The Posy Ring

by Catherine Czerkawska

  ‘You don’t lock it?’

  ‘I do when I go away. Not so much when I’m on the island. Nobody comes down here. I keep the shed locked of course. There’s almost nothing worth stealing in the house. The fiddle maybe. A couple of my father’s pictures. But his style has changed so much that I don’t think anyone would recognise them for what they are.’

  If Auchenblae is dauntingly huge, this place is compact in every way. Daisy is reminded of a boat interior or a caravan. There are two tiny rooms: a living room at the side of the house facing the sea and a bedroom at the back. The door to the bedroom is ajar and she can see a double bed, unmade, with a heaped duvet and old-fashioned woollen blankets. A utility wardrobe in walnut almost fills the available space. The kitchen is very basic, with a Baby Belling cooker, the smallest possible washing machine and a mini fridge. There’s an equally tiny shower room with a lavatory, all clean and fresh and smelling of bleach. No central heating, but oil radiators here and there. And a fireplace with a diminutive wood burner, a chipped blue enamel kettle sitting on the top. The place smells of the sea with an undertone of soot, and with the coconut of the gorse drifting in, like sun lotion. It smells of holidays.

  ‘We used to spend a lot of time here when we were kids.’ It’s clear to Daisy that he loves this place.

  ‘Where did you all sleep?’

  ‘There were bunk beds in the lean-to. I use it as a workshop now but it was OK. In fact, when we were kids, it was magic. Like camping but more comfortable. We had hot water bottles and lots of blankets for chilly nights. It was before we had the shop. Dad was always going off painting and he’d given up on islands by that time. He would go off to various European cities, preferably without any encumbrances. Mum would bring us over at the start of the school holidays and that would be us for the whole time. Me and Catty. We just ran wild.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful.’

  ‘We set off down the shore every morning and explored. Walked into Keill to play with some of the kids there or cycled north and climbed Meall Each.’

  ‘Is that the big hill you can see from just about everywhere?’

  ‘That’s the one. If you set off from your house and head inland, there’s a track to the top. Fantastic views. Catty was fearless. We could have had a hard time as incomers, but mum belonged to the island and the other kids admired Catty.’

  ‘She’s younger than you?’

  ‘A couple of years, yes. But it didn’t matter. They’d tell me she was mad, and so she was, in a good way. There was nothing she wouldn’t dare do. In fact, she was often the leader of the pack. Good with her fists and they couldn’t hit back because she was a girl!’

  His hazel eyes are shining. He’s back in some treasured past time. He gestures to a couch with threadbare cushions and she sits down. He sits opposite in a battered old armchair. The scent and sound of the sea filters through the doorway but there can hardly be a house on Garve into which the powerful sense of the sea does not intrude. It shifts your perspective on everything, thinks Daisy. The island seems like a world within a world. Hector’s bed is beside Cal’s chair. He climbs into it, turns around three times, heaves a big sigh and settles down.

  She looks around the room. There are pictures on the walls, many of them island scenes.

  ‘Which are your dad’s?’ she asks.

  He points them out: two small but detailed studies of rock pools. She wouldn’t have guessed that they were by the same artist whose bleak cityscapes she had seen in Island Antiques and in the occasional magazine feature.

  ‘Like I said, this is early stuff. He doesn’t rate them any more. That’s why they’re still here. Most of the others are pictures my mum acquired over the years. A friend of hers did that one.’ He points to a framed watercolour sketch over the mantelpiece. Two children are playing on a beach, a boy and a girl, the boy tall, slender, intent on digging with a long spade, with his brown hair flopping forward; the little girl turning a cartwheel, her polka-dot skirt hanging down, navy knickers showing, and a pair of skinny brown legs and bare feet waving in the air. There’s a glass jar on the sand beside the boy. He’s concentrating fiercely on the job in hand, but behind him, the younger child is all energy and movement and carelessness.

  ‘Is that you and your sister?’

  ‘Aye it is. Digging for bait. Except that Catty was always distracted. And she never liked the worms. She was always letting them go, setting them free, she called it. That’s Mum’s favourite picture. I like it a lot.’

  ‘Did your dad never paint you and your sister?’

  Cal seems to find her question quite funny. ‘No way. You must be joking. Dad doesn’t do people at all!’

  She thinks about what little she knows of William Galbraith. There have been exhibitions in some of the big Glasgow galleries and elsewhere too. He has slowly but surely built up a fine reputation in Scotland and beyond. One or two US stars have acquired his work and that has helped things along. He seems to paint nothing but cheerless images, without people or even sunshine. They have always looked to her like the aftermath of some terrible holocaust, although she doesn’t want to say as much to Cal.

  The room is warm and bright and too full. Not like a man’s room at all, but she senses the unseen presence of his mother everywhere. There’s a table with a red and white gingham cloth and a shallow slipware fruit bowl in the middle, a couple of shrivelled apples and a lemon sitting in it. There’s a dark wood spinning wheel, a well-stocked bookshelf, faded embroidered cushions, a threadbare rug covering most of the floor area, an ancient fiddle hanging on the wall. She can understand why he comes back again and again. She finds herself wishing that she had inherited a cottage like this. It wouldn’t present quite so many problems as Auchenblae. She could keep it. No worries.

  ‘My dad would love the fiddle,’ she says.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten your dad’s a musician. It was made on the island. I can’t play. My sister can, though. Not well, but she can coax a tune out of it.’

  ‘Maybe when my dad comes he can give it a go.’

  ‘I’d be honoured.’

  *

  After a while, he goes into the kitchen and investigates the fridge. ‘I’ve got eggs and cheese,’ he says. ‘I can make us an omelette. Or scrambled eggs. Actually, it amounts to the same thing with me cooking it.’

  He beats the eggs and she grates the cheese, a big block of supermarket cheddar. They just about fit in there, but keep bumping into one another, saying ‘sorry’. Hector is very interested in the cheese.

  ‘His favourite thing. But then everything’s his favourite thing. Except the vet’s. He doesn’t like the vet much. Which is a shame, because the vet likes him.’

  Cal makes a big omelette on top of the stove, sprinkles the cheese on top and then finishes it under the grill. While Hector wolfs down a bowl of dog food, they eat fluffy omelette with crusty bread from the village shop, and a salad consisting mostly of tomatoes with some chopped basil from a plant on the windowsill, olive oil and lemon juice. He opens a bottle of Pinot Grigio. She thinks about the drive back to Auchenblae, but doesn’t say anything.

  After supper, they go through the gate in the back garden and head down towards the sea, accompanied by a deliriously happy Hector. Looking back the way they have come, she can see that the house does indeed seem to be sitting on a stony mound, with the path they have walked down a deliberate causeway leading to the sea. There is a small horseshoe of a bay and a low drystone jetty stretching out a few metres across the mouth. The tide is out and a blue painted wooden boat with an outboard propped up on the stern is sitting picturesquely on the white sand, tied up to a rock just above the shoreline.

  ‘I’ll take you out in it some time,’ he says.

  ‘That would be good.’

  ‘You see all sorts out there. Seals. Dolphins and porpoises if you’re lucky. There are lots of rocks an
d islets. It can be a bit dodgy, but I know it like the back of my hand.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘I put out a line for mackerel sometimes. Donal McNeill puts out creels for crabs and lobsters. From Ardachy, back along there. You can’t make much of a living out of it, but he says he does OK alongside all his other work.’

  The sun is setting, slipping into a bank of high clouds, making the sky look like a bolt of grey silk. A breeze has sprung up and it’s chilly. She wishes she had brought something warmer to wear.

  ‘I thought we were going to look up Lilias,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe we should. Come on then.’

  *

  Back in the house, he switches on a couple of lamps, sets a match to wood and paper, already laid in the wood burner, and finds her a sweater. It is a big navy blue gansey with holes here and there and too-long sleeves that practically cover her hands.

  ‘Mum knitted it years ago. The sleeves are long on me as well. She’s not the best knitter in the world, but it’s nice and warm.’

  She notices how it smells of him: faintly of some citrussy cologne mixed with the oily scent of the wool, and lavender from where it has been stored away.

  As she’s putting it on, she sees that he’s watching her, his forehead creased in a frown.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘This may sound daft, but I keep thinking I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?’

  ‘We have, as it happens.’

  ‘Where? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It took me a while to figure it out myself. It was at a boot sale. You rescued me from a dealer. I was unpacking and he was muscling in, the way they do, bullying me. You did your knight-in-shining-armour bit.’

  She can’t keep the tinge of sarcasm from her voice but she’s smiling and he starts to laugh. ‘Christ! I remember. He’s terrified of his wife, that one. Big Agnes. I still see her from time to time. To tell you the truth, I’m terrified of her as well!’

  ‘I haven’t done a boot sale in a long time.’

  ‘They’re hell on wheels. Especially if you’re on your own. I’m glad that’s cleared up, though. It’s been bothering me. I thought I might have chatted you up or something.’

  ‘No. You never did that.’

  He sits down on the sofa and opens up his laptop. He’s blushing slightly.

  ‘I have to say, the signal’s pretty crap here. Slow. But then it can be just as slow in Glasgow.’

  She has to go and sit beside him so that she can look at the screen with him. She’s mesmerised by his long fingers on the laptop keyboard, suntanned or maybe just wind burned, and has to wrap the sweater more closely round herself to keep the feelings in check. He signs on to a couple of specialist genealogy websites, using his mother’s account details. ‘She doesn’t mind. She’s quite keen on family history.’

  It takes a while and they have to keep refining the search, but eventually they find one Lilias McNeill born on Garve in 1570. Her father is Ruaridh McNeill, at Achadh nam Blàth, which is surely Auchenblae. He is described as the Laird or Thane of Eilean Garbh. Her mother is Bláithín McGugan from Islay.

  ‘Just like my mother’s maiden name,’ says Cal, surprised.

  ‘Yes – you said!’

  ‘Fiona McGugan.’

  A further search reveals that Bláithín died in 1580, ‘possibly in childbirth?’ says Daisy, and Cal nods. Lilias had siblings: an elder brother called Kenneth, a younger brother called Malcolm and a younger sister, Ishbel, born in 1580, which seems to confirm the speculation.

  ‘Looks as though we’ve struck gold. Could well be your Lilias,’ he says.

  ‘More likely than not.’

  ‘I don’t know about the inscription, though. A time will come. What time? When?’

  The signal drops out and they drink more wine, finishing the bottle and opening another. Daisy feels the familiar excitement of research, exacerbated by the alcohol and his proximity. It occurs to her that she is entirely happy in this moment. She gets more of a kick out of this kind of hunt than almost anything else in her life. It’s what she loves most about the kind of antique dealing she does: not the prospect of a bargain, not the prospect of making a find, although those things are important too. What she really loves is finding out about the history of things, about the life of these objects stretching back through time and passing through her hands for a little while only. She’s wondering if Cal might be a kindred spirit, because she’s never found one before. Not a man, anyway. Never one so attractive.

  Hector is in his bed and dreaming. His legs twitch and he emits short, tinny barks.

  ‘What do you suppose he’s dreaming about?’ Cal asks.

  ‘Chasing rabbits maybe.’

  ‘I think so too. There are lots of them in the dunes down the shore. He usually has a field day there.’

  The broadband comes back on and they pursue Lilias down the remaining years of her life. She was married to one Matthew McNeill of Dun Sithe in 1589.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s Dunshee,’ says Cal. ‘It’s a small farmhouse at the south end of the island. I wonder why there? The laird’s daughter as well. But maybe it was a more important place back then.’

  The records state that Lilias gave birth to a daughter called Flora in that same year, followed by seven sons, the last born in 1605. She had died in 1620 at the age of 50.

  ‘Eight kids in however many years? Sixteen?’ says Cal. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t die of exhaustion.’

  ‘It wasn’t uncommon. If they survived the process of childbirth for long enough.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. There’s a story from way back in my great-grandfather’s day of thirteen kids in this cottage!’

  ‘Thirteen? Where did they put them all?’

  ‘God knows. But even when they moved, they kept the cottage in the family. There was some cousin or other renting it for a while but then they moved away and Mum and Dad came back when he was just starting out as a painter, when they were first married.’

  Cal’s voice suddenly manages to be cold and angry at the same time. ‘The island was his brand for a while, before branding was even a thing. There were a few lifestyle pieces in the Sunday supplements. Mum kept them. Unrealistic nonsense about life on a Scottish island. It wore off quite quickly, though. As soon as he changed his style and began to make serious money.’

  The bitterness in his tone makes her shiver. ‘He stopped coming?’ she asks.

  ‘Mostly. Mum used to bring us. He would pay the occasional visit, but the lack of space bugged him.’

  They are intrigued to discover that Lilias’s firstborn, Flora, had married into the Galbraith family, at a place called Knockbaird. She nudges him. ‘She might be one of your forebears!’

  ‘Maybe. There are quite a lot of Galbraiths on the island.’

  ‘Is Knockbaird still there?’

  ‘It is. It’s very small, though. Just a cottage, a bit like this one, not far from Dunshee.’

  ‘So Lilias’s daughter married the boy next door?’

  ‘She must have done. We used to know the people who lived at Knockbaird, but they moved away. I think somebody who works at the distillery has it now. You should take a run down there some time.’

  It is very dark by now, and they have both drunk a lot of wine. She yawns, widely. ‘I should be getting back. But you’ve drunk as much as me.’

  ‘I know. The police don’t tend to frequent this place at night, but all the same, I don’t feel very competent to drive. Do you want to stay the night?’

  When she hesitates, although there seems to be no other option, he says quite casually, ‘This is a sofa bed. We often have visitors, or we used to, when Mum came. It’s quite comfortable. I can easily make it up for you.’

  She really doesn’t want to go back to Auchenblae. No
t now. Not in the dark. It’s one thing to be there and settled, quite another to arrive there with the vast house in darkness and the thought of the tower with its accumulation of possessions, the mice in the servants’ quarters, the monstrous fridge in the kitchen. She wants to stay in this small cottage with the warmth and the glow from the stove, with Hector sighing and snoring in his bed, with Cal in the bedroom next door. To tell the truth, she wouldn’t mind being in bed with Cal. She wouldn’t mind it at all. She can feel the warmth of him beside her. His energy. But she thinks it’s much too soon. She hardly knows him. She has had too many disasters or near-disasters to be anything less than wary. And besides, he seems to be as careful as she is. Or perhaps she’s reading too much into it. Perhaps he doesn’t find her attractive at all.

  ‘OK,’ she finds herself saying. ‘Why not? I don’t much want to go back there in the dark anyway.’

  ‘No. I can understand that.’

  He finds a new toothbrush for her, still in its cellophane packet, in the bathroom cupboard. There’s a blue towelling dressing gown and a pair of pyjamas that he says belonged to his sister, although she isn’t entirely sure he’s telling the truth about that one. They are rather elegant, with fine lace trim, and don’t fit in with his description of Catty at all. She wonders how many women he has brought back here, taken down to the beach, made omelettes for, charmed with his energy and his openness. Plenty, she supposes.

  While she gets undressed in the shower room, he opens up the sofa bed, gets out the spare duvet, a soft wool blanket and a couple of pillows stored beneath it. The pyjamas are too tight across the top, and much too long in the leg. She hadn’t pictured Catty as being this tall and slender either, but maybe time will tell. Hector wakes up, sniffs at the sofa, wags his tail and gets back into his own bed again, quite happy to have some company.

  She lies, wakeful, for a long time, listening to the wind moaning around the cottage, to Hector’s rhythmic doggy snores, to the settling of logs in the stove. Cal’s bedroom door lies permanently ajar. He apologises for it. ‘It just won’t stay shut and if I try to close it, it will bang in the draught all night.’