and stronger and full of rage. He could feel it vibrating through every molecule of his body. The barman was  quick off the mark though. Helped by a couple of trawlermen who were drinking at the bar, he grabbed hold of Finn and held him back. Nicolas and his friends left, but not before one of them had called him an illiterate Paddy bastard. 

Back at Dunshee, he told Kirsty all about it, but he didn’t get the sympathy he expected. In the old days, she would always have taken his side in any dispute, especially with the Laurence family. But there had been some subtle change in her allegiance.

‘You shouldn’t get involved,’ she said, furiously. ‘I hate it when they have a go at you like that. But you shouldn’t have given them the opportunity. You should just have left.’

‘Oh aye,’ said Finn. ‘That’s right. Take his side!’

‘I’m not taking anybody’s side. I just can’t be doing with this kind of hassle. Not right now anyway!’

A few days later, when the visitors had left, Nicolas came up to the farm. ‘You really ought to have a word with that tinker who works for you, Christine,’ he said, casually. ‘Otherwise I might be obliged to give him a good kicking one of these days.’