Bird of Passage Read online

  BIRD OF PASSAGE

  CATHERINE CZERKAWSKA

  Bird of Passage was first published as an e-book for Kindle in December 2011

  Copyright 2011 Catherine Czerkawska (Wordarts)

  The moral right of the author to this text has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  Please make all enquiries regarding other rights to Catherine Czerkawska via:

  www.wordarts.co.uk

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The e-book cover was designed by Matt Zanetti: www.guerillatea.com

  In loving memory of my Irish nana,

  Honora Flynn, from Ballyhaunis.

  SPINNING SONG

  I gave you love, I gave you affection

  such as sister never gave brother,

  such as woman never gave to the baby at her breast,

  such as cow never gave to calf on the shieling,

  the love that I gave to the carpenter with his saw,

  the carpenter with his planes and hammers.

  I wish you and I, love, were on an island in the sea,

  where the tide never ebbs,

  where boat or skiff never goes,

  only a little dinghy with two oars.

  We would sleep peacefully,

  with the back of your head in the hollow of my hand,

  until the sun rose next morning.

  Traditional spinning song,

  translated from the original Gaelic

  by Frances M. Dunlop

  PROLOGUE

  The last time India saw Finn O’Malley, he frightened her so much that she knew there was nothing to be done except let him be. She was playing at a festival of Celtic music in Oban and she had made the long trip to the island on impulse. It was a cold February day with a stiff breeze blowing in from the west, and the crossing was choppy. She felt sick on the ferry, so she stopped at the village shop to buy some biscuits and a bottle of dry ginger (her mother’s cure) to settle her stomach, and the elderly woman who worked there recognised her. She had known India’s mother when she was a girl and Finn for as long as he had been coming to the island. She had sold sweets to India and her sister Flora when they were children and now she seemed delighted to see India, although slightly overwhelmed by her growing celebrity.

  ‘I miss your mother,’ she confided. ‘I miss seeing her cheerful face around the village.’

  ‘I miss her too. We all do.’

  ‘It was good to see her and…’

  The woman hesitated, uncomfortably aware that what she was about to say might sound tactless.

  ‘Her and Finn.’ India finished the sentence for her. She was long past pussyfooting around the idea of her mother and Finn.

  ‘But it was disturbing as well, you know,’ the woman continued, confidingly. ‘It was so…’ she paused again, searching for the right word. ‘So exclusive. As if they had no time for anyone else in the whole world. Only each other. Him especially, I think. Poor Finn! But then, he had no-one else. You would see them walking down the road to the village together, and he would be looking down at her as though he could never have enough of the sight of her.’

  She halted, embarrassed by her own eloquence. India wanted her to go on talking, needing to know. But she already did know. There was nothing this woman, with her pink cheeks and salt-and-pepper hair, could tell her that she had not already imagined for herself, sometimes obsessively and sometimes with simple curiosity.

  ‘And what brings you back to the island, my dear?’

  ‘I was in Oban. I thought I might go up to Dunshee.’

  The woman frowned. ‘But surely … he’s still up there. Not that we see much of him in the village. God knows what he eats. He drinks plenty though.’

  ‘I know. But I thought I should go and see him.’

  ‘Oh my dear. I don’t think he’ll welcome you.’

  ‘All the same, I have to go.’

  India got back into her car and ploughed on. Max from the band, big, cheerful Max, who was half in love with her, had offered to go with her. She had turned him down, wanting to make the journey alone but now she began to wish that she had let him come. It would have been nice to have a friend beside her.

  On the way to Dunshee, she made a detour to the cemetery. There was a single tap with a plastic milk bottle hanging from it. She turned it on, her fingers clumsy with the cold, and stood at arm’s length to fill the bottle. The water always came out of the tap sideways and if you weren’t careful it would drench you. Nobody ever fixed it. She had bought a bunch of filling station flowers on the way through Oban that morning but when she got to the grave she saw that somebody had left a posy of evergreens beneath the headstone – holly, ivy and a few larch cones twined together. The vase was a dented metal container inside a square granite casing with R.I.P. in black letters. She unscrewed the misshapen lid and rinsed out the interior, wrinkling her nose at the smell of rotting vegetation. Then she arranged her flowers, wondering how long the pink carnations would last in the wind that blasted around the granite headstones and threatened to carry the stones of the ruined kirk with it. The evergreens were a better choice. She fumbled in her bag for a tissue and rubbed at the sand and mud on the stone. ‘Cairistiona’ it said, with ‘Kirsty’ beneath.

  She didn’t linger long here. If Kirsty was anywhere it wasn’t in this sad place, although India could imagine other windy hillsides that might draw her. She clambered gratefully back into the warmth of the car and set the heater as high as it would go. Then she drove on towards Dunshee.

  The lower parts of the track were almost obliterated by furrows of chocolate brown mud. Higher up, long neglected ruts played havoc with her tyres. The little Jazz wasn’t designed for this terrain. Over to her left, she caught glimpses of the sea as she drove and she could tell that it was already ‘blowing smoke’ out there, as her great grandfather would have said, the wind whipping up spume from distant waves. Freezing rain was storming in from the west, horizontal rain that blinded her, and she almost drove into the ditch, stopping herself from veering off the track just in time.

  ‘Why am I doing this?’ she thought. ‘Why?’

  He took a long time to come to the door. She had to hammer on the oak with her fists. And then he wrenched it open, standing in the doorway, staring down at her and blinking in the light. Her first bizarre thought was that he might crumble into dust, there on the threshold. He had never run to fat but she had always thought of him as being very fit and muscular. Now his clothes hung off him and his thinness made him seem even taller. His hair was grey, and his face was stony. She had a nightmare about him afterwards. In her dreams, he was slowly turning into one of the ancient monoliths that walked the fields below the farm. It struck her that if she had met him down in the village she might not have known who he was.

  ‘India. How are you?’ he asked, and his tongue seemed thick in his mouth, though she couldn’t tell whether it was because of the drink or because he so seldom spoke to anyone these days. He had always been taciturn, but now the power of speech seemed to be deserting him altogether.

  He seemed reluctant to move, but he stood to one side, and motioned her in, grudgingly.

  She found herself remembering their last meeting. She could feel the constriction in her throat. She set about trying to fill the silence, telling him about her recent tour, the recording deal and the television show.

  ‘I still play Alasdair’s old fiddle, you know. The one he taught you to play.’

  He stirred at that. ‘Oh yes. But I was never… I could never...’ His voice trailed off into silence. She could almost see his thoughts scattering like dried leaves in t
he wind.

  He made her some tea. The mug was chipped and dirty, but she drank it anyway, because she was afraid of upsetting him. He looked ill, and he stank of stale whisky. There was such misery about him. It spilled out and filled the whole house. India found that she could hardly breathe in there. Besides, the place stank of cats.

  Her mother had loved cats – India did herself – but she realised that Finn had just started to let them come and go as they pleased, and they had bred, unchecked, tabby with ginger, feral with domestic. When she looked around the room she saw hostile yellow eyes in all the dark corners. The fire in the kitchen range was burning, but it was so choked that there seemed to be no heat in it. It gave her a pang of despair. The fire at Dunshee had always blazed bright and warm, no matter what else might be going wrong with their lives. Now the house was smothered in dust, and the fire was a weary smoulder of smoke and ash.

  ‘I have something for you,’ he said. ‘Now that you’re here. There’s something you ought to have.’

  He got to his feet and shambled up the stairs. She could hear them creaking beneath his feet. Left alone, she poured the tea down the sink and rinsed away the evidence though it was so grimy, so clogged with grease and tea leaves, that nobody would have noticed, least of all Finn.

  She sat down again, and stared out of the window, listening to the heightened whine of the wind in the chimney. She ought to be going. She knew from bitter experience that if the weather deteriorated any further the next ferry might be the last of the day. The island harbour was sheltered enough, but docking at the mainland side was another matter and would already be fraught with difficulty. She could be stuck here for days. She heard faint footsteps moving over the floor above. Then nothing. Where was he? A thin ginger cat, more daring than the rest, emerged from its hiding place and batted at her foot with a tentative paw.

  ‘Where is he then?’ she asked but the creature only gazed back at her with inscrutable, golden eyes.

  Eventually, she got up and climbed the stairs in search of him. She knew where he would be and went straight into her mother’s bedroom where she found him, crouching in the shelter of the box bed.

  ‘I was looking for these. I thought you should have them.’

  He was holding a green cardboard folio, tied up with black tape.

  ‘What are they?’

  He thrust the folder at her. ‘Your mother’s. Some of the last things she did.’

  ‘Watercolours?’

  ‘Drawings. She would have wanted you to have them. Take them.’

  She started to open the folio but he shook his head. ‘No. Take them away. Don’t you be opening them here. I don’t want to look at them. But you should look at them.’

  ‘Alright. But are you sure you want me to have them?’

  ‘Who else if not you, India?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I always thought she would leave me. I was always afraid.’ His fists were clenched on his knees. His face had an awful blankness. It was as though the struggle not to give in to despair had left him unable to manage any expression but this dreadful mask.

  ‘She didn’t want to.’

  ‘What difference does that make? She left me all the same.’

  ‘None of us wanted her to leave,’ she said, gently. ‘I miss her all the time.’

  ‘Do you?’ For the first time he looked directly at her.

  ‘Oh Finn …’

  He shook his head, looking away again.

  ‘Don’t pity me. I don’t want pity. Least of all yours. She was my salvation. Now, I have to try not to think about her. I have to make a space in my day when I don’t think about her. I’m not very good at it. The whisky helps.’

  ‘Come downstairs, now. She isn’t here.’

  ‘How could she leave me, India? Me of all people?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And if they were right, all those years ago. If there is something afterwards, some place they go to, some kind of heaven, why won’t she come back for me?’

  ‘The dead don’t obey our rules, do they? I sometimes think that maybe they are here, all the time. Only we’re so sad that we’re blind and dumb to them. Our own need obscures everything.’

  ‘Do you think that could be true?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She went to the door of the room, and saw to her relief that he was following her. ‘I have to go soon, Finn. There’s a gig tonight. I’m playing. And you can see what the weather’s doing. I have to get off the island.’

  ‘You’ll be playing Alasdair’s fiddle.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He would have liked that.’

  ‘He would.’

  Compassion for him brought tears to her eyes, but she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. He didn’t care whether she stayed or not. He wouldn’t care if he never saw her again.

  As she gathered herself together to leave, tucking the folio inside her jacket to protect it from the rain, fumbling in pockets for her car keys, he said, ‘I saw a funeral procession, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was down there, on the shore.’

  ‘A funeral procession?’ She felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Even for Finn, this was bizarre. She moved towards the door.

  He grinned at her, but, if anything, she found this more alarming than his despondency. ‘I’m not going mad, India. Or no more mad than usual. I’m telling you the simple truth. I saw a funeral procession. Men in black overcoats, carrying a wooden coffin, and they were down on the seashore there. It was twilight. A few days ago. I’d gone down to check on the boat. They crossed my path, and one of them looked back at me. I don’t think it can have been real, though? Do you?’

  ‘No, Finn. I don’t think it can have been real.’

  At the door, she reached out her hand to shake his, but at the last minute she changed her mind, and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. Then she headed back to her car. Her last image of him, as she turned around to wave, was of him raising his fingers to his cheek, and touching the place where her lips had just brushed the sallow skin. Without looking back again, she got into her car and drove away.

  Safe in her mainland hotel, with the smell of cats and whisky lingering in her nostrils, she ordered a pot of tea and some sandwiches and tugged at the knots on the folio. The tapes had been pulled tight, and she had to tease them apart with a pin. Inside was a sheaf of sketches, mostly in charcoal, although a few were in pen and ink. India drew them out, one at a time, and laid them on the bed. She thought she had seen most of Kirsty’s work: all those landscapes, all those studies of the island flora and fauna that seemed to capture the very essence of the plant, the bird, the animal. When Kirsty had painted the island in spring, when primrose, violet and bluebell vied for space, or when the lanes were dazzling corridors of golden gorse – whins, they were called on the island - there was something savage about the resulting pictures, nothing like the genteel watercolours on display in most Highland galleries.

  Most of Kirsty’s paintings were full of light, as vibrant as she had once been herself. But these were stark studies in black and white, light and shade, Gothic in their intensity. They were more like illustrations for a book, but what book could that possibly be? Staring at them, one after another, India had to suppress a shudder.

  There was a knock on the door and Max came in. He had showered and his hair was a damp blonde cascade. He looked relieved to see her.

  ‘Thank God you’re back!’

  ‘I told you I wouldn’t be long.’

  ‘I thought you might get stranded. How was your island?’

  ‘Cold and wet and windy.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘Finn?’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘You should have let me come with you.’ His gaze alighted suddenly on the pictures. ‘Wow!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Whose are they?’

  ‘My mum did them.’

/>   ‘Christ!’ He came over and slipped his arm around her shoulders, and they stared at the pictures together.

  They couldn’t be called portraits, because they were largely unrecognisable, although there was one very bold sketch of a man, head and shoulders, with a background of dark cross- hatching, and the face just angles and planes of light. India thought she recognised Finn. It was a much younger Finn, to be sure, but there was a haunted, haunting quality about the face, as though the artist had foreseen his solitary future with horrible clarity. Or perhaps known something of his past.

  One of the sheets showed two figures, so closely intertwined that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and another began, or to say which limb belonged to which person, and it was so full of a dark, heavy sensuality that India found herself blushing. In one sketch, a woman seemed to be stabbing her partner in the thigh with a dagger, or was she pulling the knife from the wound? Another had the suggestion of a great mass of roots and rocks in the foreground, with – when you looked more closely – human bodies somehow emerging from the landscape or perhaps becoming a part of it: hands, torsos, legs, all with a sense of movement, struggle, striving to escape. Or was it a striving to be absorbed?

  There were also simpler studies of two children, swiftly drawn lines, just an impression of hair and arms and long legs.

  ‘That one looks a bit like you!’ said Max. ‘You must have been on her mind, Indie.’

  She had thought the same thing. Only when you looked more closely, you began to wonder if these were not children after all, but birds, long legged herons perhaps. In another, the same two figures seemed to have impossibly long arms which were forming an arch across something that was surely …

  ‘Christ, that’s a gravestone,’ said Max. ‘These are very strange drawings, India.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘When did your mother do them, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe in those last years. I’ve certainly never seen them before…’