Bird of Passage Read online

  He nodded, but volunteered nothing more about himself, just sat there staring out to sea, and picking at the purple thyme flowers and the small grasses with grubby fingers.

  ‘It’s nice up here, isn’t it?’ she offered, after a bit.

  ‘It’s alright.’ He looked around as though seeing it properly for the first time.

  ‘This is the best place on the whole island. This is Hill Top Town.’

  ‘I thought it was Dunshee.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘Not the farm. That is Dunshee. I mean this bit. Up here. Hill Top Town. That’s what my grandad calls it. That’s what everyone calls it, though there’s no town here that I can see.’

  ‘There is no town. You’re right.’

  ‘I asked my grandad and he said there might once have been one, a long time ago.’

  ‘Maybe so. You mean down there?’ Interested in spite of himself, he turned to look into the shallow bowl of land, with its scattering of grey rocks, which formed the summit of the hill.

  ‘That’s right. And do you see the part where the flags grow, the yellow irises there? That usually means water. A spring maybe. And that means a village.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘My grandad said so.’

  ‘And he’s always right, your grandad?’

  ‘Of course’ she said, unaware of the edge of mockery in his tone, and he didn’t have the heart to laugh at her.

  ‘Is this your first time over here? At the tatties?’ she asked him.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And how long will you be staying?’

  He shrugged. ‘A few months. We’ve only just started with the earlies. We’ll be working on the other farms, and maybe going to some of the other islands, but we’re to live here at Dunshee mostly. The gaffer likes Dunshee. He says you know where you are with Dunshee.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She stood up, levering herself off the ground with her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Why is it good?’

  ‘Because I don’t have many people to play with, and you can come out with me so long as you’re here.’

  He stood up. His corduroy trousers, already solid with mud from the fields, were too small for him. He was self conscious, looking down at his naked ankles.

  ‘They won’t let me do that, will they? And not with a girl!’

  She saw that his boots were very worn, each sole parting company with the top, in a gaping grin. His feet must be wet all the time.

  ‘They will so. My grandad will. He’ll let you, if I ask him. You don’t work on Sundays, do you?’

  She could twist her grandad around her little finger.

  ‘Leave the child be,’ he often said to her mother, Isabel. ‘Let the child do what she wants.’

  ‘You spoil her!’

  ‘And why not? What else would I be doing with my one and only grandchild? How can you spoil someone by loving them?’

  ‘Do you like fishing?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I’ve got a rod. We can go fishing. There’s a loch with trout. It belongs to the estate but my grandad’s allowed to fish there.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Finn hesitated. ‘I’m here to work. I have to work. I can’t just be going off at your say so.’

  ‘You’ll get a bit of time off to go fishing though. I’ll ask my grandad if you can come with us.’

  He would say yes. She was the apple of his eye. When he was just a boy himself, Kirsty’s grandad had spoken only Gaelic. He had learned his first English at school. Now there was hardly anyone on the island, except for some of the older people, who remembered the old tongue. But sometimes he would call Kirsty ‘a’ghraidh’. Darling. She was his darling and he would do whatever she asked.

  ‘Listen, we’ll take you fishing. Me and my grandad. Francis can come too if you like. I don’t mind. And there’s the beach down there. We can go to the beach some days. Make sandcastles. Swim. It’ll be good. You’ll see.’

  As an adult, Finn often found himself rehearsing this first conversation in his mind, polishing the story like a beach pebble, making it perfect in his memory. What was it about her, he wondered, that had so drawn him to her? Or her to him, for that matter. He had never been instantly popular, not with anyone except his mother, and she didn’t count. Was it pity for his loneliness? Curiosity about the stranger – for it was clear that there were few visitors to the island? Or just a childish perception of his need: the same instinct that made her so anxious to bottle feed the orphan lambs for her grandad? Finn O’Malley looked up at her as she stood over him, small and ingenuous, her red hair in two fat plaits, hanging on either side of her freckled face, and he grinned at her.

  ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘If you like. I don’t mind if I do.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kirsty asked her grandfather about the fishing and he agreed. ‘Aye, if you like. Tell him to bring the other lad as well. What’s his name?’

  ‘The dark one’s Finn. The fair one’s Francis.’

  ‘They could both come. That Francis looks as if he could do with a good feed. If I had a beast that was looking like that, I would be giving it extra rations and calling in the vet.’

  ‘Is this wise?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘Why not? They’re only young lads. They need a holiday now and then. The work’s back breaking. They’re young to be over here. God knows why they were even sent. Or where they come from. I asked the gaffer, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. They have a strange look about them, that pair.’

  ‘What kind of look?’

  ‘I can’t quite put my finger on it. There’s something in their eyes. Do you mind that dog we had one time? Came from that big farm on the mainland. Never could do anything with him. I always wondered what had happened to that dog before we got him.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, dad.’ Isabel always called her father-in-law ‘dad’. She had lost her own father not long before she herself was widowed, but she had never been close to him. He had been a straight-laced man, good and God-fearing, but humourless. Alasdair was a benign soul by comparison, although you wouldn’t want to cross him.

  ‘I mind the dog well. It had to be put down in the end. But what has a rogue sheepdog to do with the tattie howkers?’

  ‘The money, I suppose. It could only be the money. That must be why they send them. They come from a boarding school you know. Some big place run by the Christian Brothers. That’s what Terrans told me. But why they’re there, I have no idea, and I couldn’t get anything more out of him. Does that mean they’re orphans, or what? Perhaps he doesn’t know himself.

  ‘Heavens above! Why are you so worried about them? They’re just a pair of daft lads. Maybe they misbehaved themselves. Maybe it’s a borstal or something.’

  ‘I don’t think so. That Francis looks as though he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He’s no delinquent.’

  Isabel sighed. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Sometimes her father-in-law’s social conscience exasperated her, although she would have been the first to admit that it was what distinguished him from her own father who had been content to pay only lip-service to the concept of ‘loving thy neighbour as thyself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to see our wee Kirsty in the same situation.’

  ‘That’s a different matter altogether and well you know it. But taking these lads fishing now… making favourites of them… I just think…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is it quite suitable?’

  ‘Don’t be so po-faced woman.’

  It was the mildest of rebukes but Isabel knew when she was beaten. Alasdair only ever bothered to argue with his daughter-in-law about points of principle but then he was unmoveable.

  Alasdair often took Kirsty fly fishing to the loch at the back of Ealachan House. He was on reasonably friendly terms with Malcolm Laurence who practically owned the whole island, and had stocked the loch with trout. Alasdair was casually deferential. He would have preferred
it if he were not a tenant farmer. But what couldn’t be cured must be endured, and permission to fish was one of the perks of the tenancy. He was teaching Kirsty to cast. The rod was long and too heavy for her, but she managed.

  Sometimes they met Malcolm Laurence’s son, Nicolas. Like his sister, he was away at school during term time, but he spent at least part of his summer holidays on the island. The family had a house in London, but twelve year old Nicolas was said to be ‘chesty’, and they sent him north for his health. Kirsty and her grandad often saw him, walking the island paths with his black Labrador at his heels, looking like a youthful version of his father. He wore the same tweedy clothes, the same polished brogues. His appearance always exasperated Alasdair.

  Tonight, with the two Irish boys in tow, they met Nicolas on their way to the loch. He whistled his over-exuberant dog to heel, and wished them a polite good evening, although he looked faintly surprised by their companions.

  ‘Spot of fishing, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Just a spot,’ said Alasdair and walked on.

  ‘Nice evening for it.’

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘Would you look at that?’ said Alasdair to Finn when he had gone past. ‘He’ll be my landlord one day! May the good lord keep Malcolm Laurence safe and sound.’

  Finn just grinned, and whistled through his teeth, faintly embarrassed by the outburst. Francis blushed, as though the slight had been aimed at himself.

  ‘Don’t you like Nicolas?’ asked Kirsty. ‘I think he’s a nice boy. Much nicer than his horrible sister.’ She screwed up her nose at the thought of Annabel.

  ‘Oh he’s fine,’ said Alasdair, patting her on the head. ‘Don’t you waste your time worrying about Nicolas Laurence, my wee lamb. He doesn’t need your sympathy.’

  At the loch, Kirsty practised her casting for a while, and then lent Finn her rod, very willingly. It was her great-grandfather’s old rod, in smooth greenheart, with brass fittings. It was too heavy for her to handle, but fine for Finn who – so her grandad said – was very big for his age, and surprisingly strong. Francis seemed content to lean his back against a tree and watch them. When Alasdair offered to show him how to cast, he shook his head.

  ‘I’m alright here, mister’ was all he would say. ‘I don’t mind if I watch.’

  Kirsty sat in the shade, among the creamy meadowsweet, and watched Finn too. She noticed that he was left-handed, like her grandfather.

  Alasdair was being quietly kind to the boy.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you can do.’

  It was very warm beside the loch. When you breathed in, you could feel the heat in your mouth, a sense of suffocation. Kirsty judged – with some satisfaction - that Finn wasn’t quite as competent as she. There were tiny green spiders among the meadowsweet, and they scuttled over her hands and legs, and tickled her as they went. She lifted her hand, and watched as one of them dived into space, swinging from its own silk, trapezing from her finger. Carefully she lowered it to the ground, making sure that it landed in a hollow below a stone, not wanting to squash it when she got to her feet. The smell of cut grass drifted across from the gardens at Ealachan and mingled with the musky scent of meadowsweet.

  She raised her eyes, and saw that Francis was watching Finn too. Finn was a dark silhouette, obliterating the sun. Her grandad had been showing him how to cast properly. ‘Tick Tock,’ he said, to time the cast. She was already proud of having a big boy for a friend. She heard the plop as the float hit the surface, and saw the widening rings out on the water as fish rose to flies, but not to her grandad’s bait. Or Finn’s either, for that matter. She felt the nip of the midges on her arms and legs, and slapped at them, but they were persistent. She was afraid that they would have to go home before they had caught anything. Over in the woods beside Ealachan house, she could hear the immense din of rooks beginning to circle, intent on roosting, jostling for position.

  Seeing that they hadn’t caught anything, Alasdair used ground bait, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and they caught two fat trout in a matter of minutes. He dispatched each fish with a single blow from his wooden ‘priest’, the weighted cosh which he kept in his fishing bag . Kirsty noticed how Francis flinched when her grandfather hit the fishes. Then they took them home to Dunshee where her mother gutted them, and cooked them in a frying pan on the top of the stove.

  Finn gazed around in wonder. The house was warm and cluttered. The kitchen was home to an old Scots dresser, with a row of small spice drawers along the top and a row of deeper drawers set over the base. The surface was crammed with pottery cows and horses and a collection of lustre jugs, several of them containing bunches of wild flowers in varying stages of freshness. There was an ancient spinning wheel in one corner of the room. Even now, in the middle of summer, the fire in the kitchen range was burning brightly. The wireless was playing Scottish dance music. It was a big, boxy affair with exotic names like Hilversum and Luxemburg on the dial. In use, it grew very warm, and the cat liked to sit on top of it, with the music spilling out of his soft body.

  ‘We should likely be getting back to the barn now,’ Finn said, uncertainly. ‘They’ll be wondering where we are.’

  Francis, who was looking equally uncomfortable with his surroundings, nodded. ‘I think we should go, sir.’

  ‘Not at all!’ Alasdair told them, pulling out chairs for them both, and motioning them to sit down. ‘What’s the point of catching the fish if you don’t get to eat them afterwards?’

  Kirsty saw that when her mother looked at timid Francis her expression softened. Both boys stayed to eat with them: fried trout and boiled potatoes with scones mixed with buttermilk, and baked in the oven at one side of the kitchen fire. All the bread and cakes were baked in this oven. Kirsty liked to help, liked to watch her mother putting her thumb-print into each of the big bread cakes or throwing flour into the bottom of the oven. If it burned, the oven was too hot. If it stayed white, the oven was too cool. If it went pale golden brown, the oven was just right. There was something infinitely satisfying to Kirsty about this simple formula although she couldn’t explain why. Sometimes she lay in bed at night, imagining herself as a grown-up woman, in charge of the house, tossing flour into the oven. Trying to get the temperature exactly right.

  Finn and Francis sat side by side at the kitchen table. Francis picked at his food, too shy to eat in company. He kept looking over at Isabel who smiled at him encouragingly.

  ‘On you go, son,’ she said. ‘On you go!’

  Finn, on the other hand, ate ravenously, glancing over his shoulder from time to time. He held his arms protectively around his plate, and forked the buttery fish and potatoes into his mouth, hardly pausing to chew between mouthfuls, burning his tongue on the delicious flesh.

  ‘Steady, lad,’ said Alasdair, watching him, his brow furrowed into a frown. ‘Steady on. You’ll need a wee pause between mouthfuls. You’ll not be wanting to choke yourself.’

  Finn looked up, and Kirsty thought that he reminded her of the farm dogs when they hunched protectively over a bone, casting dangerous, white eyed glances in all directions. Or perhaps he was more like the lonely crows that lurked about the farm, waiting to scavenge dead meat. But she said nothing. She found herself blushing for him.

  Francis dug him in the ribs. Finn looked up, and saw them watching him. He coloured up as well, moved his arms away from his plate and slowed down.

  Isabel spooned out more potatoes for him, but she snatched the spoon away quickly, as though she were feeding a wild animal.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much, missus.’ He looked up and flashed his sudden, disconcerting smile at her, but she turned away.

  ‘Have some more potatoes, Francis. You look as if you could do with a good meal inside you.’

  ‘Are they your only trousers?’ asked Alasdair, when the meal was finished. He had been deep in thought for most of it.

  Finn nodded.

  ‘I think I might have a better pa
ir than that up the stairs. Isabel, you’ll maybe fetch the old woollen trews from the bottom of my wardrobe. He’ll have to roll them up, but they’ll be warmer than what he has on.’

  Isabel looked daggers across the table. ‘Those were James’s trousers...’

  ‘Aye. And he has no further use of them where he is. There’s a couple of tweed jackets as well. They’ll be a wee thing threadbare but there’s a lot of wear in them still. The lads can make use of them, I’m sure.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Thanks, mister.’ Finn raised his head and looked directly at Alasdair, then dropped his eyes to his plate again.

  Alasdair reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Good lad.’

  For the first time, Kirsty felt something that she would always feel in Finn’s company. She felt a sudden sense of proprietary pride in him, as though praise of Finn was praise of herself, but it was compounded – as it always would be - by a sharp pang of jealousy. She wanted him all to herself. But she wanted her grandad all to herself as well.

  ‘Am I not good?’ she asked her grandfather, plaintively.

  ‘Of course you are. You’re my Cairistiona. My little lass!’ he said, turning from his plate to tug at her pigtails, tying them into a loose knot at the back of her neck. Kirsty was ticklish. She hunched her shoulders and shivered, but still she liked it when he teased her in this way. She caught Francis watching Finn as he ate, and Finn glancing from her to her grandfather and back again. He looked hungry. That’s what she thought. But how could he be hungry when he was in the middle of eating? When he had eaten so much already?

  ‘Just eat your tea and stop your nonsense, Kirsty,’ said her mother. ‘And then Finn and Francis had better get back to their friends in the barn.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When school was over for the summer, Kirsty was never very far from the tattie fields, and even the swimming dolls lay forgotten in her bedroom cupboard. She swung on the gate, watching the work. Often, when the weather was fine, she went into the fields and helped out, gathering up the miniature potatoes that were left behind, the ‘pig potatoes’, which were much too good for the pigs. She and her mother and grandad liked to eat them, fried up in butter in a cast iron pan until they were crispy. Occasionally, Finn and Francis would be invited to share the meal.