Bird of Passage (27 page)

It was after that that they took him away from the nice school, and away from his mother. Mrs Maguire had given him a sour sweet and taken him away in a car. He had never seen his mother again. Somebody at the new school, one of the big, frightening boys, had told him that his mother would have been sent to a place where the nuns were in charge. For a while, when he was still young, he imagined that the nuns must have been like Sister Rosalie and he envied her. But later, he realised that not all nuns were like Sister Rosalie. Later still, he heard about the Magdalene Laundries, from other pupils whose mothers and sisters had been taken to such places, and wondered if that was where his mother might be, but nobody would tell him for sure. Nobody would give him any information. If you asked questions, you were beaten for it. He had soon learned to keep his head down.

A letter had come for him. Only one letter, in all the time he had been at the new school. One of the Brothers had to read it out to him because he couldn’t read very well. The letter was neat and short, on flimsy blue paper. It said that his mother was in a fine place now, working hard and saying her prayers. She was very happy and he was to be a good boy and make himself useful.  They took the letter away from him afterwards and said they would put it in a safe place so that he could have it later, but he had never seen it again. He didn’t think that his mother could have been in a fine place at all. He wanted to go and see her, but whenever he asked about visiting her, the responses had ranged from shocked surprise to a cuff round the ear.

He made a plan. He was going to earn a lot of money and save it all up, and then he was going to take his mother out of that place and bring her home. Even the nuns wouldn’t be able to say no to him when he turned up in his flash car. In some versions of the plan, he roared up on a big motorbike, and his mother clambered onto the back of it, and they drove away together. But how could he ever do that, when he had no idea where she was?

He must have fallen into a doze, lying fully clothed on his bed at Dunshee, overwhelmed by memories, but somewhere between sleeping and waking, between dream and reality, panic seized him. They were coming in the night. They were coming for him. Still half asleep, he sat up on the bed, his mouth dry, his heart hammering in his chest. Listening. Listening.

The silence was absolute. But he felt as though he might be going to die. There was something he had done wrong. He had made a mistake. Something his mother had warned him about and he had got things wrong and that was why Mrs Maguire had come. It was all his fault. But he couldn’t remember what it was, only that it was important. A matter of life and death. He woke properly and took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. For weeks now, everything had seemed strange and unreal, even his own face in the mirror. It was all too much. Everything was too much for him. He couldn’t cope with any of it. He drank a mouthful of water from the glass beside his bed and then he stood up. He knew what he had to do. He was certain of it. Other feelings tried to struggle to the surface, nipping at him, reminding him of other allegiances, other powerful emotions, but he suppressed them all. It was what he had learned to do, ruthlessly. It was a matter of priorities. Of survival. He knew what he had to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The following morning, Kirsty slept later than usual. She had been dreaming about her mother, and had found herself weeping in the dream, but she couldn’t rouse herself. When she woke, she felt exhausted, her eyes as heavy as though she really had been crying. She went downstairs to find the Glasgow cousins all packed up and ready to go. They were eating toast, and bacon and had put the kettle on for more tea.

‘We thought we’d let you sleep’ said Beatie.’

Alasdair came into the kitchen, bringing a gust of sharp air with him. He had been out and about on the farm.

Kirsty said, ‘I think I’ll do Finn a couple of eggs  – who else wants an egg?’

Alasdair sat down at the kitchen table and pulled off his boots. ‘Well you’ll have to wake him up first. You’re not the only one to sleep in.’  

‘Why? Is he still in bed then?’

Alasdair shrugged. ‘I think so. Any other morning, I would have thought he’d gone fishing or something. But there’s no sign of him about the farm.’

Kirsty went into the lobby by the back door.  She climbed up the ladder and through the hatch, but Finn’s room was empty, the bed neat, its covers straightened. She came back down the ladder so quickly that she almost fell, and her grandfather had to catch hold of her to steady her.

‘Careful, lass. You’ll break your leg.’

‘He’s not there! He’s not up there and he’s made his bed his bed!’  

Beatie was pouring tea into china mugs. Kirsty saw, with a stab of irrational resentment, that one of them was her mother’s mug. ‘What on earth’s the matter, Kirsty? He’ll have skived off for the morning?’

‘Maybe he just went out for a walk,’ suggested one of the younger cousins.

‘That’s what I said. Skived off for the day’ said Beatie. ‘But why that should throw our Kirsty into a panic, I don’t know. The sooner you marry that nice Nicolas Laurence and set yourself up at the big house the better, if you want my
opinion. You need to stop gallivanting about the countryside with a good-for-nothing Irishman.’ 

There was, it seemed, no greater insult to be offered, but Kirsty hardly heard it. She cast one horrified look at her aunt, and rushed out of the door, calling ‘Finn! Finn!’ at the top of her voice.

Her voice echoed about the old buildings and threw the word back at her, the name bouncing from wall to wall in a hollow cadence of sounds. She ran all the way down to the beach, but the tide was out and there were no footprints except the meandering tracks of oystercatchers and dunlin. When the beach yielded no sign of him, she went the other way, climbing the slope behind the house, slipping and slithering over heather and rocks.

Just before the ferry was due to leave, the farm jeep came rattling down the hill. Alasdair was driving. He pulled up at the terminal and Kirsty came tumbling out, her face white beneath her freckles. In the past year, Caledonian McBrayne had started a roll on - roll off ferry service which made visiting by car much less of an ordeal  It was the first ferry of the morning and the cousins were all aboard, disapproving spectators, but the skipper had seen nothing of Finn.  

Kirsty was helpless to control her agitation but as the ferry moved slowly out into the bay, Alasdair managed to coax her back into the jeep.

‘He’ll be at home now, for sure,’ he said, but although Kirsty rushed all over the house again,  shouting his name, there was no sign of Finn

‘Where has he gone? Where can he be? We went up to Hill Top Town last night. He was so quiet on the way back down to the farm. We hadn’t had a moment to ourselves all day.’

‘Don’t do that, Kirsty!’

She looked down at her arms. She had been scratching at herself, compulsively, and her nails had left long red tracks on the white skin.

 ‘I don’t remember what I said to him. Maybe I upset him. I have to find him.’ 

‘Well he can’t have left the island,’ said her grandfather. ‘He wasn’t on the ferry. He can’t have disappeared into thin air, can he? We’ll just go and look for the lad. I’ll drive.’

They drove the length and breadth of the island, asking people if they had seen him, but nobody had. When they finally got back to Dunshee, Kirsty climbed up into Finn’s loft again. That was when she realised that he had taken the old cardboard suitcase, the one he had first brought with him all those years ago, from Ireland, when he was only a summer visitor to the farm. Most of his clothes were missing as well. Sick at heart, she sat in her bedroom, staring out of the window, willing him to come walking up the path from the shore.

Later that night, one of the island fishermen, Seamus, came up to the house. He and his crew had set out to the fishing in the early hours of the morning, and Finn had been waiting for them at the harbour.

‘He asked if we could put him off on the mainland, anywhere would do he said, because he had to get away for a bit. We thought it was strange, but we didn’t ask him too much. You never got much change out of Finn.’

‘Was he alright? Did he look alright?’

‘He looked much as he always does, Kirsty. Perhaps a bit more serious than usual, but then he’s not a man who smiles very much at the best of times. We’re only just in. When I went down to the pub for my pint, Sandy behind the bar asked me if I had seen Finn O’Malley, because you had been going demented all day looking for him. I came up as quickly as I could. But we put him ashore first thing this morning. We thought he was on some errand for your grandfather.’

Seamus went away, puzzled. It was well known on the island that Kirsty and the sullen Irishman were as thick as thieves and always had been. Finn wasn’t well liked. He was too taciturn, had never been one of the lads, but he was known to be a good, conscientious worker. Why would he desert the farm on the day after her mother’s funeral? It made no sense at all, and would be a subject for gossip and speculation, for many weeks to come.

 ‘Perhaps he’ll call,’ said Alasdair.

‘I don’t want him to call. I want to see him
now
! ‘

‘Kirsty, you’ll just have to be patient. He knows where you are. And how much we need him here. The phone will ring in a day or so, and it’ll be Finn. You’ll see.’

Ever since he first started to work at Dunshee, Finn had been saving most of his pay in a Post Office account. He had the pass book in his pocket and he knew that he had enough money, if he was careful, to be able to live in cheap rented accommodation for several weeks, if need be. But he wanted to get a job as soon as possible. And he had other plans too. At first, he had thought about looking for work on one of the many mainland farms, but he rejected this plan almost as soon as it occurred to him.

Instead, he found himself heading in the direction of Glasgow. He handed the little brown case, containing all his worldly possessions, to the driver, to stow away in the luggage compartment, and climbed onto the bus to complete the last part of his journey. He gazed out of the grubby window, trying to put all thoughts of Kirsty out of his mind, watching as the road wound alongside mountains and sea lochs, then gradually gave place to something busier, threading through the outlying factories and the suburban clutter of the city. He had been here only a few times, years ago, when he was a tattie howker and they would skirt the city on the way to the island, but he couldn’t claim to know the place. Still, there was a certain comforting familiarity about it, and he supposed it must be because somewhere in his head, he remembered Dublin, the broad artery of the river running through the heart of the place.  

For a few days, he took lodgings in a YMCA hostel, not far from the river and walked around the city by day, eating fried food or sandwiches in small cafes and wondering how to set about finding work. The place was full of shops and offices and they were all full of people working, but he was at a loss as to how he might become one of their number. Sometimes he would see a notice advertising a job, but they were always looking for experience and he had none. Once or twice, he plucked up enough courage to make an enquiry, but it seemed that his appearance, his worn clothing and perhaps also his accent – for he was aware that he still sounded Irish – went against him in a city which had always been divided along sectarian lines.

In the evening, with the nights drawing in, and the autumnal chill flooding the streets with pinkish mist from the river, he might find his way into a pub and have a couple of pints, but he was no big drinker and the ale was sour in his mouth. The other young men staying in the hostel were students, on their way back to university and college courses, as well as people coming to the city – like himself – in search of work. But they were better qualified. Better dressed. Better equipped to negotiate the hurdles. He felt very lost, and very miserable. More than once, he was on the verge of packing his bag, finding his way back to the bus station and returning to the island, but he always stopped himself. He was in the habit of this kind of self denial and it came easily to him.

He missed Kirsty constantly, with a terrible sadness – but then he was in the habit of missing her, so it was nothing new and he could cope with it. Almost more than Kirsty, he missed the routine of the farm and Alasdair’s quiet, undemanding presence. He missed working with the beasts and the sight of the sea from the hill above Dunshee, and the sound of the lonely birds flying over the farm in the evening.

On a rainy Sunday morning, he went out to buy a Daily Record so that he could search through the situations vacant columns, and he found himself passing a church, a lowering brick building with a tall tower, the whole place black with the grime of years. There was a patch of ground in front where thin grass struggled through the clay, and dying willow herb gave forth a mass of fluffy seeds. The little precinct was bounded by  a privet hedge and the sweet-sour city scent of it reminded him of his childhood.  The doors were open and people were going inside, couples in their Sunday best, individual elderly women, whole families. On impulse, he followed them into the warmth, and was engulfed in familiarity – the subtle darkness, the muted organ notes, the scent of incense and lilies, the flickering candles at the side altar where Mary spread her arms wide, her blue veiled head crowned with spiky metal stars.