Bird of Passage (30 page)

Finn had never been there. The closest he had been was the back door,  with the occasional delivery of something from Dunshee. They would never have thought of inviting him in.  But everywhere else, every stone, every pathway, every stretch of turf or sand and even the seas around the island; all of them seemed to have some past association. The heart of her ached with the loss of him, and there was nobody she could tell, certainly not Nicolas, and not even her grandfather. Even when she went to the cemetery, she was not free of the memories. Roughly once a week, she would take flowers to Isabel’s neat grave in the new cemetery, but there was an older graveyard and ruined kirk nearby, with many ancient slabs and enclosures, choked with weeds. She couldn’t resist scrambling down into the old graveyard. She closed her eyes, remembering a time when she and Finn had gone there at twilight.

It was winter, they had been at a loose end, and he had dared Kirsty to run three times around one of the grave slabs and summon forth the dead. She had to go counterclockwise. God knows where he had got the idea from – perhaps from some tale told by the tattie howkers. The tomb belonged to a past chieftain of the island. Finn thought he was so much older and braver than she, but she wasn’t going to be beaten. She had called his bluff.

When she closed her eyes, she could picture herself running round and round, with the brambles tearing at her ankles, and then jumping up on top of the slab and calling out, ‘Come forth, Macdonald!’ into the gathering darkness. At that moment, a white hare had erupted from the undergrowth, right at their feet, and scuttered away. She smiled at the memory. Finn was as white as the hare, in the gloom, and Kirsty wasn’t much better. He said ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Then they started laughing and couldn’t stop. She remembered them holding onto each other, laughing as they stumbled about among the gravestones until they were weak with it and then walking home, still spooked, still laughing. 

She thought that if she could just reach out her hand, she would be able to touch him. It was so cold and she could almost feel his warm breath on her cheek. She wanted him to say ‘Kirsty,’ wanted to hear him say her name one more time. But when she opened her eyes there was nothing to be seen except the brambles effacing the old stones. There was some fruit on them still, but the frosts had nipped the berries and they were shrivelled and mean. The folk here said that they belonged to the devil now, the brambles that were left behind. She cradled her belly which was only just beginning to swell, the smallest of bumps, rubbing her two hands gently up and down.

Is he dead, she wondered? No. He couldn’t be. Not Finn. She would know if he were dead. She would feel it, and she felt nothing. Which was daft when she remembered how lucky she was. Queen of all she surveyed. That’s what Nicolas told her. And after all, it was true. Wasn’t it?

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

One winter’s night, Finn and Kevin Gleason were sitting over a quiet beer in a corner pub, not far from the church. He and the young priest had taken to coming here occasionally. The pub was Irish. There were pictures of Celtic players on the walls, as well as banners and scarves. The music was defiantly Republican.

What’s the news? What’s the news? O my bold Shelmalier,

with your long barrelled gun of the sea?

Say, what wind  from the sun blows his messenger here,

with a hymn of the dawn for the free.

Goodly news, goodly news do I bring, youth of Forth,

goodly news do I bring, Bargy man!

For the boys march today from the south to the north,

lead by Kelly, the boy from Killane.

‘Your man Luke has a great voice on him,’ said Kevin, savouring his Guinness and his cigarette, drawing in smoke like a drowning man.

‘Who is it singing?’

‘Do you not know the Dubliners when you hear them?’

‘Not really.’ He had only listened to Kirsty’s records and – occasionally – the wireless at Dunshee. At the school, they had heard nothing but hymns.

‘But I don’t think he can have been all of that, do you?’

‘All of what?’

‘Kelly the boy from Killane. He fought in the Irish Rebellion in – oh, I don’t know for sure – late 1700s?  
Seven feet is his height with some inches to spare
. Nah. I don’t buy that!’

Finn laughed. ‘You know, I never knew it was like this over here.’

‘You mean the whole Republican bit? The sectarianism? The divisions?’

‘I was told about it. But I didn’t
know
. I never experienced it.’

‘What about where you worked?’

‘There was a bit of it. They didn’t much like the tattie howkers, that’s for sure. Well, not the Irish, anyway. Or only for the work they could get out of us. Except for my boss. He was a good man.’ And Kirsty, he thought. And Kirsty.

I suppose it’s worse here, but it’s the same all over the central belt. They ask you what school you went to. That was the way it was when I was growing up.  My parents are both Irish. And as soon as you tell them, they know. Saint this or saint that. Holy Family. Corpus Christi. Dead giveaway. You can see it, even if they don’t say it. None of that changes. We’ve had to put bars on the church windows. You’ll get the odd brick hurled through. Or graffiti. And in summer, the parades will stop outside and they’ll be banging that drum, fit to burst. Papes. Left footers, they call us.’

‘Why left footers?’

‘Because we genuflect. Go down on one knee! Did you not know that, Finn?’

‘I never did.’

 Did you have none of that when you were working at the tatties?’

‘Sometimes. But it was a small place. And I kept my head down.’

‘Much as you do here.’

‘That’s right.’

Throughout that first winter in Glasgow, Finn had begun to confide in Kevin, telling him a little about his past in the industrial school, although not much about Dunshee or the island. He found the quiet diffidence of the young priest reassuring. Kevin Gleason would never ask questions or only in the most roundabout way.  Instead, he told Finn about his own initial uncertainties as to whether he really had a vocation, his gradual sense of assurance. These confidences seemed to invite some kind of rejoinder. Finn found himself speaking about his time at the school, although not in any great detail, because it seemed tactless to broach these things with a priest of all people. But there was no need to go into detail, because Father Gleason seemed to know things already, understanding them more clearly than Finn himself.

On the advice of the priest, he had enrolled for evening classes in Maths and English. His teachers were pleased with him, and he had begun to realise that Alasdair and Kirsty might have been right all along. He was capable of learning, and probably more intelligent than most. Besides, he was single minded. His only real friend was Kevin Gleason, and even then there was nothing effusive or intimate about the relationship

‘You know...’ Kevin hesitated. ‘You know you mentioned your mother? And how you were wondering if you might be able to find her?’

Finn coloured up. Incautiously, he had spoken about Mary one night, after one pint too many.

  ‘I quite understand if you don’t want to talk about this.

‘No. No, I do. It’s just difficult. When I was at the school there, back in Ireland, the other boys said she might be in a Magdalene Laundry. I didn’t even know such places existed. Not then.’

‘And did you never hear from her?’

‘Not a thing. In all these years.’

‘Well, it happened. Women were sent to these places.  It wasn’t so very uncommon you know. And they are still on the go. Although there are fewer and fewer of them. But I think some of the poor souls are so used to them that it would be a cruelty to turn them out now. Women were committed to them for the most spurious of reasons. I’ve heard tell of poor lassies who were assaulted themselves maybe and were carted off for being a temptation.

‘An occasion of sin?’

‘Yes, that’s right. One of the priests I studied with, it happened to his own sister. He got her out, eventually, but it’s a shame for the church, so it is.’

‘It’s all a shame,’ said Finn. ‘What happened to me, and the other boys, that was a crying shame as well.’

Kevin didn’t know how to respond. Finn hadn’t told him very much, but the things he had let slip, over the past few months, were enough to make a grown man weep. He
ha
d wept about them in the privacy of his room, wept for the cruelty and the betrayal. And he had prayed about these things too. So far, there seemed to be few answers. He still found himself wondering if anyone was actually listening. But you had to soldier on through the doubts. It was the only way to survive. Especially when you had invested so much in your beliefs. And just occasionally, he thought that maybe it wasn’t the fixed beliefs that mattered, but the stories behind them. Those were important. The kind of stories that might show a man how a life ought really to be lived.

‘How about I make some enquiries for you? Try to find out where your mother might be?’

‘Could you do that?’

‘I could try. I might have more success than you will. Give me her details as far as you have them. Her maiden name, her place of birth, all that. I can’t promise anything. And what I find out may not be what you want to hear.’

‘It would be good to know something.’

It might help. But you never know, Finn. She could have come out by now. She might have remarried.’

‘She would have looked for me, surely.’

‘Maybe. But people don’t always do what we expect them to do.’

‘No, they don’t.’

‘That’s what I mean about finding out something you don’t want to hear. How old were you when you finally moved over to Scotland? Not just to the tatties.’

‘I was sixteen. Almost seventeen.’

‘I  don’t suppose many people knew where you were.’

‘That’s true enough.’

‘And there could be other reasons. Maybe she was told that you were well settled.’

‘But even if you do find her. If you find her for me... how can I ever go back?’

‘You mean to Ireland? Do you not want to go back? That would be understandable.’

‘I’m afraid to go back.’

It would be nerve racking, right enough.’

‘No. You don’t understand. I’d be afraid they might  take me back...’

‘
Take
you? Where?’

Finn shifted in his seat. ‘They might send  the police after me. They sent a priest after me before, when I was sixteen. They sent a priest to fetch me from the farm, and if it hadn’t been for my boss, if it hadn’t been for Alasdair...’ He stopped, remembering Kirsty, her anxious face framed by fat red plaits, Kirsty, hugging him, while he couldn’t stop trembling.

‘Oh, Finn, don’t talk daft! You’re a grown man, with a job and a home here. Nobody will be after you. In fact, you should bloody well be after
them
!’ Kevin looked so angry that, for a moment, Finn was taken aback, but then he was reminded of Alasdair, and realised that the anger wasn’t directed at himself.

‘Well, I’d be grateful if you could find out anything about her. If you do, I’ll maybe go over and see her. After all, that was one of the reasons why I came away.’