Face the Wind and Fly (3 page)

After dinner, Harry stood up. ‘I’d like to say a few words.’ There was laughter, and comments –
A few? That’ll be a first!
and
Go, man!

Across the room, Ninian was looking queasy. She’d find him as soon as she could.

But when the speeches finished and the throng of guests made their way out of the dining room, Ninian and Andrew had both disappeared again. Kate drifted from one group of guests to another, smiling vaguely, then finally spotted her son slipping back into the supper room. From there, glass doors led to a balcony. Perhaps, sensibly, he was looking for some air.

The room was dark. Ninian had crossed to the far side. Kate was about to call out to him when she saw him pull up sharply and stare at the balcony. There was someone out there. She couldn’t make out who, she just saw shadowy shapes, half hidden by the blinds at the far end. She started to pad across the carpet towards her son.

‘Oh, fuck!’ Ninian swivelled round and covered his hand with his mouth. It was a futile gesture. He threw up, violently, all over the plush carpet.

‘I haven’t been so embarrassed since you bared your bottom to the bishop when you were four,’ Kate said after the staff had masterminded the clean-up discreetly. ‘Do you want me to take you home?’

‘No, you’re all right,’ he muttered, not looking at her.

‘Are you ill? Or was it the beer?’

‘Mu-um. I’ve drunk beer before.’

‘Well you shouldn’t have. Here, drink some water.’

‘It’s so boring,’ Ninian protested, but he drank the water.

‘Well being sick was hardly the best way to enliven proceedings. Are you really all right? You’re still looking a bit green.’ She couldn’t just turn off motherly concern even if Ninian’s illness was self-inflicted.

‘I’m fine. Just let me sit here. Go and chat up whoever you have to chat up.’

An hour later, all chatted out, she went to find him again. They could wait together till Andrew was ready to go home. She spotted him across the large landing lounging on a leather sofa, talking to Harry, and padded across the thick carpet unseen.

‘Don’t you dare tell Kate,’ she heard Harry hiss.

Kate shrank back a step.

‘But I saw them, I tell you!’ Ninian muttered, his voice furious.

Skulking was ridiculous. Kate stepped into their line of vision and blazed a smile. ‘Saw who, darling?’

‘Nobody,’ Harry said.

Ninian scowled. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Oh come on. What was it you weren’t to tell me?’

But neither was to be drawn.

‘Can we go yet, Mum?’

It was nearly midnight. Kate twisted her scarf round her neck.

‘Find your father, then,’ she said, giving up. No doubt their little secret would emerge in time.

Chapter Three

Ibsen Brown loved weather. When friends or clients complained of the wind or the rain, he’d shrug and say, ‘It’s just weather,’ before putting on a jacket, or a sweater, or a waterproof and getting on with the task in hand. At six feet tall, Ibsen was built like an Olympic swimmer, with broad, powerful shoulders, trim waist and neat, muscular legs. Not that he’d ever been inside a gym – he was a gardener and his fitness came from hard physical work. He spent his days digging and hoeing, building small patios and terraces, lopping trees and rooting out unwanted stumps whose roots burrowed obstinately deep into cold earth.

Ibsen never thought about fitness, or six-packs, or bulging biceps. He wasn’t vain, far from it – he barely looked in a mirror. His idea of smart dressing was a clean tee shirt and jeans and he refused to have his hair cut. It was dark and thick and irrepressible and he controlled it by pulling it back into a pony tail and securing it with an elastic band – or, if he couldn’t find one, with an odd piece of string pulled from some pocket.

No, what Ibsen liked was growing things. He liked the feel of rich brown earth in his hands, but most of all, he loved watching leaves unfurl and strong, questing shoots pushing up through the soil from bulbs he’d buried below months earlier. He’d been a draughtsman, once, qualifying the hard way, head down every evening swotting for his exams while he sat by day in an architect’s office. It was what his father wanted him to do – Tam Brown, who was head gardener at Forgie House, was a self-taught man who prized education.

Ibsen had loathed it, but supporting Lynn and—

Say her name. You never stop thinking of her anyway.

—supporting Lynn and his baby daughter, Violet, meant buckling down to ‘a proper job’.

Ibsen parked his battered old van in front of Helena Banks’s gate and turned off the wipers. The drizzle had almost stopped. The Banks’s house was on the outskirts of Hailesbank, on the eastern side, high on a hill. At the back there were spectacular panoramas of the sea, but further down the garden a high wall provided shelter from the prevailing winds and stole the views.

‘Come on, boy.’ His chocolate Labrador, Wellington, jumped onto the pavement, tail wagging, tongue lolling, delighted to be freed from his prison. ‘Let’s see what she’s got planned for us, eh?’

He grabbed his tools from the back of the van and pushed open the gate. He’d been planning to give the grass its first cut of the year, but yesterday’s snow had set that back. The snow had taken everyone by surprise. It shouldn’t have been snowing – earlier in the week it had been unseasonably warm. Between jobs, he’d nipped into the garden centre outside Hailesbank to purchase a new pair of secateurs. Mistaking him in his overalls for an assistant, someone had asked him for petunias.

‘It’s April,’ he’d said shortly, ‘and we’re in Scotland.’ He’d left them staring at him, open-mouthed, then apologised to the girl on the till. ‘I can’t stand idiotic questions,’ he admitted, vexed at his own rudeness, ‘that’s why I squirrel myself away in people’s gardens.’

Rain had washed away the scant snow. Cutting the grass was out, but there was a lot of tidying to do.

‘Morning Ibsen,’
read the note on the nail in the shed,
‘I’m out this morning. Please can you build a new compost heap today? The old one really needs to be cleared out. Maybe see you later. Thank you. Helena Banks.’

He smiled, liking her directness. ‘That’s Mrs B for you, eh Wellington?’ The instruction scuppered his plans for tidying, but she was right – the compost did need attention. There were some planks of wood in the corner of the shed, and he found a ball of string and strolled out, whistling. He was going to enjoy his morning.

Wellington, picking up the smell of a rabbit – or maybe a hedgehog – followed it, nose down, into the undergrowth and disappeared.

They were both happy.

‘Ibsen? Ah, you’re still here.’

Ibsen straightened up. ‘Morning, Mrs Banks. What’s the time?’

‘Almost one.’

‘Is it really? I lost track.’

A strong breeze whipped Helena Banks’s dark auburn hair across her face and she pushed it back with slim fingers and laughed. ‘So you were enjoying yourself.’

Ibsen thrust his spade into the ground and grinned. ‘Guess I must have been.’

‘Nearly finished?’

‘Just about to tidy up. Want to see?’

She peered round him. ‘Looks very neat. Sorry about the lawn, maybe it’ll be drier by next week. Time for a coffee?’

‘Thanks. Maybe a quick one.’

Ten minutes later, Ibsen had kicked off his boots and washed his hands, and was seated at the large scrubbed pine table in Helena Banks’s homely kitchen.

‘That smells terrific.’

‘There’s some soup, if you prefer?’

‘Coffee will do me fine, honestly.’

Helena filled two mugs, pulled out a chair and sat down to join him. ‘Have a biscuit at least. Alice baked yesterday.’

‘I never could resist your daughter’s baking.’ Ibsen picked up a macademia and white chocolate cookie the size of his fist and bit into it with relish.

‘What do you think of this wind farm, then? We’re a little worried we’ll see the turbines.’

‘Wind farm? What wind farm?’

‘Oh, hadn’t you heard? The planning application was in the paper a few days ago. They’re building it on top of Summerfield Law.’

Ibsen stopped chewing. His hyacinth-blue eyes shaded to ink as they narrowed into slits. ‘
What?
’

‘It’s far enough away, of course, and anyway, David and I are firm supporters of renewable energy, but—’

Ibsen laid down the cookie and pushed back his chair. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Ibsen? You’ve hardly touched your coffee. And what about Alice’s—?’

‘I’ll be back on Monday as usual. Thanks Mrs B.’

He pulled on his boots, picked up his tools, and strode round the house to his van.

A wind farm? On Summerfield Law?

Not if I can stop it.

The climb to the top of Summerfield Law was not a long one, but it was steep. The track was muddy and uneven, and the grassy verges turned to bracken and heather as it rose to more than a thousand feet. Ibsen started briskly, then instead of slowing as he gained height, took the steepest part of the climb almost at a run, pushing himself to go faster and faster so that he arrived at the summit breathless but invigorated. Wellington bounded ahead, covering twice as much ground as he ran a hundred yards forward, then doubled back to check that his master was still on course for the top.

The last few hundred yards wound through a Sitka plantation, a dark, ugly wood that had been planted in the Sixties for commercial timber. If the wind farm went ahead, these trees would probably be felled, which would be one good outcome at least. Ibsen abhorred the stiff, close-planted trees, for all the world like serried ranks of foreign soldiers. This wasn’t wildlife, it was nature on an industrial scale. The path here became narrower and very steep but a wooden stile across a dry stone wall marked the end of the plantation and the beginning of the rough moorland at the top of the Law. Stone and earth made way for moss and heather, and where small songbirds had flitted shyly in the branches, the clear expanse of land became a hunting ground for kestrels and buzzards and sparrowhawks.

At the top, Ibsen sank onto a flat boulder. Summerfield Law was the highest point in this part of the county and the climb was worth the effort. The Firth of Forth made a dark blue slash across the canvas of grass and moor and hill spread out in front of him. He could just glimpse the tiny white triangular sails of a flotilla of yachts, scudding in the wind way out on the deep waters. His stomach knotted.
They can’t build a wind farm here. It would be utter sacrilege.

A figure emerged from the woods into a puddle of sunshine. A woman. A walker, by the looks of her – properly clad. She looked tiny, a couple of hundred feet beneath him, a pinprick in the landscape.

As she neared him, he saw that it wasn’t just an illusion, she actually was small, and she was attacking the hill with energy and a step so light she was almost dancing. Nice.

He called, ‘There’s room for two on this rock,’ and patted the space beside him invitingly.

The woman stopped a few feet below him and looked up, frowning. Her eyes were like sloes, dark and shiny, and her hair was cropped so short that it barely ruffled in the wind.

‘I don’t bite. Neither does Wellington, I promise you.’ Ibsen’s hair was fanning out behind him, the stiff breeze tugging at the rubber band that held his ponytail in place. ‘I’ve got coffee, by the way.’ He patted his shoulder bag, which still had his flask in it, untouched.

The woman’s smile transformed her face. The small frown – concentration? irritation? – vanished and she looked eighteen, though the spray of fine lines that trailed from the corners of her eyes marked her as older.

‘Is that a bribe?’

‘It’s an offer.’

She clambered the last few yards and sat down beside him. ‘Hi.’

‘I don’t have milk. Sorry.’ He filled the top of his vacuum flask with steaming coffee and handed it to her. ‘But there again, I don’t have germs either.’

‘How do you know?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m fit as a fiddle, always have been.’

She accepted the cup. ‘Well in that case, Mr Germinator, your tee shirt is lying.’

‘Sorry?’

She laughed and looked down. The bottle-green tee shirt he’d pulled on that morning bore the legend The Germinator! accompanied by a child’s drawing of a cheerful plant in a pot.

‘Aha. Not germs. Germination. I’m a gardener. Ibsen Brown, nice to meet you.’

 ‘Unusual.’

He was conscious of the warmth of her thigh, pressed close against his as they perched together on the small rock. He groaned. ‘No wisecracks, please. I’ve had a lifetime of ribbing. My father is self educated, and passionate about reading. And if you think Ibsen is an odd name, spare a thought for my sister.’

‘Hedda?’

‘Good guess. Most people have no idea who Ibsen was – but no, she’s called Cassiopeia.’

‘Beautiful but arrogant?’

‘You
are
well educated. Actually, she was named after the star constellation, not the Greek goddess.’ Wellington put an insistent nose in his lap and he fondled the dog’s silky ears. ‘We call her Cassie.’

‘That’s a relief. Ibsen’s good, though. I like Ibsen.’

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out an old tennis ball. ‘Here boy, fetch!’ His arm arced back and he threw the ball as far as he could across the moor. Wellington shot off, a blur of gleaming brown fur. ‘Do you have a name?’

‘I guess so.’

Ibsen looked down at her. Was she being funny?

She was smiling. ‘Kate. Kate Courtenay.’

‘Nice to meet you, Kate.’ He held out his hand. After a second she transferred the coffee to her left hand and took his. She was small-boned, like a bird. A rush of sweetness filled him, taking him by surprise.

She withdrew her hand and returned the empty cup. ‘Great coffee. Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

They sat for a few minutes in a companionable silence. Ibsen broke it first. ‘Spectacular, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Yes it is.’

‘Did you know they’re planning to put a wind farm up here?’

There was a few seconds’ silence, then she said, ‘Really?’

‘Nowhere’s sacred any more, is it?’

‘Sacred? You mean—’

He gestured at the panorama. ‘People like to come here, walk their dogs, enjoy the peace and quiet.’

‘I don’t think wind turbines are particularly noisy these days.’

‘They’re hardly likely to blend into the landscape though, are they?’

‘I think they’re only planning a few.’ Kate stood up abruptly. ‘Thanks for the coffee. I’d better get going.’

She started to pick her way down the stony path.

Was it something he said?

‘Bye, Kate Courtenay,’ he called at the retreating back, the odd feeling of contentment replaced by something more forlorn.

She turned to look at him. The sloe eyes seemed to have lost their sparkle. Or was it just a trick of the light? ‘Goodbye, Ibsen Brown.’

She turned her back and raised one arm in farewell. In a minute she was tinier than ever, just a dark speck on the heather.