Bird of Passage (50 page)

She had Finn’s name added to Kirsty’s on her mother’s headstone, a smooth slab of black granite with a simple engraving, like a child’s picture of a hill,  just like the land behind Dunshee. Somebody – India had no idea who –carried on leaving posies of wild flowers at the foot of the headstone, even after Finn ’s death. In summer it was wild roses and  honeysuckle, in autumn it was late harebells and heather. 

During the following wet and windy summer, India spent some money on Dunshee, tidying it up, making it windproof and watertight again.  She got Cat’s Protection to come over and move most of the cats, though two of them escaped, only to come back and lurk about the barns, a moth eaten black tomcat and his companion, a ragged marmalade female, but they seemed to be beyond breeding, and eventually she left them in peace.

‘If they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them,’ she said to her sister.

She had decided almost immediately that she would keep Dunshee. One of these days, she thought, she would want to settle down and when she did, Dunshee would be waiting. Until that day she went there only occasionally. But then, she would light a fire in the range, sit in the old rocking chair and each night, she would sleep in her mother’s bed, in the wall, where it was warm.

Flora would sometimes come for a day or two, but she always said it was too spooky. Too sad. Too nostalgic.

‘I don’t know how on earth you can bear to be up here all alone. I couldn’t do it.

‘I don’t mind. There’s nothing to be afraid of here, Flora.’

‘Well I wouldn’t like it. It’s a noisy old house. Too many creaks and bumps for my liking.’

‘There are mice in the attic.’

‘They must be wearing hobnail boots then.’

 ‘I play the fiddle for them and I’m sure they listen.’

 ‘Who listens, India? What are you talking about?’

 ‘Oh…’ She stretched out her long legs and smiled enigmatically. ‘You know? Such ghosts as choose to inhabit this place. Our great grandad for one.  Don’t you sometimes imagine that all the layers of times past are still here, with people just carrying on, living here, all of us at once?’

‘No I don’t,’ said Flora with a shudder.

‘Well I do. Sometimes I could swear that I can smell great grandad’s tobacco. You know that lovely vanilla stuff he used to smoke?’

‘You’re kidding me!’

‘I’m not.’

‘And our mum?’

India didn’t answer immediately, but at last she said ‘The old loft above the kitchen.’

‘What about it?’

‘It makes me a bit uneasy. I wouldn’t like to sleep up there, that’s for sure.’

‘You’re scaring me, India.’

‘I don’t mean to. And it isn’t exactly scary. Not really. Not in any sinister sense. This is our mum I’m talking about, after all!  Just strange. A strange feeling. As though the whole room has the weight of the past in it. It’s a sad room. Self contained. Private. Keep out. That’s what it says.’

‘I don’t think I want to know any more.’

India regarded her sister thoughtfully for a moment.

‘And you know the old hill fort?’

‘Of course. Hill Top Town. I haven’t been up there for ages though. And if you’re going to tell me something horrible about that as well,  don’t bother.’

 ‘No, it isn’t horrible at all. It’s rather nice. It was a special place for her.  For her and Finn both. I think they were happy there. Really happy and whole.’

Flora shrugged. ‘So?’

‘Well, I went up there, the last time I was here. It was such a beautiful day. I was tired and needed to recharge my batteries, so I came here. I woke up in the morning and the sun was streaming in the window, so I took a picnic, just like we used to do when mum brought us up to see great grandad. I packed a few sandwiches and some fruit juice. Then I climbed the rocks behind the house and went up towards Hill Top Town.’

‘And?’ Flora was interested in spite of herself. It was a calm night and the windows were open. She could hear the faint rasping  of the corncrake in the meadow by the shore. India paused to listen for a moment.

‘Summer visitor,’ she said. ‘He’s in lots of mum’s pictures. Have you noticed? Even if he’s only lurking in a corner.’

‘I never saw that.’

‘I did. It’s like a game. Hunt the corncrake.’

‘Typical mum.’

‘Anyway, I remembered Hill Top Town so clearly from when I was a wee girl. Before they sent me away to school.  I loved it up there.  I know it was never your favourite place, Flora.’

‘No. It was always Ealachan I loved. The gardens. The trees. The avenue of camellias.’

‘Anyway, there’s a sort of saucer of land at the very top of the hill. You think it’s flat topped when you look at it from below, but actually it’s not. There’s a kind of depression, with a jumble of rocks at the bottom of it. There are blueberry plants and myrtle and a few harebells. The heather was just coming into bloom. I hauled myself over the lip of land at the top and I could have sworn I heard voices.’

‘It would have been visitors, hill walkers.’

‘No. Listen. There were two people talking nearby. Quite close to me. That’s what it sounded like. A man and a woman. You know that kind of low murmuring you sometimes hear when two people are very intimate and are chatting to each other, with comfortable pauses?  You can’t quite make out what they are saying, but it doesn’t matter, because it isn’t for your ears anyway. Two people, their words only for each other.  I looked around, expecting to see … oh I don’t know… somebody. Anybody. Tourists who had walked up from the hotel maybe. But there was nobody to be seen. Nobody at all.’

‘Weren’t you scared?’

‘No. It was good to hear. It made a kind of music. I sat there for a while in the sunshine, listening to them. Soothed by them. I think I fell asleep for a moment and when I woke up, all I could hear was the wind rustling across the heather.’

Flora cast about for an explanation. ‘Maybe sound travels. And maybe Hill Top Town holds it, traps it there.’

‘Maybe it does,’ said India. ‘That’s exactly my point. Maybe it does.’

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Alan, my husband, and Charles, my son, for their unfailing encouragement and support, as ever.

Thanks also to all my wonderful Facebook and Twitter friends, but especially my many writer and indie-publisher friends for their helpful advice, for keeping up my spirits, and for sometimes making me laugh out loud at the general silliness of things. Writing can be a lonely business and I value my online friendships very much.

Similarly, thanks to the ‘electric’ authors:
http://authorselectric.blogspot.com/
for sharing the vision and helping to make it come true.

Finally, thanks to The Passive Guy, whose blog:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/
has been a constant source of inspiration for this experienced writer, but relatively inexperienced indie publisher over the past few months.

To read more about the author, visit

www.wordarts.co.uk

By the same author on Kindle:

The Curiosity Cabinet

A Quiet Afternoon in the Museum of Torture.

The Amber Heart, a new historical novel,

will be published to Kindle in March 2012.