The Posy Ring

by Catherine Czerkawska

  The paragon at the desk says nothing to this tirade of profanities, only opens her lovely eyes a little wider and looks from the incomer to Daisy and back again, with a meaningful gaze. The newcomer is an attractive if disorganised older woman, wearing a crumpled green linen dress, layered over a bright turquoise top. She has an embroidered bag slung over her shoulder and comfortable sandals on her feet but she looks hot and extremely bothered. Daisy, who is suppressing another overwhelming desire to laugh at the notion of the fucking pig, instinctively feels that here is somebody appealing. Also, she thinks, beautiful. When she was younger, this woman must have been absolutely stunning, but not in any glossy or artificial way. Not like Annabel. Even now, the newcomer has the uncompromising beauty of something slightly worn but no less precious. She has white hair coiled up on her head, but it is tumbling down, high cheekbones, porcelain pink and white cheeks with small lines. Craquelure, thinks Daisy: the network of fine cracks on an old painting. Over the years, her father’s friends have always included warm, slightly dishevelled women like this: musicians, artists, poets, occasionally prone to outbursts of swearing. The older woman’s hand flies to her mouth at the sight of Daisy.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I do apologise for my appalling language, but I’m at the end of my tether.’

  Daisy smiles at her. ‘Don’t mind me. I’ve heard a lot worse. And I know all about some parcel companies, believe me. What did they do to the pig?’

  ‘They broke its fucking ear and glued it back on – with superglue, no less – and tried to pretend that it had been that way to begin with. I mean, do I look like I have the word mug tattooed across my forehead? Or pig for that matter? Don’t answer that, Annabel,’ she adds, glancing at the blonde, confirming Daisy’s suspicions. Cal, how could you? she thinks. All too easily, of course. What man wouldn’t? She and her father call glossy young women like this ‘wedding cakes’. But most men seem to appreciate them.

  ‘Was it a particularly good pig?’ Daisy asks.

  She notices a scornful expression crossing Annabel’s face, but the newcomer understands and answers the question immediately. ‘Oh Lord, yes. A large Wemyss pig. Huge. Shamrocks. Fabulous.’

  ‘What a shame.’

  ‘I know. I always take these things quite personally. I shouldn’t but I do. My poor pig.’

  ‘They’ll pay up, Fi,’ says Annabel. She sounds bored with the whole thing. ‘They always do, you know. Get William to call them.’

  Daisy realises that the dishevelled woman must be Cal’s mother. Her son doesn’t look very much like her, except for something about the clear hazel eyes, the floppy hair caught back from her face with an ornate leather clip. Cal is taller and more wiry.

  She says, ‘Excuse me, but are you Fiona Galbraith?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She looks momentarily confused. ‘Should I know you?’ She seems genuinely worried that she might have met Daisy somewhere and forgotten her.

  ‘No. No, we’ve never met, I don’t think. But I met your son, briefly, last week, on Garve. He was… he was asked to value the contents of my house. Well, my grandmother’s house.’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ She breaks into a broad grin, shakes Daisy by the hand. ‘He mentioned it. You must be Viola Neilson’s long-lost granddaughter.’

  ‘That’s me. Daisy Graham.’

  ‘Good to meet you. We knew nothing about you. Viola was a clam. You could never prise anything out of her that she didn’t want you to know. Even my husband didn’t know that there was a granddaughter, although he knew about the daughter, Jessica. Everyone did. The elopement was a nine days’ wonder. With a travelling musician, no less!’ She stops, suddenly. ‘Oh my goodness, but that was your mother.’

  ‘And my father. They did marry, you know. But Mum died when she was very young. Dad took good care of me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about your mother. And now you’ve got the house. Do you know what you’re going to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t have the foggiest notion. But I’m going to spend the summer there.’

  ‘How lovely!’ She looks momentarily elated, then sad. Daisy thinks that she has one of the most transparent faces she has ever seen. Fiona is clearly a woman who can’t disguise her emotions. Which must make life difficult for her at times. Daisy sees the scornful expression flit across Amanda’s pretty features again, quickly hidden.

  ‘Sea and sand,’ says the younger woman. ‘That sounds so exciting.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s so much more than that!’ Fiona shakes her head. ‘You must ask Cal to show you the sights while you’re there, Daisy. And our cottage. I used to love going there. My husband tired of it but I never did.’

  ‘Can’t you still go there? Even on your own?’ Daisy blurts it out before she can stop herself. She can’t imagine not being able to do something just because your husband objects, but that seems to be what this woman is saying.

  ‘I could, but I never seem to have the time these days. Too many broken pigs!’

  ‘Anyway,’ says Daisy, suddenly embarrassed. She doesn’t want to get into a conversation about the cottage, or the contents of her house. ‘Anyway, I should go. I have packing to do. I’m off to Garve tomorrow, in fact.’

  ‘Oh, I do envy you. Give my love to Cal if you see him. And Hector. Did you meet the dog? We all love Hector.’

  Annabel shrugs minutely. She doesn’t love Hector at all, thinks Daisy.

  ‘Yes. I met Hector.’

  ‘And you will see Cal again while you’re there, I expect. It’s not such a huge place and Carraig isn’t all that far from Auchenblae.’

  ‘I thought he was meant to be on a buying trip in Argyll,’ says Annabel.

  ‘He is. He has been. And he’s good. You know that. He works hard. He can always ferret out a bargain.’

  Indeed he can, thinks Daisy, but says nothing, fixing her smile to her face.

  ‘Oh yes. I suppose he is.’ Annabel yawns widely, showing sharp white teeth, like a cat.

  ‘But you’re right. He’ll always take a detour to Garve when he can. Cal and Hector both! And why not?’

  ‘Why not indeed? That’s what I’m about to do.’

  She heads for the door. She has the distinct impression that Annabel isn’t as kindly disposed towards Cal as Cal seems to think. Perhaps the break-up wasn’t amicable at all. Men can be very obtuse about such things. Although it could be that she has a chronic grudge against anyone who doesn’t quite live up to her own high expectations. Fiona seems blissfully unaware of it or so used to it that she can safely ignore it. Daisy wouldn’t trust Annabel as far as she could throw her, as her granny used to say. ‘Fur coat and nae knickers,’ she would have said. Daisy smiles at the memory. Except that, of course, there will be expensive knickers as well. She’s a pretty woman, no doubt about it.

  There’s a weird dynamic going on in the shop. Daisy finds herself wondering, with a certain amount of relish, what happens when Cal and his father are added to the mix. Then it occurs to her that it may be something as simple as jealousy. Perhaps Annabel would like to get back together with Cal and doesn’t like the fact that he seems to spend so much time away from Glasgow, in a tiny cottage with a dog. She has to admit they’d make a very handsome couple. Besides which, she gets the feeling they’d deserve each other.

  ‘I hope you sort out your pig,’ she says to Fiona, at the door. ‘It’s been nice meeting you.’

  As she heads off down Byres Road, she realises that she meant it. It has been nice meeting Fiona Galbraith. She’d like to know her better. Which, given her son’s ability to be economical with the truth, doesn’t seem very likely now.

  NINETEEN

  1588

  Lilias, along with her young sister Ishbel, seemed to have taken it upon herself to be chief translator and educator of Mateo and his cousin. Mateo felt happier about this than seemed wise. She told them a little about the lan
dscape of the island, for they had seen almost nothing of it beyond the house and its immediate surroundings, and had no idea of the extent or nature of the island to which they had come. McNeill had intimated that they were free to go where they pleased on Eilean Garbh, as long as they did not attempt to leave it, but they had had no inclination to venture very far away from the immediate vicinity of the house. For one thing, they didn’t trust the islanders to be friendly. They confessed themselves quite ignorant about the place that had offered them shelter. Ishbel seemed surprised, with an eight-year-old’s assumption that her home was the very centre of the world, and must therefore be famous, even to strangers such as Mateo and Francisco. Lilias smiled indulgently at her sister.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know very much about the place where they come from either,’ she said. ‘Although it’s an island as well, isn’t it?’

  ‘Like this one?’ asked Ishbel.

  ‘Not so much like this one. Or at least I don’t think so, for I am almost as ignorant,’ Lilias replied.

  ‘The sun shines nearly all the time,’ said Mateo. ‘And all kinds of things grow there that I think do not grow here. Flowers and fruits of all kinds.’

  He said it so sadly that Ishbel left off petting the dogs, her chief occupation on this wet afternoon, and came over to hug him. ‘Oh, but we have flowers here!’

  ‘I have seen very few.’

  ‘You have seen only those few that survive into the winter months,’ said Lilias. ‘In springtime it will be quite different.’

  ‘You must wait till springtime and then, if you are still here, you will see flowers in plenty,’ added Ishbel.

  ‘I think we may still be here.’

  ‘Then I’m glad of it.’ The child, with a strong sense of what was fair, went over and hugged Francisco as well.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ said Lilias.

  ‘I don’t mind!’ Francisco looked up. ‘She reminds me of my little sister.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ asked Ishbel.

  ‘Sofia Isabella.’

  ‘But that’s your name, Ishbel,’ said Lilias. ‘Ishbel and Isabella are the same.’

  Ishbel put her arm through his. ‘I can be your sister while you’re staying here. And when spring comes, we can show you some more of the island.’

  ‘I don’t even know how big this place is,’ Francisco ventured.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Ishbel, giggling, looking to her sister for enlightenment.

  The island was some seventeen miles long and seven miles wide, although a Scots mile was, so Lilias told them, somewhat longer than its English equivalent. She didn’t know at all how one would count it in English miles.

  Eilean Garbh was home to a great many people, all of whom owed their allegiance to her father. There were tacksmen, those who held their land from Ruaridh McNeill, often relatives, however remote, and their dependent tenants and servants in turn. All of them were as closely interwoven as a piece of fine cloth, all relying upon each other, especially during times of hardship when their chief could and frequently did remit the rent in part or in whole. The islanders relied on the laird to oversee their troubles and their quarrels and to administer justice whenever necessary. As for the laird, he was beholden only to his clan chief, far away on the island of Barra, so Eilean Garbh was entirely his own responsibility. In any one year, there would be beasts to care for – horses, cattle and sheep in the main – as well as justice to administer and rents to collect, sometimes in cash and more often in kind. Most of all, perhaps, it was important for the chief to have a number of men whom he could ‘call out’ at need, during times of strife. But the life of the island and those living here relied on Ruaridh McNeill and his immediate family, to a greater or lesser extent, and Lilias seemed well aware of the responsibility that entailed.

  ‘Not an easy task,’ said Mateo, thinking of the quarrels, the troubles, the problems that so often arose for his own father with a smaller estate, a smaller area of land to oversee. He thought that his father brought some of his troubles on himself, being a harsh and autocratic leader. He knew little of McNeill, but the man seemed both firm and fair. Slow to anger, anyway.

  ‘No indeed. And one that certainly demands the wisdom of Solomon in all his glory,’ she said, smiling at him.

  It had occurred to him that she could not resist flirting with him. They were always supervised, and since she had a certain freedom here, he had begun to realise that she prudently arranged it that she would be chaperoned. This meant that she was able to talk to him without raising the suspicions of those who might be observing them. It emphasised the innocence of their conversations. If Beathag could not be with her, or one of the younger women who helped about the house, then Ishbel was always beside her. Today, they were seated in the hall. Francisco was still given a certain amount of leeway because of his illness, and because Beathag had taken a fancy to him and seemed happy to treat him like a younger member of her family. He was sitting huddled before the fire, with one of the few precious books the house possessed lying open on his lap, although he was dozing and waking, alternately. Mateo, anxious for work, had been given the task of repairing various pieces of household equipment that had suffered in the course of the summer: a salt box whose lid had fallen off, a new pestle that needed to be whittled for the mortar – the old one having been chewed to fragments by one of the hounds that now lay contentedly at his feet. Finn and Bran had accepted him as one of the household, sooner than their human companions perhaps. It struck him that dogs would make up their minds quickly, and then seldom change allegiance.

  A few days ago, a party of young people and children had climbed one of the hills behind the house where a group of fir trees stood, and had gathered splinters of resinous wood for making fir candles to see them through the winter. A good portion of these had to be hung over the fire so that they were completely dry before they could be used, and Mateo was engaged in bundling them and sticking them into the heavy links of the chain that held the big cooking cauldron.

  ‘There’s always work to be done,’ McNeill had told him, ‘but after the turn of the year, there will be more physical tasks, if you are so minded. You had best make the most of this quiet time.’

  Today, Lilias was spinning reddish-brown wool, harvested and dyed earlier that year from the flock of four-horned sheep with their strange dark and silvery-grey fleeces, kept quite close to the house and sometimes even along the shore where they were happy to eat what Ishbel, taking Mateo confidently by the hand to show him, had called ‘sea ware’. They were brought in and housed in stone sheep cotes by night. These sheep were, Mateo had observed, rather timid creatures and McNeill himself had confirmed that they sometimes behaved as though they ‘would rather be dead than otherwise’, although the weather didn’t seem to bother them much at all, so perhaps they were hardier than they looked. They gave a very fine fleece, albeit not much of it, but it could be spun into good yarn and ultimately woven into cloth that was both light and warm.

  ‘May I see your spindle and the ... what is this thing?’ he asked.

  ‘A whorl.’

  The spindle whorl was made of stone with a curious curved design.

  ‘It is very old, I think. My brother Kenneth found it in the old tower by the seashore. We were always playing down there when we were younger. Nobody goes there much now.’

  ‘Where does the colour of the wool come from?’ he asked, idly rearranging his fir strips in an effort to prolong the work and the moment in her company, rather than from any great necessity. ‘The bright yellow of your wrap and the red such as you have there.’

  ‘This? This wool is combed to make it finer. I didn’t do it. I have small patience with it, although my friend Morag does. And this is dyed red with the crotal, the yellow that you see on the rocks by the shore.’

  ‘So the yellow crotal does not give yellow dye?’

  ‘No
. It is very mysterious. The yellow crotal gives this reddish brown and when we comb it, it will make for a very fine cloth.’

  ‘And the yellow? The bright yellow such as you were wearing the day I first saw you?’

  He caught her blushing, as red as the wool she was spinning.

  ‘Ah, that was a gift, from my young brother’s foster family, the Darrochs, the last time they came to this island. A very fine gift. That wrap was dyed with the purple heather, when it is in full flower. And you would not expect that either. I’m told it needs some skill on the part of those who do the dyeing. I am rather poor at it, and too many of my colours turn into mud as you will no doubt see in time.’

  ‘I saw you the day McAllister put us ashore. It was beautiful.’ But he meant that she was beautiful. He knew it and she knew it. She gazed at him with her bright hazel eyes.

  ‘To be honest,’ she remarked determinedly changing the subject, ‘I have not seen the whole of Eilean Garbh myself, although my father has walked or ridden every last mile of it, as has my elder brother, Kenneth. When we were young, before he went away to college, I would ride or walk with him, and we would go for many miles in a day. There is some safety on an island, and my father was quite happy for me to go. That is how I know about the great well of Moire, whose water helped to heal you, Francisco. And the Sgurran Fithich, the Raven’s Peak at the top of Meall Each, not too far from here, from which you can see far out to the west, and Port Na Currich to the south. I have only been further than that a few times in my life so far. In spring, in May, they take the cattle north to the slopes of Dun Tarbh and round by Loch an Tarbh Uisge, where there is tolerably good grazing. There are houses up there and the folk who go seem to have a happy time of it.’

  ‘I wanted to go with them this year,’ piped up Ishbel. ‘But Father said no.’

  ‘Aye, well, Father and Mother said no when I asked them years ago. But I still regret that I can’t go with them, for they tell stories and sing songs and folk play the pipes for the dancing, and they seem to enjoy themselves very much.’