The Stormy Petrel

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Am I to understand,’ said Crispin, ‘that you are leaving the Defenders of the Highlands to do the job for you?’

  ‘To make a suggestion merely,’ said Neil.

  ‘They’re making it here,’ I said, slapping. ‘Where’s the stuff?’

  ‘Some in the cabin. I never move without it.’

  ‘One sees why.’ Crispin was slapping, too. ‘But this surely won’t be enough? I don’t mean the Shoo, I mean the suggestion.’

  ‘I thought it might give him time to think. And give me time to think as well. It’ll probably just make him mad at me, but even that might be helpful.’

  ‘If he did withdraw?’ I asked, smearing midge-repellent.

  ‘I simply don’t know. All we can do is wait and see.’

  We waited.

  When at length we went back to Eilean na Roin we got a bit of a fright, which, I suppose, served us right. As the dusk had deepened, a merciful little wind had got up and begun to stir the bracken, but we fully expected to find a furious and agitated Mr Bagshaw waiting at the causeway rubbing at his midge-bites and ready to agree to anything as long as he need never see the island again. But there was no sign of him, and when we called, there was no reply.

  ‘They’ve driven him over the cliff and into the sea,’ said Crispin, but nobody laughed. To someone like Mr Bagshaw, not used to the Highlands, and moreover, only just freed from a rather restricted form of life, the rocky island could hold, in the half-light, some very real dangers.

  ‘I’ve been a double-dyed fool,’ said Neil, explosively. ‘Come on, let’s find him. Crispin, you’d better stay put. Tie the boat up will you, please? Come on, Rose.’

  He led the way uphill at a fast pace, and I followed. We paused, but without much hope, at the tent.

  ‘If he’d been in here, he’d have heard us,’ said Neil. ‘Are you there? Mr Bagshaw?’

  No reply. He pulled the flaps open to show an empty tent.

  ‘I can hear the gulls at the cliff,’ I said, with misgiving.

  ‘Only a few. Don’t worry, nothing’s happened, I’m sure. He struck me as having a lot of sense. I’ll go over there, I know the ground better than you. You go the other way, downhill, towards the seal rocks, and take care . . . Mr Bagshaw! Are you there?’ He strode away and was soon lost to sight in the growing dusk.

  On the seaward side of the island the rising breeze was stronger, and waves boomed and echoed against the rocks. Some of the birds, disturbed, were out and calling. My eyes were used to the half-light, but even so the going was uneven, and needed care. I heard Neil call out a couple of times, but then the wind noises and the sea noises and the lie of the land blotted his voice out. I did not pause to listen for the enchanted sounds of the other island nights. I hurried, trying not to feel the older, stronger enchantment of the lonely Highland places, where the ghosts walk of all the dead, and the following shadows thicken your blood with cold.

  I was almost at the seal rocks when I found him. I heard him first. Not the moan or cry for help that by now I was half expecting, but a soft, impatient shushing noise that came from a small figure kneeling, hunched, over something on the ground.

  ‘Mr Bagshaw! Oh, thank goodness! I was so afraid . . . Are you all right?’

  ‘Hush up, lass! Keep your voice down! Of course I’m all right, but there’s a bird here with a broken wing or something, and you’ll frighten it if you shout . . . Careful now, slowly . . . Here, see.’

  I saw. Below him, barely visible in the deep shadow of a fallen-in rabbit’s scrape, a small black bird lay, half hidden by dust and pieces of broken turf. One wing, curved and narrow, protruded from the debris, moving feebly. The small body quivered and shifted, as if its feet, under the weight of dust, were still trying for take-off. But it was trapped. Behind it was the rabbit-hole, and to either side the turf bank rose sharply, where the recent fall of sandy stuff had half buried it, shutting it in like a golf ball in a bunker.

  Mr Bagshaw was making no attempt to touch it. He backed off a pace. ‘If it’s got a wing broken—’ he began.

  I knelt down, and began very gently to scrape away some of the fallen stuff. It was sandy, light and friable, and moved easily. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘the other wing’s out now, and it’s moving it. Not damaged, then . . . I don’t think it’s hurt at all. It must have just been coming out of the burrow when that bit of the bank came down and trapped it. It looks recent.’

  ‘It is. I did it. I thought I heard something funny from under ground, and then I stepped too near the edge of the rabbit-hole. Could have broken my ankle in the dark.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It was stupid of us, really, to go off like that, but you see, we were hoping . . .’ I stopped. I could hardly tell him what we had been hoping.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mr Bagshaw. ‘But how about getting this little bird out of here? If we scrape the stuff away gently . . . yes, that’s fine. What’s it doing in a rabbit-hole anyway? There, now, there, now . . . I’m used to birds. I like them. We kept pigeons when I was a boy, and my grandfather used to breed canaries. That was in the days when they bred them at the pithead to find the firedamp. I used to help him. He kept them in the engine-shed, and you should have heard them all singing whenever the engine was running to lift the cage in the shaft . . .’ He was speaking almost in a whisper, while he gently shuffled the dust and fragments of turf aside, and I scattered them away. ‘I think you’re right, the wings are OK. But – oh, here’s your brother coming. He wants to watch himself in this light.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Crispin, limping up. Neil must have heard our voices, too. I saw him coming downhill towards us.

  ‘A bird, here on the ground. A house martin, I think. It can’t fly. I thought it might be hurt, but your sis says not.’

  ‘A house martin? Here?’ And indeed, with the sickle wings spread, and the white rump now clearly visible in the dusk, Mr Bagshaw’s guess was fair enough.

  ‘It’s a stormy petrel,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen one before, close to, but that’s what it’s got to be. And it’s grounded. At least I hope that’s all that’s wrong.’

  My brother laid the crutch aside and knelt down. Neil joined us, with a question, and I said quickly: ‘It’s OK. He’s here. One of your petrels in trouble, that’s all.’

  Crispin was saying quietly, to Mr Bagshaw, ‘Rose is right. I don’t think it’s hurt, Why don’t we just lift it out of there and give it a start?’

  He reached down, but I caught at his arm. ‘Mr Bagshaw’s used to birds. Let him do it.’

  My brother glanced up. I saw him hesitate, then he moved back and got to his feet.

  ‘Go on, then, Mr Bagshaw. Your bird, I think?’

  ‘Sure.’ I felt Crispin relax beside me as Mr Bagshaw slid gentle palms under the petrel’s breast, folding the wings in and cradling the little creature firmly and expertly. It made no attempt to struggle. It looked very small and fragile in his hands, like a tiny bat with velvet wings. I smelled again the sharp, chemical smell that pervaded the broch wall.

  ‘Well, what do you know about that?’ said Mr Bagshaw admiringly. ‘The little bugger spat at me.’

  Crispin laughed. ‘If it got on your clothes, you may as well put them on the bonfire. You’ll never get the smell out. Now, if we just take it somewhere near the edge of the cliffs . . .’ He led the way across the turf. At this end of the island the cliffs were lowish, with stacks jutting from the swell and wash of white water.

  We stopped a few feet from the edge. ‘This will do,’ said Crispin. ‘Throw it over now, into the sea.’

  Mr Bagshaw turned to stare at him, his face a pale blur in the dimness. I could see his mouth opening to protest.

  ‘Go on,’ said my brother. ‘Quickly. That’s where it was going. It’s a storm petrel. Except when they’re nesting, they live at sea. Really. They follow ships, and they can swim if they have to. That little thing can fly anywhere – anywhere, as long as it’s at sea. Go on, throw it.’

 
; ‘You’re the boss, doctor,’ said Mr Bagshaw, and threw. The tiny bird made a curve up into the air, turned over, flapping a couple of times, like a moth caught in a draught, and then fell in a great sweeping dive to the sea. For a few moments we could see it, a scudding speck, black against the luminous white of the breakers, then it was gone, beating strongly out towards the open Atlantic.

  Mr Bagshaw was looking down at his hands, curved as if they still held the warm shape of the bird. ‘Well, I never did. I wouldn’t have believed that if you’d told me. A pigeon, yes, maybe, but that little spelk of a thing . . . What did you say it was?’

  ‘A stormy petrel. They call them Mother Carey’s Chickens. The storm birds. Very small, very strong, very tough. I told you, they spend all their lives at sea, except when they come ashore to nest.’

  ‘And they nest on this island?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was Neil who replied, and I added: ‘That was what you heard, Mr Bagshaw. It must have a nest in that burrow, and what you heard under the ground was the bird crooning on its egg. They only have one. They sing every night. Its mate may just have come in from the sea to change over on the nest. Usually they wait till it’s darker than this.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ He looked out for a few moments towards the deepening darkness to the west, filled with the sounds of the sea. He spoke to Neil. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘No. We try to keep quiet about them because they’re so rare, and so vulnerable when they do come in to land.’

  ‘I see. And you didn’t tell me about the seals, either. Did you know there were a lot of seals at the end there, on the rocks? Some of them with young ones, too.’

  ‘Yes. I knew. The island’s called Eilean na Roin, which means Seal Island. They’ve been here since – well, since long before the broch. Long before men came here in the Iron Age.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Bagshaw again. ‘Well, I don’t know that I can actually . . . That is—’ He did not finish what he had been going to say, but asked instead: ‘Did you get your boat fixed?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. And I think we ought to get back to it and I’ll get everyone home before the wind gets any stronger. Shall we go? Can you see your way, sir?’

  ‘Sure I can. You give a hand to the doctor here. And don’t call me sir, my name’s Hartley, but I get Hart as a rule. Now look . . .’ This as we started back towards the boat. ‘I don’t know if there’s anywhere back in the village where I can ask you to come and have supper with me, but if there is, I’d be glad if you’d all join me there.’

  ‘I doubt if there is,’ I said. ‘No hotel, of course, and I don’t think you could take three extra to wherever you’re staying, without giving notice. But why don’t we all go to the cottage? I can manage. Let’s all go back there, and I’ll fix something.’

  ‘And I’ll run you home afterwards in the boat,’ said Neil.

  We had reached the causeway. Mr Bagshaw stopped and turned back to face the three of us. ‘I won’t say no. I’d like that very much. And here and now I’d like to say thank you for this day. I’ve enjoyed it all, and that island there has been a rare privilege, and something more than I expected.’

  There was a silence that could be felt. Then Neil stepped forward and put out a hand to help Mr Bagshaw into the boat. ‘It’s been rather more than any of us expected, I think,’ he said. ‘Can you see, Hart? Then let’s go.’

  21

  It was a good supper. Since everyone in Moila knows everything, and Archie McLaren would certainly have broadcast yesterday’s proceedings, and of course Mr Bagshaw had seen no reason to make a secret of his plans, Mrs McDougall had assumed that he might stay to supper at the big house, and be taken back to his lodgings by boat, so she had helped me out by sending down with Archie that morning a bag of freshly picked – presumably hydroponic – french beans, an apple pie of her own baking, and half a dozen rolls. Neil handed them over to me, and I made that most delicious of standbys, a macaroni cheese, which we ate with bacon and beans, with the apple pie to follow.

  Mr Bagshaw, remarking that this was the best food he had tasted in a very long time, ate with great enjoyment. The burning subject of the house sale was not even touched on. Neil, who still looked tired, said little, and the bulk of the conversation was between Mr Bagshaw and Crispin. The former obviously regarded my brother as an expert on birds, and asked more questions about the petrels, and in his turn Crispin asked about the vanishing art of canary breeding. This led naturally to reminiscences of Mr Bagshaw’s childhood in some remote mining village near Durham, and so the meal passed pleasantly enough, and more easily than I had anticipated.

  Neil helped me with the clearing and the coffee. As we waited for the kettle to boil he said, softly: ‘I can’t thank you enough. I couldn’t have coped on my own.’

  ‘That’s all right. Did you gather from what he said that he’s planning to leave tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. I did make a sort of offer of a bed, as I thought there would still be a lot to talk about, but he said he wanted to be back in the village to get the ferry in the morning. So your guess is as good as mine. But—’ He stopped.

  ‘But?’

  He lifted his shoulders in a tired shrug. ‘But whatever comes in the near future, I do most passionately want to see this place left in peace. Aunt Emily used to call it her ivory tower.’ He gave a little half-laugh. ‘Something everyone should have. They’re getting rare.’

  ‘And expensive.’

  ‘That’s the trouble. Well, we’ll try and pay the price, if he’ll only let us. Here, let me take that tray.’

  ‘I can manage. Neil, Crispin brought some brandy. It’s in that cupboard, and you know where the glasses are. How about that?’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  I carried the tray through and handed cups of coffee round. ‘Only instant, I’m afraid. How do you like yours, Mr Bagshaw?’

  ‘Milk and sugar, please. Thanks.’

  ‘And thanks to Crispin, brandy,’ said Neil, coming across with the glasses.

  ‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ said Mr Bagshaw, and laughed heartily at his own joke. ‘Thank you. That’s plenty. And now –’ He took a sip, raised his glass to me, and said, across it: ‘I’m not going to make a speech, folks, I wouldn’t know how, but there’s something I’ve got to say. And the first thing is, how much I’ve enjoyed this little trip, and getting to know you folks. I can’t say that yesterday was anything great, and I’m sorry for what happened with Neil and that little rat Ewen Mackay, but it wasn’t any doing of mine, and you’ve all been good enough to treat it as such, and not hold things against me that weren’t all my fault neither – either. So here’s to you, and thank you, all of you, and specially you, Miss Rose, for this.’ A gesture took in the table.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I said, smiling. ‘I thought you said you wouldn’t know how to make a speech? That was a pretty nice one.’

  ‘I haven’t done yet.’ He was looking at Neil now. ‘You all know what I came for, and about my plans for opening the island up. I like the place, and it could be done. Boy, could it be done! Except for two things.’

  ‘Which are?’ This from Neil.

  ‘You don’t want to sell,’ said Mr Bagshaw flatly, ‘and don’t think I didn’t get all the things you let drop about the weather and the roof leaking and the light failing and no one coming to do the plumbing when the toilet seized up, excuse me, Miss Rose . . . No, Neil, let me finish. Whatever you’ve been told about this option business, there’s no way I could make you sell if you didn’t want to, and after today, there’s no way I would make you, either. Because of the second thing.’

  This time no one spoke. He took a sip of brandy.

  ‘That island, the seal island, you called it. There’s a romantic little spot if there ever was one, history, nature, good beach, nice harbour, the lot. But it would take a rhinoceros to want to sunbathe on those beaches, and you can’t tell me you didn’t know it. What the hell are they?’

  ‘Midges,�
�� said Neil. ‘Argyll variety.’ He set his glass down. The colour had begun to come back into his face. He spoke soberly. ‘Mr Bagshaw – Hart – I owe you an apology. We all do. I feel ashamed about today, and I’ve no right to be thanked for it. It was a – well, it was a conspiracy to make you hate the place. It was also stupid of us to think you wouldn’t see it. And to leave you deliberately – yes, of course it was deliberate – on the island at the time when the midges are worst . . . That was childish, a rotten thing to do. The only excuse is that you . . . you seemed so keen, and I honestly did think I would be held to it. And you took it all so well. You make me feel ashamed, and I beg your pardon. I hope you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘And me,’ I said. ‘You’ve been sweet, Mr Bagshaw, and I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what? Giving me my favourite supper? Forget it. You –’ this to Neil – ‘are a very lucky man.’

  Neil looked blank. I felt myself go scarlet. Crispin smiled into his brandy glass.

  Mr Bagshaw pushed his chair back. ‘And now I’d better be going. Neil, you and I can talk on the way back in the boat. And don’t feel bad about it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s plenty of good fish in the sea still, and I’ll find some place where I won’t be doing Mother Whosit’s chickens out of a roost, and where I can get the john mended the same day. I’ll say goodnight, then, Miss Rose, and thanks again and no hard feelings. Crispin—’

  My brother was on his feet. ‘I’ll see you to the boat. Leave the dishes till I get back, Rose.’

  He went out with Mr Bagshaw, the latter waiting to help him carefully down the steps to the path. Neil smiled at me. The tired look had dropped away.

  ‘I ought to make a speech, too. Thank you for today, and I really mean that. It’s been quite a day, and I don’t know where I’d have been without you. Shall I see you again soon?’

  ‘I’ll be here. The ivory tower is mine for another six days.’