By late March the grass was greening, and along the garden wall the jasmine and crocuses were in bloom. Leaves began to unfurl on the beech trees; one was copper, one green. Robins, blue tits, sparrows, chaffinches, wagtails, and thrushes came and went in the garden but no blackbirds. When I asked Vicky, she said a few years ago a pair had nested in the copper beech, but they weren’t common. “The first Mr. Sinclair named the house on a whim. I doubt he knew a blackbird from a crow.” Lambs started to appear, and Seamus had Tinker working in the fields with the other two collies. I had long given up locking my door, and in the mornings Nell would climb into my bed to turn the pages of one of her books and invent a story. We got up at seven-thirty, had breakfast, fed the hens, and collected the eggs. She was surprisingly fearless about slipping her hand under a broody hen. I followed Miss Seftain’s advice—we exchanged letters once a fortnight—and made sure to start lessons at nine every morning and keep to the timetable I had pinned on the wall beneath the schoolroom clock. Like Miriam, Nell gave up easily in the face of difficulties, but when properly praised, she redoubled her efforts.
In the garden shed I discovered a brand-new child’s bicycle: a Christmas gift from Mr. Sinclair. When I asked why she never used it, Nell said she couldn’t be bothered, which I guessed meant she didn’t know how. In the course of an afternoon, with me running back and forth across the grass holding the saddle, she mastered the skill and was thrilled. Another bike, for guests, Vicky said, was only a little too large for me. I lowered the saddle, and we started going on expeditions.
I took pleasure in all this, and in Vicky’s praise: “Mr. Sinclair won’t believe his eyes.” I began to long for a visit from our mysterious employer. Several photographs hung in the library, and Nell had pointed out her uncle to me. In one picture he was playing badminton; in another he was walking on a beach with two men and a woman; in a third he was sitting on the bench under the beech trees, a book in his lap. The pictures were small, and all I could see with certainty was that Mr. Sinclair had dark hair, square shoulders, and good taste in white shirts. Nell said that he always beat her at Monopoly and, she added with a sly glance, he often let her stay up late. Besides regular lessons I had introduced a regular bedtime.
In the evenings, after Nell was asleep, I sometimes kept Vicky company while she made her shell flowers. The pink and white shells came not from the cove but by mail from Glasgow, and she sold the resulting bouquets in a shop in Kirkwall. She offered to teach me the skill, but after I broke three shells in a row, she put me in charge of the green raffia that covered the stalks. While she worked, making little holes in the shells and attaching wires and stamens, she told me she had lived all her life on the island with only two brief visits to the mainland. Her parents, both deceased, had worked for the Sinclairs. Seamus and her two older brothers had grown up with Mr. Sinclair and his older brother, Roy, who had died in 1953.
During one of these conversations I finally learned the meaning of the phrase Bevin Boy. In 1943, Vicky explained, Lord Bevin had declared that more coal was needed to fight the war; one in every ten men who enlisted was chosen by lottery to go down the mines. “Seamus wanted to be in the RAF, like Mr. Sinclair,” she said, “but he ended up a Bevin Boy. At least it kept him safe.”
No wonder he had cursed my innocent question. I was still shuddering at the idea of spending hour after hour underground as she described how her parents had spent the war in dread of a telegram. “If someone was wounded, or worse”—she reached for a clump of stamens—“that was how the news came. We’d see a motorbike coming down the road and we’d hide behind the curtains, hoping it wouldn’t stop at our house.” She had been too young to understand the first time the bike stopped, in June 1943, but not the second time, in April 1944. “My poor mother,” she said. “Still I hardly knew my brothers, and the war was exciting. When a convoy was coming into Scapa Flow, you could feel the air buzzing even in our wee village.”
I recognised another strange phrase, this one spoken by the young man in the library at Claypoole. What was Scapa Flow? I asked, and Vicky said it was the harbour below the south island. The German fleet had been held there in 1919, until they sank their own ships. Then in 1939, just before she was born, a German submarine stole into the harbour and torpedoed the HMS Royal Oak. Afterwards the Italian prisoners had built a barrier to protect Scapa Flow.
“Oh, I know about the prisoners,” I said. “The person who first told me about the Orkneys said one of the prisoners had a beautiful voice and married an island girl.”
“Who was that?” said Vicky.
I could easily have said something vague—a neighbour, a friend—but for some reason I answered with Audrey’s full name.
“Audrey Marsden!” Vicky dropped her little hammer. “Where on earth did you run into her?”
“She used to cook for a neighbour, near Perth.”
“I always wondered what had happened to her. She was one of those girls who had to leave the island suddenly. I see her mother sometimes in Kirkwall.”
“Suddenly?” She had given the word special weight.
“She was expecting.”
“You mean”—I hesitated—“she had a baby? We always called her Mrs. Marsden, but she never mentioned a husband, or children.”
“Well, her husband wouldn’t have the same surname, would he?” said Vicky. “It’s not many women who can make Alison’s choice and have a child on their own.” She held up the flower, the four pink shells glowing on the end of their green stalk.
Later that night, lying in bed, I pictured Mrs. Marsden’s neat bun and respectable clothes. Could someone who looked like that secretly have a baby? I remembered her saying that orphanages were dreadful places. Then I found myself thinking about Drummond and Ross. For the first time it occurred to me that perhaps their sudden departure from Claypoole was connected to Drummond lying down with the boy, between the raspberry canes.
I spent many hours in Vicky’s company, but we did not exactly become friends; her duties as housekeeper set her apart, and we both had our areas of reserve. While I dodged questions about my past, she was reluctant to talk about Nell’s mother, although the first time I asked, she did give a brief biography. Alison was one of those girls who can ride almost as soon as they can walk; she got her first pony when she was four years old and later, at boarding school near St. Andrews, she competed in gymkhanas. When she came back to the island, her parents had bought her a stallion named Mercury. One evening, Vicky said, she’d been taking a shortcut across the fields when this huge grey horse loomed out of the mist. She had screamed, and Mercury had nearly thrown Alison.
Which was what finally happened. One day the horse came home alone; Alison was found hours later. At first they had thought she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, but after nearly a year and several operations, she could walk with a stick. Without her horse, though, she couldn’t stand the island. She had moved to Glasgow and started leading a different sort of life, singing in pubs, who knew what else. After Nell was born, her parents wouldn’t speak to her.
I would have liked to ask about Nell’s father, the man who wasn’t in the picture, but Vicky was already hurrying to the end of her story, describing Alison’s death. “They said it was heart failure, that the painkillers had weakened her heart. Nell was alone with her at the time. A neighbour spotted the milk on the doorstep.”
I was still saying how awful as Vicky stood up to check on her scones. A few days later, when I asked why Alison hadn’t sent Nell to school, she said she didn’t know, and that was her answer to the next question, and the next.
On evenings when I did not sit with Vicky or plot my lessons or take refuge in the library, I sometimes cycled into the village to visit Nora. A skinny girl of eighteen, Nora had been working at Blackbird Hall for two years and still sang as she mopped the floors. She often talked proudly about her older brother Todd, who was at university in Aberdeen, but when I asked if she had any plans to leave the
island, she shook her head. “Why would I want to do that? Besides,” she added, “I’m engaged.” Jock worked at the smithy and they were, Nora smiled, in no rush. Her first invitation to me was, I knew, prompted by Vicky, but soon it was understood that most Saturdays, if the weather wasn’t too ferocious, I would bicycle to the village to play cards or dominoes with her and Angus and their parents.
Still, despite my success with Nell, my small social life, the solace of being near the sea and earning money, I sometimes found myself restless. My life was infinitely happier than it had been at Claypoole, but except for the odd trip to Kirkwall, I was mostly confined to a large house and a small village. I was on an island on an island. At Claypoole I had been sustained by the hope that once I left the school and became an adult, everything would change. Now what could I hope for? I would pace up and down the corridor with its empty bedrooms and the locked door at the end and wonder if I would ever be able to take my exams and go to university. Once again I envied the birds. A shearwater, according to my bird book, could fly to Iceland and back and scarcely notice.
Easter brought a lavish chocolate egg for Nell but no sign of Mr. Sinclair. My eighteenth birthday passed unmarked, even by me; I recalled the date only the following day. Primroses and violets appeared beside the road and the lambs grew sturdier and butted heads in the fields. A few of the hens were left to sit on their eggs, and soon downy chicks darted around the farmyard. Then, in mid-May, the ferry went on strike. Seamus and Vicky complained furiously. The eggs and cheese, destined for mainland markets, piled up in the dairy. “And if the dispute isn’t settled soon,” Vicky said, “we won’t get summer visitors.” Or at least not many, she added. The planes were still flying. Playing in the garden with Nell and walking to the village, I found myself scanning the sky.
As the days lengthened, Nora organised a group of boys and girls from the village to play rounders in a field near the church. Thanks to the holidays at Claypoole, I was better than most of the girls; I couldn’t hit the ball far, but I was a fast runner and a good fielder. One evening in early June, a Tuesday, I showed up to find that Todd had arrived home from Aberdeen. The ferries were still on strike, but he had talked his way onto a fishing boat. He was, like Nora, tall and thin, and everything he wore—his shirt, his jeans, his shoes—had a hole in it. I was on his team, and when we won, he said it was all due to my fielding. Then he produced his accordion, and everyone gathered to sing and drink tea or homemade beer. I didn’t know most of the songs but I liked sitting there, being part of the group, laughing and joking about stupid things.
When I got up to leave, Todd followed me outside. While he rolled a cigarette, I asked him about university. What was it like? Was everyone very brainy? Did he spend every minute studying? Fine, no, no. As I launched into my fourth question, Todd said, “Shut up,” and, leaning forward, pressed his mouth against mine. After a moment, several moments, he stepped back. “Watch yourself,” he said, and disappeared inside. Dazed, delighted, I retrieved my bike and set off towards home. Perhaps it was to make those feelings last a little longer that I did not turn on my light but relied on the faint glimmer of the sky to reveal the strip of macadam that led back to Blackbird Hall.
Until his kiss Todd had simply been Nora’s older brother, nice enough looking, good on the accordion, refilling his glass with home brew once too often. His main virtue had been his attendance at university. Now I remembered his occasional glances, his soulful singing. I longed to see him again, to ask more questions; my life had suddenly expanded. I rounded a corner to find the road blocked by a car. Beside it knelt a figure, a man. I stopped and dismounted.
“Hello,” I said. “Can I help?”
Something clattered to the road. “Damn. I didn’t see you.”
He had the island accent mixed with something else. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Bicycles are very stealthy. I need to get a bell.”
“Stealthy.” He snorted. “You need a light.”
“You mean I need to use it.” I had bought a new battery for my light in Kirkwall the week before. Now, pleased by my foresight, I unclipped it and knelt beside him, aiming the beam while he wound up the jack and struggled with the nuts and then lowered the jack and struggled some more.
“You’re kind not to comment that I clearly have no idea what I’m doing,” he said. “I haven’t changed a tyre in years.”
“I’ve never changed one, though I did manage to mend my first puncture the other day.” From the safety of the darkness beyond the torch, I glimpsed brown hair and a smear on one cheek, oil or mud perhaps. I could tell by his voice that he was older—a man, not a boy.
“It isn’t rocket science. Where are you heading on your stealthy bicycle?”
“Blackbird Hall. It’s not far from here.”
“I’ve heard of it. There’s a farmer there who breeds cattle.”
“Who has less manners than his cows.”
“I see you have opinions,” he said, slipping the wheel into place. “Are you part of the household?”
“I’m the au pair.” Vicky had used the word nanny in her advertisement but that brought to mind someone with a bosom, stern and grey-haired.
“Au pair?”
“It means you’re a member of the family with special duties. Here.” I reached for the nut he’d dropped.
“Actually,” he said, “it means a mutual exchange of services. Au pair—on the level.”
“I don’t teach French yet.” I was explaining that my pupil was only eight when the wrench slipped and the man swore: “Bugger it!” I dropped the torch. The light shone upon two gleaming brown shoes, shoes so beautiful that I pictured them in a shop window in Edinburgh, costing more than I earned in a year. “Are you all right?” I said.
“I banged my hand.”
I retrieved the torch and he stretched his left hand into the beam. In the light his index finger was already swelling, slightly crooked. “Broken,” he pronounced.
“Oh, no. We should get a doctor.”
“In this time and place I doubt that’s an option. Don’t worry. It’s not fatal, just a useful reminder of stupidity.” He finished the nuts and then held the light while he instructed me how to lower the jack and extricate it from the car. I could hear him trying to curb his impatience as I fumbled with the levers, but soon the jack and the punctured tyre were in the boot and he was assuring me that he was fine to drive.
“Farewell, stealthy cyclist,” he said. “Thank you for your illumination.”
He drove off into the darkness and I continued on my bike, pleased by my two adventures.
The next morning passed predictably, breakfast, hens, lessons, but the house seemed noisier than usual. The Hoover roared back and forth outside the schoolroom and the phone rang several times. It was only when I went to make our picnic—I had promised Nell we could go to the Sands of Evie—that I learned that Mr. Sinclair had arrived the night before.
“Imagine,” said Vicky, “I was already asleep when I heard this commotion. I came out in my dressing-gown and there he was, saying he was starving.”
I thought at once of the man I’d met the night before, but surely he would have said if he too were bound for Blackbird Hall. “Will he be at lunch?” I asked.
“He’s off in Kirkwall. He wants to see you and Nell this evening. I told him how well you’re doing with her. From now on you’ll have your meals in the kitchen, unless, of course, he asks you to join him.” Her tone suggested that this was unlikely.
The Sands of Evie was a long shallow beach overlooking Eynhallow Sound. Vicky had told me that sometimes on summer evenings you could hear the seals singing on the neighbouring islands; so far we had seen only the occasional dark head in the distance. On our last visit Nell and I had built a hut out of driftwood, but today all that remained of our efforts was a scattered pile of planks and branches. We sat on a rock, eating our sandwiches and discussing how to rebuild it. Then Nell began to speculate about what gifts her uncle might have broug
ht. “I asked for roller skates,” she said, “and some records and a new collar for Tinker.” Since Nell had started lessons, Tinker spent his days with Seamus, but she still fed him every evening.
“A collar is nice,” I said absently. I would braid her hair, I thought, and have her read a page from her favourite book, Percy, the Bad Chick. My excitement was tinged with apprehension. I had done well with Nell and I deserved praise, but praise might not be forthcoming. Mr. Sinclair, like Miss Bryant, controlled my world; what if he was equally tyrannical?
Nell said something else, which I missed. Then she announced she was going to pee and headed towards the long grass that bordered the beach. I wandered down to the water’s edge and began to search the damp sand for cowries, the little curled pink shells that the Vikings had used as currency. I had found one on our last visit. When I gave it to Nell her small eyes had kindled. “I’ll put it in a secret place,” she had said, “and keep it forever.” Now my search took me farther and farther along the beach. I was nearing the far end before I realised that Nell hadn’t returned. Perhaps she had discovered a bird’s nest, I thought, or a rare flower. I walked back, calling her name. Only the waves and the gulls answered me. What if something had happened: an accident, or something more sinister? I looked up and down the long line of grass and rushes that bounded the beach, but whatever footprints she’d left were mixed with the footprints we had made on our way down. My heart clamoured in my ears. I pictured men, dark cars. Running as best I could, the sand slipping under my feet, I retrieved our jackets and knapsack, and ran back to the field where we had left our bicycles. At once my fears vanished. Hers was gone; mine had two flat tyres.
The Flight of Gemma Hardy Page 16